His Heart's Home (8 page)

Cairan didn’t allow herself to think about that now. She could
feel
the danger swirling around her. Rather than wallowing in fear, primal instinct had taken hold, allowing her to focus on protecting herself and her children
now
.

Duncan looked as if he dearly would have loved to scoop them all up into his saddle, but there wasn’t room and there wasn’t time.

“Hurry!” he said sharply, and then sprang away on his horse, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Ciaran and her children followed.

“Papa’s gone.”

Ryan’s doleful voice caused Ciaran to turn. Sure enough, the wagon had continued on, along with about a third of the caravan. All of the MacRaes and about half of the others had elected to stay behind.

“Tip the wagon!”

Duncan had leapt off his horse and was helping the men form a barricade against a ridge.

The women and children were busily unloading supplies and securing the livestock while the men primed and loaded their rifles in preparation for attack.

“HURRY!” Duncan’s voice urged them on. “They weren’t far back. They’ll be here soon.”

Ciaran clutched the children close as she looked from side to side, wondering what she should do.

All the other families were hunkering down in the beds of their wagons, but Ciaran’s wagon had gone with Sean.

“Down there!”

Ciaran spun around, surprised and relieved to see MacRae. He was pointing toward a natural gully that ran along the side of the road and was mostly covered in weeds. “
Stay down
!” he told her as Ciaran and the boys crawled down into the ditch. He started to turn, but hesitated. He looked at Avery.

“Do you know how to shoot?”

“Yes, sir!” the boy answered, eyes widening when Duncan handed him his pistol, keeping only the rifle for himself.

“Don’t you dare fire that unless you don’t have any choice!” he warned sternly. “You have to-!”

He was cut off.

An arrow had arched through the sky, catching Tanner MacNab in the shoulder and knocking him off his horse. The rest of the Scots had
just
enough time to get into position before a blood-curdling battle cry filled the air, and Indians descended.

..ooOOoo..

Ciaran was so paralyzed by terror she barely registered much of the fight. She sank down to her knees in mud, Aidan on her lap, the boys hunkering on both sides, and Mary crushed against her breast in case she tried to cry.  They shivered and wept and prayed in silence as the battle raged just beyond their view.

Liam wrapped himself in his mother’s skirts, and Ryan held onto her
arm. Only Avery stayed apart, his little fingers twitching restlessly at the trigger of the pistol, every gunshot and shriek causing him to flinch.

It seemed to drag on for hours
, but in reality it was minutes at most. The howls and moans and gunshots finally subsided, and an eerie silence took its place.

“Mama?” Liam’s sweet voice piped up after a few minutes had passed that way. “Mama, what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” she answered in a shaky rasp. She
thought
the battle was over, but didn’t know who had won, and didn’t know what she would see when they climbed up out of the gully. “Better wait here,” she said quietly, relieved when he nodded and settled down.

At last, she registered the sound of movement
and voices, but she couldn’t work up the courage to leave her hiding place. She and the children were still huddled together; too frightened to move when the grass was pushed aside.

..ooOOoo..

Duncan prepared himself for the worst.

The adrenaline of battle carried
him through the first few minutes after the fight.  It was years since he had been in a battle, but his body remembered what it needed to do. From the first volley, his warrior instinct was fully engaged, his body
acting
faster than it could think, but with a skill and precision that years of careful study and practice had wrought.

He was like a machine: firing, priming, powering, reloading and firing again, shooting round after round into the invaders. Then, when they were finally too close, he had thrown down his rifle and drawn his knife.

He didn’t feel the arrowhead that had sliced the side of his bicep, or feel the sharp rocks cutting into his knees when he dropped to the earth. That numbness continued when their foe was finally beaten. He stumbled around the camp, staring uncomprehending at the fallen bodies, his mind wandering between the forest and battlefields that were an ocean away.

A hail from Frasure Cameron brought him back to earth.

“Three men down, Laird MacRae!” he reported hoarsely. “Old Munro is bad…he may not make it, sir.”

Duncan nodded, his thoughts returning to the matter at hand. It felt like time had been traveling very slowly and had suddenly sped up again. He finally noticed the noise and the smells of the clearing around him and his sense of duty returned.

“What about the women and the bairns?”

“I think they’re all accounted,” Frasure said. “The savages made off with a few of the chickens, and the
Guests have lost a horse, but the damage wasn’t bad - not as bad as it could have been.”

Duncan nodded, but looked grim. “A raiding party,” he pronounced. He lacked any firsthand experience, but it sounded like what he had read about, and what he had heard others describe: a small, loosely organized band of braves that were looking for spoils and to scare the invaders away.

“We wouldn’t have made it without your warning,” the younger man said. His eyes flicked up the path, where Duncan noticed a thin column of smoke rising through the trees. “I wonder how the others fared.”

Duncan wondered too. Perhaps he had made the wrong decision? Perhaps they wouldn’t have been attacked at all if they had hurried on? In his heart, however, he believed he was right.

Frasure must have been of the same opinion, because he bowed his head. “Poor bastards,” he muttered.

Duncan couldn’t contain a snorting sound and spoke without thinking, “It would serve Sean
Connelly right.”

Sean…

Duncan’s heart clutched as, the last haze of the battle finally clearing from his mind, he remembered Ciaran and the children. “Did you see Missus Connelly?” he asked his cousin, frustrated by the man’s puzzled frown.

“
Ciaran!”

Duncan ignored the disapproving looks of his clansmen as he hurried to the edge of the clearing, his heart clenching in his chest as he looked around the ragged group of survivors
- and failing to see them there.

It was happening again.

He was a fool. Duncan should have known better than to care for Ciaran and her little family. It was the kiss of doom. Everything he touched turned to ash. A horrible, ragged cry welled up in his throat, choking off his air as he tried to force it down.

“Laird?”

Duncan ignored his cousin as he stumbled off in the direction he had told Ciaran to go.

Fool
! His mind taunted.
You should have kept them with the wagons. You might as well have murdered them yourself.

Duncan steeled himself for the worst as he knelt by the side of the gully. He would try to be strong, but he didn’t know if he could bear the sight of Ciaran’s beautiful body broken and
still. He pushed back the brushes, and then exhaled a slow, shuddering,
disbelieving
breath.

“Mister MacRae!”

Ciaran’s voice broke through his momentary stupor, and he thought he had never heard a more beautiful sound. She was there. She was
alive. She was safe.
He stared for a moment into her moss-green eyes, and then cast his gaze around her, picking out all five of the children’s faces.
All
of them were alive and whole.

“You
made it!” Duncan croaked, his eyes watery as relief washed over him in a mighty flood.

“Is it safe to come out now?”
Ciaran said in a tiny voice.

Duncan nodded. “Aye.
The natives have gone away. We gave them a fair beating, I reckon. We’re fine for now.”

Reassured it was safe to move, Aidan scrambled out of the gully
and launched himself into the Scotsman’s arms. The older children looked as if they would have liked to have done it as well.

Duncan squeezed Aidan tight, and then looked back at the boy’s mother. Ciaran had looked calm and shell
shocked before, but now her eyes were streaming with tears.

It was the relief
. Duncan had seen similar reactions before, and so he didn’t worry too much. He reached down to help her out of the gully, waiting as she shifted Mary to one of the older boys and then took his hand.

The tingling sensation Duncan had felt when they first touched redoubled. He curled his rough fingers tightly around her own and then pulled her out of the ditch. She managed it with a little difficulty, tottering slightly off balance for a moment, and Duncan couldn’t help it. He took advantage of the moment of weakness and tugged her into his arms.

“But-!” Cairan yelped in surprised as she was tugged against the Scotsman’s chest. Duncan stared hungrily at her eyes. There was no mistaking what he wanted to do. “
My husband..!”
Ciaran whimpered, but Duncan was sure that it was with fear and not regret.

“I won’t let him at you, lass,” Duncan growled back, and couldn’t wait another second before claiming her as his own.

His lips descended like a hot brand, searing into her skin as his hands curled around her back. She tasted as sweet as he’d imagined in his dreams. He knew, even before they broke away, that one taste would trigger an addiction.

She was
his
. The law and the church might have bound her to another man, but he knew, in his soul, that she belonged to him!

He bent to kiss her again, but Ciaran avoided his lips. “Your arm!” she gasped, touching her fingers to the sticky blood that oozed through his sleeve.

“A scratch,” Duncan assured her, annoyed by the distraction. The pain was
nothing
compared to the pleasure that a brush of her lips had wrought. He tightened his grip on her waist and bent to kiss her again - but was thwarted once more.

“Laird MacRae!”

Ciaran broke away only a second before Ross stepped into view. The man looked curiously between Duncan and Ciaran, but then registered the presence of the children and seemed to dismiss them in favor of the matter at hand.

“Laird MacRae…I think you need to see this…”

..ooOOoo..

Sean was dead.

Ciaran turned the thought over in her mind, trying to work out how it made her feel. It was something between relief and pain.  It was true he had sometimes been a monster. He had ruled her with fear and pain, and his own foolishness had gotten him killed - but it was also true he was the father of her children. He had fed and clothed her. He was the only thing she had known since she left her home and came across the sea.

The children seemed similarly undecided
, not quite certain what their reaction should be. They had all cried a little in the hours since Mister MacRae had returned and told their mother what he’d found. Ciaran walked with him the half mile up the trail, as far as the rest of the caravan had gotten before they were set-upon by Indians as well. She had looked on Sean’s dead and bloody body - she felt she
had
to see it for herself. Then she returned, drew the children aside and broke the news as gently as she could.

“What will happen to us now?” Ryan asked before anything else.

“We’ll manage,” Ciaran answered automatically, although she didn’t know if that was true. The raid on the first half of the wagons had been more successful. Most of the supplies and the cart were intact, but all of the livestock Sean had brought was missing, save a cage of chickens that was strapped in the back. What was more, Ciaran didn’t know if she could manage the horses herself - or what they would do when they reached the end of the journey. She wasn’t ready to think about that yet. She was simply trying to reconcile her mind to all the changes, and so she had missed the point of Ryan’s question.

“No- I mean…what will happen to Avery and
me
?”

Ciaran blinked. Surely Ryan and Avery knew she loved them? That she didn’t blame them for their father’s actions? That she wouldn’t dream of leaving them behind?

“Oh, Ryan!” she had whispered in answer, and then tugged him into her arms. “I won’t leave you, darling - or your little brother!”

The declaration seemed to ease the youngster’s fears. He managed a few bites of his own food before he allowed himself to be put to bed with his little brothers.

The mood at the camp was still wary and muted. The wagons had been arranged in a double circle around a large, single fire. Ciaran made sure the boys were all tucked into the wagon before she walked back toward the flames.