DARE THE WILD WIND (3 page)

Their encounter with the English dragoons abruptly made a chilling sense.  She looked up at Iain.

"It must have been his guard we met at the abbey."

And the man she had confronted in the glen could be one of the nobles riding with the Duke's messenger.  The English King's younger son had sent a high
ranking peer from his camp south of the River Spey, and such men never traveled without the company of lesser nobles to attend their every whim.

"A day early," Iain responded, "but you could be right."

"You have to warn
Cam," she said in a rush.  "He won't just face Malcolm's men tomorrow, he'll face English soldiers."

For the first time, she saw her words had penetrated Iain's mask of calm.  He let out an uneasy breath.

"I'll lead  my horse out as soon as it's full dark.  But I can't promise dragoons or your half
brother will discourage Cam.  Bonny Prince Charlie is in sore need of every man who can wield a claymore. 

"If the Duke of Cumberland crosses the Spey, we'll have to turn and fight. 
Cam's mind is set on rallying any clansmen he can gather to the Prince's cause." 

Chapter
3

Against Iain's objections the British could still be close by, Brenna led Gypsy out from behind the waterfall as the sun began to sink over the ridge.  There had been no sign of the dragoons since they first kept their lookout from inside the cave, and Brenna was positive Iain's fears were unfounded. 

There was still enough light to pick her way down through the forest, and the shadows falling over the moor would help to cloak her return.  Before she left, Brenna cauterized Iain's wound, despite his protest that it wasn't a task for a girl barely seventeen.  But Brenna couldn't desert Iain without making certain he wouldn't lose his arm or his life to a spreading poison born of neglect and his haste to ride back to the Prince's camp. 

Once she emerged from the trees, she kept her horse to the runnels and ravines cut by time and water into the broad sweep of the moor.  The last stretch approaching the castle was open, but Brenna was quickly beneath its stone walls and rapping on the postern gate, softly calling out Duncan's name.

At the sound of her voice, her father's old retainer shot back the great iron bar of the gate and swung it open.  Brenna saw strained lines relax in his ruddy, weatherbeaten face.

"My lady, you near delayed too long.  I feared Angus would be looking for me before you returned."

It would be better if she said nothing to
Duncan of her encounter with the English dragoons.  And better if Angus didn't suspect what Duncan had been about today.  Angus was Duncan's crony and one time comrade in arms, but he was Malcolm's man.  He wouldn't relish the role of informer, but he would feel duty bound to tell Malcolm that she had been abroad, and Duncan had been her accomplice. 

"I wouldn't leave you to face Malcolm's wrath," she reminded him as she slid from her horse.  "I'll see to Gypsy myself."

"You dare not, my lady.  There are English soldiers inside the walls, and you'll be seen if you make for the stables."

So they were here.  But at this hour, they were very likely gathered at the rough plank tables in the kitchens, swilling heather ale and fattening on oatcakes and hastily
roasted legs of mutton.  Only the party of nobles would dine above stairs with Brenna and her brother.  But at least one of them had come close enough to get a clear look at her.  And would almost certainly recognize her.

Would he speak, once he knew she wasn't the lowborn girl he'd taken for fair game?  Brenna had to hope he would fear his host's anger at such an insult to his sister.

"I can't tie Gypsy in the courtyard.  Malcolm will know I've had her outside the castle walls.  And I can't let Angus or one of the grooms catch you trying to get Gypsy back to her stall."

Duncan
smiled, as if he'd spent all the afternoon mulling a solution.  "No need for Angus to pother.  Only tie the beasty behind the smithy.  I'll see to rubbing the filly down and feeding her after Angus has his usual word with me, and is off to his supper with the rest."

Laughter and harsh English voices moved up the stairs from the scullery.  They couldn't delay, and reluctantly Brenna nodded. Hastily, she led her horse along the bailey wall to the crude shed that sheltered the blacksmith's forge. 

It was pitch black behind the smithy, but Brenna felt until she found a post and looped Gypsy's reins around it.  If the mare whickered, the noise wouldn't be noticed with so many other horses in the courtyard, and Brenna had very little time left to slip up the back stairs to her own quarters.

Morag waited for Brenna just inside her chamber.  Tall and sparely built, she had an overlarge nose that sat above a pinch of a mouth made smaller by an equally prominent chin.  Her brindle hair was drawn severely back, threaded with the first touches of gray, though her unflagging energy shamed many a serving girl in her twenties. 

Morag was even more distraught than Duncan.  "My lady, I feared you drowned in the Loch or sunk in some dark bog."  

Brenna threw off her woolen tartan.  "I only lost track of the time, and then my way for a bit in the forest."

Her  maid gave her a look that spoke suspicion.  "There's never been a day when you were lost in that wood.  What errand took you out so sudden on that great lunging beast of yours?"

Brenna smiled at Morag's wounded curiosity.  Morag had brought her Iain's brief penned note, put in her hand by one of the crofters with daily business in the keep.  But even if she had been tempted to break its seal, Morag couldn't have deciphered the message.  Morag couldn't read.  She had resisted all Brenna's attempts to teach her on long and drizzly days when Brenna found herself confined next to the fire with her books.

"I only needed exercise and fresh air, and a
visit with Fenella Strath." 

"You were never so thick with the schoolmaster's daughter before the Rising."  Morag hung the tartan on a hook.  "And the way to the village isn't through Lochmarnoch Wood.  Your plaid is full of brambles, and so is your hair."

Guilt made Brenna turn to the angular woman who had all but raised her since her mother's death. "Morag, don't you see it's best for you if you don't know where I've been?"

Morag's anxious face reproached her.  "I could guess well enough, even if I hadn't had it out of that dumb sheep Innis before I took the note.  You made away from the keep to meet Iain MacCavan, in spite of everything your brother has said."

Brenna couldn't resist a small laugh.  "Malcolm didn't forbid me to see Iain MacCavan."

"A fine point, when all the MacCavans are banned from
Lochmarnoch Castle," Morag said with a snort.  "And a dangerous kind of a lark for you to ride out on that great horse of yours when his lordship has forbidden you to leave the castle walls."

Brenna had settled on a low stool to pull off her boots, and she flung one at the stone wall at Morag's reminder.  "He has no right to cage me here.  I've ridden free on Dalmoral land since I could sit my first pony."

Morag turned to Brenna with grim sympathy in her gray eyes.  "That matters not a whit now.  Your father has gone to his rest.  Malcolm is Laird of Lochmarnoch Castle, and you're his ward."

"And must do as he bids me," Brenna parroted Malcolm's words in a low rebellious voice.

Despite her title and her birth, by law she was no more than his property to dispose of as he chose.  And he had made it cruelly clear that he cared nothing for her feelings or the promises their father had made.  On the day she and
Cam were to sign their marriage contracts, in the presence of all the gathered witnesses, Malcolm had torn them in shreds and ordered Cam and all the MacCavans from Lochmarnoch Castle. 

Before all their guests, he declared that no man who talked treachery to the King would make alliance with a Dalmoral.  It was a gesture that smacked of theater, and Brenna had realized with mixed rage and pain that Malcolm had timed it for that purpose.

Not for Malcolm the risks of the Stuart cause.  He had made it plain to Brenna when she begged him to reconsider and honor the betrothal their father had sanctioned before his death.

"I have no intention of forfeiting my lands and my title to adventure with the Young Pretender," he said coldly.  "The Jacobites failed in the 'Fifteen, and they'll fail again."     

He splashed fresh claret into the silver goblet he had just emptied.  Rawboned and ungainly, he was eleven years Brenna's senior.  Though he was scarcely twenty eight, little of his youth remained.  His sandy hair already thinned, and his narrow face resembled the portrait of his long dead mother in the great hall, a drab wren of a woman Brenna couldn't imagine her father had ever loved as he did her mother, the beautiful and gentle Fiona. 

Brenna stifled her contempt for his fears.  "No one has asked you to take up arms.  And no one can fault you for honoring our father's given word.  Once I'm wed to
Cam, you can disown me."

"Tempting as that thought is, dear sister, it would be too costly.  You have a substantial dowry, and I don't care to explain settling it on a Rebel."

"Or settling it on anyone who can't promise you an advantage in return?" she challenged in growing fury. 

He quickly drained his new goblet of claret.  "I see you inherited some semblance of wit from our father.  I part with your dowry only reluctantly, sweet Brenna, and I don't mean to squander it on a swaggering, posturing fool.  Cameron MacCavan will lose all he has if he follows the Stuart prince, and if I link my fortunes to his with your marriage, I risk being tainted as a Rebel.  I won't hang with him."

All his life Malcolm had been a coward.  From earliest youth, he shrank from the rough and tumble play of the other boys his age and disdained their footraces and other tests of skill and nerve.  But Brenna had learned early there was a malice in him not found in most solitary, bookish boys. 

He relished the vicious tricks he played on the servants, and he had hated the new stepmother Gordon Dalmoral had brought to Lochmarnoch to curb his willful ways.  As soon as she could walk, it gave Malcolm joy to take out his spite on Brenna.  How she survived before she could tell what he had done, Brenna never knew.  From her earliest memory, he had tripped her on the stairs and pinched her arms blue, until at last her mother had gone to their father.  Malcolm had never forgiven her for being born, for stealing any part of their father's affection.

"
Cam would give up my dowry if you'd consent for us to wed," Brenna said in desperation.

Malcolm gave her a world
weary look.  "He hasn't come to me with that offer."

"How can he, when you've forbidden him to cross our threshold  again?" she demanded.  She regained enough control to try a more reasonable tone.  "You won't have anything to fear if you let us wed before Charles Stuart can land from
France.  If that doesn't satisfy you, why not just close your eyes while we elope?"

Malcolm laughed.  "I'm hardly such a romantic, even if I could keep your dowry."

"What is it that you want?" she cried out in frustration.

"A better connection from your marriage than you aspire to," he told her with a mocking twist of his mouth.  "I've never cared for your sort of looks, but I've observed there are a good many men who do.  Bartering you off properly could bring me far more than I'll lose in your dowry."

Brenna stared at him for a moment before she could find her voice to speak.

"You'll never barter me off to anyone," she spat out.  "I'll never marry any man but Cameron MacCavan."

"My lady?"  With a start, Brenna felt Morag's hand on her shoulder.

"I've ordered Cook to keep water on the boil in the kitchen for your bath."

Brenna looked up.  "Then tell her to draw it at once.  If I'm late to Malcolm's table, he may ask where I've been."

As he was sure to do if the Englishman she had confronted below the ruined abbey gave any sign he recognized her.  Even garbed far differently, Brenna knew there was little chance he wouldn't.  At best, she could hope to keep Morag from lying for her, and Duncan from being discovered as the culprit who had opened the postern gate.

After a soak in a soapy tub, Brenna slipped into a sheer muslin chemise and frilled petticoat and allowed Morag to lace her into a stomacher of gold brocade and passementerie.  To greet an enemy of every true Scot, Brenna would have preferred a simple and somber gown to an elaborate toilette, but Malcolm had warned her he would tolerate no insult to his high
ranking guest. 

"It will do no good to dissemble with your brother," Morag cautioned with a scowl of concentration, sawing Brenna's stays even tighter.  "Every maidservant in the castle knows the Earl of Stratford has arrived.  And you can scarce say you were out haring around the countryside, and didn't know he'd come a day early."

The panniers were next.  Resigned, Brenna lifted her arms to let Morag drop the wide basket of reeds and ribbons over her head and tie the taffeta
covered hoop snugly around her small waist.  The underskirt and her gown followed, a rich smoke blue satin that matched her eyes.