Lachlan appeared to ponder this at length. “I dinna think strippin’ them naked is going to stop them this time, Johnnie. There’s too many of ’em for a start.”
“That’s what we need Marsali for,” Johnnie said in a
tension-fraught undertone. “I’m thinkin’ we make our move tonight. Marsali will know how to take care of it. She’ll keep us safe from the Sassenachs.”
Owen’s eyes widened. “Perhaps we should let the chieftain handle this.”
“The chieftain has other problems to worry about,” Johnnie said with a sly grin. “Besides, it’s time to prove to the man we’re no the helpless idiots he thinks we are.”
Chapter
23
“
I
apologize again for leaving you waiting in the castle, Major Darling,” Duncan said as he followed the stout, distinguished Englishman on horseback along the coastal road.
Actually, he hadn’t left the man waiting at all. He’d completely forgotten Major Darling in his obsessive anxiety to reassure himself that Marsali had not run off with Jamie MacFay during the night. He scanned the cove for the hundredth time in an hour. Not a trace of the swaggering ass.
“I understand from the charming Lady Edwina that your Highlanders are proving to be a handful, MacElgin.”
“Well…”
“Not that I mean to insult your heritage. It’s just that I forget sometimes you’re a native yourself.” Major Darling gave rein to a raucous snort of laughter that sent a flock of sea gulls flying. “A chieftain—isn’t that what they call you? By God, you’d look damn sweet in one of those skirts with those big hairy legs of yours.”
Duncan pretended to smile. “My clan is very concerned that you’re going to tear down their homes for your road, sir.”
The major wheeled his horse around to face Duncan. “We’re not in the business of tearing down homes, MacElgin. But if a few abandoned huts or stones stand in our way, well, that’s a different matter. The truth is we’d never disturb your Highlands at all if it weren’t for your damned Jacobites trying to put that pretender on the throne.”
“My
Jacobites?” Duncan said, frowning.
“No one is questioning your loyalty, my lord,” the major said, his ruddy face conciliatory. “If there were more sensible Scotsmen like you in the area to keep control,
I
wouldn’t be here garrisoning this blasted fortress. I’ve nothing personal against your people.”
“Some of those stones you want to knock down are sacred. The Scots believe they’re even imbued with magical powers.”
The major sighed. “You’ve always had my admiration, sir, and I don’t mind admitting that we’re both being wasted in these Highland wilds. Ah, well. Another month or so, and we’ll be back on the battlefield where we belong. But don’t worry. The surveyor told me this morning we won’t need to knock down a single cottage. As for the mystical stones
…
I’ll do my best.”
“That’s good of you,” Duncan said. Relieved to have the problem solved, he wondered how long it would take him to run back to the castle for a spyglass. He had just noticed a sturdy little sloop anchored at the end of the cove. It could be Jamie, lying in wait. He should have taken care of him last night when he had the chance.
“Well, I’m back off to my fortress,” the major said, oblivious to Duncan’s lapse in attention. “Keep them under control, that’s all I ask. I’d hate to arrest one of your relatives, but then orders are orders, and following them is what I’m paid for. I hear you’re up for a cabinet position, by the way. Remember me, won’t you, my lord.”
H
is clansmen averted their faces as Duncan rode slowly across the castle yard toward the stable. No, there was no love lost between them. After the humiliation he had dealt their precious princess last night, the chieftain loomed in their minds as more the black demon than ever before. It
didn’t matter that his motive had been to protect Marsali. No one wanted to believe the best of him.
He heard them muttering behind his back. They were disappointed if they’d expected him to show any shame at his behavior.
“ ’Twasn’t enough to break the wee lassie’s heart last night. He had to entertain an English soldier wi’ the old chieftain’s best brandy this morning.”
“Aye, and he’s made an enemy of the MacFays too, after a hundred years of friendship.”
“Puir Marsali. Moping out there all alone on the moor.”
“He’s scant the wits out of her.”
“Aye, he was bo
rn
a mean bastard and will carry his meanness to the grave.”
“ ’Tis a damn good thing he’s leaving at summer’s end. Walking away from kith and kin, clan and castle.”
“And what would you expect from a man who abandoned his own child without a backward glance?”
D
uncan stiffened in the saddle, aware that he was meant to overhear the complaining gossip. As silence fell, he could sense his clansmen waiting for him to react. He dismounted and strode toward the keep, his face betraying no emotion.
A child. His child. It was the second such reference to be slung at him since his return. Could it be true? Was one of the little bow-and-arrow monsters who terrorized the castle actually his offspring? The possibility inspired a confusing clash of curiosity and dread in his heart.
The unwanted child who had left behind another unwanted child. Pray God if there
had
been a child, its life had been happier than Duncan’s own. At any rate it was time to find out the truth.
He walked straight to the castle kitchen and confronted Cook with the rumors that had plagued him since his return.
“There has always been truth between us, if nothing else,” he said bluntly. “Did I leave a child behind, Agnes?”
She chased the kitchen maids outside before giving him an answer. A low fire burned in the hearth. Only Cook would dare tell him the truth to his face. In fact, after the
previous evening’s debacle, she was the only person in the castle who would willingly speak to the chieftain at all.
And Agnes, at her best, did not exactly exude the essence of motherly compassion toward anyone on earth.
“Aye, my lord, ye sired a wee lassie, and she must have died at birth because the doctor’s wife had her buried before anyone clapped eyes on the bairn,” she quietly explained while rolling out a pie crust on her scarred oak table.
Duncan stared into her sallow unsmiling face, seeing the cruel reality that he’d remained unaware of for fifteen years. “My father never told me that a child resulted from that union.”
“And what would have been the point?” Cook shook her head. “All three of ye paid a price in the end. The doctor, who couldna have his own babies and found his neglected wife pregnant wi’ yer love child. And her, well, he whisked the woman away the verra day the infant died. No one’s heard of them since.”
Duncan was silent, remembering how brash and sexually curious he had been at seventeen. And drunk. Aye, he’d awakened at dawn in the doctor’s bed, uncertain exactly where he was or what he’d been doing when Cecelia had booted him out the window, tossing his trews in his face.
“ ’Tis done now,” Cook said after a long silence, and it was as close to offering forgiveness as she could ever come. “The gossips have no right to be castin’ stones.”
Duncan did not know how to react, or how to feel. “I suppose I was hoping you’d reassure me it was only that. Gossip. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“I’m an honest woman if nothin’ else.”
He looked away, clearly uncomfortable by what she had revealed. “I am going to ride out to inspect the cottages to see what repairs will be needed before I leave.” He turned to the door, his face careworn in the dim light. “Do you think Marsali will come back to the castle?”
“I canna say, my lord.”
Cook wiped her hands on her apron and stared after him with a worried expression as he left the kitchen without another word.
The past haunted him, as if the present did not hold problems of its own. Should she have told him about the
raid the clan was planning tonight on the British fortress? Should she have begged him to intervene? It probably didn’t matter.
One way or another, whether the clan failed or not, Agnes feared there would be hell to pay in the end.
I
t was midaftemoon when Duncan dismounted and walked slowly through the graveyard of the little hillside kirk. MacFay’s ship, if that’s what Duncan had spotted, had mysteriously disappeared before he could get a closer look.
And now, on top of worrying about Jamie MacFay, he had to face the tragic repercussions of yet another sin.
He stopped abruptly as the tiny white stone cross caught his eye. It stood alone on the hillside beneath the shadows of an old yew tree. For a moment he was tempted to turn back. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Aye, but he
did
know now. He drew a fierce breath. This was the deepest cut of all.
An emotion stronger than fear or even self-preservation compelled him forward. Part of himself lay forgotten in that sad little grave. Youth and innocence buried beneath the weight of adult transgressions.
The abandoned product of his adulterous affair with a lonely doctor’s wife. The child he had fathered and never known existed till now. And all that marked her birth and death was a crude piece of stone and a sprig of dried heather that someone, perhaps Cook, had left in remembrance.
He knelt, his voice subdued as he smoothed his big hand over the unmarked cross. “How can I show you I’m sorry when you’re not here but in heaven?”
A deep silence was his only answer.
M
arsali slid down from her horse, her footsteps silent as she crept from tree to tree. Surely she was seeing things. That couldn't be the chieftain huddled over that wee grave.
Dh
é
,
was the big tyrant mourning then?
Intrigued, she edged as close to the circle of yews as she dared. His shoulders lifted in a deep sigh beneath his plaid but he didn’t utter a sound. Truly he was suffering.
Compassion and the urge to console conspired to move her toward him. Then she heard Duncan start to talk, and
intuition blocked the impulse. She pressed her face against the yew’s bark, the anguished shame in his voice immobilizing her.
“No wonder they hate me,” he said in a quiet voice to the tiny cross. “And of all the sins I’ve tried to undo, your death, my wee daughter, can never be forgiven.”
Marsali caught a glimpse of his face, the angular planes softened by a remorse too deep for words. Stricken with sympathy, aching to ease his pain, she remembered the offhanded insult she herself had once thrown at him about abandoning his own child.
She hadn’t dreamed at the time it was true. She had heard a rumor, that was all, and she’d used it in a fit of temper to hurt him. Guilt seared her heart as she realized how she had unwillingly added another stone to the burden of his pain.
Still, she didn’t know how to reach him.
It was as if he were the castle under its dark spell of isolation, with its ghost and secrets; and she were the moor, her heart as open as his was locked away, her instincts as spontaneous as his were controlled. Making this observation, she began to back away, sadly wondering if the drawbridge of their differences could ever be crossed.
The bundle of herbs she’d gathered to take to Bride at the cottage scattered around her feet. There was nothing she could do to help the chieftain. All the magic in the world could not stem the flood of emotion that broke from his heart, begging to be healed.
D
uncan rode straight for the cottages from the graveyard. If he could not protect the little girl laid to rest behind him, he could at least try to help his own people before he left. Not that he expected anyone to appreciate his efforts.
He stopped cold as he saw Marsali dismounting before a well-kept stone cottage in a hazel coppice. At the sight of her, a breath of sunshine and heather swept through the cobwebs of his sad reflections.
He slid off his horse. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his gruff tone covering an unwelcome surge of emotion.
She turned slowly. Although his face did not betray his feelings, she could hear the tension in his voice. She
couldn’t tell him she knew he had just learned he’d lost a child.
“I’m going to my sister-in-law’s childbed,” she explained. “Bride is having a terrible time of this one. What a surprise to meet you here.”
“I want to inspect the cottages.” He studied her small animated face. Everything about her, from her bright mop of curls down to her dirty little feet, bespoke life and a freedom he suddenly craved for himself. “I’ll come inside with you.”
She looked taken aback. “But you’re the chieftain, and ever since Gavin hurt his back, he and the rest of the family have been forced to live in the poor cots.”
“I was born in the poor cots, lass,” he reminded her, turning away from the well-trained stallion who would wait at edge of the coppice.
“But my sister has eight children.”
“I was a fisherman’s son before I became chieftain. I commanded the finest cavalry in the world. I imagine I can stand the sight of a few bairns for an hour.”