DARE THE WILD WIND (8 page)

Aware Drake Seton's gaze had moved back from
Cam to her, Brenna laughed at her partner's gallantry, and let him lead her into the first steps.  It was a simple country air, to a slower measure than the last, but it would offer Brenna the excuse she sought.  As her partner swept her into a wide turn of the dance, she stumbled and caught her heel in the hem of her billowing skirt.  With satisfaction, she heard the sound of ripping silk.

Her partner's hand steadied her, and Brenna twisted to look, letting out a small vexed cry.  "I've torn my dress."

Gratified, she saw above the hem the stitching of her skirt had wrenched free from the gown's tightly
nipped waist.  Immediately the other couples around them halted, the women ignoring the music and clustering around Brenna to examine the destruction. 

"Forgive me," Brenna apologized, "but I can't finish the dance in this state.  I'll have to find my maid to make repairs."

Her partner bent over her hand.  "I'll only be consoled if I can exact your promise for another dance."

She gathered her skirts, careful to display the gape of silk and the exposed petticoat beneath. 

"The first dance when I return," Brenna said, though she never intended to set foot in this once
loved room again.  

Chapter
6

"The man is daft," Morag hissed as she swung the door of Brenna's bedchamber wider to admit her.  "Cameron MacCavan was always a wild young fool."

"Wild, I'll grant."  Brenna laughed and whirled to shut the door quickly behind her. "But name me another man who could lock a troop of dragoons in Malcolm's dungeons without firing a shot."

Morag's answer was a glare.   Then her gaze fell on the rent in Brenna's skirt.  "Is there fighting?"

Brenna shook her head.  "Only the politest of talk."   Exhilarated, she caught the startled Morag in a swift, heartfelt embrace.  "He's here, Morag.  He's alive and well."

Morag sputtered awkwardly.  Then she recovered her fierce dignity.  "No thanks to his good sense.  And what's become of yours, ripping your finest gown?"

"My dress doesn't matter," Brenna told her.  "Quick, Morag, help me out of it."

She frowned down at the torn silk.  "No need for that.  Only stand still, and I can stitch it back in place."

Brenna caught the older woman's hands in hers.  "Morag, forgive me.  I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I couldn't risk Malcolm questioning you."

Under her high
bridged nose, Morag's pinched mouth tightened with injury and indignation.  "When have I ever betrayed you?"

Brenna felt a pang of guilt.  "Never.  But it was safer not to force you to hide anything from Malcolm."

She paused, tryi
ng to find the words to say goobye.

"I'm leaving with
Cam."  Brenna saw Morag's stricken look. "When Malcolm asks you, you can truthfully tell him I kept it a secret from you."

For a second, Morag struggled to find her voice.  "My lady, you're mad.  And Cameron MacCavan is the devil's own whelp.  How can he carry you off with him in the middle of a war?"

Brenna kicked her silver
buckled slippers from her feet, and flung open the tall wardrobe by her canopied, high  posted bed.    

"
Cam isn't to blame.  I was the one to insist." 

Morag pursued her.  "You've never seen an army camp.  It's mud and fever and pox.  It's men who'd use you ill the minute they saw the chance."

Brenna turned back to face her.  "Cam will protect me.  And what choice do I have?  After today, Malcolm will never give his consent to our marriage."

Morag's eyes reluctantly granted the truth of what she said.

"If I don't go now, I may never have the chance again."

Slowly the last lines of resistance dissolved in Morag's face.  She folded Brenna briefly into her bony arms.

"Then, child, if you must, I won't hinder you."  She put Brenna firmly away from her.  "Best let me unhook you."

The hyacinth silk slid to a bright heap on the cold stone floor.  Casting aside panniers and her foam of petticoats, Brenna pulled on boots and a simple gown suitable for riding.

Brenna had gathered the last precious reminders of her mother the night before,
painstakingly sewing them into a pocket fashioned in the petticoat she still wore.  She caught up her tartan and turned to say a final farewell to Morag.

"I'd thought to take you with me when I left with
Cam," Brenna told her, her throat clogging.

"An old woman like me would only slow you," Morag said in a strained brittle voice.  "And I've no liking for sitting on the back of a horse."

"You're not as old as that," Brenna told her with a watery smile.  "I'll send for you as soon as
Cam and I are home again."

She could risk no more delay.  With another quick embrace, Brenna threw the tartan around her shoulders.  The corridor outside her room was empty, and the music of pipes and fiddles from the gathering below muffled her footsteps as she sped down it.

The watchtower was the oldest part of the castle, the original stone keep.  The portcullis opened into the guardroom below the tower's winding stair, the main gate approached by an ancient bridge too rusty to be drawn.  Above the guardroom and the quarters of the captain of the guard, at the top of the tower, the armory faced the wide circular walk where sentries paced, commanding a view of the moors in three directions.  Their post was abandoned and eerily quiet, the lookout Malcolm stationed there locked with the English dragoons in the cells under the kitchens.  

In the early spring darkness beyond the parapet girding the tower, a chill thickening mist rose from the moat.  Dug in the time of brutal siege, it was long outdated, but deep and fed by a small stream not even Brenna's father had troubled to divert.  A dog barked somewhere in the village below the castle walls, and in the stillness Brenna heard the faraway trill of a nightingale in the wood beyond the moor.  She gathered her plaid tighter around her,

Cam
needed time to persuade the gathered chiefs of the clans.  But if she was absent too long from the great hall, Malcolm would send a servant in search of her.  And Malcolm's lackey would swiftly raise an alarm.  Brenna cared less for the cause of the Prince than riding away at Cam's side.  But Cam fought for Charles Stuart, and he risked his ancestral seat at Cairn Creath Castle and all he possessed.  The Rebels had to win. 

Iron clanged beneath her, and Brenna heard the crash of a door pushed wide on its hinges.  Shouts and booted footsteps burst from the guardroom two floors below, and English voices echoed up the stone walls of the tower.  The dragoons had broken free, to swarm up the stairs to the armory in search of weapons.  She barely had time to dart across the walkway and shrink into the narrow niche in the wall where the sentries sheltered from the weather. 

Panting from the climb, the first of the soldiers shoved at the thick oak door of the armory, cursing to find it locked.

Flattened in deep shadow in the cramped guardpost, Brenna was glad she had cast aside her ball dre
ss and wide hoop skirts.

"God's teeth, my belly gripes," one of the soldiers groaned.  "I'll skewer that kitchen slut."

"After we've done with those sneaking curs," a second man snarled.  "Send down to the guardroom for the key."

More men surged up the stone steps.

"Break the door down."  Brenna recognized the aristocratic accent of one of the nobles in Drake Seton's party.  

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, we've already put our shoulders to the door."

"Then try again," the Englishman ordered, his temper short.  "If you hadn't fallen so far in your cups, you could have smashed out of those rotting cells yourselves."

"'T
’wasn't from d... drink, my lord," one of the men stuttered.  "They p... poisoned us."

"Enough of excuses.  If we had time to spare, I'd send the lot of you fishing for your muskets in the moat."

Boots rang toward the stair.

"Fancy the strain it was for his high and mighty lordship to find the keys."  From the muttered remark, Brenna could guess the Earl's aide had turned on his heel and gone. 

New oaths rose from below, and something heavy thumped up the stone steps.  She risked a look.  The soldiers at the armory door used a stout wooden table as a ram.  In three hard blows the door splintered open, and they poured inside.  The dragoons began to pass swords and muskets down the stairs, and quickly she drew back against the clammy stones of the niche.  She was trapped on the open walk circled by the parapet.  The dragoons were between her and the stair.  She would never get past them to warn
Cam.

Then pandemonium erupted from the the great hall.  Brenna said a prayer for
Cam and Iain, thankful not to hear the sounds of muskets.  Shouts and cries erupted from the assembled guests, but the Earl's dragoons couldn't shoot into the crowd.  As long as they could rely on their swords, Cam and the rest had a chance to get away.

Closing her eyes, Brenna knew she could do nothing but stay where
Cam said he would meet her.  Nothing mattered now but keeping her promise to Cam.

The English soldiers and Malcolm's guards had emptied the armory of weapons and plunged back down the tower stair.  Frantic at the sound of fighting from below, Brenna could guess what had happened.  The Earl had made a show of accepting
Cam's pretext of truce, and quietly sent his escort of minor nobles to search out his missing men.  Cam would never have left the cells holding the dragoons unguarded.  Drake Seton's aides somehow had overpowered the sentries Cam had posted and freed the soldiers from the dungeon.

Suddenly Brenna heard loose tiles rattle and skitter down the roof above the armory.  Booted feet slid and scrambled down the slant of the gable beyond the tower.  Then
Cam swung down onto the wide walkway, softly calling her name.

Brenna ran to his arms.  "
Cam.  Thank God."

He held her tightly for a second, and Brenna drank in the familiar, solid feel of him.  Then he released her.

"You were right about the Earl," he said grimly.  "We should have watched him more closely."

"Did you win any of the other clans to your side?" 

"The Earl didn't give me time."  He caught her by the hand.  "We have to go before the Earl's men reach the postern gate." 

In the confusion, there was a chance they hadn't.  And the main portcullis below them was almost certainly already under guard.  They turned toward the stairs, and Brenna froze. 

Sword drawn, Drake Seton stood silhouetted at the top of the steps. 
Cam thrust Brenna behind him, and drew his broadsword.

"Have you come after me alone,
Stratford?" he asked, his voice taunting and deceptively soft.  "If you have, I advise you to step aside."

"I need no help to stop you," the Earl shot back. 

Instinctively Brenna shrank back to give
Cam room to deal with the Earl.

"I've cut my way through three other Englishmen tonight.  Don't force me to carve you in half in front of my bride."

The Earl stepped out onto the wide stone walk that ran around the tower. 

"I haven't found the lady squeamish at the sight of blood," he said, his tone dry and as dangerous as
Cam's.  "Or you about your given word.  Did you forget your promise to repent your vows to the Pretender?"      

The two men circled warily.

"I never promised to break my vow to the Prince.  And I take it ill that you threaten an innocent girl with a ch
arge of treason."

Drake Seton lifted the stiletto
  sharp blade of his rapier and pivoted toward Cam in a fencing stance. 

"If you  mean your affianced bride, she's hardly innocent. And I hang no woman, even t
he most treacherous of her sex.”

The Earl feinted, and
Cam parried.

"Brenna didn't plot to waylay your men,"
Cam ground out, taking the offensive.  He advanced on the Earl, but the Earl dodged the first slice of his sword by inches and landed in a lethal crouch, coiled to spring.

"Plead for your own skin," he snapped, thrusting swiftly.

In horror, Brenna saw the tip of his sword flick at
Cam's shoulder.  But Cam moved as quickly, and it came away with only a shred of cloth, no blood drawn.

"Plead for yours,"
Cam said through his teeth.

He circled, aiming a hard blow as the Earl lunged.  Their swords met, and their arms locked for an agonizing second.  Then the Earl whipped his weapon free and sprang aside, unscathed.  Brenna's fingernails dug into the crumbling stone edge of the parapet as they went at each other again.

Cam
's claymore was far heavier than the rapier in the Earl's hand, and capable of hacking destruction.  But the Earl's rapier was lighter and quicker.  Cam's weapon could shatter the Earl's sword in one well  placed blow, but the lightning thrust of the rapier could be swift and deadly if the Earl slipped it under Cam's guard.