Chapter 20
“Uh, Brice,” Colin said as he looked over Brice’s shoulder.
Brice spun around and found Eleanor with one leg over the edge of the rowboat, preparing to pull the other one in.
Anger propelled him forward. Before she could get her other leg in, he wrapped his good arm around her waist and plucked her out. “What in the hell do ye think ye’re doing?”
She gasped and looked up at him. “I have to go.”
Her words were like a punch to the stomach. He had to struggle to pull in another breath. She was running away from him, sneaking out right under his nose. He raised a brow. “And where do ye think ye’re going?”
She blinked, then looked at the ship sitting offshore. “I—”
“My lord,” the oarsman said.
He nodded to the man and dragged Eleanor away from the boat. She struggled in his grasp, tugging at the arm that was wrapped around her waist. “Let go of me,” she said. “I have to go with them.”
“No, ye don’t,” he said between clenched teeth. He was damned if he was going to let her board that boat. Hell, she had no idea where the boat was even going.
“I do. Please, Brice, please let me go,” she begged, her voice desperate. Christ, was she that determined to get away from him?
He ignored her pleas and dragged her away from the water and toward the horses.
The other men had already melted into the trees.
He practically tossed her on the horse and quickly mounted behind her.
He couldn’t hold her, because he had to hold the reins with his good hand.
Luckily she slumped against him, her body shaking.
Once they were in the safety of the trees, he turned Galad around and watched the rowboat reach the ship.
With a nod to the other men, he rode away.
Another successful mission, except this time he didn’t feel the satisfaction that he normally felt when a ship disembarked.
He was so furious that he was seeing red.
“You should have let me go,” she whispered.
“What is so horrible that ye have to run from me?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question and cursed himself for revealing his hurt to her.
“Oh, Brice.” She sighed. “It’s not you at all.”
He grunted as he expertly guided Galad through the forest. They had done this so many times that his mount could find the way home on his own.
They were riding single file again, with Colin leading the way.
Brice hadn’t planned to come with them tonight.
His shoulder was on fire with pain, but he ignored it for the moment.
Something in his gut had told him he needed to be on this run, and he’d followed that gut instinct despite Colin’s protests that he could do it without Brice.
Now he was glad he had come. He’d known something was wrong with Eleanor when she came to him after the dinner hour, but he had never guessed that she would be on this run.
“How did ye find out about tonight?” He had to know if there was a leak in the system, if one of his people had talked to her about it.
“I overheard you and Colin talking about it this afternoon.”
“And so ye decided to go along? Did ye even know where the ship was headed?”
She paused. “No.”
“Good God, lass. Were ye that desperate to get away that ye would go anywhere the ship sailed? Ye have no money, nothing but the clothes on yer back.” And what clothes they were.
Breeches and a shirt that displayed all of her womanly attributes.
He’d about fallen over when he saw her. He’d wanted to throw a blanket over her to keep her hidden from the eyes of his men.
“I’m not running from you, Brice.”
He didn’t answer, because it sure as hell felt like she was running away from him. But then he wanted to know: “Ye don’t trust me to protect ye?”
She sighed. “Of course I do.”
He whistled, causing Eleanor to jump. The man in front of him stopped so that Brice could catch up. “Tell Colin to keep going. We’ll be along shortly.” The man nodded. Brice turned the horse to the right, and Galad picked his way through the underbrush.
Eleanor stiffened. “What are we doing?”
“Going a different route.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to separate—”
“I do.”
She clutched his arm but thankfully didn’t say anything else. Brice led the horse to a small hut nestled in between the tall trees. It was partly hidden by underbrush that hadn’t been cut back in years. Brice deliberately kept it that way. It was the perfect spot.
He slid off the horse and helped Eleanor down, then tethered Galad to a nearby tree. “Come.” He didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the front door and opened it.
The outside of the hut didn’t match the inside.
From the outside, it looked like it was falling down, abandoned long ago.
The inside was dry, the floor solid. Wood was stacked beside a small fireplace.
Blankets were folded on a small straw bed.
There was no other furniture in the room but a small cupboard that housed oats.
A stream gurgled nearby with fresh water for making oatcakes.
They could be quite comfortable for days.
Eleanor stood at the threshold, peering in.
“Come inside,” he said as he set about building the fire. There were enough clouds in the sky to hide the smoke from the fire, and they were far enough off the main road that they wouldn’t be discovered by the English soldiers, who tended to stay on the well-traveled roads.
Eleanor took a few steps in and shut the door behind her. “Is this one of your safe houses?”
“Ye overheard way too much, lass.”
“I was eavesdropping.”
He shot her a glance over his shoulder. She caught it and shrugged.
When the fire was sufficiently blazing, he sat back on his heels. “Canada.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He looked over at her. “The ship was going to Canada. There are two of them. One arrives approximately every two weeks to pick up the fugitives and take them to Canada, where they will start a new life.”
She sat down on the straw mattress as if her legs couldn’t hold her up any longer. “Canada,” she whispered. “I’m not even certain I know where that is.”
“And yet ye were willing to go with them.”
Her gaze met his, her blue eyes reflecting the flames from the fire. “I have no choice.”
“Ye keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true,” she cried. She stood up and paced to the other side of the small hut. It took only a few steps. “I wish you had let me go.”
Brice hissed in a breath at the pain her words caused. Even now she didn’t want to be with him. “And what would ye do in Canada?”
“I would find a house I could serve in.”
Stunned, he could only stare at her for a bit. “Serve? How many fine houses do ye think are in Canada?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know. I would have found something. I’m actually very good at serving.”
He rolled his eyes and looked into the fire, not wanting her to see how hurt he was. He was such a damn fool when it came to women. He could never find one who wanted to stay. They all thought there was something better out there.
She sat down beside him, and he looked at the length of her legs, tightly encased in the worn breeches. The sight stirred him in inappropriate ways. He’d not seen a woman in a man’s clothes before. “Where’d ye get the clothing?” he asked gruffly, poking at the fire with a long stick.
“Cecilia. Now, don’t be getting angry at her for it. If you’re angry at anyone, be angry at me.”
“Oh, I am.”
She sighed. “Why are you angry? Certainly you can agree that I’m nothing but a hindrance to you and your Staran. I’m a danger to all of you. Blackwood is out there looking for me, and if he finds me at Castle Dornach, under your protection, all of you will pay the price.”
He stabbed the fire again. Everything she said was true.
Maybe he should have left her to board the boat.
In Canada she would be safe from Blackwood.
He’d sent countless people to Canada, watched them board that ship and say a tearful farewell to their Scotland, knowing they were headed for a better life.
However, seeing Eleanor trying to board that ship had done something to him. He was damned if another woman was going to run away from him. Yet was it fair that Eleanor was paying the price of Alisa’s desertion?
“Alisa left me,” he said into the fire, surprised he’d said the words out loud. He’d had no intention of telling her this when he’d brought her here.
“Pardon me?”
“My wife. Alisa. She left me.”
The flames crackled. Outside the wind blew harder, and in the back of his mind, Brice thought it would probably rain before the night was out.
A storm would ensure that they would stay here the whole night, and he wasn’t averse to that.
His heart told him that while he’d stopped Eleanor from leaving now, he wouldn’t be able to stop her a second time.
Her leaving was inevitable, and that stabbed his soul.
“Alisa left you,” Eleanor repeated.
“There’d been talk of our marriage between our families since we were young. She was a McKinney, and a match with the Sutherlands was good for both families.”
“That sounds very romantic,” she said sarcastically.
Brice grinned. “It was all very unromantic. We’d met before, once or twice.”
“And was it love at first sight?”
He looked over at her and smiled. “Ye are the romantic one, aren’t you?”
“I never thought I was.”
“Alisa…she was different. She’d been raised in the Highlands, but she had no love of the Highlands.”
“How could anyone not love this beautiful country,” she murmured.
Brice looked at her in surprise. He thought the same, of course, but it was a surprise to hear it from Eleanor, someone who had grown up in London, a place of elegance and sophistication. “She desperately wanted to travel to London and attend a ball. It was her greatest desire.”
Eleanor snorted. She actually snorted. Brice wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a woman snort, especially a lady.
“She wasn’t missing much. They are stuffy and hot and not all that fun. It’s the same people at every ball, and their greatest pastime is to talk about each other behind their backs.”
Brice had figured as much. He could never understand Alisa’s need to travel to England, and yet it was all she had talked about.
“Somehow she managed to have old periodicals from London sent up here, and she studied them, then talked ceaselessly about the fashions and society and balls and gossip. I tried my best to provide her with the clothes she wanted, even though I could no’ take her to London.”
He still felt shame that he couldn’t make his wife happy.
No matter what he did, it was never enough.
The only thing that would have made her happy was for them to go to London, and that he could not do.
It would have taken weeks, at least, and he couldn’t leave his people for that long and for something as foolish as traveling to London just so she could see it.
Now he wondered if he should have. Would she have been content with a visit? Somehow he doubted it.
“So she left you to go to London?” Eleanor asked.
“Aye.” Her words stabbed him. He’d been humiliated and furious when he’d discovered her deception.
Her family had apologized profusely, but it hadn’t eased his pain or embarrassment.
To the outside world, it looked as if he couldn’t keep his wife under control; nor could he make her happy enough to stay, and that had made him bitter.
“She met an English soldier who promised her everything that I could no’,” he said. “They ran away to Edinburgh and boarded a ship to England. The ship ran into a fierce storm and everyone on board perished.”
Outside, the wind picked up, howling through the cracks in the walls and making the fire jump and crackle loudly.
“I’m sorry for her death,” Eleanor said quietly. “But she was a fool. London is nothing special. A bunch of people who think too highly of themselves and not enough of others. I can say that, you know, because I was one of them.”
“She would have liked ye, Alisa would have. She would have picked yer brain until ye screamed ‘Enough.’ She would have been dazzled by yer presence. A real English lady at Castle Dornach. The like has no’ happened before.”
“And I would have told her that London was nothing to dream of. That people there are the same as people here, without the compassion that your people have shown me.”
“She would no’ have believed ye. She had it in her head that London was her…I don’t know the word I’m looking for.”
“Utopia?”
“Yes. Utopia.”
“She would have been disappointed. The English soldier probably gave her a line of malarkey to get her to go with him. More than likely he’d never stepped into a ballroom.”
Brice had wondered that himself. Would Alisa have come back to him once she got the fever of London out of her veins? He’d never know.
He stood and stretched. “ ’Tis a fine storm that’s blowing up out there. I’ll fetch some water before it hits.”