Chapter 8

The smoke-laden air made it difficult to breathe.

But Alec blessed the cannon fire and the powder. It masked the stench of death.

The earth was so saturated with blood that his boots sank into the ground. But the Scots kept coming, even after they'd been fired on. The men in the front ranks fell and the others simply walked over them, their faces stoic, their earlier battle cries muted now in the face of their defeat. They fell, dying, and a moment later rose again.

Cumberland shouted over the melee, his face contorted by an unearthly grin. His white stallion pawed the air and the duke laughed. "Kill them all, Landers!" he shouted. "Let not one man leave this place alive."

He heard himself speak words of protest. Cumberland ignored him as he gave instructions for a poor hut to be fired.

"Dear merciful God," he whispered, and the sound of his prayer strangely slowed the carnage. Men, English and Scot alike, frowned at him, as if to challenge his charity.

"There is no God in this place, Landers," the Duke of Cumberland said, riding close to him. Suddenly the other man glanced up as a radiance spread over the battlefield.

"It's all right," the angel said, startling him. There had never been the presence of an angel in this place of hell. Iridescence surrounded her, blessedly obscuring the rest of the battlefield and banishing the sight of Cumberland.

Her warm and loving touch eased his mind. A gentle voice soothed him, promised him solace. He wanted to thank her for her kindness, for the compassion she so effortlessly granted him in banishing the sight of Culloden. But then, she was an angel and ordained to grant pity to sinners.

His mind focused on her, noting the solemn expression on her face. Did she represent all those prisoners who had been condemned, then? Was she the angel of righteousness, the one who spoke out for the Scots?

Her silence mocked him.

His fingers threaded through her hair. Each individual curl seemed to reach out and snare his hand. She was so warm, and he was so very cold. Even her scalp felt heated where his palms rested. He moved closer, feeling the angel stiffen as if she became marble in that moment.

Vignettes of memory marched through his mind, reminded him of those acts performed in the heat of battle when survival mattered more than kindness. A litany of transgressions he felt duty-bound to reveal to her. But she only placed her warm hand on his brow to silence him. The tips of her fingers were callused, as if she'd performed countless acts of charity in the past.

He wanted to seek forgiveness in the sanctity of her touch, be healed deep inside where grief, sharp enough to cut, lingered.

She bent forward, arching over him in protection. Did tutelary spirits speak in voices as soft as a breeze? This one did. A celestial trick, then, to assuage his fear at an angel's presence.

Alec wrapped his arms gently around her in case she took flight. She was possessed of womanly curves that fitted against his body perfectly. An angel crafted only for him, then. His personal guardian.

She pushed against him, a soft fluttering of wings. But her strength was no match for his. He bent and kissed her mouth, softly, so as not to frighten her. But her lips thinned as if she were enraged.

It was not wise, perhaps, to anger an angel.

His thumbs brushed beneath her chin, tilting her head so that he might deepen the kiss. Her mouth felt mortal, warm and full, a pillow for his lips. Did he transgress against heaven with such an act?

She murmured something and he deepened the kiss to silence her protest. In a moment she would disappear, leaving him only a memory of a dream so sweet that it had pulled him from carnage into carnality. He felt himself swell, desire overpowering the lingering aftertaste of his nightmare. His hand cupped her cheek, fingers splaying to hold her still. But lightly, so carefully that she could not claim to an ethereal tribunal that it had been coercion.

But the angel struggled, her wings slapping at him, her head tossing from side to side. He held her pinned beneath him, desperate to convince her to remain. He kissed her, deeply, completely, feeling as if she were a well and he a man dying of thirst. Again, and she began to quiet. Once more, and she lay quiescent beneath him, her lips slack beneath his.

"Is Moira MacRae's fate to be mine, then, Butcher?" she asked curtly.

Were angels granted the ability to wound with words? To speak in a bitter tone to audacious mortals? He kissed her once more, but she only lay rigidly beneath him.

"Hurry, then. Rape me and be done with it."

The angel's face began to change, the strange luminescence altering to become reddened lips, pink cheeks, and flashing eyes the color of a pale dawn sky.

A spirit garbed not in ethereal raiments, but those of a temporal world. She was not the living instrument of his forgiveness, but a woman enraged.

No angel, then, but Leitis.

He was atop her, his hands gripping her arms tightly over her head. He stared down into her face as sleep vanished in that instant. She turned her head on the pillow, the resignation in her eyes painful to see.

Pulling away from her, he stood, stumbling away from the bed. His words of contrition were halted by the fixed and immobile look on her face.

He was, suddenly, desperate to leave her. Donning his shirt and boots quickly, he left the room in silence.

It was a lonely night, one that was empty of nature's sounds. Not one bird called or squirrel chittered. Not one single forest creature squawked or screamed, remaining mute as if they knew his plans and the significance of his solitary journey.

Nodding absently to the sentry on duty, Alec began to cross the land bridge, following a worn path up to the north end of the glen. To the one place in all of Scotland that he dreaded visiting.

He climbed over several large boulders, up past the other cairn stones that marked the burial place of the MacRaes. A venerable pine, shadowed by night, stretched its branches against the sky and marked her resting place. She lay alone here in a place of honor, her eternal view the loch and Gilmuir below. The gentle winds carried the scent of summer to this place. And here the bitter cold of winter would linger.

The marker he'd made for her as a boy was still intact, surrounded by a larger stone that looked to have been placed there only to protect his childish efforts. He didn't need to read the words to remember them. He'd done the painstaking carving, locked in his chamber so that no one could see his tears.

It was the English who brought murder to Gilmuir.He knew Leitis's words were the truth. All these years he'd learned to hate, only to discover that his enemy was innocent. Where did he put that anger now? Where did that rage go?

What was happening to him?

He felt himself changing in a way he could feel but not articulate. Perhaps it was the various burdens he felt pressing down on his shoulders—the millstone of command, the secret of his heritage, and his acts in Inverness. Or it could be that this past year had sickened him to what he was and what his countrymen had done.

Here, in this lonely place, he prayed silently. Not to God, who had often heard his pleas in the midst of battle, but to his mother, the one person in the world who had seen only goodness in him and who had granted him love and enduring understanding.

If there was a sound in the night, it was only the soft wind soughing around the cairn stones. But in his mind his mother whispered to him.

Forgive, my darling son. Be forgiven.

For almost an hour Leitis sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the door, waiting for him to reappear.

He hadn't upended her skirts and entered her quickly as Marcus had, so intent on the deed that he had not noticed her pain. She had been prepared for the act to be even more unpleasant with the Butcher. Instead, he had looked shocked at his own actions.

It was not until she had pushed him away that she'd realized he had still been in the throes of a dream. His look of stunned horror upon awakening had been too real to be feigned.

She didn't want him to be bound by honor, gentle with her, or even repelled by his own frailty. It contradicted all she'd thought of him, made him someone she didn't understand. The degree of curiosity she felt about him was unwise. As foolish as the memory of his dream-induced kiss.

She stood, walked to the window. There was no moon to shine a light inside the window, nor fire to cast an orange glow. Only the candle burning silently on the table, its faint glow no match for the darkness that encapsulated Gilmuir.

She walked to the door and opened it slowly, half expecting to see Donald on guard. But there was no one there. An invitation, perhaps, to escape. But it was too dangerous to take the cliff path in the dark and she doubted if she could get past the sentry stationed at the land bridge.

Instead, she walked toward the priory. The large, open chamber lay in solemn silence. A strange feeling of loneliness crept over her, as if the whole world slept comforted and safe on this night, but for her.

She stepped into the middle of an arch, stretching out her arms as if to capture the warm night breeze from the loch. The moon was tucked behind a cloud and there was no light to differentiate the darkness of the water from the horizon. As a result, it appeared like an impenetrable black curtain stretching as far as the eye could see.

Even Gilmuir seemed nestled in shadow, a great black bulwark silhouetted against the night. Within its walls were voices and laughter, the footfalls of children, the grumbling from old men, the giggles of young girls. All the sounds layered from generation to generation.

This was how she would always think of the old castle, even if it crumbled to nothing but dust. Here, there was the history of Gilmuir and the memory of proud people not yet defeated.

"Forgive me," he said.

She whirled to see the Butcher approaching her, a dark shadow in a place filled with them. Cautiously, she backed up until she felt a brick pillar behind her.

"Forgive me," he said again, halting a few feet away. "My actions have no justification, so I cannot offer you excuses," he added stiffly. "All I can say is that such behavior will never happen again. I will sleep at Fort William in the future."

She said nothing in response, silenced by surprise.

Without another word, he turned and left her, leaving her to stare after him until he disappeared into the darkness.