The Striker (33 page)

T
HE CHILL OF
his words followed her hours later. He hadn't meant it, Margaret told herself. Eoin was angry. He wouldn't try to take her son away from her . . . would he?

Years ago, she would have said it was impossible. The man she'd married would not be so cruel—no matter how angry he was with her. But Eoin was no longer the man she married, and guessing what this cold, imposing stranger might do seemed a fool's gambit. The serious young man she'd fallen in love with had become a grim, caustic stranger.

But maybe that had been the problem all along. She had never really known him—not really. It had all happened too quickly. Love, marriage, passion—and not even in that order. The physical closeness they'd shared had given an illusion of more. They hadn't had time to learn to trust one another before war had separated them.

Looking back with the perspective of time and maturity, she could see that they'd never really had a chance. They'd been too young. Too passionate. Too unsure of one another. It had been all fiery emotion and attraction, with a few precious moments of something deeper. Something that might have blossomed if given the chance to grow. Maybe if the war hadn't come, it would have been different. But the war had come, and the fragile bonds between them had been strained to the breaking point. Love like everything else needed nourishment. Without it, it had died.

In so many ways, their marriage had been a mistake. They'd been too different. He'd wanted her to be something she was not. But it had also been right. She'd never felt about another man the way she did about Eoin. She'd tried—God knows, she'd tried—but he'd made her feel things she'd never felt before. Passion she'd never felt before. When they'd been together, she'd been unbearably happy. Which made their separation almost harder to take.

Mistake or not, she regretted the way they'd parted the last time. She never should have sent him away like that—with ultimatums and demands—but he should have given her
something
.

Words and promises had not been enough. The fierce lovemaking had not been enough. She'd needed tenderness and love, not lust. She'd needed trust and faith, not doubt and suspicion. She'd needed to know that she was important to him. That she mattered. That she wasn't merely a bedtime distraction for the war that had always defined him.

She couldn't believe he was alive. But the initial jump of hope in her heart for what this might mean had been swiftly crushed by the knowledge that he'd returned for her father, not her. Of course, he wanted nothing to do with her. And she . . . she didn't know what to think. She'd accepted Eoin's death, and put her love for him behind her. But seeing him again had brought it all back.

They'd been riding hard for about three hours, slowing only when they were forced to veer from the road near one of the larger castles, or, like now, when they had to pause to determine which fork in the road her father had taken. Although it was clear her father was heading for the Cumbrian coast, there were many different roads to get him there.

Out of the corner of her eye, she took advantage of the rare pause in their chase to observe her husband, who'd ridden up ahead of her to speak with the handsome, if stoic-looking, warrior who appeared to be leading the tracking of her father.

Her husband might have changed—the overly muscled scary-looking brigand was not the young warrior she remembered—but he was still undeniably handsome. Maybe even more so, time and battle having put a few more hard edges on his fiercely wrought features.

But that had never been what had attracted her. It had been something deeper—something far more elemental. It was the razor-sharpness of his mind, the aura of strength around him, and the way he looked at her. All that brooding intensity that had been impossible to resist. She'd wanted it for herself. She'd wanted to know what he was thinking. She'd wanted to
be
what he was thinking. And like a moth to the flame she'd been drawn in until they'd both gone up in flames.

Him in that pyre, and her in the pits of hell that she'd trudged through in the days after. She'd cried for days, unable to sleep or eat. She'd blamed herself and wanted to die—thought she deserved to die. If it hadn't been for the discovery of her pregnancy, she might have done just that.

Eachann had given her a reason to live, and she'd be damned if she'd let the husband that had let her think he was dead for six years take him from her.

No matter what she'd done.

She'd made a mistake—a horrible one—but it hadn't been intentional. She hadn't thought she'd had a choice. But he had. Eoin had chosen to let her think he was dead, and in doing so, had cost her son a father for five years. If Eoin did not know his son, it wasn't because of her.

Almost as if he knew what she was thinking, his eyes shifted to hers. Their gazes held for a long heartbeat, before his expression darkened and he resumed the conversation—if the brusque exchange of words could be considered a conversation—with the other warrior at what seemed a harsher clip.

Eoin hadn't spoken to her since they left the church, and it appeared he was doing his best to pretend she didn't exist. He should be good at it, with six years of practice. Now that the shock of his survival had waned, Margaret felt herself growing angry. How could he have done this?

Her anger only grew worse as the chase resumed. Despite the grueling pace, her father was eluding them. Margaret didn't know whether to be sad or glad. Even with her father's increased bitterness over the past few years, she still loved him and didn't want to see him captured. After the slaughter at Loch Ryan and the execution of Bruce's two brothers in the aftermath, she didn't want to think about what kind of vengeance the king would take from the man responsible. Although “the Bruce,” as the people called him, had been remarkably conciliatory toward some of the men who'd stood against him—including the Earl of Ross, who'd violated sanctuary to capture his wife, daughter, sister, and the formidable Countess of Buchan—would he do the same for the man who'd turned over his two brothers to King Edward for certain execution?

He might. Which was one more sin her husband could lay at her feet. The Bruce had lived up to Eoin's faith in him; the king and his “lost cause” had been good for Scotland. Margaret should have had more faith in her husband. But it had seemed so hopeless, and she'd been terrified of what would happen to him if King Edward caught up with them.

It wasn't unlike the fear she felt now. Her fear for her father warred with her fear for her son. The boy must be terrified and exhausted—her father must be holding him up in the saddle by now.

As the sky grew dark, her fear worsened. Where were they? Surely they should have caught up to them by now? If they continued like this through the darkness someone would get hurt.

The next time they paused for one of their painfully short breaks to water the horses, Margaret could hold her tongue no longer. She found Eoin, talking to that same warrior again. Both men fell silent as she drew near. She looked back and forth between them, thinking that there was something similar about them. They were both tall, broad-shouldered, and built like a couple of King Edward's siege engines, but it was something more than that. It was the way they held themselves, the aura of invincibility, and the granite stillness of their expressions.

If she'd hoped to find sympathy from one of these men, however, it would not be from the tracker. The hostility in Eoin's dark-blue eyes was only marginally less in the tracker's.

From their continued silence, it seemed the other man also shared her husband's gruffness of manners and propensity for silence. They must be grand friends.

She pursed her lips and tipped her head to the unknown warrior. “My lord. I assume you know who I am. But as ‘Lazarus' here has decided to dispense with the pleasantries, I'm afraid I don't know whom I am addressing.”

He arched a brow and shot a look to Eoin before turning back to her. “Ewen Lamont, my lady.”

She smiled as if to say,
Now that wasn't too hard, was it?

Eoin must have objected to the smile because he bit out, “What do you want, Margaret?”

Aside from this scintillating conversation? Aside from an explanation of where in Hades he'd been for almost six years? She gritted her teeth so the bitter words wouldn't fly out and forced moderation to her tone. “We have to stop.”

“There are plenty of castles in the area. If you are too tired to go on, I'm sure they will open their gates to Dugald MacDowell's daughter.”

She was tempted to point out they might not welcome Eoin MacLean's wife. “I'm not too tired. But it's getting dark. If you keep pushing like this someone will get hurt—
Eachann
could get hurt.”

He stiffened, and the other man—Ewen Lamont—turned to look at him. “Eachann?”

“My son,” she explained. “
Our
son.”

Lamont muttered what she thought was a rather strong curse, and his gaze went to Eoin's for confirmation.

Eoin's mouth tightened. “She claims the lad with MacDowell is my son.”

Lamont gave a long, low whistle and shook his head, his expression seemingly one of sympathy for Eoin.

Margaret had to bite her tongue to keep from arguing about “claims.” “I know you want to catch my father, but if you keep pushing like this, my father will keep pushing, and Eachann is the one who will suffer. Have you thought of what this pace must be like for him?”

Eoin answered with a flex of his jaw that made a muscle start to tic. “What do you suggest we do? Let your father escape? If he makes it to the coast and a ship, we won't have a chance of catching them before he reaches whatever heavily fortified castle he decides to hole up in. They can't be more than mile or two ahead of us. We would have caught them by now had we not needed to avoid the parties of English soldiers your father sent after us. But there is no bloody way in hell I'll stop now.”

Margaret couldn't believe this brutal, uncompromising man was her husband. He was more like . . .

She grimaced. He was more like her father. “So you would put your son's life at risk to prevent my father slipping through your fingers?”

Eoin kept a tight rein on his temper. He didn't need to defend himself to her. “It isn't me who has put his life at risk. It's your father.” He looked to Lamont. “Come on. We've rested long enough.”

Eoin walked away. But just before Ewen Lamont went after him, she thought he glanced at her with a glimmer of sympathy.

“Your
son
, Striker? Christ, why didn't you tell me? I thought you took her with us for information.”

Eoin mounted his horse. “I did, and there wasn't time.”

Lamont shot him a look as if he knew the explanation was shite—which it was. But finding out that he had a son—a
five
-year-old son—had thrown him in such a state of shock and confusion the only thing he'd been able to concentrate on had been the mission. Find MacDowell and then he'd try to come to terms with the knowledge of a son. He sure as hell hadn't been ready to talk about it. He still wasn't.

“The lass is right,” his partner said. “This could be dangerous for the lad.
If
he is yours—”

“He's mine,” Eoin said, cutting him off angrily.

Lamont lifted a brow. “You didn't sound so certain a few minutes ago.”

Eoin grunted a nonanswer.

“More than one way to exact retribution, is that it?”

Eoin glared at him. “Do you blame me? You know as well as I what she did.”

His partner acknowledged the truth with a grim nod. “Aye. Although . . .”

Eoin's gaze narrowed. “Although what?”

Lamont shrugged. “I don't know. She's just not what I expected.”

“She hides the snakes beneath the veil.”

Lamont ignored the sarcasm. “She can't be much older than three and twenty.”

“She turned five and twenty last June.”

“She appears to genuinely care about the lad. And I saw her face when she saw you at the church. She didn't look like someone who had sent you happily to your death.”

Eoin's mouth drew in a hard line. “Yet that is exactly what she did.”

Lamont eyed him carefully. “You also didn't mention that she is rather . . . attractive.”

Eoin felt his muscles tense in a way they hadn't in a long time. His wife had always drawn attention—masculine attention. Maybe more so now than she did at eighteen. How had Fin put it? Ripe as a peach? She was even riper. “I didn't think it mattered.”

“It doesn't. But it was still a surprise. I didn't think anyone could rival MacLeod's wife.”

Eoin shot him a glare. “How about your own?”

Lamont lifted a sly brow, and Eoin swore, realizing his partner had tricked him into admitting more than he wanted. Eoin didn't care about her anymore, how the hell could he still be jealous?