by Nora Roberts
"Still, it hardly seems reason enough to stand about in a damp field at this hour. But if you must, you must. Do you intend to kill him?" Brigham flexed his fingers. "I do."
"Be quick about it, Ashburn. This business has postponed my breakfast." So saying, he strolled off to confer with Standish's second, a young officer who was pale with both fear and excitement at the idea of a duel. The swords were judged acceptable. Brigham took one, letting his hand mold to the hilt, weighing it as though he had a mind to purchase it rather than draw blood. Standish stood ready, even eager. The sword was his weapon. Ashburn wouldn't be the first he had killed with it, nor would he be the last. Though he might, Standish thought as he remembered the stares and murmurs of the night, be the most pleasurable. He had no doubt that he would cut down the young prig quickly and ride home in triumph.
They made their bows. Eyes locked. Sword touched sword in salute. Then the quiet meadow rang with the crash of steel against steel. Brigham measured his opponent from the first thrust. Standish was no fool with a sword, had obviously been well-trained and had kept himself in fighting trim. But his style was a bit too aggressive. Brigham parried, putting Serena out of his mind. He preferred to fight emotionlessly, using that as a weapon, as well as his blade.
The ground was rich with dew, and the mist silenced the slide and fall of boots. There was only the song of metal slicing over metal as the birds quieted. Their swords slid from tip to hilt as they came in close. Their breath mingled like that of lovers through the deadly cross of blades.
"You are handy with a sword, Colonel," Brigham said as they drew apart to circle. "My compliments."
"Handy enough to slice your heart, Ashburn."
"We shall see." The blades kissed again, once, twice, three times. "But I don't suppose you required a sword when you raped Lady MacGregor."
Puzzlement broke Standish's concentration, but he managed to block Brigham's thrust before the sword could run home. His brow darkened as he realized he had been led to this duel like a mongrel on a leash.
"One doesn't rape a whore." He attacked, fueled by a drumming rage. "What is the Scots bitch to you?" Brigham's wrist whipped the sword up. "You shall die wondering."
They fought in silence now, Brigham cold as Highland ice, Standish hot with rage and confusion. Blades hissed and rang, competing now with the sound of labored breathing. In a daring move, Standish feinted, kissed his sword off Brigham's, sliced in centre ecart. A red stain bloomed on Brigham's shoulder.
A cooler head might have used the wound to his advantage. Standish saw only the blood, and with the smell of it scented victory. He came in hard, judging himself moments away from triumph. Brigham countered thrust after thrust, biding his time as the blood dripped down his arm and into the thinning mist. He pulled back a fraction, an instant, laying his chest bare. The light of victory came into Stan-dish's eyes as he leaped forward to open Brigham's heart
With a bright flash of metal, Brigham knocked the sword aside moments before it pierced him. With a speed Leighton would claim later made the blade a blur, he twisted and plunged the point into the colonel's chest. Standish was dead before Brigham had pulled the point free.
Beside the pale-faced soldier, Leighton examined the body. "Well, you've killed him, Ashburn. Best be on your way while I deal with the mess."
"My thanks." Brigham handed Leighton the sword, hilt first.
"Shall I bind up your hurts, as well?"
With faint amusement, Brigham glanced over to his horse. Beside it, the estimable Parkins sat on another. "My valet will see to it." Serena awoke just before dawn. She hadn't slept well for the past week, ever since a dream from which she had woken with her heart hammering. She had been sure then, somehow, that Brigham was in danger.
Even now, the moment of fear haunted her, adding to the ache she had lived with since he'd left. But that was foolish, she told herself. He was in London, safe. With a sigh, she sat up, knowing sleep was impossible. He was in London, she repeated. He might as well have been worlds away.
For a little while she had allowed herself to believe he would come back, as he'd said he would. Then the weeks had passed and she had stopped looking down the path at the sound of horses. Coll and Maggie had been married more than a week. It had been at their wedding that Serena had finally allowed hope to die. If he hadn't come back for Coll's wedding, he wasn't coming back. She had known it, Serena reminded herself as she washed and dressed. When she had given herself to him on the banks of the loch, she had known it. And had sworn there would be no regrets. She had known, she told herself now as she bound back her hair. She had known, and she had been given everything she could have wanted.
Except that the afternoon she had spent in Brigham's arms hadn't made her quicken. She had hoped, though she had known it mad, that she would find herself with Brigham's child.
That wasn't to be. All she had left were her memories.
Still, she had her family, her home. It helped fill the gaps. She was strong enough to live her life without him. She might never be truly happy again, but she would live and she would be content.
The morning chores eased her mind and kept it from drifting. She worked alone, or with the women of her family. For them, and for the sake of her own pride, she kept her spirits up. There would be no moping, no pining, for Serena MacGregor. Whenever she was tempted to fall into depression, she reminded herself that she had had one golden afternoon.
It was early evening when she slipped away. Her mother and Maggie were sorting thread and Gwen was visiting one of the sick in the village. Dressed in her breeches, she avoided everyone but Malcolm, whom she bribed with a piece of hard candy. She rode for the loch. It was an indulgence, right or wrong, that occasionally she allowed herself. Whenever time allowed, she went there to sit on the bank and dream a little. And remember. It brought Brigham closer to her. As close, Serena knew, as he would ever be. He was gone. Back to London, where he belonged.
Now spring was here in all its glory. Flowers waved in the gentle breeze, trees were ripe with green, green leaves. The sunlight dappled through, making pretty patterns on the soft path. Young deer walked through the forest.
By the loch the ground was springy and warm, though the water would be frigid for weeks yet, and would carry a chill all through the summer. Content from the ride, she lay on the grassy knoll to read a little, and dream. It was solitude she had wanted, and it was serenity she found. From somewhere to the west, like mourning, came the haunting call of a greenshank. Dog violets grew, pale blue and delicate, beside her. She plucked a few, threading them idly through her hair while she studied the glassy calm of the lake. On the rocks above, heather grew like purple stars. Its fragile scent drifted to her. Farther up, the crags had been worn sheer by rain and time. There was little that could grow there, and to Serena, their very starkness made them beautiful. They were like fortresses, guarding the eastern verge of the loch.
She wished Brigham could see this spot, this very special spot, now, when the wind was kind and the water so blue it made your eyes sting.
Pillowing her head on her arm, she closed her eyes and dreamed of him.
It felt as though a butterfly had landed on her cheek. Dozing, Serena brushed it lazily away. She didn't want to wake, not just yet, and find herself alone. Soon enough she would have to go back and give up the hours she had stolen for herself. Not yet, she thought as she curled into her self. For just a little while longer, she would lie here and dream of what might have been. She sighed, groggy with sleep, as she felt something—the butterfly—brush over her lips. She smiled a little, thinking how sweet that was, how it warmed her. Her body stretched against the gentle fingers of the breeze. Like a lover's hands, she thought. Like Brigham's. Her sigh was quiet and drowsily aroused. Her breasts tingled under it, and seemed to fill. All along her body, her blood seemed to rush to the surface. In response, her lips parted.
"Look at me, Serena. Look at me when I kiss you."
She obeyed automat
ically, her mind still trapped in the dream, her body heating from it. Dazed, she saw Brigham's eyes looking into hers as her mouth was captured in a kiss that was much too urgent, much too powerful, for any dream.
"My God, how I've missed you." He dragged her closer. "Every day, I swear it, every hour." Could this be real? Her mind swam as fiercely as her blood as she wrapped her arms tight around him. "Brigham?" She held on, terrified to let go and find him vanished. "Is it really you? Kiss me again," she demanded before he could speak. "And again and again." He did as she asked, his hands dragging through her hair, streaming down her body until they were both shuddering. He wanted to tell her how he had felt when he had stopped his horse and had seen her sleeping, sleeping where they had first come together. No one had ever looked more beautiful than his Serena, lying in her men's breeches with her bead pillowed on her arm and flowers scattered in her hair.
But he couldn't find the words, and if he had, she would never have let them be spoken. Her mouth was hungry as it fused to his. When he had loved her before she had been fragile, a little afraid. Now she was all passion, all demand. Her fingers pulled and dragged at his clothes as if she couldn't bear to have anything between them. Though he murmured to her, wanting to show some gentleness on this, their first meeting in so many long weeks, she burned like a fire in his arms.
Unable to resist, he tugged the men's clothes aside and found his woman.
It was as it had been before, she thought. And more, so much more. His hands and mouth were everywhere, torturing, delighting. Her skin was covered with a moist sheen and nothing else as he pleasured both of them. Whatever shyness she had felt when she had first given herself to him was eclipsed now by a need so sharp, so desperate, that she touched and tasted in places that made him gasp in amazement and passion. She drew him down to her, reveling in the scent of him—in some way the same as it had been on their very first meeting. Sweat, horse, blood. It spun in her head, touching off primitive urges, the darkest desires.
"Name of God, Rena." He could barely speak. She was taking him places he had never been, places he had never known existed. No other woman had mastered him in this way, not the most experienced French courtesan, not the most worldly British flower. He was learning from the Scots wildcat more of love and lust than he had thought possible.
The blood was hammering in his brain. There was pain, exquisite, terrifying pain. The control with which he lived his life, with which he raised a sword or fired a pistol, was gone as if it had never existed. He dragged her against him, his fingers raking through her hair, bruising her soft flesh,
"Now, for pity's sake." He plunged into her, going deep. Her nails dug into his back as she cried out, but she was moving with him, driving her hips up to meet each thrust. With her head thrown back, she gasped for air. In some part of her brain she knew this was something like dying. Then there was no thought at all. Though her eyes flew open, she saw nothing, nothing but a white flash as her body went rigid.
The aftershocks of pleasure wracked her body even as her hands fell limply to the ground. Her vision was misted—it seemed only more of the dream. But Brigham lay, warm and solid, over her. And he was… he was trembling, she realized with a kind of wonder. It was not only she who was left weak and vulnerable, but he, as well.
"You came back," she murmured, and found the strength to lift her hand to his hair.
"I said I would." He shifted to kiss her again, but softly now. "I love you, Serena. Nothing could have stopped me from coming back to you."
She framed his face with her hands to study it. He meant it, she realized. Seeing the truth only made her more uncertain of what to do.
"You were gone so long. No word."
"Sending word would have put too many at risk. The storm's coming, Rena."
"Aye. And you'll—" She broke off as she noted blood on her fingers. "Brig, you're hurt." She scrambled up to her knees to fret over the soaked bandage on his shoulder. "What happened? You were attacked? Campbells!"
"No." He had to laugh at the way she snarled the rival clan's name. "A little business in London before I left. It's nothing, Serena." But she was already ripping the cuff from his shirt to make a fresh bandage. Brigham sighed, knowing Parkins would make him pay, but he sat meekly and let her tend his wound.
"A sword," she said.
"A scratch. We won't talk of it now. The sun's going down."
"Oh." She blinked, noting for the first time how much time had passed. "I have to go back. How did you find me here?"
"I could say I followed my heart, which I would have. But Malcolm told me you'd ridden out." A few flowers clung yet to her hair, and her hair was all that covered her breasts. She looked like a witch or a queen or a goddess. He could only be certain that she was all he needed. He grabbed her hands. The intensity was back in his eyes, dark, demanding.
"Tell me, Rena."
"I love you, Brigham." She brought his hand to her cheek. "More man I can say."
"And you'll many me." When her eyes dropped from his, he erupted. "Damn it, woman. You say you love me, you all but kill me with passion, then you go skittish when I speak of making you my wife."
"I have told you I cannot."
"I have told you you will." He picked up his ruined shirt and slipped it gingerly over his shoulder, which was just beginning to ache. "I shall speak with your father."
"No." Her head shot up quickly. Trying to think, she pushed the hair back from her face. How could they have come so far and be back where they had begun? "I beg you not to."
"What choice do you leave me?" He pulled her shirt down over her head, struggling for patience when she jerked away from him to dress herself. "I love you, Rena, and I have no intention of living my life without you."
"Then I'll ask for time." She looked at him then and knew she had to resolve what was in her heart and what was in her head. "There is so much to be done, Brigham. So much that will be happening around us, to us. When the war begins, you'll go, and I shall only wait. Give me time. Give us both time to deal with what has to be."
"Only so much, Serena. And only because, in the end, I'll leave you no choice."
Chapter Eleven
Contents - Prev | Next
Serena was right. Things were happening around them that would shape the destiny not only of two lovers, but of the whole of Scotland. Within days of Brigham's arrival at Glenroe, the French dealt the English a crushing defeat at Fontenoy. Though Charles's, and many of the Jacobites' hopes rose with it, Louis of France still withheld his support from the rebellion. Charles had hoped to ride on the glory that surrounded the French victory, to gain much-needed impetus for his cause; once again, however, he was left to his own devices. But this time he moved. Brigham was both confidant and informer. He knew to the day when Charles, with money raised by the pawning of his mother's rubies, fitted out the frigate Doutelle and a ship of the line, the Elizabeth. While the push in the Highlands, and in England, went on for support, Charles Edward, the Bonnie Prince, set sail from Nantes for Scotland and his destiny. It was high summer when word came that the Prince was on his way. The Elizabeth, with its store of men and weapons, was chased back to port by British pursuers, but the Doutelle, with Charles aboard, sailed on towards the Scottish coast, where preparations were being made to greet him.
"My father says I cannot go." Malcolm, sulking in the stables, frowned up at Brigham. "He's says I'm too young, but I'm not." The boy had just passed his eleventh birthday, Brigham thought, but prudently held back from mentioning it. "Coll goes, as do I."
"I know." Malcolm glared at the toe of his grubby boot and thought it the height of injustice. "Because I'm the youngest, I'm treated like a bairn."
"Would your father trust his home and his family to a bairn?" Brigham asked gently. "When your father leaves with his men, there will be no MacGregor in MacGregor House, but for you. Who will protect the women if you ride with us?"
"Serena," he said easily, and he spoke no less than the truth.
"Would you leave your sister alone to protect the family name and honor?"
The boy moved a shoulder, but began to think on it. "She is a better shot with a pistol than I, or Coll, really, though he wouldn't like to say so." This news brought Brigham's brow up. "But I'm better with a bow."
"She will need you." He dropped a hand on Malcolm's tousled hair. "We will all need you. With you here, we needn't worry that the women are safe." Because he was still young enough to know what it was to be a boy, he sat on the mound of hay beside Malcolm. "I can tell you this, Malcolm, a man never goes easily to war, but he goes with a lighter heart if he knows his women are protected."
"I won't let harm come to them." Idly Malcolm fingered the dagger at his belt. For a moment, Brigham thought he looked too much a man.
"I know, as your father knows. If the time comes when Glenroe is no longer safe, you will take them up into the hills."
"Aye." The idea made Malcolm brighten a bit. "I'll see that they have food and shelter. Especially Maggie."
"Why especially Maggie?"
"Because of the bairn." His fingers slid away from his dagger. "She's to have one, you know." For a moment, Brigham only stared. Then, with a laugh, he shook his head. "No, I didn't. How do you?"
"I heard Mrs. Drummond say so. She said Maggie's not sure she's increasing yet, but Mrs. Drummond was sure and there'd be a new wee bairn by next spring."
"Keep your ear to the ground, do you, my lad?"
"Aye." This time Malcolm grinned. "I know Gwen and Maggie are always talking about how you'll be marrying Serena. Will you be marrying her, Brig?"
"I will." He ruffled the boy's hair. "But she doesn't know it yet."
"Then you'll be a MacGregor."
"To an extent. Serena will be a Langston."
"A Langston. Will she like it?"
Brigham's eyes lost their amusement. "She'll grow used to it. Now, if you've a mind to take that ride, we'd best be off." Always cheered by the idea of his horses, Malcolm jumped up. "Did you know that Parkins is courting Mrs. Drummond?"
"Good God." Brigham stopped in the act of leading out his horse and turned to the boy. "Someone should plug those ears of yours." Malcolm only laughed, and Brigham, unable to do otherwise, put a hand on the boy's shoulder again. "Is he really?"
"Brought her flowers yesterday."
"Sweet Jesus."
From the window of the parlor she was supposed to be dusting, Serena watched them ride off. How wonderful he looked, so tall, so straight. She leaned out the window so that she could watch him until he was out of sight He wouldn't wait much longer. Those had been his words the hut time they had stolen an hour together by the loch. He wanted her wedded, and properly bedded. He wanted to make her Lady Ashburn of Ashburn Manor. Lady Ashburn of London society. The idea was nothing less than terrifying.
She looked down at herself now, at her dress of pale blue homespun and at the dusty apron that covered it. Her feet were bare—something Fiona would have sighed over. Lady Ashburn would never run over the moors or through the forest in bare feet Lady Ashburn would probably never run.
Her hands. Serena turned them this way and that examining the backs and the palms critically. They were smooth enough, she supposed. Because her mother insisted she rub lotion into them every night. But they weren't lady's hands any more than hers was a lady's heart
But God, she loved him. She understood now that the heart could indeed speak louder than the head. English or not she would be his. She had even come to know that she would leave her beloved Scotland behind for his England rather than live without him. And yet…
How could she marry a man who deserved the finest of ladies? Even her mother had thrown up her hands at Serena's attempts to learn the spinet She couldn't do fancy work with her needle, only the most basic stitches. She could run a home, to be sure, but she knew from Coll that Brigham's house in London and his manor in the country were a far cry from what she was used to. She would make a mess of it, but even that she could almost bear. It was knowing how poorly she had dealt with her one brush with society—the brief months she had spent in the convent school.
She had nothing to say to the kind of women who spent their days shopping for the right shade of ribbon and making social calls. A few weeks of that life and she would go not-so-quietly mad, and once she had, Brigham would hate her. We can't change what we are, she thought. Brigham could no more stay here in the Highlands and live her life than she could go with him to England and live his.
And yet… She had begun to see that living without him would be no life at all.
"Serena."
She turned quickly to see her mother in the doorway.
"I'm nearly done," she said, flourishing her dusting cloth again. "I was daydreaming." Fiona shut the doors at her back. "Sit down, Serena."
Fiona used that quiet but concerned tone of voice rarely. Usually it meant that she was worried or annoyed. As Serena moved to comply, she searched her mind for any infraction. True, she'd been wearing the breeches a bit too freely on her rides, but her mother usually overlooked that. She had torn the skirt of the new gray dress, but Gwen had mended it so that it hardly showed at all. Serena sat, pulling the cloth between her fingers. "Have I done something to upset you?"
"You're troubled," Fiona began. "I had thought it was because Brigham had gone and you were missing him. But he's been back for several weeks now and you're troubled still."
Serena tucked her bare feet under the hem of her skirt as her fingers knotted and unknotted the cloth. "I'm not troubled really. It's only that I'm thinking about what will happen after the Prince comes."
That was true, Fiona thought, but not all the truth. "There was a time you would talk to me, Serena."
"I don't know what to say."
Gently Fiona laid a hand on hers. "What's in your heart."
"I love him." Serena slid to the floor to lay her head in her mother's lap. "Mama, I love him and it hurts so terribly."
"I know it does, my darling." She stroked Serena's hair and felt the pang in her own heart that only a mother understands. "To love a man is great misery and great joy."
"Why?" There was passion in Serena's eyes and voice as she lifted her face. "Why must it bring misery?" Fiona gave a little sigh and wished there could be a simple answer. "Because once the heart opens, it feels everything."
"I didn't want to love him," Serena murmured. "Now I can do nothing else."
"And he loves you?"
"Aye." She closed her eyes, comforted by the familiar scent of lavender in the folds of her mother's skirts. "I don't think he wanted to, either."
