The Blood of Roses (53 page)

Damien screamed inwardly as each blow struck. For one of the few times in his life, he cursed the affluence and soft living that had left him a poor physical match for the lithe and tough Corporal Peters. The man was trained to fight and to kill with his bare hands, and Damien knew he was quickly losing ground. Literally losing it, too, he realized with a lurch of his stomach as he felt his head and shoulders tilt over the side of the cliff. Only Peters’s weight across his legs kept him from losing his balance completely, but even as he was shaking the dizziness out of his eyes and trying to reorientate up from down, he saw the flash of reflected moonlight glance off the blade of a raised knife. He heard himself cry out Harriet’s name as he threw up both arms, sucked in his belly, and braced himself for the stabbing pain.

When it came, it came not from a slicing wound to his chest, as expected, but from a secondhand bruise caused by the large rock that bounced once off the back of Peters’s neck before slamming into Damien’s shoulder. He saw the knife spin out of the corporal’s hand, saw Peters’s body jerk to the side, his mouth gaping wide in agony as young Laughlan MacKintosh’s foot caught him squarely in the groin. Dazed by the blow to the neck and seared by the flaring pain in his lower body, Peters rolled to the edge of the rock ledge and, too late to grab hold of any scrub or outcrop to save himself, slid off the lip of serrated stone. He was swallowed into the blackness, his scream ending abruptly in a crunch of broken branches some distance below.

Charles Stuart was the first to move. He ran over to assist Damien, who was coughing and staggering unsteadily onto his knees. No sooner had he pulled the Englishman back onto the safety of the plateau than a second heartrending scream pierced the mountain silence.

Deirdre was on her knees beside Catherine, her hands covered with blood, her face pale and stricken in the moonlight.

“She isn’t breathing!” Deirdre cried. “The second bullet … help me please!
She isn’t breathing!”

19

E
xactly two weeks to the day of their departure, a small but heavily armed party of Cameron clansmen were reportedly seen on the outskirts of Inverness. Word of their success in capturing the garrison at Fort Augustus had preceded them by four full days, but the victory had already been overshadowed by the prince’s own daring maneuver against the government troops occupying Inverness. A day after the astonishing rout at Moy Hall, the vanguard of Lord George Murray’s column had marched into the glen. Hearing of the prince’s close call with Blakeney’s men, the general had whisked Charles Stuart away to Culloden House, there to be surrounded by three thousand of his own men. A few days later, taking advantage of the enemy’s loss of credibility, the prince had boldly advanced on Inverness, chasing Lord Loudoun’s troops across the waters of the Moray Firth to Dornoch.

“It is all in the timing,” Aluinn remarked wryly. “Had we arrived a week earlier, we would have been heroes. Today? We’re just adding another feather to the prince’s bonnet.”

“Tell that to my wife when you see her,” Alex muttered. “The closer we get to Moy, the tighter my collar feels.”

“At your age and with your experience, you should know by now not to make rash promises you cannot keep. Especially to a pregnant female. I’m told the condition does something to their sensibilities: increasing the protective, feline instincts or some such thing. And since she has a rare temper to begin with—” He shrugged and let the sentence hang, earning a glare from the indigo eyes.

“You are an absolute font of cheer,” Alexander commented, nodding abstractedly to a couple of somber-faced women who had paused by the roadside to stare at the passing riders. “So is everyone else, for that matter, or am I just imagining all these rousing accolades of welcome?”

Aluinn slowed his horse to match Shadow’s pace, both animals drawing to a halt on the crest of a knoll overlooking the glen and parks of Moy Hall. The scene appeared tranquil enough; the camp was off to their right, snuggled at the base of the imposing, forested slope. A dozen or more fires trailed lazy fingers of smoke into the clear air, and there were visible signs of activity in and around the canvas tents. The backdrop of rolling hills marched off toward the horizon like choppy green waves on the ocean, some peaked in foaming white snow, some so distant and faded, they blended into the underbellies of low-lying clouds far to the south.

“Everything seems quiet enough,” Aluinn said.

“Too damned quiet, if you ask me.”

Struan MacSorley halted his shaggy-maned garron beside them, and next to him, Count Giovanni Fanducci reined into line, his feathered blue tricorn as sweepingly incongruous in the surroundings as usual.

“Maybe we should have-a taken time out to shave,” he noted with a disgruntled twitch of an eyebrow. Eager to return to Moy, Alex had forced his group to ride straight through, stopping no more than an hour at a time to rest the horses and partake of a hasty meal. Despite his unshaven appearance, however, the count looked the least ruffled of them all. Both Alex and Aluinn wore full beards, and were coated with the grime and sweat of the long hard ride.

Alex nudged Shadow forward again, his gaze alternating between the regal stone manorhouse and the camp. Halfway down the slope a familiar figure mounted on a muscular gray gelding came pounding across the turf. Lady Anne Moy, her hair flying loose around her shoulders and her cheeks flushed pink from the exertion, pulled to a rearing halt a few paces away.

“I was told ye were taking the road from Inverness,” she gasped. “I sent men along the way to watch f’ae ye.”

“We decided to cut across country,” Alex explained, frowning. “We weren’t really expecting a reception committee.”

Lady Anne’s horse pranced impatiently and she cursed under her breath in Gaelic. “Then ye havena heard?”

“Heard what?” Aluinn asked.

Lady Anne’s bright green eyes went to Alex. “We had some trouble after ye left. The king’s men came in the night, hoping to take the prince. Catherine was the only one who could rouse him into moving himsel’ up the mountain, to the caves where we thought he’d be safest. There was a fight, an’ … an’ Catherine was hurt—not bad!” she added quickly. “She scared the living bejesus out of her brither, mind. I ken he aged ten years bringing her back down the mountain again. But the doctor says she’s fine. She’s fine, the bairn’s fine—”

Alex did not wait to hear the rest. He kicked his heels into Shadow’s ribs, startling the beast into a gallop that carried him the rest of the way through the glen and up to the front door of Moy Hall. Horse and rider came to a flying halt, and with cloak and tartan swirling around his massive frame, Alex vaulted to the ground and launched himself through the double doors. He took the stairs to the second storey two at a time and was at his wife’s room before the other riders in the group had even gained the front entrance.

Catherine did not hear the sound of boots in the outer hallway, she was laughing too hard. She was not even aware of the impending storm until the door to her chamber burst open and a tall, caped, and heavily bearded intruder filled the doorway. The laughter died in her throat as she recognized the windblown figure, but her instinctive cry of pleasure met a similar fate as she saw his dark eyes sweep around the room and his expression change from concern, to disbelief, to anger.

Deirdre, seated by the bed, dropped the bit of lace she was mending and stared. Damien, lounging in a chair by the fire, abandoned the comedy he was reading from, his smile fading as quickly as Catherine’s when he saw the look on Alex’s face.

“Alex,” he said lamely. “You’re back.”

“If I am disturbing you, I can return when it is more convenient.”

His casual offer deceived no one. Deirdre and Damien moved together, one fumbling to gather up her scraps of lace, needles, and thread, the other closing his book and pushing to his feet. Only Catherine remained impassive. She placed her hands carefully and precisely on her lap and offered her sweetest smile.

“Do come in, my lord, and tell us all about your adventure at Fort Augustus.”

Alexander merely folded his arms across his chest and leaned indolently against the oak jamb. “It wasn’t much of an adventure, really. We met with a bit of resistance, but nothing too daunting. Nothing, from what I hear, as exciting as your own escapades.”

Catherine unclasped a hand briefly to smooth a wrinkle on the coverlet. “As you say, nothing too daunting. We simply foiled a kidnapping attempt, saved the prince’s life, and scattered the king’s army in a panic.”

“All in a day’s work,” he mused.

It was a good performance, but her husband was not fooled. Not for a minute. There were still faint shadows beneath her eyes, and the flush in her cheeks bore the unnatural brightness of a recent fever. The movement of her hand had drawn attention to the thick wadding of bandages that distorted the shape of her upper arm; the slight tightening of her lips betrayed the true cost of the seemingly nonchalant gesture.

The midnight eyes flicked to the two silent observers and his mouth spread in a lazy curve. “Would you mind excusing us? I am a little tired, a little dusty, and not very promising company at the moment.”

Deirdre and Damien were spurred into motion again, each stammering profuse apologies that went unacknowledged by either of the other two occupants of the room. Once they were out in the hallway and the door was firmly closed behind them, Deirdre spied three more grimy, bearded men hurrying toward them and she broke away from Damien, flinging herself into her husband’s outstretched arms. Count Fanducci whipped the plumed tricorn off his head and discreetly hung back a few paces with Struan MacSorley while Aluinn gave her a fierce, hard kiss.

“What the devil is going on?” he demanded, prying her away to arm’s length. “We met Lady Anne outside and she said Catherine had been hurt.”

Deirdre nodded, taking a swift inventory of arms, legs, fingers, ears. Her relief at finding him uninjured was dampened by the concern she saw in his soft gray eyes.

“It was not as bad as we first thought. We … I thought she had been shot dead, but—”

“Shot?
Catherine was
shot?”

Deirdre nodded again. “Corporal Peters shot her. Only in the arm, as it turned out, but it was still quite horrible.”

“Only?
How the hell did she
only
get shot in the arm, and what do you mean Corporal Peters shot her? Was it an accident?”

“Oh, no. It was quite deliberate. He had already killed the houseman, Robert Hardy, and was planning to kill all of us, as well, I’m sure, before he took the prince back to Inverness and handed him over to the English army.”

“Peters? Corporal
Jeffrey
Peters?”

“It was all a pretense, you see,” she explained, the words tumbling out in a flurry. “He hadn’t really changed sides at all. He only used Catherine and I to wheedle his way into camp. He was really one of the king’s men all along and would have taken the prince to Inverness to collect the reward.”

“I’m-a knew it!” Count Fanducci exploded, smacking the back of his hand against the side of Struan’s arm. “I’m-a knew something about that man, she’s-a no right!”

“Yes, well,” Aluinn acknowledged the hindsight with a grimace, “he felt the same way about you. At least, he tried to make damn sure any suspicion was directed your way and not his.”

Fanducci’s eyes narrowed. “Ah-hah! So that’s-a why you stuck to my back like-a the flea! He made-a you think I was-a the spy!”

Aluinn shrugged apologetically. “He was very convincing and I … I was open to suggestion.”

The count snorted extravagantly, feigning supreme indignation.

“Peters,” Aluinn said, returning his attention to Deirdre and Damien. “Where is he now?”

“Dead,” Damien said. “As far as we know.”

“What is that supposed to mean, as far as you know?”

“It means, the last we saw of him he was going off the top of a cliff. I took some men back up the mountain the next morning to collect the bodies and found Robert exactly where we had laid him, but Peters was gone. There was a good deal of blood on the rocks at the base of the cliff where he landed; it looked like he had been dragged off for an evening meal by wolves or mountain cats.”