Traitor or Temptress. Helen Dickson

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СКАЧАТЬ of her heart Lorne knew her trust in Duncan had brought about this horror. That was the moment she began to hate him.

      As she scrambled back down to the glen she saw nothing, heard nothing. Running with every nerve at full stretch, her heart and soul in her feet, she approached the village, one picture of what the Galbraiths and her own kin would do to David—might already have done to him—burnt on her brain in agony. Death stalked the quiet streets of Kinlochalen. She was too late.

      A burning curiosity to see the prisoner who had been brought down from the glen had induced the citizens out of doors. They were silent, huddled in groups, but Lorne saw only David’s wretched corpse where it lay in the square by the Mercat Cross, a place where witches and adulterers were scourged. His face was upturned to the sky, as fair and perfect in death as it had been in life.

      There was silence in Kinlochalen for a small space of time as the people and her father and brothers watched the small girl fall to her knees beside the youth and tenderly place her hand on his frozen cheek, her heart seized by a terrible anguish. Tears of hopelessness traced their way down her face, which she raised, fastening her accusing eyes on her father and brothers, noticing that none of the Galbraiths were present.

      ‘Daughter—get up off your knees,’ Edgar McBryde demanded, looking at her with bitterness and contempt.

      Lorne saw the murderous gleam in his eyes, clearly angry at the compassion she showed so unashamedly for this Lowlander, but it did not frighten her. She had gone beyond that. Her small chin jutted courageously upwards and her flashing eyes met his.

      ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ she cried. ‘He was not one of the raiders.’

      ‘The lad was dead when Ewan brought him down from the glen,’ her brother James told her gently, having sensed from what Ewan had said before going home to mourn his son that Lorne had tried to befriend the youth. Once young Rory had told them the young man’s name, a name familiar to them all, they knew that as a consequence of his death, they could expect no mercy from the powerful Monroes in the south.

      Galloping hooves broke the silence. Lorne scrambled to her feet and stood back when a party of about twenty men rode into the square. They stopped, their contemptuous gazes passing over the band of tough, unpolished warriors before finally coming to rest on David. Slowly the man at the head of the rest—a man accustomed to instant attention—rode forward and dismounted, going down on one knee and bowing his head over the dead youth, remaining silent for a moment as in prayer.

      Without looking at those around him, he lifted the boy up into his arms and carried him to his horse. No one attempted to stop him. The implacable authority in Iain Monroe’s manner and bearing caused the Highlanders to fall back. Assisted by one of his friends, he gently placed his brother over his horse’s back and swung himself up into the saddle behind him.

      Lorne moved forward, a small, slight figure in the midst of so many men. Averting her eyes from the youth whose life she had so valiantly and ardently tried to save, she looked into the face of his brother, Iain Monroe. At twenty years old, with his towering build and well-muscled chest, his hair and beard as black as jet, his brilliant silver eyes blazing with hellfire and damnation, some might say he had the face of Satan himself. Yet Lorne refused to lower her eyes or step away. It was important to her that this man should know she had meant his brother no harm and that she had tried to help him.

      ‘Please—wait,’ she begged him, unconsciously speaking in English and moving to the side of his horse. Her emerald eyes were awash with tears, her gaze riveted on the glittering violence in his own.

      Looking down, Iain saw a child. His eyes raked her stricken face. Without taking his eyes off her he listened as one of his companions—John Ferguson, who had met him on the road and directed him to the village—leaned towards him and said something in his ear. But recalling John’s description of the girl who had revealed his brother’s hiding place to Ewan Galbraith, the gold of her hair had already told Iain who she was. Lorne watched in agony as his eyes, refusing to relinquish their hold on her own, registered his hatred, a hatred so intense that all the muscles in his face tightened in a mask.

      To Iain Monroe, these Highlanders were a different species from his own, whose force of nature threatened the law-abiding civilisation of Scotland. In their tribal ignorance they conformed to no patterns of behaviour but their own. Their disdain of the rest of the world, their habits and manners, prejudices and superstitions, made them peculiar, and Iain cursed the whole lot of them to eternal damnation. But he would not be beaten by the likes of Edgar McBryde and Ewan Galbraith, Highlanders who would stick their murderous knives in your back as soon as look at you, men he vowed to see hanging from a rope’s end before he was done.

      ‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered, speaking with a cultured English accent, his words halting Lorne’s steps, his teeth, when he spoke, showing white and even in the midst of his black beard. He inspected her as if she were some repulsive creature crawling in the dirt.

      ‘I curse you, Lorne McBryde—I curse you all,’ he shouted, letting his cold eyes sweep the frozen faces of the onlookers, dwelling at length on Edgar McBryde, probing deep into his eyes, as if seeking something to weigh and to judge. His voice was awful and piercing deep, clutching the heart of every man, woman and child. Even the mighty Edgar McBryde and his sons bristled and stepped back before his icy wrath. ‘I shall make you pay for this day’s work, McBryde. You—and yours—will pay dearly. You slew my brother out of hand, unarmed as he was. Waging war on a defenceless lad is the work of mindless savages.’

      Iain was right. Edgar McBryde and the men gathered around him did resemble savages. Some had thrown off their plaids and stood half-naked, bristling with arms, a wildness in their eyes, their hands and bodies bloodied from the affray up on the moor.

      ‘We were not to know he was not one of the raiders. He should have had more sense than to ride down the glen at such an hour. It was impossible for the men of Kinlochalen to distinguish between them in the dark.’

      Omnipotent and contemptuous of his unworthy enemy, Ian’s voice was scornful. ‘Those men were under your control, McBryde—yours and Galbraith’s. Not even the plaid you disgrace can hide the fact that murder is your true vocation. You resemble a tribe of uncivilised, marauding barbarians, enmeshed in your blood-feuds and indiscriminate murder and content to remain there. The world is changing—Scotland is changing—and it will not be long before the lot of you are broken men and humbled. I—for one—am impatient to see that day.’

      The square was filled with tension and a dangerous hostility in the face of Iain Monroe’s contempt and bitter condemnation for the Highlanders’ way of life. Every fibre of Lorne’s body was vibrating with her need to have him know the truth about how she had tried to save his brother. In desperation she moved to go after him when he turned his horse about, but James’s hands grabbed her, jerking her back.

      ‘No—stay, Lorne. It’s over. Let him go.’

      She struggled in James’s grip, freeing herself and running after Iain Monroe, reaching up and grasping his bridle, her short legs moving quickly in an attempt to match the horse’s stride. ‘Please wait,’ she cried, almost choking on her sobs, so distraught was she. Halting his horse, he glared down at her and the expression in his eyes made her want to die. ‘You must listen to me. Please—I didn’t hurt him—’

      ‘Remove your hands from my horse,’ he seethed.

      When she refused to do as he ordered, he grasped her hand and forcibly uncurled each of her small fingers, one by one, from the bridle and thrust her from him. Like a broken doll she fell to the ground, where she lay and watched him ride away, the feeling of wretchedness and defeat lying on her young СКАЧАТЬ