Heart of Shadows (Hearts of the Highlands Book 2), page 22
“I never did,” Galien answered.
“It does not matter,” their father huffed. “We pardoned him. Killing him in cold blood now would make you a murderer in the Marches.”
“But Father,” she went to him and sat in the seat beside him, “the Bruce’s soldiers killed Ragenald. You would have a Scottish warden?”
He looked at her and then at his wife and son. “Aye. I would rather a Scot over Bennett, whose intentions toward you are evil.”
She shook her head, unable to believe her ears! She turned to her brother. Galien? Galien spoke of peace? She…for war? War against Torin. The Hetheringtons had relatives who were Scots. She didn’t care who the warden was, as long as he wasn’t Bennett. She agreed with them, so why was her blood boiling in anger toward them?
Her family didn’t seem to care that Torin had fooled them all—even the border guards. He came here for war and pretended to be peaceful…merciful. She wanted to do whatever would hurt him. She didn’t need her family to do it. In fact, she didn’t want her family to fight and die, especially against Torin. She had a logical thought every so often when Torin’s handsome face and lying tongue weren’t haunting her and remembered the safety of her family.
But logic was no match for a wounded heart, and she thought about hurting him, killing him if she had the chance.
“He may not even return,” she said, closing her arms around herself. She didn’t know which was worse. Killing him and never seeing him again, or him choosing to stay away. “I told you. He found his brothers. He will likely stay in Rothbury, and when the Scots come to our village, he will not be there to stop them.”
Her father looked a bit worried about that and turned to Galien. “Bring Rob Adams here. We need to include him in this decision.”
Galien went, but not before Braya pulled him by the sleeve of his jack. “What has come over you? You are agreeable and sensible. Why the sudden change?”
“I think we will be safe if the Scots win. If Carlisle wins, I want to bring the battle and the rest of the Hetheringtons there and make sure Bennett dies for what he tried to do to you. I am not always a reckless fool, Sister. Contrary to what you think.” He smiled and winked at her and headed out.
“Braya.”
She turned to her father.
“You must remain hidden. No one knows you are here. I want to keep it that way.”
“I wanted to check on Millie.”
He shook his head. “No, my dear. If Bennett gets a whiff of you, he may try something else.”
“Let him! I—”
“Braya!” Her father held up his hand. “Go back to your bed and rest. You have been through much. You are not thinking clearly.”
She balled her hands into fists, but she said nothing.
She was thinking just perfectly. Better than she had in a sennight.
Without another word, she left the kitchen and returned to her room and her small, prickly bed. She remembered her bed at Lismoor and fought the stinging burn of tears forming in her eyes. She loved him. She loved him still. She’d let him touch her, know her, breathe and taste her. And he had been lying to her to entire time. How could he have kissed her with such meaning knowing they were enemies? How could he have lain with her, asking her to wed him, knowing he was a lie?
She stayed in bed the rest of the day, and when night fell and her parents were asleep, she donned a fresh pair of black breeches and a léine beneath her jack and left the house.
She thought she might just go and visit Millie and the babe. Millie and Will would never tell the warden she’d returned. She was sure it would be safe and, besides, she needed a friend’s ear.
It was the lights in the distance, closer than stars, moving in formation, coming from the north that made her change her direction and head to the stable for Archer.
Her blood ran cold. The Scots had come to Carlisle.
He would be there with his king, perhaps with his brothers. What would she do if she saw him? She hadn’t taken a weapon. She could go back and possibly wake her father. No, she kept going.
She wanted to see him one last time.
Before she found a knife and plunged it into him.
Torin moved fast when word came of the Scot’s army moving toward Carlisle. He was glad his brothers came with him, but he especially did not want them fighting the Hetheringtons.
He was surprised the king hadn’t granted his request for more time. This was bad. Nothing was in place. He was to poison the guards’ supper, their water, killing his enemies like a plague. He knew who kept the keys to the weapons room and he was supposed to be in possession of the key by now. Nothing had been done. Would it matter? The Scot’s army was so much more skilled than the border guards. The Bruce’s men would be victorious.
Would Adams fight? Would the Hetheringtons? It felt as if his blood drained from his face and refused to return until he saw Braya alive. He prayed her family wasn’t fighting. Damn it, she wasn’t supposed to leave the safety of Lismoor now!
They caught up to the army, and after learning the king wasn’t with them, they broke away from the march and rode hard until evening came.
But Torin could not sleep and rose up again while his brothers slept beneath the stars. He traveled on to Hetherington territory alone with Avalon—though he didn’t push his dearest friend but let her take him at her own pace.
While they traveled, he thought of Braya. He should have told her the truth the moment he felt something for her. It was too late for that now. He was going to make certain she was safe.
But he was too late. He learned promptly from Braya’s mother that her daughter had disappeared sometime in the night and the men had gone to the castle to find her.
His heart thudded in his ears. Why did they look for her at the castle?
“Because,” her mother told him, “she was most likely looking for you.”
He closed his eyes and pulled at his hair. This wasn’t going to end well. How was he going to protect her? Her father and brother? Hell.
He promised her mother that he would do his best to bring them all home and left to go get them.
As dawn approached, he searched outside the city, along the Eden, but found nothing. He hoped her father had found her and she wasn’t alone.
He was going to have to go inside the castle. What if Bennett had found her? What if Adams had told the other men about him? He couldn’t take the whole damned guard on alone.
He was going to have to find a way in without being noticed. It was what he was good at.
The east gate.
Leaving Avalon beside the river to refresh herself and rest, he entered the castle on foot, his sword raised and ready, through the east gate. No one saw him.
But someone did.
“Torin.”
He saw her standing beyond the gate cloaked in her hooded mantle. Her silken voice echoed on the empty walkway.
Lowering his blade, he walked toward her as the sun rose over the horizon. Light blended with mist, casting her in an ethereal glow as she lowered her hood. She was his laughter, his joy, and he would do anything not to lose her. More, not to harm her.
“I was doing my duty,” he told her. “You and your family were not part of the plan.”
“The plan?” she mocked.
“Aye, Braya. An army does not attack without a plan.” He stood close. He could smell her, look into her clear blue eyes. He wanted to drag her into his arms. His muscles cramped with the need. He remembered how she felt atop him, beneath him, held close to his heart. “You were not part of it. I was not supposed to fall in love with you, lass. I never thought I would—with anyone.”
“If you loved me, Torin, you would have told me the truth. Are you such a coward?”
“Aye,” he told her. “Aye. I am. I was afraid of losing you. I knew you would never—”
She stepped forward and slapped his face. The crack sounded throughout the outer ward and drew two other men from the shadows, and then another.
His brothers. Galien.
“You knew I would never stay with you. You deceived me and used me for your own selfish desire.”
“No,” he contended. “I fell in love with your smile and your spirit. I did not know what to do. I was a coward. Forgive me, Braya.”
“What do we have here?”
They both turned at the sound of Bennett’s voice. Geoffrey Mitchell stood slightly behind him as he stepped into view. He shoved another man forward and held a knife to his throat. It was Rowley Hetherington. He’d been beaten, his left eye swollen shut.
“Father!” Braya rushed toward him and ended up in Bennett’s arms instead.
“Bennett,” Galien shouted. “I will kill you!”
“You will stay where you are if you want your family to live.” He was finished with Galien and turned his attention to Braya. “Miss Hetherington.” He closed his arm tighter around her, capturing her arms so that she could not move them. “I have sent for the priest.”
“Bennett,” Torin’s voice was like an axe falling on the back of someone’s neck. “Let her go before I kill you where you stand.”
The warning was menacing, making Braya’s eyes widen.
“I have her and her father, Gray. Whatever you do, one of them will die.”
Braya stomped on his foot, but he moved it swiftly and her heel just missed his toes.
Bennett smiled at her struggle to be free and held his knife to her throat with the hand he no longer wanted. His cheeks grew round and red. “Oh, I have imagined you in my bed for a long time, little pigeon. I have wanted you beneath me crying out my name—”
Little pigeon. Torin didn’t move. He wasn’t certain he was breathing. His vision was filled with red. Bennett. Bennett was one of the men in his house eighteen years ago. He was the one who…
Torin’s eyes were wide and unblinking as he charged like a wild bull set loose.
Bennett turned his attention to him, horrified at the speed at which Torin moved. Her captor had no time to do anything to Braya with his blade.
Torin clamped his fingers around Bennett’s wrist at her throat and pulled his arm away. His eyes were like flames. He could feel the fire rising up in him, spilling out with the rage of twenty-two years.
Still holding Bennett’s wrist, he moved to block Braya with his back as he raised his sword and swiped off Bennett’s arm.
Blood splattered across Torin’s mantle.
Braya quickly moved away when Bennett released her, screaming and trying to grasp his wound and not her.
Geoffrey Mitchell released Rowley Hetherington and leaped forward. Torin took him by the collar and plunged his blade into Mitchell’s throat.
He was vaguely aware of Hetherington rushing to his daughter and her brother joining them.
He turned back to Bennett, pointing his bloody sword at him. He felt as if he were going mad. Finally taking the plunge over the precipice. He would show no mercy this time.
“Twenty-two years ago ye burned down a small cottage in Invergarry.” He pushed the tip of his blade under Bennett’s chin. He could no longer control how he spoke or how he looked. “D’ye remember? Ye will answer or I will cut off yer other arm.”
Bennett whimpered and closed his eyes.
“Ye raided the home of a man and his wife and their three young lads,” Torin said, helping him remember. When Bennett said nothing, Torin raised his sword.
“Aye. Aye, I remember,” Bennett cried, opening his eyes to look at him. He must have known he wasn’t going to get out of this alive, for he grew bold to ask. “Which one are you?”
Torin’s sword swayed. His arm trembled. In an instant, he grew more aware of who was there. Braya, his brothers, Braya’s family.
Torin gritted his teeth then exhaled. “I am the one who ran away.”
“Torin,” Cainnech called out. “I remember this bastard. Kill him or I will.”
“The three of us will,” Torin called back, keeping his searing gaze on the warden.
“Ye called her little pigeon,” Torin continued. “She was our MOTHER!” he screamed in Bennett’s face.
He turned to Braya and her family. “Meet us by the river. Go! The army is comin’!”
He turned back to Bennett when no one remained but his brothers. “Who else among you that day still lives?”
“Adams,” Bennett told him. “Rob Adams.”
Torin’s head spun and his hands closed into tight fists. Adams. His friend. He thought he might be ill and turned away as his brother stepped forward.
“I am the one you sold,” Nicholas said, holding a long knife in his hand.
“I am the one ye kept with ye on the battlefield,” Cainnech told him and ran him through in the guts with his claymore.
Nicholas plunged his knife into Bennett’s eye.
Torin felt a long, guttural groan coming up from his depths. He let it out, releasing so much, and then cut Bennett from his groin to his neck.
Adams. He lifted his bloody face from Bennett to the doors.
Chapter Twenty-Five
From her place hidden in the trees with her father and brother, Braya watched the Scot’s army enter Carlisle’s massive outer gate after it was opened from inside. She still didn’t know if it was right for her family not to fight for Carlisle. What if a Scottish warden was worse than Bennett?
Oh, but how could anyone be worse than Bennett? Her heart wrenched within for Torin, for his brothers. To remember a man by a sickly sweet endearment he had called his mother was too hard to comprehend, so Braya gave up trying.
Torin had so many demons to give up, so many shadows. Would finding the man who was guilty for Torin’s life and killing him be enough? And what of her and Torin? Could she forgive him for not telling her he was her enemy? Her father’s enemy?
She turned Archer toward him now, so thankful that he lived. “Father, you have not yet told me what you think of Torin.”
“He is a spy.”
“Aye, he is.”
“I assume Bennett and his men killed his family.”
“He was five,” Braya told him. “Orphans raised him until he was ten.” Was any of it true? Aye. It was difficult for him to speak of it. And after seeing the fury he’d kept leashed for so long released, she believed him.
Her father and brother were quiet.
“Do you think he is dead?” Galien asked, his eyes searching the battlements.
No. She shook her head. “He is an expert fighter.”
They both nodded, probably remembering how quickly he took hold of Bennett and disarmed him—in every sense of the word.
“Where is Mr. Adams?” she asked. “Do you think he will fight Torin?”
“I do not know where he is,” her father replied, then spit out a little blood. “My tooth is loose.”
“I have never seen so many Scots,” Galien said on a dreadful breath. He spotted a rider approaching and held up his sword.
Braya watched and saw that it was Cainnech MacPherson.
“Torin wants me to escort ye all home,” he called out, coming closer.
Braya shook her head. “I am not going home. Where is Torin? He lives then?”
“Aye, he lives,” he said, reaching her.
“Good. I can still kill him,” she muttered.
The Highlander smiled.
“What if they follow us?” Galien asked. “We will stand no chance.”
“No one is goin’ to follow ye,” Cainnech assured and shooed them forward. “There is nothin’ fer ye to do here.”
“I am not going home, Commander.” Braya squared her shoulders. “And I do not appreciate your brother ordering me about. I am not his wife. I do not belong to him.”
“Braya—” her father implored.
“No. Father, he broke my heart because, aye, I do have one—and I do sometimes let it rule me. Perhaps ’tis ruling me now, but I want to speak to him. I have things I would say to him. I am not going.”
“He will come to ye,” MacPherson insisted.
She shook her head. “I wish to go to him. Where is he?”
The commander laughed. It struck her how beautiful and menacing the brothers were. “I find no humor in this, Commander. I ask you again, where is he?”
His brother sighed. “Ye would be the cause of keepin’ yer father here? He willna leave withoot ye.”
“Then the sooner you take me to Torin, the quicker we can go home.” Her eyes sparkled and her chin lifted with challenge.
The commander looked her over in her saddle from boot to flaxen crown and smiled again, shaking his head. “My brother never stood a chance.” Then he laughed.
“All right. Come with me,” he gave in to her. Then Cain looked at her father and brother. “Ye two stay here. I will help her if she needs it.”
Braya appreciated his words. Yet again. Perhaps the savage wasn’t so bad after all.
Her father pleaded with her not to go, but he was in no condition to stop her. Surprisingly, Galien remained still and promised to take him home.
She followed on Archer and caught up to the commander quickly. “Is the warden dead?”
“Aye, and in hell,” he said, slowing down.
She didn’t bring Bennett up again, letting him stay dead. She realized he was responsible for not only Torin’s suffering, but for Cainnech’s and Nicholas’ as well. She was sorry for them.
But the commander seemed a bit more light-humored than his brothers. At least more than the earl. Torin had begun to laugh of late.
“But you live,” she remarked with a knowing hint in her eyes.
“Some of us do.”
She knew he was speaking of his brothers. She couldn’t help the poor widowed earl, but… “Your brother, Torin, will be fine after today, I think.”
“How d’ye know that, lass?”
Lass. It was what she dreamed Torin had called her. “He killed his ghost.”
He nodded then shrugged his broad shoulders. “And now he will have a new one.”
He meant her. She didn’t deny it. It wasn’t her fault. “If he had told me the truth, I would not have given him a chance to feel anything for me.”
