Page 65 of Highland Fire

She did not get far. Her ankle would not hold her.

Moving blindly, using her hands to guide her, she stumbled over rocks and boulders.

She was holding her breath, bracing herself for the blow that would end it all.

When it did not come, she knew it was the mist that saved her.

Once it lifted, she would become an easy target.

When her hands closed around birse and gorse, she rested.

Her blood was pounding in her ears, and her lips were pressed fiercely together to deaden the sound of her breathing.

She had reached the entrance to the quarry.

The silence was harrowing. She strained to catch every sound. There was nothing. No creatures were stirring. No birds were singing. The only sound she was aware of was the thundering of her own panicked heart.

When a horse whinnied, her head jerked round. Her pony was close by. If she could only get to it, she could save herself. Hardly had she risen to her haunches when she sank down again. It was what he would expect her to do. He was lying in wait for her. She sensed it in every fine hair on her body.

The whole thing seemed so unreal that she had the strongest urge to call out, as if she were a child again, say she was tired of the game and she wanted to go home.

Her mind was reeling with a confusion of thoughts, none of which made much sense to her.

Of one thing, however, she was no longer in any doubt.

The man who was stalking her, a man she had loved and trusted all her life, was in the grip of some murderous dementia.

It had all been too much for him—the fire, Glenshiel’s stroke, and now the conviction that her mother and Daroch had wed in secret. He was reliving the old feud.

She was horribly afraid. Fighting down her panic, she made an effort to take stock of her position.

She must do the unexpected, take him unawares.

He would expect her to choose the easy route, head down toward the Feardar Bridge.

Closing her eyes, she traced in her mind the path she must take to escape him.

She must go up, up to the top of the quarry and over the open moor.

Carefully, soundlessly, she rose to her knees.

A pebble came tumbling from the crags above and she let out a startled sob of alarm.

To her left, she heard his tread, and she was on her feet and moving.

Her gait awkward, foundering on rocks, she pushed herself to her limits.

She knew she was out of the quarry when she felt the wind on her face, the slope of the ground beneath her feet.

The heather muffled every sound as she turned to the right, up the slope into the swirling mists.

When she found the path which led around the quarry, relief washed over her in waves.

She was shaking and her clothes were wet through with a mixture of perspiration and the dew from the mist. But it was her foot which caused her the most anxiety. The swelling was straining at the confines of her boot, and the pain was excruciating. She could not go on like this for much longer.

“Morag. Ye cannot escape me.”

That ghostly voice, coming, as it seemed to her, from right behind her, renewed her strength.

Ignoring the stitch in her side and the pain in her foot, she forced herself to go on.

Up, up, stumbling, half-crouched over, she threw herself into the kindly mist as though she were throwing herself into a lover’s arms.

She could hear sounds now, the lonely call of a golden eagle from its eyrie high in the mountains, and nearby, the song of a thrush and the answering warble of its mate.

But the sounds which pushed her to the limits of her endurance were the soft footfalls of the man who stalked her, his harsh breaths as he labored to overtake her.

She came out of the mist so suddenly that it took her a moment or two to adjust her eyes to the glare.

On one side of the path, thickets of brambles and gorse hemmed her in.

On the other, the ground fell away and the sheer granite face of the quarry disappeared into the gray mists, dropping sixty feet or so to its rocky floor.

The breeze was blowing the mist down from the hills into the valley below.

At this elevation, the mist would soon clear.

Comprehension flashed into her brain, and she spun around to face the sound of those sinister footfalls.

Eyes staring, breath coming in sobs from her exertions, she slowly backed away.

She cried out when the mist parted, like a door opening, and he emerged.

Then the mist closed behind him, and they were the only two people in the world.

He looked so much the Highland gentleman.

His trews were of the Randal tartan. His dark coat was draped with a Randal plaid that was indistinguishable from the one draped around her own shoulders.

On his head, he wore a black bonnet with an amber Cairngorm set in silver.

He was leaning on his staff, recovering his breath. Tears glistened on his ruddy cheeks.

“Why?” she moaned. “Why do you hate me so?”

“Ye know why! Did Daroch’s men no’ rape my mother in front of my very eyes?”

“But that was a different age! Different people! You must let the past go.”

His eyes were staring at a point above her shoulder, and she knew that he had ceased to listen to her.

He was weeping openly, making no attempt to dash away the tears that flowed so copiously.

“I was only a boy,” he said brokenly, and in that moment he sounded like a bewildered child, crying for a mother’s comfort.

“Yet that did not stop them. They took me, in front o’ my mother, using me as a man uses a woman.

Can ye wonder that I hate the whole tribe o’ Gordons? ”

She was weeping too. “I didn’t know! How could I have known? But they paid for what they did! They hanged for it!”

His breathing was easier now. “Aye. Glenshiel saw to it. He always took care o’ me. Now I must be the one to take care o’ things. Ye have sullied our blood. Ye, too, must pay the penalty for your iniquity.”

“You won’t get away with it! Everyone will know that you are a murderer!”

“How will they know?” He spoke softly, gently, as though he were explaining something to a difficult child.

“Have I not arranged things to make it look like a misadventure? When they find ye, there will be no marks on ye that could not come from a fall from a great height. They will think ye fell into the quarry while ye were searching for your dog. Or they will think the hound herself has savaged ye.”

Her voice came out thin and breathless. “Is that what happened to Mr. Haughton?”

He smiled, and it made her blood run cold. “Near enough. We went for a wee walk up toward Lochnagar. I hid his body in a gully, never thinking it would be discovered. It was sheer chance that your dog found him and tore the clothes from his body. Och, well, it all worked out for the best.”

He brought his staff up, holding it in both hands.

Her eyes were darting around, frantically searching for a way of escape.

She feinted to the right, as though she meant to dash through a thicket of brambles.

The staff flashed out, breaking branches as if they were straws.

He came at her again, and she dodged out of the way.

She was getting perilously close to the edge of the quarry.

Without volition, she glanced behind her, trying to gauge her position. He acted quickly to take advantage of the incautious impulse. The staff caught her across one shoulder, and she went staggering to her knees in a paroxysm of pain. He moved in for the kill.

Towering over her, he raised the staff high above his head.

Her hands went out automatically to ward off the blow.

She saw a slight hesitation, a relaxation of his muscles, and her thoughts raced about, trying to make sense of it.

He was listening to the silence. Her own ears strained to catch every sound.

All her senses were heightened. Like a deer in the chase, she lifted her head. Instinct warned her of the approach of the beast that stalked her. Something was out there, something that hunted them both.

Joy burst through her, and the word tore spontaneously from her throat. “Bocain!” From the floor of the quarry, her cry was thrown back, echoing eerily from rock face to rock face.

He wheeled around, searching the mist with his eyes.

Cautiously rising to her feet, she began to inch away.

She could hardly keep herself upright. The chill mountain breeze caught at her plaid, and her teeth began to chatter.

Hugging herself, one step at a time, she increased the distance between them.

When he turned back to her, his breathing was as ragged as hers. “Your hound comes too late.”

“Bocain will tear you to pieces if you harm a hair of my head.” It wasn’t a threat. She was pleading with him.

Her words made no impression. “We’ll go together,” he told her, almost as though he regretted having to hurt her. “Glenshiel will grieve for me, but soon we’ll be together forever.”

She cried out hysterically, “Aren’t you afraid to meet your Maker with my blood on your hands?”

“No,” he said. “Why should I be? This is fitting. A Randal and Gordon—what better way to end the feud for all time?”

She wanted to scream at him that it did not matter a straw to her whether she was a Gordon or a Randal.

She didn’t care if she was a sassenach .

What mattered were the glen and its people, not some ancient blood feud.

The present and the future counted, not the past. She stared at him miserably, without hope, knowing that he would never understand.

Beneath their feet, the earth began to tremble and a pheasant was flushed from her cover. Even as Caitlin’s startled glance lifted, a voice seemed to float at the edges of the mist.

“Caitlin! Hold on! I’m coming. I’m coming! ”