Part 16 (1/2)
He bridged over half the distance but when Ian showed no sign of dismounting, he stopped in his tracks.
”What ails ye, laddie?” he called out, knowing his familiar smirk would gall Ian far more than his exaggerated burr. ”Gettin' too much enjoyment from sneerin' down yer nose at a lowly Sinclair?”
Ian glared at him for a minute longer before sliding off the horse to face him. From this distance, he could have been that same proud, aloof boy who had been stoically taking a beating the first time Jamie had laid eyes on him. But as Jamie neared, the contempt written in every line of Ian's bearing reminded Jamie that he hadn't been that boy for a very long time.
Jamie didn't stop until they stood eye to eye for the first time in four years. ”Usually your uncle sends one of his attack dogs to do his dirty work for him. To what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your company?”
”Perhaps he thought you'd be less likely to gun me down where I stand. Not out of misplaced sentiment or common decency, of course, but to preserve your own loathsome hide.”
Despite his best intentions, Jamie felt his temper begin to rise. ”Funny how you didn't hate me until your uncle told you it was expected of you.”
”I'm sure I would have if you hadn't deliberately misled me. If you had told me who you were from the beginning. Exactly Exactly who you were.” who you were.”
Jamie shook his head sadly. ”You still don't know who I am.”
Ian's dark eyes glittered with barely suppressed fury. ”I know you're a no-good thief and a murderer. When I hunted you down that day on the mountain after my uncle told me how you had tricked me-how you had played me for a fool all those years at school and made me a laughingstock in his eyes-you didn't even have the decency to deny shooting down his gamekeeper in cold blood.”
”You just proved my point,” Jamie said softly. ”If I had to deny it, you never knew me at all.” He could almost feel Emma's gaze on his back, knew she was watching every nuance of their exchange even if she could not hear their words. ”I didn't come here today to argue with you. I came to keep my end of our bargain. As you can see,” he said, jerking his head toward where she stood patiently waiting beside his horse, ”Miss Marlowe is unharmed and ready to come with you.”
Unharmed but not unf.o.o.ked.
Jamie had to close his eyes briefly as Bon's impish voice danced through his head, accompanied by a vision of Emma lying naked beneath him on the blankets, her lips parted in a wordless sigh of pleasure as he drove himself deep inside her.
He opened his eyes to banish the vision. ”Did your uncle send what I asked for?”
Ian nodded curtly, then turned and signaled toward the far end of the glen.
The six henchmen guarding the south entrance to the glen nudged their horses apart, making room for a flatbed wagon manned by a beefy driver to pa.s.s between them. As they closed ranks once again, the wagon came trundling across the gra.s.s toward Jamie and Ian. The vehicle made a half-circle, finally rolling to a halt facing the opposite direction a few feet behind Ian.
Jamie scowled at the wooden chests weighting down its bed. ”What in the bluidy h.e.l.l is this?” he demanded, returning his gaze to Ian's face to search for any sign of treachery. ”Some sort of trick?”
”Of course it's not a trick,” Ian snapped. ”It's exactly what you asked for.”
As Jamie moved forward, Ian's hands curled into fists. But Jamie stalked right past him, heading for the wagon. The driver eyed him nervously over his shoulder as he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a fallen branch from the ground, but relaxed when Jamie moved to use the branch to pry open the lid of the chest closest to the back of the wagon bed.
The lid fell away with a clatter. The morning sunlight glinted off its contents, nearly blinding him.
Shaking his head in mute disbelief, Jamie moved to pry open the lid of the next chest only to find exactly the same thing awaiting him.
Gold. A king's ransom in gold.
He spun around, turning his disbelieving gaze on Ian. ”What is this? This isn't what I asked for! This isn't what your uncle promised me!”
”Of course it is!” Ian insisted, a shadow of bewilderment softening the contempt in his eyes. ”It's exactly what you demanded in your note. Enough gold for you and your men to live on for the rest of your wretched lives.”
He reached inside his frock coat, forcing Jamie to move his own hand a few inches closer to the b.u.t.t of his pistol. But it wasn't a weapon that appeared in Ian's hand. It was a folded piece of vellum.
He thrust the paper toward Jamie. ”My uncle also said to give you this.”
Jamie strode forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the missive from Ian's hand. He tore it open, this time not pausing to admire the fine quality of the paper or the elaborate Hepburn crest stamped into the sealing wax. There were eight words scrawled across the paper in a feeble, spidery hand: What you seek is not mine to give. What you seek is not mine to give.
While Ian stood there staring at him as if he were a madman, Jamie crumpled the note in his fist, fury rising like bile in his throat. The crafty auld b.a.s.t.a.r.d had done it again. He'd betrayed Jamie and left him standing there empty-handed and half blind with rage.
He lifted his burning gaze to the bed of the wagon. Ian was right. There was enough gold in those chests to last a lifetime. It could keep Muira and her family and all those like them on this mountain in milk and meat for many winters to come. His own men could finally stop running, stop hiding, settle down and have cottages and wives and children of their own if they so desired.
He glanced over his shoulder at Emma. Tension was written in every line of her bearing, as if she sensed something had gone badly amiss.
She had been right as well, Jamie thought bitterly. She was nothing to the earl. Just to have the last laugh in their lifelong battle of wits, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had been willing to gamble that Jamie would set her free in exchange for the gold instead of marching right back to her, shoving the mouth of his pistol against her temple and pulling the trigger.
Jamie closed his eyes briefly just to block out the sight of her. Despite what his parents had been foolish enough to believe, this feud would never end. But he couldn't keep dragging Emma all over the Highlands indefinitely. She might not survive the next drenching rain, the next surprise snowstorm, the next harrowing ride up the mountain while trying to elude the Hepburn's men.
She might not survive him.
”Wait here,” he snarled at Ian.
Rubbing a hand over his rigid jaw, he went striding back across the glen to Emma.
”Did you get what you wanted?” she asked as he approached, the proud tilt of her chin reminding him that he had made her believe there would always be something in this world he wanted more than her.
He couldn't very well tell her he wasn't even sure what he wanted anymore. That everything he had dreamed of, everything he had fought for up until the day he first laid eyes on her, now seemed less than worthless to him.
So he simply said, ”You're free.”
She nodded, then turned and went walking toward Ian. At first Jamie thought she meant to leave him without so much as a backward glance, which would be no less than what he deserved. But she had only traveled a few feet before she turned and came running back to him.
Clutching his arm and standing on tiptoe, she touched her lips to his ear and whispered, ”There won't be any strapping young lovers. There will only be you.”
He reached for her but she was already gone. All he could do was stand there and watch her walk away from him, his empty hands slowly curling into fists. Her back was straight, her shoulders unbowed despite everything she had endured since arriving in Scotland.
What a bluidy fool he had been! He had tried to steal something so precious he should have been willing to sacrifice a king's ransom to possess it.
She was nearly halfway to Ian now. Jamie willed her to turn and look back at him one last time, to see in his eyes all of the things he had been too cowardly to confess. But she just kept walking.
He had to stop her, to tell her that he was even more of a fool than his parents had been. At least they had died with something to show for their folly, even if it was only a few stolen months of happiness. If he let Emma go riding out of that glen with Ian, he would have nothing except the memory of the one night she had spent in his bed and a lifetime of regrets.
He was already taking a step when a beam of sunlight glinted off something high up in one of the cedars to the east of the wagon, distracting him. He squinted toward the tree, just barely able to make out the gleaming black barrel of a pistol protruding from the dense sweep of boughs.
Jamie frowned. His men knew better than to scale a cedar that high. If something went wrong, it would make it too easy for Hepburn's henchmen to cut off their escape route.
That was when he realized it was the wrong tree.
The wrong man.
Like a sleeper wading through the cloying fog of a dream, he followed the line of fire from the pistol to its target-not his breast but Emma's. Not his heart but hers. Oblivious to the threat, she continued across the glen, utterly alone, utterly exposed.
Jamie yanked his pistol from the waistband of his breeches and lunged into motion, knowing even as he did so that there was no way he could shoot down the a.s.sa.s.sin from this distance, no way he could reach her before it was too late.