Highland Honor (19 page)

When they slipped into what George assured him was the last little hallway, it was completely dark. “How did ye come to learn of this?” he whispered as they inched their way along, hands on the damp wall to guide them.

“I told you that I am not blessed with any great courage,” George whispered in reply. “I have a need to find all the places to hide or to escape when I come to these keeps. Once, when I was little more than a beardless youth, I was caught in the storming of a keep. I saved myself by hiding under the dead. I now carefully search every keep I go to. These are not my lords, or my lands. I see no gain in dying for the fools.”

Nigel did not have any reply to that. It made too much sense. George was a freedman. In the end, his greatest loyalty was to himself and his large family. He grunted softly when he walked into George's back, then grew very still as he heard the soft murmur of voices.

“We are there?” he asked.

“I but try to find the latch to the door.”

“Allow me.”

Inching past George, Nigel ran his hands over the heavy door until he found the latch. Holding his breath, tense with the need to be completely silent, he eased the door open. Stealth became a little easier as light from the bedchamber filled the cramped space. George began to inch along behind him as Nigel eased into the room, but he briefly placed a hand on George's chest to hold him where he was. George had shown himself to be less than skilled at creeping around, but the man might yet get through this rescue without any suspicion falling on him if he just stayed out of sight.

The moment he slipped into the room, Nigel saw the couple on the bed. It took all of his willpower not to scream out his rage and immediately attack the man touching Gisele. As he crept up to the bedside, he almost felt Gisele's pain and fear. She sounded brave but her hands were clenched so tightly at her side that the knuckles were shining white in the candlelight. Nigel saw the smallest hint of blood and realized that she had pierced her palms with her nails. He inched up to the side of the bed and silently drew his sword.

“Who is there to stop me?” said Sir Vachel.

Nigel pressed the point of his sword squarely between Sir Vachel's slender shoulder blades. “Weel, I might be willing to give it a wee try.”

The man on top of Gisele tensed. Nigel saw him glance to the main door to the room, and his lips started to part. In less than a heartbeat he grabbed him by the hair, lifted him up enough to get a clear view of his face, and punched him on the jaw. He then dragged the man's limp body off the gaping Gisele and quietly set it on the floor. When he saw that Gisele's gown was open, her breasts bared, Nigel grew so furious that he sheathed his sword, drew his dagger, and reached for the unconscious Sir Vachel.

Gisele broke free of her shock as she realized that Nigel was about to cut Vachel's throat. She scrambled to sit up, then grabbed his arm. She shivered when he looked at her, for she had never seen him that furious.

“You cannot kill him,” she whispered.

“I cannae believe ye have a drop of mercy in your soul for this bastard.”

“None, but I have a great deal of concern for you. Think, Nigel. Clear the anger from your mind and think. I have just lost over a year of my life running from the fury and vengeance of the DeVeaux, hiding from a punishment for a murder, a murder I did not even commit. I now see some chance of getting free of all of that. You have always had the chance to walk away, to turn your back on it all. The moment your knife cuts this man's throat you will lose that freedom, and suffer as I have. We will both suffer being hunted down again, bounties placed on our heads. If you kill him I, too, will carry the weight of it, and this time there will be no way to deny it.”

“She is right,” whispered George as he tiptoed past them and latched the door to the outer hall.

“George?” Gisele stared after the man in surprise, then blushed and hastily redid her gown.

“I had a change of heart,” George muttered as he moved to the bedside, watching closely as Nigel took several deep breaths to calm his fury while he bound and gagged Vachel and finally moved away from the man.

“I see,” Gisele murmured as she got off the bed. “You will let me hang for murder, but not allow this.” She almost smiled when George just shrugged, then she turned to look at Nigel. “I am most interested in how you got in here, but at the moment I am even more interested in how we can get out.”

Nigel gave her one brief, hard hug, pleased to feel no rejection of his touch, then took her by the hand and led her toward the passageway. “I have a few things I am curious about, too. One being why a usually clever lass would flee safety and hand herself o'er to the enemy.”

Clinging tightly to Nigel's hand as the three of them inched their way along the dark passage, she whispered in protest, “I did not hand myself over to them.”

“Ye practically rode up to their gates and knocked on them.”

“I got lost.”

Even though it was too dark to see anything, Gisele knew that Nigel had just looked at her. She also knew that that look had not been a flattering one. It struck her as odd, even a little funny, that after her first shock at seeing Nigel at the bedside she just accepted his rescue as nothing so unusual. She had not wanted him to risk himself by trying to save her, or even thought that he would after she had deserted him, yet it did not completely surprise her that he was there, dragging her along a dark hallway toward freedom. Her thoughts were cut short when Nigel stopped, and a moment later George bumped into them.

“We are there?” asked George.

“We are where?” she asked.

“At the end of Sir Vachel's little hiding place,” Nigel replied as he inched open the door and peered out to make sure that no one was there to see them leave a place they should not even know about.

“He sleeps in this dark, dank hall?”

“Nay, there is a passage or two off this one. His wee bed is probably down one of them.” Nigel looked at Gisele and grimaced. “It would have been easier to get ye out of here if they hadnae taken your laddie's clothes away.”

“Wait here,” George said as he slipped past them and out the door.

“Are you certain you can trust that man?” Gisele asked as Nigel pulled the door shut enough to hide them, leaving a bit of room for the light to shine in.

“Now I am. I had my doubts at first. No longer. He may not be the bravest and most honorable of men, but he didnae like what was going to be done to you. I think he even had a few doubts about your guilt after ye met him sword to sword.”

She was glad the light was too dim to see well, for she could feel herself blush. “I do not know how well I did, for I was stopped before any true test of my skill occurred.”

“He seemed to think ye were verra good. Ah, George,” he greeted the man when he returned and handed them a cape. “Not only clever, but a good thief, I am thinking.”

Gisele saw George frown, and patted him on the arm. “He means that as a great compliment.”

The moment she was wrapped in the cape they all slipped out of the passage. Until Nigel signaled him that they could go on alone, George led them through all the confusing twists and turns. Gisele said nothing as Nigel led her the rest of the way through the keep, flattening herself against the walls and ducking into corners each time he did. Her heart began to pound so hard and fast when they entered the baily that she was afraid the people around them would hear it.

Suddenly they were outside the gates. Gisele felt a little dizzy that it had happened so fast. She could tell from the tension in Nigel's lean body that he shared her urge to run, but they ambled along toward the small wood as if they had nothing to fear. The moment they were in the shelter of the trees, she sat down on the ground, her legs too weak to hold her upright any longer. Her whole body shook, and she realized that a lot of her calm had been hard wrung, a facade even to her.

George arrived a few moments later and greedily accepted the drink of wine Nigel offered him. “I believe that will be the last honorable deed I do for a great while,” George said, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

“Ye did weel, George,” Nigel said as he took hold of the reins of Gisele's horse. “I am glad ye were able to get this fool beast back.”

“His lordship was not yet aware that he had gained a mount,” George explained as he handed Nigel what was left of the money he had given him. “His stablemaster was more than pleased to let it go and pocket the coin.”

“If, somehow, they guess that ye had aught to do with this and ye feel a need to leave this land, ye are welcome on mine. The Murrays of Donncoill. Ye will find how to reach us in Perth. In most any port, in truth, for we deal in some trading.”

George nodded his gratitude, then sent Gisele a small smile before quickly riding away. Still weak, Gisele allowed Nigel to help her on her horse. She ached to rest, to lie down and close her eyes and pretend the horror of the last few hours had never happened, but she knew it was important for them to get away. Vachel was not dead, and when the man woke he would not be in a good temper. As she followed Nigel out of the little wood, she suspected that all she had accomplished with her bid for freedom was to make sure that the hunt for them would grow even more determined.

“We will camp here for the night, lass.”

Those soft words were enough to pull Gisele from her stupor. She looked around, but noticed very little until she saw the small brook. Without a word she slipped off her horse, unpacked her drying cloth and sliver of soap, and walked to the edge of the brook. Still silent, she shed her clothes, stepped into the shallow cold water, slowly sat down, and began to wash.

She could hear Nigel tending to the horses and setting up their camp, but she kept her back to him. Once they had started on their way, fleeing the wood and Vachel's lands as fast as they could, she had failed to stop herself from thinking about what had happened to her. From time to time Nigel had spoken to her and she had struggled to answer, his frowns telling her that she was doing a poor job of it. Nothing, not Nigel's concern or her own strong will, had stopped her from slipping into a dangerously dark mood.

From the moment Sir Vachel had touched her, she had ached to have a bath. It was the same sick, unclean feeling her husband had always left her with. During her brief marriage she had sometimes scrubbed her skin raw, stopped from doing herself real harm only by the watchful eyes of the maids. They had lived with Michael long enough to understand what she was suffering. Just as she had after Michael had used her, she now felt as if she needed to peel away every piece of skin Vachel had touched. Only once did she pause in her continuous washing, and that was to stare in surprise at the cuts on the palms of her hands. As she briefly soaked them in the cold water, she wondered how she could have buried her fingernails so deeply into her own flesh and not been aware of it. Then, almost blindly, she returned to scrubbing her skin.

Nigel leaned against a slender tree, took a slow drink from his wineskin, and watched Gisele carefully. She had said nothing since they had left the DeVeau keep. He had kept looking back at her, afraid she had fallen asleep and was at risk of slipping out of her saddle. Each time he had been made uneasy by the almost lifeless look upon her face, the strange distance in her eyes. The few times he had spoken to her, tried to pull her from her intense silence, her response had been spoken in a voice nearly as dead as her eyes.

When he had first rescued her she had seemed fine, no more than a little shaken. Now he was not so sure. He was also not so sure that he had been in time to save her from all Vachel had planned to do to her. Perhaps that was not the first time the man had been on that bed with her. She had been alone at the keep for several hours before he had found a way to reach her. More than enough time for the man to have already raped her once, mayhap more.

He cursed softly and ran a hand over his chin. It did not take a very clever man to see that something deeply troubled Gisele. What did require a great deal of cleverness was knowing exactly how to help her. This was the sort of thing a woman often did not wish to talk about, yet, how could he know how to help her if she did refuse to talk about it? There was also a reluctance lurking inside of him, a wish to not know anything about what had happened to her while she was trapped inside of Vachel's keep. If he did not wish to hear anything and she did not wish to say anything, they would certainly not get very far in solving her problem, he thought sourly.

There was one thing he
could
do, he decided as he tossed his wineskin aside and moved toward the brook. He could stop her incessant scrubbing. If she continued with it for very much longer she would be nothing more than a tiny lump of raw flesh. Nigel had the unsettling feeling that that was her intention, that she wanted to remove the flesh that had been defiled by Vachel. He was surprised that she could sit in the water for so long. Her shapely backside had to be nearly frozen to the rocky bottom of the brook. She was also frightening him a little, for she seemed to be caught up in some repetitive dream, so that she was not completely aware of what she was doing to herself. It was almost as if the insanity of the DeVeaux had finally infected her.

“Gisele,” he called, but she paid him no heed, so he reached out to gently touch her shoulder. “Gisele!”

“I heard you the first time,” she said quietly, staring at her empty hand as she slowly realized that she had no soap left. “My soap is all gone.”

“Ye are clean enough.”

“Am I?”

Even though she still felt an urge to keep washing herself, she allowed Nigel to pull her out of the water. She stood silently as he briskly rubbed her down with the drying cloth, obviously trying to warm her as much as he was drying her skin. When he reached for her clothes and saw the gown he hesitated, then frowned at her. Gisele finally roused herself enough to speak.

“I have no ill feeling about the clothes,” she said.

“I mean no offense, nor do I wish to stir up any ill memory, but I am surprised he found something to fit ye so quickly.”

She gave him the sad ghost of a smile. “The cut of the clothes tells me they probably belonged to a young maid. The chemise will be good enough for now.”

Nigel gently tugged the chemise over her head and laced it up, then led her over to their bed by the fire. For one brief moment he had thought about separating their beds, then decided that would not really help. It might even make her think that he was setting her aside because of what Vachel had done.

He quickly gathered up the things she had left by the brook and put them in her saddlepack. As he got some wine and food for their meal, he kept a close but subtle watch on her. The way she just sat there staring into the fire made him uneasy. He felt an urge to slap some life back into her. Nigel shook his head as he sat down beside her and gave her some food. Brutality had caused her troubles. He would be no better than DeVeau if he used brutality to try to pull her free of her dark mood.

“Did he rape ye, lass?” he asked, deciding the best way to try to solve her problem was to be direct.

“
Non
,” she replied as she slowly began to eat, her hunger beginning to revive as she tasted the food.

“Praise God,” he muttered, and briefly squeezed one of her hands. “I feared that ye had suffered while I sat in that wood trying to plan your rescue. That because I wasnae quick or clever enough, ye had endured some pain.”

“Nigel, you were in time. Vachel but touched me a little. I let that trouble me far more than I should have. Even if you had not succeeded in saving me from that bastard's unwanted attentions, you would have still saved me from a hanging. That is no small thing. In truth, I was not expecting your help at all.”

“Why? Because ye had crept away from me like a thief in the night?” He watched her closely, and felt relieved when she cast him a look that was an amusing mixture of embarrassment and irritation. She was beginning to recover.

“I had my reasons for leaving.” She hoped that would end the discussion, but a quick peek at Nigel's face told her that she was not going to be allowed to just dismiss the matter.

“And I should like to hear what those reasons were.”

“It was suddenly clear to me that this hunt had grown much fiercer than it had ever been, and much more dangerous. I no longer felt able to put your life at risk, to use you to shelter me from my enemies.”

“So, ye would have me believe that after we have spent weeks hacking our way through DeVeau's men ye suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was now becoming too dangerous? And that riding off alone, nay kenning where ye were going, leaving me alone in my weakened condition, was safer for both of us?”

It did sound remarkably witless the way he told it, but Gisele had no intention of letting him know that. She was also not going to let him try to stir her guilt by speaking of his ‘weakened condition'. Nigel had tossed Vachel DeVeau around as if he were no more than an empty sack. That was hardly the act of a sickly man. Gisele thought it a little harsh of Nigel to be questioning her and expecting sensible answers after all she had just endured.

“As you had just explained to me last eve, we were either near or even on DeVeau lands, and that ensured that the port you were taking us to would be swarming with the fools. I just felt that it had all become too complicated. There had always been a chance that we could get to a port, onto a ship, and sail far away from my troubles. Suddenly, it did not look as if that were possible any longer.” Gisele softly cursed and glared at Nigel when he greeted her explanation with a mocking sound of disbelief. She thought that it was rather clever, and deserved better than his blatant derision.

“Ye may have thought that, lass, but I fear I dinnae believe that is the whole truth of it.” It took only one quick glance at the stubborn, cross look on her face for Nigel to realize that she was not going to tell him any more. “Ye stumbled right into your enemy's arms, loving,” he added quietly as he put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her close to his side, pleased when she revealed no fear or resistance.

“I know that,” she grumbled, then sighed and leaned against him. “I was traveling to my cousin Marie's. At least I thought I was. It is clear to me now that I really did not know the way to get there. Marie does not live anywhere near a DeVeau. I know that because I sought her aid once before.”

He idly picked up her medallion from where it rested against her chest and studied it for a moment. “Ye are fortunate none of the men took this from you,” he said, as he released his hold on it. “'Tis a fine piece that could have brought them a few coins.”

“I am not sure any of them really saw it, praise God. It was hidden beneath my jupon, as it has been most times since you reminded me that lads do not wear such fine baubles. The ones who did see it, Vachel and his man Ansel, saw it as nothing remarkable. It is obviously still bringing me good fortune.”

“Aye, it is. Gisele, I am nay calling ye a liar, but something does puzzle me.”

“And what is that?”

“Ye said that Sir Vachel didnae rape ye, only touched ye a wee bit.”

“That is correct.”

“Then why would ye try to flay the flesh from your wee bones with unending scrubbing? It makes no sense to me.”

Gisele smiled sadly and allowed him to gently push her down onto the bed. The weight of his body as he lightly sprawled on top of her felt comforting as well as exciting, and she was glad. The very last thing she wanted was for her stupidity and Vachel's unwavering, cruel arrogance to destroy what she felt for Nigel. It would have been easy for Vachel to make her the frightened woman she had been when she had first met Nigel. That would have been too high a price to pay for her cowardice.

And it was cowardice, she mused. She had run from what she felt for Nigel, tried to run as fast and as far away as she could. It was also foolish. There was no running away from it. The love she had for Nigel stayed with her. All she did was deprive herself of seeing him, of touching him, and of savoring his touch upon her skin. Gisele doubted she could completely flee all that, either, for the memory would stay with her always.

She met his gaze and sighed. He was waiting patiently for her to answer his question. Nigel could be annoyingly stubborn. Gisele suspected he could calmly wait for her answer far longer than she could calmly tolerate it.

“I am not sure what I was doing makes very much sense to me, either,” she finally replied. “Vachel looks very much like my husband Michael. So much so that, briefly, I feared I was seeing a ghost.”

Nigel frowned. He found that news a little unsettling. Although he had only seen Vachel briefly through a fog of rage, he had recognized the man's beauty. Then he cursed himself for an idiot, and pushed aside his bout of jealousy. The DeVeau men might be beautiful to look upon, but they were black-hearted bastards who had caused Gisele only pain and humiliation. No one knew that better than she did. He doubted the beauty of the men affected her in any way.

“That must have made it all the more troublesome for you,” he said, slowly running his hand up and down her side.

“It did,” she whispered, then took a deep breath to steady herself. “It was worse than even I could have guessed it would be.
Oui
, Vachel looked like Michael, but, whereas Michael's cruelty revealed itself in rages and bouts of clear madness, Vachel's is the cold sort. Vachel does not blindly strike out. He is calm. He thinks carefully about what he is doing and, I think, enjoys it. He planned to keep me and use me until he wearied of me, and then he would hang me.”

After cursing viciously for a moment, Nigel wished yet again that he had killed the man. “That is what George said, but I didnae really want to believe it. 'Tis done, my bonny French rose. Ye must put it from your mind. That bastard isnae worth even one bad memory.”

“I would like to forget it all, but Vachel DeVeau is not a man you forget easily. He is truly evil, Nigel. I think he may be mad, but it is a frightening madness, one that twists the soul yet leaves him appearing sane, and he is a very clever man.”

“So, ye dinnae think that ye washed him away.”

Gisele smiled in response to his insight and also in silent acquiescence, for he began to tentatively unlace her chemise. “
Oui
. I was trying to wash his touch away. I used to do the same when my husband touched me. In my poor, confused mind it was the same. A madness seizes me, and I have a wish to remove the skin from all the places I was touched. When I was in my husband's
demanse
, the maids would stop me before I did myself harm. This time, I fear I imposed that sad chore upon you. I humbly beg your pardon.”

“There is naught ye have to apologize for.”

“
Oui
, there is. What troubles me at such times is none of your doing. You should not have to contend with the results of other men's crimes against me.”

Nigel knew there was nothing more he could say to assure her that he did not mind, so he kissed her, trying to imbue his kiss with all of the tenderness he felt toward her. He knew she did not need his strength. She had her own. Nor could he mend all of her hurts, only understand them. It was that willingness to understand that he tried to convey in his touch.