The Highlander's Promise Page 13

  His laugh echoed up toward the tiny opening so far above the floor, and Finley started up, even as he called after her, “And you were so certain it was me trying to lure you to your death!”

  She smiled smugly to the wall before her face and kept climbing. “I like to do things myself, is all.”

  All jest was gone from her a moment later, though, as Finley concentrated on maintaining firm hold on the sandy rock. It seemed as though her bottom became heavier, the wall slanted outward and at a gradual cantilever the higher she went, and it caused her to curl into the cliff with fingertips and toes and even her pelvis. She couldn’t see the opening Lachlan had spoken of from her position pressed up against the cliff, but she didn’t dare lean away from the wall to look up properly. Beads of perspiration broke out along her upper lip and hairline, trickled in itchy rivulets down her back.

  She froze when she realized she’d have to eventually come back down, which would likely prove to be an even more treacherous journey.

  “Finley?”

  She forced herself to swallow, and her fingers and toes tightened even further, the little pieces of grit beneath her fingertips seeming to roll like marbles.

  “I’m not afraid,” she gritted through her teeth.

  “I know you’re not,” Lachlan called up quickly. “You’re only five handholds from the cache.” He paused. “Take a deep breath.”

  She did, but even her lungs quivered.

  “Step up with your left foot,” Lachlan directed. “There you are. Right hand now. Almost there.”

  “Almost there,” she repeated to herself in a whisper, and her movements became surer, a little smoother and faster.

  And then suddenly she saw the edge of what had appeared to be a jutting place in the rock, but was actually the lip to an opening in the wall, just to the right of the stone ladder. Three more hand holds and she would be high enough to crawl in; one more and she would be able to peer inside.

  Her fear vanished like the smoke in the storeroom below, and her quivering lips curved slightly. Kirsten Carson would never do something so daring.

  Finley pulled up another length and held her breath as her eyes came above the level of the rock edge, ready to behold any number of ancient and stolen goods. What she saw was a monster.

  Wild, yellow eyes protruded from a sunken and elongated skull; cracked, red lips stretched around a gaping mouth with a few yellow, broken teeth. He was squatting on his haunches facing the opening as if to pounce on her, his fists clenched.

  Finley flinched, slipped, and screamed as her hands slid away from the rock.

  Chapter 10

  Finley had just reached the opening to the cache when she gave a short, hoarse scream and her hands slipped from their holds.

  “Finley!” Lachlan shouted and braced himself. Even if it killed him, he would not let her body touch the stone floor.

  But before her skirts could billow, before her arms stretched out in flight, a thin appendage, like a tree branch, shot from the opening of the cache and seized Finley by some upper part of her and snatched her into the side of the cliff as quickly and efficiently as a spider drawing its prey into the cage of its body. The stone shaft was tomb silent for a heartbeat of time, and then a hellish yowling filled the channel, bouncing from the rock, swelling with echoes, raising the hair on Lachlan’s neck.

  He leaped onto the stone ladder three handholds up and ascended as if it was of no more effort than walking down a cobbled lane. He was level with the cache in a moment, and yet the screaming did not cease even for an instant. He didn’t know of a creature that could hold its breath for so long.

  At least if it was screaming, it wasn’t eating Finley.

  Lachlan threw himself onto the stone ledge, already shouting her name. “Finley! Finley! Fin—”

  He understood at once why the screaming had gone on and on—it wasn’t only the creature vocalizing fear and outrage, but Finley, too, was shouting, each one leaving it to the other to carry on while they drew renewed breath. Little wonder the result was so piercing and discordant; it sounded like two cats lashed together inside a kettle.

  “Stop! Stop!” Lachlan shouted, scrambling to his feet to step to the center of the small chamber between where Finley and the—man?—were crouched, each with their back to a wall of stone or piled goods, each staring across the stone floor as if looking upon a demon from the very depths of hell itself.

  “Stop!” Lachlan roared. His own chest still heaved within the uneasy silence buffeted by gasps and sniffles. He looked to Finley. “Are you hurt?”

  She wouldn’t take her eyes from the man, but she shook her head.

  Lachlan turned at last toward the person crouched to his right and had to steel himself against an exclamation of shock. It was a man, or perhaps at one time had been a man. Only a score of thin, greasy black strands crossed the top of his head, and his long, thin, knobby fingers, like fat buds on winter-emaciated twigs in spring curled up over his temples and the blackened ovals of his fingernails pressed into the skin at his crown.

  His eyes bulged like eggs in his face, his lips and cheeks billowing in and out like sails with the effort of his breaths. He was dressed in an ancient tunic, impossibly long and impossibly dirty, and for an instant Lachlan’s mind went to the image he held of his grandfather, Archibald Blair. The tunic sagged between the man’s knees to the floor between his raw skin boots, and his knees were like skulls themselves, disproportionately large in comparison with his skeletal legs, the creases and follicles stained by what was perhaps peat.

  “Finley, do you know this man?” Lachlan glanced at her only long enough to see her head shake slightly again. “All right, friend,” Lachlan said softly. “We’re nae going to harm you. I’m in your debt for saving—”he paused for half a heartbeat; my wife? my woman?—“my lass, here.”

  The man’s eyes watched Lachlan while he spoke, narrowing more and more until they were barely slits in his leathery face. Then they opened so wide, Lachlan wondered that they didn’t come free from his face altogether.

  “Tommy?” he whispered. “Tommy, ’s’it you?”

  Lachlan froze. The only Tommy he knew was—

  “Do you mean…Thomas Annesley?”

  The man dipped his head, like a seabird swallowing a fish. “Have I changed so much that you doona recognize me?” He edged up to a crouch on his feet and then hesitantly stood straighter, although he didn’t entirely rid himself of his stooped posture, and Lachlan didn’t know if the affectation was physical or mental.

  “You seem to barely have aged, Tommy,” the man whispered, sidling nearer, reaching up a hand hesitantly and then drawing it back. “I thought you…I thought…” He reached out again, and this time touched the very upper part of Lachlan’s temple; he only felt the brush of it on his hair. “I thought you was dead. But you doona bear even a scar. Where’ve ye been, Tommy?”

  “I’m not Tommy,” Lachlan said, and his voice sounded queer to his own ears. Did he look so much like the man who sired him? No one had ever mentioned such a thing to him. “My name is Lachlan Blair.”

  The man cried out and fell backward, as if he’d been shot, skittering away from Lachlan until he crashed into a wall of piled crates and stacks of unknown composition, causing some of them to topple and slide and tumble over the edge. Splintering and breaking sounds echoed up from below.

  “You’re a Blair?” the man said in a horrified whisper and glanced at the edge of the cache as if considering following the detritus over the side.

  “Finley?” Lachlan called out.

  “What do you expect me to do?” Finley edged into his line of vision, holding her slight, white hand out toward the man. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she encouraged. “He’ll nae harm you, even if he is a stinking Blair.” She glanced up at Lachlan, and then turned her full attention once more to the man clutching at t
he crates at his back, seemingly preparing to climb through the chamber’s stone ceiling at any moment.

  “I’m Finley. Carson. Me da’s Rory Carson, an elder in the town. Do you know him? Are you Carson?”

  The man didn’t reply, but at least he had ceased destroying the ancient stacks behind him.

  “Good,” Lachlan said. “Keep talking.”

  Finley inched closer. “Have you been staying here? In the cliff? It must be cold in the nights.”

  He shook his head hesitantly and then glanced toward the corner, where black remains were piled. “I’ve a fire. No one sees the smoke.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Finley said, and lowered herself to a cross-legged seat, pulling her skirts down over her knees. “What’s your name?”

  The man looked back at Lachlan, and the terror in his big eyes was very clear. “He’ll tell,” he rasped. “He’s a Blair and he’ll tell them. He’ll tell the chief I’ve been hiding all these years.”

  “He willna,” Finley rushed, leaning slightly to put herself into his range of vision and gain his attention once more. “He is a Blair, but he and I are married. He lives in Carson Town now.”

  The man glanced accusingly at Lachlan again. “He lives here.”

  “He sleeps here, aye,” Finley allowed. “But he willna tell anyone anything you doona wish him to.” She looked up at Lachlan again. “Will you, Lachlan?”

  “You’ve my word,” Lachlan said at once.

  The man looked between them anxiously, and it was clear he wasn’t yet convinced of his safety. And so Lachlan made a fast decision—the only thing he could think of that might possibly instill some trust in him from the man.

  “I couldn’t tell Archibald anything even if I wished to; he’s dead. And while I am called Lachlan Blair, Thomas Annesley was my father.”

  “The chief is dead?” The man stilled and brought both filthy, thin palms up to cover his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He rocked himself slightly and took a long, jagged inhalation through his nose. Then, in a blink, he had crawled across the floor of the stone chamber and wrapped his arms around Lachlan’s legs, sobbing, “Edna’s son, Edna’s son.”

  Lachlan looked down at Finley and tossed his head pointedly at the man who had attached himself to him. She threw out her hands in exasperation and then, with a roll of her eyes, turned on her hip, scooting closer to the man, and hesitantly lying her hand on the bony prominence of his shoulder.

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s going to be all right.” She patted him until he had quieted and turned his head against Lachlan’s knees to face her. “There you are. Hello. Can you tell us your name now?”

  He gave a noisy sniff and then swallowed before speaking in a hoarse voice. “Geordie,” the old man said. “I’m Geordie Blair.”

  * * * *

  Geordie sat in the brush of the wood, the skirt of his old tunic stretched across his knees and filled with the roasted nuts he’d brought with him into his hiding place. He’d stopped crying at last, he knew, because he could clearly see the nutmeats as the shells cracked open against the hilt, and then the broken tip of his knife, and also because his cheeks had the stretched-tight feeling left by a wash of salty tears now dried up.

  They’d taken so many of his friends. Would have taken Edna, too. Thanks be to God he still had her in the town, even if she was cross and shouting at everyone most of the time. She never shouted at Geordie. Edna was very sad now, just like him, and Geordie reckoned they both would be sad for a good long while.

  He bit down on the walnut flesh, soft and bitter and still slightly green-tasting, and chewed it to a pulp. He didn’t understand why his friends had wanted to go with the Englishman and be servants in his house, any matter. Northumberland—he didn’t even know where that was. It couldn’t be so nice as here, with the mountain and the loch and the wood and all their family. But Harrell had said there would be more food for them in Northumberland, and more food to go around in the town now, too. Lots more.

  Blairs is poor, Geordie-boy; you know that. Poor and starving.

  Acras.

  Geordie didn’t care; he would have shared his part with them all if they’d just stayed. He’d thought perhaps Tommy Annesley would have been his best friend of all, the way he’d listened to Geordie and not shushed him or called him “daft bugger” or “runt” or “fool.” Edna liked Tommy very much, too. But Tommy didn’t choose to leave, so it weren’t his fault, Geordie reckoned. Tommy was dead, his skull bashed in on the hillside by them mean, greedy Carsons.

  His chin flinched and his vision grew watery at the remembrance of it, and he would have descended into weeping again had it not been for the crashing sounds of someone approaching in the underbrush. Geordie turned his head and listened, and the sound grew louder and closer, the arrhythmic crunching hinting that there was more than one person sharing this corner of the wood with Geordie.

  “It must be tonight.” Harrell’s voice; Geordie recognized.

  “Good God, Harrell, they’re still buryin’ their dead.” That was Archibald. “Give the bastards at least the night.”

  “Sure, give them the courtesy they’ve nae shown us,” Harrell taunted, and his voice was rough, not the way he usually spoke to the chief. It made Geordie feel sick in his belly. “They torched the boats with our own aboard.”

  Geordie’s mouth fell open and his temples ached at trying to make sense of what Harrell was saying. Did he mean the Englishman’s boats? The boats his friends had gone on?

  “And you would have had Edna going with them!” Archibald accused.

  “Hargrave would have made it worth yer while—he said as much. Look here.”

  Geordie leaned down to peek through the brown and red dying leaves to see Harrell handing a sack to the chief.

  Archibald took it. “What’s this?”

  “Yer share. Payment for us finding Hargrave such fine servants.”

  Archibald was quiet for a long moment. “You…sold them, Harrell?”

  “They went willingly, did they nae?” Harrell argued. “They was lookin’ for a better life than what they’d had. They chose to leave, Archibald. They get what they deserve, if ye was to ask me.”

  Geordie didn’t see Archibald’s hand striking Harrell’s face, but he well recognized the sharp crack of skin on skin.

  “You’re a disgrace to this clan,” Archibald gasped.

  In a moment, Harrell had seized the chief by his tunic and jerked him up close to his face. “Am I, Archie? Am I?” He shook Archibald, but Geordie didn’t think of going to the chief’s rescue; he could call to mind too many times when Archibald himself had laid hands upon Geordie, usually as a result of things that were none of his own doing.

  “Seems to me it’s yer precious Edna that’s played ye false. I only tried to turn it to our advantage. For the clan.” He shook him again, then Harrell shoved the chief away so roughly that Archibald fell to the leaves on his arsey-parsey, as Edna always called it.

  “We have but one chance to take the upper hand with the Carsons,” Harrell continued, coming to stand over the half-reclined chief. “We gather the fine and ride in an hour, and we tell them we’re willing to make a treaty so that Vaughn Hargrave willna return. We take the river, the salmon. We take the wood. We take whatever else we want in the whole of that town, and then we tell them that if they take on cargo from another merchant ship in the bay, Hargrave will hear about it. It’s time the Blairs prospered, and I mean to see ye stand up to it, Archibald.”

  “They’ll never agree,” Archibald rasped.

  “Sure, they will,” Harrell said. “I might have been rough on ye tonight, Archie, but ye’ll soon see that I’ve done it for yer own good. For the good of us all. And when the treaty’s agreed to, and all’s quieted, ye’ll consider me for your Edna.”

  “I canna do that, Harrell. She knew Tommy. She told me they
—”

  Harrell leaned down and picked up the sack Archibald had dropped and tossed it to the man’s chest, where it landed with a tinkle.

  “I’ll nae be needing any dowry, then.”

  Geordie’s rage threatened to deafen him, his thoughts buzzing so loudly in his head. He shot to his feet, the nut shells falling to the ground, and he burst from the brush toward the two men.

  “Nay! Nay!” he shouted, swinging his arms in great circles, hoping he could get close enough for just one blow before Harrell stopped him with a fist. “You canna have Edna! You’ve done enough! Yer bad, Harrell! Yer bad!”

  He expected the clout to land at any moment, but Harrell only grabbed hold of his wrists, jerking him to a stop, and struggling to hold him at arm’s length while Archibald scrambled to his feet.

  “Now hold on there, Geordie-boy,” Harrell grunted while he struggled. “Hold on there. What are ye on about? Ye must have misheard.”

  “I didna mishear nothin’, Harrell Blair,” Geordie shouted. “You sold my friends to…you sold them for coin! That English coin! An’…an’…” He jerked himself free at last and stumbled back a pair of steps. “Now they’re dead! Dead o’ fire! Just like all them Carsons—dead o’ fire! Dead like my friend Tommy! And you got coin for them!”

  He turned his eyes to Archibald. “Say you willna let him have Edna, Chief. You canna. Nay. I’ll tell her.” He swung his glare back to Harrell. “I’ll tell Edna what you done, and then she’ll never want you. Never-never!”

  “Och, Geordie-boy, calm yourself,” Archibald said in a shaky voice, running his fingers back through his graying hair. “There’s naught to tell anyone. You didna hear right, is all.”

  “I did hear right,” he said, stumbling backward. “I’m not a fool and I did hear right!”

  Harrell and Archibald shared a glance, and Geordie knew all too well the meaning of it. He turned and ran, intending to gain the town and shout for Edna’s help, but the town was on the other side of Harrell Blair, and Geordie found himself running down, downhill through the wood, leaping over logs, sliding through the leaves, blocking Harrell’s shouts from his pounding ears.