One Man's Love Page 12

  “They would not. Especially not to an Englishman.”

  “You are defiant and courageous, Leitis, almost dangerously so,” he said softly. “Did you treat Sedgewick with such disdain?”

  “No,” she admitted. She had always tried to avoid notice, the appearance of meekness safer to assume. Sedgewick’s cruelty could never be predicted. Yet, for all his fearsome reputation, she felt safer with the Butcher of Inverness than she did with the major. Surely that knowledge should disturb her more than it did?

  “How did you leave Fort William?” he asked. “I stationed a sentry on the land bridge, but he never saw you pass.”

  She smiled. “Another question you cannot expect me to answer.”

  “It’s a matter of curiosity on my part,” he said, glancing around the cave. His gaze fell on the shelf in the rear of the cave where something metallic glinted in the waning rays of the sun.

  His boot heels clicked loudly on the slate floor as he moved to the back. He stood there silently, picking up first one dirk, then another, passing his hand over the remaining sets of pipes. A few pieces of silver, the weapons that had not been confiscated by the English, and the few objects the villagers had been able to salvage from Gilmuir were all hidden there.

  “How do you propose we come to an amicable conclusion to our difficulties, Leitis?” he asked casually, as if he had not just discovered a reason to arrest every one of the people of Gilmuir.

  He returned to her side, his face bathed in an errant beam of sunlight. His smile, devoid of mockery or cruelty, startled her. It seemed almost a boyish expression, as if he were genuinely amused by what he’d found. Sedgewick would not have hesitated to round up the villagers, would have been pleased for the excuse to imprison them. But then, Sedgewick had never hidden his true nature, while the more she learned of this man, the less she discovered.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  His shrug irritated her. So, too, the fact that he seemed to command the space around him. It was uncomfortable to realize that his authority came less from his strength or his role as colonel than from the force of his character.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, placing her arms behind her and gripping her hands tightly. “You don’t need a hostage now, not when you’re going to arrest my uncle. Or do you deny that you’ve been looking for him all day?”

  “Why should I deny the truth?” he said easily.

  “And when you find him, you’ll hang him.”

  “It was his choice to disobey the terms of our bargain, Leitis.”

  “He’s an old man with nothing left but dreams of glory. Can you feel no pity for him?”

  “Yes, enough to offer you a bargain. Come back with me and I’ll spare your uncle.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “How? He disobeyed your laws.”

  “I’ll pardon him,” he said easily. “Or give out that he’s a demented old fool who thinks the world is as it was fifty years ago. No one at Fort William would execute a doddering old man.”

  “I’ve no reason to trust your word,” she said tightly. “And I’ve had my share of your hospitality, Colonel. I’ll decline.”

  “Even if it means saving your uncle?”

  “Go away, Butcher.”

  “My name is Alec,” he said calmly. “Or Colonel, if you object to that.”

  “Your name is Englishman,” she said, angrily. “Sassenach. Burner of villages. Slaughterer of sheep and cows. You trample crops and accost women. Butcher is a perfect name for you.”

  His smile nudged her temper up higher.

  “Do I amuse you?” she asked testily.

  “Yes,” he said surprisingly. “It’s not often that I’ve been dressed down as thoroughly.

  “Come back with me to the fort, Leitis,” he said coaxingly. “If you do, I’ll not look for your uncle.”

  “As your hostage? Or your whore?” she said, stepping away from him.

  Not only had she to contend with the very real difficulties of survival this past year, but the loss of those she loved. She and the people he’d seen today were defiant in a way that summoned his admiration.

  Even now she glared at him, an expression she’d given him often enough as a child.

  His gesture of pardoning Hamish might very well be looked on as aiding the enemy. In addition, the ruse that Hamish was not a crafty, devious, and surly old man would not be easily accepted. But he didn’t tell her that, only strode toward her, reached out and stroked the softness of her cheek with the backs of her fingers. He traced the line of her eyebrow, then pressed his thumb gently against her throat to measure the beat of her blood. Her heart felt like a struggling bird.

  Swear on all that’s holy to the MacRaes that you’ll not tell anyone what we’re about to show you. He could almost see Fergus’s merry face in the fading light, pick out the freckles that dotted the bridge of his nose. Had he grown out of them? And James, serious and somber, with more responsibility than his carefree brother, what had he been like as a man?

  Fergus had cut too deep; Alec still had the scar, faint and white on his palm. Beneath the leather of his glove it throbbed now, as it had not in all the intervening years.

  “I swear on all that’s holy to protect you,” he said somberly. The ghosts of his childhood companions nodded, satisfied.

  He said nothing to hurry her, knowing that she must come to trust him in this matter of her own accord. It was not a decision that would come with persuasion or force.

  “Why won’t you leave me alone?” she said finally.

  “Because it would be intolerable if anything happened to you,” he said honestly.

  She looked surprised. “There are other women in the glen, Butcher, who have as much to fear.”

  But they had not played with him in the forest, nor run a race with him. Not one of them had laughed with him so hard that her face grew red with it, or had brothers he had counted as his truest friends.

  Pink clouds, streaking across the sky like claw marks, signaled the final moments of the sunset. A moment of farewell, as if the sun regretted its descent. And still she studied him as if to weigh the truth of his words.

  “Why should I bother escaping, only to return with you a few hours later?”

  “To protect Hamish,” he said simply. “Because if you do not, I’ll have to continue looking for him. I’ll have no choice but to arrest your uncle and have him hanged,” he said softly.

  There were so many reasons other than that, but it would, perhaps, be better if he didn’t try to explain those to her. He wanted to keep her safe because of the guilt he felt for his actions of the night before, and because Sedgewick made no pretense of disguising his intentions. And there were the specters of his childhood friends, demanding that he guard her. The boy he had been, innocent and trusting, in glorious and youthful love, stood within him, insisting upon her protection.

  “And if he plays the pipes again?” she asked, the words so soft they sounded as if they choked her.

  “You have little faith in your uncle’s honor,” he said, threading his fingers through the hair at her temple. She jerked away and stepped back. He smiled as he moved to close the distance between them once again.

  “I have the greatest faith in his,” she said softly, “but none in yours.”

  “I wish,” he said somberly, “that your uncle cared as much for you, Leitis. He allowed you to be exchanged for him and not once looked back.”

  Her expression softened almost into a smile. “He’s my family,” she said quietly. “Whatever his faults, Butcher, he is kin.”

  “Will you come back with me of your own accord, then?”

  “You will not touch me?”

  He shook his head and held out his gloved hand for her.

  Finally, she nodded once. She didn’t take his hand. Instead, she pushed past him, leaving the cave. He followed her and they walked together down the hill. They retrieved his horse, but he didn’t mount, content to walk with her the r
est of the way to Gilmuir in silence.

  At the land bridge, Alec nodded to the sentry on duty.

  “Is he here to keep the English at Gilmuir, or keep the Scots from Fort William?” Leitis asked dryly.

  “Perhaps his duty is to keep you from running away,” he said, turning to her with a smile. “But then I doubt one sentry can keep you somewhere you do not wish to be, Leitis,” he said.

  She looked irritated at his affable mood.

  Donald stood at attention in front of the closed door of the laird’s chamber, his expression shadowed by the darkness. At Alec’s appearance he snapped rigidly to attention.

  “I have placed your meal in your quarters, sir,” Donald said stiffly, careful not to look in Leitis’s direction before leaving.

  “He’s still angry over your escape,” he said.

  “Did you punish him for it?” she asked, glancing at the closed door.

  “Does he look punished?” he asked crisply. “Beaten, perhaps? Tortured?”

  “There are punishments other than physical ones,” she said.

  “I can assure you, Leitis, that Donald’s own castigation was far greater than anything I could do to him. He has a well-developed sense of duty and felt as if he’d failed me. Even the English are capable of honor, Leitis,” he said, irritated.

  She said nothing, only walked slowly past him. He realized, then, that her attention was directed to the loom that had been moved into the room during his absence. Harrison had placed it where he would have, near the window so that the light could aid Leitis in her work.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked faintly, her hands reaching out but hesitating only inches from the wood. The loom was ugly, constructed to be functional, not attractive. Crossbars of thick, planed wood acted as legs, while the frame was an open square, with pegs pounded into the sides to hold the threads. He didn’t presume to understand how it worked.

  “I neither stole it nor killed for it,” he said sardonically. It had been a foolish impulse to obtain the loom for her, but one that he could not, even now, regret.

  He knew little about the skill, only that Leitis’s mother could often be found sitting at the loom while she hummed to herself. Her fingers would fly over the two frames as she worked, creating a pattern where there had only been an incomprehensible collection of threads.

  It was the only occupation that could coax Leitis inside on a summer day. Sometimes, when he went to fetch Fergus and James, she’d be sitting on the bench nodding earnestly as her mother taught her in a soft and lulling voice, using words he hadn’t understood such as weft and warp and heddle.

  Leitis said nothing now, trapped in a silence that was alien to her. She wiped her hands on her skirt before placing her fingers gently on the thick frame. The loom was old and there were places where generations of hands must have rested, darkening the wood.

  “I’ve no wool to weave,” she said faintly.

  An oversight on his part, he realized, and one he’d have to rectify.

  “Why did you do this?”

  It was easier to speak to her when her voice was filled with derision, not soft wonder. It made him wish to take her into his arms and hold her close, whisper that he would keep her safe.

  He had believed that the reasons for bringing her here were complex, rooted in his past and an obligation to a boyhood friendship. But Alec abruptly realized that it was less for Fergus and James than it was for her. He wanted to protect not the child Leitis, but the woman who looked at him with stormy eyes.

  Pride was an emotion of the Highlanders, and one she had in abundance. Courage, stubbornness, loyalty, she possessed all those traits that helped these people persevere when others would have been crushed.

  The answer he gave her was simplistic, not hinting at the truth beneath.

  “For the loss of your home,” he said easily.

  “Were you at Culloden?” she asked suddenly, her attention riveted on the loom.

  “Yes,” he admitted, determined to tell her the truth when he could. “Why did you want to know?” he asked when she turned.

  Her glance rested on his waistcoat, on the badge he wore more out of protection than pride.

  “Because,” she said softly, “I cannot ever forget who you are, and what you’ve done.” Her gaze rose to meet his, her eyes deep and unfathomable, as if she wept, but did not allow the tears to fall. “Even if you’re capable of an act of kindness.”

  “Consider it bribery, if you wish,” he said. “An incentive to remain here.”

  “You have my uncle for that,” she said quietly.

  He nodded.

  “Who are you,” she asked suddenly, “that you would do such a thing yet threaten to hang Hamish?”

  “I’m a soldier,” he said simply. “Whatever pity I feel for Hamish will never prevent me from performing my duty.”

  “Even if you must kill an old man?”

  “Do you think that the only ones affected by war are those who wear a uniform, Leitis?” he asked curtly. “The world is not that easily divided.” He made a slicing motion in the air with one hand. “On that side the battlefield, while here is sanctuary and peace.”

  “I know that only too well,” she said bitterly. “And yet you seem to take pride in your position, Colonel. Is there nothing about you that makes you better and more noble? Or are you simply content to kill?”

  Instead of answering her, he bowed slightly, forcing a smile to his lips before leaving her.

  Her words followed him as he left Gilmuir and crossed to the fort. He nodded as he was greeted, scanning the courtyard with the habit of command even as he climbed the stairs to his quarters.

  Entering his room, he removed his coat and hung it on a peg. The jacket, stiff with lining and heavy fabric, was too warm for summer wear.

  Walking to the window, he stood staring at the expanse of loch before him. This chamber was the only one that boasted a large window. Not necessarily a secure addition to the fort, and one he doubted was in the original architectural plans. But at this moment Alec blessed Sedgewick’s pride of place. He could see a glimmer of Gilmuir from here, and the sight of the old castle connected him in an odd way to Leitis.

  She saw him, as most people did, as he had wished to be perceived. A man of single-minded determination whose reputation acted as a barrier to further investigation. His ruse was effective, then. Perhaps too much so.

  Is there nothing that makes you better and more noble? Her question troubled him.

  In the past few months he’d discovered that the horror of war didn’t exist solely in battle. Nor did it subsist in the aftermath when women wept and men walked among the carnage to find companions who might be saved. The true horror of war was what it could do to a man’s soul. In Inverness Alec had become adept at recognizing the indifference in the eyes of those men who had learned to kill the wounded, the ill, the imprisoned without a shred of remorse.

  He had done what he could in Inverness and must do the same now. Could he ignore the MacRaes any more than Cumberland’s prisoners?

  The answer was simple but not easy, if for no other reason than the fact that the logistics would be difficult. Walking to the table aligned against the wall, he pulled out the map of the territory surrounding Gilmuir. By the light of the candles he carefully noted the locations of all the clachans he’d visited today.

  He was going to save the MacRaes. Not to be a better man, or more noble, but to aid those people who so desperately needed it. He could not watch wordlessly as old women were left to starve and children grew gaunt and fearful.

  Once again he was going to become a traitor.

  Chapter 13

  L eitis was awakened by the sound of thunder. No, not thunder, she realized groggily, but wagons.

  She stood, pulled her dress over her shift, found her hair ribbon, and donned her shoes.

  A watery sun lit the clan hall; the archway was shadowed in the faint light. She passed through the shadows into the brighter cour
tyard, stood staring at the sight before her.

  Three rumbling wagons piled high with foodstuffs led the way over the land bridge. Chickens squawked in their cages, boxes and crates and barrels were piled high and tied with rope to secure them.

  A column of soldiers followed, crossing to the glen. Leading them was the colonel, his red coat too much color against the blue of a sky barely past dawn. Another patrol, one more excuse to enforce the English presence on the hapless Scots. Or had he lied and was seeking Hamish again?

  He turned his head and stared directly at her as if he’d heard her thoughts. They were too far apart to see each other in detail. But she suspected that on his face was the same studied expression of stillness she’d seen before and in his eyes a watchfulness that no doubt mirrored her own.

  What sort of man saves a village and promises death to an old man? Who was he, that he had forced himself upon her yet remembered the loss of her loom? A man of mystery, one who incited both her confusion and curiosity.

  A cool morning breeze flattened her skirts against her legs. Grouse, rousted from their nests, flew into the air. An officer called cadence; a horse whinnied in protest at a command from his rider.

  But Leitis remained there trapped by his gaze and her own bewilderment. He looked away, giving his horse his head. Horse and rider flew over the land bridge as if they had wings, at one point jumping over the burn that fed into Loch Euliss instead of taking the longer and safer way around.

  The MacRaes were the finest riders in Scotland. One of the legends they told was that the first laird had been transformed from a horse for love of a Scottish lass. The Butcher of Inverness could shame them all, she thought, and felt only regret that it should be so.

  She turned to find Donald standing there, his face wiped of any expression at all. In his hands he held a tray holding her morning meal and a pitcher filled with water.

  “Should I be grateful to be a prisoner?” she asked, annoyed by his reproachful silence. “And never have attempted escape?”

  She whirled and walked back into the laird’s chamber, Donald following.