Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“ M ercy.” Rory hadn’t realized he’d repeated her name softly until both she and Cailean turned to stare at him. “What an odd thing to be called,” he added gruffly, shaking off the heat that had accumulated all over his face and chest.

“Cailean Macleod,” his brother said from the ground, wincing. “That’s Rabbie, over there, and this boar here is Rory.”

“It’s as civilized as a Boston parlor in here,” the younger Barnett sister—Amity—Rory reminded himself, said wryly. She handed a cup of steaming milk to Rabbie, who nodded his thanks. He took a timid sip, testing the temperature, before gulping the contents down. “Yet if I were in a Boston parlor, I’d be scandalized at how underdressed the gentlemen were, and would be forced to wed all three to save my virtue.” Rabbie choked on his milk.

Rory watched the little sister with interest. She was, perhaps, the most outrageously droll figure he’d ever met, and wrapped up in such a small, childish-looking frame. He’d thought at first that she was a child, but had soon realized that both sisters were older than he’d first thought. They were merely malnourished.

“You and your friends are lucky I found you, Mr. Macleod,” Miss Barnett said to Cailean as she worked. The hairs on the back of Rory’s neck prickled with annoyance.

“They’re my brothers,” Cailean corrected her, then groaned theatrically as she drew the needle through his skin again.

“Lucky?” Rory managed to scoff as he watched her exquisite work. “Ye very nearly killed him,” he said, pointing down at Cailean.

“Me?” she breathed, her color rising. “How have you reached that conclusion?” she asked icily, looking up at Rory as she tied off the stitch. Rory was momentarily distracted as she bent down to bite the thread with her teeth. Straight, white teeth. Her mouth so close to his brother’s face.

“The sight of ye caused him to fall, woman,” Rory growled, feeling heat flood his veins. Rory’s hands drew into fists, and he felt the first stabs of passion running along his back.

“He looked as if he’d fall any minute,” she snapped. “I gave you shelter, food. Aid,” she added, pointing down at the stitches in Cailean’s forehead.

“Whiskey,” Miss Amity added brightly. Cailean and Rabbie watched this volley silently, their eyes bouncing from Miss Barnett to Rory.

“I would debate whether or not that substance is whiskey,” Rory started to snarl.

“The fact is, you needed my help!”

“We’d have been fine without ye,” Rory yelled then, standing suddenly and acutely aware that the great bulkiness of his body took up nearly all the space in the barn.

“I don’t think you would have,” Miss Barnett yelled back, rising. She jutted out her chin to meet his stare. Rabbie and Cailean’s eyes widened. Though Rory had been whipped, beaten, bruised and brought to his knees many times since Culloden Field, his brothers knew he would never, ever get used to being challenged. The younger Barnett, for her part, stifled a giggle.

“Are ye saying I canna’ take care of my family?” he roared. He knew his eyes were glittering with fury and he felt every muscle in his body pulsating with a control he might lose at any moment.

“Look at them,” she yelled back, pointing at Rabbie and then Cailean, who flinched. “Do you think they look well-cared for?” She crossed her arms and gritted her teeth.

“Get out,” he shouted suddenly, and Miss Barnett stared at him, incredulous. Rory rolled his eyes and looked at Miss Barnett and Miss Amity. “Not you,” he said, exasperated. He turned and shouted at his brothers, “You!”

“No,” Miss Barnett shouted back, stepping lightly over Cailean’s body, letting her tattered green skirts drag over his limp form. She took a deep breath and strained her neck to look directly into Rory’s eyes with frosty blue intensity. She lowered her voice. “They need rest,” she said slowly and deliberately, each word hitting him like a stone. She narrowed her almond-shaped eyes into dangerous slits.

“We’ll no’ be taking anything else from ye,” he said just as quietly, but he meant to make it feel like a bellow.

“Rory, please,” Cailean murmured, fatigue dripping from the words. He tried to sit himself up. Both sparring partners turned to look down at Cailean. Rory recognized the look in his brother’s dark eyes, had seen it many times in the last few years. Defeat . “We canna’ keep going.” Rory looked over at Rabbie, who nodded his head once in reluctant agreement.

“Baobhan sith!” he cried finally at Miss Barnett. “The two of ye can stay here, then,” Rory growled after whipping his head and glaring accusingly at his brothers. “I’ll sleep under the trees,” he told Miss Barnett with quiet venom before stalking past Miss Amity and out into the twilight.

Inside the barn, the silence had become deafening.

“I’m sure I do not care to know what that meant,” Mercy finally said, still trembling slightly—from nerves or ire, she did not know. Perhaps both.

“Perhaps he was remarking on the weather,” Amity said dryly. “It was Gaelic, was it not?” she asked, turning to the brothers who were sheepishly silent. “Baobhan sith,” she repeated quietly, testing the words in her mouth.

Mercy unclenched her fists. This barbarian, Rory Macleod as he was called, was certainly worse than the rudest, most violent man in town, which she didn’t think possible. She’d seen the likes her father kept company with at the Halfway House and the gamblers at the inn in Frederick Town, but this brute took the prize.

“Baobhan sith,” Amity said again, rolling the vowels. The brothers looked flustered as she repeated the words.

Mercy had always had a temper, but few people could stoke it. This man was oil on her fire. She would have feigned an apology to the brothers for her outburst, but she was sure that Amity would explain it wasn’t very unlike her at all to react to hostility in kind. Bless and curse Amity, for always being outrageously honest.

Mercy sighed, regret seizing her. Though he was a brute, she could have acted more like a lady. She was always acutely aware of how uncivilized the townspeople assumed her to be, and here she was, carrying on exactly as they’d expect. Being kept out on the fringes of their society was no excuse for her to abandon all propriety. She was used to the recipients of her healing abilities being fearful, ungrateful, even distrustful, she thought angrily. So why did Rory Macleod vex her so?

“Baobhan sith!” Amity said with feeling this time, smiling at the way it felt on her tongue.

“Amity!” Mercy snapped, silencing her sister.

“Thank you, Miss Barnett,” Cailean said softly, perhaps in an attempt to intervene.

Mercy gave him a quick smile and took stock of the mess around her. There were two fugitives lying on the ground, one covered in blood, looking up at her with big, baleful brown eyes. The other averted his sharp, green-eyed stare, obviously distrustful. Her own skirts were stained red and brown, and she wondered whether they could be cleaned. She’d need to get the goats into the barn, past the giants, which would be no small task. She’d need to steal blankets from the cabin without being caught by her father. She needed to find the oldest Mr. Macleod, the third fugitive, and convince him to come back to the barn, for his own safety. The cold air in the mountains could be dangerous, but the wolves were more so.

“Right,” Mercy said, nodding. “Right,” she repeated. “I’ll go get you some blankets.” She kept nodding like a madwoman, but she was exhausted after a full day that ended with so much excitement, and there was still so, so much left to be done. After instructing her sister to tend to the chickens and feed Cameo, their old mare, she turned back to the Scots. “Do either of you have any ideas as to how to get your brute of a brother back into this barn?” she asked. Cailean and Rabbie exchanged glances, and Cailean snickered.

Rory heard his youngest brother’s sniggering as he leaned back against an ancient tree trunk. He was only a few strides into the woods, away from the clearing. He wanted to be close enough to watch over them, even as he made satisfying plans to throttle both when they were back to full health. He sighed then, the anger leaving him swiftly. What will we do now ? Rory let out a silent puff of air and let his head fall back against the rough bark of the oak with a thunk.

When they’d first arrived in the colonies, Rory had one all-consuming goal: to escape with his brothers from Lieutenant George Crawley in Belhaven. He involuntarily clenched his hands into fists when he remembered the sneer on Crawley’s face, back on the prison ship in England, when he’d told Rory they had been sentenced to transportation.

The brig on the HMS Furnace had been dank and cold. Most of the other men had huddled together for warmth, away from the walls, which seemed to suck all the heat from their bodies. Rory often worried about Rabbie, who could not abide small, dark places, or being too close to strangers. Some nights, Rory had to clench Rabbie’s hand to bring him back to himself. Other nights he stayed awake, just to make sure Rabbie didn’t hyperventilate himself into a stupor.

For months on the Furnace, the Macleod brothers had been given mere scraps to eat, and all Cailean could talk about was how they would never again get the chance to see their beloved island. They’d never gotten the chance to say goodbye to the dead, either. Though their parents had been dead for years, they had lost many cousins and uncles on Culloden Field. Rory, the only one of the three who’d fought in the battle, had watched many of their cousins take their last breaths.

Once he had returned to Rabbie and Cailean, both of whom had stayed on the island to protect the clan, there was a mad dash to hide the bonnie Prince Charlie, who had appeared suddenly on their shore. After Charles Stuart was moved covertly, the Macleod brothers and the rest of the clan had all been forced to watch as an enraged Laird Norman Macleod of the mainland, who’d prohibited any offshoot Macleod clans to fight for the Jacobite cause, burn the isle of Raasay to the ground.

The Macleods of Lewis set fire to every building, confiscated every boat. Took every head of cow and sheep. Raped and pillaged as they saw fit, then opened the doors and let the British soldiers do the same. Many men of Raasay were taken to the HMS Furnace, and their only relief was that Laird Malcolm Macleod of Raasay, cousin to Rory’s father, had survived the battle and was now in hiding, too.

After losing Bonnie Prince Charlie’s war, all the clans were required to give up their tartans, their language, their traditions. Many of the men imprisoned on the Furnace with them hadn’t fought at Culloden at all, like his brothers, but were sentenced for simply aiding those who did.

George Crawley, their warden, had himself fought for King George at Culloden, but was perhaps fighting for Laird Norman as well. Crawley’s mother was Flora Macleod, sister to the Laird of Lewis. Blood that far north runs thick, and what the Macleods of Raasay had done in defying Laird Norman had set it boiling.

To add insult to injury, Crawley had seen his father felled by one Macleod or another, Rory could never be sure which.

When Lieutenant Crawley had walked into the brig in the Furnace and told Rory that they’d soon be shipped to the colonies, it took everything in Rory, who’d hoped that one day he would see the burnt remnants of Raasay again, not to howl like a wounded dog.

“Good,” Rory had told Crawley, his teeth chattering. “I’ve always wanted to see the Americas,” he lied. “And I canna’ wait for us to be away from ye.”

“Oh no,” Crawley said, smiling. He crouched down and had let his sour breath caress Rory’s face. “You misunderstand. I have the pleasure of escorting you and several other traitors across the sea to Virginia Colony. I will watch on the dock as your brothers are purchased for sums as low as seven shillings, and then I shall purchase you. Have you ever been to an iron mine, Macleod?” Crawley asked, his silver eyes glittering. When Rory didn’t say anything, he continued.

“My uncle owns the famed Neabsco Foundry, off the banks of the Potomac River. It is grueling work, to be sure, and though many men’s lives are shortened by the labor, I am quite sure you will be able to serve your full fourteen years.” Rory understood his meaning at once—that death would be preferable to the iron mine’s conditions—but he was thinking only of the auctioning block, seeing his brothers purchased by different families, having to watch them walk in different directions, perhaps never to see each other again.

“We won’t be separated,” Rory growled.

“Oh,” Crawley said, nodding vigorously, “you will.”

Those were difficult months for the Macleods, but not remotely as harrowing as the voyage to the colonies, chained in the brig, would be.

It appeared that Mercy’s father had woken up long enough to drink himself back to sleep, as he was no longer in his chair but snoring face down in his bed in the second room. Making certain that he was unconscious with a sharp prod, she slipped back through his partially unhinged door, changed her skirts and bundled up the bloodied ones. She took the last bits of precious bread and three blankets on her way out and hid her soiled skirts under the outside steps beside her rudimentary root cellar. Coaxing the goats inside the barn, she apologized to the two Macleods as the animals passed them with alarmed bleats.

“Don’t worry, miss,” Cailean said weakly, taking a blanket and bread from her with a wink. “We don’t mind sharing the castle.”

Amity, who’d finished the rest of the chores, was back in the barn, pouring both men another cup of warm milk. Rabbie gave her a terse nod and accepted his blanket and loaf silently. Mercy bundled the last blanket against her chest and looked around, deducing quickly that the largest giant was still pouting outside.

“Do you think you’ll be able to persuade your oaf of a brother to join you in here tonight?” she asked the two others before blowing a loose lock of hair away from her face.

“Oh, no, Miss Barnett,” the youngest Mr. Macleod said, shaking his head with some pain before pouring a spot of whiskey into his steaming milk. “When Rory makes up his mind, he does not stray.” Mercy sighed, somehow knowing that would be the answer to her question. Her shoulders drooped, knowing it would be no easy feat, but she’d be damned if she was going to let someone, anyone, even this incorrigible brute, die on her watch.

“We’d like to thank ye,” Rabbie said quietly as he scratched his beard. Mercy was surprised to hear him speak.

“You’re quite welcome, Mr. Macleod.” Her eyebrows knitted together and she looked at him suspiciously. She had never been very good at reading people—men especially. While Amity danced through life and never met a foe, Mercy was untrusting and perhaps unfriendly by nature. In her experience, people were out to take advantage in one way or another, and only animals and plants and the seasons could be relied upon.

“Here.” The youngest Mr. Macleod lifted up a piece of bread with a bit of a smirk. “For Rory.” Mercy sighed and lifted the corner of her mouth before she took the bread.

“Please remember,” she said to her patient, “that the whiskey is only for pain. You’ve had enough to sleep soundly.” He winked at her again and took a long pull from the tin of milk and whiskey. She smiled tiredly and left the barn with Amity.

Mercy found her usual seat on an upturned log by the fire. Amity glanced at her briefly before heating more milk for herself. Though the heat of the flames made her cheeks burn, Mercy shivered when she tried to imagine what the Scots had endured, as she’d heard the shocking accounts.

Their one and only friend in the town had regaled them with stories fit to chill anyone to the bone. Rose Clintock, just a year older than Amity, had been a steadfast friend for years. She’d just recently welcomed a cousin into her fine house by the town’s medicinal springs. The cousin, Theodosia, had been ill in recent years, and was sent by her parents from Belhaven to the mountains in hopes that her health would improve. She was a lovely if not sickly girl, and like Rose much higher in station than the Barnetts, but had been affably neighborly the two times she’d met with them through Rose’s acquaintance.

Rose had confided in the Barnetts all about the Scottish prisoners in the shipyard that Theodosia’s father owned, and about the rebellion that had led them there. The Clintocks still had distant relatives in the lowlands of Scotland, but they were Protestants and loyal to the crown, and had therefore suffered no losses.

“It’s late,” Mercy said, just as Amity yawned.

“You don’t want any help with the other one?” Amity asked, pulling her lips into a half smile.

“I won’t need any help,” Mercy said, crossing her arms over the blanket and the bread.

“Not any help at all?” Amity asked innocently, producing another bottle of whiskey and a vial of powdered hemlock seeds.

“Amity!” Mercy whispered.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“I don’t want to kill him,” she hissed. When Amity shrugged, Mercy licked her lips. “Right, go get me the dried Jimsonweed. I don’t want to kill him, but I may want to immobilize him.” Amity rose with a grin and retrieved a different vial from the cabin.

Mercy held the vial up to the light and, confident it was the less deadly Jimsonweed, grabbed the blanket, bread, and whiskey. With a sigh, she went in search of the Scot with both the bribe and the poison.

Moonlight streamed through the branches above and illuminated the clearing in dappled patches of silver and white. When the wind picked up suddenly, Mercy pulled her tattered shawl tighter around her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes and searched the dark woods until she caught sight of the shadow of a man lounging on the ground in the distance. She sighed and headed out towards the stubborn Scot lying under the trees.

“You’re going to freeze to death,” Mercy said plainly. She bit her lip, wanting to be the kind of woman who could leave this awful man to his own devices, but she wasn’t. Though she had never understood her fellow man, she’d always had an urgent compulsion to care for him. Granny had beat that into her years ago.

You have the gift, Mercy girl , Granny used to say, and if you don’t use that gift to save a man’s eye, or limb, or life, then you are guilty. You are guilty of the loss of that man’s eye, or limb, or life.

But Gran, a young Mercy would reply, her voice shaking, they say the gift is a sin. It was true. Though men and women came from all over to receive healing ointments and incantations from the Barnett women, they’d leave in a hurry, crossing themselves, asking God’s forgiveness for having dealt with the devil.

At that, Gran would have usually given her a great smack across the face and sent her away.

Mercy’s mouth twisted at the memory of her grandmother.

“Truly,” she said begrudgingly to the giant brute lying below her. “You could freeze.”

Rory’s eyes were closed, and his mind was swimming with hunger and fatigue, but his mouth broke into a self-satisfied grin when he heard her voice. Somehow, he knew she would come looking for him. He wasn’t entirely sure that’s why he hadn’t stayed out there in the first place.

“Nae,” he said, his arms closed tightly around his chest and his legs crossed together for warmth.

“Aye,” she returned, mocking him. At this, he opened his eyes, pushed up onto his elbows, and fought a smile. This woman had a fire in her, to be sure. And damn it all if he didn’t love stoking a fire.

“Take the blanket,” she said stiffly. Rory was about to provoke her further into madness when he caught sight of her face, crumpled with what seemed to be a bone-weary tiredness. His smile fell away quickly.

“I’ll take it if ye sit,” he returned. When she finally plopped down unceremoniously, Rory realized he had been holding his breath.

“Truly, Mr. Macleod, you should sleep in the barn with your brothers,” she said as she got comfortable. He could see that he’d been right—she’d needed to get off her feet.

“D’ye know how cold it gets in the Isles, lass?” he asked her as she spread her skirts out next to him.

“I can’t say that I do,” she replied, handing him a bottle of whiskey, a piece of hard bread, and the rough blanket.

“Colder than a witch’s soul, aye,” he said, sitting up to accept them. He shoved the bread into his mouth and placed the bottle on the ground before fanning the blanket out in the air and wrapping it around her shoulders instead of his. He tried and failed to keep eye contact with those eyes of hers, so pale in the moonlight. Her dark hair, still tied back with that ridiculously old ribbon, had fallen over one of her shoulders, and as he secured the blanket around her neck his fingers brushed against warm skin.

Pulling back quickly, Rory grasped the bottle and drank deeply from it, the liquid burning his throat with sadistic perfection. It wasn’t Highland whiskey, but it would do for tonight.

“My grandmother was considered a witch,” Miss Barnett said, gazing off into the darkness. She took the bottle from him when it fell from his lips and put it to her own. Rory stared at her with a wet, open mouth, wondering at her odd way of speaking so plainly. Indelicately. She wasn’t trying to impress him, and in that way she was very unlike most women her age that he’d been acquainted with. “A witch,” Miss Barnett repeated before he could ask further. “She was an herbal healer, a midwife. She saved many, many people’s lives, but we’ve been stuck up here for years because they fear us.”

“Who fears ye, lass?” he asked her softly. She smirked and handed him back the bottle, which he drank from hungrily, wondering if what he was tasting on the glass was what remained of her lips.

“We don’t have many friends in town,” she said, by way of explanation. “It doesn’t help that we have a drunk for a father.”

“And for a mother?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“A grave,” she said, and he looked down quickly. He’d have apologized right then and there, if he knew how to apologize. He’d probably never told anyone he was sorry in all his life.

She brushed a few wayward strands of hair back behind her ear and looked over her shoulder at the barn. Her cheeks were high, royal looking, but her skin was too sun-darkened for regality. Her nose, centered in the middle of her face, twitched.

“I’m telling you because I need you to know,” she said quietly. “My sister and I, we’re alone up here. I’m not afraid,” she said, meeting his eyes, “but you need to know that we’re alone up here.”

Her honesty had Rory suddenly fighting the urge to reach out and touch her cheek. It was rare, this type of candor in a lady. Especially one so impoverished. He gripped the bottle of whiskey with white knuckles, tightly grasping at the glass in order to trap his wayward hands. He wasn’t quite sure he had full control over his own body at that moment. Maybe he was starting to go mad.

“Why do ye need me to know this, lass” he finally managed to ask. He knew why, but he was certain she would answer him truthfully, and he wanted to hear that sincerity again.

“Because I must know that you three won’t cause us any trouble.” There it is. “My father can’t know about you, or he’ll let the whole town know that you’re here when he’s deep in the cups.”

“Where’s the town?” Rory asked, suddenly thinking only of logistics.

“In the valley, at the bottom of Black Knob,” she said. “Perhaps an hour’s walk.” That sounded close enough for him to worry.

“Is it a large town?”

“Not really,” Miss Barnett said, shaking her head. “It’s growing larger, though. It used to be merely a stopping place for people to visit the medicinal springs. Now, gentlemen from the coast are building fine homes here.” She looked at him and seemed to understand his worry. “The nearest large town off The Great Wagon Road is Frederick Town, at least a day’s ride from here.” Rory threaded his fingers through his hair in relief.

He could tell that Miss Barnett was counting on the fact that he would respect her vulnerability. Hell, she’d just told him that anyone who could help them was far, and that perhaps the townspeople would be unwilling to help them at all. And so he nodded, rested back down on his elbows, and became quiet, as if to show her that he meant her no harm.

“Your brothers seem to be kind men,” she said as she leaned back comfortably against the tree. Rory stiffened, remembering the way she’d cooed over Cailean, enjoyed his magnetic charm. Rory knew full well that few women were able to resist his younger brother’s allure. Or maybe she was thinking fondly of Rabbie, in all his strong silence. Rabbie had captured the attentions of many women back home, but to Rory’s knowledge, never allowed himself to get close enough to return them.

“Nae, woman,” he growled finally. “They are no’.”

“They are not kind?” she asked, sounding both surprised and suspicious. When he took too long, searching for an answer, she said, “I was trying to pay you a compliment.”

“Well don’t,” he snapped back.

“Fine,” she yelled, getting up abruptly and stomping away before pausing, turning and walking back to him. “Here you are,” she spat, pulling the blanket from her shoulders and throwing it at him, careful to keep her shawl in her grasp. He grabbed the blanket before it hit his face. “I don’t want to have to drag a frozen corpse from my property tomorrow.” She scowled and stalked away from him.

The woman was nearly as easily heated as he was, which normally wouldn’t set his cock twitching. If a lass back home had squawked and carried on like her, he’d have written her off as a shrew. He started to wonder if it was his head, and not Cailean’s, that had been injured, because though Mercy Barnett was unlikeable and, besides those remarkable eyes and that throaty voice, had little to recommend her, Rory was fascinated. Almost enchanted.

Balling up the blanket and resting his head upon it as a pillow, he looked up through the swaying tree branches at the tapestry of stars. Though he was as far from home as he’d ever been, he took comfort in some familiar constellations—ones he’d fall asleep to on the roof at Clachan House.

Rory was his father’s first son, but he was his parents’ fifth child. Connor Macleod, cousin to Laird Macleod, was an indispensable member of the clan, and had demanded only one thing from his wife: that she bear him a son. Not to fawn over, but to continue his legacy. Connor had constructed Clachan House’s water wheel, the mill that processed the majority of the clan’s grain, and he needed a male heir to take it over. Though Connor was a smart man, he was often a cruel one. He had never been kind to his daughters, but with Rory he was often ruthless. Otherwise, Rory had been paid little attention, what with his mother managing so many girls; sisters who despised him because they knew their father had only ever wanted a boy.

After Rory’s mother died in childbirth with Cailean and his father withdrew completely into the numbing effects of work and drink, Rory found his only solace was in climbing out onto the roof of Laird Malcolm Macleod’s stables and staring at the stars, sometimes with Rabbie, who hated to sleep inside a bedchamber.

For the first time in more than a year, Rory was alone again with his stars, under the trees on a faraway mountain. He would have shed a tear, if he was able, but by all accounts at Clachan, Rory had never cried in his life, not even when he was a squealing bairn. Instead, he closed his eyes, wanting to put Miss Barnett’s face from his mind.

Unfortunately, he dreamed of her that night.