DARE THE WILD WIND (9 page)

Cam
's broadsword put him at a disadvantage.  It was too clumsy for fencing.  As the Earl pressed him, Cam abandoned his slicing attack, wielding his claymore two handed in front of him to counter the lunging thrusts of Drake Seton's blade. 

Brenna cringed at each new clash of steel on steel.  But
Cam had cut his way through swords and bayonets on the field of battle and three of the Earl's men tonight.  Brenna knew it couldn't be the first time he had faced a rapier.

She sensed
Cam was waiting for an opening.  But Drake Seton was lethally quick.  Why had he interfered?  Why couldn't he just have let them go?

Then the Earl lost his footing for a second. 
Cam sprang forward, swinging the claymore in a deadly arc.  Brenna let out a choked, terrified cry, and the Earl dived aside.  The dismembering blade had missed him only by a hair.

Instantly, he lunged back to the attack.  Brenna berated herself for the horrified sound she had made.  She had no wish to see Drake Seton dead at her feet, but she valued
Cam's life more than his.

Despite
Cam's strength and agility, his claymore was a leaden weight matched against the Earl's rapier.  She could see he was tiring.  Her dirk was in her boot, and time for their escape was short.  But Brenna knew she couldn't plunge a dagger into the back of any man, even the Earl. 

Then, as the Earl leapt away from another of
Cam's scything blows, she saw Iain framed in the light of the torch at the top of the tower stair.  His bandaged arm hung limp at his side, and he had lost his sword.  But he stooped quickly.  Straightening with a broken leg from the table the dragoons had used as a ram, he brought it down sharply on the back of Drake Seton's head.

The rapier slid from the Earl's fingers, and he toppled slowly to his knees and then fell face first to the stones of the tower walk.

Cam
let out a half winded laugh.  "You're a welcome sight.  I'd as soon have finished him myself, but the occasion calls for haste." 

He held out his hand to Brenna.  "We have to go, and now."

"Malcolm's men aren't far behind me," Iain broke in.  "The dragoons have already taken the postern gate."

Cam
wheeled back to face him.  "They've blocked our way?"

Iain nodded, his eyes sliding to the parapet. 

Brenna stiffened.  "Iain, you can't mean to jump?"

They heard new footsteps at the bottom of the tower stairs.

"That's exactly what he means,"
Cam interrupted, sheathing his sword.  He bent to capture her mouth in a swift, hard kiss.

"I'll be back for you, Brenna," he said, his voice roughening.  "And when I come for you, no man alive will stand in my way." 

Chapter 7

Brenna watched Iain drop after Cam over the edge of the parapet into the moat, battling the impulse to follow them.  But in the water her sodden skirts would drag her down.  With soldiers halfway up the tower stairs, she would only hinder their flight. 

It was a long fall, and
Cam was weighted by a sword as well as his boots.  But she saw his head swiftly break the surface of the water.  New fear gripped her for a second as Iain disappeared below the dark surface.  His arm nearly useless, he would be doubly handicapped trying to swim.  Then she saw his fair head bob up, and Cam strike for him.  A strong swimmer, Cam reached Iain in a few steady strokes.  He began to tow Iain toward the outer bank of the moat.  Just as Cam dragged Iain up from the water, she heard a groan behind her.  Iain's blow had only stunned the Earl.

She turned to face him with a hot, overpowering flash of resentment.  If not for Drake Seton, she might have gone with
Cam.  Instead she was trapped at Lochmarnoch Castle, her brother's prisoner and his.

The Earl lifted his head, cracking one eye open for a second.  Then he slumped forward again on his face.  Blood trickled from a cut above his eye where his head had struck the stones that paved the tower walk.  In spite of her anger, Brenna found herself kneeling beside him.  Lying so still, he appeared younger and oddly vulnerable.  His sharply
chiseled features had relaxed into softer lines, and with a start, Brenna realized he could be only a few years older than Cam and Iain.  It was his commanding presence and his arrogant ease with his rank that made him intimidating.

Soldiers spilled from the stairwell, the first of them swearing fresh oaths when they all but tripped over the fallen Earl.  The rest poured onto the walkway and vaulted onto the slated roof of the castle.  It would take them a minute or two to think of the moat.  By then she hoped
Cam and Iain would have time to reach one of the sheltering ravines the Highland's torrential rains had cut in the moor, out of sight and range of the dragoons' muskets. 

Thomas Wolcott wedged through the tower door shoulder
to shoulder with more soldiers, to halt at the sight of the Earl. 

"Good God," he burst out.  "Your lordship?"

The Earl's aide
de camp dropped to one knee and felt for a pulse at Drake Seton's throat.  Seton let out a grunt of protest, and lifted a blind hand to strike Wolcott away.  Relieved, Wolcott drew back.  But not before he saw the rising lump on the back of the Earl's head. 

"That misbegotten Judas.  What kind of coward do you breed in the
Highlands?"  He glared at Brenna.  "Or is this your work?"

"If it was, I'd hardly be here now."  She tore a strip of cloth from her skirt to stanch the bleeding.  Drake Seton's eyes snapped open at her gentle pressure on the cut over his eye.

"Leave off," he said, wincing.  He brought his fingers to the wound and rubbed at the slick wetness on his face.  "I'd prefer to bleed."     

It was clear the Earl wanted no help from her.  "As you wish."  Regretting her impulse to charity, she got quickly to her feet. 

Shaking off the hand Wolcott offered, he rolled to a sitting position on the stone walkway.

"Don't hang over me, Thomas."  He sent a cold glance toward Brenna.  "Find her lover, while he's still inside the castle walls."

He caught Brenna's small triumphant twitch of a smile.  Staggering awkwardly to his feet, he shot out a hand capture her wrist in a painful grip. 

"Or are we too late?  Did you give him time to escape?"

Brenna wouldn't let him see her flinch.  "If your memory still serves, you'll recall I didn't strike the blow that felled you."

Two of the soldiers who had spread out to search the roof reappeared on the stone walkway where they stood.  The Earl fixed the corporal with sharply questioning eyes. "Have you found the Scot?"

"Begging your pardon, no, my lord.  We've taken a handful of his men, and we thought we had him trapped on the roof."

"Thought?" Drake Seton grated out.  "I ordered every gate in the walls closed."

"He must have gone over the parapet into the moat."

Thomas Wolcott let out a disgusted breath.  "Then we can hope he broke his neck in the fall."

Brenna sensed that the Earl could too clearly read in her face that he hadn't.  His grasp on her wrist loosened.

"Get to your horses and scour the moor."  He reached out abruptly for the support of the tower wall. 
"And tell the grooms to saddle my horse."

"My lord," Wolcott interrupted, "you're in no state to sit a horse."

"I'm in no temper to be balked," he said in a dangerous tone.  "And in no mood to suffer the sight of this woman any longer.  Escort her to her chamber, and post a guard at her door."

          
*****

The pearl gray wash of dawn parted the chill silver mist outside the high slotted embrasure that served as a window in Brenna's bedchamber.  Through the night, Brenna had jumped at every sound in the corridor outside her room.  Clinging to the knowledge that there were dozens of branching ravines Cam and Iain could have followed through the moor, she told herself the cloak of darkness would thwart the Earl's search.  And Cam must have left horses not far outside the walls.  Cam had hoped for success with the chiefs of the other clans, but he had never been a fool.

The heavy oak door creaked on its stiff iron hinges and slowly swung open.  Brenna wheeled to see Morag enter bearing a tray.

For the benefit of the guard in the corridor, Brenna spoke caustically.  "Then I'm not to be starved in my chamber?"

Morag exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Brenna.  "You can consider yourself fortunate your brother hasn't seen fit to let you breakfast on moldy bread and water." 

She set the tray on the gate
leg table under the window.  When the guard shut the door, Brenna ran to her.

"Thank God they've let you in to see me.  What news do you have of
Cam?"

Morag glanced toward the door. "His lordship the Earl is in a wicked frame of mind.  And your brother is fair beside himself."

"Then they haven't found
Cam?" Brenna asked, lightheaded with relief.

Morag's somber face broke into a grudging smile.  "No Englishman is quick enough to lay hands on the MacCavan."

"Then he did get away."  Brenna collapsed onto the bench next to the wall.  "How  many of his men were taken?"

"Five."  Morag bent to set out the silver on the tray. 

A feeling of dread crept over Brenna.  "And killed?"

"Two," Morag said quietly.  "
Leith MacNab and Douglas MacCavan."

Brenna sat silent for a second. 
Douglas had taught Cam and Iain to snare rabbits and later to hunt roe deer, and Leith was no older than Brenna.  "Did no one but Iain and Cam escape?"

Morag's expression lightened a little.  "
Cam had a score of men in the castle.  All the rest fought their way out."

Brenna thought of Douglas MacCavan's widow and half
grown sons, and the village girl who ran to draw water at the well whenever Leith rode by.  And of the captured men, faced with execution or years in gaol.  Brenna wished Charles Stuart had never shown his face in Scotland.  This was what came of reckless defiant talk, of a lifetime of drinking toasts to the King over the water. 

"There's no profit to be had from grieving," Morag broke in.  "You'll drop like a stone if you don't eat."

She lifted the cover from the tray.  The hot honeyed smell of porridge wafted up, mingling with the steaming aroma of strongly
brewed India tea in a pewter mug, and bannocks and thick sliced ham lay on a salver.  Brenna shook her head, but Morag persisted.  "At least take some tea and porridge."

Reluct
antly Brenna settled at the gate leg table.  The first few bites tasted like leather and paste, but the succulent juices of the smoked ham and bannocks laced with honey gradually tempted her, and she left only a small portion on the tray.

Exhaustion descended on her like a weighted shroud, and Morag had little trouble persuading her into her bed.  Brenna fell into a deep sleep, only surfacing to groggy consciousness as the blue shadows of twilight gathered outside the window of her chamber.  Morag had come and gone, building a fresh fire in the hearth against the spring dampness t
hat still crept up from the rush strewn stones beneath Brenna's bed.

Shivering for a second in the thin lawn of her nightdress, she slipped from the bed, going to the pitcher and washbasin to splash cold water on her face.  A knock on the door made her straighten.  She barely snatched a wrap around her as it opened.

The uniformed dragoon took in her state of undress, his eyes moving from the disheveled tumble of her hair to the rounded curve of her breasts beneath the soft stuff of her wrap.

"My lady," he said, an insolent note in his voice, "you're summoned by the Earl."

             
                                                                      *****

Brenna drew a shallow breath to quell her dread as her guard opened the paneled doors of the drawing room.  Malcolm and Thomas Wolcott waited there as well, Drake Seton's aide standing discreetly in the far corner of the room, hands clasped behind his back.  Malcolm slouched on a shepherd's crook chair next to the Rococo game table, his spidery spatulate fingers toying irritably with an ivory chessman on the board inlaid in the table's mahogany top.

The Earl lounged by the ma
ntle, scorning the one armed French settee that sat at an angle to the hearth.  He straightened and turned as the doors slid open.  Despite the previous night's copious flow of blood, the cut above his eye was small, and he hadn't troubled to bandage it.  If the lump on the back of his head was still swollen, the glossy thickness of his hair hid it.  It gleamed a bright unalloyed gold in the flickering light from the fire, a vestige of the Viking blood that ran strong in the veins of the Saxons and Normans who long ago had conquered England.   

Today, perhaps owing to a lingering tenderness at the spot where he had been struck, the Earl wore no wig, his hair clubbed in a queue at the nape of his neck.  But his hawkish face wore the cold expression of an inquisitor.