Chapter 17
As a lass of thirteen, Meghan had been something of a tagalong.
A lot of a tagalong.
Being born stuck somewhere in a very long line of McQuoid lads and lasses, with some over her and some under her, she hadn’t really belonged to either.
The wee ones were too young, doing wee babe stuff.
The older McQuoids insisted Meghan should be off with the bairns.
So she had to wiggle her way in. To Brone, Campbell, Arran, and Dallin’s everlasting horror, Meghan dogged even their shadows. That was how desperate she was to be with them.
They had found her such a nurgle that they worked harder to keep her out.
One summer, on a visit to the Isle of Skye, she had followed them to the Neist Point cliffs.
Reckless as only lads with only summers and no responsibilities were, they had moved like a herd of Highland ewe.
They scrambled reckless over jagged rocks, pushing and pulling at one another to get to the peak.
Their pace had been impossible for Meghan to match. As she scrambled along the same rocks, the roar of the surf and the distant echo of laughter and fading cries—half terror, half triumph—as they hurled themselves one after the other into the inlet below pushed her harder and faster.
Until, breathless and winded, Meghan reached the top. All her kin had jumped. She stared out, the wind whipping about her. The seabirds screeched encouragement. And then, at a full run, she leapt.
The earth fell away, and she went hurtling over, plummeting some ten meters in a plunge that spanned a life but lasted a single second.
With Meghan in nothing but the coverlet August had hastily tossed over her, her gown just beyond reach, and Brone, Campbell, Cousin Arran, and Captain Tremaine framed in the shattered doorway—time did the same thing now.
The still lasted forever. Nobody moved.
The McQuoids, movers by nature, conquerors of still and quiet, were still, guns and swords drawn. All leveled at a barefoot, shirtless August. In surrender, he held his left palm up and set his gun down.
The minute the flintlock pistol hit the floor—
Click.
The turf and waves folded over Meghan, and her skin instantly numbed. The brutal shock sucked the breath from her lungs and propelled her back into the correct march of time.
Meghan just managed a gasp and lunged for her dress as the room came alive.
Brone dropped his pistol.
A shout torn from the bowels of hell exploded through the room. As Brone dropped the pistol and his right arm reared back, he charged first.
“I will kill you!” he screamed.
His fist connected with August’s cheek with a force that sent him flying against the foot of the bed where Meghan lay.
The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh. The sharp crack, devastating.
And a blade as sharp as any cut across Meghan’s heart.
Vomit burned Meghan’s throat.
August’s eyes—his right nearly swollen shut—touched hers.
“Stop it!” Meghan screamed, her throat raw. “Stooop!” She sobbed.
Brone shoved August at Campbell.
“You bloody son of a whore,” Campbell rasped. With violence she didn’t believe him capable of, he unleashed a series of rising blows to the chin.
August’s head whipped backward and forward in rapid succession.
“Nooo!” Meghan cried, releasing the blanket.
She jumped to put herself between August and Brone’s next attack, but it came too quick, and someone dragged her back.
A whoosh of air fell about her shoulders.
As Meghan struggled to shove her shaking arms into the jacket Arran thrust around her, Brone hauled an unresisting August to his feet—only to hit him with the same force to the other cheek. That blow turned August around on his feet with a sickening grace.
He spun in a grotesque dance—
They were in Lord and Lady Rutland’s ballroom; a gallopade played.
“…Are you familiar with the tune, my lord…”
—turning him around, until August whirled to face Meghan.
“…I am not, my lady…”
Until they met full circle in the middle; Meghan’s gaze met August’s.
His right eye puffed and bleeding, but…with sorrow. Regret.
From his lips—his beautiful lips that had just brought her more exquisite bliss than she had ever believed possible—trembled a single word.
“Sorr—”
Her brothers would not even allow him that.
Brone punched August. He went flying against the opposite wall, hitting cheek first before sliding to the floor.
Her body jerked; that blow ran through her.
“Stop,” Meghan rasped.
But no one heard. No one listened.
“Stop. Stop. Stop.”
Half mad, Meghan pivoted between her brother and cousin, darting to each, grabbing at them, shaking them.
Groaning, August lay limp, lifeless against the wall.
Gripping her hair at the scalp, Meghan wrenched the strands, tearing hard. Her body absorbed his hurt, her chest aching.
I am dying.
Half mad, she flew to her brother and grabbed his arm on the backswing of his fist.
“You cannot do this, Brone!” she rasped.
Meghan motioned toward August. “He is not even fighting.”
She made the mistake of looking at him.
His eyes closed, her impossibly powerful August improbably broken, and he slumped against the wall.
Tears burned her eyes. Furious, she dashed them away.
“He is not fighting because he’s a bloody coward,” Brone said with bone-chilling cheer.
She shivered, not recognizing her brother.
Brone nodded to one of the McQuoids behind her.
Anticipating the move, Meghan took a sprinting step in August’s direction, but Arran and Campbell had her fastened by the arms.
Bending low, Brone grabbed August’s arm, raised him from the wall, and stuck his splotched red face near August’s bloodied one.
“You fucking dog,” he snarled, spitting in his face.
Meghan wept. “Stop!”
Her proud August wore the other man’s saliva.
Brone struck August again and released him so quickly that August sprawled flat.
The low, anguished groans burrowing in his chest came rattled.
Sobbing, Meghan writhed and thrashed against their manacles.
She was invisible. No one heard her. No one saw her. They returned to a plane where gentility had been stripped away and man returned to his most basic, primal form. Grunting, shouting, violent beasts of rage.
And August would let them kill him.
And I will die…
Sweating, his chest billowing out and in, Brone stalked a short two-step path before August’s inert form. Like he didn’t know what to do with the force of hate and rage eating at him.
This time, he brought his boot back and caught August in the face. August’s cheek flew back with a sickening crack.
A kaleidoscope of grief and pain exploded in Meghan’s chest and imbued her with otherworldly strength.
“Nooooo!”
Meghan jammed the back of her heel into Campbell’s groin. She took her cousin down next.
Both men crumpled, and she flew to August.
Sinking beside him, sobbing, she hovered her hands over him. His face was unrecognizable beneath the mask of blood he wore.
“Oh, August,” she said, her voice breaking as she wept.
“Ffff.”
Fine. That garbled, mangled version of the word he would give for her reassurance.
Her tears fell over his face, the crystal drops blending with his blood, leaving their mixture pink.
“Fine, are you?” Brone growled. “I’ll correct that. Step aside, Meghan.”
“Do not,” she snarled.
Her hair hung around her face. Irreverent hate—like that of the fratricidal Cain-to-Abel battle she had never understood—flowed through her.
Crazed, she jabbed her fingers at him. At Campbell. At Arran. Again and again.
“He has to die, Meghan,” Brone said with a calm that froze her to the core. “If not today, then when he is able to hold a gun.”
Ice wound through her veins.
He would duel.
No, they would duel. August and Brone. Or one of her kin.
Meghan’s mind set into a rapid descent.
And August would not fight, because he was not fighting now…because he knew he had done wrong.
The trio stepped toward her.
Snarling, Meghan surged onto her haunches and waved wildly, warding them off with her arms alone.
Madness held her in its grip.
And they must have seen it.
They must have seen she was prepared to die for August this day. That she would make them carry her away—and that when they separated her from August, she would come right back to whatever place he was.
A faint caress down the back of her heel cut through the blind insanity.
Gasping, she spun back.
Moaning, she sank onto the floor beside August so they were face to face.
“I-I’m here,” she whispered.
She raised her fingers between them to clear the blood, to touch his nose…but hovered there.
There was no place safe to touch. Not without bringing him more pain.
“Meghan,” Campbell beseeched. “Where is your pride? Where is your loyalty?”
Was he mad?
Her pride? Loyalty?
What did those matter when there was love?
“Oh God, your n-nose,” she whispered, forgetting her brother’s meaningless questions.
A bend in the previously sharp, chiseled blade of flesh.
August lifted his head with difficulty. He leveraged himself up onto his elbow.
Unbowed. Unbroken.
“No. No. No,” she soothed, stroking his sweaty hair and wailing.
Ignoring her, August—like a knight of old returned from years of war—wrestled himself upright until he rose to his feet.
Heat suffused her as he laid a stake-claiming hand out.
When she placed hers trustingly in his, sounds of disgust went up from her family.
“By God,” Campbell snapped, “have you no shred of honor, Culross? Any decency?”
August stood at her side.
“What should I do? Leave her on the floor as you have done?”
Her breath hitched.
God, he was magnificent.
“Desuf,” August whispered.
“Wh-what?” She scrubbed the back of her sleeve across the tears and snot streaking her face. “I don’t understand y-you.”
Because they had mangled his beautiful mouth. The lips she had traced and learned the feel of.
Meghan hovered her palm over his cheek and wept harder.
August turned and spat blood from his mouth.
Plink.
“Desuv,” he said, his mouth cleared of saliva and blood, his gruff voice emerging.
“Deserve,” she repeated dumbly.
And the sight of him standing proud and unbroken sent a giddy light through her.
“The first thing he has said right,” Brone snarled. “The first thing you have both gotten right.”
Her brother’s voice droned. A strange buzzing filled Meghan’s head.
Meghan looked at the porcelain-white piece amidst his spit.
Her fingers trembling, she reached and touched—
They had knocked his tooth free.
“Meghan, step away from that dastard now.”
Fingers clasped hard around her shoulder, digging in enough to pull her free of August’s side.
Cursing, Meghan struggled against her cousin.
With a terrific roar that chased gooseflesh over her skin, August used each broad shoulder to shove off her brothers. Both men tumbled under the force with which he upended them.
He closed the space in a single stride and hauled Arran from her.
Transformed from mortal to monster, blood and sweat dripped from August’s honed physique.
He pressed her cousin by the neck against the wall.
Steady. Unrelenting.
August kept him pinned.
“Let me be clear,” he wheezed, his chest heaving. “I have allowed your offenses against me this day, but if you touch her—”
He squeezed Arran’s neck slightly.
“If you put your hand on her, you die.”
Click.
August stiffened.
“Release him,” Campbell said, a pistol pointed steadily at the back of August’s head.
She saw the inner battle he waged.
He had not fought for himself once.
Only when he felt Meghan was threatened had he moved.
And he would take a bullet.
Meghan’s stomach revolted.
And any one of her male relatives would be all too happy to do it.
August released Arran, and she breathed easier.
“Brone,” she said softly; her pulse thundered in her ears, making a mockery of her pretense at calm.
“Stay away, Meggy.” Brone shook August’s proud body for measure.
His gaze slipped, lingered on Meghan’s, and she knew what he saw.
The skin of her legs where the length of Arran’s jacket did not reach. Her bare feet.
“Oh, God.” Brone’s teeth began to chatter. “We heard him use you like a whore.”
She recoiled. Meghan swallowed her moan. “No!” Agony ripped fresh through her chest. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted—”
The crazed glint in his eyes made her rethink finishing—at least that portion.
She lifted her hand in entreaty. “Brone.” She made herself leave August.
Brone’s anguished eyes swung to her palm, and she kept coming.
“Meghan.” Campbell saw the step. He warned.
She ignored.
“Brone,” she murmured her brother’s name again, because the more she said it, the less maniacal the glint in his eyes became.
Meghan appealed to Brone, believer in love. Brone, who knew it was real, who had it for himself.
“I love him,” she whispered.
The room stilled.
The walls of the ship groaned. Timber creaked.
Hope slipped into her heart.
Meghan looked to August.
Tell them. She willed him with her eyes. Tell them you love me.
He gave his head the slightest imperceptible shake.
Meghan’s brow pulled together. She stared, confused.
The cracked and bleeding corners of his mouth attempted a smile.
For her.
A dull ache in her ribs throbbed.
“I love you,” he mouthed.
A sudden tightness seized her throat.
It was for her alone.
August knew her family would not care one way or another what he felt, or about his love or needs…
His beloved visage disappeared behind the tears in her eyes.
“M-Meghan?” Campbell’s faltering voice called her.
He stared with horror and shook his head.
“I love him.”
And those three words that the McQuoid-Smiths vowed conquered all—did.
Even the bloodlust of enemies.