Cates, Kimberly (29 page)

"Leave me the hell alone, Gav."

"No. What happened wasn't your fault. I was the one who had to prove to Father that I was a son he could be proud of. I was the one he was disappointed in, Adam. Never you. You had to know that."

Adam raised his face, and Gavin's chest was crushed with pain as he saw the hot salt tracks of tears running through the maze of purpling bruises on his brother's face. "But that was why you had to go, to fight," Adam said brokenly. "Because of me. Your whole goddamn life, you were standing on the outside, Gav. Father wouldn't let you in. The bastard wouldn't let you in!"

Gavin's chest felt like an open wound, and he knew how much it cost his brother to malign the father he'd worshiped. "I don't blame Father," Gavin said. "I had a choice. I made it. I have to live with the consequences, Adam, like any man."

Consequences.

Gavin closed his eyes, the image all too clear. The gallows, the jeering, blood-hungry crowd. And Rachel, barred in the cave room, furious, desperate. Rachel, riding away once the children were safe, returning to her world to discover that her worst fears had come true—he was dead.

Gavin ground his fingertips against his eyes as desolation washed through him. His throat thickened as he remembered her outrage, her furious declarations of love, her fierce determination that they could find somewhere to build a life together.

He could only pray that she wouldn't cling to her love for him with that stubborn tenacity that was so much a part of her nature. No, in the end, it might be better if he died on Wells's gallows and end any wild fantasies she might have clung to.

"Gav, why? Why the devil did you have to come?" Adam said, burying his face in his hands.

Gavin drew a searing breath. "I didn't want you to die."

"Hell, we're a sorry pair. Both trying to play hero, fighting over who gets to sacrifice himself. So now what? We both die?"

It was a damnable irony, one that made Adam laugh bitterly. "Who the devil will take care of Mother and the girls? And Mama Fee and the little ones? We were fools, Gav, damn fools."

"The other men will take care of Mama Fee and the children. And Wells will still have to let the ship sail—Rachel is still hostage."

"Hostage, hell. You could hold her to you with nothing more than a glance, that's plain enough to see. The damned woman loves you. She's going to be mad as hell when you get your infernal neck snapped by a noose. Blast it, Gav, I wanted you to have a chance to love her. But you always were determined to plunge after me into disaster. Christ, remember what Mother used to say?
If Adam leaped off of a cliff, Gavin would only insist on leaping higher.
But it won't matter which one leaps first this time, Gav. We'll both strike the rocks below."

Gavin reached out his hand and saw Adam's gaze flick down to it. "We'll do this thing together," Gavin said. "Face whatever the future holds."

Adam's chin raised up, a shadow of his old reckless smile on his face.

"Together," Adam said in echo. Then his hand clasped Gavin's own.

CHAPTER 17

Rachel curled up against the door, her legs stiff from the dampness and chill seeping from the stone floor, her hands scraped and cut, her voice a rasping croak in her throat. She had begged and pleaded and shouted, attempting to get someone beyond the door to listen. Yet, in the two days that had passed since Gavin rode away, the people clustered in the Glen Lyon's cave remained stone faced, immovable as the mountains that guarded the Scottish wildlands.

The Glen Lyon had decreed that she be held prisoner, and for him, the Highlanders would willingly have barred heaven's gates to St. Peter himself.

They would stand by, stoically, and watch him ride to certain death, a death they had all come to expect during the countless months the English had laid waste to their land.

Despite the lectures her father the general had given Rachel on the necessity of sacrifice in war, despite the harsh realities she'd witnessed and the deadly peril Adam was in, she couldn't sit back and watch, helpless, as Gavin flung his life away.

Yet what could she do to stop it? Not one of the men under Gavin's command would defy him, even though the fact that he was in danger was tearing them apart inside. She had glimpsed the suffering scribed into their craggy faces, but they honored him too deeply, respected him too much to challenge his orders. He had charged them to guard the children, to see that they were placed on the ship that would anchor off the Scottish coast tomorrow. These gallant warriors would carry through Gavin Carstares's final request even if it cost them the last drop of blood in their veins.

The children were helpless to aid her. Without the man who had chased away nightmares, they wandered around, lost, silent, pale little ghosts. Even if they had wanted to seek comfort, Rachel knew that they would not turn to her.

The only person left was Mama Fee.

The vagueness that had shielded her for so long had thinned until Rachel was certain the old woman was catching glimpses of reality for the first time since Gavin had found her in the burning ruins of her village. She was opening to reality just as Gavin had said she would. But Mama Fee would discover a reality far harsher now than she would have if Gavin had still been here to guide her gently into the light, to hold her pale hands, to dry her tears, to mourn with her, without words. His grief and his love for her would have shown in the depths of his silvery eyes.

Even the loss of his comforting presence wasn't half so painful as what Rachel had planned these past hours she'd been lost in hopelessness—to rip away what little remained of the fragile protective veil that had shielded Mama Fee for so long. She was going to force those gentle eyes open, to make them see—see horror and death and hate, to see all she had lost— and force her motherly heart to realize that she stood to lose Gavin as well.

Rachel cringed at the thought of what she had to do, but it was a risk she had to take. Mama Fee was her only hope—the one person Rachel could plead with, the only person here who might understand.

She couldn't bear to lose the man she loved, and she would sacrifice anything—
anything
—to save Gavin from the hell the English army would design for him. It would be a hell beyond imagining, of that Rachel was certain. There was no retaliation so swift, so savage as that turned on a nobleman judged traitor.

The wooden door cracked open and Mama Fee poked in her face like a nervous child. A brawny Scot stood guard, his bulky form visible through the crack in the door.

"Child, will you have a bit of food?" Fiona queried. Considering that Rachel had flung the last tray at the door in desperation, it was not an unreasonable question.

"Please. Yes," she said, but she could barely squeeze the words from her throat. This plan was her only chance. If she tried this and Fiona refused to aid her, there was no hope of escaping in time to help Gavin. He needed help. She knew it instinctively, felt it in the drumming of foreboding that pulsed through her every fiber, granting her no peace.

Mama Fee scuttled in and set the tray on the desk, which was still littered with Gavin's belongings: a piece of mending Rachel had snatched from his hands in utter frustration and finished herself, a handful of paintbrushes, a half-finished illumination of a rose, and "The Song of Merlin," open to the page he'd read to the little ones the night before he'd ridden away.

Rachel tried not to remember that slow smile, the way his silvery eyes had glistened with magic as he read, moved by the words and the glorious legends, watching as those tales, ages old, burrowed into the hearts of a new generation, healing wounds, soothing nightmares, making them believe in wizards and knights and the triumph of good over evil.

She saw Mama Fee's fingers trail over the half-finished illumination, that fragile hand trembling just a little. "'Tis a lovely picture he was making," Mama Fee said. "He'll have to finish it when he returns."

"He's not going to return," Rachel said. "He's never going to return."

Mama Fee looked up in alarm and started to cross the room, wanting to flee the chamber that still seemed to hold a piece of Gavin's soul, and escape the desperate, pleading creature Rachel had seen when last she looked into Gavin's tiny mirror.

"Please, Fiona, wait," Rachel said. "I need to talk to you. About Gavin."

The old woman looked hastily away, fumbling with her bodice. "I'm not certain I should," Mama Fee said, glancing back at the heavy door and the guard beyond. "The others think we should all stay away, try to ignore—"

"My pounding? My begging?" Rachel clenched her bruised hands, then held them into the flickering light of the oil lamp.

Mama Fee's breath hissed through her teeth at the sight of them. "Poor lamb! You mustn't—mustn't take on so. 'Tis hard for all of us, with him gone away. It breaks my heart to—to hear you."

"You are the one who told me to love him, and now I do, and it hurts so badly, I can't bear it. Please, stay for just a moment. Stay."

Anguish and understanding flashed in Mama Fee's eyes. Then she walked to the door, and Rachel feared the woman would leave. Instead, Mama Fee hesitated, then shut the door softly. The pale heather color of her gown flowed about her, her halo of white hair making her seem an unquiet spirit, more of the next world than this one of caves and orphans, rebellion and brave sons lying in unmarked graves.

Rachel remembered with a twist of self-loathing how impatient she'd been the day she'd run away, how she'd wanted to confront Mama Fee with truths that would never change. Yet now, as she looked at the woman's face, filled with quiet dignity and eternal grief, Rachel knew it would be the hardest thing she had ever done to burden the older woman with harsh truths.

Mama Fee turned toward her, and Rachel met her gaze, forcing words from her lips so final, so terrifying they tasted like ash on her tongue.

"Fee, Gavin is going to die."

A tiny cry of denial tore from the woman's lips, echoing the desolation in Rachel's own heart. But Mama Fiona forced a brave smile, one Rachel was certain she'd flashed at her seven brawny sons as they marched away to war.

"No!" Mama Fee protested. "Gavin is going to save Adam. They'll both come riding home."

"How? He can't break Adam out of a prison by himself. The security surrounding a prisoner like Adam will be so heavy an angel himself couldn't slip into Adam's cell."

"Gavin will find a way. You must have faith."

"Faith won't save Gavin this time. He is riding into the middle of the English camp alone. You don't know how much they hate him. Half the officers would sacrifice their own mothers for the honor of bringing the Glen Lyon to justice."

Mama Fee's brave smile seemed to crumble into dust, and Rachel hated herself as she pushed on.

"Gavin is going to die if we don't help him. Just like your sons died. Like Timothy died."

Mama Fee recoiled, shrank into herself as if the pain were devouring her from the inside out. "No! Timothy isn't dead! He's alive! I know it, I feel it."

"He's dead, Mama Fee," Rachel said through the thick knot of grief wedged in her throat. "He's dead. But Gavin isn't! Not yet."

Tears welled up in the old woman's eyes and flowed down cheeks like aged parchment. "No. No. Timothy's alive. Gavin is going to bring Adam back to me."

"Gavin is going to be captured himself. And then—" She looked up at this woman, this mother she'd never had, and knew that it would be easier to strike her with a cudgel than to crush her spirit this way. She could barely force herself to continue. But she clung to the image of Gavin and the knowledge that Mama Fee loved him too much to allow him to die, that somewhere beyond the haze grief had spun about her soul, Mama Fee would endure anything to save him.

"Do you know what they do to traitors, Mama Fee?" Rachel said, hardly able to frame the words herself. "Do you know what they'll do to Gavin?"

"No! He's a good lad! He—"

"He's the most wonderful, noble, brave man I've ever known. And they'll kill him in the most hideous way possible if we let them! They'll drag him out in front of an angry crowd, and they'll put a noose around his neck."

"No," Mama Fee whispered. "No, no, no."

"They'll hang him, just enough so he can't breathe, crush his throat until he's in agony. But they won't give him the peace of death."

"Stop!" Mama Fee raised her hands to her ears, trying to blot out the horror. "I can't listen." Rachel grabbed her fragile wrists, dragging them away, tears burning her own cheeks.

"Then they'll take him down, and then they'll cut him, Mama Fee, cut him with knives before he's dead, and—"

"No!" Mama Fee ripped away from Rachel, her eyes wild, like a cornered deer feeling the first snapping bite of a wolf's fangs on its throat. The woman folded in on herself, a pulsing ball of grief, of human suffering. Sobs racked Mama Fee, and Rachel was terrified she'd broken the fragile thread of the woman's sanity.

"Please, help me!" Rachel begged, clutching the old woman's quivering shoulders. "I can stop this, Mama Fee. I can help him! But not locked in this cave! I won't lose him," Rachel said fiercely. "I won't let him die. Please, Mama Fee. If you could have done anything to save your Timothy—anything—wouldn't you have tried it? All I ask is a chance."

Fiona raised her face, and beneath the shine of tears, Rachel glimpsed a mother's hell. "I didn't even ask him not to go. I wanted to, but I didn't. I watched him march away, smiling, like each of the others. Sewed their stockings, packed them bannocks to fill their stomachs. I told them to stay warm and dry and I waved to them... smiled for them and let them go. They were such brave boys. Timothy—he ran back to me, he—he caught me in his arms and said... he said, 'I won't go, Mama, if you ask me not to.' But his eyes were full of hero tales, and I couldn't ask him... I couldn't ask him not to go."

Rachel's heart felt broken, the shards cutting deep into her soul. "Mama Fee, please. It's not too late to save Gavin. If you help me, I vow I'll bring him back to you. Alive."