The Saint (47 page)

She wanted more.

But maybe he understood more than she realized. He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Aye, it’s the only honorable thing to do, but it’s not the only reason I ask. I love you, Helen. I’ve always loved you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry.”

Helen looked in his eyes and saw the truth. Her heart swelled. Some of her uncertainty began to fade. They would get past this. They would—

Suddenly, they both turned at the sound of what could only be described as a roar of complete rage. “You murderous bastard, don’t touch her!”

Helen’s heart sank as her brother Kenneth came storming toward them.

Seeing his fist pulled back, instinctively, she moved in front of Magnus. “Stop, Kenneth, you don’t understand. He’s asked me to marry him.”

But Magnus was having none of her “protection.” He easily lifted her aside and blocked her as her brother squared off in front of him.

“Marry him?” Kenneth scoffed. “Over my dead body.”

He launched his fist toward Magnus’s face. Magnus blocked the punch. But when Helen lurched forward to try to put herself between them, she distracted Magnus and Kenneth’s second blow found its mark. Magnus pushed her forcibly back. “Stay out of this, Helen.”

The two men exchanged a few more blows. She’d never seen her brother like this. He was known for his hot temper, but this was something more. This was rage and hatred unlike anything she’d ever seen. He looked like he wanted to kill Magnus. This wasn’t just the enmity between their clans at work. “Stop!” she yelled at her brother. “Stop. Why are you doing this?”

Magnus connected with Kenneth’s gut, bending him in
two. Or at least Kenneth pretended to be bent in two, because in the next instant he’d brought his fist up under Magnus’s jaw, snapping his head back. “Tell her,” Kenneth sneered, challenging Magnus with his gaze. “Tell her how you killed her husband.”

Helen was so shocked by her brother’s pronouncement, it took her a moment to realize that Magnus had turned a ghastly shade of gray. He’d also stopped defending himself against her brother’s blows. Kenneth’s fists pounded into his jaw and face like a hammer. He was beating him to a pulp and Magnus was letting him. “Fight me back, you bastard!” Kenneth shouted, pummeling him to the ground.

But Magnus wouldn’t. Helen lurched forward again, reaching this time for her brother’s arm. “Stop, Kenneth! You’re going to kill him.”

Kenneth was seething and huffing like an angry dragon. “It’s no more than he deserves.” Behind the rage she could see the anguish in her brother’s gaze. “They found him, Helen. They found Gordon. In the bottom of the tower at Threave, pinned in by rocks, with his throat cut and his face disfigured. One of his own men had killed him.”

Helen felt horror rise at the back of her throat. “There must be some misunderstanding.” She looked at Magnus. He’d managed to get to his feet, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Tell him, Magnus. Tell him it isn’t true.”

“I can’t do that,” he said stonily.

Helen gasped in horror, realizing the truth. This was the dark secret. This was what he’d been hiding from her.

Kenneth let out an expletive and would have gone at Magnus again, but she held him back by hanging on his arm.

“Stop!” she yelled. “I won’t let you kill him no matter what he’s done.” She looked at Magnus again, knowing there was more. “Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

William was his friend. There had to be a reason.

“Because he wanted you,” Kenneth said. “He’s always wanted you.”

Helen spun on Kenneth in anger. “You know that’s not true. William was just as much his friend as he was yours. I want you to leave, Kenneth. You’ve done enough damage for the day.”

“I haven’t done nearly enough damage. He’s still standing. I won’t leave until I hear an explanation.”

“Go to hell, Sutherland. I don’t owe you a goddamned thing.”

Kenneth lunged, prepared to go at Magnus again, but she stopped him. “Please. Please just go. Let me talk to him.”

Her brother met her gaze. His mouth fell in a hard line, but he heeded her plea. “If you marry him, Helen, you are dead to me.” He threw Magus one more angry glare. “This isn’t over, MacKay. I told my brother this would never work. I’ll not spend one more day under the same roof with you.”

With one more warning look at Helen, Kenneth stormed off the beach.

She looked at Magnus’s bruised and battered face and said, “Come. I’d better tend to your face.”

His expression was terrifyingly blank. “Helen—”

She cut him off. “Your face first, then we talk.”

She needed to give herself a moment to calm down. But part of her feared that if they talked now, fixing the cuts on his face would be the last thing either of them wanted to do.

He followed her to the kitchens. A small storage room at the back housed the castle’s apothecary. She washed the blood from his face with a cloth she dipped in a bucket of water one of the kitchen maids had fetched from the well, and then began to spread a salve over the cuts and abrasions. He didn’t flinch or move a muscle the entire time, even when she touched the worst, a wide gash on his cheek, but he had deep cuts and bruises along his jaw as well. It was as if he were numb.

“If it doesn’t stop bleeding I will need to stitch it closed.”

He nodded indifferently.

Finally, Helen wiped her hands on the linen apron she’d donned and turned to face him. She could put it off no longer.

“Why, Magnus? You must have had a reason.”

Her unwavering faith in him, however, only seemed to make him angrier. Guilt, she realized, was twisting inside him. That was the darkness.

“I had no choice.” In a cold, emotionless voice, he explained what had happened. How William had been pinned by the rocks. How the English were swarming them. How he’d tried to get him free but couldn’t. How William had been dying, but he’d been forced to take his life to prevent him from being captured or identified, and how it hadn’t mattered in the end because of the birthmark.

It wasn’t what Magnus said that filled her with horror, but what he didn’t say. He’d done it to protect the identity of William’s brethren, but he’d also done it to protect her.

She staggered, finally understanding the gravity of what stood between them. It wasn’t just her family. It wasn’t just that she’d married William and his loyalty to his friend. It was so much worse. He’d been forced to do the unthinkable in part to protect her. And part of him blamed her for it.

She’d thought love was all that mattered. In her naïveté, she thought nothing was insurmountable if they loved each other. But she was wrong. Even if he loved her, guilt, blame, and the ghost of William would always be between them. He would never forgive himself, and he would never forgive her.

But even as her heart was breaking, she sought to ease the burden that he’d obviously been carrying for a long time. “You had no choice,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “You did what you had to do. Blood in the lungs like that …” She shook her head. “There was nothing anyone could have done. He was as good as dead.”

He jerked away from her touch. “I know that, Helen. I don’t need absolution from you.”

She knew he was only lashing out in pain, but the words stung nonetheless. “What is it that you need from me then, Magnus? Because it seems whatever I do, it will never be enough.”

Their eyes met, and for a moment she thought her words might have penetrated through the guilt and anger, and that maybe they had a chance.

But she was only seeing what she wanted to see. In the cold echo of his silence, she knew what he’d known all those months ago, but which she’d refused to understand. William Gordon’s death would always be between them. Magnus might love her, but the guilt would prevent them from ever finding true happiness. Could she marry him knowing that?

Her chest squeezed with the answer.

But she was saved from telling him so when a deafening clap of thunder followed by a loud boom tore through the air. Without thinking, she hurled herself against his chest, trying to block out the terrifying sound.

Thunder? It couldn’t be thunder, she realized. The sun had been shining outside.

“What was that?” she said, gazing up at Magnus. It was a sound unlike anything she’d ever heard before.

But Magnus obviously had. His mouth tightened. “Black powder.” The boom had barely stopped when he started pulling her back through the kitchens outside, into the
barmkin
.

People were rushing all over the place in panic. An unfamiliar acrid smoke filled the air and, seconds later, her lungs. They looked up and saw the newer of the castle’s two donjons on fire.

Not just the donjon, she realized with growing horror.

“The king!” she exclaimed.

If it signaled anything but the king in danger, Magnus might have actually been grateful for the interruption. His proposal hadn’t gone as he’d planned, and now that she’d learned his secret …

Blast Sutherland and his damned interfering! He’d never wanted her to know. He’d never wanted to see that look of horror and disgust on her face as she realized what he’d done.

But she hadn’t looked at him like that at all. Hell, maybe compassion and understanding was worse.

He shook off the thought as he raced toward the burning tower. Sensing Helen behind him, he turned around and shouted for her to stay back.

A lot of good it did him.

She shook her head. “You may have need of me.”

His mouth hardened. Damn it, she was right. But he wasn’t happy about it. She should be running away from danger, not toward it. Their eyes held for a long pause. “You aren’t going in that tower, you will wait outside—where I tell you.”

Not giving her a chance to argue, he pulled her through the crowd across the courtyard toward the burning donjon.

As it always did in a time of crisis—except if that crisis had to do with a certain lass—an odd calmness descended over him. His mind cleared of all but the tasks before him, which came to him in a series of simple successive acts: find the king, control and assess the damage, decide how to rectify it. He wouldn’t fill his mind with worst-case scenarios and hypothetical disasters; he focused on what he needed to do. If the king was in that tower, he was going to find him and bring him out.

MacGregor had planned to return the king to his chamber after the audience with the Earl of Sutherland. As that had been some time ago, Magnus knew there was every reason to suspect they were in there.

Except they weren’t. He and Helen were almost at the tower when he caught sight of the king, MacGregor, and the cadre of knights Magnus had left to protect him standing near the postern gate. The Earl of Sutherland and MacAulay were rushing out of the Great Hall, which sat between the two donjons, and saw the king about the same time Magnus did. They all converged on the royal party at once.

But no one was getting near Bruce; MacGregor had ordered a protective circle around the king.

With the king safe, Magnus’s cold calm turned to fury. “What the hell happened?”

MacGregor met his angry gaze with one of his own. The members of the Highland Guard didn’t like surprises, and another attack on the king under their watch sure as hell qualified.

“We should have been in there, that’s what happened,” MacGregor said. “We were almost at the king’s solar when he insisted on going to the barracks to check on some of the men who’d been injured. We’d just come out of the stairwell on the first floor when the first blast sounded.”

The king pushed his way through the protective wall of
men in front of him. “My ears are still ringing,” he said angrily. “By the rood, that was too bloody close!”

“Did you see anything?” Magnus asked.

MacGregor shook his head. “My only thought was to get the king somewhere safe. It was like an inferno. If anyone was in there, I doubt they could have survived that.”

Magnus thought so, too. Whoever had done this was either gone or dead. But he intended to make sure.

For the next few hours, he set about making order out of chaos. The king’s security was first. Another chamber was found for Bruce in the old tower. Magnus had the entire building searched and cleared before installing a guard of soldiers at the only entry to control access.

MacGregor took charge of organizing the attempt to put out the flames in the castle. But it was an exercise in futility. The wooden floors of the upper chambers and wooden roof had lit up like tinder. Only the smoking shell of the tower remained. Fortunately, as it was the middle of the day, the tower appeared to have been empty but for the king’s party, who’d barely escaped disaster.

The placement of the powder left no doubt as to the target. MacGregor was certain the sound had come from the chamber under the king’s.

Once Magnus had assured the king’s safety, his focus turned to one thing: who could have been responsible. It didn’t take him long to realize who was missing. A party of knights had ridden out right before the explosion; among them were Sutherland and Munro. But only one of them had familiarity with black powder.