Dreamer (Highland Treasure Trilogy) (26 page)

I love you, all the same!

B
ut there is nothing that
I can give you. Nothing!

Catherine watched as Susan silently
drew her hand out of the cloak and laid it gently against his cheek. Cursing
under his breath, he drew her fiercely to him, and Catherine looked away. She
turned her back on them and crossed the clearing to the fire. She crouched and
looked into the flames. They paid the price every day for these few moments;
she would not deprive them of a single one. 

In the light of how much these two
must suffer for this illicit love, Catherine’s own problems seemed so trivial.
She was in love. She was carrying her husband’s heir. She had the power to make
him happy. And yet, she thought with a tinge of bitterness, she selfishly
continued to withhold this knowledge of the bairn from him.

Feeling wretched, she tried to push
aside her own weakness in wanting him to love her back, tried to push aside the
ridiculous desire of somehow extracting from him a promise of fidelity in their
marriage, tried instead to focus on what she could do for
him
if she
were ever to escape from this encampment.

John Stewart had enough problems
already. He certainly didn’t need the added worry of an stubborn spouse.

Some time passed; Catherine had no
idea how much. The night grew colder, but she paid no heed to it. The fire was
warm, and before long she’d lost herself in her dreams.

She was back in a land she knew so
well. The mists hung on the craggy hills and the sky was a rainbow of
crystalline colors. It was the calm after the storm. In her arms she held a
child at the threshold of a garden. A cooing, gray-eyed son. The son of her
knight. Placing a soft kiss on the infant’s brow, she stepped out into the
meadow at the sound of her knight’s approach.

Looking up into his misty eyes, she
felt her body sing when he gathered both her and their son in his embrace.

And then she knew it was time. At
last, the time had come to take her vow. Looking up again into his handsome
face, she whispered the words that she had so long been keeping locked within
her heart.

The knight drew her lips to his.
His kiss was tender. Then John Stewart simply held her...

“‘Tis time we returned to Balvenie Castle.”

Catherine turned and looked up
confusedly at Susan.

“Here, let me cut your bonds!”

While Susan reached behind her and
sliced through the thongs tying her wrists, Catherine twisted around and looked
in the direction where Adam of Glen had last been. He was gone, and so were the
others.

Like a band of ghosts, they had all
vanished. Visible signs of their encampment were still in evidence, but there
wasn’t an outlaw to be seen. A cough came from behind her. Turning, she saw the
two men who had captured her standing by the edge of the clearing.

“Where did he go?”

“Where he can think, he said.”

Her hands finally free, Catherine
slowly came to her feet and started rubbing the soreness out of her wrists.

“Here is your dirk!”

Catherine, still confused, looked
at the proffered dagger in Susan’s hand. “He is letting me go?”

Susan nodded. “But we’d better hurry back to Balvenie. ‘Tis only an hour or so before dawn, and we have a long
way to go.”

“Wait.” Catherine tried to sort out
what was happening. For Susan--and Adam--just to set her free with no promise
of silence was beyond her understanding. They’d not even asked her to remain
silent. Extracted no oath to keep their secret. Surely, the younger woman would
be in terrible trouble if Athol ever discovered any of this. And yet, Susan was willing to trust her, to allow her to return with her to the castle. “I
don’t...”

“Your face is a mess!” Susan
whispered, frowning at the sight of Catherine’s face. “The scratches from the
briars at the cave entrance...”

“I’ll tell them that I fell onto
the rose bushes in the garden,” Catherine said breezily. “And my cloak and my clothes are ragged from...falling in the dirt...while chasing Jean’s nieces in
the stable yard. And the marks on my wrists...Well, no one has to see or know
anything about my wrists. Your secret is safe with me, Susan. But...”

The younger woman placed an
affectionate hand on her arm. “Adam is angry with me...and with himself. He is moving
his camp farther from the castle, where I cannot come to him at night. But thank you, Catherine.”

Catherine placed her hand on top of
Susan’s and smiled into her face. “I am doing this as much for myself as for
you. As much for my husband as for Adam of the Glen. We have to try to help
them overcome their differences.”

“But there is nothing that can be
done! I tried to make Adam understand that Athol is not the devil that he
thinks him to be. As you did tonight, I tried to tell him that the earl did not
know of their kinship. But without any way of bringing out the truth of their
past...it was just impossible.”

“Based on the little information
that we each have,” Catherine said, “perhaps there are questions that can be
answered now.”

Susan’s eyes bore her conviction
when she spoke the words. “Adam is not evil. His anger comes from suffering.
From pain that he truly believes was caused by John Stewart.”

“But how could he intentionally
cause harm to someone that he didn’t even know existed?”

“Aye!” Susan whispered. “‘Tis
impossible. But how can we change anything?” 

“We can...and we will...because now
‘tis the two of us,” Catherine said with conviction. “I know we cannot change
the past, Susan, but we have the power to fashion the future. That is our only
chance. The future must belong to us.”

Together, they moved past their
escorts and into the darkness.

Once he’d questioned the English
monks--and gained nothing by it--John Stewart became a raving terror.

The stables and its inhabitants
were his next targets and, with every stable hand trailing in his wake, Athol
personally counted every stallion, mare, gelding, and mule. None were missing.
The warriors and the porter’s lads who tended the gates were questioned
individually. A little past sundown, the portcullis had been lowered, the great
oak and iron gates shut, and no one had gone either in or out since then.

Torches flared, lighting the
courtyards as warriors and serving folk moved to and fro, and every kitchen,
cellar, and storeroom was searched. Athol was everywhere, but to no avail.
Catherine was nowhere to be found.

By the time he met Auld Mab at the
entrance to the Great Hall, he was feeling the tug of panic on his nerves, but
he set his jaw and forced down the steely taste in his mouth. The old woman,
too, had disappointing news. The serving folk had gone through every room in
the castle--except the dowager’s chambers and his own. There was no trace of
her.

As he turned away, he felt a
pressure building within him. He wanted to shout, lash out, pound something
into powder. And he would, too. The next person who brought him bad news.

He whirled, facing a dozen men and
women.

“Search everything again!” he
shouted. “Find her.”

Storming up the stairwell to the
second floor, he felt the sharp edges of fear clawing at his insides. Where she
had disappeared to he couldn’t even guess. If she’d run off to Elgin again, he’d personally flay her alive. But his worst fear lay in the possibility that
she had actually been the victim of foul play. What if there were more like Roy
Sykes living under his roof? What if they had seized upon Catherine’s
adventurous nature and lured her some way out of the keep.

But how?

Knowing that he would leave no
stone unturned, Athol shouted for Tosh, ordering him to send four parties of
warriors out into the night to search the village and the glen and the
surrounding hills for some trace of her. Moments later, the sound of horses and
men could be heard moving out of the courtyard through the low, arched gate.

If this were any castle but Balvenie, Athol knew he would be concerned about secret passages and subterranean tunnels. He
knew well enough that nearby Ironcross Castle was riddled with them. He’d
nearly lost his life in one. But it was not the case here.

His family had taken possession of
the castle years ago, when the Black Douglases had been whipped so badly at
Arkinholm. The fear of the rebellious Douglases trying to take the castle back
had haunted the minds of that first Stewart earl of Athol, and the man had not
hesitated to torture and bribe the former inhabitants’ serving folk until he
knew every possible weakness in the castle.  It had not taken long to block up
the three tunnels that led under the curtain walls.

But there was no way Catherine would
even think of searching out such things. There was no way she would even know
of the three old trap doors that lay hidden around the keep. What woman in her
right mind would follow a tunnel to nowhere?

Nay! he thought, shaking his head.
Even if she had found a trap door, what good would it do her? She wouldn’t be
foolish enough to step into a moldering dark passage. It would serve no
purpose. There could be no way out for her there.

She was a stubborn woman, true. But she was hardly one to waste her time.

But still, he thought, climbing the
stairwell for the hundredth time, he could not simply stand and wait. The sky
in the east had already taken on a grayish hue, and soon the sun would push up
past the wooded hills to the east.

There was one other thing he still
had to do. He’d considered going up and questioning his mother before. He knew
from Auld Mab that the dowager was awake and concerned.

He should go see her, he decided
with a frown. Tosh had told him of Catherine taking the ailing woman out into
the gardens. And he’d also heard that Lady Anne appeared to be no worse after
the afternoon of fresh air in his wife’s company. In fact, Auld Mab had
confided, the dowager had seemed, as a result, to be in as good a mood as she’d
seen her in months.

He would go and talk to his mother.
He could at least ask her if she was privy to anything that might be brewing in
Catherine Percy’s pretty head.

It was curious how the dowager
seemed to be taking a liking to Catherine. His mother had never been very
cordial with any of the women he’d known. But though he found the growing
affection between them refreshing, he still found himself at odds with his
mother. She knew more than she was telling about Adam of the Glen, and her
silence was beginning to wear on him.

Nay. He hadn’t the patience for Lady Anne right now, certainly not with the reproaches she was sure to heap upon
his head. He’d deserve them all, of course, but he didn’t have time for them
now. More than likely, Lady Anne would have no answer that would be of any use
to him, but she would be ruthless in her censure of everything that he’d done
to prove himself unworthy of his wife’s affection.

Deciding that he was fretting about
the wrong thing at the wrong time, Athol reversed his direction and started back
down toward the storerooms. Unlikely as it seemed that Catherine could be in
one of the tunnels, he wasn’t about to let any possibility slip past him.
Calling for torches as he passed the Great Hall, he continued his descent. He
would do a personal inspection of all three trap doors and the tunnels leading
from them.

And God help her if he found her
there.

****

Sir Arthur Courtenay eyed the two
renegade Scots standing before him in their  outlandish Highland gear. He knew
that these cutthroats could be trusted to carry out his instructions, but he
would as soon hang them as look at them.

Standing before the hearth of the
ramshackle manor house he’d taken possession of, the king’s Deputy Lieutenant
continued to bark out his instructions in terms so specific that they could not
fail to understand him. Before he was finished, though, the approach of one of
his own officers from outside drew his attention.

“He is arrived, m’lord, as you said
he would.” The soldier cast a look of disdain in the direction of the
Highlanders.

“Did you stop him?”

“Aye, m’lord. He’s in the stable
yard, and a mite upset over us handling him as we have.”

“I don’t care how you handle him.
Just keep him out. What did he say?”

“He said nothing until we closed
ranks on him. Then he started spouting off that your lordship can’t be
searching out the maps without him. He ‘insists,’ m’lord, to know what’s been
found.”

“Did you tell him ‘tis no longer
his business to be involving himself in the king’s concerns?”

“Aye, that I did, m’lord, and the
lads are enjoying the ruckus he’s making. He’s demanding to see you right
away.”

The king’s deputy rose slowly to
his feet and glared at the man. “Well, tell the monk to go to hell, for the
king no longer has any use for his useless carcass.”

“I tried to be insulting, m’lord,
but he...”

“You have other means, Captain!”

“Aye, m’lord, but he’s a priest,
and the men--”

“If the filthy swine curses you,
then kick his teeth out, but
keep him out of here
.”

The officer nodded as he turned and
strode out of the hall. The Deputy Lieutenant turned to the two waiting men.

“Use whatever deceit you must. Hire
as many hands as you need, if you must take her by force. But bring her back to me. Do you understand?”

The two soldiers nodded confidently
in response.

“With good horses, we’ll have the
lass here inside of a fortnight,” one said as they turned to go.

Once he was alone, Sir Arthur moved
away from the fire and gazed with disgust at the roughly sketched map that lay
beside a small open box on the table. Finding this had been the last straw. The
haughty bitches had buried the box in the midden heap of this very house.