DARE THE WILD WIND (7 page)

Not waiting for either of them to hinder him, he wheeled away.  But before he could take two strides, there was a clatter at the entry to the hall.  The music faltered, and in the crowded room, the din of voices stilled. 

A band of half a dozen men paused for a charged second in the great arched doorway.  Basket
hilted broadswords swung at their sides, and they were booted and spurred, and dressed in the short Highland coats and the tartan trews worn in battle.  And all wore the forbidden badge of the Rebels, the blue bonnet with the white cockade.

                            ***** 

“It’s the MacCavan.” 

The words echoed all around her, and Brenna's heart drummed wildly in her ears as she watched
Cam strike across the smooth worn stones of the hall toward her, strong and unconquerable and alive.

The last of the music had died, and the crowd parted before him.  Surrounded by his enemies, his face lit in his old daring grin.  Beneath his tumble of russet curls, his craggy features had thinned in a way Brenna didn't remember, fined and sharpened by the dangers and privations of months on campaign from Prestonpans to
Derby.  But Brenna caught a private spark of devilry in his brilliant blue eyes.  He was still the handsomest man in the Highlands, and it took all of Brenna's strength not to run to his arms.

She sensed too clearly that any unexpected movement could shatter the stunned tableau around her.  As he strode forward, not a Scot in the hall put his hand to the hilt of his sword.  Only the four English nobles with the Earl of Stratford reached to draw their weapons.  At the opposite end of the great hall with the Earl, Malcolm's skin had gone a milky gray.

"You dare come here?" he choked out, his words thick with rage.

Cam
's voice rang the length of the hall.  "I come under the white flag of truce."

"Who let you through my gates?" Malcolm sputtered.  Then his voice steadied.  "Call the guard."

None of the men around him moved. 
Cam's gaze slid over them and returned to Malcolm.

"I need no key to your gates.  And your guard is occupied."    

Brenna breathed again.  Iain was among the five men with
Cam, despite the bulge of a bandage under the sleeve of his shirt.  Though she knew his wound would make it impossible to wield the claymore that swung in its scabbard from his waist, a true Scot would be naked without the heavy double edged broadsword traditional in the Highlands.  Iain sent her an encouraging, conspiratorial smile.  But how many MacCavans could Cam have brought inside the castle walls?  And what had become of the dragoons?

Malcolm's thin control broke, and he clawed clumsily for his sword.  "You'll never leave these walls alive."

Drake Seton stepped in front of Malcolm. 

"Even for a Rebel, an Englishman honors a flag of truce.  What business brings you here?"

"My lord, I'm Cameron MacCavan, chief of Clan MacCavan."  Despite his powerful frame,
Cam could sketch a graceful bow.  "I've come here today to make peace with my old neighbors and to treat with you."

Drake Seton's voice went even more cold.  "Then you know you address an emissary of the Crown?"

Cam
smiled as if they faced one another at a game of curling or shinty.  "I'm mindful of the honor, my lord.  And trust in yours."

Brenna saw a flicker of surprise play across Drake Seton's aquiline features.  "Do you forswear your allegiance to the Pretender?"

"I come to speak to you of the Prince,"
Cam responded.  "And to mend fences never meant to be broken."

A murmur ran through the room.  Brenna heard a woman's whispered question behind her.

"Can Cameron MacCavan be deserting the Prince?"

Brenna knew
Cam better, even if Iain hadn't forewarned her.  But Iain hadn't mentioned this part of the plan.  Still, they were at war.  If it was trickery, how else could Cam gain the ears of all their neighbors?   She would have thought far less of Cam if he turned coat from Charles Stuart to win Malcolm's consent for their marriage.

       Suspicion still lingered in the Earl's face.  "To what does the Crown owe this sudden change in sentiment, Lord MacCavan?"

"To much I'd speak to you privately about, with your permission." 
Cam didn't grovel despite his words.  "But first, my lord, I request a dance with my promised bride."

A roar of relief and approval rose around the room, from men who had been his friends until he rode away last August.  They loved him still, and Brenna rejoiced that Iain had been right.  Not even the Rising could turn them against him.

Cam
wheeled toward Brenna, and she could see no one else in the room.  Dimly, she heard Malcolm's voice, calling out to forbid it.  But at someone's nod the bagpipes struck up their favorite reel.  Without a backward glance for Malcolm, Brenna moved to meet Cam at the center of the floor, her fingers sliding up his hard muscled chest to the solid strength of his wide shoulders.  He reached out for her, his hands all but spanning her waist.  The sweet familiar warmth of his touch sent a tingling shock through her, and she lifted her face to gaze into his.

"
Cam, I thought you'd never come."

"You knew I would."  His voice had dropped to a low husky note, and his intense blue gaze held Brenna's.  She felt as if she was being drawn into the clear depths of twin mountain lakes, as if she was drowning.  But she drowned in joy, and only insistent, prickling fear forced her to speak.     

"But not today.  Not with English soldiers inside the walls."

He laughed and whirled her into the first steps of the dance.  "That's why I sent Iain, to prepare you."

"It's mad to walk into the lion's lair," she said when he swung her back to him again.

"Your brother is no lion," he answered, his old co
ntempt for Malcolm in his words.

"It's the Earl of Stratford I tried to warn you about," she told him.  "He isn't Malcolm's kind of fool
.  You can't underestimate him.”

Cam
's teasing smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.  "Are you saying you fear for my skin?"

"I fear for the least hair on your head, and you know it," she shot back.  "How do you expect to escape once the Earl discovers you've deceived him?"

"By the time the Earl realizes I don't intend to betray the Prince, he'll find his dragoons very little help to him."

"Have you brought an army to Lochmarnoch?" she asked.

He ignored her skeptical tone, spinning her away from him again.  "Not so many men as that.  But I know how to use them."

Other dancers had joined them on the floor.  Brenna waited until they drew close again to speak.

"I'll have more of an answer than yo
u're giving me." 

Amusement lit in his eyes at her persistence.  "With so many guests and their tacksmen arriving through your brother's gates, it was easy enough to send my men in wearing the tartans of the other clans.  I learned every twist and stone of
Lochmarnoch Castle before we were ten.  And some of my clansmen whiled away pleasant hours in your kitchens before the Rising."

"They persuaded the maids in the kitchens to help you?" Had
Cam thought what the price could be for the scullery maids once he and his men were gone?  "Did they poison the dragoons?"

"Nothing so elaborate or dangerous,"
Cam said.  "They only served them a midday meal that made most of them retch and the rest of them green."  He couldn't repress a soft laugh.

"By the time my men closed on them, they were too weak to make much protest at being herded inside cells under the guard
house.  They'll survive, and no one can lay any certain blame."

The worry that weighed on Brenna lifted.  She wanted to laugh at how easily
Cam had unbarred the castle gates. "And how did your men come by other clan's plaids?" she inquired with a small smile. 

"Do you need to ask?"  He flashed her a highwayman's grin.  "Some of our neighbors' men will nurse lumps on their heads, but most were secretly glad to lend their tartans in the Stuart cause."

Brenna knew many of her brother's men still had Stuart lean
ings.  But they were bound in loyalty to the chief of their clan.  Like the men who quietly surrendered their plaids, they would never directly disobey their chief, even one as sorry as Malcolm.

"Do you really think you can sway any of Malcolm's guests to
join the Prince's cause?"

Cam
's face grew grim.  "I have to try."

"Are things so desperate?" Brenna asked in alarm.

"We've won battle after battle,"
Cam said, "but we have yet to win the war.  We're in retreat, but we're going to turn and fight, and we need all the clans behind us."

If any man could persuade their neighbors to change sides, it was
Cam.  With the Highlands at his back, the Prince might finally inspire the fierce loyalty of Scot for Scot.

The last strains of the dance were fast approaching, and Brenna could waste no more time in questions.  Conscious every eye in the hall was on them, she drew away from him in the final intricate steps of the reel.

"Tell me where to be when you leave."

Cam
gave a short laugh.  "My departure could be abrupt."

Brenna spun back to face him.  "Only say where to meet you, and I'll follow you."

"No," he said sharply.  "I won't put you at the same risk I did yesterday."

Sudden panic knifed through Brenna.  She seized on the one argument she knew he couldn't dismiss.  "I'll be at more risk here.  The Earl suspects I lured his men into ambush." 

It was half true.  The Earl had said he wouldn't hang her, no more.  Brenna saw the flash of regret in
Cam's face at putting her in peril.  The tempo of the music quickened, and Cam caught her by the waist.  "Meet me on the watchtower, by the armory."     

The music of the pipes spiraled to a frenzied crescendo, and he swung her high above his head in the last wild turn of the dance.  Closing her eyes, Brenna abandoned herself to the dizzy spin of their bodies and the strength of the arms that held her.

Then the dance was over.  Eyes holding hers, he let her slide slowly down until her feet touched the floor.  Bodies pressed intoxicatingly close, they had only a moment, but it was long enough for Brenna to speak.

"Good hunting," she whispered with a glance toward the old friends waiting to greet him once the music ended. 

Cam
was quickly surrounded by a crowd of welcoming men, half of them boyhood companions, clapping him on the shoulder and the back.  One or two gave him brief bearish hugs, shouting friendly insults to hide their joy that they met again in a ballroom and not on the field of battle.  Just as Cam hoped, their salute all but engulfed him, barring his passage back to the Earl.

As she turned away, Drake Seton's gaze pinned her.  For a second, Brenna felt a flash of guilt.  The sight of
Cam had wiped all thought of last night from her mind.  Now the Earl's look was an unwelcome reminder of their clash in her father's study, and her brief betraying weakness in his arms. 

Even Morag called Drake Seton handsome as the devil himself.  But his chiseled aristocratic profile was far too arrogant.  She couldn't deny he was powerfully male, but seeing
Cam again had swept away all the torments she had suffered in the night.  She had only been away from the feel of Cam's arms and his strong solid body too long.  Seeing Cam again was proof no other man would ever be his equal. 

The tight twitch of the Earl's jaw told Brenna he wasn't accustomed to being slighted in favor of a noisy reunion between friends.  But there was nothing he could do. 
Cam had outmaneuvered him.  By now one of the Earl's aides must have confirmed Cam's men were inside the castle gates in force, and the English soldiers nowhere in evidence at the portcullis or on the parapets above.  Drake Seton had no choice but to wait until the furor of Cam's homecoming subsided, and on Cam's promise he would parley with him before the gathering dispersed.

Drake Seton was, in practical fact,
Cam's prisoner.  But only at the sufferance of the chiefs of the other clans inside the great hall.  Uncomfortably, Brenna realized Cam couldn't be sure how long he might have to draw the other chiefs aside.

Brenna could see how restraint rankled the Earl.  Half of her longed to taunt him for his conceit.  But silence was wiser if she wanted to escape without arousing the suspicions of her brother or the Earl.  She couldn't vanish in too great a haste, and Brenna joined in the next dance. 

Lachlan Fraser bowed over her hand, smiling at her glance toward
Cam.  "Your betrothed seems detained.  May I offer a little diversion?" 

Her own smile betrayed the right touch of regret.  "I may be in need of it. 
Cam's friends seem to forget I haven't seen him in nearly a year."

He drew her back into the center of the floor.  "If I had his good fortune, I wouldn't absent myself so long."