Legends (14 page)

Douglas sat up and held out his arms. “How about a hug to warm me up before I get out of bed?”

She looked distressed but snuggled into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. “Name something you’d really like to have, El. Something that’s not the least bit practical. Something you’ve never thought that you could have. Something you want simply because it would make you happy.”

“Children,” she said in a tormented voice.

Shaken, he wished he’d been more specific and saved her from such sorrow.
Yeah, Kincaid
, he said to himself.
Explain that you meant the important stuff. Jewelry. Cars. Money
. Douglas kissed the top of her head. “Are you certain that you can’t have children?”

“No, but it seems likely. Jonathan was as healthy as a horse. And all of his brothers had children.”

“Did you and Jonathan ever see a doctor about the problem?”

“No. Jonathan wouldn’t go. It shamed him, he said. If we weren’t meant to have any bairns, then that was that. What point was there in learning whose fault it was?”

Douglas gritted his teeth at such backwardness. “Didn’t he wonder if the problem could be corrected with medical help?”

“No. He was a proud man. He was a shy man. And as I said, the problem was likely mine. I didn’t want to know the truth either. We were married for life, children or not. Why be humiliated when it would change naught?” Her hands clasped his and clenched them tightly. “I think you’re safe, Douglas. You don’t have to worry about becoming a father from tonight’s frolic, if that’s why you’re asking.”

Douglas drew back. She looked at him carefully. He glared at her. “Dammit, do you really believe that’s why I’m asking?”

Her face went pale. “I don’t know! I’m sorry. I’m a wee bit distracted right now.
Please
get dressed. Then we can talk some more.”

He shook her lightly. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you upset?”

“Because you won’t do me the simple favor of covering your handsome behind and coming to sit by the fire! Is that too much to ask?”

She was trembling now. He stared hard into her golden eyes, and a terrible sense of foreboding swept over him. “Elgiva?” he said slowly, demanding explanations.

“Oh, Douglas, my dearest—” Her voice broke. Shaking her head, she raised both hands and stroked his face gently. “You’ve been so wonderful tonight. I wish it could go on forever.”

“It can, El, it can.”

Sam leapt up and ran to the outer room, growling.
Elgiva gasped and began tugging at Douglas’s hands. “Get dressed! Oh, please, get dressed!”

Douglas stared at her in horrified understanding. “Someone’s here,” he accused numbly. “You set me up.”

“No, I swear, I didn’t mean it to be that way! I forgot to use the radio—you and I, we were busy, you remember, and then we fell asleep! And when I woke up, I remembered to call my people, but it was too late! They think something’s gone wrong!”

Sam was barking ferociously now. Bitter with betrayal, Douglas pushed Elgiva aside and grabbed his clothes. “I’m getting out of here and taking you with me, doll, and I’m going to make you wish you’d never played me for a fool.”

“I wasn’t trying to trap you again!”

“Save the lies for your fairy tales.”

There was a crash as the door burst open in the other room. Elgiva started from the bed. Douglas snatched her to him, then pinned her around the waist with one arm. Sam backed into the room, snarling.

A half-dozen men burst in, carrying guns and walking sticks. They wore dark clothes and ski masks, but from the variety of old weapons and far-from-athletic bodies Douglas surmised that they weren’t professionals at this kind of adventure.

“No, no, no!” Elgiva screamed as they surrounded the bed, guns pointing at Douglas’s head. “Calm down!”

A tall, muscular man, apparently the leader and certainly the only one who looked both athletic and deadly, made a throaty sound of rage. “Let her go,” he snarled at Douglas.

Douglas considered the fact that he was sitting in Elgiva’s bed naked and that, quite possibly, the tall man was a close relative of Elgiva’s. “I think she’s all that stands between me and certain death,” he observed. Douglas tightened his arm around Elgiva’s middle. “I’m not going to hurt her. Back off.”

“Please,” Elgiva begged. “He’s not going anywhere. Don’t start a fight. Just make him go back to the cell.”

“What has he done to you?” the leader asked in a thick Scottish burr. “If he’s harmed you in any way, tell me.”

“No, no, he hasn’t done anything but escaped.”

A man who looked like a fat, hooded wrestler brandished an old shotgun. “He escaped right to your bed, I see! And he looks to be at home there!”

“Is that true?” the tall man asked Elgiva, sounding distraught. “You didn’t let the bastard out on purpose, did you?”

“No!”

“She did, she did!” the shorter man insisted. “I can see the guilty look on her face! She’s betrayed us all!”

“Don’t be a fool!” the other man retorted. “She’s been forced into something, can’t you see? And she knew we’d come when she didn’t use the radio!”

“He escaped, but he stayed for my sake!” Elgiva cried. “I could have told him to run when I realized that you were on your way, but I didn’t do it!”

Disappointment made a hard, unyielding fist in Douglas’s chest. Loyalty and honesty were the two things he cherished most about his family, about
anyone
who became important to him. In a cutthroat world, he had to have that haven of trust, if only among a few people. Deep down he respected Elgiva’s motivations, but her betrayal hurt.

“So you
did
trap me,” Douglas said between gritted teeth.

He felt her shivering inside the circle of his arm. She turned her face toward him and a single tear slid down her cheek. “A wee bit,” she admitted. “But only … later. What happened between us wasn’t a cold-blooded calculation. I swear.”

Douglas looked at the men grimly. “Hell, yes, she let me out,” he told them. “She’s seen how pointless your deal is, so she’s changed sides. And we’ve spent
the past few hours playing hopscotch in bed together. So if you’re going to lock me up again, you better put Mata MacHari in the slammer with me.”

Elgiva shrieked in distress. “He’s twisting the truth! He’s just trying to cause trouble!”

The tall man thrust his rifle into the hands of a companion. He advanced on the bed with both massive fists raised. “Pull on your pants, Kincaid, and get out of bed. I’m about to beat you senseless.”

Douglas grinned slowly. Elgiva twisted to look at him with eyes full of desperation. “No! I won’t have you two kill each other! Please, Douglas, get back in the cell! I’ll get in there with you! Just stop this! Stop it!”

“Stop it. My sentiments exactly,” a new voice said with calm authority. Everyone jumped. Douglas looked toward the door to the outer room. There stood T. S. Audubon, dressed like a commando in a spy movie. Audubon’s love for drama was in full swing. He scowled grandly and waved an automatic assault rifle that made all the combined weaponry in the room look puny.

The window next to the hearth shattered as two of Audubon’s assistants poked their rifles inside. “If all you gentlemen will drop your weapons and go over to the cell, I’ll be very happy,” Audubon ordered. “You really don’t have any choice.”

“Nice timing,” Douglas commented.

“Thank you. Nice hostage you’ve got there.”

“I might let her go if she’ll tell her cronies to cooperate. I’m sure she doesn’t want any of their plaid blood on her conscience.”

“Especially since one of them is her brother,” Audubon added.

Douglas felt Elgiva stiffen. “Go, please,” she told her accomplices, looking directly at their tall leader. “We don’t want anybody hurt because of my mistake.”

The defeat in her voice made Douglas angrier. It tore at his resolve not to feel any sympathy for her. She’d deliberately kept him busy in bed, knowing
that the others would arrive to trap him again. He wasn’t going to let himself forget that.

“I can’t believe you betrayed us,” Elgiva’s brother accused bitterly. He removed his mask, exposing hair the same reddish-brown shade as hers and a face no less proud.

“I didn’t do that,” she murmured in a broken voice. “But maybe I made a mistake or two in judgment.”

“Deceiving someone who wanted to treat you fairly is a
damned
bad mistake in judgment,” Douglas told her.

“This is fair?” She looked down at his binding arm. “You didn’t hesitate to think the worst of me and try to make my own people turn on me.”

“Aye, ’tis an odd brand of fairness!” her brother shouted. “I’m thinking that my sister is innocent of all but trusting a man who knows how to charm people into heading for hell with him!”

“I’m sure that hell is a very profitable place,” Douglas returned smoothly. “Why don’t you go there and report back to me?”

Everyone tensed even more. Elgiva’s brother lurched forward, but his companions grabbed his arms. The short, chubby man jerked his mask off also, revealing a florid face, red hair, and a calculated smile. “We don’t want any trouble here, lads.” Where he had been a troublemaker seconds earlier, he was now a diplomat. “Do as Mr. Audubon says. Let’s put our guns down and move back.”

“Nice change of heart, Mayor MacRoth,” Audubon observed.

“Please, Rob,” Elgiva begged, staring at her brother. “Do as they ask.” His expression furious, he slowly complied, and the others followed. The room filled with Audubon’s men, and they surrounded the kidnappers.

Audubon sighed with relief and pulled a dark knit cap off his head, then ran a hand through white
hair that flowed to his shoulders. He stepped to the foot of Elgiva’s bed.

Douglas was in too bad a mood to appreciate the way his friend smiled at the compromising scene there. “Well, Douglas, it looks as if you didn’t need rescuing at all,” Audubon noted dryly.

Douglas felt the rigid resistance in Elgiva’s trapped body. “I needed all the help I could get,” he answered.

And this was just the beginning.

Elgiva sat in her chair by the fireplace, staring stubbornly into space while self-rebuke and sorrow made a cold knot inside her stomach. Douglas and his henchmen had allowed her to pull on a pair of brown trousers and tuck her nightgown into them; because they wouldn’t give her the privacy to change into other clothes, she looked ridiculous. She tossed her robe onto the floor and drew a black wool sweater over her bulging, clumsy gown.

Douglas, who was already dressed in his gray trousers and sweater, threw her walking shoes near the hearth. “Put them on,” he said curtly.

Shom went to the shoes, took both into his mouth, and carried them the last bit of distance to her. Tears choked Elgiva’s throat. She stroked Shom’s head and wished humans could keep trust alive so faithfully.

Elgiva felt everyone in the room watching her as she stuffed her feet into the shoes. Rob, Duncan, Andrew, and the village physician, Dr. Graham, were locked in Douglas’s cell along with the new men they’d brought with them. John Callum and Richard Maxwell were farmers—their families had lived on the MacRoth land for hundreds of years, passing their parcels down as if they owned them. John,
Richard, and the other farmers on the estate stood to lose as much of their heritage as the MacRoths did, if Douglas refused to change his plans.

Mr. Audubon and his men lounged around the cottage, looking glad to be out of the cold highland night. Douglas did not look glad about anything. He stood across the room with his legs braced and his arms crossed over his chest, eyeing Elgiva with unwavering dismay.

She raised her equally grim gaze to his. “I’ll be going to the cell with my kin and my neighbors now. I’d like to be kept with them, if that’s not too much to ask.”

“I want information,” Douglas retorted. “Who planned this kidnapping?”

“I did,” Elgiva and Rob said in unison.

Elgiva pressed her hands to her throat. “Don’t steal my thunder, Robbie! This was all my idea, and you know it!”

“No,” Dr. Graham said sternly, his shaggy gray head shaking slowly. “The whole bunch of us planned it. And a dozen more besides. You reivers will have to prosecute the whole community or none at all!”

“Aye,” Andrew said. He was a thin, wiry man who had never lost his military posture from a career in the British air force. Now he drew himself up proudly, as if he were about to be executed. “I flew everyone back and forth to America in my plane, and I flew the helicopter that stole you from your rooftop, Mr. Kincaid.”

“And I fixed a cell in this place to hold you,” Duncan announced.

“And I helped!” John Callum added.

“Myself also!” Richard Maxwell said.

“And it was me who researched everything about you,” Rob told Douglas with smug victory. “You and your disgusting, self-indulgent lifestyle.”

Elgiva buried her head in her hands. “You promised it wouldn’t be this way, lads! We agreed that I’d be the one to take the blame! I don’t have children to
leave behind! Or a mate! Do you not see how you’ve hurt your families, you proud fools?”

“Ellie, I haven’t got children or a mate, either,” Rob reminded her. She heard the apology in his voice and knew that he was sorry for accusing her of betrayal earlier.

“But you would have had them eventually,” she told him, lifting her head to offer him a gaze of tormented affection. “You had more of a future to lose than I did. All I had was my shop—”

“Enough!” Douglas said loudly. Elgiva looked at him and found his expression darker than ever. Was there also a hint of surprise and distress in it? Perhaps remorse? She was too wounded to trust her hopes right now.

He slashed the air with one hand. “I want the truth. What did you people expect to get from me? Why didn’t you try to bargain?”

“With the man who never bargains unless it serves him best? The man who tried to copyright his own name so that no other could use it in business? The man who once evicted all the old people from a nursing home so that he could build a parking lot for his office building?”

Douglas shook his head. “You don’t know the truth.”