Highland Obsession (35 page)

She looked up at him, her chest tight. “Alan is my husband,” she said slowly. “He makes me happy, and I want only him.”

“Despite the earl taking you into his bed?”

A hot flush crawled up Sorcha’s cheeks. “Aye,” she choked out. “I love Alan.”

“Well, then, you must tell him.”

“Yes. Yes, I must. I have to make certain he knows . . . before the battle . . .”

Her father captured her wrist, holding it gently but firmly against the table. “Is this what you want? Be certain, daughter. I won’t advise you to chase after Alan only for you to betray him later.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. It was devastating to know her father now held her in so little regard. Before this disaster, he’d trusted her.

“I swear by everything holy that it’s what I want. I’d die before betraying Alan.”

A worry niggled at her heart as she remembered Cam making love to her last night. She didn’t consider it a betrayal, but it seemed clear Alan did. Even though he had encouraged her every step along the way . . .

She shook her head as if to fling off the confusion. All that mattered was her husband. She had to reveal her heart to him before the battle. If he died thinking her in love with Cam . . . God, she would never be able to survive that.

“I must return to Camdonn Castle.” Abruptly, she rose, pushing the chair back over the flagstone floor. “The Earl of Camdonn is the only person who will be able to take me to the Lowlands in time.”

They encountered Cam a mile out of Glenfinnan on the wide path leading to Camdonn Castle. On foot, Charles and Moira flanked Sorcha. Cam rode alone, reining his horse when he drew up to them.

He dismounted, his forehead furrowed in confusion. “Where is Alan?” he asked Sorcha. “I was coming to find you, to speak with you both.”

“Alan’s gone.” The words were painful to say aloud, even to push out in a tone higher than a whisper. Moira squeezed Sorcha’s hand in support.

A crease appeared between Cam’s brows as he frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Mar’s men held a council of war. He’s already leaving Perth.” Charles eyed Cam distrustfully. Her brother had obeyed their father by accompanying Sorcha to Camdonn Castle, but he didn’t like Sorcha’s plan, and he hesitated to ask the earl for anything. Before they’d seen Cam approach, he’d been attempting to devise a way to take Sorcha south himself. But he possessed neither the horseflesh nor the funds to deliver her south quickly. Cam was the only man who had enough of both.

“The Glenfinnan men marched at dawn,” Charles continued as Cam’s frown deepened. “Bowie rode to Camdonn Castle early this morning to inform Alan of their plans. Of course he agreed to lead them.”

“Of course.” Cam’s soulful eyes met Sorcha’s, and she saw the pained understanding in them.

“Cam—” She broke off, struggling for the words. How to say them in the presence of her brother and sister.

Cam thrust a hand through his short-cropped hair, then lowered it to his side, fingers balled into a fist. “You’ll come with me,” he said in a low voice.

Charles gripped the hilt of his dirk and took a menacing step forward—as if to protect Sorcha should Cam attempt to toss her over his shoulder.

Sorcha grabbed her brother’s arm and yanked him back. “Stop, Charles. He means no harm.”

Still, Charles bristled. His lip curled as he stared Cam down, his blue eyes narrowing. “I’ve no understanding why my sister chooses to defend you when you’ve done nothing but cause her harm.”

“You’re wrong,” Sorcha breathed.

“No.” Cam’s brown gaze focused calmly on Charles. “He speaks the truth. But you all must understand, I now intend to remedy the mistakes I have made. There will be no more confusion about my intentions. I’ll take your sister to Alan MacDonald so she might reconcile with him before the battle.”

Sorcha stood in stunned silence, her lips parted. Cam had finally let her go. There was no need to beg him to take her south. Her relief was so acute, her shoulders lifted as if a great weight had melted from them.

Charles pushed out a harsh breath. “How can I be certain you speak the truth? How can I be sure you won’t abduct her again?”

Sorcha cast Cam a helpless glance, then squeezed her brother’s arm. “He won’t, Charles.”

“How can you know?” Moira asked quietly.

Sorcha turned to her sister in surprise. “I trust him.”

“But why?”

“I’ve nothing to offer but my word,” Cam replied, his voice solemn. “I know it’s not worth much, but I vow I’ll treat your sister with honor and take her to her husband in the most expedient way I know how.”

“I’ll travel south with you, then,” Charles said.

Sorcha shook her head, inwardly cringing at the thought of Charles anywhere near a field of battle. She feared as much as her father that her brother would leap into the fray and get himself killed.

“No, lad.” Cam’s voice was gentle. “Your clan needs you here.”

Charles huffed.

Cam inclined his head and held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture of supplication. “Your desire to protect your sister is laudable, Charles, but I ask you to pass that task along to me. I seek redemption. Forgiveness. Can you understand that?”

Sorcha pressed her lips together to hold back the emotion wrought by the sincerity in Cam’s voice, but Charles merely bristled.

“We’ll leave this afternoon. We’ll try to intercept the army before they engage.”

Cam looked exhausted. The muscles of his face had tautened into an expression of resignation, and his brown eyes shone with emotion. He was letting her go, but it hurt him. Sorcha hated his pain, despised that she had to be the cause of it. But some things were necessary.

He was such a passionate man, inside and out. The woman who won Cam’s love would be a very lucky woman indeed.

She released her brother and sister and stepped toward Cam. He enfolded her in a warm, brotherly embrace. “Thank you,” she whispered, clinging to him. “Thank you, my lord.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
hey were too late.

When Cam and Sorcha reached the remnants of the soldiers’ camp on the edge of the village of Auchterarder three mornings later, exhausted from hard riding and little sleep, smoke no longer trickled up from the fire pits, but the place smelled of burned wood and peat with overtones of scalded porridge. Cam’s heart sank as they rode into the abandoned camp.

A woman stood at the doorway of a crude shelter as Cam drew the horse to a halt, its hooves spraying mud. She was a haggard-looking, scrawny matron, who introduced herself as Jane Farquarson. Friendly and hospitable, she herded them inside, where they huddled around a smoldering fire as she fed them barley broth. She explained how she and her husband, a trooper, had been on the march with the Earl of Mar since he’d raised King James’s standard in early September. Yesterday morning Mar had ordered the men to head south to take possession of Dunblane. She hadn’t heard any news since.

Sorcha turned to Cam and placed her hand on the horse’s pommel, ready to be lifted into the saddle. “Let’s go, then.”

Cam shook his head somberly and stiffened his resolve. “No, Sorcha. I’ll not allow you to step foot on a battlefield.”

Her jaw set, and her pretty lips pressed into a mulish line he knew well. “I must.”

“No. I’ll not risk your safety. You will remain here with Mrs. Farquarson.”

Sorcha opened her mouth to protest, but he wouldn’t give in. She was so bent on finding Alan, she’d risk everything to reach him—even her own life. Cam knew Alan wouldn’t want her within miles of a battle. He pressed two fingers to her lips to stop her from speaking. “You may stand here and argue with me all day, or you can agree to allow me to go find him to deliver your message.”

Seeing the decision had been made for her—she was not fool enough to persist in the argument when he’d made up his mind, and they had no time for quibbling—she acquiesced. “You’ll hurry?”

“Of course.”

She buried herself in his embrace. “Bring him back to me.”

“I will.”

He held her tight for a long moment, but then she released him and gave him a little push. “Go. Before I leap up on that beast and find him myself.”

He mounted and turned toward Dunblane. “Stay here,” he ordered over his shoulder. “I’ll be back.”

She just looked at him, her green eyes filled with fear. “Hurry.”

His heart surging, he prodded the horse into a gallop.

Cam rode for miles in the cold without encountering a soul, but he finally passed through a village and was told the rebels had spent the frigid night on the edge of Kinbuck Moor. One of the villagers was kind enough, given a small purse, to change his horse for a fresh mount. Cam sped to Kinbuck, arriving at the encampment long past noon. Losing hope he’d intercept Alan in time, he followed the trampled ground southeast from there.

As soon as Kinbuck Moor disappeared behind him, he began to hear the sounds of battle from beyond the sparsely forested rise ahead. Gunshots, like the clatter of pebbles against a window. The low boom of cannon fire. Soon after, shouts, grunts, the clank of steel on steel. Worst of all, and rising above the rest, were the ear-splitting screams of dying men and animals.

The borrowed mare was no war-trained horse, and under his knees, Cam sensed her rising tension as he urged her forward. They crested a rise, and he looked down onto the moor spread out below.

Thousands of men and horses had trampled the pale autumn yellows of the grass and bracken. Argyll’s men swarmed over a low rise in the distance, but it looked as though Mar’s forces drove them back just as quickly. Beyond the rise, framing the scene, stood a line of long hills. Different from the craggy, steep mountains like those that surrounded Cam’s home on Loch Shiel, the gentle autumn greens and golds of the grass-covered Lowland hills sloped gently toward the low-hanging gray clouds.

On the field, men and horses moved so quickly, the line of battle blurred, like a wide smudge in an otherwise detailed painting. Fanning out between the main action of the battle and Cam, hundreds of Highlanders moved steadily forward. He could not see the entire width of the army because the ground was too uneven and the smoke too thick, but from the look of it, he must be near the right flank of the Jacobite army. The stench of gunpowder mingled with mud and blood rose from the soil far below, and Cam fought to keep from gagging.

Fear gnawed in his gut. Good God. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in any part of this confrontation. How was he to find Alan in this mass of men? And how could he do it without getting himself killed in the process?

He spurred the horse down the hill toward a clump of dismounted officers engaged in heated conversation at the bottom. One of the men he recognized as the Earl of Mar himself, dressed in a tartan jacket and trews with blue garters. He looked up as Cam drew near.

“Camdonn! What in blazes are you doing here?” he bellowed, his buggy eyes bulging more than usual. His wig was dirty and askew, and his actions jerky, as if he was in a panic. As Cam dismounted, the earl’s hand dropped to his sword hilt.

“Rest easy, Mar,” he said mildly, though loudly enough to be heard above the din. “I’m not here to fight, but to deliver a message to a friend.”

“A Highlander?”

Cam nodded. “A MacDonald.”

With narrowed eyes, Mar gave him a once-over, then looked away, apparently satisfied he told the truth.

“A message?” said another officer. “What in God’s name could be so important as to interfere with a man on the field of battle?”

Cam shrugged. “It’s a private matter, sir. I must find him.”

“The MacDonalds are here in the right flank,” said yet another. “But they’re in the front lines, in the heat of the fight.”

Cam swallowed. He wasn’t surprised. All this was surely a trial from God himself, meant to test his fortitude.

“Well, then.” Mar’s voice sounded a hundred furlongs away. “Go find your man, Camdonn. I’ve a battle to win.”