Laird of the Wind (12 page)

He did not. "I do not bear you a grudge," he said firmly. "But you know well what you have done to me."

"Have I burned your castle or stolen your freedom, as you have done to me?" Her voice rose to a shout.

He held up a hand, palm out, a swift, silencing gesture. "Your words took away what small chance for peace I had in my life. Your words ruined my name, and set all this in motion."

She stared at him. "Do you mean one of my—my visions?"

He nodded. "Aye. You know what you said of me."

She blinked in astonishment. "I know naught."

"You know far more than naught," he snapped.

"But I do not recall what I said. If you have heard the prophecy, then you know my words better than I."

He snorted doubtfully. "Who told you to say what you did of Wallace, and of me?"

"Wallace—" She paused, her heart beating fiercely. She had strived to remember one prediction out of all of them; she knew, now, what he meant. "No one told me what to say. The words just come to me."

"Do you know the damage your words have caused?" he growled.

Isobel saw the thunder in his eyes. "I meant no harm through my visions," she said. The thought pierced her with a deep hurt. "I forget the prophecies as soon as I say them. I am sorry if whatever came from me harmed you and yours. I want my prophecies to help people." She looked up at him with true regret. "Mayhap that will bring you some sense of peace."

"Hardly," he muttered. He yanked so firmly on the leather piece, in her distraction, that she let go. Her horse stepped forward to follow his. She rode in the wake of his silence, like a boat riding through a storm.

"If Ralph does house your lover at Wildshaw," she said, after a while, "then let me go there and I will ask him to release her. Then we will both have what we want, without all this fuss of ransom and anger."

"We will not talk more of this now," he said over his shoulder. "I will wait until you are rested and less irritable."

"Irritable! You are the ill-willed one here."

He said nothing, his back to her. The steady footfalls of the horses filled the silence. She watched him for a long time, seeing the wide strength of his back, the power in his arms and thighs, the beautiful strands of gold that threaded his hair—and the invisible iron rod that seemed to form the core of his being.

She remembered his gentle words, his warm touch. All that was irretrievably lost between them. She felt the disappointment of that like a betrayal.

"I thought I could trust you," she said. "I was wrong."

"You will not be the first to say that of me," he replied.

He kneed his horse to a canter, drawing her along behind him. Isobel gripped the horse's mane and glared at James's back, while she concentrated on keeping her balance at the pace he set.

Profound weariness, made heavier by fear and anger, settled like a lead cope over her shoulders. As they rode on, she grew too exhausted to even think about arguing with him. She rode in a daze, her body aching with fatigue, her wounds burning, her thoughts and emotions in a thick muddle.

When James slowed to silently hand her an oatcake that he took from a pouch at his waist, she said no word of thanks. She ate woodenly, hardly tasting it.

The sky was almost fully dark as they reached a narrow wooden bridge over a river. The moist air and the loud, white-capped rush of the water below them revived her senses, and she guided her own mount across the bridge. They left the riverbank and rode across a moor, entering the rim of the forest.

The trees seemed to swallow them in rich darkness. James slowed their pace, for only silvery strands of moonlight lit the earthen path. But he went steadily forward, as if he saw through the night, as if he knew this track blinded.

Isobel frowned at the thought. Her misery—physical, mental and emotional—increased as the horses' hooves thudded onward. She did not want to ride any farther; she did not want to be held hostage by this infuriating outlaw; she did not want to feel the deep aches of pain and fatigue any longer.

She did not even care to gain her freedom in this moment. All she truly wanted was to rest, and oddly, to be held and soothed like a child. Her thoughts could barely go beyond a simple yearning for someone who cared about her welfare, like her mother or her father, both gone in different ways. James Lindsay did not seem willing to offer her comfort ever again.

Tears pooled repeatedly in her eyes, and she dashed them away. Finally she let them slide silently down her cheeks, too tired to hold them back any longer. A great, wet, hiccoughing sob escaped from her, and James glanced at her. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then turned away, his jaw set tight.

As they reached a fork in the path and turned left, Isobel uttered a small, involuntary cry and slumped forward, collapsing in raw exhaustion. She hardly knew, or cared, if she fell or was lifted down. All she wanted was sleep.

She heard James murmuring her name, felt the his hand warm upon her cheek as she melted into a black void.

Chapter 8

Kee-kee-kee-er.

Pearled light filtered through the overhead leaves as James opened his eyes. Certain he had heard the cry of a hawk close by, he scanned the clearing in which they had spent the night, but saw no hawks overhead or in the trees. He glanced down

. Isobel lay stretched out beside him, wrapped in his cloak. He had dozed with his back against the wide trunk of an oak tree, while a sturdy root, covered by his cloak, served as her pillow and his armrest. She slept deeply, curled warm against his thigh, serene and lovely. But her snores created such earthy contrast that James smiled a little.

He remembered ruefully that his older brother had snored like that in the bed they had shared as boys. James had pinched and pushed at him to gain quiet, and his brother often returned a solid, sleepy punch before rolling over.

At the thought of his brother, killed on the bloody, tragic field at Falkirk seven years earlier, James lost the smile and tightened his mouth.

Kee-kee-kee-keer.

He heard, again, the unmistakable cry of a hawk. But it was an agitated kakking and not the drawn out, clear cry of a hawk in flight. To his practiced falconer's ear, the bird sounded distressed. James sat straighter, careful not to wake Isobel, and looked around the glade again. But he saw no hawks.

Beside him, Isobel blew out a long, loud breath. James patted her shoulder gently. She inhaled and sighed out another noisy snore. He touched the side of her jaw, petal soft yet firm beneath his fingertips, and she turned her head. The shift quieted her breathing. He rested his hand on her shoulder and continued to scan the glade, looking for the hawk.

He had dozed without sleeping deeply, but he felt alert. Years of living as a forest renegade had taught him to rest warily, his weapons close at hand. In the weeks since Wallace had been taken and his own name had become anathema, the ability had served him well.

He leaned back his head to look at the dense texture of the trees, pierced by shafts of light. The forest at dawn had a sleepy silence, and sounds carried clearly. He heard the soft, steady rush of a burn close by, the rustle of ferns as small creatures slipped past, and the whirr of wings among the leaves.

Odd, that. He frowned and glanced about again, his eyes, sharper than most, as keenly attuned to the forest as was his hearing. A handful of larks scattered into the early sky, a sure sign that a hawk was nearby, even without the kakking he had heard earlier.

If the hawk was a trained bird rather than a wild one, hunters would be nearby. Concerned, he glanced at Isobel and touched her shoulder to wake her, though he knew she needed the sleep. She whimpered and turned. Her body was firm and warm against his leg, and her cheek, soft as a sun-warmed rose, rubbed against his hand.

The sensation plunged through him and whirled in his groin. He withdrew his hand, but several pulsing moments passed before the honest reaction of his body calmed.

The hawk kakked again, somewhere close to the glade. He frowned and shoved his hair back in exasperation. He and Isobel should take to their horses again, and quickly. Hunters could be Scots or English, and willing to take a forest outlaw and a prophetess as a good day's quarry.

He decided to make certain before waking her. As he began to ease away from her, she moaned and turned further, resting her hand on his thigh.

His body throbbed with the sudden contact. He picked up her hand—delicate and fine-boned in his large fingers—and set it aside. She snuggled against him. He sighed heavily, looking down at her.

Total exhaustion had caused her to collapse last night, he knew. James regretted pushing her stamina, and her stubbornness, so far. He should have made camp long before she fell from her horse. Fortunately, he had caught her before she injured herself further, and he had discovered the little glade where they and the horses could rest safely.

Time had slipped inexorably toward dawn. Now they would be lucky to arrive at his aunt's house before the sun was high. He sighed again, aware that every plan he had made concerning Isobel Seton had unexpectedly altered, since the first moment he had sighted Aberlady Castle and found it besieged.

He had expected the prophetess to be a malicious, hard woman. To his dismay, her courage and grace made it difficult for him to coldly remember who she was and what she had done.

Subtle but certain, his body hardened and his heart softened whenever he was near her. He could not easily ignore the charm of her eyes, or the graceful sway of her supple body.

He had never met a truly irresistible woman. The one girl who had caught his young heart had been sweet and good, and had died horribly. In the years to follow, willing village girls interested him, but his fascination was easily sated, and his heart remained safe in his keeping.

The young prophetess enchanted him, distracted him, confused him, and touched off his temper like a flint. And her dazzling smiles, given to Quentin and even to rough-edged Patrick—but not to James—had made him simmer with unaccustomed jealousy.

And last night, her exhausted, lonely sobs had sliced through him. He was not pleased with himself for turning away, for she had collapsed soon afterward.

He shook his head mildly as he watched her, and wondered if he had met the woman he could not resist. Perhaps, together, they sparked one of those rare alchemical integrations of the male and female natures that he had read about in long, postulating theories, years ago.

God only knew what else it could be. He made a sour grimace as he thought again of the irony: he felt an extraordinarily pull to the prophetess of Aberlady.

If he succumbed to the effect she had on him, he would risk his sole chance to save Margaret, and revenge what had been done to his comrade, his kin, and his reputation. But to do that, he needed to keep his reason cold and his emotions colder.

Isobel sighed, and her hair slipped over her pale cheek like a fold of black silk. He brushed her hair back, letting his hand linger over her head; she was finely wrought, delicate and yet strong. Thoughts of pleasure and peace slipped across his mind.

He lifted his hand from her warm, satiny head and fisted it against the cold tree root.

Kee-kee-kee.

James looked up. The hawk sounded quite close. He eased away from Isobel and stood. Then he stepped through undergrowth and between the trees to look around.

The hawk's cry sounded again. Overhead, James saw the upper branches of a large oak tree sway, and he heard the frenzied thrash of wings. He circled the gnarled base, gazing up.

He saw the hawk high up through the leafy cover. Wings flapping, crying intermittently, the bird struggled on its perch. James glimpsed brown leather straps, the bird's jesses, wrapped around the branch.

Quickly, he grabbed hold of a tree limb and hoisted himself up, climbing cautiously, watching the bird. The gray and cream feathers, delicately barred, and the distinctive white slashes over each blazing red-gold eye told him that the bird was a male goshawk, and not yet fully adult.

"There, now," he said quietly as he came closer. "Hush you bird, hush." He knew that the steady sound of a male voice could calm a trained hawk. As he spoke, he glided upward, keeping his pace slow and careful so as not to further alarm the goshawk.