The Viper (35 page)

Lachlan swore he could hear Boyd smirking. "Are you going to sharpen that blade all night?" he bit out angrily. "Aren't you supposed to be finding us a boat?"

Boyd didn't bother hiding his amusement. He got to his feet slowly, sliding his sword back in the baldric at his back. "Aye, I'm going. It might take me a while," he pointed out unnecessarily.

Lachlan was already painfully aware that he'd made a mistake. Boyd's amusement was a hell of a lot safer than being alone with her. Before he could think of a way to call him back, the other man was gone.

Steeling himself for what was to come, Lachlan pulled his tunic over his head. The quicker this was over, the better.

She didn't make a sound but went perfectly still. Jaw clenched, he kept his eyes straight ahead. Horror. Disgust. Pity. He didn't want to see any of them. If she thought this was bad, she should see his back. But as it was, she stood in front of him and could see only the smattering of battle scars that crossed his chest and arms.

Growing impatient and wanting this torture to be over, he ventured a glance in her direction. It was a mistake. It wasn't the scars, the cuts, or the bruises that had made her hesitate.

She was ...

Hell, she was staring at his chest as if she were starving, and he was a platter of marzipan.

He swelled harder. He couldn't take this. "Is something wrong?" he snapped.

She blushed and quickly averted her gaze. Picking up the salve, she began to tend the cut on his arm. It was a deep sword slice across his forearm from the Battle at Brander a couple of months ago, which had reopened at the hands, fists, and feet of Comyn's men.

Having her hands on him was no easier the second time around. His nerve endings snapped and fired with every touch. He felt as if he were jumping out of his damned skin. Especially when her finger started a slow trace of the mark on his arm.

A few days ago he would have taken care to hide it. The lion rampant, the symbol of Scotland's crown, set in a shield and encircled with the torquelike band of a spiderweb. It was the mark borne by all members of the Highland Guard. As many of the Guard had done, he'd personalized his, with two swords crossed behind the shield and a viper coiled in the web. She might not know it was the mark of the Guard, but the symbolism was clear.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

He met her accusing stare. "I took an oath. Besides, it was
--is
--too dangerous."

"You pretended to be nothing more than a hired sword, and instead I find out you are part of the most revered fighting force in Scotland? A member of the king's closest retinue. I thought you had no loyalty. I thought you'd betrayed me. And now I find out this? If you'd told me--"

"It wouldn't have changed anything."

"It would have for me. I might not have spent two years hating you for something you did not do." Suddenly, her eyes widened with realization. "Robert and Sir Alex? William and Magnus? The two men at the convent?"

"Stop!" he said, grabbing her wrist to pull her hand away from his arm. Fear made his heart pound. She knew too much. "Don't ask, don't even think about any of it. Don't you understand how dangerous knowledge is? Do you know what those men would have done to you if they thought you could tell them anything?" She paled. "Forget you heard anything they said."

He should have known better than to try to scare her. "Haven't I earned the right to know the truth?"

He clenched his jaw. "Not if it puts you in danger. Damn it, Bella, don't you understand? My former brother-in-law found out that I was a part of the guard, and now I have a price on my head to rival Bruce's. They will do anything to find out the names of the other men. Anything. It isn't just the other men at risk--their families will be in danger."

She lifted her chin, not backing down one inch. "I wouldn't say anything."

He nearly laughed. "Spoken like someone who has never been tortured."

"And you have?"

"Aye," he said bluntly. He hadn't broken, because at the time he hadn't cared about anything. He didn't have a weak spot. Then. "Care to see a sampling?"

He turned his back.

This time she gasped. Her eyes widened. He saw the horror that he feared, but also something else. Something unexpected. Something like admiration.

"My God, Lachlan." Her fingers ran over the jagged lines where the steel hooks had pierced and ripped his flesh, nearly to the bone. "To survive this ..." Their eyes met. "What happened?"

Once he'd told her to ask him anything. He had no secrets. He didn't care. His past was behind him.

But something had changed. Her care, her concern, her questions had opened old wounds.

And he feared it would reveal too much to a woman who had already gotten too close.

Bella knew he didn't want to tell her. He was pulling away from her, just as he'd been doing for the past two days. The closer they drew to safety, the farther away he seemed.

If she thought the way he'd avoided her and acted as if nothing had happened between them had hurt, it was nothing compared to the pain she'd experienced on hearing his crude disavowal to Robbie Boyd. Not until that moment did she realize just how much she'd come to care for him.

"
Just because I want to fuck her ...
"

If he'd pointed an arrow at her heart it couldn't have been aimed more perfectly. Her chest squeezed and burned. To be an object of lust and nothing more. Dear God, would a man ever want her for something more?

She'd thought Lachlan was different. She'd thought ...

What, that because it had felt special to her, it was to him? Had prison left her so desperate for a connection that she'd felt one where there wasn't?

No. She couldn't believe that was all it had been to him. He didn't mean it. He'd probably just been trying to stop Boyd's probing. Probably. But she couldn't be sure.

Perhaps his past would give her a clue. She wanted to know the truth, not what people said about him. She wanted to know everything about
him
.

"Tell me," she asked again. Knowing he hated being challenged, she added, "I thought you had nothing to hide?"

He knew what she was doing but answered her with a shrug. "There isn't much to tell. My wife was very young, very beautiful, and very spoiled. I was infatuated with her." Though he said it without emotion, Bella's heart pinched. It seemed so unlike him. "Within a few months, Juliana's ardor waned, and she regretted her impulsivity in marrying a bastard without much land to his name--even if he was a chieftain to a clan."

Bella paled. "You were chieftain?"

He smiled tightly. "Aye, for a while I did 'my duty,' as you call it. I was completely unaware of my wife's discontent, too blinded by lust to see what was happening right before my face. She devised a way to get rid of me--quite an ingenious little plan, actually--telling her brother that I intended to betray him. Unfortunately, Lorn believed her.

"At the time, King Edward was acting overlord of Scotland, and he was furious at Lorn and the rest of the MacDougalls for a recent spate of attacks on English soldiers. My brother-in-law decided this was a good opportunity to get back in the king's good graces. He needed someone to blame, and I was convenient. He sent me and my men on what was supposed to be a raid, but instead it was a slaughter--our slaughter. I alone survived. Forty-four men who'd followed me into battle never went home to their families."

She put her hand on his arm. God, no wonder he'd turned from his clan! He blamed himself for the deaths of all those men. "Oh, Lachlan, I'm--"

He ripped it away as if her comfort scalded him. "I'm not done. You wanted to know; now you'll hear all of it."

The mask of detachment had slipped. The fury of emotion revealed itself in the angry sneer of his mouth. "I should have died along with them." He pointed to a two-inch-wide circular scar on his shoulder. "Unconscious, with a spear pinned through my shoulder, the English left me for dead. Which I would have been in a few hours, had I not been found by my kinsmen--and enemies--the MacDonalds. I 'recovered' in a MacDonald prison for a few months, before my cousin, Angus Og, for reasons of his own, decided to help me escape. He was the one who asked me to join the Bruce," he said as an aside. "He tried to warn me about my wife, but I didn't want to listen. I didn't realize the truth until I returned to Dunstaffnage Castle, to find Juliana betrothed to another man--a much more rich and powerful man."

The lack of bitterness and emotion in his voice made her heart go out to him all the more. She wanted to touch him but knew that he wouldn't accept her comfort. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

"Juliana pretended to be glad to see me, right up to the point that her brother threw me in his pit prison and gave me these," he pointed to his back, "while trying to get me to confess my alleged betrayal." He laughed. "I think even he started to have doubts about my guilt after a while."

Horror washed over her at the calm manner with which he spoke of the cruelties inflicted on him. It was almost as if he were talking about someone else. She knew she was getting the barest sketch of what had happened and that he was leaving out things she didn't even want to imagine.

It certainly explained his reaction in the tunnel and to going into the pit prison at Peebles. She, better than anyone, understood that particular source of fear.

Their eyes met, and it was as if he knew what she was thinking. "Ah, yes, you discovered my little secret, didn't you? I've no fondness for dark holes."

He said it as if it should lessen her impression of him. But how could she not but admire him after all he'd been through? He'd been betrayed by those closest to him, had been imprisoned, and withstood suffering she couldn't imagine. He'd scraped and fought back after everything had been taken from him.

He'd survived.

Just as she had. "And I have no fondness for small rooms and bars." Their eyes held for a moment in shared understanding. She glanced down at the lock by his foot and understood something else. "The manacles. The lock in the tunnel. Is that why you are so good at getting past them?"

He lifted a brow in a mocking salute, obviously surprised that she'd made the connection. Reaching down behind his ankle, he slipped something from the leather sole of his boot and held it up for her inspection. It looked like a nail, but without the sharp tip. "I keep a spare in my boot, in case I am without my sporran. Unfortunately, working locks is a skill I learned only later. I escaped Dunstaffnage in a much less civilized way."

She tilted her head in question.

"There were so many rats they'd made wide holes under the walls. I dug my way out by following their path."

She shivered. Rats. She abhorred the vile creatures. One was bad enough, but hundreds? Good God, what must that have been like?

He stopped for a moment, but she knew he wasn't done. When she put her hand on his arm again, this time he did not shake her off. "What happened to your wife?"

"I should have just left, but I waited for her on a beach I knew she liked to walk on by the castle." Bleakness had crept into his matter-of-fact tone. "I confronted her. God knows what I was expecting. An excuse? An explanation? A denial? I was so angry, I needed
something
. She was shocked to see me, of course. I suspect she thought her brother had already had me killed. She feigned ignorance of my accusations, and God help me, I wanted to believe her. But as soon as my back was turned, she came at me with a dirk." Her gaze went to the jagged scar on his cheek. He smiled. "Aye, my reminder never to turn my back on a beautiful woman."

He said it in jest, but she suspected there was far more truth in it than he wanted to acknowledge. His wife's betrayal had molded him as much as his mother's rejection. Trust. Love. He knew neither. Anger and bitterness would have been easier to contend with. Cold acceptance was so much worse. How could he believe in something he didn't know existed?

"We struggled for the knife. I tripped and fell on her. When I stood up, the knife was lodged in her stomach. So you see, the rumors are true, at least in that respect."

"But it wasn't your fault! Good God, Lachlan, she was trying to kill you."

"She was a woman," he said tightly.

Bella stared at him in disbelief. "And so there can be no excuse?" She shook her head. "You claim to have no rules, no code but your own, but you are more conventional than you want to admit, Lachlan."

He gave her a sharp look, clearly not liking her observation. "When I returned home to my family at Castle Tioram, it was to find that I had been found guilty of treason, and my holdings, with what wealth I did have, declared forfeit."

"But surely your family--"

The muscle below his jaw jumped. "My family believed as everyone else."

"But didn't you explain?"

"Why? I realized my presence made it difficult for them, so I decided to go to Ireland and make what fortune I could as a gallowglass."

"So you expected blind loyalty from your family but won't give it yourself?"

White lines appeared around his mouth. "Leave it, Bella. Don't think you understand me; you don't."

But she couldn't leave it. For the first time so many things were clear to her. Why his reaction to her bothered him so much, and why he'd resisted it so strongly. He thought his feelings for his wife were to blame for the death of his men. That his desire for her--his lust--had made him fail his duty to his men.

It was clear he thought she posed the same threat. She understood why he didn't trust her. He'd known only unkindness and betrayal from the women who should have loved him. But she wanted him to trust her. "I'm not your wife, Lachlan. I would never betray you."

He laughed, making her feel naive again. "Everyone is capable of betrayal, Bella, everyone. It's only a matter of finding your weakness."

"So it's better to live your life in fear? To cut yourself off from everyone so that no one can ever hurt you?"

He gave her a hard look. "It's not me I'm thinking about."

His men
, she realized.
He's still punishing himself for the deaths of his men
.