Black Raven's Lady: Highland Lairds Trilogy (24 page)

“Raine,” he called again, “Raine, get up!” This time, the urgency in his voice brought her to full, reluctant awareness.

Finding herself flat on her stomach in the sand, she crawled onto her hands and knees and bowed her head in thanksgiving.

The storm had passed.

They were alive.

Thanks be to God—and her faery rune.

Keir gently lifted Raine to her feet, holding her steady on her wobbly knees until she got her land-legs under her. The world swayed and rolled in a sickening motion. Exhaustion from their fight to stay afloat had left every muscle as weak as a newborn’s. Her stomach churned from the salt water she’d swallowed. She fought the feeling of nausea as she lurched back into the world of sight and sound and complete awareness.

The morning sun shone through patches of fluffy clouds in an azure sky. Nearby on the beach, the barrel they’d clung to during the night now lay in pieces scattered about them. Somewhere in that great expanse of ocean her shoes and socks floated on the crest of a wave.

“We have company coming,” Keir told her quietly. “Don’t say a word, love. Keep your eyes down. With luck, they may think you’re a lad.”

Raine could understand his hope that she’d be mistaken for a young seaman. Encrusted with salt and sand from the top of her head to her bare toes, she was certain she’d hardly recognize herself.

Although Keir had brushed away some of the sand clinging to him, he also showed the effects of their harsh battle to survive. His shirt hung in tatters on his large frame. His long black hair had come loose from the braid that had hung down his back and now framed his scarred features in sand-covered strings.

The sound of hooves thudding along the water’s edge carried clearly across the beach, and Raine turned to look in their direction. A large group of horsemen rode toward them, kicking up the sand and splashing through the edge of the water as they came. Forty riders, at the very least.

Raine could sense Keir’s rage and frustration as he eased her behind him. He had no weapon. In the height of the gale on board the
Raven
, he must have removed them—claymore, broadsword, and dirk. Even the small dagger he kept in his boot was gone. In the storm, his weapons and boots would have weighed them down as they floundered helplessly in the huge waves. But now the two of them were defenseless should these men be enemies.

Raine shielded her eyes with one hand and studied the approaching Isles-men. Well-armed and well-mounted, some were attired in the red-and-blue plaid of Clanranald. At their head rode Allan MacRanald, chief of that line of Macdonalds. The paunchy, baldheaded laird had attended the royal wedding in Edinburgh the previous summer, where Raine had seen him at the Scottish court dancing with his sweet-natured wife.

Beside MacRanald rode a second laird sporting the three-plumed bonnet of a chief. He wore the distinctive yellow-and-black tartan of Clan MacMurchaidh and was accompanied by a contingent of his kinsmen.

When the large party of horsemen slowed and halted a short distance away, Raine’s heart squeezed painfully. Beneath his chief’s bonnet The MacMurchaidh had a full head of dark brown hair tinged with silver. His nut-brown eyes met her astonished gaze without a hint of recognition and then passed on to study Keir through narrowed lids.

Raine staggered backward, rocked to her core. She was looking into the eyes of her natural father for the first time. In a cloud of fear and hope she barely felt Keir’s hand at her elbow, holding her steady.

A thrill of excitement flooded through Raine, lifting her heart and spirit as she recalled the vision that had first sent her on this quest.

Her mother clutching Torcall’s hand and telling him she loved him . . . the future chief of Clan MacMurchaidh begging Nina to go with him . . . the two lovers promising to flee together the next morning. . .

Dear Lord above!

She had found the man she’d been seeking since the day she’d left Archnacarry Manor.

“Laird MacMurchaidh,” Raine called loudly. “I am your daughter!”

Keir tightened his grasp on her arm, his startled eyes revealing his shock as he looked down at her. “Be quiet, Raine,” he ordered in a hushed tone. “Say no more.”

MacMurchaidh urged his mount forward and regarded her with an expression of mild bemusement. “What did you say to me, lass?”

Trembling with shock, Raine studied the laird carefully. There was no doubt he was the young, dark-haired man of her vision. Older now, of course, with gray at his temples and lines in his cheeks. But the same intelligent dark eyes. The same handsome face that her mother had kissed so lovingly.

“I am your daughter, Torcall MacMurchaidh,” she repeated, unable to keep the exhilaration from her creaky voice. A rush of conflicting emotions—joy, dread, expectation mixed with apprehension—sent shivers through her. She fought to stay upright while the sand beneath her seemed to move.

Torcall dismounted and stepped closer, scrutinizing Raine with open curiosity, as though wondering which woman in his past had produced a female offspring unbeknownst to him.

With a jolt of chagrin, Raine suddenly realized how dreadful she must look, covered with sand, dressed in sailor’s garb, her damp hair matted to her head. The heat of mortification stung her salt-crusted cheeks. Never had she imagined her first meeting with her natural father would be so humiliating.

As MacMurchaidh came near, Keir placed himself squarely between the two of them. “Don’t touch her,” he warned in a low, threatening growl. He fisted his large hands, ready to defend her at the cost of his own life.

At the sound of Keir’s voice, the chief of Clanranald climbed down from his horse and hastened to join them. “Laird MacNeil!” he cried in astonishment. “How the devil did you come to be here at Calbhaigh?” The pudgy man glanced up and down the empty beach, the whites of his eyes pronounced in his fear. “Where’s your ship and your men?” he demanded, turning in a circle as though expecting them to appear by magic.

MacMurchaidh peered closely at Keir, then lifted his brow in surprise. “Well, well,” he said with a sneer, “if it isn’t the Black Beast’s Spawn himself. The king’s own Hellhound come to pay us a call. I didn’t recognize you covered in filth, MacNeil.” He propped a hand on his sword belt and smiled mirthlessly. “Aye, ’tis true then, what they say,” he continued. “You’re as ugly as your blighted father. But not quite so ferocious, I think.”

Keir lifted his head higher, his strong chin jutting out, as he openly flexed his powerful arms. Raine realized that only the thought of her safety kept him from striking the older man down where he stood.

“If you try to harm her, you goddamn bloody traitor,” Keir said with cold dispassion, “I’ll break you in two before your lackeys can even reach you.”

MacMurchaidh immediately stepped back out of arm’s distance and lifted one hand to signal his kinsmen forward. Twenty soldiers dismounted and hurriedly gathered around Raine and Keir.

“Who is your mother, lass?” MacMurchaidh asked, returning his attention to Raine.

“My mother is Lady Nina, whom you loved in your youth,” she said. Her voice cracked in her fear and agitation. She wrung her hands, suddenly overcome with dread that he might not accept her as his daughter.

“Nina Paterson,” Torcall said speculatively, half to himself. Clearly astonished, he peered at Raine, looking her over from head to toe. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You don’t favor Nina in the least,” he said, his cutting words laced with sarcasm and disbelief. “Clearly you haven’t her golden hair and blue eyes.”

“I believe I take after my father,” Raine stated boldly, refusing to be crushed by his obvious rejection.

“Pay the lassie no attention,” Keir interjected. “She’s crazed from our night spent in the storm and the sea. ’Twould addle any man’s wits, let alone a weak female’s. Lady Raine is the daughter of Gideon Cameron. Leave her to me, for I am responsible for her safekeeping.”

MacMurchaidh stiffened and his face grew pale. “I know of Laird Cameron,” he said through clenched teeth. A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I heard the bastard was murdered by a Macdonald over five years ago, and I rejoiced at the news.”

Raine stepped back in dismay at the callous words. “How can you speak so ill of the dead?” she asked, choking back a sob. “No man could have been more devoted to his family.”

“Gideon Cameron took the woman I loved,” MacMurchaidh gritted. He reached out to grab Raine’s arm.

The instant his fingertips grazed her hand, Keir smashed his fist into Torcall’s belly. As the older laird doubled over in pain and shock, Keir caught the man’s chin with his other fist. A half dozen soldiers piled onto Keir’s shoulders, and he staggered to his knees under their weight.

Raine watched in horror as five men struggled to pin Keir to the ground, while a sixth struck him a vicious blow on the head with a sword handle.

“Stop! Stop!” Raine cried. She tried to reach Keir, lying unconscious at the men’s feet, but they held her back.

“Bring the lass,” Torcall ordered and turned to go.

“What about MacNeil?” asked one of the soldiers standing over the still form.

Torcall never looked back. “Kill him.”

“You can’t kill him!” Raine cried, frantically clutching at her father’s sleeve. “Laird MacNeil is my betrothed.”

Not bothering to answer her, MacMurchaidh continued walking across the sand to his horse.

“Wait!” Allan MacRanald cried in a high-pitched shriek. Elbowing his way into the circle of MacMurchaidh kinsmen, he frantically waved his chubby hands in their faces. “Wait! Stop! Wait, I say! MacNeil’s worth a bloody king’s ransom alive! He’s worthless dead! Worse than worthless! Those cursed Hellhound brothers will come and raze my castle to the ground.”

“As you wish,” Torcall agreed in a bored tone as he mounted his horse. He looked down from the saddle in seeming detachment at their prisoner sprawled unconscious on the sand. “He’s your hostage, Laird MacRanald. Do what you wish with the bastard.”

Chapter 20

T
HREE DAYS LATER
Keir stood on a rough-hewn bench looking out the narrow window at the galley that had been repaired in the loch below. Amongst the many islands of the Hebrides, clansmen armed with longbows and crossbows had used similar vessels to get about under the combined power of both oars and sails since the time of the Vikings. Too light for cannon, they provided quick and easy transportation into the countless lochs and inlets.

MacMurchaidh’s galley had been caught in the tail-end of the storm and suffered little real damage. His men had finished setting its two new masts the previous afternoon.

Prior to the gale Allan MacRanald’s smaller, lighter, single-masted galley had been pulled onto the sand, laid on its side and secured with heavy ropes to ride out the weather unharmed. It now waited in the loch’s gentle swell beside the larger galley.

Each day Keir had studied the horizon, hoping for a glimpse of the top-gallants that would foretell the coming of the
Black Raven
and her two sister galleons. He knew without doubt that Macraith, Fearchar, and Colin were searching up and down the eastern coast of South Uist. They wouldn’t rest until they’d found him and Raine alive—or were convinced they’d both been lost to the sea.

Fettered by a three-foot chain manacled to one wrist and bolted to the stone wall beneath the barred slit, Keir stared morosely out the window of his prison cell high in one of Castle Calbhaigh’s towers. His gut twisted inside each time he thought of Raine—and he thought of her constantly. He had no knowledge of her whereabouts or how she was being treated. He’d failed to protect her, and his abysmal failure festered like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

In impotent rage, he kicked the morning’s wooden bowl of sodden oat porridge off the bench and watched it fly across the straw-covered floor to crash against the opposite wall.

The creaking of iron hinges pulled his attention to the door, and Keir jumped lightly down from his perch. As he waited, hoping for the opportunity to catch his jailers unprepared, the door opened just enough for a solitary person to pass through. Strange, since his two guards had always swung it wide and entered together. One would stand cautiously out of reach with a loaded crossbow aimed at Keir’s chest, while another, his tall, thin form shaking visibly, brought in water and food.

This time instead of his jailors, Raine stepped into the cell and the heavy door slammed shut behind her. “Keir,” she whispered, her thick-lashed eyes brimming with tears. “Thank God, you’re alive.”

Relief surged through him at the sight of her cherished face, her clear skin unmarked by bruises, no visible injury to her limbs. Keir’s heart leapt up to lodge in his throat. He tried to speak. Nothing came out but a harsh, unintelligible groan.

With a tremulous smile, Raine started across the dirty stone floor toward him.

“Wait!” he croaked, motioning her to stay back. “Don’t come close. I stink of the prison.”

“Why would I care?” she asked, laughing in delight. The bell-like sound seemed to wrap around his lungs, squeezing the breath out of him.

“But I care,” he said with a rueful smile. “I smell like a pig.”

“I need to touch you, Keir,” she insisted, moving quickly to him. “I need to feel your heart beating beneath my hand and know that you are truly alive.”

In spite of his wretched condition, Keir opened his arms and she fell into his embrace. “Darling, darling lass,” he murmured huskily, bringing her soft female form against his hard, aching body.

Raine raised her head, offering her lips, as she clutched his holy medal in her fingers. Keir kissed her with all the love he felt in his heart. Their tongues met in silent communion, telling each other without words the depth of their joy and heart’s ease. They were safe in each other’s arms, the physical and emotional longing between them pushing everything else aside.

Too soon Keir broke the kiss to take Raine’s hands in his. He held her at arm’s length, checking her from head to toe for any sign of ill treatment.

The soiled seaman’s outfit she’d been wearing had been replaced with a fine green satin gown, its wide sleeves trimmed with fur. Her freshly washed hair, adorned with a green ribbon and falling in loose ebony curls around her shoulders, smelled of perfumed soap and pampered femininity.

“You’ve nay been hurt?” he asked, needing her spoken reassurance.

In the past three days he’d told himself over and over that it would make no sense for Raine’s captors to harm her. Not when her family would willingly pay a fortune to rescue her. Yet he’d been haunted with the fear that she’d suffered abuse at their hands.

“I’ve been well treated,” she assured him. “But I’ve been so worried about you! They refused to let me see you, no matter how many times I begged.”

Her confirmation acted as a balm to his tormented soul. “Thank God, you’re unharmed,” he said. “That’s the only thing that matters.”

“Oh, but look at you, my darling,” she cried softly. With heart-stopping tenderness, Raine cupped his battered face in her palms, the tears spilling over and sliding down her cheeks. “What did they do to you, Keir?” she asked with a strangled sob. Shaking her head, she touched the tip of her finger to his mouth with the weightless pressure of a butterfly. “I should never have kissed you.”

“You should always kiss me, love, he said with a slow half grin, ignoring the sting of his split lip. “They gave me a thumping, nothing more,” he affirmed, as she gently explored the lump on his forehead. Wherever she touched him, the pain disappeared. “I take it I look like the very devil, but I wouldn’t have missed this visit for all the gold in the kingdom.”

Raine smoothed her hands down his arms and chest, exploring his body for injuries, just as he’d done to her only moments before. “No broken bones,” she said with a sigh of relief. “Although they could have given you decent clothes and some shoes.”

“I’ve suffered far worse in battle,” he asserted with a dismissive shake of his head. His ragged shirt and torn breeches were the least of his concerns. “MacRanald needed me strong enough to write a letter to my family asking them to pay my ransom.”

She nodded and smiled, hopefulness lighting up her delicate features. “I thought so, though they’d never tell me what they had planned.”

“I was happy to write the ransom demand,” he told her. “I just didn’t want them to know how pleased I really felt about it. Once Rory and Lachlan receive my letter, they’ll come, never fear. My brothers will reduce this castle to a pile of smoking rubble.”

Keir led Raine to the bench and motioned for her to sit down. Kissing her lightly on the forehead, he sank to his haunches in front of her, trying to ignore the humiliating rattle and clank of his chain. Placing his hands on either side of her hips, he buried his face in her lap, inhaling the intoxicating scent of her, then looked up into her astonished eyes.

“I can do no more than breathe in your essence, love,” he said softly, fighting the passion stirring in his blood. “The guards could interrupt us at any moment.”

She nodded in understanding. “Keir,” she whispered, “I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m leaving this morning with Laird MacMurchaidh.”

“Nay,” he answered gruffly. Shocked at her words, he leaned forward and placed his hands on the wall behind her, imprisoning her within his arms. “I forbid you to go with that traitor, Raine. You must stay here at Calbhaigh with me.”

She frowned and leaned back against the stones, widening the distance between them. “You cannot forbid me to do anything, Keir,” she said, clearly annoyed. She pressed her hands against his shoulders in a useless attempt to shove him away. “I’m free to make my own decisions.”

“You are not allowed to make decisions that will endanger you,” he explained, making a futile attempt to conceal his anger. “When you placed yourself in my keeping on the
Black Raven
, I became responsible for you. Therefore, I will decide what is best.” He rose to his feet and strode to the end of his chain in growing frustration, then turned and glared at her. “This is where my brothers will come for us—if Macraith, Fearchar, and Colin don’t find us first. Right now, they’re scouring the coastline up and down South Uist searching for us. You need to be here when they come for us.”

“Oh, I’m certain they’ll rescue you,” she said with a placating smile. “Otherwise, I would never choose to leave.”

“If you remember,” Keir stated coldly, no longer trying to hide his fury, “I told them to meet the
Black Raven
here at Loch Baghasdail. I planned to secure Laird MacRanald’s fealty to the Crown. Believe me, lass, they will never quit looking for us until they are convinced we’re no longer alive.”

“Still, Laird MacMurchaidh insists that I go with him,” Raine said, moving to her feet and standing in front of him. “I really have no choice in the matter.” Folding her hands together, she looked down at the tips of her borrowed shoes, then up to meet his eyes. “Dearest, I’m sorry, but I must leave you here in this prison cell.”

“What in God’s name are you thinking?” Keir clasped her wrist and brought her closer, searching her gaze. “You can’t go with that bastard rebel.”

Raine reached up and touched her finger to his lips as though silencing an obstreperous child. “I have a very good reason, Keir.” She inhaled deeply and released a long, drawn-out sigh, as though her patience was quickly unraveling. “I saw Laird MacMurchaidh in a vision the summer after Gideon died,” she explained. “He was with my mother, and they were pledging their love. I believe MacMurchaidh is my father.”

“Stop!” he said, holding up a hand in warning. His lungs compressed, squeezing the life’s breath out of him. “Don’t tell me you dreamt about someone who looked like that sniveling traitor and now you think he’s your father. I refuse to listen to this rubbish.”

“That’s the reason I left Archnacarry Manor,” she continued, as though she was unaware of the raw pain in his voice, “and traveled to Inverness with the Poor Clares. And why I pleaded with you to be taken onboard the
Raven
. I wanted to reach Steòrnabhagh and speak with Torcall MacMurchaidh before he was brought to Edinburgh to be tried as a traitor.”

“Raine, you had a dream, nothing more,” he insisted, desperate to make her see reason. “He’s using you as a pawn. My God, lass! Can you not tell his intentions?”

Shaking her head in denial of the obvious truth, she placed her hands on his chest. He covered her fingers with his own. A smile of certainty curved her lips. “Keir,” she said softly, “do you remember when I told your brother, Rory, where he could find Joanna when she’d been abducted by her kinsmen?”

“That ’twas only by chance,” he protested. “We all knew Joanna would be kept in a Macdonald stronghold somewhere in the Isles. You made a lucky guess when you suggested Dhomhuill Castle.”

She lifted her arched brows, as though he were the foolish one. “And what about the royal wedding, when I told your brother, Lachlan, that he’d be triply blessed in love? Francine gave birth to triplets. Was that mere chance as well?”

“Saying someone’s marriage will be blessed is as common as attending the wedding feast,” Keir pointed out, certain he was on solid ground with that one.

Raine laughed, the musical notes filling the cell with the marvelous sound he’d come to adore. “And the storm?” she asked. “Did I not warn you that you’d be swept overboard?”

“Now there I have you,” he told her earnestly. “We would never have washed over the side, if you’d stayed below in sickbay. If you’d followed my orders, Raine, none of this would have happened.”

“Oh, you’re so very wrong,” she said in a tone of absolute conviction. “If I hadn’t been with you, Keir, the magic rune could never have saved you.”

In that moment, Keir realized the depth of her conviction about the power of magic. Raine obstinately clung to the belief that if she hadn’t come above decks to rescue him with her ancient carved stone, he would have drowned. Any emotions she had felt toward him were based on her nonsensical belief in faery enchantments. Yet ’twas only by the grace of God they’d both survived their harrowing ordeal.

Trying to ignore the rattle of his chain, he clasped her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake in an attempt to bring her to her senses. “Rainey, love, you mustn’t go with Torcall. You must stay here until we’re rescued. ’Tis far too dangerous to go to Steòrnabhagh.”

“I have told him I will go,” she pointed out in her stubborn, hardheaded way.

“How can you be so blind?” Keir demanded, his heart sinking to his toes. “MacMurchaidh plans to use you as a hostage. That cunning bastard knows there’ll be a siege and his castle will be taken. When it does fall, he won’t hesitate to use you as a shield.”

“I know that he’s supporting a losing cause,” she admitted. “Both he and Donald Dubh will eventually be caught by the king’s forces.”

“Taking you with him is merely a ruse to protect his own life,” Keir told her bluntly. “No one, least of all MacMurchaidh, thinks you are a seer.”

“But I did see him in a vision, whether you or anyone else believes it,” she said with quiet certainty, as though there was no need to discuss it further.

Looking up at the ceiling, Keir rubbed the back of his neck, trying to get a rein on his exasperation. “Has MacMurchaidh actually told you that he believes you have the second sight? Or that he thinks you may be his daughter?”

Her eyes widened, and the pain in their luminous depths tore at Keir’s heart. “Nay,” she whispered. “Not yet, but I’m sure he will, once we reach Murchaidh Castle and safety.”

Keir drew Raine into his arms. “Rainey love,” he murmured, “I’m not trying to hurt you. Stay with me, darling lass.” He kissed her passionately, attempting to convince her that she must remain at Calbhaigh with him. If reasoning wouldn’t work, perhaps sexual desire could.

“We’ll spend the rest of our lives together, Keir” she pleaded, her voice shaking with emotion. “But I’ll have only a short time with my father. Once you are ransomed you will bring your ships and your men to storm his castle. MacMurchaidh will soon be killed or captured and transported to Edinburgh for trial and hanging. Please, I beg you, dearest, give me this one chance to become acquainted with the man who sired me.”