Chapter 15 #3
come. “Be smart about this, Scott. Don’t make Pam a widow and
Robbie fatherless.” He looked the other three men in the eyes one
by one. “Ross, Douglas, Todd, don’t lose your lives or limbs over
this. No matter what, you’re not getting the princess, so take me,
let me deal with Roger. Too many people know who Princess Alina is
now. Too many know what Roger has done, what he’d intended to do to
the princess. As will her father, King Jerrik, soon enough.”
“What happens when her father, this King
Jerrik, exacts his revenge against Roger?” Ross, who was married
with two young children, asked. “What happens to us and our
families then?”
“He will not exact his revenge on the people
of North Shore,” Alina said loudly, sidling Etain up beside Beasty.
“You have my word on this.”
Scott held a hand up and spoke with Ross,
speaking low and glancing around several times.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Owen
told Roark as Scott and Ross continued to talk it over. “We’ve got
them outnumbered two to one.”
“Yes,” Roark said. “I do.” He met Alina’s
worried gaze. Alina, who’d forgiven him everything. Who he hoped
would forgive him this. “I got everyone into this and I’ll get them
out. No one else should pay for my actions any more than they
already have. Scott, Ross, and the others are decent men doing
their laird’s bidding. They don’t deserve to die today. None of you
do. I’ll not chance Alina getting hurt or taken, and I won’t let
anyone die today if I can help it.”
Owen nodded. “You’re a good man, Roark.”
“Thank you, Laird Owen. You saying that means
a lot.” He glanced at Alina, who was biting her lips and shaking
her head. He looked to Scott and Ross. “Do we have a deal?”
“We do,” Scott said.
“Damn,” Niels grumbled. “I was really hoping
for a go at those three idiots from the inn.”
Roark quirked his brow. “You may get your
chance yet,” he told the Northman. “Roger’s men will have no need
of them once they have me. My guess is they’ll toss them a copper
each and cut them loose within a league’s distance of here.”
Niels grinned as Owen ordered Liam and Duncan
to load the whisky and wool onto the Trade Wind. Roark
offered his hand to the laird and Niels. “Thank you,” he told them.
“For everything.”
Owen clasped his forearm, his green MacLeod
eyes serious. “If you get out of this alive, Roark MacInnes, you’ll
always have a place at Silver Water Keep.”
Roark nodded, unable to speak for the sudden
lump in his throat. His own father had never offered him such
praise and acceptance his entire life. Roger had only praised him
for a job well done when it was to Roger’s benefit. He nodded to
each of Owen’s men in turn and then met Alina’s wide-eyed gaze, his
heart splintering into a thousand shards at the pain and grief he
saw reflected there.
He took Etain’s reins from her trembling
hands and led them past Owen and his men, past Roger’s men, and up
to the gangplank of the Trade Wind. He dismounted from
Beasty, wrapped his hands around Alina’s slim waist, and helped her
down from Etain, groaning as she slid her body against his until
her feet hit the ground. She leaned into him, embracing him as
tightly as he embraced her, as if they could hold on against
everything and everyone pulling them apart.
“I wish it could be otherwise, Ali love,” he
whispered in her ear. “I wish we truly were in a world where our
actions had no consequences or repercussions for anyone other than
ourselves.”
“But we don’t,” she whispered into his neck.
“We never did.” She lifted her head and met and held his gaze, her
crystalline green eyes glistening with tears. “I love you, Roark
MacInnes.” She grabbed him by the arms and shook him. “You stay
alive, sir stag,” she told him. “You stay alive until I can come
back for you. And I will. I swear it.”
Roark nodded and pressed his forehead to
hers. “I will, my lady owl. I will do whatever I can and must. I
swear it.”
She rolled her forehead against his. “I know
you will,” she said. “You will do whatever you think right and
necessary. That’s what worries me.”
He tilted up her chin and smiled down into
her beautiful, sad face, and she smiled back through her tears. He
lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, soft, tender, and
lingering sweet, and then he broke the kiss, offered her his arm,
and walked her up the gangplank.
***
Alina stepped onto the Trade Wind’s
deck, loath to let go of Roark’s arm. To let go of him. They stood
there for an eternity as the ship’s crew loaded the barrels of
whisky and batts of wool in the hold, neither of them speaking a
word. What was there left to say? They’d been saying good-bye for
days now, all the words had been spoken, all the endearments
whispered, their love proclaimed.
When the last of the trade goods had been
loaded, and the hatches battened down, Roark lifted Alina’s hand
from his arm, kissed the backs of her fingers, untied the sheath
from his waist belt, and placed the spyglass in her hand. He gave
her one last, slow, melting grin, and then he turned and walked
back down the gangplank.
Holding the spyglass in her numb fingers,
Alina stood rooted to the deck as she watched Roark walk away from
her. She clamped her jaw tight to keep from calling out after him,
to beg him not to give himself up to almost certain death for the
sake of others. For her. Yet she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t
ask him to give up his honor for her. She’d tried, many times, and
he’d refused every time, and she loved him all the more for it.
She stood and watched him mount Beasty as the
ship’s captain gave the orders to set sail. She watched him take
Etain’s reins and led her over to stand between Scott’s and Ross’s
mounts. She watched as he looked up and found her gaze and held it.
He smiled, and she tried to smile back but couldn’t, else her
fragile mask of fortitude would crack and break.
She startled at the creak of rigging and the
snap of sails unfurling and closed her ears to the shouts of the
sailors throwing off tie lines to the dock.
Beneath her feet the ship lurched forward as
the wind filled the sails. She touched her fingertips to her lips
and held her hand up to Roark, her tears falling freely as the wind
and the tide pulled the ship, and her, away from her one true
love.