Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
I t took them near a full day to reach James and their Fraser kinsmen along with the other clans as they made their way toward Stirling, encountering an advance group astride that suddenly emerged out of the wooded area they had entered, and surrounded them.
Ruari grinned as they were escorted deeper into the heavily wooded forest all the while aware of eyes that watched, but remained hidden. It was typical of the chieftain of Clan Fraser to spread out the clans as much as possible while hidden, instead of gathering in one large mass that might easily be attacked and overcome. It was something he had learned as war chief of the clan, and relied on more than once when encountering greater numbers of the enemy--keep their numbers small, strike using surprise as a weapon, then disappear.
"I see that ye still have yer head on yer shoulders," James greeted him, the lines about his mouth easing.
"What word from Stirling?"
Over the hours that followed, he and DeBrus explained the agreement that had been reached.
"Do ye trust Marshal's word?" James had asked.
"He is a practical man, for all that he is King Henry's vice counsel," De Brus responded.
"He did not achieve his primary goal--for Alexander to bend the knee to Henry. But he has the young king's assurances that raids will not continue across the borderlands in exchange for Marshal's promise that the English forts will be abandoned and English soldiers removed."
James turned to Ruari, his eyes narrowed as if looking for some sign.
"Do ye trust him? Will Henry keep the promise?"
There was far more in the question, the unspoken that simply said... 'Ye are of my blood, I trust your word, as I trust no other '.
Ruari nodded. "For all that he is English, I trust that he believes he can persuade the English king to see the way of it. War is costly and the English have been at war the past thirty years and more. Tis rumored that Henry is deeply in debt."
He didn't reveal the source of that information, but Juliana had been insistent that it was true from her 'friendship' with a certain Earl who was privy to that information.
"He cannot afford to break his word," DeBrus interjected. "His coffers are near empty from the cost of the war with France," he angled a look at Ruari who had been part of that.
"And other misadventures."
Ruari nodded. "Aye, Calais, a costly adventure on the advice of another who has no concern for such things."
"Blackwood," James exchanged a look with Ruari. "Our people have seen his banners at Stirling."
Ruari nodded. "A most interesting encounter. You should know he was not in agreement with Marshal."
"Will he abide the agreement?" James asked, knowing the man from past encounters.
"Marshal is the king's man and speaks for him in these things," DeBrus explained. "To go against Marshal would be to go against the king."
James was thoughtful at that last comment, but not entirely satisfied. He shared his concerns with Ruari as they talked about what had taken place as night descended over the encampment.
As before, when he and DeBrus had entered the thick woods, he did not see several hundred clansmen spread about, hidden in the rocks, crags, thick gorse, and tree cover that surrounded them. But they were there.
"There is more," Ruari finally told him what Juliana had shared with him. "What do you remember of our sister?"
The night was thick about them, impossible to see one's hand's in front of the face. James sat only a few feet away. He couldn't see the expression at his face, but he sensed the silent thoughts before answering.
"She was a wee thing, not more than the same age wee Eleanor when your mother died and our father sent her to family in England."
"And no word of her in all these years since?"
"None that our father shared with anyone. I think it was a pain deep inside that he'd locked away and refused to speak of. She would be a woman grown now, and wed by now."
"Aye," Ruari commented. He couldn't see but felt that narrowed gaze on him.
"What is yer meaning?"
"She is now Lady Blackwood."
The sound of that name was as cold as the night air about them. The silence that followed told far more than any words.
"How came you by this information?"
"A friend at Stirling," Ruari replied.
"You trust the word of this ' friend '?"
"I do."
The night was long, with little sleep. When first light broke through the tree cover overhead, he rose and followed the sound of water to the edge of the stream near the encampment. Mist curled over the ground, a mantle of frost crunching under his boots. At the water's edge, he scooped water and splashed it over his face.
In the light of day, if he looked hard enough he caught a glimpse of a familiar face among the thick undergrowth as others stirred. Dirt smudged from the past days on the march, his kinsmen squinted in the early morning sun, an easy camaraderie among them as word spread from camp to camp that an accord had been reached with the English, for now.
But there were others, tried in battle and old conflicts who were more circumspect in spite of DeBrus' assurances that the English would soon be leaving Stirling. None would be satisfied until the last English soldier had left Scotland. Then, it would be as it had been in the past--wait and see if the English kept the peace. He and James both knew that if the forts were not abandoned by the time the first snow came, the clans would not accept the agreement.
With ice on the ground he longed to return to Lechlede as he cupped a handful of water and drank. His encounter with Juliana, while fortuitous, had reminded him that what they had shared had passed so long before that it seemed the memory of it belonged to another. And perhaps it did--someone who had died on that stretch of sand at Calais and then became another when he returned to Lechlede--another man who had wished only to die on Scottish soil except for a spirited lass who refused to let him die.
He looked up as a shrill whistle sounded across the encampment, a familiar warning that others approached. As that sound turned to a series of short sounds usually heard only in the wood but known by every kinsman, hands reached for claymores and knifes, and familiar faces disappeared into thick cover as riders slowly approached.
Ruari drew the long blade from his belt, then pulled the claymore from the leather sheath where he'd laid it at a rock at the edge of the water. He glanced across the encampment and saw James surrounded by several Fraser kinsmen. DeBrus joined him as another signal passed from tree-to-tree, from rock outcropping to other hiding places as the sound of horses approached.
Cautious with weapons drawn and several more hidden as clansmen lay in wait surrounding him, William Marshal slowly approached the encampment.
"Marshal," DeBrus told James as the English reined in their horses.
"Hold," James the Scots who surrounded them.
Ruari counted those he saw astride behind Marshal. He saw only eight riders. How many more lay in wait? He saw the breath Marshal slowly released as they made eye contact.
"Fraser, I would speak with you and your chieftain. Tis a matter most urgent."
"Only eight men," DeBrus said in a low voice. "And by the looks of leather and their horses, they've ridden most of the night."
Ruari was still hesitant, his gaze scanning the way they had traveled and the surrounding tree cover as he knew others did to determine if others were hidden.
"Marshal only," James finally agreed, with caution. "Your men are to remain as they are."
"Tis not an agreeable thing to be outnumbered, is it?" Ruari said with a deadly smile, remembering the hours past at Stirling as he joined them and greeted marshal with a curt nod.
"No, tis not," Marshal replied as he stepped down from his horse and ordered his men to remain where they were as he handed the reins to one of his knights.
"And no one was the wiser that he left your encampment?" James said with undisguised contempt when Marshal told them of Blackwood's disappearance.
"His camp was a distance apart," Marshal explained. "With so many encamped, it can be difficult to know the place of every man and horse."
James made a sound that said but one thing--he would knew where every of his men were. But that was not the concern now.
Ruari restlessly paced the small clearing where they met with Marshal. Only a handful met with them, including DeBrus. The muscles at the back of his neck tightened as the news that Blackwood had departed without warning.
He would not have left with only his armed guard and a handful of others if it was his intent to return to London.
"You took great risk coming here," James commented. "We could have cut you down before you ever reached the forest."
Well aware the risk and what was at stake, Marshal and his guard had ridden through the night hoping to intercept Fraser and warn him. His men were exhausted, pushed hard, and at risk for being cut down by rogue Scot kinsmen who had no knowledge of the accord that had been reached with their king at Stirling.
"It was worth the risk, to avoid a bloody war," Marshal spoke in low tones. Now he was stepping beyond his position as counselor to King Henry, and into a dangerous place.
"I come to you with a warning; Blackwood has his own ambitions. I believe he will not stop until he has taken what he believes to be rightfully his... "
"Rightfully his?"
Ruari heard the edge in James' reply.
"By what right?" he demanded.
Marshal looked to DeBrus but found no support there. His expression plainly revealed his conflict.
"He would claim Fraser lands by right of marriage."
James exchanged a look with Ruari at what he had learned at Stirling.
Many had seen James' expression, void of all emotion, unreadable now, but Ruari knew it well. Beneath that unreadable expression was a turmoil of emotions. Families--women, children were at Lechlede, including Brynna and his own children, and many others under the protection of a small group of clansmen.
Gabhran was an experienced war chief. But was it enough to stand against Blackwood and others he might order to ride with him from the English fort to the south of Lechlede who would have no knowledge of the agreement? Nor would Blackwood be inclined to make it known. He had but one purpose, and Ruari had confronted that at Calais.
He crossed the encampment in long strides with only one thought. James caught up with him as he seized a saddle and flung it over the back of the nearest horse--the black stallion James usually rode.
"He has a score of men, and a full day and night ahead," James pointed out what Marshal had revealed.
"And the English garrison with more men, within a half day of Lechlede and no knowledge of the agreement made at Stirling," Ruari added.
James stepped past him and prepared to saddle another horse.
Ruari stopped him. "DeBrus trusts Marshal's word... "
"But you do not?"
Ruari's expression was grim. "He risked much coming here. That speaks for the man. But the English must go if the agreement is to stand. The clans will follow you as they must."
There was no need to explain further--that Marshal must immediately turn the whole of the English army back toward England. If not, James and the clans must be prepared to stand against them and protect Stirling.
James nodded. "I will follow when we are certain there is no further danger of an attack on Stirling." He clasped Ruari's good arm.
"God speed. Tell Brynna... "
The words would not come and both knew his thoughts, the fear for all at Lechlede at least three days' ride away. But it was far more, words spoken between a man and woman in the deep of the night, promises, vows of love, to protect...
Ruari thought of Alix, her strength, courage, what she meant to him. He nodded, struggling with his own thoughts, his own fear.
"Tell her yourself, aye? When this is done."
"I go with you." Marshal announced as Ruari, DeBrus, and the men he'd chosen prepared to ride out of the encampment.
"No." Ruari replied, that single word stopping him.
"I may be able to stop Blackwood from this recklessness... " Marshal explained.
Ruari took a skin of water and dried meat rolled in a leather skin one of his kinsmen handed him and secured both at the saddle.
"As you should have stopped him at Stirling?"
He made no attempt at polite words. There was no time. He jerked the reins away and set the spurs to the stallion.
Frost had set in the night before and nipped at children's noses with the promise of the coming winter in the air.
Two of the children dodged among the trees in the orchard, brandishing wooden swords--the chieftain's oldest son, Connor, and the son of one of their kinsmen who had ridden out with the chieftain weeks before.
They were supposed to be helping Alix and two other young women as they gathered the last of the apples that had fallen to the ground and others that still clung to limbs high in the tree tops.
"They're rotten," Connor Fraser exclaimed, lobbing one at his sister who picked it up and sent it back at him with deadly accuracy. It was the red hair--sass along with a boldness that took nothing from either brother or any of the other children. She would have made a fierce warrior.
"Rotten or no, put them in the baskets," Alix firmly told them both, knowing full well most were only slightly bruised.
"Morna will make a fine pie with them, but there will be none if there are no apples and we canna leave them for the birds."
"The birds are hungry too," Connor had argued with all the charm of another one she knew too well. That apple hadn't fallen far from the Fraser tree.
She sighed as if with regret. "When it comes time to cut the pie, I'll simply have to tell yer father that the birds ate your piece."
That was enough to convince them that it might be wiser to make certain there were enough apples for the pie. Both dutifully began picking up the ones that had fallen beneath a nearby tree.
"Will we be done soon?" Eleanor asked. "The day is almost gone."
Alix smiled to herself at that bit of exaggeration, and looked to the sky certain it was not yet midday.
There were thick clouds and the smell of rain. Earlier those clouds had sat at the horizon in layers of purple and flame red, as though bruised and bathed in blood. Maisel, believed that it was a warning when she took her morning meal earlier from the kitchen. She had seen just such a sky before.
" When Lechlede was attacked by the murdering Campbells and the Fraser was badly wounded." she had told her.
"And I dreamed last night of crows. The sky was black with them."
A warning in the old woman's dreams?
She had heard Gabhran speaking with some of their clansmen as the days wore on and still there was no word from Stirling. He had doubled the guard at the gate and sent other guards to the village below. A precaution, she heard him tell Lady Brynna, while others hauled extra wood in carts that was stacked beside the hearth in the great hall.
The hounds were sent with patrols that swept the countryside by day, then brought inside at night, another precaution, while weapons silently appeared, propped against the walls as the days became weeks and still there was no word from the clansmen.
In the dark of night the day's work done, as she lay at her pallet and listened to her grandmother's faint snoring, fear was like a hand that closed around her throat so that she could not breathe.
What if Ruari... ?
Fear hovered at the edge of her thoughts. She tried to push it away, but it slipped into her thoughts at the sight of something--the chieftain's chessboard she had often shared with him, the flash of dark red as light from the fire at the great hearth caught in the fiery depths of young Eleanor's hair, at the sight of clansmen in the practice yard where he had spent countless hours driving himself past exhaustion, and in the cool depths of the stone at the ring he had given her.
What if Ruari did not return?
She pushed back the fear, and held onto the words they had spoken in that old place where his ancestor had first claimed Fraser land.
"I give you myself, my honor, all that I am."
"There will be rain before nightfall," the girl Lettie said, with a glance toward the sky.
"Aye, a storm will be on us before nightfall."
Alix shivered and rubbed her hands together for warmth against a different cold deep inside.
The morning grew darker as they continued working against the ominous threat of weather, past midday with the hope of gathering as many apples as they could find or pick those that hadn't yet fallen as Connor and young Eleanor climbed high into the branches.
They heard the first sounds from the top of the wall, warning shouts that echoed off the stone walls of the keep, then the frantic sound of the copper bell brought from Edinburgh years before that hung at the outside wall.
It was used to call their kinsmen to a meeting of the clan. Now it was urgent, a warning that sounded over and over in the cold air.
"Go!" Alix told the nearest woman. "Take the others with ye."
When Lettie would have picked up one of the baskets, she shook her head.
"Leave it!"
She spun around and searched the nearby trees where she had last seen the Connor and Eleanor, even as the bell continued to ring a warning.
Connor came up behind her. Eleanor in tow.
"What does it mean? What's happened?"
"We must return to the hall, now."
She grabbed Eleanor by the hand and hitched up the hem of her tunic as they ran and followed the others through the gate at the edge of the orchard and into the back of the kitchen.
The hounds had set up loud baying as the bell continued ringing and kinsmen and guards ran through the main hall."
"Find yer mother," Alix told Connor. "Both of ye, stay with her."
He held onto her arm. "I won't go with the children!"
At near nine years of age he was tall, near reaching her shoulder, with dark hair and dark, serious eyes from his father. But that stubborn refusal he'd inherited from another.
"Aye, then. Find Gabhran and do as he says. Do ye hear me?"
Connor nodded, his mouth set. He had been like a shadow to the old warrior these past days and gave no argument to any task Gabhran gave him. He left at a run.
"Go to yer mother," she told Eleanor. "She will need your help."
For once there was no argument. The girl turned and fled up the tower steps. Alix ran across the great hall.
The massive door stood open and she ran down the steps and across the yard to the high wall. She climbed the steps and found young Dougal with other kinsmen lined up at the stone half wall at the landing that the top of the wall.
When he saw her, he pointed toward the cart road that led from the village. A column of riders charged up the road toward the keep.
The young Scot's face was pale, his expression taut, but the look in his eyes was fierce.
"English."
The black dragon on a red field quivered and snapped in the cold air as the first rain pelted down.
She knew that image, from things Ruari had spoken from fevered dreams those first weeks after he returned. And she knew the name of the man who carried it.
"Blackwood," she whispered. Impossible, she thought, even as those riders approached.
What did it mean? What had happened that the English war general was here? What had happened to Ruari and their kinsmen.
"Aye, Blackwood." Gabhran acknowledged, now beside her, his gaze reaching out across the distance between that was rapidly disappearing.
"The devil's whoreson." He turned to her.
"Ye canna be here, lass. Get to the hall with the others," he ordered as the first arrows came over the wall, one of their kinsmen falling only a few feet away.
"Go, now!" Then he gave her that look that he had given her those first days when Ruari and their kinsmen had gone.
"You know what to do, lass."
His words tore through her. "Gabhran... ?"
"Go now, girl, and be strong as I know ye can be. Ye have yer dirk?"
He would not have asked it, if he did not believe the danger was real. He nodded, then turned back to the wall, shouting orders. Thick wood gates closed, cross bars set as more Fraser clansmen appeared.
She raced down the steps, across the yard, and back into the main hall. Brynna Fraser stood at the foot of the tower steps, a claymore propped against her side.
"I saw from the upper tower window. Is there no word from James?"
Alix heard the fear in her voice, the way she tried to hide it.
"You must make ready to leave," Alix told her.
In that way of understanding things that goes unspoken, Brynna Fraser nodded. "I will get the children ready. What of the others?"
Women and children, families of their kinsmen who had crowded the keep the past days, gathered food, blankets for warmth, and kept smaller children by their sides, older ones with weapons at hand, expressions at their faces showing the range of emotions they felt--fear, the heavy weight of responsibility with their fathers and brothers at Stirling, and only a handful to protect them all.
From years before, other conflicts, Morna had organized the women and older girls. Head counts were taken. And they waited. Too soon the sounds of the attack reached them, a bloodied kinsmen bursting into the main hall.
"There are too many," he told Lady Brynna. "With soldiers from the garrison."
"What of our men?" she demanded with authority.
He shook his head. "They will hold as long as they can, but the English have set fire at the gates. We canna hold them for long."
The grim reality--the attack would soon be inside the gates. And then...
Brynna nodded. "The women and children... "
Alix laid a hand at her arm. "There is a way out. Gabhran showed me after the chieftain and the others left... if there was ever a need."
As there was now.
Brynna nodded and gave instructions to Morna and the others, then returned to the tower where young Eleanor watched over her new brother in spite of her earlier feelings about him.
Brynna carried her newborn son down from the tower hall, the other children following. And they waited, as the sounds from the wall and the yard beyond became more ominous. Then Gabhran entered the main hall, young Dougal with him. Behind him at the yard, Alix glimpsed some of their fallen kinsmen.
How was it possible? Why were the English here? What did they want?
But there was no time for questions as Gabhran glanced at the faces of the women and children. His gaze came back to her.
"Ye must go, lass, and take them with ye."
"What of you and the others?" Brynna asked.
"We will follow if we can." He patted Alix's arm. They both knew the truth behind those words.
"Go now," he told her, his voice gruff in that way she had heard him hundreds of times with their kinsmen. Then he turned back to the main entrance and gave orders to Dougal to bar the doors, then follow Alix and the others.
Alix led them through the kitchen, to the storerooms below, mindful of the dark passage and the narrow stone steps. One-by-one, they followed, Lady Brynna handing her bairn over to Morna, then encouraging the others with her calm voice and reassurances.
Mothers carried small ones, older children holding on to the one behind them, forming a human chain that rapidly descended the steps, the air growing fetid with only a single torch held by one of the older lads to guide the way. When they reached the bottom of the steps, they entered the last storeroom that held casks of wine. Alix quickly moved to the wall at the back of the storeroom and felt along the stones until her fingers brushed cool metal.
She pushed against the iron lever as Gabhran had showed her. The metal handle angled away from the wall. She grabbed it with both hands. Stone grated against stone as the portion of the wall at the opening moved just far enough for someone to pass through. She motioned for Dougal.
He bent low, holding a torch before him as he entered the passage and lit a second torch at the wall.
"Where does this go?" Brynna asked, keeping her voice calm for the sake of the children when all she could think was that they might all soon be dead.
"It leads under the orchard and then to the forest that borders the loch," Alix explained.
"Gabhran showed me the way. Ye'll be safe there."
Until Ruari and their kinsmen returned, she prayed. As the others moved past her and entered the passage, there was one not among them.
Maisel!
She started back up the steps as the last of the women and children disappeared into the passage.
"Where are ye going?" Dougal called out,
"Maisel is not here!"
"Ye canna go back! It's too dangerous!"
"I'll not leave her."
She felt her way along the stone wall that lined the steps, reached the next level, then climbed the last steps. Dougal cursed as he followed.
"Wait, aye! I'll go first."
It was strangely quiet at the great hall as they emerged from the back of the kitchen.
"Stay behind me," he told her, moving ahead with both hands wrapped around the claymore. They left the hall by the smaller side door, and stepped out into blood and death.
The massive gates at the wall gaped open. Fire spread along the top of the wall, smoke billowing into the sky. Several clansmen still lined the top of the wall, but were attacked as the English swarmed the stone steps and cut them down.
The practice yard was littered with bodies and the smoldering ruins of several outbuildings. The vast Fraser stables had also been set afire, English soldiers throwing additional torches onto thatched roofs. At the far end of the yard, smoke billowed from Maisel's cottage. Alix drew the slender blade Gabhran had given her. She heard Dougal's warning, then more curses as he followed.
She slipped behind the dovecote, then along the pens that contained the geese and hens. She tripped and would have gone down, if Dougal hadn't clamped a hand around her arm and steadied her. She stared down at the carcass of one of the chieftain's hounds at her feet An arrow protruded from its neck.
"We canna reach the cottage," Dougal warned. "There are too many."
She pulled free and ran along the curtain wall toward the cottage. She called for the old woman as she reached the small garden that surrounded it, fighting the smoke that choked at her throat and stung at her eyes.
The cottage was in shambles, Clay pots and ewers shattered and strewn across the floor. She stumbled more than once, fighting the smoke as she went from memory of the small cottage.
As smoke filled the cottage, she found her old friend slumped at the floor. She gently shook her but there was no response.
"Ye canna help her now," Dougal said gently standing over her. Alix nodded, her heart aching at the loss for the one other person other than her grandmother who had been as family to her.
"We must go now. "
Difficult as it was to leave her friend, Alix followed him from the cottage, keeping to the shadows at the curtain wall, but it was impossible to return to the main hall with the number of English soldiers in the main yard. Then, she saw Gabhran.
The old war chief of Clan Fraser fought off two English soldiers, two of his kinsmen fighting at his back. A half dozen more English joined the confrontation, steadily closing in on the Scot warriors.
Outnumbered, Gabhran let out a fierce war cry and lunged at one of his attackers with his long blade, then slashed at the second man with his shorter blade. Unable to hold them all off, one of his kinsmen went down and an English blade sank deep in Gabhran's side. He bellowed with rage, retrieved his long blade and took another man with him as he went down.
Alix screamed at them, anger sending her across the yard even as Dougal warned her back.
She reached Gabhran and went down beside him. "Cowards!" she screamed at his attackers.
"What one man among you is brave enough to face my kinsman? Or are you all English cowards? Brave only when you outnumber another?"
"Hold!" the command sliced through the smoke-filled air as a tall figure clad in black armor crossed the yard, that red dragon seething on the black mantle that swirled around his shoulders.
Blackwood! A name that she had learned to hate for his brutality, and for the life he had very nearly taken. That brutality was there in the dark gaze that bore into hers, and at the cruel hand that buried in her hair as he dragged her to her feet.
In the dying light of day, a blood red sky cast deathly shadows across the walls of Lechlede as she defiantly met that murderous gaze.
"Where are the others?" Blackwood demanded. He shook her.
"Tell me!"
"Tell them nothing!" Dougal shouted, now held prisoner between two English soldiers, his face bloodied.
A brief look passed between Blackwood and the warriors at Dougal's defiance.
"No!" she screamed, then watched helplessly as the English soldier slashed the blade across Dougal's throat.
His eyes slowly closed and he slumped between his captors.
Terrified and enraged, Alix drew the blade Gabhran had given her and struck at Blackwood, slicing his cheek.
That cold, brutal expression was what Ruari had seen when Blackwood had taken his arm at Calais and left him for dead. She would surely die now.
The blow snapped her head back, stars bursting behind her eyes, and she tasted blood at the inside of her cheek, the dirk falling into the dirt at the yard. Then she was being shaken as if she was some animal that had been trapped and caught.
It would come now. Death. And a helpless regret welled inside her--of the life that Ruari's vow had promised.
"I give you all that I am... " As she had given herself.
And with regret, there was sorrow... for Dougal, Gabhran and the others whose bodies filled the yard.
But no others! The bloody English would not have the others, she thought fiercely. They were gone. And in that there was a defiant pride as Blackwood stood over her.
A fist closed around her throat as he angled her head back until she thought her neck would break. His other hand , that had so easily signaled the death of Dougal and others brushed the bodice of her gown, the stone at the ring Ruari had given her, gleaming at the end of the heavy chain that wrapped around Blackwood's gloved fingers. He tore it away and slowly smiled.
"See to the others," Blackwood ordered his men. "I have what I came for."
Alix was dragged across the yard and up the steps into Fraser hall. English soldiers ran past, searched the upstairs chambers, then raided the kitchens. She glimpsed two of his men as they emerged the kitchen with flagons of wine.
Please don't let them find the passage...
Then she was being dragged up the steps to the tower above.
She fought against the hand wrapped around her hair, stumbling, falling, then hauled back to her feet as they reached the upper floor chambers.
Blackwood kicked open the door to the chieftain's chamber, empty except for one of his men, searching for anything of value--one of the chieftain's swords, hammered silver flagons, a chest that laid open on its side, the contents spilled onto the floor.
"Get out!" Blackwood ordered his man. As the warrior left, Blackwood kicked the massive door shut.
For those few moments his hand loosened at her hair and she scrambled away from him.
Lord John Blackwood leaned back against the door. The chain dangled from his fingers, the ring slowly turning, the Fraser stone gleaming.
He tore off the leather breast plate and tossed it aside.
"Lady Fraser... It is a pleasure to meet you. "
Lady Fraser? He thought that she was the chieftain's lady!
"I have waited a long time to pay the chieftain of Clan Fraser back for my losses at the Borderlands, and claim what is rightfully mine."
He came away from the door and slowly stalked her.
There was no escape and even if it meant her life, she would never tell him that she was not who he assumed her to be, or risk the lives of the others who were now safe.