Wishing For a Highlander (28 page)

As they ran, horse and master cutting a defiant streak through the air, he thought about his last night with Malina and a grin settled on his face. Would she be too disappointed to grant him another such night? Was he a cad for wanting another? And then another after that and another yet again until he lost count?

She was his wife, after all. If ever it was acceptable for a man to act on his desires, ’twas with his wife. But it felt wrong when he kent he was nay meant to keep her.

One moment thoughts of losing Malina had his gut in knots. The next, he was flying through the air as Rand tumbled beneath him.

He sailed over Rand’s head to land hard in the road. Rocks bit his shoulders and knees as he rolled. The ear-splitting scream of a horse in pain had him springing to his feet the moment he came to a stop.

Rand was trying to get his feet under him, but somat was wrong. Darcy’s chest contracted with dread.

Ignoring his scrapes and bruises, he ran to his horse. Blood flowed from both the gelding’s front legs. The white of shattered bone glistened through the red.

“No. No!” He fell to his knees and clutched Rand’s thrashing head. The horse ceased struggling and collapsed on his side. His nostrils flared and his eyes flashed their whites. “Rand, lad, what happened?” Grief tightened his throat around the words.

Rand was as good as dead with two broken legs. He would have to use his sword on his faithful friend.

“What happened?” he repeated helplessly.

The road had been flat, a little rocky in places, but not enough to prove dangerous to a galloping horse. Tearing his eyes from Rand, he glanced back along the road, looking for what might have caused his horse to fall.

Nearly invisible, a rope was strung tight across the road, tied to trees on either side.

“Christ,” he breathed, his muscles tensing. “A trap.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than he heard the scuff of a boot in the dirt behind him. He lunged for his sword, still strapped to Rand’s saddle. He drew it and spun around in time to meet Hamish’s thrust. The bastard had been aiming for his throat.

“Dinna kill him, Hamish.” Gil’s voice.

Keeping an eye on Hamish, he found the red-haired man standing with his hand on his hilt at the side of the road where one end of the rope was tied. Though Gil made no move to attack, Darcy angled himself to keep both men in view.

“Why spare him?” Hamish sneered, setting himself up for another strike. “Steafan said to bring him back alive or nay. ’Tis only the witch he demands alive, and that only so he can watch her burn.”

When Hamish struck again, his arm shook with the block. ’Twas not Hamish’s strength, which was no match for his when it came to swordplay, but bitter betrayal that seized his muscles. Not only did it seem his uncle was intent on pursuing Malina for a witch’s spirit purging, but he’d given the order to treat him as the worst kind of traitor.

If any hope of returning to Ackergill had remained, Hamish’s words snuffed it out. A part of his heart sheared off like a cliff crumbling into the abyss.

Gil said to Hamish, “The laird gave that order in haste.” To Darcy, he said, “Dinna fight, lad. Come along with us, now. Steafan’s temper will have cooled by the time we get back.”

“Will his temper have cooled toward my wife, too?” He kent the answer already.

“Ye ken she must burn,” Gil said, and Darcy despised his calm. “’Tis the best thing for her everlastin’ soul.”

“Malina is no witch,” he said, refusing to give ground to Hamish, who tried to crowd him toward the edge of the road. “And I willna be returning to Ackergill.” He cut a sharp look at Gil. “Alive or nay. Ye leave me and my wife be and tell Steafan I have aligned myself with the Murray, or ye shall fall under my sword here on this road. The choice is yours.”

He prayed he didn’t have to make good on the threat, but he was no fool. Gil was capable of great cunning, and Hamish of great cruelty. And he saw no sign of the other three riders he’d glimpsed in that valley. The missing Keith might have been searching for Malina that very moment. His gut coiled with fear. He was assailed by an unbearable urge to lay his eyes on her and assure himself she was safe.

“No,” Hamish said. “The choice is yours. Come along with us or I shall make use of your wife while ye watch. I’ll show her what a man can do when he isna scairt of his cock. I’ll have the bitch praising me for sating her when her husband couldna as she goes to the fire.”

Fury tightened his movements. He blocked Hamish’s sword, then threw him back with a roar. “Ye willna touch my wife! Not ever!”

It took every honorable fiber in his body for him nay to thrust his sword through his clansmen, especially when he remembered the sound of his wife’s cries when Hamish had struck her in Steafan’s office.

“Then ye better come along, lad,” Gil said, quick as a rabbit. “Because we have her already. The others collected her from the Murray for a wee sum of silver. Dinna give Hamish cause to touch her. Lay down your sword.”

He stopped listening after Gil said the Keith had Malina. His mind snapped with rage. He imagined her wrestled onto the back of a horse, bound and gagged and on her way to Ackergill. What evil would Steafan’s guards do to her before he could find her? What evil would Steafan do to her if he failed to reach her in time?

He didn’t even have Rand to chase them down.

He roared with frustrated fury. He couldn’t afford to dally in the road any longer. Malina needed him.

Her bonny face fixed itself on his heart. He struck out with his sword and took Hamish with a ruthless jab to the belly. The man’s eyes flew wide with shock.

He spun around to find Gil gaping with equal surprise. But despite his shock, the man didn’t back down. He positioned himself for defense and Darcy didn’t disappoint him.

They battled. He took Gil’s blade to his shoulder and thigh, but his strength and size didn’t fail him, nor did the training he’d gotten from Aodhan, who was the only man he’d ever met whom he didn’t think he could best with a sword.

When Gil finally fell, blood gushing from his side, the tracker wheezed, “Ye would betray your clansmen for a witch? Ye’ll burn in hell for this.” He coughed and died.

Horror tried to pull him to his knees as he panted over the bodies of his clansmen, but he couldn’t let himself regret what he’d done. Not when Malina could be suffering.

But there was one task he must see to before rushing to her rescue.

Poor Rand lay in the road, broken and bloody, trembling with pain. He didn’t permit himself to hesitate. His dear friend had suffered too long already. He knelt as he drew his dirk and dragged the blade firm and true under Rand’s bridle.

“You’re a good lad,” he told the gelding, rubbing his ears as his life spilled onto his lap and the dusty road. “Ye are the best horse a man could boast. God grant ye endless pastures to roam in heaven.”

When Rand’s eyes stilled, he rose a harder man than he’d been a quarter hour before. Icy determination in his veins, he sliced the blasted rope across the road, threw himself on Gil’s dappled gelding, and raced for Dornoch.

Chapter 19

The rich scents of lavender, thyme, mint, and countless other plants and flowers bombarded Melanie as she followed Constance into the storeroom. It reminded her of stepping into the Yankee Candle shop in the Charleston mall. Oddly, the modern-day memory lacked the bite of fervent longing she’d braced herself for.

Following Constance’s example, she harvested seeds from a basketful of delicate, lacy, dried flowers. That done, she learned how to mix honey and the expensive but highly-effective spermicide, quinine, which Constance ordered from an apothecary in Edinburgh.

The thought of using these things to keep from getting pregnant seemed as strange as making her own sausage and sewing clothes for her children, both things that Constance insisted she would teach her. A week ago those tasks would have seemed terrifying, maybe even impossible. But with her competent friend showing her the way, she believed she could not only survive in the sixteenth century, but thrive in it.

An unexpected fondness for Ackergill made her chest tight as she thought about thriving at Darcy’s side. Steafan was a paranoid bastard, and she’d just as soon see Hamish ride his black horse and his even blacker heart off a cliff, but she found herself missing Fran. Edmund, too, and their baby. And Fraineach. She’d spent no more than a few waking minutes in the manor home, but longed to see its sunny rooms again and to breathe deep of its crisp ocean-side scent. In fact, she missed Faineach more than her apartment back in Charleston.

In her dreams the night before, she’d seen herself rocking her baby in the dusty room that had become Darcy’s storage place for the things a single man had no need for. In her dream, the bassinette had been freshly painted and lined with fluffy blankets. The skeletal wire rack had had a dress on it that she would mend while her baby napped. The spinning wheel with a sheet over it would be oiled, and, thanks to Fran, she would know just what to do with it when the wool was ready to be made into skeins.

Fraineach wasn’t just Darcy’s home. It was hers.

“I wish there was some way to get Steafan to take us back,” she mused out loud as Constance tied a ribbon around the jar they’d just filled with the honey mixture.

“Here,” Constance said, handing her the jar. “It’ll keep forever, but you’ll need to stir it very well each time you use it. Just use what drips off the stick to coat the wool before inserting it. Consider it a welcome home to Ackergill gift.” At her dubious look, her hostess lifted her chin. “We are two intelligent, determined women, and the Keith laird is just one paranoid man, a man who’s reputed to be afraid to leave his keep at that. Surely we’ll think of some way to reinstate Darcy. He is the man’s heir, after all.”

“Obviously, you haven’t met him. He’s not going to budge. His mind is made up that I’m a no-good witch and his nephew has been corrupted by me. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Pish posh,” Constance said, waving away her concerns. “Nothing is impossible. Just look at my private bathroom. Now, let’s start by considering what matters to the laird of the Keith, shall we? What does he value above all else?”

She scoffed. “That’s easy. Power. He’s the kind of man who likes to see everyone around him cower. He likes to think he’s more important than he is.”

“Well, we certainly don’t want to give him any more power. Is there anything he wants that might be within your power to give him?” Constance took her arm and led her from the storeroom.

“Nothing comes to mind.” She doubted Steafan could be bought off with the gold Darcy had given her; he seemed the type to gain a lot more enjoyment from a grudge than from wealth. “Personally, I don’t want to give that jerk anything except maybe a lit stick of dynamite. Why do you ask? And where are we going?”

“To Wilhelm’s study. I believe we’ve received some correspondence from Ackergill Keep in recent years, and Wilhelm keeps everything, especially correspondence. And I ask because no man, however stubborn, ever makes up his mind so firmly that the right woman can’t change it.”

“Well, we’d better write to Ginneleah then. According to Darcy, Steafan’s ga-ga over his wife.”

“Now you’re on to something, my dear Malina.” Constance used Darcy’s name for her in affectionate jest.

She liked the easy friendship she’d found with this woman, even if she thought Constance a tad crazy for taking the comment about Ginneleah seriously. Melanie hadn’t even met the girl; Darcy had told her she was only 17, and she’d married Steafan two years ago, at the tender age of 15. She shuddered. The poor thing.

In Wilhelm’s study Constance poked through a cherry wood cabinet until she came away with two sheets of paper. “Here they are,” she said, showing them to Melanie. “It was the strangest thing. Wilhelm received these a year apart. The most recent came in June last year.”

Constance was quiet while she read the short letters. They were essentially thank you notes for a perfumed oil Wilhelm had sent the couple as a wedding gift and then as an anniversary gift the next year. “Why strange?” The letters seemed quite thoughtful to her. If there was anything strange about them, it was seeing Steafan so cordial and gracious in writing, proving he wasn’t a perpetual ass.

“They’re strange because Wilhelm has never sent a single thing to Ackergill keep, gift or otherwise. To be honest, I don’t think he’d even heard of the Keith laird by name until we received the first letter.”

“Maybe Steafan mistook a gift from someone else as being from Wilhelm,” she said, frowning at the letters.

“The second one seems to refute that.” Constance pointed at a line she hadn’t understood the meaning of.
Ginneleah and I hope and pray the saints will bless us through your kind gift as he has blessed you so greatly.
“I think this is a reference to our six sons. I think he assumed the oil is a conception aid and that Wilhelm and I credit something of the sort with our good fortune in bearing so many healthy children.”

“But you didn’t use anything like that. You told me so this afternoon.”

Constance nodded significantly.

“Why would Steafan assume it then?”

“Since you arrived, I’ve been wondering the same thing. Thinking we credit a perfumed oil with the birth of our sons is an oddly specific assumption unless the gift arrived with a note. Surely there had to have been a note if he was certain enough to write a letter of thanks to Wilhelm. Twice.” She narrowed her eyes and tapped her chin with a slender finger. “What if someone sent him the oil in Wilhelm’s name?”