Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Tell me all the Dowager Avrie said to you,” Finnan demanded tersely, “before she died.”

“I already have,” Jeannie replied with false calm. Finnan could hear so much in her voice now—all the emotions that filled her heart, varied as the colors of this glen he loved. He heard fear and longing and determination like iron.

She sat curled on the stones above his head, working furiously with his father’s dirk to loosen the mortar around the shackle that secured his left wrist to the floor. How much time did they have? Surely Deirdre would not leave them together long, unmolested. She and her husband would soon come. Sweat broke out all over his body at the very thought.

“Why did she tell this thing to you?”

Jeannie’s attack against the mortar never ceased: ding, ding, ding. Would they hear her beyond the scorched doorway?

“She wanted to destroy my hope they would trade her for you. She wished me to know she believed in her cause—that her son and grandsons claimed full right to this place. She seemed to think the blood gifted the claim.”

“So it does.” Finnan’s voice wavered in his own ears. Blood was blood, his own father had taught him that. And what value legitimacy? Could he say the heart had no right to choose? His lips twisted. Feuding was an old game in the highlands, but not usually among blood kin.

Softly, Jeannie went on, “She said your grandfather had promised Gregor a share, but when he died there was no bequest.”

So the vassals had remained vassals, and ire had soured the old woman’s heart. Finnan could understand that. “Stuart, Trent, and I are cousins,” he mused. “As are Stuart and Deirdre. Aye, well, cousins wed often enough in the highlands.” It explained why Gregor had thrown off the bonds of loyalty, so many centuries strong.

He found it difficult but not impossible to imagine the Dowager capable of the kind of passion he and Jeannie shared. Yet if he had learned anything these many days past, he had learned that love came as it would, and could not be gainsaid.

He looked at the woman huddled on the floor and felt his heart struggle within his breast. Whatever happened to them—however terrible—he knew at least the love would endure.

Upon the thought, he heard the sound he had been dreading all the while, that of approaching footsteps.

“Jeannie, Jeannie, they come.” He implored, “Kiss me one last time.”

She complied and bent to him, her lips warm and tender.

“And,” he pressed then, “promise to follow as I lead.”

“That, my love, I can pledge to do—always.”

****

Jeannie’s heart beat in sickening thuds as she heard her captors approach. How long had she and Finnan been here together? She could only guess, but the sun had moved over to the west, creating a pool of shadows on one side of the room. She secreted the dirk in her waistband at the small of her back and shoved the second weapon she had taken from the hidey hole—a longer, bone-handled knife—up her sleeve. Then she stumbled to her feet and backed away from Finnan.

She could barely look at him, for the wounds he bore. Wrists and ankles seeped blood where he had fought the shackles. The older wounds at his shoulder and down his arm had broken open, and many new cuts had been laid.

At the same time, she could not keep her gaze from him. For she knew each glance might be her last.

He loved her. Her laboring heart struggled and bounded in her breast. One miracle, at least, had occurred: the hatred he felt for her on Geordie’s behalf had transmuted into this unbreakable bond. Might they not expect yet another such miracle?

The scorched and flame-darkened door opened, and Jeannie prepared herself for what she expected to see: both Avrie brothers and a troop of their men, set on murder. But she saw only Deirdre Avrie with a knife in her hand.

Tall and straight as a spear, Deirdre moved into the room and closed the door behind her.

“Well, Brother? Have you decided how you will die?”

Finnan reared up and met his sister’s gaze. “Have you come to kill me by your own hand? Is your hatred so very bright?”

Deirdre had no chance to answer. The door opened again, and Stuart Avrie stepped in. He, too, came armed, still wearing his sword and, no doubt, with a dirk secreted somewhere about him. His face wore an expression of cautious consternation.

“Wife…” he began.

Deirdre shook her head as if she knew already what he meant to say.

“There has been pain enough,” he told her. “Let it be done.”

She answered, without ever taking her gaze from her brother, “Aye, so it will be, this day. But first he will suffer. I want him to choose. He must make an impossible choice, even as I did.”

Stuart Avrie drew a breath, and his gaze moved over her, considering. “We are so close to having all we ha’ ever wanted.”

She did turn her head then and look at him. “All you ha’ ever wanted,” she corrected. “Take the glen, Husband. I want only his heart.”

Abruptly she switched her gaze to Jeannie, who felt its touch like the bite of cold iron. “Only, I think it no longer lies within his body.”

The breath scraped in Finnan’s throat as he drew a ragged breath. “Let her go,” he said. “She has no part in this.”

“Oh, but I think she does.” Deirdre’s smile looked sharp as the blade in her hand. “Hard to believe my brother could care for anyone—actually experience love—and feel it true. But I suspect ’tis so. He will do anything to save her, Husband. He will seek to save her, as he never did me.”

Finnan did not attempt to argue it, merely stared at his sister in mute agony. His chest rose in another convulsive breath. “Only let her go, and I will do anything you ask, die any way you choose.”

“Och, you will do whatever I ask, Brother. Remember how it was when I entertained you with my blade all last night? How much better if I give her the same treatment? Cut her face, so ’tis not so pretty. Slice through that white flesh.”

“Deirdre,” Stuart said, an objection, and she rounded on him, displaying sudden fury.

“You shall not deny me this! Call your brother—the two of you will hold her down while I let her blood. See what he offers us then.”

“I offer it now!” Finnan bellowed. “You want my signature on some paper? Bring it. You want my heart bleeding on this floor, Deirdre? Take it. But first you will set her free.”

Jeannie’s emotions rose like a wild conflagration, like unstoppable flame, and she turned her gaze on the man who arched against the stones. All the strength and loyalty ever he had harbored, and for the sake of which he had fought, was now hers alone. He gifted it to her on the strength of his love, far more than she had ever hoped to gain. Ten years had he battled, so hard had he struggled. This glen meant all to him, yet he laid it—and his life—at her feet.

“Get your paper,” Deirdre told her husband. “Call your brother.”

“We will no’ need Trent to finish this.” Stuart drew a paper from inside his vest. Carefully, he circled Finnan as he might a maddened dog on a chain.

“Let her go first,” Finnan said again. He did not so much as glance at Jeannie, but nodded at the sheet in Stuart’s hand. “And you will need to unbind me if you want my hand on that.”

“You will give over all ownership of the glen?” Stuart pressed. “You surrender it to me and mine?”

“So long as you guarantee Mistress MacWherter’s safety.”

Stuart grunted and slanted a look at his wife. She said nothing, but avid light filled her eyes.

Jeannie had seen Finnan harbor that same light, and fear twisted her gut.

“No,” she said, only that, but it snared Deirdre’s attention. The woman clutched the knife—the same with which she had cut her brother?—and circled behind Jeannie.

“Go ahead, Husband, unfasten his right hand—bring the ink and let him sign. If he makes one wrong move, she will die.”

For answer, Stuart dug into the pouch at his belt and produced pen and ink. He fumbled with those and the sheet of paper, laid them all at Finnan’s shoulder. Then he caught up a key that hung on a chain round his neck—that to the shackles, as Jeannie saw.

Her poor, beleaguered heart rose. Dared she hope they might escape this with their lives? Once Avrie had his paper, surely there remained no reason to kill them. He would have full claim to the glen. Yet she could feel Deirdre close behind her, bristling with menace.

Stuart went down on one knee and used the key on the iron at Finnan’s right wrist. As soon as it came free, Finnan gave a mighty bellow—Jeannie’s name—and heaved his body upward.

All his remaining strength lay in the movement, and it tore the shackle on his other wrist—that on which Jeannie had worked so diligently—from the ancient mortar between the stones. As he rose he swung the chain, still attached to the shackle, in a wide arc that took Stuart Avrie in the side of his face. At the same moment, Jeannie leaped forward out of Deirdre’s reach.

“Finnan!” she cried, drew the long knife from her sleeve, and placed it in his waiting hand.

That left her unarmed save for the dirk at the small of her back. She spun to face Deirdre, already looming above her, knife at the ready, and a wild look in her eyes.

All her life Jeannie had lived a civilized existence. The most vicious aspects of Dumfries were its gossip and alehouses; her greatest fears had been want and uncertainty. Now she faced danger at its most primal in the form of Deirdre Avrie with a stained blade in her hand.

Would she rise or fall? Stand or flee? Jeannie spared a thought, if not a glance, for the man on the floor behind her who, from the sound of it, was engaged in a battle of his own. Then she looked deep inside herself. She drew the dirk from her back and leaped at Deirdre Avrie.