Chapter 12

Guaril had led the group into Scotland as far as he was able; frae there Rob’s housecarls had been warned to take over, leading them in the direction of Stirling and the bridge that would mean they didnae have to cross by the Queen’s Ferry into Fife. Once past Stirling they would be safely away towards Perth where nae Norman would dare to follow. All Scots had heard the tale of Malcolm Canmore and his army reaching Abernethy in 1073 with the Normans on his heels and of the treaty he had been forced to sign in obeisance to King William. None of them had expected it to last.

Taking care of the bairns slowed Rob’s party down, and it was early morning by the time he, Nhaimeth, Rowena and Becky caught up with the others close to Kinross. The sun was rising behind Benarty, limning the mountain in the pale gold light of autumn. At least that’s how its reflection appeared to Rob as they reached the shores of Loch Leven and came to a halt behind the wagons.

With both bairns bawling at the top of their lungs, nae one could charge them with trying to creep up in secret and, truth be told, Rob couldn’t find it in his heart to blame them. What the lads needed was a wee bit of comforting frae their mother instead of being bumped all over the countryside on the back of a horse.

“At last,” Guaril greeted them and, reaching out, gripped the bridle, holding Gun-eagal steady, “I was beginning to worry that ye had been caught,” he looked behind Rob and finished, “and my Rowena along with ye.”

“Hah, is that so? Tell me, when did ye last ride across country with a wee bit of a lad strapped to yer chest? Believe me, it’s nae easy matter. Making a race out of it was never in the plan.” Rob sighed and stretched his arms and back after Guaril released him and Ralf frae their bindings, taking the unhappy Ralf into his arms. “That said, he’ll be better when he’s seen his mother,” he assured Guaril as he dismounted, catching a look of surprise on Becky’s face as a laughing gypsy woman reached up to take Harry into her arms. Her expression was soon forgotten as the impatience that had tagged his journey surfaced. “Where is Melinda?’

“Still in the wagon.” Guaril’s eyes rolled as he jiggled the bairn up and down in his arms trying to soothe him. “The Lady grew quiet so we thought mayhap it was best to wait until ye were here with us, so she wouldn’t feel threatened.”

“God’s teeth, she’ll be out of her mind with worry. Show me to her, at once.” Not quite so certain that Melinda wouldn’t feel threatened, he took Ralf frae Guaril’s hands and immediately placed him in Becky’s arms. For some reason, he wanted to hold his breath as the gypsy pushed back the loose flap of painted leather covering they had stretched over the wagon. Melinda lay amongst a conglomeration of rugs and rolled up canvases from the tents that most of the gypsies slept in. Rob’s conscience smote him when he realised Melinda was still rolled up in his plaid.

Guaril’s excuse that he didnae want her to feel threatened fell flat when Rob saw how uncomfortable she looked. He imagined feeling threatened as a reaction would be considered mild. Aye, she was going to be livid, and he couldn’t blame her, travelling all that distance for so many hours without a skerrick of relief in sight.

He leapt over the back of the wagon and knelt beside her, carefully levering her body into a sitting position within his arms as, gently, he loosened the plaid and revealed the confusion on her face. Pushing Melinda’s hair back frae her rapidly blinking eyelids, he said, “It’s all right, lass, yer safe. I have ye now.”

“Rob?” her eyes widened, pale green in the early morning light that was seeping through the opening in the flap. Outside, Becky waited with Ralf, and he wondered which of them was most surprised when Melinda’s eyes narrowed. Her bonnie lips twisted and when at last she managed to speak, her words fell frae her lips in shreds as she clenched her teeth. “How dare ye!”

Rob didnae respond in kind, but though he wanted to soothe, his reaction was pure male. “Dare what, dare rescue ye? Dare bring ye home with me where ye belong?”

“Home? The clan McArthur’s home? Ye mean I’m in Scotland?”

“Ye were aware I was Scottish when ye fell in love with me, when ye made me yer promise, and since I’m a Scot, then so are my sons.” She seemed to brighten up at mention of the lads.

“Harry. Harry’s here? Where is he? I should feed him. Get me out of this thing.”

“It’s a plaid yer wearing,” he informed her as he unwound the fine worsted woven by auld Mhairi, who’d been his father’s nurse.

Her nose thinned as she dragged in a short sharp breath. ‘Wrapped up in is hardly the same as wearing in any language, Scots or French,” she snapped as if distancing herself even farther than the borders. After handing out that piece of information, she pushed the plaid down till it sat around her waist.

As soon as her hands were completely free, they went to her breasts. Rob heard her draw in a painful breath. “Harry’s not too far away, but Ralf’s right outside. I’ll pass him into the wagon and ye can feed him.”

As he turned away to make good on his words, she almost screamed at him, “No! Becky always feeds Ralf and I feed only Harry.”

Rob landed on his feet outside the wagon, turned and cocked an eyebrow at her. Surely she was jesting. “What difference does it make, they’re both yer sons.”

A glance at her expression soon made clear his mistake. She was furious. “Bastard, I hate you!” she cursed him. “BASTARD!”

She couldn’t have said aught more likely to hurt him, yet he pushed aside the pain that twisted like a knife in his gut. “Aye, yer right, I’ve been one frae the day I was born, but I told ye that and ye still crawled into my bed and rubbed yer body against mine. Ye wanted me then, Melinda, and now ye have me. Better make the best of it, for I tell ye true, naught ye can say or do will let my sons bear the La Mont name. Make up yer mind to it, lass, we’ll be wed as soon as we reach Cragenlaw.”

He placed his big hands on either side of Ralf’s wee body. His son kicked his wee legs and looked at Rob, eyes and mouth wide. Fighting the urge to pull the lad back against his heart, the place he had held him on the way frae Wolfsdale, Rob lifted Ralf over the back of the wagon and held him out until Melinda had nae choice but to take the bairn or let him fall. “This is yer son. He is hungry, and ye can mend that by feeding him.” Ralf didnae seem over-pleased about the awkward way his mother was holding him and began to whinge.

As his father, Rob couldn’t help but let his disgust at her show, “Try not to let yer temper sour yer milk,” he told her, walking away quickly before he snatched his unhappy son back into his arms. There was nae doubt in his mind that there was a story behind their obvious dislike of one another. Ralf was hardly more than a year auld but he wasnae stupid. Why, when he was hungry, would he reject his mother?

Harry on the other hand didnae appear to give a damn one way or the other. He laughed up at Becky as she put him to the breast and latched on to her nipple. Rob found it hard not to turn around and check how Ralf was faring, and it hurt him that this method of punishing Melinda meant punishing Ralf. It was a quandary, but the solving of it couldn’t be done by Rob giving in to her.

Rob always kept his promises. He loved Melinda and he loved his sons, which meant he had to stay strong. One day in the future he would be Chieftain of the clan McArthur—the distant future he hoped—and he would be hard pressed to stick to the road he had chosen, but a Chieftain had to think of what was best for the whole clan, not himself alone or just a wee portion of the whole the way Melinda’s father did.

He was Rob McArthur, a Chieftain in the making, and he dare not forget that.

Every bone, nerve and sinew in Melinda’s body shook as she pressed Ralf close without looking at him, both of them sobbing. Through her tears, the top of Ralf’s dark hair didn’t appear so different frae Harry’s. No, this need to reject her younger son wasn’t visual; it came frae the senses, as if she would recognise Harry in the darkest room, and of being aware she would never feel compelled to hold Harry at arm’s length as she did with Ralf. Rob probably thought her immature, childish, yet try as she might. she couldn’t put aside the memories of pain, of blood and of thinking she was about to die.

Holding Ralf close hurt, the way she knew the futility of letting Rob close again would. And this, a man who said he would wed her whether she would willingly or not.

Not, if she had her way.

She had told Rob she hated him, and she did. She had lived with the emotion since a few moments after Ralf began his struggle to arrive into the world. No matter how much she attempted to distance herself from the memory of the struggles of Ralf and the midwife taking place betwixt her thighs, the pain in her heart kept dragging her back.

She had just begun to look on both twins when they played together, but Rob’s abduction of them all without a by yer leave had set back her attempt, if not to love Ralf, at least to tolerate the lad her father had so named.

Finally the soreness in her breasts forced her to give in and bare her breast, forced her to glance down and see her younger son’s wide-eyed expression of surprise. For a long moment she thought he might reject what was offered, then the look he gave her changed and he latched onto her nipple.

The deep pull of Ralf’s lips didn’t hurt as much as she had imagined; no, the pain she felt was in her mind and in her heart. In a moment of clarity she wondered if the pain she felt was self-inflicted. The thought made her tremble. She had always believed herself above such things as cruelty, like the withdrawal of her affections from the bairn she had loved while he resided in her womb. Two bairns squashed together inside her narrow frame. The midwife had said it explained the almost scar-like mark on one of Ralf’s calves. She had hardly thought about the mark from that day to this, though she had watched Becky massage lanolin made from sheep’s wool into the mark. And wasn’t there enough? Hundreds of the woolly beasts grazed her father’s hills.

Not that the oil had done any good. She had listened silently to Becky complain over it, yet feeling in her heart the mark was well deserved. Ralf would have a lifelong reminder of what he had put his mother through. If she pulled back the woollen wrap they had bundled the lad up in to look at his legs, the mark would be easily visible, but she didn’t. She wasn’t that interested.

Instead she let her mind wander, trying to recall what Rob had told her of Cragenlaw. He loved the place and had described the castle in great detail, including the fierce drop from the top of the cliff to the sea. If it wasn’t for Harry, jumping from the edge might have sounded like a grand notion. Yet she knew she couldn’t kill herself, for Harry, her love, her joy from the moment she looked into her eyes was her father’s heir. One day he would be Baron Wolfsdale, a much better proposition that a cauld draughty and no doubt crumbling castle in the Highlands filled with all sorts of weird, vicious men. Her father had told her about the Highlanders after fighting them in battle. Rob might be every bit as crazy as those other Scots, the ones that filled the air with wild cries—Highlanders, shields overlapping, linked as in a chain of bearded rabble-rousers.

Then she had met Rob, a young Highlander who looked more like a white knight than an axe-wielding giant. Rob, handsome with a hard but clean-shaven jawline, had captured her heart the moment she saw him. Na?ve, that’s what she had been.

Indeed, it had taken her months to come to that conclusion. Months of slow, grinding disappointment and disillusion, certain he would come for her—then he didn’t.

Now it was too late. Her heart had closed against him; she could never love him again.

The water Nhaimeth look down on below the grassy bank might be fresh instead of salt, a loch in place of the sea, but the fragrance filling his nose still reminded him of home—of Cragenlaw. Heather grew on the mountainside, withered now, but the breeze carried the scent of dried petals and pollen on it and brought the fragrance down to the water’s edge. He stood quietly, breathing the smell in, barely thinking at all, when Rowena appeared at his elbow and broke into his contemplation, for that was what it had been—a moment when he realised didn’t want to leave Scotland again. “I’ve brought ye something to eat,” she said. “Rabbit, a nice change frae the porridge we had on the way.”

It felt strange meeting somebody, a lassie he could look in the eye and for some reason he had been at a loss for words—inhibited. Her clothing made her stand out, bright-coloured dyes were uncommon in a country where most women made their own dyes frae local plants such as moss and bracken. She held out a napkin with two pieces of rabbit in it—legs. He supposed she was what young Lhilidh would have called exotic—a word she’d fixed on frae her experience of seeing the Moor garbed out like a king when he came to Dun Bhuird all yon years ago. Lhilidh herself had been gone almost seven years, and it still hurt to remember how she had died.

Hungry, Nhaimeth lifted a piece of rabbit and, sighing, took a big bite, slightly surprised by Rowena’s generosity for she had hardly spoken to him, except to pass on a message, since he rode into the gypsy camp with Rob. He rolled his eyes in enjoyment, and nodded his thanks until he swallowed. “A right treat. I thank ye.”

Rowena took the second leg and nibbled daintily, but then she was a lassie, and he had his stripped to the bone afore she said, “Guaril caught two or three coney before we arrived, but I think Rob is determined to be away without delay.”

Nhaimeth chuckled, “He’ll be wanting to show off, and who could blame him with two braw lads to present to his father? The clan will have a grand celebration that’s for sure.”

“Do ye envy him?” Her question startled him and, aye, mayhap because it seemed a mite personal an inquiry frae a someone he hardly knew.

“Envy,” He raised an eyebrow, it wasnae an emotion he had ever thought applied betwixt him and Rob. “Nae, I’m happy for him. He’s one of my best friends— the best—with Jamie Ruthven coming a close second. We all met when Rob first came to Cragenlaw. He was eleven back then, a lad, and now he’s a man.”

She sniffed. “Is that what ye think it takes to make a man, putting a bairn inside a lass?”

He looked at her, disappointed that she couldn’t look at Rob and see what he did. “I’ll let ye off with the insult since ye have hardly had time to get to ken the lad.” He threw the bone into the water and prepared to walk away, unwilling to let his temper show after the help she had given them earlier, yet he couldn’t resist a last retort. “I’ve stood by his side in battle. Sounds funny, dinnae ye think, me a warrior in a battle? I never had a moment’s fear, for I trusted Rob to be there if I needed him. He’s more than just a man, as ye will soon find out. He’s a Chieftain in the making.”