Gather the Stars, Page 2

  He stared out across a bank of wisteria, his eyes brimming with a sorrow so bleak, so vast, Rachel couldn't bear to look at it. "Rachel, forgive me," he said softly, capturing her hand in a grasp that unnerved her.

  "Forgive you for what? Helping me escape that mob of officers before my face cracked with the effort it took to keep smiling? I've—I've been hoping that we would find time to—to chat, catch up on... on everything."

  He took her hand, and Rachel sensed that he knew she was lying. "It's all right, Rachel. I know it's awkward. Strange." The gentle words made her cheeks burn with shame. "I need to go inside now. This leg aches damnably from the chill of the bench. But there is a lovely cascade of roses down this path a little ways. My wife was telling her Hessian about them, and I know how you adore roses. Besides, considering that I am a pariah, it might be best if you weren't seen re-entering the ballroom with me."

  She was touched by his consideration, and ashamed by the sting of relief she felt at the chance to escape his company. "I would love to see the roses, Nate. It was good to talk to you. I want to do so again. Soon." He gave her hand a parting squeeze, then limped off, leaning heavily on his crutch.

  She tarried near the stone bench until he disappeared through the doors leading to the ballroom. Turning, she retreated deeper into the maze of shrubbery, heading for a bank of stunning roses.

  Night shadows pooled, velvety dark, blurring the edge of earth and sky, the wind stirring the rose petals and lifting their scent to the stars. Yet as the ballroom fell farther behind her, a sudden chill penetrated the thin veil of linen draped about her, teasing skin used to countless heavy layers of velvets and satins, petticoats and jewels.

  She reached up, untying the velvet ribbon that held Sir Dunstan's miniature, and cupped it in the palm of her hand. Her eyes skimmed it in the moonlight.

  Dear God, she had achieved everything she'd ever dreamed of in her betrothal to Sir Dunstan. She should be happy. Why, then, did shadows of doubt seep from the corners of her heart, taunting her with a vague sense of disappointment? In Dunstan, she wondered, or in herself?

  No, what she was feeling was merely the emotions she'd seen her father suffer at the end of every military engagement—battle won, mission accomplished. A dead calm that left a person restless. Restlessness—that emotion had always been as much a part of her as her sable hair and the quick impatience in her crystal-blue eyes—a feeling that she might burst if something didn't happen.

  A scream rose in her throat, then died there, as one of the shadows came alive, something huge and dark and monstrously strong capturing her in sinewy arms.

  Outrage flooded through her, and she was certain that one of the officers she'd known since childhood was playing some sort of prank on her. The brilliant officers that filled the ballroom to brimming were the same terrible boys who had leaped out at her from closets and tied her hair in knots when she was a little girl.

  "This isn't amusing," Rachel snapped, jerking around. "Release me or—"

  Breath snagged in her throat and she froze, too stunned to move as she saw a face blackened with burnt cork and a white Stuart cockade—a pale smear of doom against the night.

  The symbol of the Glen Lyon.

  Dunstan's miniature tumbled from numb fingers. She fought and kicked, desperate as Nate's words about the rebel lord sent pinwheels of raw terror careening across every nerve of her body. Something coarse was yanked over her head, killing even the faint light of the flambeaus, cutting off the air. She dragged in another breath to scream, but her mouth filled with choking dust, ropes cutting into her wrists as they were bound in front of her.

  Sweet God in heaven, she was being kidnapped in the middle of a military ball with half the officers in the English army a garden's length away.

  This was impossible... impossible. Someone would hear her... someone would come...

  She attempted to scream again, but the breath left her lungs in a whoosh as strong arms hurled her up onto a horse's back. Pinning her effortlessly to the saddle despite her wild struggles, her captor mounted the horse behind her.

  "Don't be afraid, Mistress," a deep English voice rumbled in her ear as the horse was spurred into motion.

  "As if I'd be afraid of a cowardly traitor!" Rachel choked out, trying to fight the infernal bastard and keep from breaking her neck at the same time.

  Her defiance shattered on a cry as the horse suddenly launched itself over a barrier she couldn't see. She half expected to be hurled over its head onto the turf as its front hooves slammed into the ground, but her captor held her fast.

  Helplessness tore at her, she who had been helpless only one time... the night her mother had died. She fought the sensation even more furiously than she had fought her assailant.

  "You'll never get away with this," she spat out as the horse regained its balance, its gait all but jarring the teeth from her mouth. "I know who you are."

  "And just who am I?" the rough baritone asked in the infuriatingly amused tone one might use with a temperamental child.

  You're a monster, she wanted to say, a giant—huge and thickly muscled, and terrifying, but she flung back her answer like her papa's own daughter. "You're the rebel bastard Glen Lyon."

  Laughter, rich and unexpected, rang out, shaking the hard chest against which she was imprisoned. "I wouldn't even attempt to claim that title, hellcat. The Glen Lyon is ten times the man I am." There was just a touch of awe in the man's voice—enough to tighten the chill vise of terror about her chest.

  "He is ten times the traitorous villain, you mean," Rachel flung back, her head reeling. Not the Glen Lyon? The villain hadn't even bothered to abduct her himself?

  Her captor's words resounded through her.

  Ten times the man I am...

  Her imagination flooded with images of this legend-spun rebel lord—stronger than Samson, more cunning than Caliban, more demonic than Lucifer himself

  What would such a beast want with her?

  The Glen Lyon and your betrothed are sworn foes.... Nate's words tore at her spirit.

  Sworn foes...

  She caught her lip between her teeth to keep from crying out. Memories stirred in her head—whispered accounts she had overheard of horrors beyond imagining, the hideous fates of women who had fallen into enemy hands.

  Thunder in heaven, surely this Glen Lyon couldn't... would not dare to... to what?

  Ravish her?

  Ice poured into her veins. The traitorous rebel was a coward—a craven coward who had kidnapped the betrothed of the bravest man in all England. There could be only one reason to commit such a nefarious crime—to have her completely at his mercy. What better way to wound the proud Sir Dunstan than to brutalize his betrothed?

  Terror was a living thing inside Rachel. She renewed her struggles, yet it was as if her captor was hewn of pure granite, immovable, impossible to defeat.

  Tears of hopelessness and despair bit at her eyes, and in their wake, her father's admonition rose as it had a thousand times before: A soldier never cries....

  The words reined in her panic, tamping it down with fierce resolution.

  No. She would not let these traitors make her cry. She had to think, to plan, to find a way out of this disaster.

  Whatever vile fate Glen Lyon had in store for her, no paltry coward would ever defeat Rachel Alexandra de Lacey. The general's daughter was about to embark upon her own private war.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rachel had never suspected that war was so uncomfortable. Hot spikes of pain screwed themselves deeply into every joint of her body. The rough blindfold made her eyes itch. The constant jolting of the horse jarred her until her teeth threatened to chatter right out of her head.

  They had been riding for an eternity, an eternity Rachel had spent listening to every sound with excruciating intensity, trying to gather any clues that might help her retrace the horse's steps once she escaped.

  Blinded by the strip of cloth still secured over her eyes, she'd distin
guished the rushing music of a burn spilling over stone, and had tried to count the number of times her body shifted in her captor's arms as he guided his mount up sweeps of hills.

  She'd congratulated herself for her genius when she'd begun demanding to be allowed to answer calls of nature whenever she guessed that they might be near some particularly distinct landmark. Those few moments of grudging privacy had given her time enough to sneak up the hem of the blindfold and glance at the wild highlands of Scotland engulfing her.

  The sensation had set terror clawing inside her, the terror Persephone must have felt as she was dragged down to Hades' domain. However, Persephone had been face to face with her nemesis from the moment of her abduction, while Rachel was left at the mercy of a too-vivid imagination. To her, it seemed as if the Glen Lyon was vengeance incarnate. The hintings of his dark deeds had made Rachel's spine tingle with foreboding while she was yet safe in the garden. Here, in the vast wildness, they iced her skin with pure dread.

  The one thing that had kept her sane during the grueling trek had been the hope that she would be rescued at any moment. Nate must be aware she hadn't returned to the ballroom by now, and a party of soldiers would be riding hard in search of her.

  To aid them in their quest, she had done all in her power to slow her captor's progress. She dallied as long as possible during his merciful moments when he would shove a crumbling bannock into her hands or press an otter skin full of water to her lips. Yet as time ticked by, even Rachel had to admit that it would be more and more difficult to track her in this immense Scottish wildland.

  That admission left her two choices—give way to blind panic, or summon her courage. She must prepare to confront the despised enemy of her betrothed as though she were a captive queen, to face the rebel who was almost a legend....

  She swallowed hard, imagining a primitive Scot warrior with tangled hair and bestial eyes, lust twisting a cruel mouth—the very object of every maiden's worst nightmare in the days of the border wars. She shivered, recalling the tales Dunstan had told her, the ruthless savages that had murdered his father and brother and countless other ancestors through the ages.

  She was just dismissing the image as one more folly when a shrill sound shattered the silence, drawing a stifled cry from her own lips.

  Not even her wildest imaginings had prepared her for the barbarian war cries that erupted around her as her captor pulled the horse to a halt. The Gaelic cries cut at her like the blade of a claymore, left her knees shaking no matter how desperately she tried to stop them.

  "You've got her! That bastard Wells's woman!" A high-pitched voice pierced her ears through the cacophony of sounds.

  "I hope to hell I've got the right one," her captor called out, dragging her down off the horse with him. "It'd be damned inconvenient to have abducted the wrong woman."

  He flung Rachel over his shoulders like a sack of grain, crossing to God knew where with long strides. Rachel could feel fingers plucking at her, poking her.

  "Did she scream and faint?" someone demanded to know.

  "If she didn't already, the Glen Lyon'll make her wail like a pig with its tail caught in a gate," another voice insisted.

  "The Glen Lyon can go to hell!" Rachel snarled despite the sack. "Take your hands off me, you—you traitor scum." Yet it was unnerving—the voices pounding her like battle clubs, the chill that seemed to envelop her, the hard hand of her captor smack in the middle of her upturned rump. Without another word, he dumped her unceremoniously onto something cool and hard.

  She struggled to stand up. She'd be damned if she was going to face these traitors on her knees. But before she could, a swarm of fiends engulfed her— crawling over her legs, tugging at the sack, their hands sticky-sweet... with blood? The gruesome possibility teased her mind.

  Dear God, what had she stumbled into?

  Garbled, indecipherable babble pounded against her, as if some evil horde of gnomes or mythical demons had been set upon her.

  One of them ripped the blindfold from her head, taking a good-size hank of her hair with it. Light from blazing flambeaus bored all the way to the backs of her eyes, blinding her for long seconds, yet when her vision began to clear, she wanted to grab the blindfold again, to draw it over her eyes.

  She was staring into the face of the most hideous gnome she had ever seen. It was barely a hand's length away from her nose. Thick white paste stiffened its hair into gruesome spikes, and primitive, painted symbols traced grimy paths on skin dark with filth. One side of the creature's face was horribly distorted, its cheek bulging, its upper lip twisted. Despite all her brave intentions, Rachel couldn't keep from shrinking back. Dear God, what was it?

  "We're not going to feed you even a crumb, Sassenach!" The gnome's hate-filled voice echoed through what seemed to be a rough stone cavern. "We're going to starve you until your bones stick right out of your skin."

  "No!" A creature that looked half human leaped with wild excitement. "We're going to pull her skirts all up and let someone jump on top of her and she'll scream and scream!"

  Her captor cut in. "The Glen Lyon will be the one meting out justice here. Of course, I'm certain he'll take your suggestions under advisement."

  She turned to see the man who had carried her away from the garden—a swarthy mountain of a man with ebony hair and a flashing grin that made her want to ram his white teeth down his throat. "Now let the lady up this instant," he commanded.

  Obedient demons? Rachel wondered incredulously as the pack of gnomes scuttled off her with groans of disappointment. She scrambled to her feet, her knees all but buckling as she braced herself against a rough stone wall. She towered over her tormentors, their faces shifting into better focus as one of them plopped a grimy thumb into its mouth.

  "Children," she gasped out, disbelieving. "They're... children." The notion horrified her beyond anything she had experienced, and the threats they had spewed out were even more unnerving because they had fallen from what should be innocent lips. "What kind of monster would keep children like animals."

  "I suggested the Glen Lyon drown the lot of 'em, but he says they'd spoil the water for drinking." Was the man actually smiling? "Now, we don't want to keep him waiting."

  He guided her through a twisted passageway that led deeper into the cave, to where a fresh-hewn door had been fitted to the stone. Is it the rebel's lair? Rachel wondered. Or a prison buried so deep in the bowels of the earth that no one would hear me scream?

  The lion's den. Rachel couldn't stifle the throb of fear. She felt as if she were about to become some monster's next meal. She steeled herself to confront her nemesis—the vile fiend who had ordered her abduction.

  But as her captor shoved the door open, revealing the makeshift chamber beyond, Rachel froze, her mouth gaping.

  A man sat at a wooden desk, a tousled dark-gold mane of hair tumbling in wild disarray about a lean face. Intense gray eyes peered through the lenses of spectacles at whatever was in his hands. He was spouting a string of words in perfect Latin. But despite the fact that Rachel had been educated far more thoroughly in the language than any other woman she knew, these were words she had never heard before.

  "Christ's blood," the man muttered to himself. "I'm going to murder that bastard when I get my hands on him."

  "On her, little brother. You did specify I was to bring you a woman."

  The man wheeled, stunned as if he'd been clubbed from behind by one of the demon-children. He leaped to his feet, his spectacles sliding farther down his nose, a bundle of garish scarlet velvet that could only be a woman's gown tumbling to the cave floor. A spool of thread bounced madly across the room to thump into the heather-stuffed mattress crammed against one wall.

  "Blast it, I've lost that needle again!"

  Rachel gaped at him, more stunned than if he'd been a naked savage gnawing on human bones. These two men were brothers? It seemed impossible.

  "Mistress de Lacey, may I present the dread rebel lord Glen Lyon."

&nbs
p; The golden-maned man stopped groping for the needle and straightened. He was tall, too thin, with the mouth of a poet, the expression of a scholar, and the eyes of a dreamer—the absolute antithesis of every raider Rachel had read about in her contraband French novels.

  Strangely, she felt almost cheated. It was upsetting enough that she'd been abducted—but to be abducted at the order of a man like this!

  The Glen Lyon? He looked more like a Glen Kitten! But couldn't a man like this be even more dangerous? Weak men were often the cruellest, to compensate for their own shortcomings. And it was obvious that this rebel had a whole brigade of minions ready to act upon his command. The man who had plucked her from the garden looked strong enough to tie iron bars into knots if the spirit moved him.

  "Miss Rachel de Lacey?" The Glen Lyon sketched her a bow, as if they were at a soiree. "I'm—"

  "You don't need to introduce yourself," Rachel shot back. "From the moment I arrived in Scotland, I heard tales of the coward of Prestonpans. But I had no idea that you were so craven that you wouldn't even take your own prisoners. What kind of a man are you? Forcing others to do vile deeds for you because you lack the courage."

  She'd called him a coward, an accusation that would have made Dunstan violent with rage, but this man didn't even have the grace to blush! She expected some reaction—an explosion of masculine outrage, a gruff denial of the charges levied against him, or at the very least, savage shame. Instead, amusement twinkled in the Glen Lyon's storm-cloud eyes.

  "Abducting ladies isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid. I would've made a disaster of it. And there's nothing more upsetting than a botched abduction. However, I trust that Adam saw to your every comfort?"

  Her mouth hung open like a fishwife's. Sweet God, was he jesting?

  No, the knave was toying with her the way a cat tormented its prey. He had her in his power—had all the time in the world to torture her. He wasn't fooling her with that solicitous smile.

  "Comfort?" she sputtered. "I was snatched from the midst of a ball, slung over a saddle like a sack of grain, and hauled off to God knows where. Then I was set upon by demons."