One Man's Love (8 page)

“That’s your excuse?” she asked, angered. She glanced in his direction, her words sputtering to a halt as she stared.

There was only so much man the copper tub could hold. He had not looked quite so large in his uniform. His arms, sprinkled with black hair, rested on the sides of the tub, while his knees, bent in order for his long legs to fit, reached his chin.

As she watched, he squeezed the cloth against his shoulder, rinsing it. Soapy water ran down his chest as he lathered it, his hand moving in slow, almost enthralling circles before flattening against his stomach.

She thought, for a moment, that he might have been anyone. A Scot. A warrior. Yet the look in his eyes, level and imperious, was that of someone who expected obedience to his word and his wishes. That labeled him a victor in any era.

She was neither a maiden nor an innocent. Then why was she staring at a naked man with such rapt attention? She told herself to glance away or say
something cutting to him, words that would prove she was not tongue-tied and witless.

In a thoroughly unwelcome and unbidden thought, she realized that the Butcher of Inverness was a handsome man. She stared down at the plate in front of her, horrified by that traitorous thought more than by his nakedness.

“I did not mean to embarrass you,” he said casually, as if the silence between them had not been stretched thin.

“I’ve seen naked men before,” she said, willing her voice to steady.

“Your Marcus?”

She nodded, although it was not the truth. Their one and only coupling had been done in haste and she’d kept her eyes tightly shut from the beginning. But she’d helped to tend the sick and bury the dead, and more than once a wrestling match between two kilted men had resulted in bare backsides and fronts being exhibited for the entire world to see.

He said nothing further, the stillness interrupted only by the sounds of his bathing, a splash of water, droplets falling back into the tub in a slow trickle that recalled a spring rain, the scrape of soap being placed back into its container, the hollow note as the edge of the copper bath was lightly tapped.

She stood and walked to the window once more, carefully averting her eyes from his side of the room. Fort William’s lanterns had been lit, the chain of lights defense against the night. Beyond was the land bridge, the small torch carried by the newly dispatched sentry bobbing as he walked his post. There would be no escape there.

“Have you never once wished to be quit of this place?” he asked.

“It might be easier to leave,” she conceded. “It’s
difficult when everything around you only brings back memories.”

“The memories will follow you wherever you go,” he said.

“As yours do?”

“Yes, but then, Scotland has been the source of most of my recollections.”

Inverness, no doubt. She had heard tales of his atrocities, of the helpless prisoners whose only crime had been to love their country. That is what she should think about, not the fact that he was a man of disarming charm and a curiosity that surprised her.

“Gilmuir is my home,” she said, “for all that I’ve not been here since the laird died.”

He said nothing for a long moment. Finally, he spoke again. “I thought you had no leader,” he said soberly.

“No one in the clan could replace Niall MacRae. And after the war, there was no need. There are only a handful of MacRaes left.”

“Did your laird counsel rebellion?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” she said, “but did not live to see it. He would have led his men into battle against the English, if for no other reason to avenge his daughter’s death.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, and his voice sounded cautious, almost hesitant. “The Scots killed her.”

She shook her head. “It was the English who brought murder to Gilmuir.”

“You lie,” he said quietly, his voice laced with a dangerous emotion, one she could not discern.

She whirled, angered by his attempt to intimidate her.

He was standing, his foot raised to leave the tub,
one hand reaching for the toweling. The candlelight gleamed on his flesh, the water droplets accentuating the plate of his chest, a flank, the muscled beauty of a limb.

He stepped out of the bath making no move to cover himself, the toweling bunched in one hand and held at his side.

She looked away from him.

“Tell me what you mean, Leitis,” he said, his voice grating. A quick sideways glance revealed that he had wrapped the linen around his waist and was walking toward her.

“The laird’s daughter was killed by the English,” she said, tensing as he came closer. He stood beside her, the heat from his body so great that she felt warmed by it.

“Moira MacRae was married to one of you,” she said, folding her arms, her palms cupping her elbows. “But she suffered greatly for it, for all that she was a countess. General Wade’s troops didn’t care that she was titled. All that was necessary was that she was a woman and alone.”

His hands gripped her shoulders. Slowly, resolutely, he turned her until she faced him. His hands inched down her arms until his thumbs were gently resting against her inner wrist.

“I’ve heard it was the Drummonds who killed her,” he said tightly.

It seemed as if he held himself motionless, naked but for a strip of cloth, barely drawing a breath. She had the sudden, surprising notion that he was enraged.

She wished he would move away. Or perhaps she might.
Take a step, Leitis. One tiny step so that you do not feel him so close.

It seemed as if the moments ticked by sluggishly as
she stared at him. She felt herself warming again when his fingers trailed along the inside of her wrist. As if he tested the truth of her words by measuring the beat of her blood.

“What do you care, Butcher?” she said finally, uncomfortable with his silence and her own reaction to him. “It’s an old tale. A tragedy for us, not the English.” She stepped back even farther. “They killed her, just as you killed the Scots in Inverness.”

A
lec stared at her, unable to deflect her sudden rage or shield himself from the look of contempt in her eyes. She protected herself with anger, a ploy that had not worked successfully until this moment.

Walking to the table, he glanced down at the meal Donald had brought him. He rarely ate with the other officers unless he was on campaign. Instead, he chose to remain aloof, a habit that had begun at Flanders. It was difficult to form friendships among his troops, only to have to order them into battle and possibly to their deaths. But at this moment he doubted he could eat; breathing was difficult enough.

He traced the lip of a plate, feeling the curve of it, and the blue and white raised pattern beneath his fingertips. “Are you certain of this, Leitis?”

“Yes,” she said shortly. “Ask anyone in the glen, if you don’t believe me.”

Alec nodded, as if reluctantly accepting the truth, but slowly, so that he might tolerate the rawness of it.

He sat, pressing the heels of both hands against his closed eyes, hearing Donald entering the room as if summoned by his confusion. His aide began to fill the buckets from the tub, a chore he’d evidently chosen to perform alone.

“Why does it matter to you?” she asked curiously once he’d gone.

Alec didn’t answer her. What could he say? That he had based a lifetime’s worth of hatred on a falsehood?

He had become a different person the day his mother had died, the journey back to England solidifying the change from laughing boy to angry young man. He’d known that those halcyon days of his childhood were over.

He glanced over at her. Leitis stood with her back against the wall, her eyes wary, her arms crossed. Not the pose of a penitent or a reluctant hostage.

He wanted to tell her that he was not as loathsome as she thought, that his actions in Inverness should count for something. Instead, he remained silent, reticence being safer than revelation.

An hour passed; her eyelids began to droop and twice Leitis almost fell.

“Do you intend to stand there all night?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said shortly.

Finally, she sat cautiously on the edge of the bed, leaning one shoulder against the carved oak headboard garnished with the MacRae crest. He continued to sit where he was, legs stretched out before him as he stared into the black bricks of the fireplace as if it were a doorway to a secret room, a place to escape from his thoughts.

The wind was sighing around Gilmuir, brushing against the thick blown glass of the windows, rushing around the ruined walls. It was a mournful sound, an eerie accompaniment to the other noises in the night. Somewhere a timber creaked, a floorboard popped. A brick fell to join its companions. It was as if the old castle were moving around them slowly, coming back to life in the darkness.

When Alec stood, Leitis jerked awake, the scrape of his chair against the floorboards evidently warning her. He threw the towel toward the bath and watched her eyes widen as she stood and backed to the wall, instantly wary. He donned his breeches and walked out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

Night enshrouded the old castle, the roofless clan hall bared to the elements. The moon was an egg-shaped glow in the sky. He tilted his head back, staring up at the stars. They seemed to wink at him, in commiseration, perhaps. Or were they weeping, instead, and every blink was another tear shed?

Darkness was kind to Gilmuir, filling in walls that had been destroyed in the bombardment, giving the shadows life until it was possible to believe that he was not the only being of substance in this chamber.

He was not a man given to flights of fancy or one to believe in specters and phantoms. It was simply that his thoughts were on the past more than the present. His memory furnished the picture of his grandfather, seated in his thronelike chair, presiding over judgments with more ease than Alec had ever felt. But then, the laird’s pronouncements had been for minor infractions and rarely meant a man’s death.

He could remember sitting here beside his mother’s bier. She’d been dressed in her finest gown, a blue linen that made her look like a princess. A wooden platter had been placed upon her chest. On it
his grandmother carefully piled a mound of earth and one of salt. Any object that could reflect an image had been removed from Gilmuir, the dirks and shields in the hall covered with the MacRae plaid.

The clan was in mourning, and the wind was transformed into the wails of women. It seemed as if they brushed by him like grief-stricken ghosts, their vaporous hands outstretched as if to commiserate with him in his self-imposed vigil.

The five pipers of the MacRae clan lined up one after the other to give tribute to the laird’s daughter. They played the MacRae Lament, a tune of indescribable sorrow. He had hated the sound of the pipes that dawn morning. But then, he’d hated everything about Scotland from that day forward, the savagery, the barbarity, the cruelty of this place.

The stars were suddenly veiled in the nighttime mist, a not-uncommon occurrence at Gilmuir. The MacRae March swirled around him, a celestial choir of high-pitched notes; a tune that brought back memories both joyful and sad.

Reason came to him at that moment. It was neither a dream nor an apparition, but only Hamish defying his edict. That stubborn fool.

He spun around and returned to the room. Leitis was standing in the doorway, her expression one of confusion rather than contempt.

She stiffened as he moved closer until her back was pressed against the open door. He placed his hands on either side of her head, pressed his thumbs below her jaw, and tilted her face up, studying her in the soft yellow candlelight.

His fingers trailed over her face softly and without haste as if he sought the child in the woman’s features. Her only response was to close her eyes and remain immobile beneath his touch. But she trembled
beneath his fingers, evoking a surge of tenderness so strong that it startled him. Pulling back, he dropped his hands and stepped away from her.

“Where did Hamish get the pipes, Leitis?” he asked.

“Do you think I would tell you, Butcher?” she asked, blinking open her eyes.

“I should have hanged the old fool,” he said, placing both of his hands on her waist and pulling her gently to him. He backed her up to the bed, the lone candle illuminating the strange dance between them. She landed on the wide mattress in a flurry of skirts and flailing limbs.

He lifted her hair, pressed his lips against her bare throat. Her blood seemed to race, even as she angled her head aside.

“No,” she said, the word both a protest and a command.

Slowly he rose over her.

What else had he expected? He almost spoke the words.
Leitis, I knew your brothers. I knew you. You are my fondest playmate and my first love.

But he knew he wasn’t going to divulge his true identity. He didn’t want her memory of him tarnished by what he had become. Just as he held an image of her in his mind, he wanted the boy named Ian to always live in hers, forever young and innocent and untainted by war or labels.

He moved to her side, placing his hand at her waist, feeling the movement of her chest beneath his palm.

Leitis turned her head and stared at him, her eyes turbulent and filled with loathing. Even so, she was warmth and loveliness. Comfort and welcome. Perhaps not for him, but for this one moment he could pretend. In his mind, fogged by too many memories,
it was another time, another place. Not Scotland battered by war. Not this woman scarred by sorrow. Not him, the Butcher of Inverness.

She would not show her fear, not even if he raped her.

But as the moments passed and his breathing slowed, it was evident that the Butcher of Inverness was falling asleep.

His hand lay flat against her waist as if claiming her. His grip was not punishing as much as it was a restrictive one.

Leitis waited a few moments longer until she was certain that he was asleep, then began to slowly move to the edge of the bed. Her left foot slid soundlessly to the floor, and then her right. Cautiously, she moved beneath his arm, lifting his hand, finger by finger, from her waist.

She stood, only to feel her skirt being tugged. He rose up, gripped her arm, and pulled her until she fell heavily on the mattress.

“I sleep lightly, Leitis,” he said softly.

“Let me go,” she said desperately, but he held her tightly against him. Her cheek lay against his bare chest. His skin was tight with muscle, his chest dusted with curling hair that tickled her nose.

“Sleep, Leitis,” he commanded wearily, wrapping his arms around her again.

“I want to go home,” she whispered. A bit of weakness whispered against his skin. But he startled her by easing his grip, pulling back, and placing the most tender of kisses on her forehead.

“So do I,” he said surprisingly.

His sleep deepened as the moments passed, but each time she tried to slip away, his grip tightened reflexively. He was a formidable enemy, but not in the way
she’d imagined. Yes, he wielded power, but he had the oddest ability to strip the breath from her and escalate the beat of her heart. Even worse, he amused her until she had forgotten, for a moment, exactly who he was.

She should spend less time thinking of his eyes, darkly brown and brimming with secrets. Or his mouth, squared and resolute in duty yet hinting at a smile. Instead, she should be feeling compassion for his victims.

The curiosity she felt was unwelcome. But he had stood in the clan hall, staring into the shadows as if he saw ghosts there. What had he sought from the darkness of Gilmuir?

She lay pressed against him, hoping that sleep would capture him so that she could at least move away. But he seemed restless; his breathing altered and the beating of his heart increased.

She pulled back and glanced up at him. His face was contorted in a grimace as he began to speak, the words mumbled and unclear.

A dream, and a troubling one, at that. A man named Butcher must sleep ill indeed.

Suddenly he flung out his arm, his hand balled in a threatening fist. He twisted on the bed, allowing her to move. He gripped the pillow with both hands, holding on to it as if it were his salvation.

No ordinary dream, but one that was born in his soul.

She stretched out her fingers tentatively, touching his forehead. He turned in her direction like a child reassured. Although it was awkward ministering to the Butcher of Inverness, she didn’t move away, perhaps because he appeared so helpless at the moment.

She reached out and placed her palm on his cheek. “It’s only a dream,” she softly said, a reassurance she might have made to a child.

“All dead,” he said softly. For a moment she thought him awake, so clear and reasonable was his voice. His eyes, however, were closed and his face rigid, the muscles in his jaw prominent. She pulled back her hand, a hollow feeling in her chest as if her heart were waiting a long agonizing moment before beginning to beat again.

“All dead,” he said again, his voice oddly expressionless.

“Who is dead?” she whispered.

He turned away, his hands clenched into fists at his side. The words he began to speak were an unintelligible murmur, each utterance followed by an interval of silence. After several moments of listening closely, she realized that it was a roll call of names he repeated. Men he’d ordered into battle? Or those he’d killed?

Troubled, she moved to the edge of the bed, but his hand reached out and gripped her waist, pulling her back. A moment later he buried his face against her bodice.

Her hand wavered in the air above him before she finally lowered it, stroking back the hair from his damp face. “It’s only a dream,” she murmured, confused by her sudden wish to comfort him. “Go to sleep,” she said softly.

What battle did he relive? What horrors did he see in his mind? She would never ask him. An Englishman’s memories were not those she wished to plumb.

It was a childhood verse she repeated, something that her mother had sung to lull her to sleep. The poem, in the Gaelic, was a lyrical comfort:

He no longer spoke, but from time to time he shuddered, as if returning with difficulty from a land of ghosts and graves. His breathing began to ease as he calmed.

Fort William settled down for an uneasy sleep. Somewhere her uncle was, no doubt, playing his pipes. The villagers were probably talking of her and of Hamish, having finished their communal evening meal. And she, Leitis MacRae, was crooning softly to her enemy.