Cates, Kimberly (25 page)

She couldn't see Gavin's face, only felt his shoulders sag, heard the rough burr of defeat in his tone. "Don't you see, Rachel? If it wasn't a curse, it was a dream, impossible to hold from the first moment I looked on your face."

She stiffened, her voice ruthless, cold. "I suppose that I finally do understand, Gavin. I was wrong about you. You are a coward. The worst kind—one who cloaks his own fear in noble lies, who pretends he's being selfless when he's truly running away."

She could feel her verbal sword thrust cut him more deeply than any blade honed of steel. Knowledge that she'd hurt him sickened her, yet she couldn't stop it, didn't dare give him a place to hide from what he was throwing away, not if there was any chance she could make him see.

"I told you from the first what I was," he admitted in a soul-weary voice that broke her heart. "You should rejoice at the prospect of getting away from this glen and from me."

He guided the horse down through a copse of trees and the pillar-shaped jut of stone that signaled the entry to the hidden glen where the cave lay. Even through the thunderous coursing of her hurt, Rachel heard something discordant below—a dozen or so voices raised in alarm.

She could tell Gavin heard it at the same instant, for he swore, low, under his breath. Gavin's arm all but crushed her ribs to brace her on the horse as he spurred his mount down into the glen that sheltered the entrance to Glen Lyon's cave.

Terror stabbed deep, and Rachel half expected to see the area crawling with red-uniformed soldiers, triumphant as they herded Mama Fee and the little ones into the same kind of hell they'd created in the desecrated village.

But the motley cluster of people who had gathered in the hollow were the very opposite of the spit-polished English soldiers she'd imagined. Ragged plaids were draped about men far too thin, their gaunt faces hardened by defeat and the poison that had spread across their land. Women cradled their babies, while a scattering of smaller children clung to their skirts, their faces drawn, as if they'd just been told Satan had defeated the angels.

The orphans, who had been racing around the clearing, shouting war cries and battling with stick-swords the morning Rachel had fled the glen, were now huddled together, their cheeks tear-streaked, their eyes unutterably old. Mama Fee looked as fragile as a butterfly whose wings had been shredded by the beak of a hawk.

"What the devil?" Gavin cursed, and Rachel could feel that his sudden alarm mirrored her own.

The approaching hoofbeats made the others look up, the men grappling for their weapons, the women gathering up children like worried hens. Yet the instant the horse came into full view, the people gaped as if Gavin had just risen from the dead.

Swords drooped at the ends of limp arms, pistols wavered, as if their weight had suddenly grown too heavy. The reaction should have relieved Rachel, yet somehow it only served to make her more unsettled. Something was horribly wrong.

Mama Fee was the first to recover from the strange spell that seemed to grip them. With a glad cry, the old woman ran toward them, her bare feet skipping like a girl's across the ground, her eyes star-bright with tears.

Gavin reined his horse to a halt just in time to keep the old woman from being bruised by its great hooves.

"My lad! My lad!" Fiona cried, grasping Gavin's breech leg. "Oh, sweet Jesus, thank God you're safe!"

"Of course I'm safe. It would take more than a troop of scurvy soldiers to get the best of me." Gavin lifted Rachel down, then dismounted himself. Rachel's heart clenched as he turned and opened his arms to the distraught woman. Fiona flung herself against his chest, weeping a mother's tears, the tears of a mother who had already sacrificed far too much.

Mama Fee's fingertips traced Gavin's face, as if to assure herself he was real. "Malcolm and the others came. They said they'd met these people on the road. Strangers. They said that you were captured! They said the soldiers were going to execute you! I was so afraid. I couldn't—couldn't bear to lose another of my bairns."

"They'd need a long rope to stretch here from Edinburgh, sweeting," Gavin said, pinching her parchment-pale cheek with a tenderness that made Rachel's eyes burn. "You needn't fear, Mama. Just think how humiliating it will be for the bloody braggarts when they are expected to produce the Glen Lyon, and they've nothing but some phantom. We must have made them desperate indeed, if they've stooped to pretending that I'm in custody."

"They're damned determined to make it seem real," a man whose mouth was misshapen from a sword cut said. "Saw them dragging the poor bastard along the road in chains. Saw it with my own eyes, I did."

Gavin frowned. "What the devil?"

"'Twas the Glen Lyon. Saw him with my own eyes. They'd beaten the bloody hell out of him, but he was still spittin' defiance, laughin' at the bastards despite how savage they were treatin' him."

"This
is the Glen Lyon, you bloody fool." A burly Scot thrust his finger at Gavin.

Gavin put Mama Fee away from him gently, but his hands were suddenly numb. "You saw someone? Who the blazes could it be?"

"Beggin' yer pardon, but it's still a sight easier believing he was the Glen Lyon, 'stead of you. And besides, he was claimin' to be the rebel lord loud enough to hear clear in London."

Gavin's heart gave a painful thud against his ribs. "This man—what did he look like?"

"A blasted mountain, he was, with fierce eyes and hair black as the devil's own. Looked as if he could crush the chains to dust with his bare hands."

Gavin struggled for balance.
No. It couldn't be Adam. Jesus, it couldn't be.
Adam, who was three times as wily as any soldier; Adam, who had seemed invincible from the first moment Gavin had stared at him across the length of their father's study, a wary, heartsick boy, whose mother had just been buried, confronting the brawny black-haired youth who was obviously everything their father could desire in a son.

You can bloody well stop fighting it, Adam,
Gavin could hear his father decree.
Gavin is going to live at Strawberry Grove now. You're brothers. You'll bloody well act like it....

"There must be some mistake." Gavin's voice sounded like a stranger's. "It must be some—some poor madman they stumbled on." He wheeled on the man who had spoken, grabbing a fistful of plaid. "Tell me, was there anything else about him, anything else you saw?"

"I was hiding by the side of the road, but they shoved the poor bastard as he was passing, and he fell, barely an arm's length away from me. His eyes were black, and there was a scar—here." The man stroked one finger along the left side of his jaw.

Gavin reeled, images flashing before his eyes: two boys pummeling each other, Adam's blows landing with painful precision, Gavin's glancing off, barely causing his half brother to flinch. Then, suddenly, Gavin had landed a punch that sent Adam careening into the stable door. Skin split, blood flowed, and Gavin had stood, frozen, appalled at what he'd done.

Adam had never told his father what had happened, and Gavin had sat, silent, watching as the surgeon stitched up Adam's jaw. The small scar had marked the beginning of a wary acceptance between the two brothers, brothers who loved each other, yet understood each other not at all.

"Adam," he said aloud. "They must have captured him when he was leading the women and children away from the village. But why? Why would he claim to be the Glen Lyon when he's not—" A low cry of realization tore from Gavin's chest, and he staggered back, the blood draining from his face, his hands trembling.

What would make a man claim to be something he was not? Condemn himself to a torturous death that should be the fate of another? Adam—bold, brash Adam, who tried to pretend he cared about nothing, no one—was sacrificing himself in Gavin's place. Why was he flinging himself to death? To give Gavin a chance at life? Make it possible for Gavin to lose himself God knows where, without the deadly Glen Lyon to make him a fugitive the rest of his days?

"No!" Gavin roared, blind rage and pure terror jolting through him. "I won't let that bloody fool do it! I won't—"

"Gavin?" Rachel's voice—it came to him through a red haze. "Gavin, you're frightening Mama Fee. What—what is it?"

"Gavin, please... they don't have my Adam," Mama Fee said quaveringly. "It couldn't be... Adam." Tears brimmed from the old woman's eyes, and she seemed to age a hundred years.

"Sir, there is one more thing you should know. The execution has already been set. It's irregular as blazes, but Cumberland wants the Glen Lyon dead before any aid can be mustered in his defense."

"The Highlanders would die in a trice for the man—" someone called from the back of the crowd.

But the man shook his head, interrupting. "What they fear most is interference from England. The Glen Lyon has secret sympathizers in some of the most powerful stations in the land. Cumberland fears an appeal to the king for mercy."

"How long? How long before the execution?" Gavin demanded.

"Two days from now. At dawn."

Two days!
That would barely give him time to reach Furley House and attempt a rescue.

"God help me," Gavin muttered, but the plea died on his lips as he caught the sound of rustling in the brush. Gavin looked up to see the soot-smudged face of a woman—the brave lady who had helped him hand the children from the burning building, the woman who had been the strength of the tiny band as it headed off on its dangerous trek across the bogs and moors.

She limped toward him, her breath rasping, her legs and feet torn by briars, bruised by stone. Her eyes were bruised circles as she staggered into the clearing.

Gavin bolted toward her, shoring her up, this woman suddenly transforming what had seemed a nightmare into something excruciatingly real. "My brother! Where is he?"

"The English were closing in on us. They would have killed us all, but he—he charged out, drawing the troops away."

"Oh, God." Gavin swore. Bold, reckless Adam, riding hell for leather into disaster.

"He saved us all. We'd be dead if not for him. Before he rode out to face the soldiers, he bade me come to you," the woman said. "He asked me to tell you..."

"What? Tell me what?"

"He said that he got you into this rebellion. That this was his chance to make it right. He wants you to have a new beginning. Sail with the children."

"No!"

Had Adam carried that guilt all this time? Adam, all bluff and bluster, so careful not to let anyone see?

"He said his nurse always claimed he was born to hang. And he said one thing more: that he wanted you to be happy. You deserved to be happy."

Gavin reeled with the knowledge that while he'd been loving Rachel upon a heather bed, his brother had been in chains, being beaten and tortured. While Gavin had been wrapped in the cottage's enchantment, Adam had been riding alone to face the soldiers.

Gavin's throat closed, his eyes hot hollows of grief. He felt a hand on his arm—Rachel's hand, so soft, her face brimming with pain and compassion, as if she knew how Adam's sacrifice was scarring his soul.

"Gavin," Rachel choked out. "We have to do something, find some way to help him."

"I'm not going to let him die for me. Bloody bastard! I'm not going to let him!"

"Let me help you. I can go to Dunstan—even to Cumberland. They might listen to me. I'll make them listen—"

"You think they'll give a damn what you say?" He tore away from her touch. "Even if you got down on your knees, it wouldn't matter! They've hunted me for nearly two years, suffered humiliation every time I escaped them. They're hungry for blood, and they'll get it, blast them to hell! But it won't be Adam's blood. I swear it won't be Adam's."

"Gavin, please. What... what are you going to do?"

"Offer them a trade: Adam's life for the Glen Lyon."

"No." She was ashen, desperate, all traces of anger stripped from her face, leaving it vulnerable, love and fear warring there. "You can't just ride in and offer yourself up! Do you really think they'll release Adam? They won't! Gavin, think! There must be some other way—"

"There's no time!" He yanked away from her grasp and charged into the cave, hungry for the feel of his pistols in his hands, the weight of his sword.

He heard her follow, felt her presence, but the desperation with which he wanted to turn to her and bury himself in her arms only hardened his resolve.

"Gavin, let me go with you. Let me try."

"You have to stay here. Without you as hostage, there'll be no chance for the children to get away. The bastards will ambush Cairnleven, and the children will die. All of them will die—Catriona, Mama Fee, Barna. Besides, what are you going to do, Rachel? Charge in and tell Cumberland that Adam is a hero? That he's saved countless women and children from the bite of English swords? You think Cumberland would thank him for that, when he is the man who wants the Highlands cleared of rebels once and for all?"

"Children aren't rebels," Rachel choked out, clinging to him. "I'll make Cumberland see—"

He wheeled on her, impotent fury seething in his eyes. "You don't understand, do you? Better to cut them down in their cradles before they grow into Jacobites, hungry to avenge their fathers, their mothers, their sisters. Better to slay every Jacobite who breathes, down to the tiniest babe in its mother's womb, than to wait in your bed twenty years hence for an assassin's sword or one brave leader to gather up the pain of the past into a fist of rebellion that can strike to England's very heart."

His jaw knotted. "Give me your ring—your betrothal ring."

"My ring?" She'd taken it off the second day she'd cared for his wound, saying she didn't want the gaudy setting to tear the half-healed flesh. Yet she knew there had been other reasons, more indefinable ones, that made it impossible for her to feel the weight of that ring on her finger.

She crossed to the chipped cup on Gavin's desk where she'd stashed the ring so it wouldn't get lost. "What do you need it for?" she asked, clutching it in her hand.

"To prove you're my captive."