The Maclean Groom (30 page)

“I-I'm sorry, milord,” Malcolm said. “They told me they were Lady Joanna's family, come to pay their respects to the bride and groom. They'd hidden their weapons beneath their clothing.”

Fists clenched, Alex glared at the beefy Macdonald soldier. Like Rory, he hadn't yet buckled on his broadsword and dirk. “Get your hands off my niece, you damn filthy slug,” he ordered.

Godfrey snickered, his beady eyes glittering in his bloated face. “No one will be harmed,” he said, “as long as you remain calm. Lady Cameron and the lassie will act as surety for your good behavior. But if either of you try to resist, the girl and her mother will be the first ones killed.” He jerked the point of his dark, scraggly beard toward the door. “Now, gentlemen, shall we join the ladies?”

When they entered the manor hall, they found Nina encircled by five Macdonalds at the far end of the chamber. Rory paused to scan the large, high-ceilinged room with its gallery leading to the second-floor quarters.

Andrew, accompanied by a corpulent Observantine friar, waited in front of the great hearth. His brown eyes troubled, the comely lad seemed to have lost his zeal for marrying his cousin. The night spent with the brigands and the subsequent rescue had left its mark.

Along with Cameron's clansmen who'd been disarmed, the household servants had been gathered together and seated on the benches at the trestle tables under the surveillance of a dozen soldiers. One woman wept quietly, the only sound in the large room, except for their footsteps on the scented rushes. Isabel stood apart, guarded by two men. Joanna was nowhere in the hall.

“Get in there,” Godfrey snarled as he shoved Rory from behind.

Rory reined in the urge to turn on the filthy cretin and wrest the sword from his grasp. Until he knew that Joanna was safe, he dared not take the offensive.

The remaining Macdonalds surrounded Rory, their weapons drawn, and quickly separated him from the Camerons. They led him to the center of the hall, and Rory allowed them to force him to his knees, five sword points held scant inches from his head.

A noise came from the gallery above, and all eyes turned upward. Gripping Joanna's arm, Ewen dragged the outraged lass remorselessly along behind him. She was still in her nightshift, her hair tumbling about her. Too far away to be heard from the lower level, the two were arguing bitterly.

On the second-floor arcade, Joanna tried to wrest free from her cousin's grasp. “Let me go,” she insisted. “How dare you invade these people's home!”

Ewen's baneful gaze flickered over her rumpled shift and disheveled hair as he scrutinized her with open disdain. “We won't be here long, lass,” he replied. “Only as long as it takes for you to sign the papers for your annulment.”

“You're mad!” she told him scornfully. “There are no grounds for an annulment.”

“There are always grounds, if a lassie is clever enough.”

Her jaw dropped, and she gazed at him in bewilderment. “What justification could there possibly be?”

“Impotency.”

“That's a lie,” she hissed.

But he already knew that. He'd found her asleep in bed, surrounded by the evidence of Rory's presence and their impassioned mating. The room was littered with apples, oranges, walnuts, flowers, perfumed soaps, and articles of clothing. The tub of bathwater, cold now, still sat in front of the hearth, the toppled screen on the floor beside it. Her husband's sword and dirk rested next to the overturned stool. Nearby lay a coverlet of sable, where they'd moved during the night to be close to the crackling fire while he brushed her hair dry.

“'Tis a lie!” she repeated. “And well you know it.”

Ewen pivoted so only his back could be seen from the manor hall, neatly hiding Joanna from view. He pitched his words low, making certain the people watching from the ground floor couldn't hear.

“You're going to swear before God and man that MacLean is impotent, Joanna,” he said with a sour smile. “I've brought the priest and the papers. Your Macdonald
clansmen shall be the witnesses to your oath.”

She recoiled in disgust. “I'll never swear to such a lie. Never. 'Twould be blasphemy!”

Ewen drew her closer, his fingers biting into her arm. “Then you'll be relieved to know that you'll soon be a widow,” he said. “Because either you swear that the marriage has never been consummated, or by God, we'll kill the baseborn miscreant here and now.”

Joanna clutched the red and blue tartan wool pinned to Ewen's shirt. “Don't kill him,” she begged. “I pray you, don't kill him.”

His smile flashed cold and humorless in his silver-streaked beard. She could hear the faint rasp of desperation in his voice. “The decision is yours, lass. I'd rather not risk the King's retribution for killing his favorite Highland laird. But James Stewart and his bloody avenger be damned, MacLean lives or dies according to the next words out of your mouth.”

He thrust her toward the gallery railing. Below, the Camerons and her kinsmen waited in mesmerized silence, their faces uplifted, their gazes locked on the two cousins arguing above them.

“Say it,” Ewen snarled. “Tell them now.”

Joanna flinched in horror as she looked down at the scene below. On the rush-covered stone floor, five able-bodied Macdonald soldiers held Rory at sword point. He was on his knees, Godfrey behind him. The sight of the magnificent golden warrior humbled by his enemies tore at her heart.

Her lips trembled. “I…I…” she began, then covered her mouth with shaky fingers.

“Say it, Joanna,” Ewen commanded.

She gripped the carved walnut railing and stared down at the crowded hall. Within a cluster of burly men-at-arms, Lady Nina, white-faced and terrified, met Joanna's gaze, beseeching her wordlessly to save her family. Ebony eyes unwavering, Raine stood with the malevolent blade of a dirk resting against her throat, waiting with an air of contemptuous detachment. Laird Alex and Isabel had been sep
arated from the others by a small knot of soldiers.

Rory watched Joanna with cool self-possession, his features composed. He seemed to be trying to give her some of his own strength of will, his concern for her welfare surpassing any fear for his own safety.

Joanna tore her gaze from his, unable to meet the piercing green eyes when she denied him. Instead, she looked at the priest in the hooded black habit of the Observantines, who stood beside Andrew at the fireplace. “I-I wish to…to apply for an annulment, Father,” she said, her voice scratchy and thick in her bone-dry throat.

“Don't, Joanna,” Rory called, an icy warning in his words.

“On what grounds, milady,” the friar inquired smoothly. The portly man had been bribed and knew exactly what was occurring.

“On the grounds of…of…” Tears blurred her eyes, and she could no longer focus on the people below. She placed her fingers on her eyelids, pressing away the telltale drops.

“Don't do this, Joanna!” Rory shouted. The fury in his words struck her with the force of a riding crop across the face.

Her gaze fastened on the clergyman, she clung to the wooden rail, her knees nearly buckling beneath her. “The marriage between Laird MacLean and…and myself has never been…been consummated.”

“Goddammit!” Rory cursed, turning his wrath on the friar. “She's being forced to say this, you cold-hearted sonofabitch.”

The priest ignored him. “Can you prove your statement, milady?” he inquired pleasantly.

“We…we have always slept a-apart,” Joanna said, choking back a sob. “I tried to kill him on our wedding night and ran away the next evening, as my cousin Andrew can avouch. Since arriving at Archnacarry, Laird MacLean and I have…have slept in separate bedchambers.”

The friar's tonsured head shone smooth as a sea-worn
pebble as he nodded gravely. “And this you solemnly swear to, Lady Joanna?”

Joanna wiped the tears from her cheeks, then twisted her hands together in front of her. “I swear by all the saints in heaven that, despite the holy sacrament of matrimony, I remain a virgin still.”

“She lies!” her husband roared. His booming voice echoed through the hall in his wild frenzy. “We are well and truly married.”

Rage tightening every muscle, Rory started to regain his feet, and the five men encircling him struggled to hold him down. With an oath, Godfrey grabbed a handful of Rory's hair, shoved a knee between his shoulder blades, and jerked his head back. He held his dirk across the stretched tendons of Rory's throat, the steel less than an inch away.

“Don't make another mistake like that,” Godfrey warned, a sneer creasing his pocked, bleary-eyed face.

“You're a dead man,” Rory told him calmly. The points of five broadswords moved closer at the soft-spoken words.

“Let me slit the whoreson's throat,” Godfrey called to his brother. “'Twill be faster than filing those damn papers in Rome.” He moved to draw the razor edge of the blade across the exposed juggler.

“Wait!” Nina cried. Her rose-gold hair drifting about her shoulders, she held out one graceful hand in a pleading gesture. “Don't kill him. 'Tis true, what Lady Joanna says. I gave them separate rooms at their mutual request. Laird MacLean never slept with his wife.” She paused, knowing every head was turned in her direction, every pair of eyes fastened on her. “I know it for a fact,” she continued, her angelic face drained of color, her melodious soprano quavering pitifully. “I know because he slept with me, instead.”

A hush swept through the chamber.

“And you'll be willing to sign an oath to that effect, Lady Cameron?” the black-robed friar inquired with an unctuous smile.

“I will swear to it on the holy crucifix,” she replied, her
lovely azure eyes fastened on Rory. “Joanna Macdonald remains a virgin.”

With a bellow of rage, Rory shoved a punishing elbow into Godfrey's soft paunch and sprang to his feet. The merciless crack of a sword hilt on the back of his head brought instant blackness.

T
he wind sweeping across the loch carried the smell of the autumn harvest. From his dungeon window, Rory had only a tiny glimpse of the cloud-covered night sky and the faint sound of water slapping against the prison's thick stone wall. But he knew from the scratches he'd etched on the granite that the straw and hay would soon be stacked in the fields and the black-faced sheep brought down from their hillside pastures.

Five months.

Five months that seemed like eternity.

He lay on the pallet, his arm across his closed eyes, and recalled his last day of freedom.

The Macdonalds had set fire to Archnacarry's barns to aid their escape. When Rory regained consciousness, Alex and his men were battling the blaze and seeing to the safety of the animals. Rory had quickly found his weapons in the bedchamber where he'd left them. As he prepared to leave, he'd spoken briefly to Nina, chiding her for sacrificing her reputation for his sake.

“Did you think I'd let them stick you like a Martinmas hog merely to save my laughable reputation?” she'd asked, her eyes shining with bittersweet amusement. “I've been the subject of gossip for the last thirteen years, Rory. At least this time, 'twas of my own making.”

He'd kissed her forehead compassionately. Since the birth of a black-haired, black-eyed daughter in a family of
pale-eyed blonds, Nina had been the target of vicious gossip about Raine's parentage.

“I know you for who you are, Nina. A decent and honorable lady.” He squeezed her hands and offered a bracing smile. “And I'll happily kill any man who dares to say different.”

Then he'd galloped off on Fraoch with the intention of riding to Kinlochleven, there to gather his men—and his brothers, if they were still at the castle—and lay siege to Mingarry. But in his blind urgency to regain possession of his wife, he'd ridden straight into a trap.

A large force of armed men had lain in wait for him along the road through Archnacarry Glen. He'd killed eight of them before they'd finally overwhelmed him. Bound, gagged, and blinded with a hood, he'd been brought to the prison fortress.

Thoughts of Joanna came with the dusk, as they always did. Rory dreamed of her nearly every night. He saw her now as she'd been on their last evening together. Her eyes flashing, her slim, pale figure scampering about the bedchamber and scrambling over the mattress. Her throaty laughter as she'd lobbed the apples at his head.

God, he ached for her.

After their frantic joining that night, he'd held his wife in his arms while she quietly sobbed. He'd taken her twice more, each time a slow, lingering mating that had left her breathless and moaning his name. But though she hadn't wept again, neither had he been able to coax from her the one admission he craved.

He'd wanted Joanna to tell him she loved him.

It no longer mattered that he didn't believe in romantic love.
She believed in it
. And he wanted Joanna to believe she was in love with him. He wanted it with a yearning that tightened like a steel band around his chest and sent a sharp, fierce need raking through his insides.

But she hadn't said the words he craved to hear.

Nor would she ever say them.

He'd known that night, without being told, that she was
waiting for his confession of guilt. Joanna wanted her husband to admit he'd been wrong to capture Somerled Macdonald, and that he now regretted it. But it was the one thing he'd never say to his darling wife—because it wasn't true.

Lifting his arm, Rory opened his eyes and looked around the dreary cell. Other than being chained and kept in solitary, he'd been well-treated. Apparently Ewen was simply waiting for the papers to come from the Vatican, which would pave the way for Andrew to wed Joanna. Once the cousins were married, there'd be nothing Rory could do, short of murder.

He didn't look forward to killing the poor laddie, but the Macdonalds were leaving him no choice. The deaths of Ewen and Godfrey, however, were a different matter. Hatred for the treacherous pair had festered like a chancre in his heart during his captivity. Imagining various and ingenious ways to kill them, all involving the greatest degree of pain for the longest amount of time possible, had occupied his idle hours.

The clink of metal in the passageway signaled the arrival of his evening meal. As the yellow glow of torchlight glimmered through the door's tiny, barred window, Rory slipped silently to his bare feet. Reaching for the iron shackles on the stones, he moved to stand beside the closed door. He'd been leashed to the wall by a length of chain, and it'd taken him five months to loosen the damn bolts with a tool he'd fashioned from a tin cup. But tonight Rory would either be a free man or a dead one.

When the turnkey stepped inside the darkened cell, Rory moved with agile speed, looping the chain around the big man's neck and jerking it tight. The tall fellow, not one of his usual jailers, fought back with astonishing ferocity. The sonofabitch grabbed the chain around his throat with both hands and wrenched downward, at the same time grazing Rory's shinbone with the edge of his heavy brogue and stomping viciously on the top of his attacker's bare foot.
Rory clenched his teeth against the intense pain and yanked the restraint tighter.

From behind came a polite tap on his shoulder. “Pardon me, Rory,” Keir whispered with a chuckle, “but I don't think you should be garroting your own brother.”

“Jesu,” Rory hissed and, opening his clenched hands, released the chain. Keir deftly caught the iron links before they clattered on the stone floor.

Rory threw his arms around Lachlan, enclosing him in a fierce bear hug. “You damnfool idiot,” he said hoarsely. He clapped his brother's face between his hands. “I could have killed you.”

Lachlan returned the embrace, pounding Rory on the back. “When we get out of here,” he said with a wry grin, “remind me to blacken one of your eyes. Right or left, it doesn't much matter.” Impeccably attired as usual, he ran his sardonic gaze over his older brother's tattered rags. “And I can recommend a good tailor, if you need one.”

“God Almighty,” Rory groaned, returning the grin as he hobbled about, “you almost broke my foot.”

“Talk later,” Keir advised. The gold hoop in his ear glittered in the wavering torchlight as he handed Rory a sword and dirk. “Right now, let's get the hell out of here.” Holding up the burning rush light, he signaled them to be quiet.

Rory followed his two broad-shouldered brothers up a narrow, winding passage. The sprawled bodies of three guards lay along their path, throats slashed. Keir led them up a spiral stone staircase to the battlements, where another corpse rested at a peculiar angle. Despite his breastplate and helm, the soldier's spine had been snapped like a piece of dry kindling. Rory knew exactly what had happened because he'd seen it before. Keir had picked the sentry up, brought him lengthwise across his bent knee, and neatly popped the backbone. For whatever reason, he'd slashed the unlucky bastard's throat for good measure.

“I wanted to make sure he didn't cry out,” Keir said with a shrug as he stepped over the dead man.

“There's a permanent garrison lodged here,” Lachlan explained to Rory in a low tone. “So we decided to slip in and out without raising a fuss.”

The sound of footsteps climbing an outside stairway at an unhurried pace came from below.

“This one's mine,” Rory told his brothers softly.

Barefoot, he moved stealthily along the castle wall and waited for the soldier to appear. In the blaze of the torches, the shadows danced on the stones as the guard, a replacement for the fallen sentry lying beside the parapet, drew nearer.

The moment he stepped onto the battlement, Rory clapped a hand over the sentinel's mouth and jerked him off balance. As his adversary staggered backward, flailing wildly, Rory clasped the back of the man's head in his other hand and in quick movement broke his neck.

The three brothers lowered themselves down the rope that Keir and Lachlan had used to scale the outer wall. At the bottom, Fearchar waited in a rowboat. He clasped Rory's hand and pulled him aboard.

“Wheesht,” he said with his boyish grin, “when you disappear, man, you go underground like wee pawky mole.”

Rory scowled at the pale-haired titan, suddenly worried that his possessions had been usurped by the Macdonalds, along with his wife. “Dammit, you're suppose to be guarding Kinlochleven.”

“I put Murdoch to watching over your fine, fair castle, laddie,” Fearchar replied, untroubled by his cousin's testiness. “And your Uncle Duncan left a detachment of his own men there when he rode off for Stalcaire with your lady mother. Kinlochleven will be waiting for you, sweet as a dimpled whore, when you're ready to return.”

They rowed quietly away from the mighty citadel, which rose up from a small island in the middle of a loch.

Rory looked back in astonishment. “Where the hell was I?”

“Innischonaill,” Lachlan told him grimly.

Rory met his brother's sober gaze, then turned back to study the brooding fortress, its black outline faintly visible against the cloudy sky. The castle had been the seat of the chiefs of Clan Campbell until they'd moved to Inverary on Loch Fyne when they became earls of Argyll. It was now used solely for a prison.

“Why?” Rory muttered under his breath.

His single eye glittering in the moonlight, Fearchar spat into the loch. “'Tis a question we'd all like answered. Maybe we should pay a call on Archibald Campbell.”

Rory shook his head. “First, I'm going to raze Mingarry to the ground. By God, I'm going to tear down Ewen's castle stone by bloody stone.”

“No need,” Keir said cheerfully. “Mingarry's yours.”

Rory looked over his shoulder at his youngest brother in surprise. “How long did the siege take?”

“Five days,” he replied. “We left Tam MacLean in command. The lad's young, but he's sharp and capable.”

Rory tried to smother his increasing alarm. No one had yet mentioned his absent Macdonald wife. Recalling the heartbroken tears she'd shed their last night together, he had no notion whether Joanna had gone with Ewen and Godfrey willingly. He wanted to believe she'd sworn to her virginity from a desire to save his life, but she might have made use of the opportunity to rid herself of an unwanted husband. Whatever her reasons, he intended to get her back. He'd worry about her feelings later.

“And Joanna?” he asked tersely. “Did you rescue her safely?”

“She wasn't there,” Lachlan answered with compassion. “Nor Ewen or Godfrey. That's why the castle fell so quickly. There was no leadership at all. Only a token garrison had been left to defend the stronghold. We didn't destroy a single tower or blow up a battlement; everything's intact.”

“Where are the Macdonalds?”

“No one knows,” Lachlan replied as he rowed. “They've disappeared, including Ewen's wife and two
children and a large, well-trained force of Macdonald men-at-arms. 'Tis why we had such a hard time finding you. There was no one to question and no leads to follow.”

“Ewen and Godfrey have been accused of treason by the Lords Commissioners of Parliament,” said Keir. “We're not the only ones searching for the blackhearted maggots, but we'll be the first ones to discover them. 'Twould be a bloody shame for anyone else to kill them but us.”

Rory plunged his oar into the black water of Loch Awe, rowing rhythmically. The fresh night air and the physical activity acted like a potion, sending the blood coursing through every vein. His muscles responded joyfully to the pull and drag of the current.

He would get his wife back—he didn't doubt it for a moment.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“Well, if you dangle a large enough bait, you'll finally pull in a fish.” Keir said in cadence to his strokes. “There's a guard back there in Innischonaill sitting on several sacks of newly minted crowns like a hen setting a clutch.”

Fearchar laughed, the soft, humorless sound filled with derision. “If he's canny enough and lucky enough to fool Archibald Campbell, the Judas may just live to spend his gold.”

As they brought the small boat to the shore and jumped out, Rory turned and looked back at the island fortress. Somewhere in those formidable dungeons, the young Donald Dubh Macdonald waited in chains to be rescued by his kinsmen. Imprisoned by his own maternal grandfather, the second earl of Argyll, the lad was the illegitimate son of the last Macdonald High Chief, Lord of the Isles. Should the youngster be released from his imprisonment, every Macdonald in the Highlands and Isles, and their allies with them, would rise up in rebellion against James Stewart. 'Twould be Rory's duty to crush them. He prayed God it would never happen. Not for his sake, but for Joanna's.

“We'd best ride to Stalcaire,” Rory said as they mounted and prepared to leave. “Duncan will know if the
permission for the cousins to wed has arrived from Rome. And if the annulment has been awarded.”

A scowl on his bearded face, Fearchar shifted in his saddle and glared at his cousin with his one good eye. “Hell and thunder! Won't the litigation be dropped, now that you're free to tell the truth?”

Keir snorted disdainfully. “There's always a midwife or a physician who can be bribed to swear to a young woman's virginity. And for enough sillers, even archbishops have been known to look the other way.”

“But whatever the outcome of Ewen's petitions to Rome, we need to call at Archnacarry first,” Lachlan said, a smile lighting up his aristocratic features. “I've received a message from Isabel Cameron. She believes that her niece can tell us where they've taken Joanna.”