Highland Avenger

by Hannah Howell

  Brian ignored the chuckles of the men who had gathered around them. “Your mother sent ye to get the boys?”

  A faint smile touched the young man’s bruised mouth. “You have not met my mother. She saw this as a way to make our part of the family more powerful. She believes we are scorned and treated ill by the rest of our family. She wishes to be the one who does the scorning and the ill treating, oui? She believes the children will help her get that power for they are protected. Only some, not much, but ...” He shrugged.

  “Did ye ken that Lucette planned to slowly kill off many of the landed and titled people of his clan? That he claimed he had the DeVeaux as allies?” Brian saw his answer in the widening eyes of the young French lord.

  “I only knew that I would have to kill him for he intended to kill the children. As for having my family as his allies? I fear I am all he had and I was reluctant. The rest of my family knows nothing about all this or Amiel.”

  “What about the land?”

  Lord Ignace shrugged again. “It is strategically important but we have lived without it for years. I considered getting that a good thing but not necessary. The woman, the guardian, might have been persuaded to sell it. Mayhap to come home here with the children or to live quietly somewhere with them. That was a thought.”

  “And what did ye want from all this?”

  “What I wanted matters little. My mother and uncle hold the money until I am thirty or wed. I did suggest to her that sending me here might be the death of me but she was not troubled by that.”

  Brian looked at Sigimor, who sheathed his sword, crossed his arms over his chest, and nodded. It was all the agreement he needed. They did not have one of the worst of the DeVeaux here, just a young man with little choice. He doubted anyone would cry for revenge over the loss of some men-at-arms, but killing a young lordling of the clan, even one they did not favor, could renew the feud between the Lucettes and DeVeaux, and the Murrays, with a vengeance. He also thought that sending someone back to tell some truths and a few lies would help keep the boys safe.

  “Tell me, if ye had a choice, what would ye have done? What do ye want to do?” he asked DeVeau.

  “Go home alive. I would not have done this. What my mother wants does not matter. I think it would just get us killed. I like being of so little importance to the rest of my family that they barely acknowledge me.” The two men with him grunted in agreement. “Why do you think Lucette approached us and no other? Because we are no real threat to any Lucette. We have a small vineyard far away from most of the others and they only notice us when they need a place to rest on some journey. They come, eat our food, drink far too much of our wine, and then forget us as soon as they ride away. I would like it to stay that way.”

  “And the sinking of the ship?”

  “Stupid,” he spat out, anger bringing a light flush to his cheeks. “Unnecessary. I was asleep and did not know what Lucette was doing. I would never have agreed, which I think is why I was not awakened and told about it. My father was a sailor, oui? What he did for France and the king is why we have our vineyard and the title.”

  “Then ye will go home, alive, with your two men. But ye will tell your mother that the boys died, that ye were attacked as ye tried to bring them back to France.”

  DeVeau frowned. “That may cause trouble with the grandfather. They are bastards but the grandfather, he is a man who believes in caring for any with the family blood in their veins.”

  “Ye will find a way to go and tell him, secretly, that the boys live. They are ours now. Lady Arianna got them a piece of land here from the Lucettes and here they will stay. And, as ye can see, they will be weel protected. That grandfather can deal with the Murrays or us if he e’er has need to speak to the lads.”

  “She got the Lucettes to give the lads their Scottish lands?” DeVeau asked in surprise. “Mayhap she was not a madmon’s choice for guardian, eh? Do you think she will be wanting to be rid of their French lands?”

  “If and when she and the lads want to, ye will be the first they offer them to. If ye do as I say.”

  “And if ye dinnae,” said Sigimor, “then ne’er close your eyes, lad.”

  The way DeVeau stared up at Sigimor, slowly blinking and paling a little, revealed his youth as nothing else had. Brian winced and knew he had to end this soon. His wounds had cost him a lot of blood and he was growing light-headed.

  “I swear upon my father’s honor that I will do all you have asked,” DeVeau said.

  “Go home, DeVeau,” said Brian. “If ye keep your vow, then it all ends here.”

  “What of Lucette’s body?”

  “We will see that he gets back to his family with a warning,” said Harcourt.

  “Oh, and if ye truly were appalled by the sinking of the ship, ye may wish to speak to a Captain Tillet.” Brian gave the man Tillet’s direction. “It would serve ye weel to do so as I dinnae think ye want your name tied to that sinking, nor have it brought to the attention of the rest of your kin.”

  DeVeau nodded. He and his men sheathed their swords and moved to gather their horses. Brian knew that would be all they would leave with for his kinsmen were already busy gathering up anything of value left on the battlefield. He frowned when he saw Callum fall into step beside DeVeau for he did not believe the young man would go back on his word.

  “Callum?” he called.

  Callum looked at him and grinned. “Naught to worry about, Brian. Just talking about wine and ships.”

  Brian shook his head and then stumbled. Sigimor moved to steady him. He looked at his cousin and knew he was not going to be able to stay conscious much longer.

  “Jesu, Brian,” muttered Sigimor. “Ye are bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  “Just how does a stuck pig bleed?” asked Brian.

  “And now ye are talking like a fevered mon. We need to get back to the keep and see to those wounds.”

  Brian looked toward the keep. It appeared to be miles away and surrounded by a thick haze. He looked back at his cousin.

  “Sigimor?”

  “Aye?”

  “Catch me.”

  Sigimor caught Brian before he hit the ground. He picked his cousin up in his arms and, cursing softly, started toward the keep. “Arianna is nay going to be happy about this.”

  No one disagreed.

  Chapter 19

  Arianna wrung out the rag she had just dipped in a bowl of cool water and bathed the sweat from Brian’s face. The terror that had gripped her when he had shown signs of fever had eased now. It had been two days and his fever had not risen very high. His wounds were healing nicely as well, with no signs of infection.

  She shivered with dread as she remembered her first sight of him after the battle. To see him bloodied and carried in Sigimor’s arms had nearly brought her to her knees. If Brian had not groaned softly at that moment she would have started wailing like a banshee. The mere thought of him dying had torn the heart right out of her. She had actually been relieved to hear that he was only wounded, until she had seen the wounds. It had taken Mab and Fiona a few moments to assure her that none of the wounds were mortal.

  Fiona and Mab had done wonderful work. Arianna was ashamed about how little she knew despite all the teachings of her family. She had been too young to understand the importance of such teachings. Her love had been the garden and still was. In her youthful arrogance she had thought the ability to grow all the plants the healers needed was enough. In France she had been better than the healer they had used but, next to Fiona and Mab, she was a fumbling novice.

  “I just assumed that everyone had skilled healers,” she told a sleeping Brian as she bathed his arms. “That was verra foolish of me. Just because I grew up surrounded by women who had great skill didnae mean there were a lot of skilled healers outside the lands of my kinsmen. If I had taken a moment to consider the matter, I would have recalled how often one of my kinswomen was called away because of her skills. Then I would have kenned the idiocy of my beli
ef. The fact that I was just a child doesnae excuse me, either.”

  “Why not? Many of us dinnae think much on the future when we are children,” said Fiona as she closed the door behind her and moved to the side of Brian’s bed. “He looks better.”

  “His wounds are still clean and already show signs of healing,” Arianna said.

  “Good. I have come to sit with him for a while and Mab will follow me. Ye go and visit with your lads, get some rest, or go and enjoy this rare sunny day in the gardens.”

  Arianna forced down the reluctance she felt, the need to stay at Brian’s side. Fiona was right. She did need to get some rest, to leave the room and breathe some fresh air. She would do Brian no good if she exhausted herself. With a nod to Fiona, Arianna stood up and walked out of the room, intending to find Michel and Adelar.

  Two hours later, Arianna sat down on a stone bench in Fiona’s garden. She knew she would have to seek her bed soon. The visit with the boys had quickly revealed to her just how tired she was. But, the sun was shining, the gardens were full of the signs of new growth, and she needed to savor that for a while. She leaned back against the tree behind the bench and let the sun warm her.

  “Ye would probably be more comfortable sleeping in a bed.”

  Blinking rapidly, Arianna sat upright and looked at Callum as he sat down next to her. A glance up at the sun told her that she had fallen asleep for a while, but her body was demanding a much longer rest. She was a little surprised that her cousins were still at Scarglas.

  “I had thought ye and the others would have left by now,” she said, a little embarrassed that she had paid so little attention to where her cousins were after they had come to help her.

  “We are waiting on ye,” Callum said.

  “Ah, weel, I cannae say when Brian will be fully recovered.”

  “Actually, we are waiting to see what ye wish to do when he is. Stay or leave. I can see by your face that he has ne’er given ye a hint of what will happen about that. So, ye and the rest of us will wait until he does.”

  Callum was too astute, she decided. He always had been. Arianna suspected the horrors of his childhood had something to do with how easily he could see into a person’s heart. Orphaned and abused, he had known the worst of humanity until her cousin Payton and his wife, Kirstie, had saved him. He had gained a true skill at judging what a person was or what they wanted from those dark days. Now accepted by his paternal family, the cherished grandson of a powerful MacMillan, he had fulfilled his boyish pledge to grow strong and learn to fight so that he could protect the innocent. She did not believe she needed his protection, however.

  “There has been little time to think about the future,” she said, and was not surprised by the way he just cocked a brow at her for the thin excuse was worthy of derision.

  “Nay? He found time to be your lover.”

  She could feel the heat of a blush stinging her cheeks but ignored it. “That is none of your concern.”

  “Ah, but it is. Arianna, we failed ye.”

  “Nay!”

  “Aye, we did. All of us. We didnae stand by ye as we should have as a family. Ye were in France for five years, lass, and not one of us came to visit.”

  That still stung but she told herself not to be a child about it. “Ye didnae ken that I wanted ye to. The Lucettes didnae let ye see the letters that might have made ye want to come to see how I was faring. They didnae let me see any letters from my family that might have spoken about visiting, either, so ye couldnae have kenned that I wished to visit home or have ye visit me. As far as all of ye kenned, I was content.”

  He moved closer and put his arm around her shoulders. “E’en if ye were truly content, someone from the clan, from your family, should have gone to visit you. The verra fact that ye ne’er asked us to visit or asked if ye could come home for a visit should have made us wonder why. We definitely should have had some suspicions roused by the occasional missive from your husband or his family telling us that ye were far too busy to visit with us.”

  They should have and Arianna suspected the fact that they had not would hurt for a while. She knew how the days could pass, how long a journey it was, and how many obligations her family had. Soon that would be enough to soothe the sting. They had written so they had not forgotten her. And with the Lucettes watching all letters coming or going, her family must have begun to wonder if she cared about any of them anymore. The wound she had suffered had mostly been inflicted by the Lucettes and it would heal.

  “I didnae ken that the Lucettes wrote to any of ye.”

  “Only now and then. I believe it was at those times when they saw something in our letters to you that told them we were becoming unsettled by the lack of any invitation to come to France or your unwillingness to visit with us here. They kenned verra weel that we wouldnae have tolerated the way ye were being treated. That doesnae excuse us, though. Someone should have traveled there to see how ye fared, nay just taken the Lucettes’ word for it.”

  “The Lucettes, aside from Claud’s family, are good allies and good people. There was nay any reason to be suspicious of them. Of course, I was ne’er allowed to see any of the other Lucettes, either. I fear I thought they ne’er wished my company, but now I ken that the Lucettes or Claud made sure none of them came to visit, either.”

  “’Tis the way of such people. They cannae have the ones who care for ye come anywhere near. Claud certainly couldnae allow it or all of his lies would have been revealed and one of us would have freed ye of the trap he had put ye in.”

  She sighed. “Brian told ye everything, didnae he?” She had the feeling that Brian had done so because he was angry at what he saw as their neglect.

  “About how Claud abused ye? Aye.”

  “He ne’er hit me, Callum.”

  “What he did was still abuse.”

  “I ken it now. Brian made me see that, although it did take a while for it to become clear to me.”

  “I will confess that it took me a while to ken how ye didnae see what he was doing from the verra start. Then I understood that what he did was feed ye a slow poison.”

  “That is exactly what Brian calls it. Insidious is what it was. Rather like that wee drop of water that slowly wears a hollow in a rock. When I became aware of what he had done to me, I was ashamed. Why had I allowed it? I have thought about it a lot and have decided that I wasnae as certain of myself as I had thought I was. A part of me accepted the implication that I needed a great deal of improvement. I also come from a clan with a lot of strong, good marriages. I wanted that for myself and I think I was willing to believe Claud wanted that, too. Many of his criticisms were weel disguised as advice.” She shrugged. “It doesnae matter. I am recovering. I dinnae e’en hear his voice in my head as often as I did before.”

  “I think ye are still wounded enough that ye now hesitate to reach for what ye want.”

  “Both people must want it, Callum,” she said quietly, knowing that he spoke of Brian.

  “Aye, but that doesnae mean one cannae at least try to convince the other that they both want the same thing.”

  She laughed with him and promised him she would think about it. There was some wisdom in his jesting words, however, she thought as she finally left the garden to seek her bed. One could not force love from a person, but that did not mean one had to just sit and wait, hoping it would grow. She could, at the very least, try to show Brian that there was love just waiting for him if he wanted it.

  What she knew she could not do was openly declare her love and hope for the best. If Brian could not have his mind changed about sending her home, she did not want to leave knowing she had handed him her heart only to have it tossed aside. Arianna decided that what she needed to do was show him in every way she could that she cared for him. If he wanted her as some thought he did, he would see how she cared and ask her to stay.

  Brian woke to the soft sound of Arianna’s voice. He had heard it often during his recovery. The way she had cared for
him as he had healed made him think she had some deep feelings for him. He tried not to let that tempt him into reaching for what he knew he could not have. He saw no harm in basking in her warmth for a little while longer, though.

  “Ah, ye are awake,” she said, and hurried back to the side of his bed to kiss his cheek. “Hungry?”

  “Och, aye,” he said as he sat up and rested against the pillows she stacked behind his back. “I will be glad to get out of this bed, too. A fortnight abed is too long.”

  “I ne’er liked being bedridden, either. I once thought that the sun only came out when I was too ill to enjoy it.”

  He laughed and then murmured his pleasure when she set a tray of hearty meat, bread, and cheese before him. Another sure sign that he was healed for Fiona was very strict about what an injured or ill person could eat. This food was only for the healthy.

  Arianna kept him entertained with tales of what everyone was doing while he ate. It was evident that she had settled in nicely at Scarglas. He knew she and Fiona had become very close. He prayed Arianna would not be too hurt when he sent her home.

  Brian then wondered if she was reluctant to leave because she still thought her family had deserted her. That wound had been deep and he doubted it was fully healed yet. Arianna had the sense to know it was not her family’s fault, not entirely, but that did not mean she was eager to face them all.

  “So, your cousins are still lurking about?” he asked as he picked up his tankard and then inhaled the scent of good strong ale, another thing Fiona had denied him while he healed.

  “Just Callum and Uven,” she replied. “Brett and Harcourt had to leave as they had places they had promised to be.” She frowned. “I have the feeling there is something troubling Brett but he didnae tell me what. I think he got tired of me asking him if everything was fine.” She smiled. “Might be why he left.”

  “Could have given him a nudge but I suspicion it was more about some place they had said they would be, some promise they had made. And, at times, a mon doesnae want to talk about what troubles him, nay if it is personal.”