Highland Troth (Highland Talents Book 3) (31 page)

“Jamie.” Kyle’s voice sounded suddenly close, at the open door.

Jamie could only imagine what he thought of the scene they set.

“Bind the survivors, take them to their horses, and get ready to travel,” Jamie ordered without taking his gaze off his prisoner. “Leave Caitrin with me. This won’t take long.” He heard Kyle move away and nudged the man sprawled at his feet. “Talk, MacGregor. For yer life, or yer last few miserable minutes of it.” He should have ordered Kyle to tend to Caitrin, but he would do that himself, in moments. He couldn’t bear the thought of another man touching her, especially not where Alasdair had cut her.

“Why….why should I tell ye…anything.”

“Because I’ll kill ye where ye are unless ye do.” Jamie heard the men moving off into the woods, but he kept his focus on MacGregor.

“Ye will, anyway.”

“Aye, I will. So live a few minutes more and explain yerself.”

“Explain myself?” MacGregor’s coughing fit had ceased and he straightened up. He glanced past Jamie’s legs.

Jamie saw the defiance in his eyes as he beheld his men, dead or under Lathan control. He would get no help there.

MacGregor shrugged. “Explain what my father used to do to me, his useless spare of a spare of a spare? He wouldna touch his heir, or the spare, but me, ach, aye. To this day, I dinna think my mother kent the kind of man she married. She would no’ have approved.”

“Did ye start with the tavern whores in St. Andrews, or were there others before them?”

“I remember them well. I watched what my da and uncle did to yer sister. They were so much alike, the Twins. Especially in how they enjoyed their perversions. I had plenty of time to learn from them that day, and others. Ye didna ken who to suspect, did ye? Surely no’ yer auld schoolmate.”

Jamie shuddered, fighting to let Alasdair live long enough to tell all he knew.

“I dinna ken why yer sister was in the woods by herself. Meeting a lover, perhaps?” MacGregor chuckled and coughed. “She was too sweet for a man of my laird’s…taste…to pass by.”

Jamie’s stomach turned. He knew exactly why his sister had been alone, away from the keep. Their father had told her of his plans to marry her to a man she didn’t like. Jamie knew she loved someone else, but not who. He’d seen her leaving the keep and run after her, hoping to discover who she was meeting. Much as Caitrin used to run after Toran and him. Netta had seen him, run faster, and hidden in the forest. He’d looked for her, but eventually had given up and gone back to the Aerie as darkness fell, thinking she must have returned home already. He’d never seen her again. But years later, he’d heard how she’d been found, and what was done to her.

What Alasdair MacGregor had begun to do to Caitrin. And worse.

“So they tortured her,” Jamie ground out. “Raped her. Then killed her.”

“I suppose they couldna let her return to tell her da who had done those things to her. She was ruined for another man, anyway. ’Twas kinder to cut her throat.”

Caitrin’s sob kept Jamie from doing the same to MacGregor. But still he could not face her. He kept his gaze on the man on the floor at his feet instead. “And when ye came to St. Andrews, ye began to practice what ye learnt.”

“Ah…the lasses in the pubs. Aye, they thought to make a day’s wage or more off me—a wealthy student. They looked down on us, ye ken. Those whores looked down on the students who drank their ale and paid for their favors. So I paid them good coin to let me do whatever I wished.” MacGregor chuckled and Jamie nearly went for him. “Some got more than they bargained for, but if they started screaming, really, what did they think I would do?”

“Why were ye never caught? Any of the ones who lived could have identified ye.”

“I told them I’d kill them, slowly, of course. And if I wasna around to do it, I had friends who liked to do the same things I did. They’d never ken which of their trysts would end them. No’ true, but they didna ken that. Either way, they thought they’d end up dead unless they stayed quiet. So they did.”

“Ye will hang for this.”

“Nay, I dinna think so. A laird’s word against yers?”

“And mine.” Caitrin’s voice at his side startled Jamie. He’d been so focused on MacGregor, he’d never heard her get to her feet and move toward him. He turned to her. It was a mistake.

Alasdair MacGregor reached out, grabbed the comb from the floor, then broke it in two as he leapt to his feet. He charged at Caitrin before Jamie could react and step between them. Like the wildcat that had attacked her in the dark forest, he went for her throat, slashing with a piece of the comb in each hand. She blocked his attack with her arms, snagging the teeth of the comb in her sleeves. He knocked her down and fell on her, wrapping his hands around her throat.

Jamie grabbed MacGregor by the hair, hauled him off Caitrin, and then slammed his head into the wall, stunning him. He fell to his knees by Caitrin, where she lay, pale and panting.

“Lass! Caitrin…”

“He didna cut me…dinna let him…”

Cut. Aye, he’d give the bastard some of his own medicine before he ended his miserable life. The dirk lay where MacGregor had dropped it. Jamie scooped it up and cut MacGregor’s clothes away, baring the front of his body, intending to make good on his earlier threat to unman him. In his fury and haste, he left shallow gashes in MacGregor’s skin, from neck to crotch.

“Jamie, nay!” Caitrin’s horrified plea barely penetrated the rage that ruled him.

She rolled to her side and reached out to him, but his outrage blinded him to everything but the man before him and he didn’t heed her. He knelt with knife point poised to castrate MacGregor, but what he saw there stopped him.

Scars. Old scars. Some long and deep, others around them short, shallow flicks, in tracks from his sack down his thighs. This was what Alasdair had meant? His father had done this—to his child? Horror supplanted Jamie’s rage long enough for him to drop the dirk. Caitrin crawled to him, screamed and clapped a hand over her mouth when she saw the damage her attacker had suffered so long ago. “Oh my God.”

“God had naught to do with this,” Jamie answered her. “Or with what this made him become.” He rolled MacGregor over to shield his body, and then he stood and helped Caitrin up. “He deserves to die for what he did to those women in St. Andrews, and to ye. And to Ewan. But no’ for my sister. The bastards who did that are long dead. I’ll no’ unman him. His father did enough of that years ago.”

He went to the door and shouted for Kyle to bring some men, then Jamie turned back and wrapped Caitrin in his arms. “Are ye well enough to ride? The healer must see to ye.”

“I am. What about him?”

“We’ll throw a plaid over him so he doesna frighten small children, and let Toran exact Lathan’s justice on him for his crimes. I’ll no’ take him as far as St. Andrews, and dare no’ return him to MacGregor, where he has allies aplenty.”

“Perhaps no’. Has it occurred to ye he may have treated his own people the same way he treated me? Or worse, the way he was treated?”

“Nay. Else he would be dead of a knife in the back long before now.”

Kyle approached the door with another Lathan and one of the MacGregor prisoners.

“What happened?”

“He’s no’ dead. Find a plaid to cover him and get him out of here.”

A feral growl was the only warning Jamie got as MacGregor sprang at Caitrin with the dirk Jamie had carelessly left near at hand. Jamie shoved Caitrin out the door at Kyle and pulled his own dirk. MacGregor managed to slash his arm as momentum carried him past Jamie, but Jamie grabbed the tatters of his clothing before he could carry his charge to attack Caitrin, hauled him back around and buried his dirk in his chest.

MacGregor went down without another sound.

Jamie glanced from him to see to Caitrin’s safety. She held her knife before her and the expression on her face told him she’d been prepared to use it. Good lass. She’d had the presence of mind to scoop up the blade MacGregor had knocked out of her hand, though the reach of Kyle’s dirk outmatched hers by a foot. One way or the other, MacGregor had sealed his fate. But Jamie saw it done.

****

Caitrin didn’t know whether to be pleased or relieved as MacGregor’s body collapsed into a heap on the floor, Jamie’s dirk in his chest. Twice more, he had attacked her and Jamie had saved her.

She’d never seen Jamie like this. Out of control with anguish and fury. He had a beast in him she’d never suspected, one he’d kept hidden from everyone around him. Her childhood friend, the man she thought she loved, was terrifyingly out of control.

Should she fear him? She backed up a pace, her gaze going from MacGregor’s body to Jamie’s tense form, looming over the man he’d just killed, breathing hard, every exhale nearly a growl, every muscle locked tight, blood dripping from the cut Alasdair had inflicted on his arm. She heard Kyle and the others standing behind her shuffle and mutter, but she paid them no heed.

Caitrin now understood why she’d been sent home so suddenly, all those years ago. The manner of Jamie’s sister’s death had compelled the Lathan to send her away for her own safety.

Jamie’s chest heaved and he doubled over.

Caitrin feared he was going to be sick, but quickly realized he was sobbing and fighting it. Surely not because he’d been forced to kill the monster at his feet. Because of what he’d learned about his sister’s death? Ewan’s? Or because of what had been done to the young Alasdair that made him into a monster?

“Jamie…” She kept her voice soft and low, hoping to reach him through his anguish, but he didn’t move except to shudder. “It’s over,” she told him and moved toward him.

“Stay back.” His voice cracked, a ragged cry torn from somewhere deep inside him. “Kyle, take the prisoner back with the others. Caitrin, go with him.”

“Nay.” Caitrin froze where she stood, still out of reach, as Kyle and the other men moved away. “I want to help ye.”

“Ye canna.” He shook his head, or maybe his shuddering strengthened, making it more visible, more pronounced.

“I can if ye will let me.” She took another step toward him, but his hand shot out, blocking her.

“Dinna come near me. I…I still want to…kill something.”

“It’s no’ yer fault.” Caitrin backed up a pace, taking Jamie’s warning seriously, but she refused to leave him in this state.

“It
is
my fault. My sister died because of me.”

“What? Nay! Ye didna kill her. Alasdair’s monster of a father and the others did.”

“’Twas my fault she stayed in the woods long enough for them to find her. We’d been warned to be in the keep by dark.” The despair in Jamie’s voice nearly drove Caitrin to her knees. How long had he been holding on to that pain? Since before the Lathan sent her home, surely. From the day they found his sister’s body.

The Jamie she knew was easy going and even-tempered. He always said just the right thing to defuse a tense situation with a joke or a perfectly timed comment. She’d never dreamed he could harbor such grief, such anger. Was that why he’d become such a skilled negotiator? Years of bargaining with himself to keep the anger and pain at bay? Hidden beneath charm and reason?

Did Toran suspect? Nay, likely not, or he would not have sent his friend away from the Aerie.

“I’m sorry, Caitrin…for so many things.” He straightened up, finally, his back to her. “I have to walk away now. I dinna wish to hurt ye.”

The hoarse agony in his voice sent chills coursing down her limbs. “Ye canna hurt me, Jamie Lathan. ’Tisna in ye to do such a thing.”

“Ye canna ken what is in me. No’ now. I’m so…filled with fury…I can barely speak.”

His choked panting, rather than her talent, gave her the truth of that. “Jamie…”

“Find something to bind yer wounds then go get Will. Tell him to bring a horse to carry the MacGregor’s body back to the keep. ’Tis past time for the healer to tend to ye, as well.”

She hesitated. “Yer arm.”

But still Jamie didn’t move, even to turn to face her.

“Do as I say.”

Before Caitrin could argue further, he walked out into the sunshine, leaving her with MacGregor’s body cooling on the floor.

She spun away and began rifling cabinets for bandaging, but found none, so she ripped the sheet from the cot in the back room, tore it into long strips and bound them into a makeshift bandage around her thigh. Another folded strip made a pad over the wounds on her breast that she held in place by tying her dress closed with another strip looped under her arm and over the opposite shoulder. All the while, she ignored her attacker on the floor. She found a cloak and shouldered it on over her torn dress. That would have to do.

She quit the croft house and hobbled away from it as quickly as the pain in her thigh would let her. She didn’t see Jamie. Where had he gone?

Uilleam, the other Lathans and their prisoners were at the treeline, not far from the croft, yet she struggled for breath and limped by the time she reached them. Kyle saw her first and came to her.

“What can I do to help ye?”

“Jamie wants Uilleam to bring a horse for the MacGregor.” Better not to mention in front of his men he was dead. They’d find out the truth soon enough. “Make sure these men are under Lathan control. He expects trouble.” Of course, Kyle would know that. He’d seen what happened and knew how their prisoners would take the news.

“Where is Jamie?”

“I dinna ken,” she answered, her voice breaking on a sob that rose from behind her wounded breast. Suddenly, her knees gave out.

Kyle scooped her up before she crumpled to the ground. He carried her to a waiting horse, and lifted her up, seating her side-saddle. “Will ye be all right there long enough for me to talk to Uilleam?”

“Aye.”

“Ye willna faint and fall, will ye?”

“Go.” Suddenly, she barely had the strength to speak. She suspected shock had set in, from the events or from blood loss, she didn’t know. She just wanted to lie down and not get up again for days. She leaned over the horse’s neck and willed the world to go away.

It wasn’t long before a low rumble alerted her Jamie and Will had returned with Alasdair’s body. She opened her eyes to find Kyle standing beside her mount.