The Rose and The Warrior (25 page)

“Does this mean I can't carve up any MacTiers?” demanded Thor.

“I'm afraid we agreed to release them unharmed,” Laird MacKillon said apologetically.

“That's outrageous!” blazed Thor. “Just look what those wretches have done to my pipes!” He pointed a bent finger at the ruined instrument lying in a heap upon the ground.

“Why don't you go with Myles and threaten some of the prisoners?” Roarke suggested. “Tell them all about how you're going to grind them up for haggis.”

“It won't be the same as actually doing it,” he grumbled.

“Now, Thor, I'm sure you can make those MacTiers quiver in their skins so hard it will be better than actually chopping them up,” said Donald, trying to console him. “I know you had me worried when I first came here.”

Thor's expression brightened. “Really?”

“Absolutely,” Donald assured him. “Poor Eric couldn't sleep for days, he was so afraid you might hack him to pieces where he lay and turn him into a batch of bannocks.”

“I might still do it.” Thor gave Eric a menacing look.

“Ye should let my Edwina take a look at that arm of yours, lass,” said Magnus, moving over to Melantha. “I'd take the shaft out myself, but I'm thinkin' she'd probably do a fairer job of it.”

“I want to see my brothers,” protested Melantha.

“Of course ye do,” said Magnus soothingly. “Let's just take care of this wee arrow first, and then they can visit ye in yer chamber.”

Melantha shook her head. “I need to see them now. I have to make certain they are safe.”

“I'm sure they're fine, Melantha,” Colin assured her.

“How can they possibly be fine?” Melantha challenged, her voice ragged with despair. “Their father has just been murdered.”

Thor frowned. “What's she talking about?”

Roarke moved toward her. “All is well, Melantha.” His tone was low and soothing. “You have nothing to fear.”

Melantha stared at him a moment, her eyes wide and haunted. “No,” she whispered, the word barely audible amid the orders being shouted to the remaining men on the wall head. “No.”

Roarke reached out, capturing her in the protective cradle of his arms just as a sea of black obliterated her anguish.

Voices were floating around her, wisps of sound on the cool night air. She struggled to make them out, but they were low and hushed, swirling around her in languid circles, just escaping her grasp. It didn't matter anyway. Nothing mattered anymore. There was a terrible emptiness inside her, a tattered, aching hole that had torn her apart, and although she couldn't recall what was causing her such unbearable grief, she was certain it could never be overcome. She sank further into the warm folds of darkness, vaguely wondering if she were dying. She hoped that she was. Surely in death there would be respite from this suffocating sorrow.

A soft whimper escaped her throat, stripping away some of the layers of blackness. She shook her head, fighting her ascent to wakefulness. But a slow, sure awareness crept cruelly through her flesh, causing her to feel the throbbing in her arm, the rising of her chest, the softness of the plaid lying over her like a fragile shield against the world.
I am not dying,
she realized, and she was overcome with disappointment. In death she might have shared a fleeting moment with her father. In life, she would have to go on without him.

She opened her eyes, feeling utterly lost.

The chamber was washed in honeyed light, which emanated from a small cluster of dripping candles on the table beside her bed. The windows were open to the silky night air, filling the room with the sweet scent of pine, grass, and the acrid tinge of the torches still burning on the wall head and in the courtyard below. Melantha shifted slightly and was surprised by the lash of pain that whipped up her arm. She studied the neatly arranged bandage on her upper arm with complete detachment, as if it were someone else's limb affixed to her body. After a moment she turned her gaze to the other side of the chamber, searching for the sleeping forms of her brothers.

Instead she found Roarke stretched out in a chair beside her bed, sound asleep.

He did not look as though he could be overly comfortable, for his massive frame made the chair appear almost ridiculously small. Nevertheless he was slumbering deeply, which told Melantha he must have been exhausted. She studied him through the soft haze of candlelight, noting the deep lines etched across his forehead, the taut set of his jaw, the dark growth of beard shadowing his handsomely sculpted cheeks. He looked older to her in that moment, older and far wearier, revealing a vulnerability she had never imagined to see in him.

She had always known he was not a young man, for the lines of his face betrayed the experiences of a life lived close to forty years. And yet she had never sensed the slightest hint of weakness in him, either in spirit or in his physical abilities. Of course he had demonstrated some discomfort during their journey here, but she had attributed that to the fresh wound in his backside, and given it no further thought. She thought of him on the wall head earlier that evening, racing back and forth as he directed the battle from every angle, anticipating each move of his opponents, and shouting orders to men who had no reason to obey him. And yet her clan had obeyed him, willingly and completely, despite the fact that he was their enemy, and the warriors they fought were his own.

Roarke had done everything within his power that night to protect her people from the very men who had come to grant him his freedom, risking his own life in the process.

It was this that had caused her to throw herself at him when she saw one of the MacTier warriors training an arrow upon his chest. She had tried to tell herself that she hated him, for he was a MacTier warrior, and represented greed and brutality and savage force. But somehow Roarke had chiseled away at her loathing, until finally it was but a thin veneer of the dark, cold force that had sustained her so well these past ten months.

She swallowed the sob threatening to escape from her throat.

Roarke's eyes flew open as his hand shot to the dirk at his waist. He swiftly scanned the dimly lit room before finally studying Melantha.

“You're supposed to be asleep,” he told her, releasing the hilt of his weapon. He rose and went to the table to pour her a cup of ale.

“I'm not tired.”

He raised a skeptical brow as he handed her the wooden goblet. “All is quiet now, Melantha,” he assured her. “The MacTier army has retreated, and the wall is heavily guarded to alert us should they return. Your brothers are safe, and are spending the night under Beatrice's care. As for your clan, there were a few injuries, but they were relatively minor, and they have been treated. Everyone who is able to is sleeping, including the MacTier prisoners. Except,” he qualified, “for those who are too frightened to close their eyes after Thor's ranting about turning them into meals for the next year, and Gelfrid's talk of giant rats lurking in the shadows.”

“I must see for myself,” she murmured, although she made no effort to move. Just holding the goblet steady in her hand seemed to require an enormous amount of energy. She could not imagine where she would find the strength to actually rise from her bed.

Roarke regarded her sternly. “You have been injured, Melantha, and although the wound is not serious, you did lose a fair amount of blood before Gillian managed to stitch you closed. It is essential that you rest, or you will be of absolutely no use to anyone tomorrow.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Gillian took the arrow out?” She could not imagine her gentle friend accomplishing such a feat without dissolving into a fit of weeping.

“I removed the arrow,” Roarke told her. “I have had more experience in these matters than Gillian, and I believe she was very relieved when I offered to do it. Fortunately for you,” he added dryly as he took the cup away from her, “Magnus was not available.”

She leaned back against her pillow, feeling immeasurably tired. She was dressed in a simple linen chemise, which left her arms bare but for the bandage, and the pale skin of her chest naked except for the slender silver chain and pendant she always wore. She frowned, thinking the green stone looked far paler than it had before. Telling herself it was just the light, she lifted it to shimmer in the amber glow of the candles. The orb was unusually warm against her fingertips, almost as if it were radiating its own heat.

“ 'Tis a pretty piece,” Roarke commented. “Was it your mother's?”

She shook her head. “The only jewelry my mother ever owned was a plain silver ring my father gave to her when they were wed. When the MacTiers came, they made everyone bring their valuables into the courtyard and drop them into a pile. I hid the ring in my shoe. But then they made us take off our shoes and boots and place them in another pile, and one of the warriors found the ring before I could hide it.” Her tone was flat as she recited the story, but her fingers had tightened around the pendant, bleaching the skin of her knuckles.

Roarke cursed silently. It was obvious Melantha's ring had meant a great deal to her, and it filled him with rage to know his own clan had stolen it from her. “Was this pendant something you took during one of your raids?”

She nodded. “One day we captured a coach that was traveling to your holding. Inside we found a half dozen crates bearing silver chalices, crosses, and trays, and one well-fed priest who seemed a little too eager to hand over everything to us. I thought it odd the way he kept patting at the bloat of his waist, and ordered Magnus to search him. A small box was belted to his girth, and in it lay this pendant.” She released her grip to let it glitter once again in the candlelight. “I wanted to sell it with everything else, but Magnus said 'twas by luck that we had found it, and so it would bring us further luck if I wore it.” She dropped the orb against her skin. “I think he just liked the idea of me having something from the MacTiers, even though he knew it could never replace my mother's ring.”

No, thought Roarke, not even the rarest of jewels could hope to ease the loss of that simple, worn band.

“Do you believe they will return?” she asked quietly.

“They will not return tonight,” he assured her, lowering himself into the chair. “Thor did a fine job of making them believe that my men and I would be slain if they did, and that is not what they want. Although they have been ordered to subdue your people, it cannot be at the cost of my life or the lives of my men. That would not be a good victory.”

“I see.” Her tone was flagrantly bitter.

“This was not my doing, Melantha,” Roarke reminded her. “You knew the risk of attack when you decided to take me and my men prisoner. I tried to warn you, but you refused to listen.”

“You were coming to crush my band and capture me,” she retorted coldly. “If I had let you go, would you and your men have simply walked home and left us alone?”

Roarke hesitated. “No.” He wished he could have said otherwise.

“And if you had managed to capture us, what would our fate have been?”

He shook his head impatiently. “It doesn't matter—”

“It does matter, Roarke,” she interrupted fiercely. “You had been given orders by your laird, and it was your duty to carry them out or face the consequences of failure. What would you have done to me and my men?”

He stared at her in frustration. “We had orders to crush the Falcon's band and return with the Falcon himself as our prisoner.”

“And that is what you would have done, isn't it? You would have butchered Colin, and Magnus, and Finlay, and Lewis. And you would have captured me and dragged me back to your holding, where I would have been tried before your laird and executed.”

“I would never have allowed anything to happen to you, Melantha.”

“You nearly cut my head off the first time you saw me.”

“Only because you were trying to kill me.”

“I was trying to kill you because you were going to slay my men!”

Roarke closed his eyes, suddenly weary. He did not want to talk about killing and duty any more. A sharp blade of guilt was twisting in his gut, making him feel tense and defeated. He had betrayed his own clan tonight, he realized bleakly. Those men down there were his own people, linked to him by history, loyalty, and blood. Some of them he had recognized, although he did not believe any of them were men who had ever fought under his command.

Even so, the magnitude of his treachery was appalling.

Never, in over twenty years of service, had he ever acted against the welfare of his laird or his people. His life had been far from perfect—the lonely deaths of his wife and daughter were an agonizing testament on that point—but he had prided himself on his clear, unquestioning loyalty to his clan. He had always carried out his duties with single-minded purpose, leaving no room for contemplating the devastating effect his actions might have had on others. It had been his lifelong mission to strengthen his clan, to expand its borders, and to constantly enrich its coffers by bringing home the bounty of war. This was not some barbaric doctrine of oppression; it was merely a fact of life in the Highlands. Those holdings he captured then fell under the MacTier influence. He had abated any guilt by assuring himself that the conquered clans were now better off, because they would be protected from others who might dare to attack them.