Chapter Twelve

Alana concentrated on inhaling slowly through her suddenly dry lips. Shaw looked fierce enough to wrestle a four-hundred-pound wild boar, breaking it in half with muscle alone. She knew he’d never hurt her. No, not since she saw him trying desperately to feed and comfort a newborn baby on the edge of the woods at the festival. Oh, she’d been furious when he’d let his men truss her up, but not afraid. A woman’s instincts were her greatest weapon, and hers told her that the honor that Shaw held himself to was unbendable.

“You do not have to answer,” she said. “And I am not saying that I do want something to happen. I am just wondering what would happen if I did.”

He took a controlled step forward, hands fisted at his sides, so that he stood directly before her. His eyes were so clear, the gray of them flecked with blue, as he stared down into hers. “The fire that has been smoldering between us, lass, would ignite,” he said, his voice low and rough as if he struggled with the answer.

“Fire?” Her voice was tiny, something she hated, and she stood taller. “I am not afraid of that kind of fire.”

She held perfectly still as his fingers came up to catch a curl of hers that lay along her shoulder. He still frowned as if he struggled, but he’d softened somewhat. “The fire is not something to fear, Alana, it is the ashes the next morning, what is left afterward.” He dropped her curl and shook his head. “For a lass, losing yourself to passion has consequences, permanent ones.”

Annoyance calmed her heart from full-out sprint to a rapid run. “Every girl who has ever had a mother, grandmother, or nosy crone next door knows that, Shaw.” Her hands propped up on her hips. “An unfair disadvantage for women.”

“There are also the consequences that would fall of me being a Sinclair and ye being a Campbell. Two clans at war with each other,” he said.

“I am not at war with the Sinclairs,” she said, anger sharpening her tone.

“The Sinclairs are at war with the Campbells who have taken over our lands and castle.”

“I had nothing to do with your lands and castle,” she replied, realizing that they were standing nearly nose to nose.

“Your brother would likely feel differently,” he said, his words sounding like a growl.

Her hands dropped from her hips to land palm down on his chest. It was a barrier, but she didn’t push against him, shoving him back. In fact, the contact begged her to press into him. Her gaze dropped to her splayed fingers where they sat against the hard muscles of Shaw’s chest. She remembered too well the contours that she’d explored in the darkness of their tent, and when she lifted her gaze, she saw that his had followed hers down his chest.

Slowly she curled her fingers inward until two small fists sat against him. She tapped his chest with her knuckles. “You do not strike me as someone who would fear my brother,” she whispered, not ready yet to step back. Anger mixed with something much more dangerous to her composure, regret.

His eyes lifted to hers again, sharp with conviction. “I do not fear the Campbells, I fear the destruction of my clan, which is my responsibility. My actions directly affect my people.”

She swallowed, feeling a flush rush up her neck as if she’d been caught being selfish, selfish and unimportant. “And my actions only affect me?”

“Ye are the sister of a Campbell chief, Alana. So nay, your actions could also draw your clan into war.”

She dropped her hand, not really believing that her brother would go to war over her giving away her maidenhood. Rather, it sounded like an excuse. She turned away. “Let us ride, then. The faster we reach St. Andrews, the faster we can get to my mother in Edinburgh.” So I can release you from my life.

…

Damn. Bloody foking hell. Curses flew through Shaw’s mind as he studied the proud woman seated before him on the horse. It had been three hours since their discussion, argument, or whatever one wanted to call the idiotic words that had flown from his mouth. What he’d meant to be a mild warning had slid straight into him reprimanding the lass about being selfish and risking her clan, which was nothing like what he wanted to say. At the beginning, a part of him even wanted her to say she didn’t care about the barriers between them, that she wanted him anyway, the hell with her clan and the rest of the world. But that was a fantasy for the foolish. He’d realized it more and more with each word he spoke.

Shaw had his clan to think about. Alana did, too. But she didn’t know about the hell that was the daily living for his people at present. The constant reminders of why he must secure their lands and the safety of their clan by reclaiming Girnigoe Castle. Because I haven’t told her. Bloody conscience.

They rode in a northern direction, Rìgh weaving in and out of trees at a brisk walk. He was used to traveling for days, riding fast and walking far. He’d been born having to run. It seemed that the Sinclairs had been moving forever, never having a safe, stationary home that wasn’t threatened by the Sutherlands to the south or the Campbells riding through Sinclair territory, owning it.

Alana sat before him, her spine stiff, but over the hours, it had sloped slightly. She held onto the pommel with one hand, and he watched as the other slid behind in a fist to rub at the low part of her back.

“Here,” he said, holding the reins before her. It took a few seconds for her to take them, and he pressed his splayed hands across her lower and mid back. His thumbs slid along the tight muscles he felt through her thin stays.

She breathed out a sound of relief, rounding forward and then arching as he worked the stiffness there. She wasn’t what he’d consider a small woman, but his hands could easily span her back, as if she fit perfectly against him.

After a few minutes, she straightened. “Thank you,” she said, her voice soft, and he took the reins back.

They rode past a series of oaks that were losing their golden leaves, so that they rained down upon them. He watched her look up, long hair tumbling down her back to pool into the chasm between them.

She leveled her gaze outward. “We have never had much interaction with the northern Campbells, although my brother, Grey, went with my father and cousins to fight your clan in the north when he was younger.”

When exactly had that been? Foking hell, it seemed Campbells had been attacking Girnigoe his whole life, from the first time his uncle took over, bringing his debt with him. They’d ceased for a few years after George Sinclair sold the lands and castle to the Campbells, and Shaw had been too young and preoccupied with learning to become lethal to ask why. Then when his uncle died nine years ago, a new wave of Campbells had burned the village before the castle. It had taken a group of six Campbell bastards to physically throw him out, but not before Shaw had ordered that they ransack their own home so the damn Campbells wouldn’t be comfortable in their castle. But even without furniture and tapestries, or even a sound roof, the Campbells had moved in. They took over everything, pushing their own pigs and goats into the corrals and rebuilding huts for the warriors who held the castle.

“How did you lose Girnigoe?” she asked, her question easily picking the lock he held on his anger.

“My mother’s brother, George Sinclair, was a drunkard and fool. He was also unfortunately the chief after my father was killed when I was five, becoming the sixth Sinclair Earl of Caithness. He squandered money, so when it ran out, and my mother’s money ran out, he sold the castle to the Campbells. We lived there with him. When he died nine years ago, the Campbells came to claim the property, throwing me out by force.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Your mother and father?” she asked, her words soft. “How did they die?”

“My father died in battle. My mother…died four years later.”

“Illness?”

“She fell.” It was the most he’d told anyone about his mother’s death. Even his men who were as close to him as brothers didn’t know the extent of the abuse that had played out under the roof of Girnigoe before Shaw grew muscle and learned to wield a blade.

His uncle was a bully-ruffian, cruel and unyielding, especially when he was drinking whisky. Shaw had learned to develop a tolerance for the spirits when his uncle would force him to keep up with him. As a boy, Shaw would pretend to pass out when his brain grew sluggish. But things had changed after his mother was killed, and George Sinclair learned that if he touched anyone Shaw loved again, the blade that an eleven-year-old held against his wrinkled throat could still be deadly.

Alana twisted in the saddle, and the look across her features was a mix of shock, sorrow, and pity. His gaze raised to look out over the horse’s head into the woods of gold and red leaves.

“I am sorry,” she said. “Mothers are very important.”

He looked back down at her. “Which is why ye are risking yourself to find your own.”

She nodded. “My father was returned to us for burial, a blessing I suppose when the English turned their Covenanter meeting into a battle. Only my mother’s ring returned with him.” She held her finger up before her with the circlet of silver. “We thought her dead, but now I have hope that she is still alive.”

His jaw tightened until it hurt. He had thought all the Campbells had died that day when the English attacked the group that had claimed to be a peaceful Covenanter meeting. But everyone knew, including he and his men, that the meeting had been one to discuss dethroning the king who was a secret Catholic and who had forced his approved liturgy on them. Shaw and his loyal men had ridden down to it in hopes to discuss the ownership of Girnigoe with a different Campbell chief, Alana’s father.

“I did not see prisoners taken,” Shaw said, his voice soft.

She twisted to look up at him. “You were there?”

Tell her. Shaw’s muscles contracted as if ready to battle, but he held everything in check. Her eyes were so green, so hopeful, even the questions reflected there were innocent, free of suspicion and hate.

“I came south to speak with your father about supporting us in regaining the castle and lands from his cousin. The English arrived after I spoke with him.”

She placed her hand on his arm, the touch sending a tightness to his heart. “I will keep hope that she was taken and is still alive,” she said.

“Aye, lass, ye should.” She turned back, and he stared at her hair before looking upward into the sky, the leaves framing it. Maybe if Lady Campbell was still alive, she would say the words that Shaw couldn’t bring himself to say.

…

Alana exhaled, her eyes scanning the forest around them. Although she had kept as far from Shaw as possible while riding between his splayed thighs, his nearness assaulted her senses, and her back still ached. She had held onto her anger from their talk this morning for as long as she could, but the story of his mother dying when he was a boy and him having to live with his horrid uncle had softened her.

Before their argument, she could think of little else than making the powerful man lose control again and the sweet torture his touch ignited within her. She had experienced kisses before, but nothing like the all-consuming ravishing and tasting that she’d learned from him last night alone in their tiny hiding space.

She hadn’t cared one whit that he was a Sinclair. They weren’t all liars like Kirstin had said. Shaw Sinclair was honorable. Maybe too honorable. She blushed and was glad she faced forward on the horse where he couldn’t see her face. Maybe she was too dishonorable, risking war between their clans for pleasure.

Blast. Why did everything need to be complicated?

At home in Killin, no one looked at her twice. She grew up as everyone’s little sister, blending into the background with her dogs. Even when she grew up, the warriors continued to see her as Grey’s untouchable sister or the skinny little girl with wild tresses covered in dog hair from rolling around with whatever pack she was raising. When she’d met Shaw, he’d seen her as something more, someone more. Someone valuable who could help him on his important mission.

“Did you choose me to help you with the babe because I was the sister of a Campbell chief?” She let the words out fast before she could think better of it. Half of her wanted him to say yes, proving he thought that there was something special about her. But the other half very much wanted him to say no, that his abduction was due to needing her help as a woman, not that his plan was calculated and deceptive.

There was a long pause, and the longer it lasted, the tighter her hand gripped the pommel before her. She heard him exhale. “Not at first. At first, I was just impressed by your courage at the throwing contest, and then ye were kind to offer help when ye found me trying to feed the bairn. I knew who ye were, but my mission was to bring the bairn to St. Andrews, not steal away a Campbell.”

Her brow furrowed. “And why are you helping to save the king’s daughter exactly? Will it help the Sinclair clan?” Alana twisted in the saddle to stare at him. His gaze was already lowered to meet her own.

His features were tense and made even sharper with the growing shadows of the lowering sun. “Aye,” he said. The tiny word soaked into her, speaking whole paragraphs.

“The king will give you back your lands and castle if you save his daughter,” she said without question. She pushed aside the initial hurt that he was indeed using her to focus on the information, the needs hidden below the surface of his actions. “That is why Rose must arrive alive to St. Andrews, or the deal is broken.”

It wasn’t as if his expression changed, but it opened somehow, as if he wished for her to see inside him. “The only thing I have ever wanted my entire life is a family, one that does not have to run and hide or endure constant threats. One that belongs. When my uncle died, I thought circumstances would improve, but they only turned worse until the only course of action was to somehow win back our home through the English. If the Sinclairs have legal ownership again, I can rebuild the mighty Sinclair clan.”

“Do you have the money to pay off your uncle’s debts?” she asked.

“Not all of it, but we have raised some. A royal decree could see the lands and castle transferred without payment, but I am working to cleanse away his debt anyway.”

She nodded, just a little tip of her chin up and down before turning back forward. They rode for long minutes, and she uncorked her flask that held water from another fresh running stream they had passed. As she tipped her head back, Alana felt her hair brush against Shaw. It sent a warm shiver across her chest that she pushed down deep, not wanting to feel when things were so complicated.

“We will stop when we find a suitable site to have a fire.” He shifted in the seat behind her.

“The warmth will be good,” she murmured.

They rode farther. “Ye do not mind fires, even after being thrown into one?” he asked.

Alana curled her toes in her boots as if the scars on the bottoms of her feet still seared and itched from healing. “No. Not fires. Being trapped in one, that scares me. When the flames are too big to stamp out.” She exhaled, a slight sigh coming out with it. “The nightmares I have sometimes are awful. I wish I could banish them. You must have similar nightmares, being thrown out of your home.” She kept facing forward.

“I focus on the outcome, what it will look like to win back my home,” he said, his voice tinged with the darkness of conviction. “Sleeping in the bed in which I was born, where my father slept before he died and my uncle moved in. I imagine festivals on Sinclair lands with family smiling and laughing together, with warm homes and a solid army of trained warriors to protect them and hunt for food. My sisters…sister wedding and having her own bairns who do not fear men with torches coming in the night. I imagine the respect given to Sinclairs for their strength and honor instead of hearing that we are liars, gamblers, and cheats.”

She swallowed. “If you come down from the north more, people will learn that you are not your uncle.”

“I have never been able to come down from the north because I am always trying to keep my clan from dying out or losing hope. Right now, they are considered squatters on their own family land. Only a crucial mission made me leave them alone.”

“Saving a babe,” she whispered.

“Saving my clan.”

She remained quiet after the description of his home. Somewhere through their conversation, her anger had begun to change to guilt. Shaw deserved a home, just like Alana did. She knew better than anyone what it felt like to have someone steal one’s castle. “Is your hip sore?” She glanced back at him.

“Nay.” He didn’t say anything else.

“I can make more ointment if we find an apothecary in St. Andrews. I have my own dried herbs back at Finlarig. If you return me there, I can make more.”

“After Rose sets sail for the safety of France, and…the Sinclairs are acknowledged for our service, I will take ye wherever ye wish to go.” His words were slow and his tone serious and determined.

“To Edinburgh to free my mother, or are you not helping me with that now?”

“Ye gained my promise, and despite what ye have heard, Sinclairs keep their oaths.”

“I have not actually heard much about the Sinclairs. The Campbells of Breadalbane are not the same as the Campbells who plague you up north.” She did turn then, willing him to see the truth in her eyes.

The connection was strong, like a tether between them, his eyes beautiful and stormy, like they’d seen too much killing in this world, too much heartache. It made her want to cup his bristled cheek, but she didn’t despite the fire that still sat in her belly. She watched him inhale, some of the tension leaving his face. “Aye,” he said, nothing more, and she finally turned forward again. She wanted to say more, but the words that rose in her mind dispersed like smoke in a strong wind. For up ahead, she caught sight of a tiny structure.

“Shaw?”

“Aye?”

“There is a cottage ahead.” Her heartbeat kicked up into a fast patter. Blast her carnal mind, for the first thing that popped into it were his words from early this morning. If the cottage stood empty, they might very well be sleeping up out of the dirt and leaves tonight.