Part 27 (1/2)

”I will sit with him, Serena.” Fiona knelt beside her, laying a comforting arm over her shoulders. ”You need rest, for yourself and your child.”

”I cannot leave him, Mama.” Serena wrung out a cool cloth and stroked it over Brigham's pale face. ”I am easier here than I would be if I tried to sleep. Just looking at him helps somehow. Sometimes he opens his eyes and looks at me. He knows I'm with him.”

”Then sleep here, for just a little while. Put your head in my lap as you did when you were a girl.”

With Fiona's gentle persuasion, Serena curled up on the floor of the cave. Reaching out, she covered Brigham's hand with her own.

”He is beautiful, is he not, Mama?”

With a little smile, Fiona stroked her daughter's hair. ”Aye, he is beautiful.”

”Our baby will look like him, with those fine gray eyes and strong mouth.” She closed her eyes and listened to the fearless song of the wind. ”I loved him, I think, almost from the first. I was afraid. That was foolish.”

Fiona continued to soothe and stroke as Serena's words grew slurred with sleep. ”Love is often foolish.”

”The child is moving,” she murmured, smiling as she drifted off.

”Brigham's child.”

Brigham's dreams were unrelenting. Sometimes he was back on the moor, trapped in the smoke and fury of battle. Men died agonizing deaths around him, some by his own hand. He could smell the blood and the acrid scent of gunpowder. He could hear the pipes and drums and the unrelenting boom of artillery.

Then he was limping through the hills, the fire in his side and the mist over his brain. He thought he smelt burning-wood and flesh-and heard screams echoing in his head.

Just when he knew he would scream himself from the sound of it, it stopped. Serena stood beside him, wearing a white dress that glittered over her skin, her hair falling like melted gold.

Sometimes when he opened his eyes he would see her, so clearly that he could make out the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. Then his weighted lids would close again and he would be pitched back onto the battlefield.

For three days he drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness, often delirious. He knew nothing of the little world that had been conceived within the cave, or of the comings and goings of its people.

He heard voices, but had not the strength to understand or to answer.

Once, when he floated to the surface, it was dark and he thought he heard a woman's quiet weeping. Another time, he heard the thin cry of a baby. At the end of three days he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, a sleep as peaceful as death.

Waking was something like being born, confusing, painful, helpless. The light burned his eyes, though it was dim in the rear of the cave. Weakly he shut them again and tried to orient himself with sounds and smells.

There was earth and smoke and, oddly, a smell of cooking food. There was also the sickly scent of poppies that spoke of sickness. He heard murmurs. With the patience of the weak he lay still until he began to make them out Coll. Gwen. Malcolm. Relief poured through him nearly as strongly as the delirium. If they were here and safe, so was Serena. He opened his eyes again, wincing at the light. He was gathering his strength to speak when he heard a rustle beside him.

She was there, sitting with her knees curled up close, her back against a wall of rock. Her hair had fallen forward, almost curtaining her face. A wave of love all but drained him.

”Rena,” he murmured, and reached to touch.

She woke immediately. Emotions raced across her face as she s.h.i.+fted close to run her hands over his face. It was cool, blessedly cool.

”Brigham.” She lowered her lips to his. ”You've come back to me.”

There was so much to tell him, so much to hear. At first Brigham was only strong enough to stay awake for an hour at a time. The memory of the battle was clear, but that of the aftermath was, mercifully, a blur to him. There had been pain, a hotter, sharper one than the throbbing ache he felt now. He remembered being dragged and lifted and carried. There had been cool water poured down his burning throat. Once he remembered coming out of a half swoon when he and Coll had stumbled across six bodies. Gradually, at his insistence, the gaps were filled in. He listened grimly, his fury and disgust at c.u.mberland's atrocities offset only by the joy of having Serena and his unborn child close to him.

”This place won't be safe for long.” Brigham sat braced against the wall of the cave, his face still pale in the dim light. It had been two days since he had come out of that fever. ”We need to move as soon as possible, toward the coast.”

”You're not strong enough.” Serena kept his hand in hers. A part of her wanted to stay snug in the cave and forget there was a world outside.

In answer, he brought their joined hands to his lips. But his eyes were hard and focused. He would be d.a.m.ned if he would see her forced to give birth in a cave. ”I think we could seek help from my kin on Skye.”

He looked at Gwen. ”How soon will Maggie and the baby be fit enough to travel?”

”In a day or two, but you-”

”I'll be ready.”

”You'll be ready when we say you are,” Serena cut in.

A trace of the old arrogance flickered into his eyes. ”You've grown tyrannical since I last saw you, madam.”

She smiled and touched her lips to his. ”I have always been a tyrant, Sa.s.senach. Rest now,” she urged as she settled a blanket over him.

”When your strength returns we shall go anywhere you choose.”

His eyes became very intense, and her smile wavered. ”I may hold you to that, Rena.”

”Just rest.” The weariness in his voice made her ache. He had left her a strong, seemingly invincible man. He had come back to her inches from death. She would not risk losing him to his own stubbornness. ”Perhaps Coll and Malcolm will bring back meat.” She lay beside him, stroking his brow as he drifted off, and wondering why her brothers tarried so long.

They had seen the smoke from the ridge. Sprawled on their bellies, Coll and Malcolm looked down at Glenroe. The English had come again, bringing their fire and their hate. Already the crofts lay in ruins, their thatched roofs gone. MacGregor House was alight, and flames flickered out of broken windows.

”d.a.m.n them,” Coll murmured over and over as he pounded a fist against the rock. ”d.a.m.n them all.”

”Why do they burn our houses?” Malcolm was ashamed of the tears and hastened to wipe them away. ”What need is there to destroy our homes?

The stables,” he said suddenly, and would have risen up if Coll hadn't restrained him.

”They would have taken the horses, lad.”

Malcolm pressed his face to the rock, caught between childish tears and a man's fury. ”Will they go now, and leave us?”

Coll remembered the carnage surrounding the battlefield.

”I think they will hunt the hills. We must get back to the cave.”

Serena lay quietly, listening to the comforting domestic sounds. Young Ian was suckling again, and Maggie hummed to him. Mrs. Drummond and Parkins murmured over the preparation of a meal, easily, as if they were still gossiping in the kitchen. Near Maggie, Fiona worked with a spindle, peacefully spinning what would one day be made into a blanket for her grandchild. Gwen fussed with her jars and pots of medicine.

They were all together at last, together and safe. One day, when the English grew tired of raping Scotland and returned over the border, they would go back down to Glen-roe. She would make Brigham happy there somehow, make him forget the glittering life he had led in London. They would build a house of their own near the loch.

Smiling, Serena s.h.i.+fted away to let Brigham sleep. She had a pa.s.sing thought to look out and see if she could spot her brothers returning, but even as she stood, she heard the sound of someone moving near the mouth of the cave. Words of greeting were on the tip of her tongue, but then she stopped. Neither Coll nor Malcolm would have a need to come so cautiously. With a hand that had gone suddenly cold, she reached for the pistol.

A shadow blocked out the light at the mouth of the cave. Then she saw with a sickening lurch of her heart the glint of metal and the telling red of the coat.

The soldier straightened, his sword raised, as he took quick stock of his find. Serena noted that his coat and his face were streaked with dirt and soot. There was a look of triumph in his eyes, and an unmistakable glint in them when he spotted Gwen.

Without a word, and with no thought of mercy, he advanced on Parkins.

Serena lifted the pistol and fired. He stumbled back, blank surprise showing in his face the instant before he crumpled to the ground.