Under the Same Sky (35 page)

“I feel ye, Maggie,” he said, and my world started to spin. I leaned over him and searched his eyes.

“Tell me you’re all right,” I whispered.

His hands were warm and he laid them against my cheeks. I wanted to disappear within them, dissolve into his skin. His smile was so soft, his eyes wet with unshed tears.

“Oh, Maggie,” he said in his deep, curling accent. “I’m more than all right.”

Wahyaw stood off to the side with Andrew’s friend, no longer interested in the fight. Soquili sat beside Andrew’s prone body and frowned at me.

“What are you doing, Ma-kee? Who is this?”

I had broken Soquili’s heart before. If only I didn’t have to do it again.

“This is Andrew,” I said. “This is the man I have dreamed of my entire life.”

He stared at me, then frowned at Andrew, who gave him a vague smile. Soquili snorted with disgust. “The man you spoke of so many months ago? This is him? How did he come here?”

“She called to me,” Andrew said. “O’ course I came.”

Soquili hissed at him to be quiet.

“It’s true, Soquili,” I said. “I tried to tell you. Everything I have ever told you is true.”

Soquili’s eyes flicked between the two of us, and I could almost
see the questions and answers flowing through his mind. He shook his head and stood up.

“It is all true,” he said. “It was true all along.”

He backed away, then disappeared into the trees.

I sat up and stared at Andrew’s chest, at the stain that bloomed across the side of his white shirt. “You’re not all right,” I said.

“I am,” he assured me. He pulled himself up so he sat with a grunt, then yanked the bottom of his shirt up so we could see the wound. He was right. It wasn’t bad, but he would probably need me to stitch it.

His skin was warm beneath my palm, soft yet taut over his muscles. I felt dizzy at the sight of his skin, of the sparse black hairs that drew lines over his chest and belly. I touched his side, near the cut, and gasped at the contact, no weaker than it had been a moment before. He felt it, too, and stared at me in amazement.

“Skin to skin,” I said quietly.

He took my hand from his chest and held it to his lips, then tugged me closer. I don’t remember moving toward him, but I was there, and he was kissing me, our bodies feeling each other as they always dreamed they would. His lips were warm, and he smelled of sweat and dirt with a hint of fresh blood. He tasted…like nothing I could describe. He tasted like Andrew. His fingers were in my hair, strong and sure. He drew away from the kiss far enough that we could look into each other’s eyes.

“My God, Maggie,” he whispered.

Tears poured down my cheeks, and he wiped them away with his thumbs. His lips brushed my cheeks, my neck, my eyelids, my forehead, my lips. I lost track of everything around us. I had no idea if it was day or night, and I didn’t care. I was in Andrew’s arms. He was all there was in the world.

He pulled away again, holding my face in his hands. His smile was beautiful, his cheeks wet with our shared tears. The dark eyes I had seen in my dreams danced.

“Come away,” he said. He stood up, wincing only slightly as his wound objected, and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go home.”

“Home?”

“My home,” he said, then gave me a wry smile that raced through my senses. “
Our
home, if ye’ll have me.”

I laid my palms on his warm, solid chest and felt whole. Complete. Every question answered. Finally, after everything, I felt at peace.

“Tell me you’re real,” I whispered.

“I’m as real as ye are, Maggie. An’ I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life provin’ it to ye.”

At first, Andrew didn’t understand. He had her. He had Maggie in his arms, safe and warm and real. But she said they couldn’t go. Not yet.

She led him by the hand, deeper into the woods. “My sister is back here,” she explained.

Adelaide was awake but lying still as a fawn in the grass. When she saw Maggie, she sat up slowly. She offered a small smile, looking curiously at the man who held her sister’s hand.

“How do you feel?” Maggie asked, kneeling beside her.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Addy,” Maggie said, her face lit with joy. “I never told you something.”

Addy waited.

“This is Andrew. This is the man I have always known in my dreams.”

Addy looked confused, but not overly surprised. She knew her sister well enough to know it was the truth.

Maggie turned to Andrew, who sat in the grass beside her. “I never told anyone about you,” she admitted. “I didn’t want—”

“Nor did I,” he assured her.

Andrew studied the slight blond version of Maggie. So alike, he thought. And so different. Like his brothers and him. He felt a twinge of regret. Maggie would have liked Dougal.

Iain and Wahyaw, looking more than a little confused, joined them, and Andrew introduced Iain to Adelaide. Wahyaw glared at them all. Soquili understood English and spoke a little, but Wahyaw had never learned. Adelaide began to translate, and his expression relaxed. He nodded with understanding as Maggie explained.

Maggie’s gaze was weary. “There’s one more thing I have to do. If they never see the proof about Captain Quinn, I will spend the rest of my life running.”

“Tell me what to do,” Andrew said. “An’ I’ll do it.”

“There is a box,” she said slowly. Her fingers tugged at the grass by her feet. She ripped out one piece at a time while she spoke. “It’s in a cabin near the fort. That cabin belonged to Captain Quinn. He… he brought girls there. Girls his men stole from their homes and did terrible things…” Her voice caught and she grabbed a handful of grass, but didn’t pull.

“It’s okay, lass. Take it slow,” Andrew murmured, resting his hand over hers until it relaxed.

“How is it ye ken these things?” Iain asked.

“Because…” She stopped, unsure.

“It’s all right, Maggie,” Andrew said. “He’s a friend.”

Maggie’s chin quivered slightly. She looked up and met Andrew’s eyes. The air between them thickened, and for a moment, Andrew forgot anyone else was there.

“I know because Addy and I were two of those girls,” she said softly.

For a space of a breath, the only sound came from the tall pines whispering overhead. Then Addy sniffed and Iain cleared his throat.

“And the evidence, lass? What’s in the box?” he asked.

“Quinn took something from every girl. He put those things in the box. There are ribbons and lace and shoes and… and dolls…”

Maggie closed her eyes, and Andrew felt the air change again, as if it drew him toward her. He held her trembling hand tighter, and she showed him the six beaten girls in the cabin, and the worn wooden box off to the side.

“Please, Andrew,”
she said silently.

“Where do we go?” Andrew asked.

“I’ve only seen it once,” Maggie admitted. “But there is someone else who knows.”

Joe had known it was coming. From that moment in the prison when she’d entered his mind and discovered what he knew about the cabin, he’d known she’d need him again. He felt her now, as he stepped out of the woods and through a field of knee-high grass.

The soldiers were miles behind, having eventually accepted his apologies for having lost the fugitives’ trail. In fact, he thought smugly, he could have followed them with his eyes closed. Theirs had been a desperate escape since both the girl’s sister and the big warrior were injured. Their track would have been obvious. But no one questioned Joe when he led them down the line of the riverbed, in the opposite direction.

She needed the box. He had wondered how she would manage to get it. She knew there were captives in the cabin. She had shown him that. She most likely knew the place was guarded. But what she didn’t know was the exact location.

Safely away from the army, Joe skirted the fort and headed toward
Quinn’s cabin. The building was buried deep in the brush, a delapidated four walls and a roof. That was all Quinn had required for storage.

Joe sat hidden among the trees, watching six shabby men loll in the clearing. Usually only two stood guard, and under closer inspection Joe saw that only a couple of them carried pistols. Another had a musket. So two, maybe three were guarding. And the others? Why would men make their way out this far if it weren’t for the girls in the cabin? Joe’s gorge rose and he spat into the leaf mold beside his feet.

The men appeared to have finished what they’d come to do, and now relaxed around a small fire, laughing and talking. Nothing much to hold Joe’s attention. He lay back in the dry autumn grass and waited for Maggie.

It didn’t take long.
“Joe,”
she whispered.

He knew she would follow his mind as easily as he had hers. All she had to do was hear his thoughts and she’d know exactly where to go. Her gratitude wrapped around him like an embrace, and when it was gone, he felt alone.

The sun was high in the sky, filtering through the canopy of the forest, dotting Joe and the leaves around him. The man with the musket stood up, brushed off his trousers, and nodded farewell to the other men. Joe slid soundlessly out of view and watched him head down the path. Now there were five outside the cabin.

Maggie was close. Almost close enough he could hear her if he tried. Joe peered around the area until a quick movement caught his eye, and he spotted Maggie’s group. The two Cherokee were there, and it looked as if the warrior’s injury had been well tended. Joe could see no trace of blood. Two other men had joined them. Large white men. Scottish Highlanders, from their dress. Joe had seen quite a few Highlanders in town recently. He got along with
them, for the most part. They weren’t so different from the Indians in some ways. They lived off the land and they were not a people to suffer provocation in silence. Maggie crouched behind with her sister, as if they were protected by the men’s shadows.

Joe had no intention of fighting. Today he was merely an observer. He had brought her here. He had given her what she needed, and in return she had given him something he couldn’t name.

There was a
thwick! thwick!
as arrows cut through the air and plunged into the two armed men. They fell to their knees without a sound, and their cohorts stumbled backwards with surprise, then grabbed their knives and scanned the line of trees.

The Scots downed the first two, and the uninjured warrior sliced the third man’s neck with unerring skill. They left the bodies where they lay, then strode toward the cabin with one Cherokee in the lead. The injured warrior stayed behind to watch over the sisters. Joe wasn’t surprised. From everything Maggie had shown Joe back in the prison cell, he imagined she had no desire to step any closer to the cabin.

The sound of heavy breathing alerted Joe. He sat up straighter, always hidden. Ten feet in front of him hunched the man who had left earlier, adjusting his position amongst the fallen leaves. The man must have heard the noise of the short-lived brawl and come back. The barrel of his musket followed the midpoint of the smaller Scotsman’s back as the group walked toward the cabin.

Joe slipped through the crackling brush as silent as a snake, until he was close enough to smell the man’s scent: musky and aroused. Joe knew many men who reacted the same way when they killed another man, as if it were a sexual act. Joe had never felt that. He accepted that causing death was part of his life. An unpleasant part, but one he understood.

Joe’s huge hands clamped on to the man’s face from behind. The
musket dropped to the earth with a dull thump in the split second that Joe held the man’s life in his hands. Then he jerked his grip with precision, disconnecting the man’s neck from his spine.

Joe dropped the body and ground his jaw forward and back as he considered what he had done. He couldn’t know whether or not he had ended his own life through that quick twist of his wrists. He would be put to death if his action was discovered, yet his heart felt unusually light.

She had been right. He had known what to do.