Chapter 21
Chapter 21
He stopped them in their tracks. “You are a Duncanson?”
Maura swallowed. Archie had told her of the events at Glencoe and what was known of the officers who had ordered the slaughter. Major Duncanson was her father’s brother. And Captain Robert Campbell was her mother’s uncle.
Her blood could not be more tainted.
Dugan dismounted and left her there atop Glencoe. The irony of it did not escape her.
“Dugan?”
She could not jump down and follow him because she was too far off the ground. But waiting while a hideous wave of guilt washed over her was not acceptable, either.
She took up Glencoe’s reins and walked the horse through the mist in the direction Dugan had gone, aware that with one misstep, she could tumble over a cliff. She would massacre Glencoe all over again.
“Dugan?”
Dear God, he might have fallen.
Maura had been dreaming while they rode, of possibilities. Of finding gold and having the freedom to choose her own destiny ... a future that included Dugan. And Rosie, of course. She knew Dugan would not deny her sister a safe refuge at his holding.
She’d hardly been awake when she mentioned Aucharnie, otherwise she never would have spoken the name of her home. She knew what her kin had done to Dugan, to his family.
Dear God, how he must despise her.
“Dugan?” She whispered his name this time, almost afraid to face him now that he knew.
He would soon make the connection between the Duncansons and the Duke of Argyll—yet another enemy.
She came upon him all at once. He was crouched down, yanking up bits of moss from the ground between his feet. His expression was one of anger as well as disbelief. “Yet another Duncanson has a MacIain at her mercy.”
“A MacIain?”
“I was born to clan MacIain. Do not pretend the name means naught to you.” He tossed away the moss and stood, taking the reins of the horse from her.
“No.” Maura felt shame and culpability by association. “Archie told me something of what happened at Glencoe. Dugan, I—”
“Damned MacLean mouth.” His blue eyes had turned to ice, and he looked away as though he could not stand the sight of her.
“No, don’t be angry. I asked him.”
“About Glencoe?”
“I knew naught of it, Dugan.” She reached for him. “Help me down?”
“No.” His voice was harsh. “ ’Tis better to keep moving.”
Maura felt tears spill from her eyes as he mounted the horse behind her and used some mysterious internal compass to turn the horse in the direction they had been going. At least, she thought ’twas the same direction. For all she knew, he might shove her off a nearby cliff in retaliation for what her family had done to his.
She shuddered. She knew next to naught about the events that had occurred at Glencoe. Only that Dugan’s parents and brother had been killed by soldiers who’d been billeted with his clan. That her mother’s uncle had carried out the atrocious orders, given by her father’s brother.
“Dugan ... This changes naught. I—”
“Your kin slaughtered my family. And you think naught has changed?”
“I cannot tell you how sorry I am,” Maura said. “I never knew such things happened.” She remembered Robert Duncanson as a stiff and unyielding man, and had never liked or felt comfortable with him. But that was no excuse. If he’d been a decent Christian—
“Do you know what it means to murder under trust, Lady Maura?” He said her name as though the very sound of it on his lips was abhorrent.
Maura swallowed tightly and nodded. Murder under trust was the worst possible offense—the killing of one’s host after accepting his hospitality. She felt her joints turn to jelly.
“Aye. Major Duncanson gave the orders, and Robert Campbell of Glenlyon carried them out.”
“I never kn—”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Ah, right. You never knew that men like your Sassenach Lieutenant Baird merely follow orders given by bloody, fecking bastards like Major Robert Duncanson and the Earl of Stair.”
“No, I do know,” she said quietly. “I know they are despicable. And my father is one of the worst.”
Dugan felt Maura take a deep, shuddering breath, but she said nothing more. What was there to say? That she was part of a lying, butchering clan of savages who’d slaughtered his family? Destroyed the life he had been meant to lead?
He’d vowed long ago to despise the name of Duncanson and to destroy every one of them if he ever got the chance.
He ought to pull her down from his horse and let her find her own way to ... to wherever it was that she thought the gold was hidden. Or was that just a lie, too? A clever scheme to get him to take her to her sister? Because Monar was on a direct path toward Loch Camerochlan.
He didn’t know what to believe anymore. His musings all morning about how perfect she was had been wholly mistaken. He would never take a Duncanson to wife.
Baron Kildary was welcome to her.
Dugan never spoke of the events at Glencoe to anyone. It had been the darkest, most vile day of his life, and it chilled his heart to know that Maura’s kin had been part of it all.
He forced away the memory of that February morning. Twenty-five years had passed since that godforsaken day. He was a grown man now, and laird of his mother’s clan, the MacMillans. He was responsible for the people there, and he would not let the damned duke’s unreasonable demand end in disaster. The way Laird MacIain had done at Glencoe.
“It seems to me you owe me, Lady Maura.”
She turned to look at him then, her eyes wet with tears he chose to ignore. For what did she know of it? What did she know of the kind of betrayal and gruesome loss he’d suffered?
She averted her eyes. “I know.”
“The location of the gold is my price for your kin’s offenses against mine.”
Mayhap Dugan was right and Maura should just tell him what she’d seen on the back of the map.
But then he would send her to Braemore and turn her over to Baron Kildary, and Rosie would languish forever at Loch Camerochlan with Tillie Crane.
“I cannot tell you,” she said quietly. She’d felt this kind of desolation only once before—the day Lieutenant Baird had gleefully locked her inside her chamber at Aucharnie and they’d taken Rosie away.
“Damnation, woman!”
Maura bolstered her resolve. She was not guilty for what her kin had done, and she refused to pay for their heinous offenses. At least, not entirely. “You sent Bryce to your holding to delay Baron Kildary until your return. I refuse to go there. I will take you to the gold and then go on my way to Loch Camerochlan for Rosie.”
“ ’Tis not up to you to dictate the terms.”
“But it is,” Maura countered, brushing away her unwelcome tears. “I will not give you the means to be rid of me, Laird.”
Old Sorcha had said the Glencoe lad would not find the map’s secret, and she’d been right. The old woman had spoken of an ally, too. That the map would be of no use to Maura without an ally.
’Twas clear Dugan was her ally, whether he liked it or not.
She hoped she’d judged him correctly. True, he belonged to a breed she did not know or understand, but she did not think he would resort to violent means to elicit the clue from her. She’d seen his kindness with the crippled serving girl at Caillich, and she hoped his principles would prohibit him from treating her with brutality.
In a tense silence, they rode up a sloping hillside, and when they reached its peak, Maura looked down into a glen where the mist was not as thick as what they’d left behind. She saw Dugan’s men ahead, riding toward a large, thatched cottage. It was clearly a prosperous holding, with a shed and a modest barn, although they all appeared to be abandoned. There were cattle grazing on the grasses as far as the eye could see, and a lone horse standing beside the old stone shed. Chickens were out free and pecking in the dirt.
Conall paused to look back, and when he saw Dugan’s horse emerge out of the mist, he spoke to the other men. They stopped to wait.
Maura welcomed the sight of the cottage. She hoped the presence of others would help to mitigate the tension that flared between her and Dugan, and there might even be an opportunity for her to gain access to the maps again. Alone.
Exactly the way she’d expected this journey to be. Yet she’d been anything but alone. When she’d have struck off on her own after Fort William, she’d resented and feared Dugan at first. Now she believed he was a fair man who was only trying to do what he must for his clan.
The atrocity her kin had committed against his family was so profound, Maura could not blame his disgust with her for being part of their clan. If she could have changed her name and her origins, she would have done so years before.