Chapter 2
CAMERON HALL, SCOTLAND
Robert Francis Cameron mac Cameron stood up to his ankles in blood and muck and cursed.
The day had not gone as he’d planned. He was surrounded by dead and dying, which wouldn’t have troubled him any other day but today too many of those poor souls were his own kin. Damn those bloody Fergussons to hell.
He’d never liked them. He liked them even less than he liked the MacLeods to the south.
At least a MacLeod would come to a battle with a sword in his hand and a grin on his face.
He had yet to meet a Fergusson who wasn’t lying in wait behind some bloody bush, ready to cry foul for some imagined slight and demand a fight to settle it.
And they tended to stab in the back.
His youngest brother had discovered that first-hand. Sim lay facedown in the mud, a wicked-looking dagger haft sticking out of his back. His next youngest brother, Breac, had just fallen to his knees, clutching his belly where a sword had recently resided.
“Cameron, ride for the MacLeod witch.”
Cameron looked up. “What?”
His cousin Giric stood in front of him. “I said, ride for the MacLeod witch. ’Tis a rout for us here anyway. I’ll see Breac back to the hall. Go fetch a healer before he dies.”
Cameron looked about the field and saw that his cousin had it aright. There were more dead Fergussons lying before him than he’d ever had the pleasure of seeing before. Of course, his clan had paid the price as well, but not an equal one.
Unless he was to count the loss of one brother who was already dead and the other who would be dead before midnight, and then the price had been high indeed. And for what? Yet another imagined slight.
He stood there in the rain and stared down at Sim, that braw, fearless lad who had seen but twenty winters.
Where was the justice that he should meet death on a soggy spring day?
There was a girl waiting for him behind in the keep, a girl he’d planned to wed in the summer, a girl who would likely now end her own life in despair.
And then there was Breac. A score and four years sat upon him, years full of laughter and maids fighting each other to have him.
He had a wife, a young son, and another babe coming in the fall.
How would Gilly react when Breac was brought back, bleeding from a wound that no power on earth could heal?
At least he had no one waiting for him inside the hall. He was too sour, too demanding, too brusque. There was the occasional wench willing to warm his bed, but nary a one willing to touch his heart. Perhaps it was a pity that he alone of his brothers remained on his feet.
“Cam!”
He looked at his cousin. “Do not call me that,” he growled. “’Tis Sim’s name for me.”
“Very well, Cameron,” Giric snarled, “go fetch that damned MacLeod witch before you kill another of your brothers.” He spat onto the bloody ground. “You shouldn’t have faced this challenge openly.”
“I am no Fergusson,” Cameron said coldly. “I don’t creep up behind those I intend to slay.”
“Aye, and your brothers are dead because of your precious honor, aren’t they?
Cameron knew he should have used the blood-drenched sword he held in his hands a final time to slay the whoreson standing in front of him, but as Giric was his first cousin—and the only one left him—he supposed there was reason enough to allow him to draw breath a bit longer.
“See Breac safely to my chamber,” he commanded.
“I will. Go.”
Cameron nodded, then caught sight of his priest wandering through the mud, bending every now and again to close eyelids or feel for a heartbeat.
He turned away. He wasn’t ready to watch the man close either of his brothers’ eyes, not when he might be able to save one of them.
He turned and sprinted for his hall. He resheathed his sword in the scabbard strapped to his back, swung up on his horse, then wheeled around and thundered south.
He would fetch the witch and hope.
He could do nothing else.
For almost two hours he rode as if the very devil himself were on his heels.
He slowed only when he crossed onto MacLeod lands and only because it behooved him to be careful.
He might have had a chance to tell them why he was borrowing their healer; then again, they might have killed him first and wondered what he was about later.
He had to admit that was the one thing he liked about them.
He wasn’t one to pause and contemplate where action served him better, either.
But he needed their healer, so he was careful.
He knew where he was going, for the most part.
’Twas rumored that the healer’s house was to the north of the keep, north and a bit east. Surely he could slip past their scouts, snatch the woman whilst she was stirring her pot, and make off with her before she could sound any alarm.
With any luck at all, the MacLeods were just as afeared of her as he was and they wouldn’t be guarding her.
She would be by herself and easily carried off.
He left his horse tied to a tree on the edge of the forest, then melted into the shadows. He heard nothing, but that wasn’t reassuring. Scouts were, by nature, very silent lads. If they weren’t, they were usually dead.
With that pleasant thought to keep him company, he continued to creep through the forest. He would find the old woman, convince her to come with him by promising her some reward she wouldn’t be able to refuse, then spirit her back to his horse.
For all he knew, she would be able to work a miracle and Breac would be whole once again.
He wasn’t pessimistic by nature, his sour disposition aside, but he supposed he would be surprised only if his brother lived long enough to allow the witch to look at him.
He turned away from the thought of being the last of his father’s sons, partly because he would miss his brothers and partly because it would change nothing for him.
He would still be laird of an unruly and feisty clan.
Giric would still slink around behind him, waiting for a chance to slip a knife between his ribs.
He would still hold on to power by the sheer force of his will alone.
Hadn’t his father done the same, ruling with an iron will and heavy hand long after Cameron’s mother had fretted herself into an early grave?
Cameron had always known that he would take his father’s place—and not just because he was the eldest. His father had given him his clan’s name to remind him who and what he was.
His mother had given him another unprecedented pair of names to remind him that whilst he was his father’s son, he was also hers and came from a line of fair, reasonable men. His father had called him nothing but Cameron, likely out of spite. His parents’ marriage had not been a happy one.
It was, he suspected, why he was still unwed.
Or perhaps ’twas that he hadn’t yet found a reasonable woman.
He didn’t want a shrew like Gilly, Breac’s wife, who would blame him for everything that went awry in her life, and he didn’t want an immature, unsteady girl like Heather, Sim’s lass, who would no doubt sob herself to death over Sim’s lifeless body.
He wanted a woman who would stand up to him but not screech at him, who would respect him but not cower, who would love him and not betray him.
Obviously, he was doomed to die without an heir.
He continued to walk silently through the woods until he saw a clearing. A little house stood there, listing to the west, with a pale, unholy sort of light spilling out the rounded windows. The air around it shimmered with some sort of magic that he couldn’t quite see but he could certainly feel.
Apparently he had come to the right place.
He dragged his sleeve across his suddenly sweaty forehead and pressed on. It was just a woman, and an old one at that. He was weary and that had led him to imagine things that were not so. He had nothing to fear.
He hesitated in front of her door for far longer than he should have, then put his shoulders back and reminded himself that he’d seen a bloody score and seven autumns already and he wasn’t about to die on the hearth of a woman who was—despite the rumors—nothing more than a brewer of potions to cure warts.
He took a deep breath, then rapped smartly on the door.
And for the briefest instant, he wondered if he might be so fortunate as to have her not answer.
The door opened suddenly and a woman stood there. Cameron couldn’t see her face, for the light from her fire was behind her, casting her into shadow.
“Are you the MacLeod witch?” he demanded in his most brusque tone. It wasn’t that he was nervous; he was simply in haste. ’Twas best the witch understand from the start who was in command.
She tilted her head to one side. “Aye, I am,” she said slowly.
Cameron found himself unreasonably relieved to find her Gaelic was intelligible. He wouldn’t have been surprised to have had her babble in some sort of evil tongue that would cast a spell on him immediately.
If he believed in that sort of thing, which he most certainly did not.
“Did Jamie send you to fetch me?” she asked.
He considered giving her the truth, then decided against it. If she was expecting to be summoned by a Jamie, a Jamie he would be until he’d gotten her home. He was already going to hell for consorting with a witch. A bald-faced lie or two wouldn’t make things any worse for him.
“Aye,” he said briskly. “Come with me now.”
“All right.” She stepped back. “Let me get—”
“Nay,” he interrupted. “Now.”
“I have to bank the fire.”
He would have done it for her, but he found that he couldn’t cross her threshold.
He stood in shadow with his hand extended into her home and fought the urge to shiver.
To distract himself, he watched her move back across her floor to tend her fire.
When she turned back toward him, he felt his mouth fall open.
Why in the hell had he thought the MacLeod witch would be an old hag?