Chapter 18

 

 

The dead wolf flopped to the ground. The others reacted in an instant, flying at the men, snarling and spitting.

The men leveled their axes and swords at the wolves, but the wolves didn’t play that game. They slashed the men with their bare fangs. They closed in body to body against the men where weapons wouldn’t do any good. One man fell with his throat ripped out. Others screamed.

Jamie launched himself at the combatants. “No! Stop! Ye dinnae understand.”

No one heard a word he said. He ran to the nearest body, attempting to pry a man and a wolf apart. He couldn’t see who it was in the gloom. He didn’t care. He had to stop them fighting. These men didn’t understand the wolves were their friends.

The wolf in his arms made a lunge and slashed the man across the cheek. The man screeched out loud, and Jamie recognized Jock. The wolf sprang clear. Jock wheeled and ran. “Fall back!” he called. “Fall back!”

His companions took a little longer to disengage from the wolves. The wolves, on their side, took even longer to realize the men wanted to flee. The heat of battle had infected their minds. They kept fighting, even when the men broke and ran. The wolves hounded them out of the village until every man left alive ran for the shelter of the woods.

Jamie turned around. His heart crashed into his shoes at the scene before him. The dead wolf lay on its side next to the planter, the spear sticking out of its chest. The dead man lay not far away in a pool of his own blood.

Another man knelt next to the wolf. It was Arch. He ran his hand across the wolf’s fur. He stroked its face, and his chin fell onto his chest. While Jamie watched, the wolf changed back into a man, and he recognized Alec.

“Another McLean’s goin’ home in a coffin,” Arch muttered.

Grace laid her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get him inside. We can’t leave him lying out here all night.”

Arch gritted his teeth and snapped the spear shaft flush with Alec’s chest. He took the body in his arms and carried it off to Ganny’s cottage.

Jamie turned away until they vanished into the night. He waited until all the McLeans left. Only Grace remained.

He walked over to the dead man and stared down at his face. He wore his curly brown hair tied behind his neck. His shirt fell open to reveal a long scar cut across his chest.

Grace came up behind him. “You okay, Jamie? Did you get hurt?”

Jamie shuddered. He could barely draw breath to speak. “It’s Daniel.”

“Jamie?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“What am I goin’ tae tell Marri now?” he asked. “She was worried he wouldnae come home, and now he ne’er will. This is my fault. I should ha’e stopped this long ago. I should ha’e done more tae warn Jock about the McLeans. I should ha’e protected them.”

Her tender hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Protected who? You’ve been working nonstop since this thing started. You tried to warn Jock, and you couldn’t stop this fight. There were too many of them.”

He heard the words, but they meant nothing to him. The weight of everything that happened today landed on him like a ton of bricks. The giants’ blows, seeing Christie almost die, and now this—what could one man do with catastrophes like this? How could he survive them?

His head bowed. His back bent. He couldn’t rise under this crushing weight. He would rather die than face Marri and break the news that Daniel was dead. The villagers would find out. They would never forgive the McLeans for this. The vendetta would drive their Clans apart after Jamie and his brothers had fought so hard and sacrificed so much to bring them together.

“I cinnae do this no more, lassie,” he sighed. “I cinnae fight this anymore. I want tae go home. I want tae go back tae Urlu.”

She stood back and watched him. He no longer cared if she thought him weak for venting his feelings. He had to get them out. He had to say the words to the black night crowding around him. He had to fall apart, if only once in his life.

She squeezed his shoulder, and her sweet breath brushed his ear from inches away. “Come inside. You’re tired, and you need to lie down.”

“What about Daniel? I cinnae leave him here.”

She didn’t answer. She took his hand, and she wouldn’t leave him alone until she got him moving. He paid no attention to where she led him. He shuffled after her in a stupor. Life wasn’t worth living. He hated this place and everyone in it. He wanted to be around his own kind, where people understood him and he didn’t have to explain everything.

If he told Angus or Robbie the McLeans were trying to help them, they would believe him. They trusted him enough to listen when he told them something they didn’t know. He didn’t have to fight over and over to convince them.

He wanted nothing more than to take his rest in their company. He always idolized his older brothers—all of them. They were the best of men. He ached to be just like them. Just being in their company and sharing their battles gave him the thrill of a lifetime.

What did this dirt village have to offer him compared with that? Jamie could never admire Jock or Piper the way he admired his brothers. No one in this village inspired him to be the best man he could be. They couldn’t, because they weren’t the men he wanted to be.

Grace pushed him through a doorway. She shoved him down in a chair and left him sitting there alone in the dark. His mind registered from a great distance he was inside walls, but he couldn’t see anything.

She came back a few minutes later and rummaged around in the dark for a moment. Then a flickering flame winked up in front of him. It chewed through a pile of broken sticks and grew into a cheery fire.

Grace turned around and smiled up at him. “You’ll feel better when you get warm. I’ll go get some food from Arch. Stay here.”

He broke out of his trance. “Where are we, lassie?”

“I found this shack south of the village one time when I was here a few days ago,” she replied. “I was just wandering around. It’s abandoned. I guess it’s too far out of the village for the giants to take any notice of it. Maybe they didn’t even see it. Anyways, we’re here. I’ll run up to the village and get some food.”

“Do Arch and Christie ken where we are?” he asked.

“I told them,” she replied. “I just went up there to get a live coal to start this fire.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

She ran off. The fire warmed his face and hands and chest. It started to thaw that hopeless despair that threatened to overwhelm his heart. She left the door of the shack standing open. He looked through it at the stars scattered over the sky.

Daniel was out there somewhere. He still lay by the planter with his throat gaping open, but inside these walls, Jamie could rest. He could put aside everything that happened and sink into the delicious heat filling him up.

Grace rushed in. She went down on her knees by the fire, gasping in the flush of running. She bent over a bundle and unwrapped it. “I guess these villagers don’t eat a very broad diet. Arch gave me some meat and bread. I guess that’s all they’ve got. Here. You’ll feel better when you eat something.”

She pushed a lump of cold meat into his hand. Jamie stared at her features in the firelight. She couldn’t be the same person who yanked him away from that giant just in time. She couldn’t be the same warrior that stabbed the giant in the foot with Jamie’s own saber. She was too beautiful for that. She was too delicate and fine.

She glanced up, and a brief smile flashed across her face. Her hair swept her cheeks. What could a man do with a woman like this? How could he live owing her his life?

Like his brothers, he didn’t know how to deal with Carmen when they first encountered her. They thought she was strange and unnatural. After the first fight when she held her own and even saved Callum’s life, they started to understand.

After that, these women proved their worth time and again. No man could apply the old rules to them. They existed in a class by themselves. They withstood untold hardships. They faced unspeakable dangers. They fought, and they won. Nothing could defeat them. No matter how bad things got, they only got stronger, more courageous, more caring, more intelligent.

His heart exploded with love for her. Each of his brothers went through this agony of wanting her. They suffered a pain worse than death not knowing if they could win the woman they loved so much.

Would he ever win her? Could he ever deserve her? Would he ever touch her heart the way she touched his? Would she ever understand what she did to him?

He’d never let himself feel anything as serious as this, let alone try to explain it to another living person. He couldn’t bear to expose himself to her, but he had to. One way or the other, he had to make her understand how he felt. Better to get it off his chest and have her turn her back on him than to live with this agony.

She settled down cross-legged in front of the fire. She munched her own food and stared into the flames. She had no idea what storm churned in his heart and mind. She had no clue how he felt about her. She tossed wood on the fire. She wasn’t even thinking about him.

“Lassie,” he began.

She didn’t look up. “Yep?”

“Why ha’e ye and yer mon there ne’er had bairns taegether?”

Her head shot up, and her eyes flew open. “What?”

“How laing ha’e ye been married tae him, that ye had no bairns wi’ him?” Jamie asked.

Grace searched his face. He couldn’t see her eyes when she turned away from the fire. She sat there so long he worried he might have offended her.

All of a sudden, she turned away. She went back to mindlessly poking the coals with a stick. “Mike was infertile. We didn’t find out until we’d already been married for four years. I really wanted children. It took so long for me to get pregnant, I started to get worried. I made him go to the doctor. He didn’t want to. He kept saying there was nothing wrong with him. The very first visit, they found out he had a low sperm count. There was no chance we could get pregnant without intervention. I wanted to do IVF. I wanted to use a donor. I wanted to do anything. I would have spent our life savings to have children, but he always said no. He just stuck his big toe in the sand and kept saying no to everything. In the end, I had to make the decision to accept it. The only other option was to leave him and start over, and I didn’t want to do that.”

She fell silent. Jamie didn’t understand everything she’d said, but the emotion came through loud and clear. She wanted children. She ached for them, and her husband always said no. He probably knew all along how much he hurt her, and he didn’t care.

Grace’s head whipped around. “What about you? Why aren’t you married yet? Don’t tell me there are no nice Urlu girls who wouldn’t give their front teeth to get their hands on you.”

He couldn’t laugh. Any other time, he would have turned this into a crude joke, but not now, not when he sat alone with her in the dark. “There’s plenty o’ Urlu girls all o’er the place.”

“Let me guess,” she remarked. “You broke a few hearts when you left home. Did they stand around and cry when you flew away?”

“I didnae break any hearts,” he replied. “I ne’er led ’em tae believe I’d gi’e ’em the time o’ day. I ne’er wanted any Urlu girl—not like that, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted a woman like me brother’s wives,” he told her. “I didnae ken it when I was young. Once I started tae get tae ken ’em, though, then it was a different matter altaegether.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Carmen,” he replied. “It started wi’ her. Then it was Elle, and then ’Azel. Now it’s Sadie. I ha’e seen ’em one after the other. I ha’e seen me brothers fall fer ’em, and I ha’e seen each o’ ’em up close and personal in the heat o’ battle. I love ’em all and trust ’em wi’ me life—e’ery one o’ ’em. I envied me brothers their wives. I could only pray I’d meet someone like that one day, but I made up me mind I’d ne’er marry anyone else. Once ye ha’e seen it fer yerself, ye cinnae e’er go back tae anything else.”

She stared up at him. “I didn’t know you felt that way about my friends.”

“Ye hadnae seen ’em since they came ’ere,” he went on. “Ye hadnae seen how they changed—all o’ ’em. Ye’d no recognize ’em. When I think on what they used tae be, I dinnae recognize ’em meself. They’re each o’ ’em so different, and yet there’s summat that binds ’em all taegether. Ye’ll see ye ha’e the same thing in ye, and ye ha’e started tae change as weel. Ye’re turnin’ intae the same thing.”

She looked away. She stirred the fire and put a few more logs into it.

“I ha’e ne’er met another woman I wanted tae marry as much as ye,” he blurted out. “I ha’e ne’er met another woman I wanted tae marry at all. I ne’er let meself believe I could meet anyone I felt that way aboot—the way me brothers feel aboot their wives. Now ye’re ’ere, and ye’re married. Oh, I ken he’s dead and all, but ye’re still married tae him. Ye’ll no turn aside from all that tae take any notice o’ me.”

He got out of his seat and walked away into the dark. He couldn’t face the consequences of what he just said. He wished he could take the words back, but he couldn’t. He had to say it, and he did. He prepared himself a long time ago to walk away from her. He was as ready now as ever to accept the worst.

Once he turned his back to the fire, he saw the shack in the dancing flames. A bed stood against the far wall, just like every other cottage in the village. Now he recognized where he was. This was old Dick Ralston’s house. He died unmarried, with no children or family. No one moved into the house. It sat alone and unnoticed by everyone. It took an outsider like Grace to notice it and put it to use.

Jamie walked away from the fire. He stopped in the doorway. The stars spread out above his head. He heard men’s voices coming from the village. The McLeans were over there somewhere.

All at once, he couldn’t hold himself up a second longer. He crossed to the bed and lay down on it. He stretched out on his side. The pillow smelled fresh, even after all these years. Why?

He closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to sink beneath the waves into black sleep. He didn’t want to know this world anymore. His eyes snapped open when he heard Grace come toward him. She stood in front of his face and gazed down at him.

He craned back his head and fixed his tired eyes on her face. “Thank ye, lassie. Thank ye fer me life. That’s all I wanted tae say.”

He let his head fall. Now that he succumbed to gravity, he couldn’t lift himself off that bed to save his life. He let his eyes drift closed, but she still stood there staring at him. She stood there so long he opened his eyes again.

Silence enveloped her. She stood rooted to the spot, never moving. He looked up at her darkened face. All at once, she attacked him. She threw herself at him and kissed him in rabid hunger. She covered him with her body and pushed him over on his back.

He’d never wanted anything more than this, and now she was here. His fondest dreams came true when their lips met. He spread out flat and let her drape her luscious form over him. His body surrendered to her kisses.

He kissed her back as fast and as hard as he could, but he couldn’t keep up with her. She devoured him in ravenous bites. Her tongue whipped into his mouth and set his blood boiling. His hands came to rest on her hips. Her weight fell on top of him, and he closed her in his arms.

Once he got hold of her, things changed fast. He matched her hungry mouth. She tilted one way and then the other. Her hair tumbled around her face and brushed his eyelids. He scooped one hand up behind her neck. He seized a handful of her hair and crammed her mouth down on him.

He’d dreamed of this moment too many times to let it pass him by. He slid his other hand around her waist. She shuddered and convulsed when he touched her stomach. He crept higher to the stiff arch of her ribs. She sobbed into his mouth. She never quit kissing him. She undulated her body down his muscular frame. Her breath intoxicated him beyond belief.

Before he could move an inch, she sat up on his lap. She glided her hands down his shirt. Smoky desire smoldered in her eyes. It transformed her into something wild and unstoppable. He caught his breath at the sight. For the hundredth time, she changed into something he wouldn’t recognize if he’d seen it anywhere else.

The next thing he knew, she collapsed on top of him. She buried her face in his neck and mouthed down to his chest. Her hair spilled across his face and tickled his skin. He followed her movements with his hand on her neck. She flexed her hips against him in open desire.