“The English walked us nearly until dark that first day, herding us along like animals. Every step was a step farther away from you. Your screams still echoed in my ears. I thought of nothing else all day but how I would escape and return to you. At nightfall they made camp. The prisoners were all tied to trees— except the women, who were expected to cook the meal.”
“They wouldn’t attempt escape on their own?” I would have.
“You wouldn’t have,” Collin said, as if he’d read my mind, “if it meant leaving Lydia behind.”
“Oh,” I said softly. That possibility brought fresh tears. “They couldn’t leave or their children would be killed.”
“Aye.” Collin nodded solemnly. “Very effective method of containment— and all else the soldiers wished,” he added bitterly. “There is little a mother will not do for her child.”
Or a father for his son. I thought of Collin’s father. “How did you escape?”
“The English had searched me right off and found the dirk in my boot. But they are lazy, and they did not think to look in the other boot as well. I’d a shorter knife there, the one I use for carving— one given to me by your grandfather long ago.”
Our eyes met for a brief moment before I looked away. But I had seen what he was thinking, and he likely knew my thoughts as well. Grandfather had not given him that knife merely for carving. He had known that one day Collin would need it.
“I’d helped an old man to walk throughout the day, allowing him to lean on me, when he would have been whipped— or perhaps shot— by the soldiers. He’d a daughter with him, and she came to me at the night to bring me a bit of water and bread. I convinced her to fetch my knife and cut me loose. She did. Before I left I had to tie her up, with a gag as well, so come morning the soldiers would not suspect that she had helped me.”
“Why didn’t you set her and the others free?” It was a fine story of escape, but I could not help thinking of those left behind.
“I had asked, did she want to come with me, but she would not leave her father, and we could not take him, slow as he was. As for bringing the others— none of us would have made it away.” Collin’s face pinched, and he shook his head, looking aggrieved. “I did feel badly leaving them. But it was to you I’d sworn my oath, you I had pledged to protect and had failed. Nothing weighed stronger than returning to you.”
“That was the first day. You didn’t return for almost three weeks.”
“The longest three weeks of my life.” Collin chanced another look my direction. I answered it with one I hoped was closed. I was intrigued by his story, that was all.
“I returned the way we’d come, walking the entire night through, staying clear of the roads, lest the soldiers came searching for me. I had nothing, save my knife. They’d given me little to eat or drink the whole of the day before. At sun up I could go no farther but found an old foxhole and curled up in it, covering myself with leaves. It was a fitful sleep, for I heard your screams in my mind, and then I heard the soldiers in the woods around me. It seems the coin they’d given Brann was a pittance compared to the price I’d fetch as a servant in the Colonies, and they were not about to let their income be lost.”
“Fourteen years of labor ought to be worth something,” I muttered, my ties to the English and soldiering leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
“Aye. It is— to the English, anyway. They came too close. I left my hiding place and ran farther into the woods. A particular brutish soldier took to cutting through the brambles with his newest toy— a claymore confiscated from one of the other prisoner’s homes. The soldier was close. I heard him thrashing about, but I did not think he saw me. I ran on, ducking between bushes and around trees. Until I came around one, lost my footing, and my head met the side of his claymore. I fell as it struck, off the edge of a precipice, into a deep ravine.”
I gave a start, almost feeling the fall myself. Oh, Collin. I started to reach for him but stopped myself just in time. “Go on,” I said in a choked voice.
“It was dark and freezing when I woke again. My head hurt something fierce, and I felt faint with the loss of blood. But I was blessedly alone and had landed on my side, my head literally stuck in the mud. The fall kept me from the Redcoats and stopped up my wound— though I cannot recommend mud as a treatment in general.” Collin grimaced.
“I wrapped my shirt around my head tightly then trudged on, walking in a cold stream to both keep myself awake and to cover my scent. I found a dead fish and ate it raw.” A corner of Collin’s mouth lifted as he glanced at me.
“Dead fish aren’t so bad after all?” He had teased me terribly once, on our journey through the Highlands, when I had speared a fish, only to discover it had been dead for some time. Remembering that morning together, and thinking of him alone and bleeding with naught but a raw, dead fish to eat, softened my heart a little more.
“They are bad,” he confirmed. “I ought to have chosen starving. The next day I heaved out my guts— and the fish’s too.”
“Ugh.” I clutched my stomach, feeling ill myself.
“Somehow I survived that and kept going.”
“Somehow?” I didn’t want him leaving any detail out. I wanted to know everything that had transpired. It was the only way I might come to a proper conclusion.
“Because I had to,” Collin amended. “Every step brought me closer to you. Every minute longer I was gone gave Brann more time to hurt you. I was close to the Campbell keep. But I’d no idea what I might do when I arrived— no weapon, save a wee knife. No strength to speak of. Going there as I was would have provided Brann the perfect opportunity to kill me— before your very eyes. As much as I wanted to charge in and save you, I couldn’t.”
“You went home instead,” I guessed, remembering the clan map showing the border we shared with MacDonalds.
“I started to.” Collin rose from his chair and began pacing in front of the fireplace. For months I’d believed it a habit of both brothers, when really he had been here, right before my eyes. Why hadn’t I seen it? What kind of wife does not know her own husband? One who had been married all of three weeks, perhaps.
“I’d not yet reached home when I discovered that my clan was coming to me— or to confront the Campbells. They were camped on the border of our lands, and Ian had wasted no time preparing them as if for war— men, women, and children. He’d armed them with everything he could think of— wooden swords, tines formed from antlers, pitchforks— a broomstick.” Collin gave a short laugh. “I might have found it amusing, except that it was rather brilliant. By use of disguise and props, Ian intended to make it appear the MacDonalds were greater in number and decently armed. When I realized what he had accomplished in so short a time, I saw him for the leader he could be— if only his motives were well aimed.”
Collin stopped his pacing to roll his neck and shoulders. I sensed this was not a tale easily related. But so far, I did not doubt the truth of it.
“I’d not made myself known to Ian or the MacDonalds yet. I wasn’t certain how they would receive me, and I needed time to plan what I might say to persuade them from their course. If not, there could be both bloodshed and repercussions. I had to persuade them— all of them, but especially Ian— to help me.
“I lingered far enough away from their camp not to spook the horses, but not so far as to have them out of my sight. About an hour after most had gone to bed, there was a commotion. I’d dozed off and woke to see Ian and Niall in a heated argument on the rise above the camp, parallel to my hiding place and only a short distance away. I crept closer and overheard them arguing over what to do when they arrived on the morrow. Niall wished to seek me out straight away and kill me. But Ian—” Collin brought a fist to his mouth and bowed his head.
I remembered another moment I had seen him thus, when speaking of his brother— when I had believed him to be Ian, speaking of Collin.
I ached for him— ached to go to him but couldn’t. Not yet. Not ever? I reminded myself th
at I was angry. Furious with him. He had lied to and hurt me. All things that should not have been difficult to remember. Yet I was struggling to remember already and wanted nothing more in this moment than to stand and wrap my arms around him. Instead, I slid my traitorous hands beneath my legs. We had much more territory to cover.
Collin regained his composure and continued. “Ian said he would not kill me, and he forbade Niall or anyone else from it, stating that he would personally see to it they suffered a gruesome death if they even attempted as much. Niall argued that if Ian was to have any chance as laird, I needed to be dead. Elsewise, the people would not follow him. ‘Let them follow whom they will,’ Ian said. ‘I’ll not kill my brother.’”
“He seemed keen enough to do it before,” I said.
“So we believed.” Collin favored me with another smile. How I had missed those— and him. He seemed different already, less formal and guarded, more comfortable in my presence, already transforming in the past hour from the man I had believed myself handfast to, into the husband I had loved.
“You’ve one thing in common with my brother,” he said.
Before tonight I would have said we had much more than that, like the shared love for the child bequeathed to us. “Which is?”
“You are both good at bluffing.”
It took me a second to understand what Collin meant. “That night in the clearing, Ian’s gun was empty too?”
“Aye.” Collin took his chair again, angling his body toward me. “It was all show for Niall, to appease him. Ian did want to send you back to England. He was against our marriage. But murder had never been his plan.”
“But at the river—”
“He meant to scare you. That was his first idea, to frighten you enough that you’d ask to go home. Ian knew I’d take you if you asked it of me.”
“He held a knife to my throat.” I was the one standing now, bearing down on Collin. “He pushed me in. I nearly drowned.”
“He wasn’t expecting anyone to come upon you so sudden. He became spooked and lost his head.”
“I nearly lost mine and everything else that night. I don’t believe it.” I crossed my arms and turned away from Collin. “How did you find all this out, anyway? You couldn’t have learned so much listening to that one conversation.”
“I didn’t learn any of it then. Only that my brother did not mean me harm from that point on. Which was enough that when Niall rose up and tried to kill Ian, I did what I must. I flung my knife into his back then ran forward and bashed his head with a rock.”
I shuddered. Violence. Always. Would Scotland ever know another way?
I faced Collin again. “You didn’t kill him.”
“I believed I had. We rolled his body down the opposite side of the hill and left it.
“No wonder you were surprised when he showed up here.”
“Surprised. Angry. Frightened for you. I’d no choice but to finish what I’d started and kill him that night. But I was wrong in acting out of anger.” Collin expelled a breath, as if letting that same rage go once more. He took his glass from the table and lifted it to his mouth before discovering it was empty.
“I had learned, by then, all the harm Niall had done Ian. It was Niall who convinced Ian that both my father and I had abandoned him on purpose. Niall had twisted my words and actions, to make it seem as if I hated my brother. All that and more, leading Ian away to a depth of misery and toward hell itself— when he had practically been there so long already, during his years with the Munros— and yet Ian had still refused any attempt to take my life. When I saved his, Ian realized Niall had been wrong. About many things.”
I let all of this settle for a minute while Collin left to find us drinks and something to eat. All-night revelations apparently made for great hunger and thirst, as I was experiencing a considerable amount of both. A good sign? When we had started this conversation I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to eat or drink or do much of anything ever again. Utter devastation seemed too light a description for what I’d felt when Collin had pushed back his sleeve. Enough that I had wanted to curl in a ball and never move again.
Two hours in, and I was doing all right. Breathing without pain, anyway. As of yet we had skirted the main topic, the actuality of what had happened to cause Collin’s deceit. But I believed him so far and felt more open to empathy than I would have said possible when we began.
I sat once more and brought my hands to my head, pounding for some time now with an incessant ache— all the crying, no doubt. No wonder I was thirsty. Since leaving the hall I’d probably shed enough tears to fill a small bucket.
There would undoubtedly be more before the night was through.
Is he worth it?
At the kirkyard just hearing Collin’s name and the possibility that he was alive sent my heart soaring with hope, though I’d believed an ocean and months or even years separated us.
What was so different now? Five months of deception, heartbreak, and mistrust made up the chasm between us. I hung my head back and sighed.
Crossing an ocean might have been easier.
Chapter Forty-two
Collin set his drink down and pushed the plate toward me. “Have the last bannock.”
“Thank you.” I left it for later, stifling a yawn, wondering how long it would be before we finished here.
“You’ve been patient,” he said. “Not many would have been so. I’ll get on with it, so you can rest your head a bit.”
I nodded, doubting very much I would be able to rest anything, even if given the opportunity, before Lydia’s return. My mind was too consumed with the tales of the night and the man beside me, whom I had believed lost to me forever.
Collin cleared his throat and began once more. “I’d no sooner helped Ian move Niall’s body than I collapsed, near death myself from blood loss and sheer exhaustion. We couldn’t even make it the distance back to camp, but Ian found a crevice in the rock and carried me to it. Fearing I would be dead before he returned, he ran all the way back to the main camp and grabbed what he could to help me. I had presence of mind enough to tell him not to let anyone know I was there. With the English patrol still about, it was safer for both them and me if no one was aware of my presence.”
Collin refilled his cup and drained it quickly.
“Over the next three days Ian shared his whisky and stitched my head.” Collin grimaced. “Made me wish I was dead— as much from the poor drink as the stitches. But it was no small miracle I’d survived to find him, and he did not intend I lose the battle from there. As I tried to regain my strength he told me much of what I have shared with you already. For the first time, since we were fourteen, Ian and I were truly brothers again. I came to know the true measure of him, to see that he is as good a man as our father was.”
As good as you are. My eyes were watering once again, imagining what such a reunion must have meant to Collin. I thought of Anna, our estrangement the past few years, and how I had been hurt by it. How much greater had Collin’s loss and sorrow been?
It was easier to believe Ian of good character than I would have imagined, probably because I had spent the past five months reinventing the monster Ian into a man I thought I could love and trust. I wondered how I would feel if ever we met again.
Collin continued his story. “While Ian had been caring for me, a few of the MacDonald men grew restless and raided one of the neighboring clans, the Menzies, catching the attention of the Redcoats still in the area.”
“They were still looking?” I gripped my cup tighter.
“Aye. A few MacDonalds rode out to distract the patrol, while Ian had the others pack up and make haste toward home.”
“What would the patrol have done if they had found you all?” I thought of the MacDonald women here who had become my friends. Of the families, the children, the men and women who had assimilated among us— with gratitude, if anything.
“I do not like to think of it,” Collin said. “Armed as we were,
even with our crude weapons, it would have meant a great deal more people headed to the Colonies. But the English are careless with life, and particularly the Highlanders’ lives. If they had come upon the body of camp when all were there, I fear the MacDonalds would have been ripe for slaughter.”
“It was then I came to my decision.” Collin paused, then leaned closer, hands open in front of him, pleading in the depths of his eyes. In it I saw the pain and self-loathing I’d witnessed weeks ago. Whatever had happened next, he hated himself for it.
“I told Ian I must turn myself in or the clan would suffer for it. I reasoned that if the English had me in their possession once more and believed me responsible for the trouble with the Menzies, they would leave. I knew that if I went with them, I’d not escape again, and that meant leaving you alone to suffer what you would with Brann. It tore my heart out. I did not know how I could do it, yet how could I not— and save many?”
“Leaving your entire clan in the way of an angry English patrol was not an option,” I agreed. I could not fault him his decision. “How did you come to be here? And the MacDonalds too?” I breathed easier, reminding myself that they had all come here. Except Ian. My gaze flickered to Collin’s stricken one.
He nodded slowly. “You have guessed already, I see. Ian and I followed the patrol, staying safely away until we were far enough from the MacDonalds. Ian asked that I wait a half hour before I turned myself in, to give him time enough to rejoin the clan. I agreed.
“Before he left, he swore an oath to me that if you still lived, he would see you safe. Since we had not a Bible to swear upon Ian took his knife and cut his hair off as a symbol of his vow as had Paul of old.”
Ian’s beautiful hair. “Oh, Collin.” This time I did reach out to him, grasping his hand firmly. He responded in kind, holding to me as if he needed strength to tell the next.
A Promise for Tomorrow Page 30
