Judith E. French (27 page)

“Who are you?” he repeated.

Her smile became teasing laughter.

Incensed, he rushed toward her and threw out his arms to capture her. He had no plan; he didn’t have the slightest idea what he would do once he had her, but he had to make certain she was solid and not a dream woman. She didn’t move. His hands closed around her, and he felt the warmth of her living body. He smelled the scent of a strange herb in her hair and felt the silken springiness as a lock brushed against his cheek.

She looked directly into his eyes, and the shock of recognition gladdened his heart.

Then she vanished.

Sterling Gray had carried the image, the scent, the memory of her warm body with him ever since. He kept it close to his heart when his mother died and his white father came to claim him. He held the memory of his vision when Oxley took him across the ocean and placed him in an English boarding school. He remembered her the day he’d received his commission in the dragoons, and he remembered her now.

All those years had not dimmed her image, and he’d never ceased to search for her. He’d looked into a thousand women’s faces without seeing the one face that haunted him. Until the Battle of Culloden...

Until he’d found her again, and once more she had disappeared as quickly and as mysteriously as she had on that long ago forest mountaintop.

And that enigma was why he was drunk tonight. That was what troubled his heart and soul until he could think of nothing else. Cumberland and the dragoons be damned. He had to find that woman again.

Whether she was real or a delusion, he had to know the truth.

 

Sixty miles to the north, Cailin stood by the bed and looked down at the sleeping faces of her sister Jeanne and Jeanne’s infant son. Firelight played across their features, hiding Jeanne’s pallor and the babe’s exhaustion. Offering a silent prayer for their continued recovery, she pulled another coverlet over them and backed slowly out of the master bedchamber.

Jeanne had protested weakly when Cailin directed the servants to carry her to the great carved bed, but Cailin had insisted. “Our father will need it no longer, and his room has the largest fireplace of any sleeping chamber in the house. He would want you to lie there.”

“Our stepfather,” Jeanne had corrected her.

“Our father,” Cailin insisted. It cut her sore that she’d been unable to recover his body from Culloden field. She had returned the following day, but English soldiers had turned her away, saying that the traitors were being buried in mass graves.

Jeanne and the baby were both alive, and that was something to be thankful for. When Cailin had reached Inverness, she’d found that the ten-pound boy had righted himself and popped out into the midwife’s hands, seemingly none the worse for his mother’s long, difficult labor.

As soon as Cailin heard that Cumberland’s men were murdering the wounded Jacobites, she’d known that she had to get Jeanne and young Jamie away from Inverness and safely home to Glen Garth. It had taken five cold, wet days of traveling, and Jeanne had wept most of the way. She cried for their father and for Alasdair, but most of all, she wept for her husband, Duncan. He was either fleeing for his life, dead on the field, or a prisoner. No one could tell them.

Cailin hoped that Duncan MacKinnon was still alive. With Johnnie and Alasdair dead, they needed him desperately She had opposed her sister’s marriage on the grounds that both Jeanne and Duncan were too young, but no one had listened to her. Not counting their grandsire, Duncan MacKinnon was their closest living male kin.

Cailin walked down the dark corridor of the old house without a candle. She didn’t need one. This had been her home since she was six and her mother had wed Johnnie MacLeod. Many called the old house at Glen Garth haunted, but if it was, Cailin believed the ghosts must be happy ones. She had loved this rambling gray pile of stone since she’d first laid eyes on it.

From somewhere, perhaps the kitchens, she could hear a woman keening. If Cailin let herself think too long on Johnnie, she’d be bawling as well. It would be hard to imagine Glen Garth without her stepfather’s booming laughter. She folded her arms over her chest and hugged herself hard to ease the pain. Johnnie and Alasdair both lost on the same day. It was enough to shatter her if she didn’t steel herself against the hurt.

She couldn’t afford the luxury of mourning her men; too many in the household depended on her. She swallowed the lump in her throat. In the morning, she’d have to take her little brother, Corey, aside and tell him that his daddy wouldn’t be coming home.

Cailin entered the shadowy great hall. Beside the hearth, an old hound raised its head and thumped a greeting against the stone floor with its tail. Cailin scanned the room, half-expecting to see British troops charging through the far door, but all was still except for the dog’s whining. Antlers of long-dead stags, faded tapestries, and ancient weapons lined the walls. The ridgepole was lost in darkness overhead. Nothing seemed the least bit out of place.

Then she stopped short, and goose bumps rose on her arms. She smelled tobacco . . . her stepfather’s special blend. She stiffened as she became aware of the hunched figure sitting in the high-backed chair near the fireplace. Cailin’s mouth went dry. “Johnnie?” she called.

“Hist, lass. ’Tis only me.” Her grandfather’s deep voice rumbled through the chamber.

“Grandda.” Relieved, she hurried to him.

As she drew near, he raised his wrinkled face and smiled at her. His sightless eyes shone white in the firelight. “Cailin.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Ye gave me such a start,” she confided. “I thought—”

“Ye thought I was a ghost,” he finished. “Nay, hinney.” He squeezed her hand as she sat on the arm of his chair. “Nay. I wish I was. Even a ghost would be more help to ye than a sightless old man.”

Tears rose in Cailin’s eyes. Never once before had she ever heard Grandda mention his affliction. Even now, there was no self-pity in his tone. “You’re of more use to me than a dozen young men,” she insisted. “You’re the only one left with any sense around here. Glynis told me you’d already ordered the servants to bury the silver plate and drive the cows into the hills.”

“Aye, that I did. We’ll have Sassenach crawling over this house as thick as fleas on a dog’s back.”

“Most of the MacLeods didn’t rise for Prince Charlie. I hoped the British would pass us—”

“Johnnie’s kin will tell them soon enough. We Scots have a weakness for English gold. We’d nay be where we are today with our necks in George’s yoke if our own people hadn’t sold us out.”

“I hope not.” She patted her grandfather’s bald head affectionately. “I thought you were abed and sleepin’. I saw no need to wake ye for bad news.”

“How is Jeanne?”

“Weak but not feverish. And the babe is strong. With a warm bed and something to eat, I’m sure they’ll be all right.” Her hand tightened on his again. “Have you heard that Alasdair ...”

“Aye. Glynis told me. God takes the good ones early.”

“That says a lot for what you think of me,” she teased with black humor.

He tapped the thornwood cane that leaned against his knee. “You’re strong, lass, as strong as this old cane I had from my da. And you’ve lived long enough to know that good men and bad die in war.”

“I was there. I saw Johnnie fall. I saw the dragoon put a sword through his chest.”

“Ach. I dinna ken that, sweeting. ’Tis sorry I be for ye. You’ve had a broth of sorrow in your years. First your father—dead afore you saw the light of day—and then your mother, my own girl Elspeth, and then your husband. ’Tis a wonder you’re not as mad as Angus’s cow.”

“Prince Charles has done me little good, and that’s for certain,” she said softly. Her husband, lain, had caught an ague on the way to join the prince’s party in September of ’41 and died without ever seeing his sovereign. She and lain had had another terrible fight about his leaving; she’d not even kissed him good-bye. It had been a sorry ending to a sorry marriage. “I always regretted that we didn’t make a child before he died. Now, I suppose it’s for the best. I’ll have Corey.”

“You’ve always been more mother to Corey than a stepsister.”

“He’s as dear to me as Jeanne, but God knows that she’s as much a child as my mother was.”

“Haven’t I always said your good sense came from your father? I loved Elspeth well. She was the only babe of mine that lived past weaning, but I always knew her faults.”

“Grandda, promise me you’ll live forever.”

“I wasn’t thinkin’ of goin’ any time soon.”

“Good.” She slid to the floor and leaned her head against his legs. “I’m tired, Grandda. I’m tired and hungry, and I hurt too much to cry.”

“It’s bed ye need, lass.”

“I can’t sleep. It will be light soon, and there’s too much to do. I’ve got to count our food stores and gather up whatever valuables the servants have missed. I have to—”

“Ye ha’ to sleep,” he said firmly. “And that’s an order. Whatever comes tomorrow will be none the worse for a good night’s rest.”

“I keep thinking about the battlefield. I keep seeing that dragoon’s face. Every time I close my eyes, I—”

“A cup of whiskey will cure that. Dead’s dead. One Englishman is like another. ’Twill do ye no good to hate. You’ll never see him again, as surely as you’ll never see Johnnie MacLeod this side of paradise.”

“He had black devil eyes, Grandda ... the dragoon who killed Johnnie. He was an officer, but he didn’t wear a wig. His hair was his own, and it was as black as coal. If I’d had a pistol, I’d have shot him myself, the murdering spawn of Satan.”

“And like been shot yourself. Ye did what was right, lass. Ye brought your sister and her babe home safe. Now we must prepare ourselves for the worst, for German George’s fist will fall hard on the Highlands. And it may be that those who fell at Drummossie Moor will be the lucky ones.”

 

 

 

 

 

And don’t miss the first two books in
the
I
NDIAN
M
OON
series!

JUDITH E. FRENCH is the author of ten Avon Romances, including
Highland Moon, Moonfeather, Lovestorm,
and
Scarlet Ribbons.
She and her husband of 32 years make their home in an 18th-century farmhouse in rural Delaware, on a plantation that belonged to one of Judith’s female ancestors in 1743. When she isn’t writing or doing historical research, she enjoys collecting authentic ghost stories and folktales of the Chesapeake Tidewater country. Judith is the mother of four and a grandmother. One of her daughters is a bestselling romance author, continuing the family tradition of storytelling that has come down through generations of farm families.
Moon Dancer
is the third book in the Indian Moon Trilogy.