Amanda Scott (35 page)

“Kate might be doing that,” she said, considering the notion for the first time. “Had we not both infuriated Fergus and Sawny, they would never have gone looking for her.”

“The decisions to hurt and to kill were their own,” he said, “and they leapt at the least excuse to do both. A man like Campbell has no business acting for the government and ought to be clapped up into jail for what he did.”

“They all ought to be hanged,” she retorted.

“I agree, but that will be up to a court to decide once they have been laid by the heels.” When she did not answer, not trusting her temper, he added, “You will manage better tomorrow if you have a good night’s sleep. Why don’t you go up to bed?”

Telling her what to do again, she thought, but if she said anything, she would tell him what she thought of his absurd notion that justice prevailed in the Highlands. To the mighty went the right, as anyone ought to know, and the only way Fergus Campbell would learn a lesson was if someone stronger taught it to him. Instead of saying these things, any one of which was likely to stir not only Rothwell’s wrath but MacDrumin’s, she said she would offer to sit with Ian and give Kate a rest.

But when she got upstairs, she found James with Kate and Ian, and he was looking grim. He shook his head when she asked if she could help, and she saw by the way he looked that he was more worried about the boy than ever.

Deciding that Rothwell was right about one thing, that she would handle things better the next day if she got some sleep, and certain that since Dugald had not made an attempt to speak to her before dark, he would not show his face until morning, she went to bed, hoping he was already attending to Fergus Campbell.

It seemed as if she had no sooner put her head to the pillow than she slept, only to come awake again during the wee hours, certain that something was amiss. There was no sound, nothing to indicate what had wakened her from her deep sleep, but her sense of something being wrong would not go away, so she got up, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and slipped out of her room. The torches lighting the gallery had been put out, but at the end, she saw light spilling from the room where Ian was sleeping, and her breath caught in her throat. She could hear sobs and knew at once that they were Kate’s.

Running barefoot, heedless of the icy stone floor, she flew down the gallery to the open door. “Oh, my dear Kate, I’m so sorry” she cried, the words tumbling from her lips as she burst into the room to find Kate in James’s arms, sobbing her eyes out against his shoulder. They stood beside the bed, blocking any view of its small occupant.

Over Kate’s shoulder, James’s gaze met hers, and to her astonishment he began to smile.

Rothwell said from behind her, “Ian’s going to be well, Maggie. I’ve just sent someone to wake your father and tell him.” His hands were warm on her shoulders.

“Really?” She turned to judge the truth of his words by his expression, but tears filled her eyes. “Ian will live?”

“See for yourself.” He pointed to the bed, and since James and Kate had moved a bit, she could see the small figure there.

Ian’s eyes were open. He was watching Kate, but he shifted his gaze to Maggie and murmured in a cracking voice, “Why is Kate crying? Did James make her cry?”

“Oh, my love,” Kate said, pulling away from James and kneeling beside the bed, “Oh, Ian love, you’ll be well.”

“Where am I? Kate, Fergus Campbell and a lot of others came tae the hoose! They said they …”

“Whisst now, love. Haven’t I got you safe away, and hasn’t James made you well again?”

James knelt beside her and grasped Ian’s thin wrist.

Rothwell drew Maggie away. “We’re not needed now,” he said, “and you should get back to bed before you catch your death. Whatever possessed you to come running out here without so much as a pair of slippers on your feet? Have you no sense, woman?”

“Stop telling me what I should or should not do,” she cried, her temper suddenly and most inexplicably flying out of control. “If I want my slippers, I’ll get my slippers, but it can be no concern of yours, so keep your opinions to yourself!”

He shut Ian’s bedchamber door and stood looking down at her until she could think of nothing but how near he was and how cold the stones were to her feet. Shifting stealthily from one foot to the other, she refused to meet his gaze.

He said, “The fact that I am your lawful husband entitles me to a number of rights that I have not chosen to assert.” He paused as if to be sure she took in his full meaning, and she shifted her feet again. “Are you cold, little wife?”

She gritted her teeth, but even they would not cooperate, and when they began to chatter, Rothwell scooped her up in his arms and carried her back down the gallery to her bedchamber. “Put me down,” she said crossly. “You take too much liberty.”

“You should be glad I don’t take more,” he retorted, dumping her on her bed. “Get under those covers right now.”

“I won’t,” she snapped, springing back to her feet, her hand raised to slap him. He did not speak, and in the dim light from the pale moon outside her window, he was only a gray shadow, but the crackling vitality of the man was undiminished and, sensing it and something more, she stopped her hand before it touched him. A moment passed before she realized she was holding her breath, and with a sigh she put her hand down.

“A wise decision, little wife. I am not a violent man, but I have already warned you that I won’t take kindly to being struck. I’d no doubt feel a strong urge to retaliate in kind. Now, you may do as you choose, but I am going to bed. I’ve a good deal to do tomorrow.”

“Aye, you behave like a husband only when it suits you,” she snapped, and then, shocked by the words that had shot without a moment’s reflection straight from her mind to her tongue, she tried to cover the slip by adding swiftly, “You’ll never take Fergus to justice your way, Rothwell, but it does not matter, for I’ve sent for Dugald. He’ll show you justice,
Highland
justice.”

“I have already spoken to Dugald,” he said. “In fact, I spent the evening talking to a number of our tenants, and sent messages to others. Tomorrow we band together to take Campbell and MacKenzie to Inverness to be held until the next assizes.”

“Raising the clan shows some sense at least,” Maggie said, reluctantly pleased that he had taken command of the situation, “but Fergus will refuse to go with you, so there will be battle done. Kate and I will—”

“You and Kate will stay here to look after Ian,” he said harshly. “You will obey me this time, Maggie, or rue the day, and don’t be looking daggers at me either. Your father would tell you the same. This is men’s business.”

“It is MacDrumin business,” she said stubbornly, “and if you think Kate will agree to stay behind while you avenge what was done to her family, you don’t know her at all.”

“I’ll leave Kate to James,” he said, gripping her by the shoulders, “and you will do as you are bid. I’ll have your word on that before I go, Maggie. Defy me, and you will find out just how it suits your husband to behave.”

She was still, wanting to tell him again what she thought of men who assumed they could order women around when they had no real right to do so, but his words triggered a memory of the words she had shot at him before, words she knew now he had heard perfectly well. The aching chill in her feet was forgotten. She was aware only of his warm hands on her shoulders, his grim sense of purpose, his tantalizing nearness.

He was still, too, suddenly. His grip did not slacken, but his breathing grew ragged and deeper. And though, except for the tight grip on her shoulders, he did not touch her anywhere else, her whole body sensed a crackling electricity between them. The silence lengthened, and she dared not look up into his face. She licked dry lips, and tried to breathe evenly, but her breath seemed to be as ragged as his. Then his grip on her shoulders tightened more, and he whispered, “Look at me, little wife.”

She looked at his chest, and even in the dim light she could see it, broad and strong, rising and falling with his breathing, and she suddenly remembered what he had looked like without clothing, with no more than the cover from her bed wrapped around him. Her palms grew damp, her body tingled.

“I said, look at me, little wife. Do you disobey?”

Swallowing, telling herself she was not in the least afraid of this man, and was certainly not afraid of the way he made her feel, she looked up. Moonlight touched his right cheek, giving his eyes a dark and silvery glitter, revealing an intensity that sent shock waves through her. Her breathing was shallow and quick, and she could feel a sort of prickling sensation, as if her skin anticipated his touch. She could not look away. She felt as if she were caught in a spell, a magical webbing that entwined her and would not let her move.

She was being nonsensical. Licking her lips again, she murmured, “I am looking at you, sir. What now?”

“This,” he said, and he kissed her.

His lips were hot against hers, and the spell deepened, for her own lips moved as if they were bewitched, as if they would take more even than he was willing to give. She moaned deep in her throat, and as his hands moved from her shoulders to her back, holding her close, stroking her, caressing her, her own hands responded, doing the same to him.

Heat coursed through her body, awakening it, stirring feelings and sensations she had never known before. She wanted him to continue, to waken any other feelings that lay sleeping within her, and when his tongue sought entrance to her mouth, she welcomed it, letting him have his will with her, feeling no inclination to stop him. The second time she moaned, he set her back on her heels and looked ruefully at her.

“I ought not to have done that. You bewitch me, wife, and there are matters I would explore with you at a more appropriate time. But I don’t want you to think that because you can stir primitive feelings in me you can also compel me to change my mind about what I said. You and Kate will stay here tomorrow. Now, climb into bed, and I will leave you to sleep.” Still overcome by her body’s response to his kiss, Maggie obeyed silently, and when he was gone, she lay thinking far into the night. It occurred to her at one point that he had left without repeating his demand that she promise to remain in Glen Drumin, and so when the sun’s first rays entered her bedchamber, she got up, dressed quickly, and went in search of Kate.

They went carefully, cautiously, each carrying one of Kate’s pistols, and Kate had her trusty dagger tucked into her boot as well. Knowing the men had followed the main track through the glen to the ridge-top, they took a shortcut Kate knew and topped the pine-forested rise above Campbell’s house in time to see a host of men ahead, stealthily making their way downhill through a thicket of willow and aspen bordering a tumbling stream.

Kate looked grimly at Maggie. “Campbells, or I miss my guess,” she murmured.

“Aye,” Maggie agreed.

“They’ve not seen us yet. We must take cover before they do. Follow me and hope that if one of the horses makes a noise, they think it’s one they’ve left behind themselves.”

They turned into the thick woods that bordered the stream, the sounds of their horses’ hooves muffled by a thick carpet of pine needles. Out of sight of the men, they quickly dismounted, tied their reins to tree branches, and with Kate taking the lead, moved as swiftly as they dared through the forest.

Suddenly Kate dropped to her haunches, motioned to Maggie to do likewise, and they crept forward until they could see the house in a clearing ahead. Maggie heard Rothwell’s voice, then Campbell, and then she saw Campbell on his front step. Just then Kate grabbed her arm and nodded toward the stream, where willows and aspen were moving despite the lack of wind.

Before Maggie could open her mouth to scream, Kate drew her pistol and fired it in the air, and pandemonium erupted as the MacDrumin men dove for cover.

R
OTHWELL HAD BELIEVED MACDRUMIN’S
warning that Campbell would not be easily taken, but when they rode into the very clearing where the house was, without so much as a rustle from nearby bushes to suggest reinforcements at hand, he began to relax. They did not ride directly up to the house but took cover in nearby woods until, seeing no guards, he decided Campbell was confident his power as bailie would keep him safe, and motioned to MacDrumin and his men to move closer to the house.

“Show yourself, Fergus Campbell,” MacDrumin shouted, “or are you too much of a coward to answer for your crimes?”

The front door of the house opened, and Campbell stepped outside, looking around casually as if he were merely answering the call of a friend. “That you, MacDrumin? What would ye?”

“We want you, you pestilential scoundrel, and I’ve my pistol aimed straight at your black heart, so put your murdering hands over your head and come out away from that doorway!”

“Faith, hold yer fire,” Campbell said, obeying at once. “I’ve no wish for trouble. I dinna ken what ye’re up in the air aboot, MacDrumin, but if ’tis talk ye want, I’ll talk wi’ ye.”

Rothwell exchanged another glance with James, raising his eyebrows at this unexpected meekness on the part of a man they had been warned was a treacherous killer. When MacDrumin stepped out into the yard, Rothwell followed him, noting absently that Campbell seemed surprised to see the pistols in their hands.”

“Do all yer men come armed, MacDrumin?” the big man said snidely, his tone louder than before. “’Twill be a pleasure tae inform the magistrate that ye sae openly defy the law.”

Rothwell said calmly, “These are no longer MacDrumin’s men but mine, Campbell. I am Rothwell of England, and thus am not subject to acts applying specifically to Highlanders.”

“To none of them, my lord?” Again the tone was snide, surely not that of a man expecting to be taken to justice.

A prickle of forboding stirred, and Rothwell saw that James too had drawn his pistol. Both men also wore smallswords, and Rothwell knew that MacDrumin was armed with a broadsword as well as his pistol. MacDrumin’s men, many looking like the wild men Rothwell had once thought them with their shaggy beards, long hair, and voluminous, dyed-over plaids, carried clubs and the round leather shields they called targes, but if any of them carried other weapons, they did not show them.