The Campbell Trilogy (78 page)

“No,” Lizzie said, stopping him. “On what charge?”

Finlay frowned. “That will be for your cousin to decide when we reach Dunoon.”

“And what if he’s telling the truth? About the attack,” she added to clarify. Lizzie looked at Patrick, and for the first time he could see the hurt in her eyes. The knowledge that he’d deceived her. She knew he was not the man he claimed to be.

But he wasn’t deceiving her about this. “I’m telling the truth. I swear it on the souls of my parents. These men seek you harm.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, so much he wanted to explain, but he would never get the chance. He stared deep into her eyes, saying a silent apology, begging her to forgive him, and then he broke the connection and turned back to Finlay. He would protect her with his life, but the idea of her getting caught in the middle of a battle—where he could not control the chaos—sent chills running down his spine. A stray arrow. A misfired hagbut. A wide slash of a sword.

“You bloody fool!” he shouted to Finlay. “Listen!” The unmistakable sound of horses resonated in the cold night air. “Get her out of here before it’s too late.”

Finally the truth seemed to have penetrated. Finlay’s confidence was shaken, and he looked at Patrick uncertainly. “Maybe you’re right—”

“Just go,” Patrick said. And with one last look at Lizzie, a look that would have to hold him for a lifetime, he turned to face his brother.

But it was too late.

A hail of arrows broke through the canopy of trees and landed with deadly precision behind him. Patrick turned in time to see the stunned look on Finlay’s face before he slid from his saddle and dropped like a rock to the ground, an arrow pinned right between his eyes. Two of the Campbell guardsmen he’d brought with him fell at his side.

Gregor and at least ten MacGregor warriors broke through the trees. In addition to the men with his brother yesterday, he recognized the others as some of the most dangerous, bloodthirsty, and savage of the lot—men who’d earned the MacGregors their outlaw name.

The Campbells under Patrick’s command looked to him uncertainly—Finlay’s pronouncement had not been without effect—wondering what to think.

Patrick was caught between two worlds—one real and one invented. He was a MacGregor, the blood enemy of Campbells. A few months ago, he would never have hesitated to lift a sword on a Campbell, but he’d lived among these Campbell guardsmen for months. Knew them. Ate with them. Drank with them.

He’d hoped to get Lizzie to safety without bloodshed, but Gregor had made it impossible.

When a Campbell guardsman next to him lifted a hagbut from his pack and took aim at his brother, the hesitation was gone. In one seamless movement, Patrick reached behind his head, grabbed the horn hilt of his
claidheamhmór,
and swung. The long steel blade slammed into the mail chest plate of the Campbell, knocking the gun from his hand and the man from his horse.

The battle lines were drawn.

He was a MacGregor.
The
MacGregor. For better—or worse—these were his men.

There was only one reality. All it took was one look at Lizzie’s horrified expression to remind him of that.

Her face had drained of color. “My God, what are you doing?”

Patrick didn’t have time to explain; he needed to get her the hell out of here.

The battle erupted around them like wildfire as his men joined Gregor’s in battling Campbells—only the four Campbells he’d brought with him had yet to join the fray, momentarily stunned by his actions. Before they could turn on
him, he stopped them. “Take the lady and go. Ride south for Dunoon as fast as you can.”

One of the men reached for his gun, but Patrick was faster. The guardsman pulled his hand back in pain, cut from thumb to wrist by the swiping edge of Patrick’s sword.

One of the other men called him a foul name and lifted his blade, but Patrick easily blocked the attempt.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Campbells falling under the MacGregor blades—the fight inching closer.

“You can kill me later. Go. Protect the lady.”

The men appeared to be reconsidering when Lizzie, who’d been conspicuously quiet, spoke. “Why should anyone listen to you—”

“If you want to live, you will do exactly what I say,” he said fiercely. “I told you the truth, these men mean you harm.”

“Then why did you …” Her voice dropped off as his brother drew close enough for her to make out his face. She gasped with recognition.

Her gaze shot to his. Confusion. Disbelief. Hurt. None of which he could explain or excuse.

A lifetime lost stretched between them in that one look. Of her eyes sparkling with merriment, of a smile no longer tentative, of holding her in his arms, of looking deep into her eyes as he slid inside her, of her cheeks pink with rapture as she came apart around him, of her sitting before the fire, her belly softly rounded.

Of everything that could not be. His chest cinched with pain, wishing …

Hell.
“Go,” he said roughly. Coldness was the only mask he could don to smother the pain.

If he’d wanted her hatred, he had it. The last look she gave him before turning her mount and heading south
along the path through the trees left him no doubt. The accusation and betrayal pierced like a dirk in his chest.

His gaze lingered on her back, on the flaxen strands of hair loosened by the day’s events and now flying behind her like a silken veil.
Farewell.
The heaviness pressing against his chest cut off his breath.

But before Lizzie and her guardsmen could pass out of sight, two arrows fired in quick succession hit the backs of two men riding behind her. One slumped forward, the other one fell to the side. His foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged for a few feet beside his horse before coming loose.

Gregor’s voice rose above the din of battle. “Don’t let them get away. I want the Campbell bitch.”

The last guardsman with her had slowed to see what had happened to his companions, and it proved to be his death. Another MacGregor arrow fired and hit him in the neck.

Lizzie’s cry was all that Patrick heard. He swore, knowing that his last-ditch effort to send her to safety with her cousin’s men was not going to work. It would be up to him to keep her safe, but his options were running out.

Before he could go to her, two Campbell guardsmen rushed him on foot. He shouted at her to stay back—hoping that she would listen to him—and met them full force, wielding his sword with deadly precision and knocking them back long enough for him to dismount. His horse was only an encumbrance in the dense trees. They attacked him from both sides, but Patrick used his sword with one hand to hold one back as he dispatched the second with his dirk in the other. A few swings later, the second man lay beside the first.

A quick glance around told him that the day was almost done. Only a few Campbell guardsmen remained. His fury at Gregor rose as he noted that four MacGregors had fallen—including
two of the men with him at Castle Campbell—shot before they could reach the Campbells with their swords.

Gregor had stretched Patrick to the end of his brotherly compassion. He understood his brother’s rage—his need for revenge and the hatred that blackened his soul that matched his own—but the challenge to Patrick’s authority as chief could not be ignored. And the blind rage lashing around inside him was rooted in something far more elemental. Gregor had threatened his woman, and right now Patrick could kill him for it.

He glanced over his shoulder, relieved to see that Lizzie had followed his direction and stayed back, partially hidden in the trees. When he turned back around, his gaze met his brother’s. Slowly they walked toward each other until they stood face-to-face a few feet apart.

Through the rage, Patrick felt sadness that it had come to this.

“I should kill you for what you’ve done,” he said flatly. “You think you can be chief?”

Gregor’s face was as hard and unyielding as his own. “A better one than you. I wouldn’t put a lass before my clan. Before my own sister.”

Patrick gritted his teeth, forcing himself to bite back the swell of rage. Gregor was just trying to make him lose control. There was only one way to settle this once and for all.

“If you want to challenge my authority,
brother,
do it as a man.” He swung his sword around, holding it before him. “By right of sword.”

If he lost, he’d be leaving Lizzie unprotected, at the nonexistent mercy of his brother.

But he wouldn’t lose.

Gregor snarled, his mouth pulling back in a cruel imitation of a grin. “To the winner goes the spoils?” he taunted, glancing over at Lizzie.

When Patrick followed his gaze, Gregor swung his sword around in a violent slash that Patrick barely
blocked. It was his answer to Patrick’s challenge—a dirty move that would have made Arthur and his knights of the Round Table shudder in shame, but it set the stage for how this battle would be fought. Chivalry and the knightly code of honor had no place among hunted men. The MacGregors survived by ignoring the rules. It was one of the reasons they were prized by other clans as fierce warriors.

But Patrick could play just as dirty as his brother, and his next move proved it. He spun and snaked his foot around Gregor’s ankle, knocking him to the ground. Gregor just managed to roll out of the way of the blow from Patrick’s sword that followed.

Gregor righted himself, and the battle continued. They circled each other like gladiators of old, sizing each other up, exchanging swings of the swords, trying to find the weakness that would let them go in for the kill. Though Patrick had the advantage of height and build, Gregor was quick. They were well matched—always had been—but Patrick had one thing Gregor did not: Lizzie’s life in his hands.

The battle continued, blow after blow, swing after swing, until sweat poured off his skin, and the muscles in his arms and stomach burned from exertion. He was tiring, but so was his brother. The violence of the blows increased as exhaustion and the urgency to see it done overrode patience.

Patrick blocked another blow to his head; steel clashed against steel, reverberating in his ears and the force of the blow shuddering through his body. He responded with one of his own, grunting as he swung his blade with two hands across his body in a wide arc. This time his brother was a fraction of a second slow, and Patrick’s blow knocked him back.

It was the opening he’d been waiting for. With a fierce cry, Patrick swung his sword again and again, raining down on his brother blow after blow of powerful strikes.
Gregor couldn’t withstand the force and started to fall back, blocking rather than fighting.

Patrick had him, and they both knew it.

One final blow brought Gregor to the ground. Patrick had the point of his sword at his neck before Gregor could recover. Patrick’s heart was hammering from exhaustion and the rush of blood from the fight. He wanted to kill him, and the force of it shook him. He could see the rage he was feeling returned in his brother’s gaze. And something else—hatred. Gregor wanted him to do it.

God, he was tempted. But this was his brother, the only brother he had left. Other than Annie, the last of his family. He’d won; that was enough. “Yield,” he said softly.

Hatred blazed back at him, and Patrick knew that Gregor would not have shown him the same mercy. He pushed the blade a little deeper, drawing blood. “Do you yield?”

“Aye,” Gregor grunted through clenched teeth.

“Say it,” Patrick demanded.

“I yield, damn it.”

After a moment, Patrick pulled back his sword, leaving Gregor seething in the dirt and mud. Gregor was furious, but he would get over it. His challenge had failed.

Patrick mounted his horse and swung it around, closing the short distance to Lizzie in a few moments. He dropped to the ground and approached her cautiously—walking past one of the men who’d fallen trying to protect her. The one who’d been dragged by his horse hung at a grotesque angle only a few feet ahead. She was watching Patrick with wide, terrified eyes, staring at his face as if she’d never seen it before.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She took a few steps back. “W-who are you? W-w-what do you m-mean to do with me?”

Her stammer made something in his chest twist.
She’s scared of me.
“I won’t hurt you.”

She gave a sharp cry of disbelief. The hurt swimming in
her eyes made his heart wrench. “God, how can you say that?”

Patrick was so focused on soothing her, he didn’t notice the movement until it was too late. He heard Robbie’s cry of warning behind him and looked up just in time to see the barrel of a pistol pointed directly at him.

The Campbell dragged from his horse was not dead.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. He heard the blast. Saw the smoke. Then the force of the shot knocked him back. White hot fire seared through his thigh.

Robbie rode by and with the MacGregor battle cry ended the Campbell’s life, this time for good. But the damage had been done. Only ill aim had saved Patrick’s life.

His head cleared and the impact of his injury hit him hard—not just the lead ball, but the import. In showing his brother mercy, he’d allowed him an opportunity. One that Gregor would not hesitate to use. Patrick could not risk Lizzie’s life on his brother’s honor.

With a bullet lodged in his thigh, he would be no match for Gregor. And with only four of his own men against Gregor’s ten ruffians, they would not be able to defend Lizzie should he die.

Gritting his teeth to bite back the cry of pain, he got to his feet.

“Hold them off,” he said to Robbie, mounting his horse. The pain that shot through his leg almost made him keel over—only the knowledge of the ugly death that awaited Lizzie kept him seated.

Robbie nodded. “Aye, Chief.”

“The cave,” Patrick answered the silent question. “If you can get there tonight without being followed. Otherwise rally the men at Balquhidder Kirk as planned.”

Robbie gave him a short nod, and before the others realized what he was going to do, Patrick snatched Lizzie off her horse, set her before him, and plunged into the trees.