“Your recollections are of no import here, Ruari.”
“Are they not? No good comes of using an innocent maiden as a tool for vengeance. You should know the truth of that!”
“She is innocent no longer, Ruari.”
The older man swore. He pivoted and paced a distance, then turned to confront the younger man once more. “And what do you mean to do about that? Have you wed the lass?”
“Nay and I will not.”
Vivienne’s heart sank to her toes at his conviction. So she was to be no better than a courtesan.
“Is this the root of the laird’s claim?” Ruari demanded. “He will have your prick for this crime, upon that you may rely! Some cunning man will drag you back there for the price upon your head, upon that you can rely, and the tool you used to do this deed will be the first sacrifice demanded of you.”
“Then I had best not be captured.” The younger man turned his back upon Ruari once again.
For the first time, the older man looked on the brink of losing his temper. He took a deep breath, reddened in the face, then bellowed. “It was not whim that made me pursue you now, lad, nor was it the prospect of reward from the Laird of Kinfairlie and his kind! I have no need of your secrets and your confidence, but I am determined to accompany you from this point forward all the same.”
“You will not do so.”
“Aye, I will, and I will tell you why that is so. Nay, do not argue with me. It is not because you make such a cursed mess of what is left of your days, though that would be reason enough. It is because your father saw the truth at the end, and thus he dispatched me to your side. I am to aid you, lad...”
“The time when you and my father might have aided me is long past.” Vivienne’s captor stood tall and straight, his tone telling her that he did not welcome Ruari’s offering.
“Have you never erred and regretted your choice?”
“Of course.”
“Then so did your father, and you have no right to hold as much against him. The past cannot be changed, only the future can be wrought in new design,” Ruari said sternly. “Thus your father taught me, and thus I know he taught you.”
“How unfortunate that he did not similarly instruct my brother.”
Ruari spat upon the ground. “You cannot say that your brother did not change his future to suit himself better than his past had done. There were other lessons he did not heed, to be sure, but that one was the making of him.”
When the younger man might have spoken, Ruari held up a hand. “We are in agreement, lad, as to the true nature of Nicholas and the weight of his crimes. Though I come late to your aid, my intent is no less strong.” He offered his hand once again. “Are we met in peace, then?”
“I have no need of your aid. Begone, Ruari.”
“You have need of all the aid you can muster!”
“I have the aid of the Earl of Sutherland, and that will suit me well enough.”
“Do you now?” Ruari arched a bushy brow. “And how much do you know of the Earl of Sutherland that you are so keen to trust his word? What will he have of you in exchange? These are treacherous times for those too keen to grant their trust, and we both know that you are within their ranks.”
“I know little of the Earl and his intent, but I have no other choice. He at least offered me aid when my own kin denied it to me.”
“And for what cost?”
The younger man held his ground and folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you come, then, Ruari? You will not depart without the telling of your tale, so tell it all, then mount your steed and begone.”
Ruari looked away, his expression pained, and took a few slow paces. He glanced back, his gaze bright, and took a steadying breath. “For many a year, I served a man, loyal and true. I served him willingly, I served him unswervingly. I followed him into every battle, I granted him my best counsel, I loved him like the father that never I had. He treated me well, better than one so lowly born as myself had any right to expect, and never did he ask me for more than my loyalty and trust.” He swallowed visibly. “Until a month past.”
“No,” Vivienne’s captor said, his voice wavering slightly.
Ruari bent his head. “Aye, lad, the end comes for all of us sooner or later, and so it came to the man I had served for most of my life. And when he lay dying, when he confessed his sins and make his reckoning, he saw that he had made one grievous error in his days. And because his time was short, he entreated me to set matters aright in his stead.”
Ruari turned and appealed to Vivienne’s captor. She listened greedily, savoring each detail. “He begged of me to find his eldest son, he asked of me to see the crimes wrought against that son redressed -” Ruari reached beneath his cloak and offered a sheathed dagger on the flat of his hand. The large sapphire trapped in the pommel of the dagger glittered in the sunlight. Vivienne peered at the blade, then noticed that her captor stared at it like a man transfixed.
Ruari continued with quiet resolve. “He charged me with delivering this talisman to his son, along with his heartfelt apology.”
“No!” the younger man shouted and turned away, marching to the lip of the cliff. “It cannot be thus.”
Vivienne clutched her own hands tightly together, disliking Ruari’s tidings herself. She had lost her own parents less than a year before and knew it was a wound that did not heal readily. She felt a sudden sympathy for her captor as well as an urge to console him. How horrific to have lost his father, to not have been present at his father’s end, to have been estranged from his father when that man died. There was a chasm that could never be healed.
“It is thus,” Ruari said, his tone leaving no space for doubt. “As surely as I stand before you, William Sinclair has breathed his last. As surely as I offer you the legacy that is your own to claim, William Sinclair decreed that you should possess Blackleith once more for all the days and nights of your life. As surely as my name is Ruari Macleod, your father charged me with aiding you in this quest, with seeing his disservice undone.”
Vivienne’s captor did not turn. “I thank you for your trouble and your tidings, Ruari, but you will not remain with me. Godspeed and farewell.”
* * *
Ruari dropped the reins, left his steed and took a step toward the younger man. “Your father knew he erred! He knew he owed you better than what you had been granted, he knew in the end that he should never have believed the tales told against you. It would have killed him to know that you had been compelled to beg a favor from the Earl of Sutherland.”
“So you say. The shadow of those days is long and a dead man’s testament serves me far less than that of a live one.” Vivienne’s captor turned then to confront Ruari and she wished she could have seen his expression. “If my father repented of his judgment in truth, then he might have done it sooner. His forgiveness serves me little now.”
“You have more than grown harsh, lad. You have lost your heart!”
“Whatsoever I have lost has been stolen. Farewell, Ruari.” And Vivienne’s captor marched to Ruari’s steed, gathered the reins and offered them to the other man.
Ruari’s lips set grimly. He shoved the sheathed blade into his belt and strode after the other man, eyes flashing and voice rising. “How dare you speak to me thus! I have spent a month seeking your sorry hide, lad! I have been in every hovel and every inn between Blackleith and York, I have slept in places with rats so large the white meat could have been carved from the dark, I have gone days without decent food and spent nights battling fleas as big as my fist. And why, why did I do this deed?”
His voice rose to a roar. “I did this for love of your father, no more and no less! I did this because I could not bear to see him so distraught, because it was so unfitting for a man of his ilk to be begging me - me! - to ensure that he could find eternal peace.”
Vivienne’s captor did not respond, nor did his stance soften.
Undeterred, Ruari stalked the younger man and seized his arm. “I did this because your father demanded more than my word, more than my promise. He demanded that I pledge my own soul’s salvation upon the relic in this blade’s hilt, that I cut my finger and shed my own blood upon the blade known to hold every oath every wrought by any man in your family. This blade!”
He shoved the sheathed knife at the younger man again, who reluctantly accepted its burden. Vivienne could see her captor’s reverence for the weapon in the way he handled it, and knew the token did not mean so little to him as he would have had Ruari believe.
“I did this because the blood of kings courses through your veins, lad, and I swore that if you were too dispirited to fight for your due, then I would do it for you. And what reward do I receive?”
Ruari smartly snapped the reins of his steed from the younger man’s grip. “Not so much as a word of gratitude. Not so much as a greeting. Not so much as a handshake between men. Oh, the world has become a sorry place when men cannot even allow courtesy between each other.”
The younger man glanced up. “All well said, Ruari, though I do not recall being offered a great deal of courtesy when all went awry at Blackleith.”
Ruari swallowed, then nodded his head slowly. “Fair enough, but you must forgive the past, lad, to see yourself bereft of its burden.”
Vivienne’s captor closed the distance between the two men with quick steps, his posture menacing, then deliberately flicked back his hood. His scar seemed more cruel in the afternoon sunlight, and the hardness of his expression did little to soften its effect. “I will never be bereft of this mark of the past.”
The older man winced, looked away, then met the younger man’s gaze again with an obvious effort. “I did not know,” he said quietly.
“The past will be forgiven when it has been avenged, Ruari. You need not linger to know it will be so.”
Ruari’s expression brightened at this grim pronouncement. “You do mean to fight, then? You have not surrendered fully?”
“I never meant to leave injustice be. Such a wound as this, though, must heal, and it was not the sum of my injuries. Praise be the Earl of Sutherland took me into his own abode, or I should be bleeding in ditch yet with no aid from my own kin.”
Vivienne’s captor walked away, turning the blade in his hands. The older man’s lips tightened grimly as he obviously noted her captor’s limp.
Vivienne could not fully believe what she had heard. Her captor had been cheated of his holding somehow and his family had done nothing to aid him! It was outrageous treachery and she could not blame him for being bitter and angry. Indeed, she was prepared to argue with this Ruari on his behalf, for no man should be so poorly served by his own kin.
But wait. Her captor’s brother was named Nicholas. Vivienne paused to reconsider what she had heard. And the holding in question was named Blackleith. Why was that name familiar?
Her captor’s father had been William Sinclair.
Vivienne gasped in sudden realization of how her captor and Ruari Macleod could have heard her name before. Nicholas Sinclair had had an older brother, an older brother who was to inherit their family holding of Blackleith.
Could her captor be Erik Sinclair?
That man paused and glanced toward the half-fallen structure where she supposedly slumbered, perhaps having heard her gasp of dismay. Vivienne instinctively tried to make herself smaller, but Ruari must have spied her.
“There is someone there,” he declared. “Is it the laird’s sister in truth?”
Vivienne huddled lower into her cloak, hoping she appeared as if she still slept. She heard the crunch of booted feet approaching, and, knowing as she did who walked with such an uneven pace, her pulse began to flutter. She still feigned sleep, hoping against hope that she would not be caught eavesdropping.
She heard him halt before her, smelled his skin, knew he was but an arm’s length away from her. She resolutely kept her eyes closed.
“Vivienne,” her captor said, a thread of humor in his words. “You fool no one when your breath comes so quickly as that.”
She opened her eyes to find him offering his gloved hand to her. She could not read the expression in his eyes.
“Vivienne,” Ruari breathed. He peered more closely at Vivienne. “It is no marvel that Nicholas was so vexed that she denied him. She is indeed a beauty.”
“You are Erik Sinclair,” Vivienne said to her captor, and he had the grace to not deny her conclusion. He merely bowed his head in acknowledgement, his gaze bright as he watched her. “Why me? Why ride all the length of Scotland to claim me?” she asked softly. “There must be maidens aplenty betwixt here and Blackleith.” To her astonishment, it was Ruari who answered her.
“But you are the sole maiden who ever denied Nicholas Sinclair,” that man said. “And oh, it irked him mightily, though I must say that he did not do justice to your fair features in his account of his failure.”
“It was a marvel that he even admitted as much,” Erik said.
Ruari snorted. “He was neither the first nor the last man to admit more than was prudent after consuming too much ale. I do not doubt that he would have preferred to keep the tale to himself, but the ale loosened his tongue and he made the error of speaking in public company so the tale traveled far.” The older man smiled at Vivienne. “He was soundly mocked for his inability to seduce you, of that you can be certain.”
“But still, I do not understand...” Vivienne paused and stared at Erik in dawning horror. “You chose me, purely to irk your brother, purely to claim what he had been unable to possess? You chose me for vengeance?”
A muscle twitched in Erik’s jaw and his expression turned yet more grim. He met her outraged gaze without blinking, however, and nodded but once. “That would be the simple explanation.”
“As it is truth, there is no need for another more elaborate!” Vivienne’s thoughts flew. “You must have told Alexander that you were Nicholas. Then he would have thought he arranged a match that would please me.”
Erik shrugged. “I knew only that Nicholas had courted you and that you had spurned him. When I heard that you were yet unwed, I thought it likely that your family had found greater favor with the match than you had done.”