Seduced by a Highlander (28 page)

Behind him, Isobel clutched his arm, pulling him back from the place where he was his father’s son, where for an instant, he saw his sword cutting through Andrew’s flesh.

“Ye speak of honor like ye know what it means,” Kennedy spat. “Ye are a MacGregor. The scourge of Scotland. A name that should have been exterminated—”

“Andrew!” Patrick cut him off. “This
MacGregor
stopped the Cunninghams from burning our crops. He saved John’s life, and my own. Ye will not insult him again in my house.”

“Call him friend if ye like, Patrick. But what is he still doing here? Ye told me he was injured, but he is fit enough now to be on his way.”

“He is helping us,” Lachlan said, stepping around Patrick to smile at Tristan.

“Aye, we do not want him to go,” John interjected. “Do we, Isobel?”

“No, John, we do not.”

Beside her, Tristan exhaled a breath he felt as if he’d been waiting ten years to release.

“That is verra touching.” Andrew made the error of mocking them. “But she is to be my wife, and I do not want his soiled hands on her.”

“She will be yer wife only if I am dead,” Tristan said in a mild, thoroughly controlled voice. He was done
being gracious. He didn’t want to lose Isobel, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to let this bastard have her.

“Easily arranged,” Andrew snarled. “I have no difficulty with killing a man whose father murdered theirs.”

“Both our families are guilty, Andrew,” Isobel said, stepping around Tristan. “He lost his uncle, a sorrow that has taken as much from him as ours has taken from us.”

“The way I heard it, it was no tremendous loss on the Campbell side.”

“Kennedy,” Tristan growled from deep in his chest. “Apologize fer that or lose yer tongue.”

“Tristan.” Isobel turned to him, her soft voice anxious to calm him. “Do not—”

“He turned his back on the kingdom his kin served fer generations.”

“Andrew, that is enough!” Isobel turned to shout at him, and blocked his view of Tristan’s hands.

“He sided with outlaws.” Andrew moved forward and pushed her out of his way. “Because he was afraid of them.”

Tristan caught Isobel in his hands, pushed her behind him, and snatched Andrew’s dagger from his belt all in the space of a breath. In the next, he held the bastard by the hair in one hand and pushed the edge of the blade to his throat with the other.

“Ye dare use force with her?” He didn’t recognize his own deadly whisper or Annie’s terrified scream. “Ye scorn a man fer bein’ good?” The blade cut through Kennedy’s flesh and a trickle of blood flowed.

“Tristan!” Patrick stepped closer to them and reached out for the blade.

“Let him have it, Tristan, please,” Isobel cried.

Tristan’s eyes burned into Kennedy’s as he stepped
away. He flipped the dagger over in his hand, shoved it back into Andrew’s belt, and walked away from him.

“Patrick,” Kennedy whined the moment he was free. “Throw him out before he tries to kill one of ye!”

“I think it is ye who should go, Andrew,” Patrick told him, standing at Isobel’s side. “It is late, so Annie can stay. Cam will bring her home in the morning.”

“He is the dangerous one,” Andrew argued, wiping the blood from his neck with his palm and showing it to them. “A murderer just like his father. I saw it in his eyes! How do ye know that he will not kill Cameron?”

Tristan didn’t know why he might kill Cameron, but he was already sorry he hadn’t knocked out some of Andrew’s teeth. He noticed Patrick’s face drain of all color first, and then, beside him, Isobel grasping at her chest.

“Isobel?” Tristan moved toward her. She sucked in a short, shallow breath and then clutched Patrick’s chest.

She couldn’t breathe. “Isobel!” he reached her and touched his fingers to her cool cheek, watching her gasp for another elusive breath.

“She is having an attack!” Patrick snatched her up in his arms and carried her into the dining room, calling out orders as he went to Cam and Lachlan to get to her garden.

“But she has no butterbur.” John wrung his fingers together as he followed his brothers to the door.

“Ox-eye daisies, John. Go!”

Butterbur was better. John and Lachlan had told him of the plant that helped her breathe the day he learned that he’d destroyed it. Hell, she didn’t have any because of him.

Bending at her chair as Patrick set her in it, Tristan
took her cold hand in his. She was awake, her eyes wide, glassy, and frightened. Her nostrils were flared, her colorless lips drawn, dragging in rapid, shallow gulps of air.

“What can we do?” Tristan looked up at Patrick. “How can we help her?”

The boys barreled back into the house and ran straight for the kitchen with Cameron.

“We’ll make her tea. It will help, aye, Bel?” Patrick somehow managed to brave a smile for his sister, and Tristan admired him even more than he had before.

She nodded and squeezed Tristan’s hand. He kissed it in return and didn’t glance up at Patrick or anyone else who might have seen.

The tea seemed to take an eternity to boil, but Tristan used the time to sit with her, to soothe her with his steady voice and promises to take care of her. She smiled at him twice, claiming sole ownership of his heart.

Andrew stood off to the side looking frightened, and a bit overwhelmed. He hadn’t counted on taking a sickly wife. He disgusted Tristan.

Cameron fed her the medicinal tea when it was ready and steaming hot. It took two cups and an hour before she began breathing normally again. Tristan remained with Cam by her bed while she slept. Long into the night they remained quiet, keeping careful vigil over her. Tristan didn’t feel uncomfortable in the silence. He’d come to expect it from shy Cameron. All the more surprising when Cam looked up at him sometime just before dawn and cleared his throat.

“Do ye love her?”

“I… I dinna’ want to love her,” Tristan answered, lifting his gaze from her face to her brother’s. “But I do.”

Cam’s smile was so slight, Tristan thought he might
have imagined it. “Why do ye not want to love her? Because she is a Fergusson?”

Tristan shook his head. “Because I am afraid.”

“Ye?” Cam’s smile was gentle, not mocking. “I do not believe it.”

“The last person I loved was taken from me. I dinna’ know if I can survive it a second time.”

They were quiet for a time, listening to the sound of Isobel’s breath. “Do ye always speak the truth so openly, Tristan?”

“How do ye know that everything I tell ye is the truth?”

Cam shrugged and looked at his sleeping sister. “Sometimes when ye watch a person, ye can hear more.”

Tristan grinned at him. “In that case then, aye, I usually find myself bein’ truthful.”

“Honesty is an honorable virtue to possess.”

“Ye’ve been listenin’ to my tales about the knights of the Round Table, then, aye?” Tristan laughed.

“Aye, but I fear I do not remember their names as well as John does.”

“ ’Tis their virtues that should be remembered, no’ their names.”

Cam nodded and was quiet for another moment or two. “Tristan?”

“Aye?”

“I love Annie Kennedy.”

Tristan went silent, playing over in his mind how many times the lass had giggled at him like a lovesick kitten these last few days.

“I know she is a bit smitten with ye at present.” He held up his hand to stop Tristan when he tried to interject.
“If ye could win Isobel, I know ye could help me win Annie. Will ye?”

Tristan sat forward in his chair and beckoned Cam to come closer. “I’m goin’ away fer a few days.”

“Why?” Cam asked him quietly. “I did not mean to—”

“I will return,” Tristan assured him. “But while I’m gone, here is what ye must do with Annie.”

In the sitting room the next morning, Isobel paced before the hearth fire, wringing her apron into a tight knot. By the time she was well last night, it was too late to send Andrew off alone, so he sat with Patrick now quietly watching her while they waited for Cameron to finish his morning chores and join them.

“I do not understand why ye are so vexed by MacGregor’s departure,” Andrew said after another ten minutes of her marching back and forth.

Isobel flicked her scalding gaze to him and bit her lip. This was all his fault and she wondered, not for the first time since last eve, how such a foolhardy man would ever lead his clan.

“I do not know why he left so suddenly, Andrew,” she practically barked at him. “He had no idea that my father did not kill his uncle until ye blurted out Cameron’s name.”

“How was I supposed to know what ye told MacGregor and what ye haven’t told him?”

Now Isobel turned on him. Oh, how could Patrick think she would ever take this man for a husband? “Do ye think Tristan would have been so friendly and kind to Cameron if he knew? Do ye honestly think any one of us would have confessed to the Devil MacGregor’s son that it was Cameron who killed the earl?” Just speaking it
made her stomach clench and her breath falter. But truly, could the man be so dull-witted?

“I saw him before he left,” Annie said quietly, sitting by the fire. “He did not say he was leaving, but he asked my fergiveness fer frightening me last night.”

“He did not know what I meant, Isobel,” Andrew defended.

“He is verra clever, unlike ye, Andrew,” she told him. “Why would ye expect him to kill Cameron? Why Cameron and not Patrick or Lachlan? Ye said Cameron! He would have no reason to kill anyone else save fer if they killed his uncle!”

“He does not know it was me,” Cameron said quietly as he entered the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Ye were just a babe.” Isobel hurried to him. They never spoke of that terrible day. She did not want to speak of it now, but perhaps it was time. Cameron had lived with his guilt, his remorse that their father had died in his place for too long. “Ye were younger even than Tamas. Father should not have taken ye with him.” Her hands shook as she placed them on her brother’s arm. Dear God, it was a tragic accident that had cost her family so much—and Tristan’s as well. She hadn’t even known the earl had been killed until two days after when the MacGregor Chief had come to take his revenge. They were children, terrified and desperate to hide from the unholy fire that raged in Callum MacGregor’s eyes as he slowed his mount at their front door and shouted her father’s name. Isobel would never forget that day, or the look on her father’s face as he left the manor house. She had watched by the window with Cameron while Alex fought with Patrick to keep him inside. She could not look away as Archibald Fergusson stepped up to that
great, snorting warhorse. She thought her father would be trampled before her eyes, but she could not look away. She tried to block Cam’s vision when MacGregor dismounted. He was so very big compared to her father, so fit and strong and silent as he drew his sword.

She turned her gaze now to Andrew. The MacGregors would have never suspected that the fatal arrow had not come from Archibald’s quiver if it wasn’t for Andrew’s father. Kevin Kennedy had gone to Campbell Keep with her father. He had known it was Cam’s arrow, and he shouted for Archie to save himself, to plead his innocence before the Devil. But her father had refused to give up his son.

Isobel had watched, horrified, while MacGregor’s sword disappeared into her father’s chest. She didn’t remember screaming, though she must have done so, because those murderous eyes found her through the window. She thought he was going to come inside and kill the rest of them, but he let her father fall at his feet, and then he was gone.

Oh, how could she have let down her guard with Tristan? She didn’t want to believe she had been correct about him all along, that he had come here because his father wanted the true killer’s name. But why had he left the holding before dawn without so much as a farewell, taking his horse and a few days’ worth of food? And why had he done so after Andrew had implicated Cam in something terrible?

“Ye were the last one to speak with him, Cameron,” she said softly to her brother. “Did he not mention where he was going?”

Cameron shook his head. “He said he would return. That is all.”

But with whom? His father? An army? Isobel closed her eyes to stop the panic rising in her like bile.

She’d almost made it to the kitchen when Cameron’s voice stopped her. She turned, swiping at the tears she tried to hide from him.

“He will not bring harm to us.”

“How do ye know that, Cam? His family has hated ours fer ten years.”

“Because he is a good man.”

“I know that, but he said things would be different.”

Her brother gave her an addled look. “What things? How would they be different? Bel, ye are makin’ no sense.”

“I asked him if he would take vengeance on the man who killed his uncle if the man still lived, and that was his reply. Things would be different.”

“It does not mean—”

“Cam, did ye not see how close he came to killing Andrew last night because Andrew spoke poorly of Robert Campbell? No matter what he has done fer us, or how much we have come to care fer him, he loved his uncle more than anyone in his life. He told me this. I fear he will avenge him.”