Claimed by a Scottish Lord (9 page)

―Geddes will not harm Friar Tucker,‖ Rose said. ―Even he would not dare.‖

Ruark mounted his own horse and pulled on Loki‘s reins. He moved off the road and into the woods. As he rode past his men awaiting him at the cemetery‘s edge, they fell in behind him. He kept to the trees as best as the landscape allowed and rode quickly.

Rose rode just behind and to the left of him. An occasional glance over his shoulder told him she was still on the horse, though he didn‘t have to look to know. He could feel her. Smell the lilac encasing his senses. Her docility should have made him suspicious for she was the least submissive woman he had ever known, but it was enough just to keep her out of his head.

He clenched and unclenched his gloved fist on the reins trying to ease the tension from his body, annoyed that he could not. A mile later, his small party of riders joined two more of his men awaiting him. The moon remained ghostly bright, skimming the treetops, and soon Ruark was concentrating on the thin ribbon of trail.

Traveling for a half hour, he followed a path parallel to the river before he broke into the open. Except for Colum, the rest of his men were there. They fell in behind him as he rode his horse down the loamy bank and into the river. A cold spray of water leaped to life around him and slowly rose to his calves. His men had worked two days to find a place shallow enough to traverse the river without using the public crossing north of here. To his left, the river‘s rocky bed dropped and the fast-moving current would grab a person. A two day‘s ride away laid Kerr land, and safety.

In that instant, the stallion‘s reins went slack. He twisted in the saddle. Somehow, Rose had cut the reins. Ruark cursed. He swung his horse around and grabbed the stallion‘s bridle, barely ducking in time as she made the horse rear. Throwing her leg over the horse, she slipped from the back of the stallion and into the rapidly moving current. For a moment, she disappeared into the swirling blackness only to bob up ten feet away. Even as he heard someone shouting in the darkness, Ruark had already removed his boots and jumped into the river after her.

Chapter 5

R
ose didn‘t know how long she had been in the water. She had swum maybe a hundred yards when the icy current grabbed her hard and would not relinquish its fierce grip, even after she found purchase in the rocks. The undertow pulled at her, thrashed her to and fro. Driftwood wedged between the rocks pressed against her.

Somehow, she‘d managed to remove her jacket, nearly drowned attempting the feat, but her jerkin and breeches still weighed her down. She lost her grip on the jacket and watched it sail away, lashed and tangled by the boiling white water. She had learned to swim in this river, knew it well, had not for one moment thought that escaping into it could actually kill her. When she slid from the stallion‘s back into the water, she had not considered that the recent rains had swollen the river to its outer banks.

With the moon having gone behind the clouds, she struggled to see. She could hear shouting behind her. She looked back over her shoulder just in time to see Roxburghe slide from his horse and push off into the river after her. Panic struck her. She struggled to pull herself onto the slick rocks at the water‘s edge, but her hands slipped, the current jerked her backward and swept her along like human flotsam.

The river‘s rolling banks became cliffs that began to rise on either side of her, creating a shadowed narrow channel. The passage became a black abyss. The current picked up speed and power. She was headed straight for a waterfall! She swam harder at an angle, fighting to reach the shallower water.

She made it to the other side and with all her strength, grabbed a projecting tree branch covered with debris. A backwash spun in a monstrous whirlpool only feet away. She knew craggy boulders hid underneath. Over the water‘s roar, she heard the thunder of the waterfall, and couldn‘t believe she had traveled so far. Her heart hammered, her chest ached. No wonder she could no longer feel her fingers. She gasped for breath, water roiling over her.

Inching her hands one over the other, she sought a stronger grip, found one, and held on for life. If she let go she would be sucked into the whorl of white water and spit out over the waterfall. She didn‘t know which was worse—to have gone willingly with Roxburghe or be dashed against the rocks in a foamy, pulpy end.

Then Roxburghe was suddenly behind her, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist and lifting her out of the current. ―Let go,‖ she heard him yell over the roar of water. ―I‘ve got you!‖

Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head. She could not do it. She could not trust him. She could not go back! ―You let go!‖

His arm tightened on her waist. Somewhere in her brain, she knew he was standing in the water. ―You need me to get to shore. We can no‘ stay here. The water is too damn cold. Let go, Rose.‖

His body prevented her from slipping back into the current. Yet it was that very strength and power that dissuaded her from trusting her life to him. She clenched her hands tighter, terrified of letting go of the tree branch, a lifeline in the murky depths that had become her life. Fate had taken away her rainbows and her dreams and now it would drag her the rest of the way down.

Over the roar of water, she screamed. ―I will not go back with you. I—‖

―You can not return to the abbey,‖ he shouted near her ear. ―There is no place in Britain or France you will be able to hide from your father now. That is the way it is, Rose. But if you go over the falls, I go with you.‖

The thought gave her pause. The idea that she might die with him, might have to spend eternity bound in death to him, sharing the black waters of an abyss or the flames of hell together, was too horrible to contemplate.

But the choice to go to her father should have been her own to make, just as the choice to let go of the branch was now. In any case, they would soon both be too weak to fight the current. Roxburghe was right about the danger. She could fight him and end up too weak to pull herself from the water before they went over the waterfall.

She loosened her lifesaving grip and he caught her in his arms. Together they struggled to the bank and crawled out of the water exhausted and half drowned. She collapsed to her knees next to him. He rolled onto his back and placed one forearm over his eyes. Over the river‘s roar, she heard his labored gasps as she sucked in her own lifesaving breath. His Holland shirt had been torn across one shoulder. Like her, he wore nothing on his feet. She could still escape him.

Somehow, she still possessed the strength to make a dash for the rocks, but his hand shot out, grabbed her ankle like an iron vise and she slammed to the ground against her palms. She twisted around, ready to kick him, but he was already upon her, holding her down with one thigh insinuating itself between her knees. She launched a dazzling attack of her own, withdrawing the dirk from a slim sheath on her hip and laying it against his throat. The action had been so clean and swift she felt a moment‘s satisfaction. She met his narrowed eyes, even as her mind was immobilized by the terrifying idea he would strike her.

―I see now I erred in playing the gentleman and should have frisked you more thoroughly,‖ he said and spit blood. She must have hit him in the mouth.

―Gentleman indeed! I refuse to be your hostage.‖

His breath brushed her cheek, but that was not all she felt of him heavy against her.

―Have you ever cut a man‘s throat, Rose? ‘Tis messy.‖

She had never maliciously harmed any creature, yet her hand tightened on the blade.

―I would not die instantly,‖ he continued as if to convey there was a chill in the air. ―I would still have time to snap your neck. Such a lovely neck, too.‖

―Do not try to be charming, Roxburghe. I am extremely angry.‖

And she was cold and trembling. And frightened. She didn‘t want to kill him. She wanted only to escape. As if to confirm her intention, she tightened her grip on the blade. ―Do you doubt my courage?‖

If he had been angry before, something else had replaced the emotion. ―Nay, love. I am only debating how best to disarm you without getting my throat cut.‖

He made no attempt to remove the blade from her hand. He was smart, she realized. If he disarmed her by brute force alone, he would have given her psyche room to retreat. Surrender became a powerful tool of defeat if given by choice, even if that choice was an illusion.

She didn‘t resist when he finally eased the knife from his throat and pressed her wrist to the soft ground, into the mud and pine needles. His weight rested on his arms positioned now on either side of her head. Neither moved. They were wet and covered in slime. But it didn‘t veil the heat of him. Her shirt sucked to the crevices and curves of her body, and she may as well have been naked beneath him for all the protection the thin fabric provided her. Though she was frightened, something melted inside her.

The dirk fell sideways next to her hand.

The tips of his damp hair brushed her cheeks. ―I concede you handle a blade well. An interesting pastime for a sister of the abbey. Would you have really used it?‖

She fixed her gaze on his face. ―I . no one has ever tested me that far.‖

He frightened her and infuriated her, and she knew she should fear him. He did not move as she‘d expected. Lord above, now that the shock of nearly drowning and going over the falls was wearing away, she felt a moment‘s faintness. There was nothing casual in the way his eyes touched hers. She didn‘t know what emotion it was he caused to rise in her.

She‘d heard accounts where women were abused and violated by their captors. The infamous Kerr laird would know of such stories, too.

―Please,‖ she murmured, aware of her own weak response.

―Please, what?‖ he said in a low voice.

She stared into eyes that were wild and dangerous. She remembered in sunlight they were the color of a twilight sky. ―I want you to get off me. You are . heavy.‖

He laughed. Rose thought she hated him at that moment. She wanted to buck and dislodge him. But his chest already flattened her breasts and she dared not move. His face held no emotion, as if he could read her thoughts. ―If I wanted to rape you, love, the deed would already have been done.‖

Pushing away from her supine body, he stood and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Stunned, she stared up at the black velvet sky filled with stars and took her first deep breath. But without his body heat, the night air had chilled in the fine mist. After a moment, she propped herself on her elbows. Her wet hair fell over eyes like reeds. She shoved it back with her hand and flinched. Her entire body hurt. Especially her leg.

Roxburghe was squatting in ankle-deep water rinsing mud and blood off the back of one hand. He had injured himself on the rocks as well.

He watched her from beneath half-lowered lids. After a moment‘s pause, he returned to tending the cut. For a man with such large hands, he worked quickly and efficiently. He appeared to have a familiarity with cleaning wounds. Her gaze dropped to the ring on his hand before she caught herself and looked away.

―Do you always wear breeches?‖ he asked.

She endured the amusement she glimpsed as his eyes went over her and slowly returned to rest on her face, and accepted the question as rhetorical.

―Why were you hiding at the cemetery?‖ he asked.

She pressed a thumb against her temple. ―I go to the cemetery often when I wish to . pray. Everyone knows that.‖

―Including those border raiders?‖

She turned her head startled and alarmed. ―What makes you think they were not after you?‖

He propped an elbow on his knee. ―Because the abbey is in the opposite direction of the border crossing. And a conversation with the mountebank told me otherwise. No . I suspect your man, Geddes Graham, was after you. Not to play nice, either.‖

A heavy silence fell between them. If only she could think clearly. Roxburghe was right. She could never go back to the abbey. ―Geddes is a weasel. He is an informant for ‖ She refused to say
my father
. ―For the king‘s warden,‖ she said, the most hated man in all Scotland.

People would despise her, too, when they learned his daughter still lived. Her life as she had known it was forever at an end. A part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity and utter irony.

Instead, she started to shiver from the combination of wet, cold, and pain and wrapped her arms about her torso. ―Geddes and I have never got along. I took money from him that belonged to Jack.‖

Wrapping a torn piece of fabric from his shirt around his palm, Roxburghe returned to her side and knelt on one knee. Hard muscles encased not just his arms but his legs. She had so desperately wanted to find a weakness in him, yet his strength overwhelmed all impressions.

―You need to dry out. We cannot remain here. Can you walk?‖

He was asking if she could walk barefoot in the woods. The soles of her feet were as callused as cow‘s hide. She‘d grown up barefoot. But she had injured her thigh. She could feel warmth pooling against the cloth of her breeches. ―Wouldn‘t it be better to await your men to find us?‖

―Lest you have not noticed, we are on the wrong side of the river. I doubt even you have a taste for raider company, dressed as you are.‖ With care, he gently tilted her chin. ―I don‘t want to kill anyone over you tonight, Rose.‖

She pulled from his grip. Her ring on his finger, like the small earring in his ear, flickered in the moonlight.

And fueled the pace of her thoughts.

What manner of man would not be afraid of border raiders when he was but one against many? A border raider himself. The same kind of man who had let her keep her weapon—who would risk death to jump into a raging river after her.

That he had done so for the life of his brother only made her own actions and defiance less clear in her mind.

R
uark ascended the path that let away from the river, a small winding trail more suitable for goats than humans. The sound of rushing water still roared in his ears. Twice while climbing, he‘d stopped to hand Rose up the slippery boulders.