Parris Afton Bonds (28 page)

Enya was heart-weary. Yesterday she had killed. How self-righteous she had been; how unfairly judgmental of Ranald, when she did not know the circumstances behind what had seemed brutal behavior. Once more she was in the ship’s cabin. Once more her captor talked to her. Only this time she could see his face.

Ranald sat on the edge of the bunk. She stood. Waited to hear why he had summoned her. She had never seen him looking so tired. Elbow braced on one knee, he rubbed the bridge
of his nose, a habit that was becoming dearly familiar to her.

"With Murdock dead . . . your rescue of Mhorag . . . there is no longer any need to hold you captive. The ship lies only fifteen knots off Ayrshire. By tomorrow ye and your companions will be r
eturned to your home.” “You are . . . setting me free?”

He raised his head and gave her a dry grin that barely touched the pleats at either comer of his mouth. “
Aye, the monster has recognized the insensitive brute for what he is.”

Enya blinked back tears.
I have gone too far. It is I who have slain the wild beast. I have civilized him to the point he now no longer needs me. Her hands ached to reach out, to smooth his disheveled hair where it fell across his forehead.

Instead, she clasped them before her in
a semblance of perfect composure. "Where do you go from here?” Good. Her voice did not sound choked with the tears her heart were crying. In fact, she sounded quite composed. "Now, with Murdock dead, there will be no place safe for you. The Duke of Cumberland will not give up until you and your reivers are dead. Oh, don't you see, you can’t continue to kill until the last British soldier is killed?”

Those incredibly wide shoulders seemed to sag. "I canna go on living under a government hostile to Highland
ways.”

"Then God speed,”
she whispered, and retreated from the cabin.

The Gulf’s warm current blessed the morning with a clear, sunny day. Elspeth’s hooked nose sniffled, as if she were suspiciously close to tears. “Good-bye and God bless,” she told Ranald. The old woman had taken a liking to the Cameron chief, after all.

Enya couldn
’t look at him. Her averted gaze locked with that of Mhorag. The young woman held out Enya’s tortoiseshell comb. "The comb couldn’t make a woman of me. Ye did.”

Enya took the comb and would have hugged the young woman, but her eyes, glinting suspiciously with tears, warned her not to make the good-bye more difficult. "The lucky man who takes you to wife, Mhorag, will be getting all woman."

She turned quickly and descended the rope ladder to the waiting dinghy. Next to Jamie snuggled a beaming Annie. On the bench behind them a lone Duncan sat at the long oars. In another dinghy were her mother, Arch, and Elspeth.

"Tis been a grand adventure," Duncan said, his gaze l
ocked on Mhorag, who stood at the ship’s railing, her expression grim and unyielding.

"Aye," Enya said, then added, "The Camerons, they be a proud clan."

"Too bloody proud," he said, not bothering to hide the heartache in his voice.

Despite Annie at his si
de, Jamie’s own heartache was visible to see. He paused in rowing to glance back at the ship. The look in his eyes was bleak. With his father’s death, some of the dash had gone out of the young man.

"My father
’s last words were not of his love for me but of his hatred for his nephew," he muttered. "Because of his hatred for Ranald, my father betrayed our clan. He was not the man I thought.”

"I understand your father was once a remarkable leader,”
she said gently. "His infirmity must have eaten away at his heart and brain.”

"Ye are certain this is what you want to do?”
Duncan asked him. "To return to Edinburgh?"

"I go with Ranald
’s blessing. Resistance didn’t gain us peace. Mayhap cooperation will rescue for posterity our Scottish culture. Edinburgh is no longer a provincial backwater. Enough determined Scotsmen could make it an intellectual hub of Europe."

Peace was not waiting for Enya or her mother. Alistair met them at the door with joy at their return and grief weighing his tidings. “
M’lord has passed away, Lady Kathryn.”

Kathryn
’s composure shattered. Weeping wildly, she collapsed into Arch’s arms. He hugged her and stroked her back. "Malcolm is released at last from his own captivity. Take solace in this, my love.”

Since Enya had not expected to see her
father alive again, or the man she had grown up believing was her father, the news of his death was not such a blow. Though she was saddened, the life burgeoning within her overrode her grief.

For more than a month the ever-present sickness plagued Enya. T
hen, just as quickly it passed, and she felt her swelling body to be life-giving. Renewed, even as spring renewed the earth.

Spring might have been evident in the flowering of the rhododendron and snapdragon and in the chorus of meadowlarks and robins, but
she found no delight in the season for which she had once so longed.

Arch vanished, as was his wont. A man of missions, a man of mystery.

Duncan, too, took his leave, to return to the sea, whether it was to fish or smuggle he would never say. Only, “Things willna be the same in Ayrshire. The excitement is gone.”

In those days of mourning, Elspeth and Alistair ran Afton House with quiet but brisk efficiency. Jamie and Annie stayed on, a comfort to both her mother and Enya. Indeed, his and Annie
’s comforting extended to Enya beyond the bounds of mere friendship.

He told her as the three of them sat one afternoon sunning on the terrace, "I know that you are with child, Enya.”

Her head snapped in his direction. He sat on a low red brick wall that enclosed the terrace. "How do you know that?” Her hand, holding one of the rhododendron blooms, fluttered to her stomach. True, it was now nicely rounded, but she hadn’t thought that condition was noticeable in the smocks and fuller gowns she had been wearing.

She gl
anced at Annie. Basking in the light of Jamie’s love, she bloomed like spring’s flowers. "You told him, Annie?”

“
Nae, mistress." She smoothed the ruffles on the sprigged muslin gown Kathryn had ordered refitted for her. "I didna ken. Mhorag did."

"Mhorag v
oiced her suspicion to me the morning we left ship,” Jamie said. "She said that although she might not be able to bear children any longer, she knows when a woman is with child."

"I see." The young Highland woman must certainly suffer mixed feelings.

"Enya?"

She refocused on Jamie. He rubbed his palm, as if it were stained. "Aye?"

When he didn’t speak Annie said, "The bairn will be needing a father. Jamie and me talked. We want you to know that he would be more than glad to stand in for the bairn’s father."

She said carefully, gently, "I am touched more than you both realize by your offer. But Jamie
’s destiny is not mere fatherhood. Tis fatherhood of a dying nation. Scotland calls for your attention, Jamie."

Now he looked at her. "You are like your mother. A
truly grand lady.”

If her mother mourned the loss of Arch as well as her husband, she never expressed it. Gowned in black, she presided once more at the brilliant salons that had always been a hallmark of her rule of the Afton clan. However, her keen interest in the fashionable assemblage of notables was visibly lacking.

Jamie filled in the gaps in conversation admirably. "A school in every parish has become a reality in Lowland Scotland,”
he told their dinner companions one balmy May evening. "We must encourage our people to do the same for the Highlands.”

“
There has to be a social and intellectual balance in Scotland," said David Hume, a well- known philosopher and historian.

He spoke a Scots more broad than Ranald
’s, and Enya experienced such a painful yearning that she barely managed to keep a polite smile and mumble intelligible responses the remainder of the dinner.

None of the dinner guests made mention of her advanced condition. Had they dared, Annie would have been at their throats. Wit
h her blend of bawdiness and naiveté, she charmed these sophisticates.

Which was just as well. When the men adjourned to the Chinese Room for cigars and brandy Enya pleaded indigestion and escaped to her bedroom.

Sleep that night did not come easily, and when finally she succumbed it was to restive dreams of her months as a captive . . . dreams that too quickly became a reality once more.

The shadow-draped apparition leaning over her bed clamped a hand over her mouth. A handkerchief muffled her scream. Next
, the blanket smothering her, enveloping her, brought her harshly awake.

Dreams didn
’t feel like this.

Trundled like Cleopatra in a rug, she kicked and tried to scream, but her flailing legs were ineffective against the strength of her captor, and her scre
ams were only snorting noises.

She knew she was being taken down the stairs and out of the house by way of the terrace and the garden. The blanket
’s wool was rough against her bare legs. Her abductor loped easily with her over his shoulder. Bundled though she was, she could still perceive the direction her captor was taking—the cobblestone road that linked Afton House with Ayrshire.

Too soon, though, her abductor deserted the bumpy road for an incline of some kind. Then she heard the slap of breakers agains
t shore. Next, she was dumped in what could only be a dinghy, if judged by its pitching. Just when she could feel dampness seeping through the blanket, she was transferred again. This time up, up, in a swaying fashion that harmonized with the wash of waves against something solid.

At last she was released and tossed onto something padded. The creak of timbers, the gentle rocking, told her she was aboard a boat of sorts.

When nothing further happened she struggled out of the blanket. Dazed, she stared around her. She was on the
Pelican
again. In Ranald’s cabin again.

Encased in a jute sack, Duncan thrashed and pummeled his abductor. A resulting “Unnh” of pain gave him some satisfaction, but not liberation. To be impressed by the damned British Navy was one thing, but to be waylaid by a common brigand while he sat drinking fine Scots whiskey in his trawler was quite another.

If he had been a wee more cl
ear in his head, he might have been able to determine where this seafaring highwayman was taking him. As it was, the floor came up beneath him with a solid thud.

"Dam
’me, but if ye ain’t picked a poor gent to hold hostage!" he sputtered, getting hair-like jute strands in his mouth.

He thought he heard a female say, "Ye can leave now, Patric
—Colin."

He wriggled free of the blanket. On hands and knees, he was disoriented, and the lantern light momentarily blinded him. When he was able to focus he looked from
the plank flooring upward.

Arms folded, a grinning Mhorag stood over him. "Me boots need polishing.”

He fought against the sway of the ship to get his balance and stand upright. "Is that so? Well, ye just canna command me whenever ye feel like it, Mhorag! I’ve had enough of yer highhanded—”

"And me heart needs loving."

Now it was his turn to grin, that silly grin that revealed his crooked teeth and merry disposition. "Is that so?”

Panic swept over Kathryn. Her abductor had flung her over his shoulder, and her chest bumped painfully against his back with each rapid stride he took. Wrapped as she was in the blanket, breathing was next to impossible.

She didn
’t fear death, but she did fear torture. Her clansmen had always admired the wisdom and justice she dispensed as their ruler, but they knew nothing of her cowardice. As long as she was in control . . . Now, she wasn’t.

Was she being abducted for reward, for retribution of some kind, or
—for ravishment?

Ravishment. Strange, the word should mean bo
th to take away by violence and to overcome with pleasure. She had never known real pleasure at the hands of her husband. And now never would.

Her lungs collapsed like bellows for want of air, and her rib cage hurt from the jostling. She grew dizzy, lost t
rack of time and what was happening. It seemed to her that she was being carried aboard a ship.

Just as she felt as though she might faint, she was laid down. The blanket was peeled back from her face. She stared up into the dark, passionate eyes of Arch.
“Dear, dear Arch. Did I give you permission to—’’

He brushed the hair back from her face with tender hands. "You
’ve always been in charge, my love. For the duration of our voyage I ask that you give over to me. If at its end you still wish to return to Afton and Ayrshire, then I will escort you back.”

“
Back?” she asked stupidly. “For where is this ship bound?”

“
For the American colonies, the colony of North Carolina. I have taken out a grant of land on the upper Cape Fear River, near a village called Campbelltown. Governor Johnston has given asylum there to many of the Scottish chiefs.”

Everything was spinning. Pleasantly spinning. Especially when she felt Arch's lips at her temple. He was stretched out beside her, pleasuring her love-starved body with his s
troking hands. “What about Ayrshire? The Clan Afton?”

“
Jamie has agreed to preside over matters there until you make up your mind.”

She felt his hand follow the curve of her hip, cup it, and rest there. "Make up my mind about what?”

"Whether you will marry me."

She put her arms around his neck. "Did you ever doubt my answer?" she murmured between kisses.

"It means leaving Scotland. Forever."

"My home is not in Scotland. Tis in your arms. Tis always been in your arms since that day in
the stables, Arch, when I was but fifteen and you made me yours."

After all those years, more than twenty, he made her his again.