“I am well.” Her voice was flat, toneless.
“Lass…”
“I asked you to call me Tara,” she snapped.
“All right. Tara. I dinna believe ye. Remember—”
“What is it you wish me to say?” Now, emotion all but choked her as she spoke in broken sobs. “We left them! We left them there to burn or bleed, and we ran away! We even left the horses!”
She doubled over, elbows on her thighs, head tucked down, hands clasped over the back of her neck. Her shoulders and back heaved as she sobbed mightily. When he tried to touch her, she shook him off.
“Don’t touch me, please. Don’t!” she managed to cry.
He did not, settling for sitting back and cursing himself instead. He should have continued on rather than deciding to find the source of the smoke. What had he been thinking of? Any contact with outsiders could result in a tragedy such as this.
The mercenaries would have found the camp whether or not he and the lass were there.
But she would not have known of it, which was all he cared about at that moment.
He knew it was wrong. That he ought to also care about the generous people they’d left behind. People who had taken a chance on welcoming them, even against their better judgment. Look how they had been rewarded.
He recalled the dimpled lad who’d urged her to dance, and his heart clenched.
“How?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “How could they do it?”
“I dinna know,” he admitted. “I could never do such a thing. Not ever. It takes a certain sort of animal to bring so much misery to others.”
She sat up, rubbing her arms. He pulled out the cloak Davina had given her—yet another generous gift, and draped it over her shoulders. “I cannot understand it. They were looking for me. Were they not?”
He sighed and wished she would not ask him. “Aye. I suppose they were. They would have looked for ye there whether ye were there or not, mind.”
This did not seem to matter. All she knew was they’d been looking for her and had punished others in her place. “And that man. You killed him.”
“I killed them both—him and the one ye fought.”
“Both?”
“I couldna have either of them telling the others two of us had escaped, could I? As it is, there is still a chance one of them saw us, but I was not much of a mind to stay around and find out. We had to take that chance and run.”
“It’s glad I am you killed them,” she snarled, staring out over the water. The intensity of her gaze, of her voice, the blankness of her face disturbed him. Pure hatred.
“I feel the same,” he confessed. “They deserved it.”
“But…” She turned to him, her eyes looking through him but not seeing him. It unnerved him greatly, but he did not dare look away. “But, we still left the others. Who is to say what they did? How could we leave?”
“Lass—Tara,” he corrected, “we had no choice. Ye had no choice. If ye wished to live, ye had to go. And I had to be the one to take ye, for ‘tis I who’ve been with ye all along. I would not wish to leave ye on your own now for anything in the world, for now, we know what waits out there for ye. Do ye believe ye could fight all of them off on your own?” Perish the thought of her so much as trying.
“Of course not.” She had that much sense left, at least.
“And had anything happened to me—had I fought another man, and another, until finally they exhausted me and managed to take ye—we both know what would have happened. What your fate would be.”
“I know.” She brought to mind someone dead inside. Hollow. Resigned to the truth and unable to care much. She would care later, he knew, once the rest of her shock wore off and she was able to feel again. She would care very much.
“I had to make a decision in a moment’s time. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was either ye or the rest of them. I made my choice, and it was the only choice I could make, and I would not take it back if given another chance. I would choose ye, again and again. Ye need never fear.”
Her chin quivered. Her eyes welled. “But the children.” She covered her face with her hands.
This time, when he wrapped an arm about her shoulders, she did not push him away. Instead, she laid her head upon his chest and wept until her tears soaked his tunic.
“We might as well stay here for the night,” he suggested once she’d quieted. “Ye need to sleep, and I need to rest my aching body. The man was not much of a fighter, but he was quite eager to try.”
She said not a word, choosing instead to go about the business of unsaddling the horse and spreading the blankets without raising a fuss. She worked quickly, efficiently, and without looking his way once.
Whether she blamed him for being unable to do more or for insisting they investigate the camp was unclear. He only knew she blamed him.
And she was not alone in that.
18
Shana woke to the unpleasant sensation of rain hitting her face.
“Ah, no,” she muttered, groaning as she pushed herself up on one elbow. Sure enough, clouds had covered the sky while they slept and were now emptying themselves over the world.
“What else do we need?” William grunted to the sky before sitting up, wincing as he did. She winced, too, upon seeing him in better light than she had before they’d gone to sleep.
There was a rather ugly bruise beneath his left eye, just beside the place where he’d been cut. That looked better than it had before, at any rate, though it had oozed blood during the night which had crusted in his hair and over his ear.
“I must look a fright,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his stubble. His knuckles still bore traces of blood even after he’d washed his hands at least twice in the river.
Suddenly, the rain went from a drizzle to a downpour, and an icy one at that. They gathered the blankets and scurried under a spruce with long, low branches which managed to catch most of the rain before William then tended to the horse, leading him to a drier spot.
“It will be slow going now,” he grunted, looking out toward the river. “Slower even than before. I’m not certain where we are, to be honest.”
She wiped the rainwater from her face.
He pointed straight ahead. “That ought to be north, as far as I know, and the river is flowing west to east. If this is the River Glass, we’re in luck.”
“How is that?” She realized she did not care much whether or not they were in luck. Not when her thoughts kept returning to those they’d left behind.
He turned to her with a brilliant smile. “Munro land is just beyond the other side of the river, near Loch Glass. It flows into this. I believe we’re nearly home.”
Home. It was not her home. It was not even his home—he had already told her as much, had he not? She could hardly muster a smile in the face of his enthusiasm.
“What is it?” he asked.
She gaped at him. Could he be that daft? “How can you ask me that?”
“Tara, ye have to put aside what happened—believe me,” he continued over her protestations, “I know how ye feel.”
“You do not know any such thing.”
“I do.” He sighed, leaning an arm against the tree trunk and wincing as he did. “Tore my shoulder, I think. Not that it matters. What matters is, we are safe. I managed to get ye out of there before they found ye. That is what I must remind myself when I feel guilt or regret.”
“Do you feel those things? Do you?” She wanted him to. It would mean he wasn’t like them. Not if he could feel, if he could regret.
“Of course I do. Who do ye think I am? Have I not shown ye time and again and that I am not the sort of animal they are? I would never consider breaking up a camp, burning it—” He stopped himself there, though his mouth had opened as though he wished to say more.
She was glad he’d stopped himself, for she could not listen to it. Her imaginings were terrible enough without hearing the brutal images in her head spoken aloud
.
He looked down at his bloodstained tunic.
She had wept on that tunic, had she not? With a man’s blood beneath her face. Her stomach churned at the thought.
“I canna pretend to be sorry I killed them, however.”
“I do not expect you to.”
“But if ye think I dinna care about what happened there, ye are mistaken. Terribly so. I’m sure I shall never forget it. All it does is make me that much more determined to get ye to safety.”
“Why?” she whispered, nearly too exhausted to speak. She felt empty inside, as though all of her crying had hollowed her. Would she ever cry again? How could she possibly have any tears left?
“Why? Why do I wish to get ye to safety?”
“Why me? What makes me any better than any of the others?” She sat, drawing her knees to her chin and wrapping her arms about her legs. “Why was I worth saving and none of the others were? What makes me different from them?”
“Is that it? Ye feel guilt for being alive and well while they…?”
She nodded, eyes closed, unwilling to hear more.
“Och. I know that feeling as well.”
“Please, do not humor me.”
“I am doing no such thing. Ye shall recall, that I fought in the rising.” He sat beside her, just far enough away that they did not touch. “Do ye know how many men died?”
“I do not.”
“Nor do I, but I can tell ye I watched dozens. Hundreds, perhaps. We may never know how many brave men we lost against the loyalists, but I know I was not one of them. And for months afterward, I regretted being one of the men who’d walked away—able to walk away—from the battle after the fighting was done. I even hated myself for having lived while the others died. What was so different about me that I deserved to live when they did not?”
She opened her eyes to look at him. “Why did you fight when you had a duty to the laird?”
“He wished for me to go, if I wished to go. I know he would have been there alongside me if the duties of managing the lands did not mean more. He has no brothers, ye ken, and no children. No heir.”
“I see. And you lived through it.”
“Somehow.”
She had seen him fight. She knew how strong and fierce he was. It hardly seemed like a matter of chance.
“I know I was not the only one to feel the way I did. That I did not deserve to live when others had died.” He stretched his legs out before him, wincing. “He truly bruised me.”
“Do not speak of him, please.” He might have been nothing better than a devil, but he was now dead. It hardly seemed proper to speak of him, and in such an offhand manner.
“Forgive me. I dinna mean to offend.”
She waved this off. He was humoring her again, and there was not much that angered her more. “I would rather not think of either of those men.”
“Ye never have to again.”
“Och, but I will. I shall think of all of them.” And she would ask herself every day why she had been able to escape while they had not. Why had more of them not run for the horses, that they too might get away?
A voice in her head answered that question for her. Because they didna wish to leave each other. Manfri would have spoken so, and he would have been correct. They were a clan, a family, and they’d stayed together to protect each other.
Perhaps William’s way was better. There was no way to tell.
Would she have run away if she were one of the girls with whom she had danced? If a group of men had raided her camp, attacked her kin, would she have run off into the night and taken the first horse she came to? Or would she have stayed behind to fight until her dying breath?
Much more likely was the latter than the former. But it was always easy to answer such questions when not in the midst of an emergency.
And truth be told, she was ever so relieved when they escaped. There was no denying it to herself, even if she would never admit it aloud.
The rain continued to pour, now dripping on them even with the tree acting as cover. She reached for her cloak and pulled it up to her chin, but that did nothing for her head.
“We canna cross the river until the rain stops,” William informed her with a grimace. “With the water rising so, it will cover the road and sweep us off.”
“Are there no other bridges?”
“Do ye believe there are bridges everywhere, just waiting for us?” There was an edge to his voice, and she regretted her question. He was even more eager to reach safety than she was. After all, traveling with her was a heavy responsibility which he would be glad to rid himself of.
So she told herself.
He let out an angry sigh. “Aye, there are other bridges, but they happen to be a good distance apart, and all of them except one are built the same. I’ve seen them, trust me. The only one sitting high enough above the river sits at the mouth of it, where the loch flows through and narrows. In this rain, it would take us most of the day to reach it, and we would be knee-deep in mud by the time we did. Far better to stay where we are.”
“What if they happen to find us?”
“The rain will hold them in place, as it holds us in place. They shall count on that.”
“How do you know?”
“I dinna know!”
“Just as you did not know last night what we were about to walk into, yet you insisted we go though I said I didn’t think we ought to!”
He threw his hands into the air with a look of grim satisfaction. “There ye are. I knew it. I’ve been waiting all through the day for this. For ye to blame me, as I knew ye wanted to. As if I have not already blamed myself. Please. Dinna hesitate to remind me that we might have avoided that horror if we had not ventured nearer the camp.”
“We might have avoided that horror if we had not ventured nearer the camp!”
“And ye might have avoided being kidnapped and having a bounty on your head if ye did not raid villages and camps!”
This took her breath away. If he had kicked her in the stomach, the effect would have been the same. The air left her lungs in a hard, heavy burst.
“That is what you think of me?” she barely whispered, still struggling to breathe. “You believe it was my fault for being there. I was not part of that raid. I waited for the others to return. I was in my tent. They took—they took me—” She placed her hands over her breast when her heart began racing out of control, the memories making her ill.
“Och. I ought not—”
It was too late. He had already said it. She was already reliving the night. And she knew he blamed her. As if she could help what Manfri wanted to do. As if she had any say.
“Leave me alone now.” She turned away from him, curled into as tight a ball as she could and drew the cloak over her shoulders. “Do not speak to me, do not look at me. Tell me when we can move on to the bridge. I want nothing else from you now.”
“If ye would only listen.”
“No.” She lowered her head onto her folded arms and wept.
19
William had never so wished he could dig a hole and bury himself in it.
He had never so regretted anything he’d said.
He had crushed her. The last person he wanted to hurt.
In any other case, at any other time, he would have said what he said and not given it a second thought. In fact, he might have taken pride in knowing he’d been able to cut his foe to the quick with nothing but a few well-spoken words.
Killing without spilling a drop of blood was rather efficient. It meant less to clean up after the fact.
But this? This was what he’d imagine it meant to have oneself torn open from top to bottom and watching one’s innards spill out. He had somehow managed to harm himself while hurting her, because he had caused her pain. It was all too much to understand.
But he needed to understand, because she was still with him. She was still his to care for and protect.
Only the sound of rain hitting ground, river, dripp
ing from the trees filled the air after her angry sobs quieted, and he both welcomed the peace and cursed it. With nothing to do but sit and wait, every thought and fear and a sliver of self-doubt he’d pushed aside came rushing back to fill to empty minutes.
He closed his eyes in the vain hope that it would all go away. He’d never so wished to escape reality. In truth, he’d never wished to escape it at all, preferring to face challenges head-on. He’d faced this one long enough. It was not weakness to wish for escape, even for a moment.
That moment dragged on as he slid into a dreamless slumber, lulled by the rain and the softness of the needles beneath him.
Silence was what roused him.
Not complete silence, as the river’s flow never ceased and the snorting and soft neighing of the horse reminded him of its presence. But these were mere background noise, the sort of thing a man learned to ignore when so much of his life was spent in its midst.
The rain had ceased, which was what pulled him out of slumber.
To find himself alone.
“Lass?” He sat straight up, immediately reaching for his dirk. How could he have been so careless? “Tara! Where are ye?”
Scrambling to his feet, all but deafened by the sound of his racing heart, he looked in all directions. Only a single set of footprints in the rain-softened earth. He followed them, blade at the ready, eyes darting this way and that.
He’d failed her again. He was never meant to protect her when he could not manage to stay awake. What had become of him?
What was to become of her?
He continued to follow her tracks. Why was there only one set? Why, unless…
Unless she had not been taken from him. Unless she had run away.
This slowed him down somewhat as the truth settled into his bones. Of course. He would have heard a scuffle, the approach of other men. Under no circumstances would she have gone without a fight.
She had escaped him while he slept. She was in no more danger than that in which she’d placed herself.
Highland Temptations: Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 30
