Heaven and the Heather (32 page)

“Apparently she didnae.” Niall struggled to get out from under Agnes. “Get off me, woman!”

“Do not bother to rise,” Sabine said, the fury surging within her, beginning at her toes. It grew like a snowstorm, inch by rapid inch. “I wish my last memory of you to be like this, groveling at my feet. I was a fool to think you worthy, thinking you honorable.”

“Agnes was just—” Niall shouted.

“I know what ‘she was just’!” She had given him her heart. She had been such a stupid fool. How could a Highland
sauvage
give himself to one woman? He lived like an animal, and rutted like an animal…now, while he lay upon the ground, bared to the night, he had never looked so much like a beast. And she had fallen in love with him. Falling out of love was a most dismal prospect indeed, but an easy one with this sight before her.

Niall finally managed to get out from under his intended.

Sabine took several steps backward. She stared at Agnes, who rose boldly, beside Niall.

“You have won,
sorcière
,” she said. “I give you your wish. I am leaving.”

“NO!” Niall shouted. “Ye will
not
!”

Sabine turned away from him. Rory barricaded her way.

“I am leaving,” she said flatly.

The mammoth just shook his head and stared down at her.

She stepped to the left of him, off of the path. He mirrored her. She stepped to the right. He followed her move.

“No games!” she cried.

“No games,” Niall said behind her.

She whirled around, the heat building in her eyes, blinding her.

“Hear me out,” he said.

“You cannot tell me what I already know.”

“Sabine—”

“Do not say my name. You could run me through with that large Highland sword of yours and do me no more pain than I have witnessed and heard this night. I wish now that the darkness would cover your face, so I may not ever look upon it.”

“Ye must not…” Niall said taking her left wrist. He pulled her against his body, that heated, firm body where she had once sought protection and love. How foolish of her.

The storm built within her, reached her heart. She did not care about Niall, his body, or any other thing about him. She had lost the trust, had lost the trust her queen had in her, had lost the life she had known in recent years, had begun to accept, all because of this Highland man who had played with her heart and done as he pleased, without a by-your-leave!

“Listen to me!” he shouted.

Demands, always demands from men. Were they not good for anything else?

“I am leaving,” she said under her breath. “And there’s nothing you or anyone can do to stop me.”

She looked through her hair and into his eyes. His blue gaze had lost its magic upon her. Betrayal had dulled the colors, made the hue normal, like everyone else.

“I have proof of Campbell’s treachery against my queen. I will take it to her…and save her,” she said. “I, alone.”

“
We
will save her,” Niall countered.

“There is no
we
, only me! All you have to take to the queen is your damned name and your worthless honor!”

Niall tightened his grip on her wrist. Was that red she saw in his eyes?

The snowstorm froze her heart, and its fury forced her gnarled fingers to ball into a tight fist.

“Release me,” she growled.

“Not until ye—”

All she saw was the blinding rage of the storm within her. Then she felt Niall’s face as it gave way to her right fist. For the blink of an eye, she hated herself. Then she hated Niall for making her feel that way, for making her do the unthinkable, for making her sink to Campbell’s level, and that of her father. Hell, where they dwelled, would be a welcome reward from this torment upon her now.

Sabine barely knew the woman who suddenly left destruction in her wake and escaped into the night, while inwardly cradling the remains of her shattered heart.

“B
loody woman!” Niall shouted into the star-filled night. But stars did not dance on the ground, did they?

He could only keep one eye open. The other eye, swollen shut held the stars against a burning darkness. His head seemed to have been cut in two by an expanding fissure of pain and dizziness. No man had ever struck him as hard.

“Damn woman!” he cursed. He managed to rise to his hands and knees.

“I’ll get the lassie,” Rory said from somewhere far away.

“Aye,” Niall rasped. “Get her, drag her here if ye have to. I’ll be along…soon…bloody hell…owwwww.” A fresh bundle of pain stabbed his eye right into the center of his head. He tore a fistful of damp moss from the ground and placed it over his eye.

He rose on shaky legs. Agnes tried to help him up, but he shrugged her away. “I’m fine,” he lied.

“Och, aye, I can see that,” she scoffed. “The French lass has a mighty swing in her fist, has she no’?”

“Tell me what I dinnae know,” he growled.

He willed his legs forward. Why was the ground moving beneath him? Niall swallowed and tried to ignore the pain, all the worse because Sabine had delivered it to him.

If she had only heard him out, not been so stubborn. But he had seen the enormous hurt in her eyes, knew at that moment he should have told her about Agnes.

“What was there to tell her?” he grumbled to himself, while stumbling down the narrow path toward the cottages. “I had promised my father I’d marry Agnes as a weak effort to bring peace to these lands. It was a promise ill-conceived, not important. Telling her would have only burdened her with more strife.”

He spoke these things aloud, practiced what he would tell Sabine when he saw her. If it took Rory holding her down so he could tell her, then so be it.

As he made his way through the forested path, and through the pain, he pondered the question Agnes had so deftly posed to him.

Are ye gonnae ask the French outeral to be yer wife?

Such a powerful question. Niall had told her the notion had never entered his mind, when in truth it had, on several occasions. Sabine was betrothed to Campbell, but only in word, not in the banns. However, the queen had given her consent to the marriage, and the queen’s consent was her command. Nothing could break it, nothing but the proof that Campbell was a traitor. He had to reach that step in his life before he could take another. So, he placed Agnes’s question in the back of his mind and continued onward, this time breaking into a run, despite the burning on his arse and the fire on his face.

His claymore banged against his back, as his feet pounded the ground. The faint glow from the tiny cottage windows guided him out of the forest and into the open glen where the wash of a full moon illuminated the landscape.

He skidded to a full stop before the byre, freshly turned mud splattering his feet. He slid his gaze down to the softened earth. Deep and very fresh hoof prints met his eyes. He followed them, impacted into the ground from a beast that had been forced to make great haste, to the east, to the queen, to Castle Campbell Dubh.

“That foolish lass,” he breathed. “Too bloody willful, but that’s what I love about her.”

He dashed into the byre, certain to find Rory there, holding his hand to his eye, another victim of Sabine’s wrath. He expected to take another mount, for Sabine surely would have taken his, and he would catch her. By God he was certain of that…until he stepped into the dimly lit byre.

Rory was not within, neither was his mount, neither was Sabine. Niall stood just inside the door. The emptiness of the stable gnawed at his soul. He stepped forward toward his horse. Something crinkled and gave way under his foot. It was not straw or manure. He stepped back and reached down to the gut strings that protruded from under a pile of soiled straw. He pulled gently and revealed Sabine’s
sac
.

Immediately, he looked inside. The proof of Campbell’s treachery was tucked safely there with the gold coins.

“Why?” he whispered, tucking the purse into his plaid.

He glanced about the byre. “Why would she leave it?”

A cruel and confusing answer lay just a few paces from where he stood.

“No….” he breathed, leaping forward to snatch it from the straw.

Niall stared down at his hand. Too many thoughts fought for purchase in his turbulent mind. Only one screamed in his ears. Harm had come to Sabine, and Rory had to be at the heart of it. His friend and champion had betrayed him.

“But why!” he screamed into the dusty air.

He clenched his fist around the evidence. A torn scrap of brocade from Sabine’s gown, covered with blood.

“What have I done,” he said ripping across the byre to his mount. “I sent Rory after her. By God, what have I done?”

S
abine lay trussed like a sheep to be sheared across the back of Rory’s mount. She could still smell the coppery scent of his blood caught under her fingernails. He had tried to tear her clothes off to get at the evidence against Campbell she had stupidly told Niall she would take to the queen. Her anger toward Niall had blinded her to her suspicions about Rory, had made her mouth divulge what she had in front of him. Now she knew it was Rory inside Campbell’s chamber. And she knew the evidence against Campbell was not on her. She closed her eyes.

Sweet Saint Giles let Niall find my sac. This I pray to your mercy, amen.

She jostled on back of the mount, her belly riding hard against horse flesh and muscle. Once in a while, over the thump-thumping of hooves on the Highland path, she heard the plaintive cry of an owl from the suffocatingly dense forest shadows. Only the moon guided Rory on this narrow path, or was it greed and disloyalty to Niall that guided him?

She knew where they were headed. To Rory’s true master. Lord Campbell. That thought sickened her more than the constant bumping of her belly against the horse.

The beast slowed and eventually stopped to the sound of Rory’s soft clicking. How could a man who spoke so softly to his beast be so cruel to his best friend?

“Tell me where this evidence against Campbell is, lass,” he said. The first words he had spoken to her since he had taken her away from Niall’s valley.

She looked up, the blood rushing through her head when she did so, making her dizzy. She blinked several times and saw they had halted on a precipice. The moonlight reflected across a shallow valley cut by a forest in the center. Up the other side of the valley lay a horribly familiar shadow—Castle Campbell Dubh.

“I will tell you nothing,” she said.

Her heart froze at the thought of her destiny falling back into that dreadful place. She doubted the queen would still be within, having long taken her affairs back to the comforts of Holyrood.

Rory turned and looked down at her. His face was raked on either side with eight long scratches.

“’Tis a pity, ken,” he said. “Ye leave me with no choice.” He arced his chin toward the castle.

Sabine stared up at him. What did she care? Niall was hers no more. All she had was her strength and the will to save her queen. Getting as far as Castle Campbell was one step, not a good one, but a step nonetheless. She wondered if Niall would dare follow, and she knew the answer before Rory urged his mount forward.

Of course Niall would. And she was oddly cheered by the thought. Maybe she would give him a chance to explain himself to her, when they both sat in the gaol of Castle Campbell.

chapter 18

Falcon’s Flight

T
his chamber was far better than any gaol. For that Sabine should have been a little grateful. But how could she be grateful to the Devil?

“A fine confinement for a fine lady,” Lord Campbell said. He stood before the hearth, hands clasped behind his oiled leather doublet. The sword he wore at his hip, a slender blade with a golden, pierced hilt that glinted in the firelight, distracted Sabine from his words. She had never seen him carry a sword before. Circumstances were different now. The queen was a day gone from the castle. Her royal presence and her guards were no longer within the high, stark stone ramparts.

“You wear your smile and sword to shield your fright,” Sabine said. She tipped her chin up.

Campbell took a broad stride away from the hearth. His hand moved to the hilt of his sword. One more bold step and he would be close enough to inflict more damage to her face. Sabine shuffled backwards. She would gladly engage in this
pas a deux
with her captor to keep him from striking her again. Her ears still rang from his last blow. Yet, he could pound her to darkness on the plank floor and, she would still refuse to tell him the location of the proof against him.

“I give you one more chance to give this ‘proof’ to me.”

“You could give me a thousand chances,” she said. “But I still have nothing.”

Sabine gripped the bedpost, digging her fingernails into the wood.

Campbell stalked closer until his hot breath pressed against her face. He raised his hand. She turned her face away, leaned into the bedpost, waited for another blow, another taste of blood to course over her tongue.

“No,” he grimaced, “not that way…I have another method to get what I want…Remove your garments.”