Authors: Pamela Montgomerie
Sapphire Dream (39 page)
Then Malcolm said something to him and his head snapped up. Green eyes, brimming with shock and intelligence bore into hers. Then his face broke into a smile that erased the years with a single stroke. She knew that smile, for she’d seen it a hundred times in her memory—him laughing at the storm.
Tears blurred her vision as a fragile, pounding joy burst within her chest.
“Papa.” She took a step toward him, then another, and knelt before him. His strong arms pulled her so tight she was certain she would never breathe again. And she didn’t care.
She was shaking all the way to her bones as she clung to him.
At last.
She’d found him at last. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
At last.
She’d found him at last. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
“Brenna.” Malcolm was pulling at her. “We must be away.”
She pulled back, but her father held her, gripping her arms nearly until they hurt. “Let me look at you, Brenna lass. You’ve grown bonnie and strong, the very image of your mum.”
“And she’s got your stubbornness,” Malcolm hissed as Hamilton unlocked her father’s chains. “Come. Both of you.”
Brenna wiped her cheek on her shoulder. “I missed you so much.”
As Hamilton and Malcolm helped him to his feet, he lurched drunkenly, pain flashing over his face.
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s been flogged. You’ll have to open the door for us.”
“Okay.” But as she turned, she suddenly realized what was missing. Or who. “Where’s Rourke?”
“He’ll be right back,” Hamilton said. “Get the door, Brenna.”
But he wouldn’t be right back. A sick feeling sank to her stomach as she peered into the dungeon, seeing the shadow skirting the far wall, heading slowly toward the circular stair she’d descended with the tour only a week ago. She knew exactly what he was up to. The same thing she’d meant to do herself.
He was going to try to kill the Earl of Slains before the earl could kill her.
God, she loved that man. But she would personally throttle him if they got out of there alive. This wasn’t his fight. If he failed, his death wouldn’t change anything. Hers would at least end the prophecy’s curse.
“Brenna . . .”
She swung around to face them, these three men she would give her life for. Malcolm and Hamilton had her father propped between them.
“He’s going after the earl,” she told them.
“He canna—” Malcolm began.
“He’s trying to save me. I can’t let him do it. It’s not his fight.” She couldn’t run and leave him to die. Not that he wasn’t a fine fighter, but good grief, the castle was overflowing with bluecoats. Besides, she’d saved him before by distracting his opponents. Maybe she could do it again.
Hamilton held out his hand. “Brenna, you can’t—”
“Get my father to safety.”
“I’ll go after Rourke,” Malcolm said.
Brenna shook her head. “I can’t hold Papa up. He needs your strength, little brother. I’m not going to be any use to him. You have to get him to safety. And I have to do this.”
“Brenna, nay,” her father said, his voice strained. “I forbid it.”
Brenna met his hard, terrified gaze. “Papa, the prophecy demands I do this. It’s my destiny. And it will end no other way.”
The pain in his eyes tore her apart. “I have waited for ye for too long to lose ye now, lassie mine.”
“I know. But if it were you instead of me, you’d face this head-on, right?”
“But you—”
“Am I right?”
Her father sighed, frustrated and angry . . . and resigned. “Aye.”
“She has the Cameron fight in her, Da,” Malcolm said. “I’ll have to tell you how she greeted me after twenty years,” he added ruefully.
Brenna leaned forward and kissed her father’s prickly cheek. “I love you.” She turned to look at Hamilton, then Malcolm. “All of you.”
“Ah, lass,” her father said, his voice brimming with misery. Then he squeezed her hand and released her, his voice growing strong and demanding. “Come back to me, Brenna. The prophecy says you’ll defeat him and ye will, aye?”
Brenna flashed him a watery grin. “He won’t know what hit him.”
“Go with God,” Malcolm said a few minutes later as she saw them through the door into the cave.
She closed the door behind them, then swiped away her tears and steeled herself for what she had to do. The prophecy would end tonight one way or the other.
Brenna crossed the dungeon, keeping to the outside walls as she’d seen Rourke do. But she’d barely made it halfway along that first wall when a voice erupted from across the room, sending her heart into her throat.
“If you’re servicing one of us, lass, you’re servicing us all.”
Her heart sank to her stomach as a tall, blue-coated figure stepped out of the shadows and started toward her.
NINETEEN
“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.”
Rourke froze at the sound of Brenna’s voice resonating through the dungeons.
She sounded cold. Haughty. “I’m a guest of the earl’s. And though I seem to have lost my way, I am quite certain he will not appreciate your thinking otherwise.”
Nay, she was to have been safely away by now. Hamilton should have gotten her out of here.
He braced himself against the stone wall of the stair. He’d been so close, already past the first turn, undetected.
“Forgive me,” the guard replied, his tone stiff. “I will escort you back to the—”
“That’s her!” another man shouted. “That’s my mermaid!”
Rourke’s last hope of keeping her out of the fray sank like a stone in his belly. He eased back down the turnstile stair as Brenna’s words rang over the stones.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s her,” insisted the second man. “She said the earl sent her to entertain us. You can entertain me now, lassie.”
Rourke turned the corner just as the soldier grabbed Brenna around the waist. The wildcat slammed her head back, catching her unwary captor in the nose. As the foolish man reared back, she spun and kneed him hard in the ballocks.
The lass was magnificent. And near certain to get herself killed.
Drawing his sword, Rourke lunged forward and took out two of the guards before they realized what was happening. Only two more stood between him and Brenna’s tormentors. He took on the two at once, parrying every blow, getting in an occasional thrust with little success.
Sweat rolled down his temples, his pulse thudded as he fought to reach her. He had to get her out of here.
But as he fought, a sound reached his ears that sunk his heart to his boots. The echo of multiple heavy footsteps descending the stairs. The swish of a dozen swords being drawn.
Brenna yelped and he saw she’d lost her fight and was being held, a blade pressed to her throat.
“Drop your weapon or she dies,” her captor yelled.
“Rourke, no!” No fear glittered in her eyes, only fire and determination. She’d intended to face the earl this night, as he had. And it seemed that was precisely what they were going to do.
Bluecoats swarmed into the dungeon. The fight was over. Rourke backed away from his opponents. When neither made a lunge for him, he dropped his sword to the stone floor. Three guards lifted their sword points to his throat. A single move and he’d seal his death.
The captain of the guards circled around him, eyeing him with interest. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”
Rourke clenched his jaw, his only regret that he’d failed to save Brenna. If only Hamilton had taken her when he left. But his wildcat had a mind of her own.
“I’m Brenna Cameron.” The lass’s voice rang through the dungeons, clear and loud. “And he’s Rourke Douglas, Viscount Kinross. The Earl of Slains is expecting us.”
Without warning, the hilt of a sword slammed into the back of his skull and darkness swept him away.
Brenna gasped as Rourke fell. He couldn’t be dead.
Please don’t let him be dead.
Please don’t let him be dead.
“Brenna Cameron, eh?” The bluecoat who’d hit Rourke walked toward her, studying her with cold eyes. When he reached her, he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back, bringing sharp stinging tears to her eyes. “How did you get in here?”
She’d never tell. They’d find her father and the others, and she could not let that happen. Especially when she’d known from the moment she entered this castle she would probably die here tonight.
But as his knife pricked her throat, threatening to slice her open, cold terror iced through her veins.
A voice yelled from behind her. “Alex Cameron’s gone.”
The leader yanked her hair harder. “Tell me how.”
“Magic.” She bore her hatred into him with her eyes. “I’m a witch, or hadn’t you heard?”
The coldness in the man’s gaze slowly turned to wariness as his eyes moved from the empty chains where her father had been, back to her. He released her slowly and took a step back, but his expression remained hard.
“If you hurt another of my men, your friend will die.” Brenna nodded, rubbing her stinging scalp. Rourke wasn’t dead.
The bluecoat motioned toward the stairs with his knife. “Move.” To his men he said, “Take Kinross, too.”
Brenna climbed the stairs, all too aware of the soldiers at her back dragging Rourke’s limp body between them. There was no escape, not with Rourke out cold. Had she signed their death warrants by trying to fight a war she could never win?
Bluecoats surrounded her as they made their way through the dark and silent hall to another set of stairs. Finally reaching the top, the bluecoat leader rapped on a heavy door. When the door swung open, a large hand shoved her inside.
“Tell the earl we’ve got Brenna Cameron here to see him.”
The servant nodded, lit one of the tapers on a nearby candelabra, then hurried through a far door. To fetch the earl, she presumed. While they waited, one of her guards used the single taper to light the rest of the freestanding candelabra and its twin, standing on the other side of the large, intricately carved wooden table.
The room slowly brightened, revealing a large, richly decorated room covered in wood paneling and lined with more than a dozen framed portraits. The earl’s ancestors?
Rourke’s captors dragged him into the room behind her, then knelt to bind his hands and feet with a thick rope. Brenna watched him, desperate for a twitch or a sliver of tension that would reassure her he was alive. But she knew he must be, or they wouldn’t bother to tie him.
It would be far better for both of them if he remained unconscious until after the earl was through with her. She didn’t want him to have to watch her die. Nor did she want him trying to fight to save her, because he’d only wind up getting himself killed in the process.
She couldn’t bear to be the cause of his death, too.
As the minutes piled up and the earl didn’t come, her pulse began to lose a bit of its urgency. After looking for her for twenty years, she’d have thought he’d be anxious to get his hands on her, but maybe the guy was a sound sleeper. It was, after all, the middle of the night.
Finally, after what seemed like at least an hour, the far door opened and she realized what had taken so long. He’d dressed for the occasion.
Into the room walked a man who looked like he’d stepped out of an old French painting. Dressed in the fashion of Rourke and his uncle, times ten, he wore a deep green brocade jacket trimmed in gold bows. The bows were everywhere—hem, sleeves, shoulders. On his head, he wore a huge velvet hat, also trimmed with bows, and on his feet, square-toed buckled shoes with a good three-inch heel.
Long black ringlets framed his face and hung halfway to his waist, not quite concealing the wisps of gray hair that poked out from beneath.
His eyes, as they focused on her, were clear and cruel even as they flashed with cunning delight.
“Brenna Cameron. At last, we meet. You’re every bit as bonnie as your mother.”
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