Chapter 10 #3
Rose looked around but saw no sign of Ruark.
She drew back the iron lever on the gate, wincing slightly as it screeched on rusty hinges.
She entered the yard and walked among the stones to where the horse tore chunks of grass from the wet ground, chewing thoughtfully as he eyed her approach.
No one was near to prevent her from taking the horse and riding away. But something stopped her.
All her life, she had felt trapped by other people’s decisions about her future, leading her about like a horse wearing a halter, telling her what she could do or not do, who she could be or not be.
She found that even drenched as she was and with mud caking the hems of her skirts, she had never felt more in control of her own fate.
Even if the illusion of choice falsely empowered her, ’twas her choice to not take Loki and run.
Behind her, the door to the chapel stood slightly ajar, and she found herself stepping inside.
The interior smelled old and musty like mildew, beeswax, and a hint of incense that had been burned into the stone walls over the decades.
A beautiful mural of angels colored the domed ceiling high above her head.
She thought a candle burned in the loft.
She turned up the stone staircase to her right.
This was a crypt. The wall bore the names and ages of the various Roxburghe earls along with their wives, sons, and daughters for the last two centuries.
A small, narrow room opened at the top of the staircase. A candle burned in a ceramic holder.
Someone had set it on a narrow table in front of an engraved stone built as part of the wall. Rose bent and read:
RUARK JAMES LINDSAY KERR
BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND TO JANELLE HIS ENGLISH brIDE
1650–1685
CHANCE NOT. WIN NOT.
A profane statement about one’s destiny.
“He was my great-grandfather.” Ruark’s voice came from behind her and she spun around alarmed. He stood on the stairs. “I surprised you,” he said. “I apologize. You were absorbed.”
She had not seen him when she entered, but it looked as if he had been up here awaiting her.
She gestured to the angels floating against the ceiling. “This area looks newer than the rest of the chapel.”
“The loft was added during my great-grandfather’s tenure as earl, after a candle caught fire and burned the timbers in the old chapel roof.
So he has been granted his place of prominence .
. . despite the fact that he was presumed to be a traitor and distrusted by many on both sides of the border.
He was a privateer in the service of King Charles the Second. ”
“Perhaps he was also a smuggler and pirate. I cannot imagine any relative of yours selling out so completely, no matter appearances.”
Ruark climbed the stairs, stopping just before he reached the landing where she stood. He’d tied his hair at his nape with a leather thong. Soft leather riding boots hugged his calves.
His cloak and hair were damp as if he had not been long out of the rain. She could smell the clean scent of soap on him. He walked to where she stood and peered out the window as if to make sure Loki remained tied.
“I considered it,” she said. “Escaping.”
“I know.” Leaning a shoulder against the cold stone wall, he folded his arms. “I was beginning to think you had got lost.”
“You knew I would be coming here.”
“I saw where you went into the woods and knew where you would be exiting. There is only one path.”
“You left Loki unguarded?” she accused him. “I could have stolen him!”
“And yet . . . you did not.”
She felt trapped by the fact that he had not so much left Loki in the open, but that he would have let her take him.
“I have been watching you, wonderin’ how I should approach you,” he said. “I know that learning about your father came as a shock—”
“Why would you care?”
He smiled briefly. “I could not rightly say,” he admitted, scratching his head and eyeing her with bemusement.
“You do not much like me—that is true, I think, and deservedly so. You have only tried to cut my throat and bash my brains with a rock. Maybe I do not like having the advantage between us, love.” He paused, then said softly, “Maybe I have been where you are. Trapped.”
Folding her arms, she dropped her gaze to her feet and swallowed past the constriction on her throat.
The smell of burning candle wax made her nose itch.
After a moment, she sat on the wooden bench in the alcove next to the narrow stairway.
As if she’d invited him, he settled his large body next to her making her scoot a bit to accommodate him.
She could not help staring, for his warmth burned through her damp clothing.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and they remained thus in companionable silence.
She could feel his eyes on her profile. His leg remained in her field of vision and she glanced at the stone engraved with his great-grandfather’s name.
“He isn’t buried here,” she said.
“He perished at sea a year after Janelle died giving him a son.”
“I . . . am sorry,” she said, compelled to say something.
“Aye, but ’tis a fact of life. Loved ones die. Ships vanish.”
Most ships that vanished remained so forever. No one ever knew the fate of the crew or passengers. Like her mother. Ruark could have so easily met such a fate. “You are his namesake. How is it you managed to follow in his footsteps?”
He didn’t answer immediately and she sensed some kind of struggle within him.
“My father made the decision for me,” he said watching the candle sputter.
“He and I did not have the best relationship. More often than not when it came to settling our differences, he won. One day after a particularly . . . violent disagreement, he shipped me off.”
“McBain told me . . .”
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “The reason no longer matters.”
The tenor of those words told her that at one time nothing else had mattered more. But something had changed inside him just as something was changing inside her whenever he was near.
“Is it true then that you tried to kill him?”
Humor twinkled in his eyes, though his gaze was at once direct. “Aye. I was not known for my restraint in the tender years of my youth.”
“But thirteen years ago you were barely an adult. How is it that you eventually became captain of the Black Dragon?”
“The captain was a drunkard and wieldy with a whip. One day while he was beating one of the crew, I decided I’d had enough.”
“You mutinied?”
“I am guilty of smuggling. Perhaps even a bit of subversive behavior should anyone choose to mount an offense against me. But not a mutineer. The Roxburghe family owns a fleet of merchant ships. My great-grandfather’s legacy to this family.
The ship on which my father exiled me, the Dragon, was my own inheritance.
My father possessed a macabre sense of irony when it came to doling out life lessons.
” He studied his clasped hands. “It took me a year of hell before I had the guts to claim the helm of that ship as my own.”
“What did you do with the captain?”
He glanced sideways at her. “I dropped the bastard off in Workington with a note to my father, telling him to go to the devil. I then gave the crew a choice to stay or leave. Every single man jack stayed.”
“Will they come to live at Stonehaven?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Most want to stay on the sea.”
Do you? she wanted to ask.
“I came here to save my brother,” he said, as if he could read his mind. “I never had any intention of staying. I’ve never been much of a farmer.”
“You should stay, my lord.”
She looked around the sunlit stairwell in hopes of diverting her thoughts.
Dull early-evening sunlight broke through the clouds and filtered through a stained-glass window at her back throwing patches of red, green, and gold on the walls around her.
“This is a fine loft that your grandfather built. You have kind servants. A beautiful home.” She cleared her throat and stood.
As did he, slowly, as he stepped down the stairs and once again took his place in front of her.
“Why should I stay?”
“Because you are looking for something, and if you have not found it already, then you have not been searching in the right place.” Self-consciously, she looked down. “Now that I have rambled about, I think I should like to return.”
He propped one boot against the landing to prevent her escape.
They stood nearly eye to eye, and something hot and dangerous arced between them.
“There is a hunting lodge an hour’s ride from here,” he said.
She felt the warm assessment of that dark blue gaze.
“I have been meaning to visit the place since my return. You are welcome to ride with me. Chaperoned, of course . . . if you choose to go back and fetch Jason to accompany us.”
“A chaperone? Because you do not trust me. Or I should not trust you?”
“Both, perhaps.”
This time it was her turn to laugh, but she sobered at the thought. “At least we are honest with one another,” she said.
Honesty in and of itself was a form of trust. She had only truly trusted two people in her life. Friar Tucker and Mrs. Simpson. A hostage houseguest was not supposed to trust her captor. Or feel safe. Or feel this much desire. Yet she did.
And as the silence lengthened between them, he cupped her face with his hands. Her heart pounded against her breasts as if she had been running uphill, and then he bent his head and kissed her.
She stood on the landing, still holding tightly to the balustrade as if to catch some of her weight.
Her mouth opened taking his tongue and giving her his.
She wanted to touch him, to know him as she had that night in the glade, except in the light where she could see and feel him, where her mind could not lose him in the darkness.
His kiss gentled, a contradiction to the raw desire she sensed in him and which coursed through her.
He pulled back, his hooded eyes surveying her as if to discern her thoughts.
Strangely, she was no longer afraid of the future.
She had at last found the capacity within herself to confront her future on her own terms. “Will everyone not wonder where we are?” she asked. “Are they not looking for us?”
He swept back a wayward strand of her hair and lent his mouth to the shell of her ear. “I am the only person who went after you today, Rose. If they wonder, they will not speak of it upon our return.”