Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) (22 page)

He tried to take a step, but he was falling, falling further back through time. He felt his body jolt, and he straightened and reluctantly opened his eyes.

Maclean was seated upon his horse, at the head of his men, facing Auchry Macleod of Mhairi. He could feel the animal beneath him, the chill wind on his face, the smell of fear and sweat, the aching tiredness of his own body. And his raging pain and pride. Like a knot inside him, it twisted, urging him on, telling him he had no choice but to teach Ishbel, teach them all, that he was every bit a man like his father.

He wanted to tell himself no, he wanted to turn
around and go home, but he wasn’t able to do anything. He was Maclean, and yet he wasn’t. The
Fiosaiche
was forcing him to be an observer only. His mouth opened and the words that came out were the ones he had spoken long ago.

“I have come for Ishbel,” he said, and his hands tightened on the reins.

And there, behind Auchry, was Ishbel, smiling a strange little smile, and at her side gangly Iain Og, his eyes reddened by the cold and maybe sleeplessness. The boy was looking upon his own death and he knew it.

The
Fiosaiche
’s voice was in Maclean’s head. “Remember. Savor the pain. Learn the lesson. It is the only way….”

He was back in the airless, windowless room where the Forsythes kept their collection, with Bella’s worried face before him and the hum of the air conditioner in his ears.

“I know what happened,” he said in a voice that sounded like a stranger’s. “And I wish to God I did not.”

Brian put down his cell phone, his hands
shaking so much he nearly dropped it. Elaine, Bella’s agent, had just called him. She’d been trying to ring Bella, but no one was picking up. Elaine didn’t seem to know that Brian and Bella had split up, or if she did, she wasn’t about to let on. Instead she launched into a diatribe about Bella’s book
Martin’s Journey
, and how it had sold out and was about to go into another reprint. Elaine finished the call with details of the publicity Bella had turned down, begging Brian to talk some sense into her. In ten minutes he knew everything about
Reading England
and all the chances Bella was letting slip through her fingers.

Bella’s book was a bestseller.

He couldn’t believe it.

Brian had been avoiding anything to do with writing since he left the cottage, and now he learned that Bella had finally done what he never thought she could.

He had walked out on her after all this time, and
now
she had a bestseller. He sat down heavily on the antique chair in Georgiana’s gleaming entrance hall.

Anger built in him, a hot, self-righteous fury, with Bella and the way she’d treated him. She hadn’t once tried to call him and apologize. It had been he who had gone back to the cottage to see her, to try and talk some sense into her.

He’d arrived to find the place empty, but there were plenty of signs that someone had been there recently. The smashed plates and smell of burning worried him, and he’d only waited a minute or two before deciding to climb the path to the castle ruins. She was probably up there. She was always up there, moping around, dreaming about Maclean. Brian had come to loathe the man. If he wasn’t already dead, Brian would have wished death on him.

At first he couldn’t believe his eyes. The mist had come down over the castle ruins, and the whole scene was just as cold and bleak as he remembered, but as he stood peering toward the gateway, he’d seen movement. He couldn’t take it in at first. He’d kept watching, thinking it must be a hallucination. Bare skin and entwined limbs, an erotic living sculpture. Bella and her man were so caught up in their lust they didn’t even know he was there. Shameless. Sickening.

He’d been utterly shocked. Bella? This woman who was acting so wildly and primitively was his Bella? More embarrassingly, he’d been turned on. He’d never seen her like that, wanton, her hair loose about her, and giving as good as she got. She was like one of those pagan fertility goddesses he’d looked at in the museums she was always dragging him into.

Brian had begun to back away, but the man had heard him and jumped up, calling out aggressively. Until then Brian had been tossing up the idea of confronting him, but now he thought better of it. God Almighty, the bastard even had a weapon, some sort of sword! Brian had run off, back to the car, and left before they could catch him. He’d glanced in his rearview mirror for miles, worried he might be followed.

But he couldn’t forget what he’d seen, and he’d been mulling over his hurt and anger ever since. The memory stayed with him. It was like the car crashes he sometimes came across when he was driving on the motorway, when he couldn’t seem to help looking despite knowing he might catch a glimpse of something he’d rather not see. The memory of his visit to Bella was like that, and he replayed it over and over.

The question he found himself asking the most was:
Why didn’t she ever behave like that when she was with me?

That she hadn’t just made her betrayal all the worse.

After all the sacrifices he’d made for her, all the times he’d tried to help her and turn her into something better. She’d never appreciated him or his efforts. She hadn’t understood that if it hadn’t been for him, she’d never have been able to keep going. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d never have become a bestselling author.

And now that Bella
was
a bestselling author, who on earth was going to be there to help her choose the right clothes and get her into some sort of shape to face the media?

Brian shuddered as he had a vision of Bella appearing on television in her blue robe and slippers, with
those extra pounds on show for all the world to see. He’d just die of embarrassment.

There was only one thing to do.

He’d have to forgive her and take her back. She’d be so grateful she’d soon give her new man the elbow, if that’s what he was. Thinking about it now, Brian began to doubt it was anything more than a fling. The brute probably came calling at the cottage looking for a handout, decided Bella was easy pickings, took what he wanted, and was now long gone. When Brian turned up at her door, she’d fall on him in tears and beg him to help her.

Pleased with the ego-soothing scenario he’d created, Brian smiled to himself. Yes, she’d be so very grateful when he agreed, a little grudgingly, to help her. He wouldn’t forgive her straightaway, oh no, he’d make her earn it. And he’d drop a few hints about what he’d seen up in the ruins, nothing concrete, just enough to keep her guessing and worrying that he might leave her again.

Perhaps he should travel up there tonight? There was so much to do if he was to get her into shape, and they’d need to head south to London as soon as possible if they weren’t to miss out on the opportunities Elaine had created for them.

But Brian decided he didn’t want to look too eager. Tomorrow would be soon enough, and he could take some champagne with him. Yes, champagne would be a nice touch, something good but not too expensive.

To celebrate Bella’s success, and their reconciliation.

“You have what you wanted, then?” Mrs. Forsythe
asked curiously.

Maclean knew he looked haggard and Bella pale, but he tried to be polite in return for the woman’s kindness. It was not her fault that his pigheadedness and pain had set in motion the events that destroyed his clan and emptied his lands. Ishbel might have been complicit in the massacre, but his pursuit of her and the murder of Iain Og had begun it.

“Thank you, we do.”

“Good.” She led the way out, pausing as she passed a small table with a grubby cloth on it. She clicked her tongue. “I thought I asked for that to be disposed of,” she murmured, picking it up with a grimace. “My husband has contacts all over the place,” she explained, “and sometimes they bring him objects they think he might be interested in. Someone came this morning and left this, but really I don’t want it in the house. The old
woman who brought it was very…odd. I told the maid to throw it away.”

Maclean glanced at the bundle curiously. “What is it?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Some bits of old leather wrapped up in a piece of old woolen cloth. I can’t imagine what it was used for. To hang someone, perhaps,” she said, and laughed nervously, as if it weren’t really a joke. “Would you like to see, Mr. Maclean?”

Maclean took the ragged piece of cloth, feeling the grease and grime of centuries clinging to it, and began to unwrap it very carefully to expose what lay within. Leather strips, like rope, knotted and frayed and very old.

Mrs. Forsythe made an expression of disgust, but Bella moved closer and Maclean could feel the tension in her body.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Maclean stirred the leather strips with his finger. There was a dull jangling sound. Some of what he had thought of as knots were actually thin circular pieces of discolored metal, silver maybe, and there was a long, narrower rod of metal. “Something for a small beast, I think. A pony, mabbe.”

Bella’s breathing was loud at his side.

“That’s a bit,” she said in wonder. “It’s a bridle, Maclean.”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Forsythe was completely unimpressed. “Well, my husband doesn’t collect horse tack.”

Maclean frowned, leaning closer to the bridle. “It’s verra grubby and I can hardly see, but there seem to be
engravings on the metal pieces.” He pointed with his finger. “A shape, a woman mabbe, holding the harness?”

“It’s very old,” Bella added, her voice strangely distant.

“Yes, I can see that. Old and very smelly. I do not want it, Ms. Ryan.” She gave Maclean an oddly shy look. “Do you want it, Mr. Maclean? Please, feel free.”

Maclean hesitated. He was aware that Bella had grown very still and was even paler than before. She must have sat with him all the time he was in the past. How long had that been? Had he said anything, done anything? He hadn’t been able to ask because Mrs. Forsythe had come into the room almost as soon as he awoke, but Bella was clearly upset and probably frightened.

“We dinna need—” he began, meaning to refuse.

“Thank you.” Bella was forcing a smile at Mrs. Forsythe. “I’ll try and clean it up and look at it more closely. If it is important or valuable, then I’ll certainly return it to you and your husband, Mrs. Forsythe.”

“If you must,” the woman sighed, “but really, I don’t want it.”

Bella reached out as if to touch the harness, and then drew back, folding her fingers tight into a fist. She was afraid of it, thought Maclean. Or she was afraid of him.

They were back in the car on their way to the hotel. Bella, who hadn’t been able to wait to leave so that she could talk to Maclean about what he had seen, was silent.

At least the old document had revealed what had happened to Tamsin. The girl had been caught up in the
massacre, although she barely remembered it by the time her story was being written down. She had been found, frightened and bleeding, some way from the main site of the killings by one of the Macleod clansmen. He had recently lost a daughter of his own to illness and, thinking to please his wife, had taken her home with him. Tamsin hardly spoke a word for a year, but after that she seemed to recover. In time she married the son of the household and moved house to the Isle of Skye.

Bella could imagine how it felt to be the only survivor of the massacre of Loch Fasail, and she understood why Tamsin had kept quiet about it. Perhaps her host family had warned her to hold her tongue.

And then there was the bridle.
The magic bridle
, the hag’s voice sounded in Bella’s head. As soon as Maclean had begun to unwrap it, she had felt dizzy with an excitement and awe she had never felt before when confronted with even the most precious of objects. It was as if on some deep level of consciousness she knew it was important, and she must have it.

Bella had never been superstitious, had never believed in signs, but she was shaken by the power of what was happening. Her dream and reality had collided. But what on earth was she meant to do next?

Slip the bridle on, but remember, the creature will no’ be easily restrained, and if it knows what ye are about, then it will kill you.

The voice sounded in her head like an echo, quite clear and precise, and utterly impossible.

“Bloody hell.” She sounded just like Maclean.

Perhaps that was why he turned to look at her strangely. “Bella? What is wrong?”

“I think I must be tired.” She didn’t want to explain to him, she wanted to think about it first, try and understand what was happening to her.

“Aye, it has been a day to remember.”

“Maclean—”

“Wait until we are in our room and I will tell you. I will tell you everything.”

When they were finally back in the room, Maclean poured himself a dram of whiskey from the tiny bottle in the bar fridge, and crouched to examine all the other bottles and crinkly packets of nuts and chocolate bars—the man was fascinated with refrigerators. Then he straightened and drank the whiskey down in one gulp, and stood a moment, gathering up his words, while Bella sat quietly and watched him.

“I did go after Ishbel,” he said at last. “I went to fetch her back from her father’s lands. I believed I had justice on my side and that Auchry would agree with me and hand her over. I wasna afraid of him; if anything, he was afraid of me. But in my blind hurt I had underestimated what a weak treacherous weasel of a man he was. When I reached the borders of Auchry’s land, he rode out to speak with me.”

“Was Ishbel there?”

“Aye, she was there, and Iain Og.”

Auchry was listening to his complaints, nodding in agreement, and all but crawling up his arse. Maclean could hear his own voice, so much like his father’s, and
it made him feel sick with shame. His eyes flicked to Ishbel, standing behind Auchry, but he could read no fear in her face. She didn’t believe that she would be sent back to Loch Fasail. She had it all planned, Maclean realized now in despair.

Ishbel lifted her arm. It was a signal.

The crest of the hill behind her came alive as dragoons surged over it and down the other side in a tide of red. They had been there all along, watching and waiting for her to call them forth.

“They are from Fort William,” she said, still smiling. “They are looking for rebels, Maclean. How fortunate for us that you are here. Now they will leave my father alone. A fair trade, don’t you think? You for him?”

Maclean’s men roared their fury, the sound echoing around them, but he stayed them, holding up his hand. “Wait!” he shouted. He still didn’t believe she would truly do it, that such a thing could happen to him.

Ishbel was screaming, turning toward Auchry’s men and the dragoons, who had reached them now and were lined up to the rear. “He is a rebel, a traitor to the Crown!” Her voice rose. “Kill him!”

It was chaos, the noise of the men and Ishbel’s screaming. Maclean couldn’t think. He looked to Auchry to tell her to stop it, to behave herself, but he didn’t. The older man urged his horse back, and Maclean knew then he had given up his right to lead. Like the weak bastard he was, he had handed the privilege over to Ishbel.

Sickness washed over Maclean. He was outnumbered, and the dragoons were well armed. He had blundered into something he could never escape.

“I am betrayed!” he roared, and surged forward, drawing his broadsword. His men followed, tearing up the ground with their running feet, their voices so loud he felt deafened. He was about to die and it was too late to do anything about it.

He struck down one man, then another, but there were always more of them. The dragoons rode among his men, slicing with their swords, inflicting terrible injuries. Maclean looked up, wiping the blood and sweat from his eyes. His shoulder was cut, but the pain wasn’t too bad and he could still use it. He could see Ishbel some yards away, clinging onto Iain Og and trying to pull him away from the fighting, to safety with her.

She doesna deserve happiness.
Maclean burned with her betrayal. He pushed forward, fighting like a madman, making a path to Ishbel and her lover. Iain Og saw him coming and pulled away from Ishbel, standing like a proper man, pride overcoming the terror on his young face.

It wasn’t much of a fight. Maclean killed him with one blow.

But he felt no sense of achievement, just a sickness deep in the pit of his stomach. It was wrong, all wrong.

Ishbel was screaming again, but now she was saying, “Vengeance! I want vengeance! Kill him, kill him, kill him….”

Maclean felt the hot breath of a horse at his back, sensed the blade before it swung down upon him. The dragoon struck again, and again.

“And afterwards? What happened after you were…dead?”

It was Bella’s voice, drawing him back into the room, and he wanted to cling to it, and her. What he had seen and felt that day was an insanity he never wanted to repeat, and if he could, he knew he would undo it, whatever the cost to himself.

He found his voice. “When you were reading Tamsin’s diary I was shown what happened at Loch Fasail. I had killed Iain Og, and Ishbel wanted her vengeance. My death wasna enough for her. She rode on to Loch Fasail with her men and the English dragoons, and massacred my people. She has that burden upon her soul. But
I
must take the blame. I know that. If I had stayed at home, it would no’have happened; if I had listened to the women, I would no’have gone. I didna love her, I never loved her, and I had no right to force her into the same unhappiness as my mother. You have taught me that, Bella.”

Bella’s eyes filled with tears.

“I died at Mhairi with the sound of Ishbel’s curses in my ears and then my body was cut to pieces, just as the legend says, and cast to the four winds. I didna even have a proper grave. Not that it matters. I was already on my way to the between-worlds.”

“You remember that?” she whispered.

He nodded slowly, watching her. “Ye want to know what that was like, don’t ye, Bella? Mabbe it is not something a mortal woman should hear.”

“But I want to hear. This is about you and I want to know. I need to understand.”

He thought a moment, his gaze turned inward.

“I remember the pain. The sword…and then there
was darkness. A great long tunnel of it. The cold darkness of the between-worlds. I was stumbling along and I couldna see where I was going, so I pressed my hands along the walls and felt my way. The stone was wet and slippery, and there was a dreadful silence. As if I wasna alone but whatever was in there with me was holding its breath—”

“Maclean!” He looked at her sharply, but she shook her head, forcing back the horror. “No, please, go on. Tell me.”

“There were things in the darkness.” He shuddered. “I couldna see them, but I knew they were there. Things with claws and teeth. I tried to turn back once, but then there were more of them, nipping at my feet, turning me again the way they wanted me to go. But the tunnel just went on and on, and there was no way out.”

He stopped, and for a long moment he was silent, perhaps collecting his thoughts, perhaps reminding himself that he was safe now.

“What happened then, Maclean?”

She heard him take a deep breath.

“I’d given up. I dinna know how long I was there, days, months, years. I stood in the dark with those things about me and I longed for nothingness. This wasna death, there was no peaceful sleep, this was a place of punishment and suffering, and it was cold and dark and far more terrible than I’d ever imagined. That was when she came, the
Fiosaiche
. She had a light with her, a glowing circle of flame that floated before her, and her voice was as soft as lamb’s wool and her wings as strong as an eagle’s, and her gaze on mine was more terrifying than anything I had ever faced when I was alive.”

Bella imagined it, Maclean hunched beneath the roof of the nightmare tunnel and the sorceress before him in all her fearsome glory.

“What did she do?”

“She said…she said that my time would come and when it did I must redeem myself and cast the burden from my soul. She said that too many lives had been lost because of me and it wasna supposed to be so. She would not have it so. And then the tunnel was gone and…and there was nothing. I slept. I slept on through the centuries until she came to wake me again, two hundred and fifty years later.”

Bella felt excitement stir in her. “You shouldn’t have died like that. It was a mistake. You were meant for greater things, Maclean, but you messed up.”

He stared at her. “I see that now, but the seeing isn’t enough. I need to make things right, I need to change them, but how can I do that when the world I knew is gone?”

“I—I don’t know.”