Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (22 page)

Slowly, Nicholas rose, leaving his dagger in place until he could step out of reach of Archie’s long arms. Archie pushed up onto his hands and knees, then stood slowly, wiping blood and dirt from his face. He looked about him. “My dagger?”

“At the bottom of the loch, no doubt.”

Archie pressed a hand to the back of his neck and winced. “Sending you here was a bad idea. King Edward will not be happy.”

“King Edward had better think me dead. If I find out otherwise, I promise you I will hunt you down and you will die. Now go!”

Nicholas knew he should have killed the man, that he couldn’t trust Archie, but he had never had a stomach for cold-blooded murder. And yet he knew it likely the man would return for the Targe himself. The rewards would be far greater if he could lay Nicholas’s betrayal before the king, along with the prize. But at the very least Nicholas had bought a little time while Archie licked his wounds and fetched his reinforcements. The king’s men-at-arms were encamped near Oban, at least a hard day’s travel there and another back. He could only hope it was enough time to regain Rowan’s trust, at least enough to protect her clan from what Archie would bring down upon them.

He watched until Archie disappeared from sight, then turned and sprinted into the forest. He had to find Rowan.

CHAPTER TWELVE

R
OWAN STRUGGLED OVER
the slippery rocks in the burn. Her breath burned in her lungs, and her feet had long past turned to blocks of ice, but she dared not return to the relative comfort of dry ground. She dared not stop.

She tried to stay focused on the sounds around her, though the burble of the water splashing over the rocky streambed made it hard to hear much else. She tried to stay focused on where to place her feet, on taking one more step, on finding a hiding place that did not entrap her. And yet again and again she found herself overwhelmed by the dueling emotions that blocked out everything else, that she could not control: desire and betrayal.

One moment she was scrambling for her life, the next, reliving the moment Nicholas took her in his arms and the passion that burned through her at his touch. The next she could barely breathe as she relived the moment that villain Archie exposed Nicholas’s lies.

Was it all a lie?

The things she’d heard from that ruffian, Archibald—Archie, as Nicholas had called him—had betrayed the true nature of Nicholas of Achnamara. She stumbled over a branch, hidden by the water, barely catching her balance. She stopped, pressing her palms to her face for a brief moment before forcing her frozen feet to move up the ben again. How could she be so trusting? He was not Nicholas of Achnamara. He was Nicholas, King Edward’s spy, sent to destroy everything she loved.

And yet…

Though she had managed to free herself from Archie’s grasp—she still did not understand exactly how she had done that!—Nicholas had attacked the other man, helped her escape, and from
the sounds that she had heard in the first few moments after she ran, he had fought Archie to keep him from following her.

But Nicholas had betrayed her, betrayed her trust.

She stumbled again, falling to her knees in the cold water this time, drenching the few parts of her skirts that had not already suffered that fate. Her eyes burned but she refused to give in to tears again. She had failed to recognize the danger. She had let herself be swayed by his dark eyes and the passion that flared between them.

“Rowan?”

As if summoned from the maelstrom in her head and heart, he stood at the top of the embankment that flanked the burn, looking down at her. One eye was already showing signs of bruises. He had a scrape along his left cheek as if he’d met the gravel face-first. Blood trickled from a cut on his left forearm.

And he was as drenched as she was. More so.

Concern for him flashed through her, curbed immediately by a steely resolve. She could not trust this man. She would not trust this man.

She scrambled up the steep bank across the burn from him and ran as fast as she could into the dense trees and undergrowth.

N
ICHOLAS COULDN
’
T MISS
the flash of warm concern in Rowan’s eyes. Nor could he miss the brittle pain there. He would give anything not to have hurt her but it was inevitable. No matter how this mission had played out, the moment he touched her after the wall nearly fell upon them her disappointment and hurt were written in stone. Now he must find a way to regain her trust, at least enough to let him help protect her and her clan from Edward’s covetous goal of adding Scotland’s conquering to Wales’s and ruling the entire island of Britain.

She darted into the darkness of the wood across the burn. He scrambled down the embankment and up the other side, following her as quickly as he could.

“Rowan, stop! Let me explain!”

She glanced back at him but didn’t slow down. Nicholas pushed himself, closing the distance between them until he was close enough to hear her ragged breath.

“Please, stop.”

She tripped and fell, catching herself with her hands on the ground. He almost stepped on her, but sidestepped at the last moment. She stayed there on her hands and knees, her sides heaving, her head hanging down, the tangles of her hair obscuring her expression.

He stooped down next to her and reached to move her hair away.

“Do not touch me.” The words were low and menacing. “Do not dare touch me.”

Nicholas stepped away from her, the words drawing old wounds to the surface, childish hurts battled with the need to cradle her in his arms and comfort her. He put more distance between them. Drawing on experience with his mother, he knew that was best.

“I won’t touch you, unless you ask me to.”

“I will never ask that of you.”

“I do not blame you for that,” he cleared his suddenly tight throat, “though you will understand if I hold out hope that you will change your mind.”

“Hah.” She flung her hair out of her face as only women seemed able to do and sat, resting her arms on her bent knees, her breathing still labored. He watched her carefully, ready to chase her again if she bolted.

“You shall never get the Targe.”

“Aye, I ken that. We need to keep King Edward from getting it.”

“Why would he want the Targe? It only protects those who live upon this land.”

Nicholas soaked that information up, adding it to the little he’d gleaned so far. “It is said it protects this route into the Highlands, that it is a shield against invasion.”

She laughed then, that husky sound that filled him with an odd joy he’d never experienced before he’d met her.

“You have been misled. If it was that powerful, do you not think the English would have been rebuffed by now? Last I heard, the southern vermin have overrun this land, Lowland and Highland, spreading pain and suffering everywhere they go.”

He watched her for a long moment. “I am sorry, Rowan. I…”

“You what? Did not come here to my home as a spy for Longshanks? Did not try to seduce me for your own purposes? Did not plan to steal something that doesn’t belong to you or your damned king?” Her voice rose with each question until she launched herself to her feet. “What did we ever do to you?!” Anger animated her face bringing high color to her cheeks and lightning to her eyes. She stomped toward him and poked him in the chest with her finger. “What did I ever do to you?”

He started to reach for her but remembered his promise. He hooked his thumbs in his belt but couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped him. “You smiled at me. You beguiled me with your sweetness, your fierce loyalty, with your trust.”

“With my stupidity.”

“Nay, Rowan. Never. You gifted me with something no one else ever had, not even the king. You gifted me with your trust and I regret, more than you shall ever know, that I am unworthy of such a gift.”

She looked away for a moment, as if collecting herself. “What are you going to do with me?”

That was a good question and one he didn’t know the answer to. “For now, I have bought us a little time. With some persuasion, Archie has ‘agreed’ to return to Oban and wait for me there.”

“Until you bring the Targe to him, no doubt.”

“That is what I told him, but in truth, I do not believe he will sit passively and wait for me, so we must prepare for his return. He will not return alone.”

“And if he waits for you in Oban?”

“Then I will take him a false Highland Targe. King Edward will have the Targe for his own, and to keep it from him will only stoke his ire and that is never a good thing, but neither Archie nor the king, nor even I, know what it looks like nor even what it is. I can
give them a false shield, and give you and your clan some time to prepare. Wales resisted and lost. Scotland will fall, too, whether the king has the Targe or not, but I would not have you and your family suffer”—he had to look away from her as the bloody images from his dream overlaid the woman he faced—“suffer because fate handed you the keeping of the Targe.”

“Fate? It is not fate, Nicholas, or whatever your true name is.”

Her words knifed through him, cutting at a pride he’d thought long gone. “My true name
is
Nicholas of Achnamara and I truly do not remember exactly where Achnamara is.” He looked up at the forest around him… so familiar. “I think it cannot be far from here, though, for it is as if I have come home when I look about me. I
am
Scottish.” At her lifted eyebrow he added, “Half Scottish. My mother. My father… not.”

“English.” Her voice was flat, a statement, not a question.

“Aye.”

“How can you choose the English over the Scots? Were you raised amongst Highlanders? Or did your English family make you who you are?”

“I have no English family,” he snarled, then closed his eyes and struggled to calm the rage that ate at him at the mere thought of his English “family.” “I went to England when I was ten and two. I thought…” He clenched his fists. “I thought my father would welcome his son, so I found him…” He paused. “He beat me and told me he would kill me if I dared show my face to him again. The man who ravaged my mother when she was barely become a woman refused to acknowledge her son, though it was clear to look at me who had done the deed. If I had been older, more worldly-wise, I would not have been surprised. But I was.”

He met Rowan’s wary glance.

“My Scottish family.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. He gripped his belt tightly in his fists, but did not look away from her. “I would have stayed there if I could, but my likeness to my sire… as I grew, my mother could not bear to look at me. As I reached a man’s height, she feared me.” He had not ever spoken of this to anyone. “I could not stand to be the cause of such terror in anyone, especially my
mother. When she could no longer be near me without quaking, without flying into a rage, or throwing herself into a corner and crying, I had to leave. I could not be the source of such terror in my own mother’s life. So I left. I vowed never to return.”

“Yet here you are, in the Highlands.”

“Not from my own choosing.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she demanded, viciously pulling leaves and bracken from her hair. “Is it to gain my sympathies so you can get closer to the Targe?” Anger and hurt radiated from her.

“Nay, love. I am telling you this because coming back here, to the Highlands, coming back to where I was born and raised, has changed me… or maybe it has changed me back, to the way I was before I left here.” He looked away from her, trying to figure out how to put into words the shift that had taken place deep within him in just a sennight. “Rowan, I am not the man I was when I left England bound for this place to take the Highland Targe for King Edward.

“In England, I am the king’s favorite spy and even though few know who I am or what I do, there was pride in that status. I had made something of myself, rising from the ashes of my parentage.” He looked back at her. “I found a place where I was valued, not thrown away like so much dung, where I was accepted, not reviled for who I looked like.” This was the longest speech of his life but he dared not stop now, not if he had any hope of securing Rowan’s future. He needed her to see the truth in the words he was about to speak.

“And then I came here. I met you and your clan. I walked the forest, climbed the ben”—he looked down at his still damp clothes—“fell in the loch. I remembered what it was like to be a Highlander, to wrap oneself in the loyalty and comfort of one’s clan. I remembered how it felt to know that this is a place I belong, that these are people I belong to, and that I would do anything to keep them, to keep
you
, happy and safe. I remembered who I wanted to be so long ago.”

She didn’t say anything for long moments but she didn’t look away from him, either, and he counted that a good thing. He could see her battling with herself, softness creeping into her regard,
fighting with the hurt he had inflicted. He stepped closer slowly, not wanting to frighten her. He wanted to take her hand in his, draw her back into his embrace, find the peace and the passion they had shared such a short time and such a lifetime ago, but he didn’t.