Chapter Thirty-Eight
“This is not over,” Dougal said as the five of them rode away through the windy darkness. Bertram MacNab—well-bound and still streaming blood—rode double with Dougal, so Dougal could keep his blade at Bertram’s throat. “I have still to decide the fate of our captive.”
Isobel, riding alongside the two men, blinked at her husband—this stranger with the wild, black hair, bloodied face, and seeping wounds. In the light cast by the stars and a half moon, with the blade glittering silver in his grasp, he might have been a savage conjured from the past.
She knew Dougal MacRae as harsh, unbending, and ruthless. He had earned the name of Devil Black full well. Yet always, in her experience, had he held his emotions in check. Even when they lay together and their passions ran high, she sensed a part of him kept back as if he guarded himself.
But the battle she had just witnessed defied all that, made a mockery of restraint and any civilized veneer he had ever worn. Life and death had balanced on his blade, and did yet.
“No one pursues us,” said the scribe, looking over his shoulder, and not for the first time. He seemed nervous about the choices he had recently made and how he had cast his lot.
“They will not come,” Dougal growled from between clenched teeth. “Not unless they want this bastard to die.”
He jerked Bertram by the rope that encircled his throat, and Bertram made a sound like a trapped animal. Isobel could feel the rage emitting from Dougal. She also felt such a tangle of other emotions—terror, relief, horror, love, and, surprisingly, pride—she could barely contemplate them.
“Do you mean to kill him?” Catherine asked. Isobel glanced at her sister and felt concern; Catherine rode her mount hunched over, as if in pain or as if protecting the babe she carried, but her voice sounded strong.
“I am no’ certain,” Dougal replied.
“He deserves to die,” Isobel shocked herself by saying, and her husband looked at her sharply.
“I know.”
Bertram, fool that he was, spat, “You ha’ not got the balls to kill me, MacRae! ’Twould mean all-out war and an excuse for the King to end your practices in the district.” Beneath his defiance, Isobel heard the pain in his voice, and it gave her satisfaction.
“And what of your practices in the district,” she challenged quickly, “terrorizing the women who fall into your hands and, no doubt, the wives and daughters of your clansfolk and tenants. Should that not be ended? Would the world not be a better place without you?”
With difficulty, Bertram turned his head to stare at her. “By God, what kind of woman are you?”
Dougal laughed joyously. “She is the daughter of Celts and Vikings—a fearful combination! Trust me, MacNab, the only thing keeping you alive is my need to get these women safe off your lands. When we reach my border, we shall think again.” Cruelly, he drew Bertram’s head back.
“You recall the boundary where you left me some eight years ago?”
“Still no one coming,” said Campbell.
Ahead, a shallow burn marked the boundary of MacNab’s holding. On the far side of it waited Dougal’s small troop of warriors, all mounted. They gave a shout when they identified the approaching riders, and lowered their swords.
“Go,” said Dougal to Isobel. “Take your sister across.”
“What will you—?” Isobel began, trying to look into his eyes.
He lowered his lashes. “Go.” He told the scribe, “You stay. I need a witness.”
Campbell, looking unhappy and a bit ill, obeyed. Isobel splashed her mount through the water to the opposite bank, with Catherine behind her.
One of the warriors called to Dougal, “Your man Hewett is awa’ with your letter to the King.”
“It is well. You hear that, MacNab? What do you think the King will make o’ this night’s work?”
Bertram sneered, “He will have your head, MacRae. James is in my father’s pocket.”
“You think so? For, I am thinking ’tis you who may hang, instead of me. Get down.”
Swiftly, Dougal dismounted and hauled Bertram after him. Isobel, watching from the far bank, thought it a scene out of some dark dream, lit only by the cold stars and the half moon.
Bertram wobbled when his feet hit the ground; the wound in his thigh, grave and deep, had cost him a lot of blood. Dougal leveled the sword, already stained, at his throat.
“On your knees,” Dougal ordered. “I want to hear you beg for your life.”
“I will be damned!”
“Aye, no doubt, but that will come later. This is my time of justice. On your knees, or you die where you stand.”
Slowly and with a glance at the scribe, Bertram sank down onto his knees.
“Now,” Dougal told him, “we will have a confession. You will recite all your sins—well, I doubt we ha’ time for that, but give us the major ones. Start with what you did to Aisla.”
“That craven bitch,” MacNab said.
Dougal struck him, a sweeping, openhanded wallop that knocked him over, and then hauled him up again by the rope that encircled his neck.
“You will tell what you did to her, and fairly. How she suffered and died. These folk,” he swung his sword at the listeners on both sides of the burn, “are your council who will help decide your fate.”
Bertram said nothing.
“Come, man! Is that not justice?” Dougal shouted at him. “I want to kill you now, my blade thirsts for it, but I give you, here before witnesses, the chance you did not give her.”
“She was weak,” Bertram said. “From the moment I took her, she wept and moaned. She did not deserve to live—only the strong deserve to live.”
“She was a child,” Dougal cried, “a lass of sixteen when you took her. What need had you to torture her?”
“I shall tell you, MacRae, why I treated that bitch the way I did, if that is what you want to hear,” Bertram spat up at Dougal. “’Twas because she loved you. And once, when I rutted with her, she was foolish enough to call your name!”
Dougal sagged where he stood. Isobel, watching, saw the strength go out of him, precisely as if he had been stabbed to the heart. But his blade remained steady at Bertram’s throat.
“And then you came to save her,” MacNab went on, “fancying yourself the great hero. I could no’ let you have her, could I? Nay, I wanted your shame! And do you know, MacRae, she died soon after—still with your name on her lips?”
“Kill him,” said Catherine in a harsh voice, making Isobel jump.
“Aye, kill him,” agreed one of Dougal’s warriors, beginning a chorus. “He deserves it!”
Dougal’s blade trembled visibly at MacNab’s throat—with eagerness, Isobel fancied.
“Kill him,” said the scribe, Campbell.
Dougal raised his head and looked at Isobel. By some trick of the moonlight, she could see all of what filled his eyes—blinding pain, the lust for revenge, and a question.
“Leave him live,” she voted after a moment’s deliberation. “But make certain he never finds pleasure in raping another woman—anywhere or at any time.”
Slowly, Dougal grinned. At that moment he looked so like a devil Isobel shivered. But at the same time something within her responded to that look and gloried in it.
“My wife has spoken, MacNab,” he cried. “And despite all you ha’ done to her, she chooses mercy.”
“No!” MacNab howled.
“I think you should kiss the ground in gratitude to her. Kiss the ground, MacNab!”
He struck Bertram again, a thunderous blow that sent him tumbling sideways in an awkward sprawl. Bertram’s bound hands moved to protect his genitals, but Dougal’s blade moved more quickly still and laid the grievous wound. Bertram howled, like a pig at the slaughter, into the night sky.
“You should have killed him,” said the scribe mildly. “Now he will hate you twice as much.”
“There is still time for him to bleed to death,” Dougal said levelly. “Just you be sure, Campbell, you write down the fact that I granted him mercy, and left him alive.”
Campbell looked round at the assembled company and gave a tight smile. “Aye, so—left him here beside the burn, bound and in the same condition he left his stronghold. I do no’ know how he came by that last crippling injury.”
“His word against ours, and yours—I like that, fine!” Dougal grinned again, turned, and sprang back onto his horse. Bertram had ceased writhing and lay motionless on the ground.
Isobel looked again at her husband—wild-haired, calm-eyed, and with an ease about him that argued he had shrugged the weight of the world from his shoulders.
He splashed his horse across the burn and held out his hand to her. “Let us, Wife, go home.”