Gather the Stars

  "No!" Mama Fee protested. "Gavin is going to save Adam. They'll both come riding home."

  "How? He can't break Adam out of a prison by himself. The security surrounding a prisoner like Adam will be so heavy an angel himself couldn't slip into Adam's cell."

  "Gavin will find a way. You must have faith."

  "Faith won't save Gavin this time. He is riding into the middle of the English camp alone. You don't know how much they hate him. Half the officers would sacrifice their own mothers for the honor of bringing the Glen Lyon to justice."

  Mama Fee's brave smile seemed to crumble into dust, and Rachel hated herself as she pushed on.

  "Gavin is going to die if we don't help him. Just like your sons died. Like Timothy died."

  Mama Fee recoiled, shrank into herself as if the pain were devouring her from the inside out. "No! Timothy isn't dead! He's alive! I know it, I feel it."

  "He's dead, Mama Fee," Rachel said through the thick knot of grief wedged in her throat. "He's dead. But Gavin isn't! Not yet."

  Tears welled up in the old woman's eyes and flowed down cheeks like aged parchment. "No. No. Timothy's alive. Gavin is going to bring Adam back to me."

  "Gavin is going to be captured himself. And then—" She looked up at this woman, this mother she'd never had, and knew that it would be easier to strike her with a cudgel than to crush her spirit this way. She could barely force herself to continue. But she clung to the image of Gavin and the knowledge that Mama Fee loved him too much to allow him to die, that somewhere beyond the haze grief had spun about her soul, Mama Fee would endure anything to save him.

  "Do you know what they do to traitors, Mama Fee?" Rachel said, hardly able to frame the words herself. "Do you know what they'll do to Gavin?"

  "No! He's a good lad! He—"

  "He's the most wonderful, noble, brave man I've ever known. And they'll kill him in the most hideous way possible if we let them! They'll drag him out in front of an angry crowd, and they'll put a noose around his neck."

  "No," Mama Fee whispered. "No, no, no."

  "They'll hang him, just enough so he can't breathe, crush his throat until he's in agony. But they won't give him the peace of death."

  "Stop!" Mama Fee raised her hands to her ears, trying to blot out the horror. "I can't listen." Rachel grabbed her fragile wrists, dragging them away, tears burning her own cheeks.

  "Then they'll take him down, and then they'll cut him, Mama Fee, cut him with knives before he's dead, and—"

  "No!" Mama Fee ripped away from Rachel, her eyes wild, like a cornered deer feeling the first snapping bite of a wolf's fangs on its throat. The woman folded in on herself, a pulsing ball of grief, of human suffering. Sobs racked Mama Fee, and Rachel was terrified she'd broken the fragile thread of the woman's sanity.

  "Please, help me!" Rachel begged, clutching the old woman's quivering shoulders. "I can stop this, Mama Fee. I can help him! But not locked in this cave! I won't lose him," Rachel said fiercely. "I won't let him die. Please, Mama Fee. If you could have done anything to save your Timothy—anything—wouldn't you have tried it? All I ask is a chance."

  Fiona raised her face, and beneath the shine of tears, Rachel glimpsed a mother's hell. "I didn't even ask him not to go. I wanted to, but I didn't. I watched him march away, smiling, like each of the others. Sewed their stockings, packed them bannocks to fill their stomachs. I told them to stay warm and dry and I waved to them... smiled for them and let them go. They were such brave boys. Timothy—he ran back to me, he—he caught me in his arms and said... he said, 'I won't go, Mama, if you ask me not to.' But his eyes were full of hero tales, and I couldn't ask him... I couldn't ask him not to go."

  Rachel's heart felt broken, the shards cutting deep into her soul. "Mama Fee, please. It's not too late to save Gavin. If you help me, I vow I'll bring him back to you. Alive."

  The woman raised her face, a tenuous strength showing through the many wounds that lay behind her eyes. "How? How could you stop this?"

  "My father was a general. I grew up amidst the officers, and many of them know me. I was like a daughter to the regiment. They would listen to me, Mama Fee. I know that I can find someone who has the power to stop this madness."

  "But what if they won't..."

  "I'll find a way. But you have to help me escape. You have to help me."

  "Gavin said to keep you locked away." Mama Fee's voice broke.

  "Gavin told you to be strong so that when he dies you can help the children, get them away from here. Wouldn't you rather be strong and help him live?"

  Mama Fee lifted her hand to Rachel's cheek. "You would fight for him? For my Gavin?"

  "With the last beat of my heart."

  Those wise old eyes filled again with grief and desolation, but also a strength that awed Rachel, humbled her. "I have enough ghosts haunting my heart, Rachel child. I'll not stand by and add another. Be ready. When everyone sleeps, I will set you free."

  Sorrow sliced through Rachel. "Mama Fee," she whispered as the older woman started for the door, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your boys. About... Timothy."

  Fiona's eyes were glazed with tears as she pressed Rachel's hand. "If my boys are angels, they'll be watching over you when you ride tonight. They'll guard you for their mama's sake. Especially my Timothy."

  Rachel watched as Fiona slipped from the cave chamber. If my boys are angels... Mama Fee had said. Rachel could only pray that Mama Fee could send them to her. She needed a miracle.

  Was it possible to wrest Gavin and Adam from the hangman's noose? Was it possible even for General Lord de Lacey's cherished daughter to convince those in command to release them?

  Or would she be forced to try something that would test her courage even further?

  You will help my Gavin?

  With the last beat of my heart...

  Rachel paced to Gavin's desk and traced the intricate painted strands he had woven into the shape of a rose. Stunned, she realized that she would rather die at his side than live for an eternity without him, this man who had taught her to laugh, to love, to cry, this man who had made her alive for the first time.

  He'd spent the years since he'd first taken up his sword fighting for others, using his strength to shield them. He had mastered the ability to fight without losing the compassion in his soul. Now, Rachel would find a way to teach the Glen Lyon one final lesson. How to fight for himself.

  It seemed as if Mama Fee's angels had held Rachel in the palm of their hands. The night had no power to hurt her, the ribbon of road lit by a moon silvery as Gavin's eyes. Nothing, no night creature, no desperate fugitives, no hunting soldiers crossed her path. She rode, her heart thundering with desperation, fighting the dragging fear that even now she might be too late. Military justice was a hungry beast, and it had been starved of the Glen Lyon for far too long.

  Yet, Rachel couldn't even consider the possibility that Gavin lay dead. Neither could she blot out the persistent fear that chafed in her soul.

  The children. She had been taken hostage to guarantee their freedom. Would the ship still be allowed to sail if she charged into Dunstan's camp—alive, safe?

  Yes, Rachel vowed resolutely. Dunstan would understand that little Catriona, Andrew, and Mama Fee, that all the other children deserved a chance at a new life, far from the war and poverty sweeping across Scotland like flames from the Apocalypse. Dunstan was a soldier knighted for his courage. No brave man, no honorable man would shed the blood of innocents.

  Rachel gripped the reins of the horse Mama Fee had helped her steal from those belonging to Gavin's men and chewed her lower lip. Dunstan was no cold-hearted stranger, she reminded herself staunchly. She knew him. She had great affection for this man who had once been destined to be her husband. It would all turn out right in the end.

  Not all... Rachel thought with a nervous twinge. For somehow, she not only had to plead for Gavin's life, Adam's life, and for the safety of the orphans. Somehow, she also had to tell Dunstan that she could no
longer marry him.

  She looked down at her bare finger, remembering Gavin's face when he'd taken the heavy betrothal ring—proof that she was indeed in his hands. And a subtle stirring of foreboding beat in her breast. What would Dunstan say and feel when she told him that she had fallen in love with an outlaw Jacobite, a man branded a coward and traitor? What would Dunstan say when she told him that she, proud Rachel de Lacey, who had scorned the bravest men in the king's army, would now gladly follow her rebel lord anywhere he might name? That she had already surrendered to him her heart, and her maidenhead in a humble Scottish croft on a heather bed?

  No. Rachel shoved the thought aside. She would find some way to explain it all to Dunstan, once Gavin and Adam were free. He would understand.... She shivered, remembering Nathaniel Rowland's features as he'd told how deep and thick the hatred between Dunstan and Gavin ran.

  She had ridden all night, and now, at daybreak, the horse crested a hill. Rachel drew rein, gazing at the building below—yet she really did not see the edifice where Gavin was held. Her eyes fixed instead on the bright yellow of new wood, the hammering and sawing of men constructing something on the front lawn.

  Rachel's heart thudded, her throat closed. Gallows.

  She shut her eyes against the images that spilled into her mind: Gavin, walking to that gallows, his gray eyes filled with courage, his soul braced by the hope that his orphans were safe. She could imagine him filling up his heart with memories of the green fields he so loved in far-off Norfolk as the noose was being fitted around his neck. And Rachel knew with agonizing certainty that her face would be painted against the private darkness of his eyes when he closed them; the memory of her touch, the impossible beauty of the dream they had shared on the heather bed would fill him with unbearable regret as death reached out to claim him.

  "Stop it!" Rachel railed at herself. "You're going to get him away from all this. No matter what you have to do." She reached down, brushing her fingertips against the hard weight of the pistol she had managed to hide beneath her skirts as a precaution. She prayed she'd not have to use it.

  Then, she coaxed the horse into a canter down the road. The men working on the gallows looked up; the guards, posted about the estate, stiffened, every eye boring into her. It was no wonder they stared, Rachel thought. She must have appeared like some wild woman riding down on them, the warrior queen Bodacia Gavin had told the children about.

  Her hair, tugged free of its pins by the wind, flowed in a tangle about her shoulders. Her gown, one that had encased Adam's mistress's considerable charms, was travel stained and rumpled. Rachel could only imagine what her eyes held if they were truly mirrors of the soul—desperation, terror, resolve. And love. God help her, Dunstan must not see the love.

  "Who the devil?" One of the soldiers demanded, leveling his pistol. But at that moment, one of the other men glanced up. Bertram Townsend had served under her father in years past, given Rachel his pocket watch to play with, told her tales of her father's heroism—before she'd realized how easy it must be to be brave with an entire regiment between you and your enemies. The grizzled sergeant gave a whoop and pushed the other soldier's weapon toward the ground.

  "Jesus save us! It's Mistress Rachel!" he bellowed, bolting toward her.

  Rachel drew rein as Bertram hauled her down from her mount. The other men flung down hammers and saws, shoved pistols back into place, and raced toward her, astonished, overjoyed, as if their own daughter had suddenly been brought back from the dead.

  Bertram swung her around in dizzying, delighted circles, as he had when she'd been a child in satin slippers and hair ribbons. "Rachel, me girl! However did you escape? But of course you did! You're your papa's daughter, after all! No thieving band of rebels could keep our girl in tow!"

  "It's a long story—how I got away. I promise to tell all later. But now—I need to see Sir Dunstan at once," Rachel said, as the soldier set her on her feet.

  "And so you shall, missy! There's men who thought him cold these past few weeks, but I know he's been half out of his mind with worry. Tough as your father would have been, was Dunstan. Takin' care of his duties as if he were made o' stone instead o' flesh and blood. You would have been proud of him."

  Rachel felt only a cold lump in her chest at the memory of her mother's portrait being stripped from the wall, her father's face impassive as his wife was banished forever from his life. Had Dunstan banished her just as easily?

  Rachel forced a smile, yet despite her welcome by these men who had always been devoted to her, she couldn't shake the chilling fact that this reunion was set against the backdrop of a half-made gallows Gavin was destined to die on.

  "You know, Sir Dunstan captured the curs who did this to you, Mistress de Lacey," a youth, beet red with devotion, piped up. "He's got two of them locked up right now, ready to hang. And all of us, down to the last man, have been fighting over who gets to kick the stool from beneath their feet. We'll be pure rejoicing watching them die."

  Rachel felt the blood drain from her cheeks, her fingers clenching in the fabric of her gown. Hatred. It gleamed in the eyes of every man surrounding her, so palpable it made her tremble. They were hungry for the Glen Lyon's blood, these men who had dandled her on their knee, the younger ones who had squired her about ballrooms and plied her with pretty trinkets. They had always wanted to bring this man to justice as a traitor to the crown, but this rage was different, personal. It was obvious in every face turned toward her: they wanted Gavin Carstares's blood because he had dared to touch her.

  Was there even one she could ask for help? One she could trust?

  Only one, and he was back in Edinburgh, one of his legs gone, his wife in another man's bed. Nate Rowland. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the ball that seemed a lifetime ago—and she would have sold her soul to be able to reach Nate somehow, to tell him...

  I wish to God I could ride at the Glen Lyon's side, Nate had said. He'd seen, he'd known, he'd understood the horror. But she had been too blind to see it. These soldiers, loyal to Dunstan, would not understand any more than she had. No—she would have to do this alone.

  The thought sobered her, unnerved her as Bertram escorted her inside, bolting along like a child with the most glorious Christmas gift ever.

  He barged straightaway into the dining room, the gruff conversation of the cluster of officers within dying in a breath of stunned outrage. Rachel stumbled in after Bertram, lost in the man's bulky shadow.

  "What the blazes is the meaning of this intrusion?" Sir Dunstan demanded, but Bertram only beamed.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but look who just came charging down the hill, bold as Henry V at Agincourt!" Bertram gave Rachel's wrist a tug, and she stepped into the light.

  For an instant, Sir Dunstan glared, his lips twisting in a sneer as if she were a camp follower who had dared defile his sacrosanct chamber. Then his eyes widened, one hand flattening on his medal-spangled chest. "Rachel?" he gasped, the blood draining from his face. "Rachel, my God!"

  He stumbled to his feet and rushed toward her, reaching out to touch her face, as if he expected her to disappear, some phantom of his imagination.

  "It's me, Dunstan," she said as he smoothed his pristine fingertips across the smudges of grime on her cheeks.

  "Leave us." Sir Dunstan barked out the order, the other officers and Bertram tumbling pell-mell from the room in a hail of good wishes and praise for her resourcefulness.

  The instant the door shut behind them, Sir Dunstan's arms swept around her, crushing her against him. The medals bit into the tender flesh of her breasts as his mouth came down on hers in a kiss that ground her lips against her teeth.

  "I can hardly believe it's you!" he rasped, breaking the kiss. "How ever did you get away?"

  "A woman named Fiona Fraser helped me. She unbarred the door and helped me find a horse."

  "Thank God! I've been out of my mind, picturing you, helpless in that bastard's clutches! If it had been in my power, I woul
d have razed every inch of this godforsaken land to find you! God, when I think of you at the mercy of animals like that—" His face contorted with very real pain. "But you escaped them, didn't you, Rachel? My brave, bold love! Christ, what an officer's wife you'll make!"

  She flinched inwardly, wanting nothing more than to extricate herself from his embrace. His muscles pressed against her in an overzealous embrace, as if in some subtle way he was intent on making her feel that his strength, his power, was superior to hers.

  She saw his features harden, his eyes blaze with cold fire. "Did they hurt you, Rachel? I vow, if one of those traitorous bastards so much as laid a finger on you, I'll tear them apart with my bare hands!"

  "No!" Rachel said, flattening her palms against his chest, gaining enough space to breathe. "No, they were—they were kind to me. They never meant me any harm!"

  "Never meant you any harm?" Sir Dunstan echoed with a bitter laugh. "They abducted you, held you hostage! They threatened to kill you if I didn't accede to their demands."

  "I know, but—but they would never have done so. I'm certain of it."

  Sir Dunstan's brows crashed together over his hawklike nose, displeasure and confusion tightening his thin lips.

  "What the devil is the matter with you? You're acting so strange—" Sir Dunstan grabbed up her hands. Rachel couldn't stifle the tiny gasp, a wince as his grasp chafed the abrasions that splashed her knuckles. Sir Dunstan's gaze flashed down, locking on the scrapes and bruises. "Jesus, Rachel! What happened to your hands?"

  I all but broke them pounding on a door, desperate to escape, to ride here and set the Glen Lyon free... Rachel couldn't meet Dunstan's eyes. She pulled away from him, crossed to where an elegant sideboard was weighted with enough food to feed the children at the Glen Lyon's cave for three months.

  "It's nothing," she insisted. "I came to you, Dunstan, the instant I was free. I knew that when I reached you, everything would be all right again."