Trapped behind walls of silence, Gavin spurred Manslayer away from the enchanted cottage, carrying his lady back to the reality of a rebel's cave and frightened orphans, soldiers hunting and a future that could never be.
It was the hardest thing the Glen Lyon had ever done. Yet even that anguish paled to nothing in comparison to the knowledge that seared his heart.
This would be the last time Gavin would ever hold his lady in his arms.
CHAPTER 15
Rachel struggled to hold herself as far from the wall of Gavin's chest as possible, a futile effort as each clop of the horse's hooves jarred her deeper into the arms of the man who had shattered her heart. Shattered it? No. Bruised it a little. All right-battered the blazes out of it. But not shattered it. The daughter of Lord General de Lacey was not made of such fragile stuff. And Gavin Carstares was about to discover that truth for himself.
Confound the man, Rachel cursed in silent fury. He'd done everything in his power to drive her away from him in that tiny, peat smoke-scented cottage. He'd infuriated her, hurt her, betrayed her so savagely that she might actually have driven him from her heart if it hadn't been for the piercing glimpses of desolation she'd seen in his storm-cloud gaze.
He'd used every weapon possible to keep her away from him in some warped, infernally heroic effort to save her from the path he'd taken. This man, who hated the feel of a sword in his hand, loathed the rage and the killing and the battles that never ended, would fight like a madman to keep her from sharing his fate.
Yet he had shared the night magic their love had spun. He'd tasted the glittering beauty of their kisses, felt the mutual wild response in every brush of their fingertips, the communion of spirits beyond imagining. It was too late to turn back now, to break the bonds he'd woven between their souls.
Nothing—neither threat of danger nor hurtful words, not even the unspeakable horror of losing him in a rush of violence—could drive her from his side. Because in spite of all he had said, she had seen the love in his eyes, the desperate longing, the shadow of hope some part of his soul still clung to.
Damn you, Gavin, you picked a bloody inconvenient time to play hero! I won't let you give me up as if you were some knight errant on some holy quest. I'll seep so deeply into your heart you'll never be able to wrench me free, not even to protect me from yourself.
She felt him suck in a bracing breath as they crested a rise that seemed familiar.
"Rachel."
It was the first time he'd spoken since they had set out that morning. She was furious at how hungry she was for the rough-velvet sound of his voice.
"I want you to know that I won't be sharing the cave room anymore." It shouldn't have surprised her. It had been miserable enough after one kiss, fighting to stay away from each other. Their lovemaking would make it near impossible. It shouldn't have hurt so much. But his rejection buried pain so deep inside her that it shoved the breath from her lungs.
"The door will be open," he continued. "You'll be allowed to come and go as you please."
"Trust you to be an innovative villain. A hostage held without shackles. Just think, I'll be free to race off into the Highlands again whenever the spirit moves me. It will give me such power. Imagine. I will be able to take away the only weapon you have to get the soldiers to allow your ship to anchor in the inlet."
"You won't leave," he said with quiet certainty.
"And you won't stay." It took all her strength to keep her voice from breaking. "You'll avoid me as if I have the plague. God forbid that Saint Gavin slip from his pedestal again, that you be tempted to kiss me, make love to me."
He didn't say a word. But she felt his muscles go rigid, his jaw clench where it pressed against her curls. Even his knuckles on the reins whitened in contrast to the dark leather. His fiercely held control enraged her when she felt as if she were crumbling to pieces.
"Tell me, Gavin, what is the Glen Lyon's exalted plan this time? Surely we won't charge up and tell Mama Fee the truth about what happened between us. No. That would be the logical thing, the fair thing to do. We'll just pretend everything is the same. Let her keep stitching on that wedding gown I'll never wear. Let her keep waiting for a son who will never come home to her. It should be even easier to make her believe we're in love since now you've bedded me."
She felt Gavin's muscles stiffen as if she'd dealt him a blow, but his voice was infuriatingly even and reasonable.
"There are only a few days until the ship arrives at Cairnleven," he said. "We'll get through it somehow."
"A few days to endure before I'm swept out of your life? I'm not going anywhere, Gavin. I'm not leaving you. Your infernal honor be damned!"
"You're going back where you'll be safe."
"Am I? And how are you going to achieve that feat, oh brave and mighty Glen Lyon? What are you going to do? Tie me up and attempt to unkidnap me? Bind me and gag me and dump me into my bedchamber? Are you going to set guards up to make certain I stay there?"
"I won't have to." There was just enough unease in his voice to give her a bitter surge of satisfaction. "You'd never be able to find your way back to the cave," he insisted.
"But I'm just stubborn enough to try. Imagine it, Gavin. Me, riding alone through the Highlands searching for you—all those soldiers preying on helpless women, and you won't be anywhere near to save me.
"Damn it, Rachel, it's not a jest!" She could feel his control slipping notch by notch. "I know you're hurting. I know it's because of me. And I'm sorry. God's blood, if I could change things, I would."
"Of course you would!" Rachel laughed bitterly. "You'd wish away last night, erase the kisses and the caresses, the laughter, the tears, the hunger. You'd strip your life and mine of that magic because you're a bullheaded, nauseatingly noble idiot who doesn't have the brains to appreciate the fact that out of all this madness, we've been given a miracle."
"Was it a miracle? Or was it a curse on us both?"
White hot, the words lashed at her, spilling disbelief and hurt in their wake. "A curse?" she echoed.
"God knows it rivals the tortures of hell. Was the devil taunting me one last time when he sent you into my hands, Rachel?"
"Oh, I'm a curse, Gavin. No doubt about that," Rachel snapped back at him. "I'm dead certain the devil had nothing to amuse him on a Thursday afternoon, so he said, 'What can I do to torment Gavin Carstares? Let's see, what hideous fate could I devise for him? I know. I'll make him fall in love with a woman who would willingly walk through fire for him, who would be willing to follow him anywhere he named. I'll curse him with the possibility of a life with that woman and children to love him. What a torturous fate that would be.'"
She couldn't see Gavin's face, only felt his shoulders sag, heard the rough burr of defeat in his tone. "Don't you see, Rachel? If it wasn't a curse, it was a dream, impossible to hold from the first moment I looked on your face."
She stiffened, her voice ruthless, cold. "I suppose that I finally do understand, Gavin. I was wrong about you. You are a coward. The worst kind—one who cloaks his own fear in noble lies, who pretends he's being selfless when he's truly running away."
She could feel her verbal sword thrust cut him more deeply than any blade honed of steel. Knowledge that she'd hurt him sickened her, yet she couldn't stop it, didn't dare give him a place to hide from what he was throwing away, not if there was any chance she could make him see.
"I told you from the first what I was," he admitted in a soul-weary voice that broke her heart. "You should rejoice at the prospect of getting away from this glen and from me."
He guided the horse down through a copse of trees and the pillar-shaped jut of stone that signaled the entry to the hidden glen where the cave lay. Even through the thunderous coursing of her hurt, Rachel heard something discordant below—a dozen or so voices raised in alarm.
She could tell Gavin heard it at the same instant, for he swore, low, under his breath. Gavin's arm all but crushed her ribs to brace her on the horse a
s he spurred his mount down into the glen that sheltered the entrance to Glen Lyon's cave.
Terror stabbed deep, and Rachel half expected to see the area crawling with red-uniformed soldiers, triumphant as they herded Mama Fee and the little ones into the same kind of hell they'd created in the desecrated village.
But the motley cluster of people who had gathered in the hollow were the very opposite of the spit-polished English soldiers she'd imagined. Ragged plaids were draped about men far too thin, their gaunt faces hardened by defeat and the poison that had spread across their land. Women cradled their babies, while a scattering of smaller children clung to their skirts, their faces drawn, as if they'd just been told Satan had defeated the angels.
The orphans, who had been racing around the clearing, shouting war cries and battling with stick-swords the morning Rachel had fled the glen, were now huddled together, their cheeks tear-streaked, their eyes unutterably old. Mama Fee looked as fragile as a butterfly whose wings had been shredded by the beak of a hawk.
"What the devil?" Gavin cursed, and Rachel could feel that his sudden alarm mirrored her own.
The approaching hoofbeats made the others look up, the men grappling for their weapons, the women gathering up children like worried hens. Yet the instant the horse came into full view, the people gaped as if Gavin had just risen from the dead.
Swords drooped at the ends of limp arms, pistols wavered, as if their weight had suddenly grown too heavy. The reaction should have relieved Rachel, yet somehow it only served to make her more unsettled. Something was horribly wrong.
Mama Fee was the first to recover from the strange spell that seemed to grip them. With a glad cry, the old woman ran toward them, her bare feet skipping like a girl's across the ground, her eyes star-bright with tears.
Gavin reined his horse to a halt just in time to keep the old woman from being bruised by its great hooves.
"My lad! My lad!" Fiona cried, grasping Gavin's breech leg. "Oh, sweet Jesus, thank God you're safe!"
"Of course I'm safe. It would take more than a troop of scurvy soldiers to get the best of me." Gavin lifted Rachel down, then dismounted himself. Rachel's heart clenched as he turned and opened his arms to the distraught woman. Fiona flung herself against his chest, weeping a mother's tears, the tears of a mother who had already sacrificed far too much.
Mama Fee's fingertips traced Gavin's face, as if to assure herself he was real. "Malcolm and the others came. They said they'd met these people on the road. Strangers. They said that you were captured! They said the soldiers were going to execute you! I was so afraid. I couldn't—couldn't bear to lose another of my bairns."
"They'd need a long rope to stretch here from Edinburgh, sweeting," Gavin said, pinching her parchment-pale cheek with a tenderness that made Rachel's eyes burn. "You needn't fear, Mama. Just think how humiliating it will be for the bloody braggarts when they are expected to produce the Glen Lyon, and they've nothing but some phantom. We must have made them desperate indeed, if they've stooped to pretending that I'm in custody."
"They're damned determined to make it seem real," a man whose mouth was misshapen from a sword cut said. "Saw them dragging the poor bastard along the road in chains. Saw it with my own eyes, I did."
Gavin frowned. "What the devil?"
"'Twas the Glen Lyon. Saw him with my own eyes. They'd beaten the bloody hell out of him, but he was still spittin' defiance, laughin' at the bastards despite how savage they were treatin' him."
"This is the Glen Lyon, you bloody fool." A burly Scot thrust his finger at Gavin.
Gavin put Mama Fee away from him gently, but his hands were suddenly numb. "You saw someone? Who the blazes could it be?"
"Beggin' yer pardon, but it's still a sight easier believing he was the Glen Lyon, 'stead of you. And besides, he was claimin' to be the rebel lord loud enough to hear clear in London."
Gavin's heart gave a painful thud against his ribs. "This man—what did he look like?"
"A blasted mountain, he was, with fierce eyes and hair black as the devil's own. Looked as if he could crush the chains to dust with his bare hands."
Gavin struggled for balance. No. It couldn't be Adam. Jesus, it couldn't be. Adam, who was three times as wily as any soldier; Adam, who had seemed invincible from the first moment Gavin had stared at him across the length of their father's study, a wary, heartsick boy, whose mother had just been buried, confronting the brawny black-haired youth who was obviously everything their father could desire in a son.
You can bloody well stop fighting it, Adam, Gavin could hear his father decree. Gavin is going to live at Strawberry Grove now. You're brothers. You'll bloody well act like it....
"There must be some mistake." Gavin's voice sounded like a stranger's. "It must be some—some poor madman they stumbled on." He wheeled on the man who had spoken, grabbing a fistful of plaid. "Tell me, was there anything else about him, anything else you saw?"
"I was hiding by the side of the road, but they shoved the poor bastard as he was passing, and he fell, barely an arm's length away from me. His eyes were black, and there was a scar—here." The man stroked one finger along the left side of his jaw.
Gavin reeled, images flashing before his eyes: two boys pummeling each other, Adam's blows landing with painful precision, Gavin's glancing off, barely causing his half brother to flinch. Then, suddenly, Gavin had landed a punch that sent Adam careening into the stable door. Skin split, blood flowed, and Gavin had stood, frozen, appalled at what he'd done.
Adam had never told his father what had happened, and Gavin had sat, silent, watching as the surgeon stitched up Adam's jaw. The small scar had marked the beginning of a wary acceptance between the two brothers, brothers who loved each other, yet understood each other not at all.
"Adam," he said aloud. "They must have captured him when he was leading the women and children away from the village. But why? Why would he claim to be the Glen Lyon when he's not—" A low cry of realization tore from Gavin's chest, and he staggered back, the blood draining from his face, his hands trembling.
What would make a man claim to be something he was not? Condemn himself to a torturous death that should be the fate of another? Adam—bold, brash Adam, who tried to pretend he cared about nothing, no one—was sacrificing himself in Gavin's place. Why was he flinging himself to death? To give Gavin a chance at life? Make it possible for Gavin to lose himself God knows where, without the deadly Glen Lyon to make him a fugitive the rest of his days?
"No!" Gavin roared, blind rage and pure terror jolting through him. "I won't let that bloody fool do it! I won't—"
"Gavin?" Rachel's voice—it came to him through a red haze. "Gavin, you're frightening Mama Fee. What—what is it?"
"Gavin, please... they don't have my Adam," Mama Fee said quaveringly. "It couldn't be... Adam." Tears brimmed from the old woman's eyes, and she seemed to age a hundred years.
"Sir, there is one more thing you should know. The execution has already been set. It's irregular as blazes, but Cumberland wants the Glen Lyon dead before any aid can be mustered in his defense."
"The Highlanders would die in a trice for the man—" someone called from the back of the crowd.
But the man shook his head, interrupting. "What they fear most is interference from England. The Glen Lyon has secret sympathizers in some of the most powerful stations in the land. Cumberland fears an appeal to the king for mercy."
"How long? How long before the execution?" Gavin demanded.
"Two days from now. At dawn."
Two days! That would barely give him time to reach Furley House and attempt a rescue.
"God help me," Gavin muttered, but the plea died on his lips as he caught the sound of rustling in the brush. Gavin looked up to see the soot-smudged face of a woman—the brave lady who had helped him hand the children from the burning building, the woman who had been the strength of the tiny band as it headed off on its dangerous trek across the bogs and moors.
She limpe
d toward him, her breath rasping, her legs and feet torn by briars, bruised by stone. Her eyes were bruised circles as she staggered into the clearing.
Gavin bolted toward her, shoring her up, this woman suddenly transforming what had seemed a nightmare into something excruciatingly real. "My brother! Where is he?"
"The English were closing in on us. They would have killed us all, but he—he charged out, drawing the troops away."
"Oh, God." Gavin swore. Bold, reckless Adam, riding hell for leather into disaster.
"He saved us all. We'd be dead if not for him. Before he rode out to face the soldiers, he bade me come to you," the woman said. "He asked me to tell you..."
"What? Tell me what?"
"He said that he got you into this rebellion. That this was his chance to make it right. He wants you to have a new beginning. Sail with the children."
"No!"
Had Adam carried that guilt all this time? Adam, all bluff and bluster, so careful not to let anyone see?
"He said his nurse always claimed he was born to hang. And he said one thing more: that he wanted you to be happy. You deserved to be happy."
Gavin reeled with the knowledge that while he'd been loving Rachel upon a heather bed, his brother had been in chains, being beaten and tortured. While Gavin had been wrapped in the cottage's enchantment, Adam had been riding alone to face the soldiers.
Gavin's throat closed, his eyes hot hollows of grief. He felt a hand on his arm—Rachel's hand, so soft, her face brimming with pain and compassion, as if she knew how Adam's sacrifice was scarring his soul.
"Gavin," Rachel choked out. "We have to do something, find some way to help him."
"I'm not going to let him die for me. Bloody bastard! I'm not going to let him!"
"Let me help you. I can go to Dunstan—even to Cumberland. They might listen to me. I'll make them listen—"