Page 24

He wasn't dead. That was the first thing Patrick realized when he woke. The next was that his head felt as if it had exploded and been put back together in a jumbled mess; and the third was that he was not alone.

He was lying on a bed in what appeared to be an old stone botban. He could see a fireplace for heating and cooking, the bed, a few tables and chairs, a cupboard, and sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, watching him with a black look on his face, was Jamie Campbell. Though he appeared to be relaxed and not an immediate threat, Patrick did not fool himself. Argyll's Enforcer was one of the fiercest and most deadly men in Scotland— Highlands or Lowlands.

Still, he was alone, and for a moment Patrick contemplated escape.

Reading his mind, Jamie smiled. “I wouldn't advise it,”

he said. “Even if you could get past me, which I doubt given your current condition, my men have surrounded the building. This time, they will not hesitate to shoot.”

Patrick realized that his nearness to Lizzie when they were taken was likely what had prevented them from using their guns before. He was immediately conscious of his disadvantage. Hell if he would lie here like some damn invalid. Gritting his teeth, he sat up slowly. His head exploded in fresh pain, and nausea crashed over him. Biting back the urge to empty his stomach, he rode out the wave. Then, seeing a flagon near the bed, he helped himself to a long drink, welcoming the fiery taste of the crude whisky— ambrosia to a starving man.

“Patrick MacGregor,”

said Jamie, tapping his fingers on the arm of the wooden chair. “It's been a long time.”

Not as long as you think. Jamie was referring to the time they'd spent—briefly—fighting together on the Isle of Lewis, but Patrick had seen him much more recently than that. He'd had an arrow pointed at Campbell's back only a few months ago.

“Not long enough,”

Patrick replied dryly, given his current state of imprisonment. “How did you find us?”

“We learned of the attack on Lizzie almost immediately—one of the guardsmen managed to escape. Then, while we were searching the area, one of my men chanced to be nearby when the fiery cross passed through Callan-der. We took a chance that you were headed here.”

Patrick swore at the bad luck. “And my men?”

Jamie gave him a long look. “We'd seen neither hide nor hair of anyone until you arrived.”

His expression hardened. “The outlaw Gregor and his men, however, were taken not long after you fell. They will be executed in Edinburgh for their crimes.”

Patrick felt a stab in his chest. Not for the brother he had, but for the one he'd lost before circumstances changed Gregor into the bitter, hate-filled man he'd become.

“And your brother's crimes?”

Patrick said cuttingly. “Will Auchinbreck be executed for his?”

Campbell's mouth tightened into a grim line. “I'm sorry for what happened to your sister.”

The concession surprised him. Jamie Campbell seemed honestly repelled by his brother's actions. “Yet Auchinbreck will not pay for what he's done.”

It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact.

“In the courts … nay.”

Campbell met his gaze. “But I've no doubt that one day there will be a reckoning.”

Patrick studied him carefully, knowing there was something Jamie Campbell wasn't telling him but also realizing he'd told him all he would.

But if Gregor had been taken and was already on his way to Edinburgh, as was likely, why was he here? “Where's Lizzie?”

Campbell gave him a hard look. “Somewhere safe.”

“I want to see her.”

“No.”

If Campbell thought he would accept that, he was sorely mistaken. The first thing he would do when he got out of here was find her. She might hate him right now, but she was his wife.

Jamie rubbed his shoulder in the place Patrick had landed a blow with his claidbeambmór. “You've improved since last we met.”

Patrick examined the knot on his head, his fingers skimming over the bloody, tender flesh. “So have you.”

They'd both been young on Lewis. Now they were men—warriors in their prime.

Campbell met Patrick's gaze with a knowing look. “You're too good a swordsman not to have avoided the blow to your head.”

Patrick didn't say anything, looking away from the other man's piercing stare. They both knew he'd stood down, but damned if he'd explain himself.

“My sister told me an interesting story,”

Jamie said casually, though Patrick could tell it was an act.

“Is that so?”

Campbell's eyes simmered with rage. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now.”

Patrick met his anger with his own. “Because your sister insists that you believe in justice, and the only crime I've been accused of is one that I did not commit. The atrocities done at Glenfruin were not the work of the MacGregors.”

Campbell's eyes narrowed dangerously. “I'm talking about what you did to my sister. Lying and wheedling your way into Castle Campbell to convince her to marry you— not to mention putting her life in danger, even if, as she says, you did save it more than once.”

Patrick wondered how much Lizzie had told him. The basics, probably. If Campbell knew the worst of it, Patrick wouldn't be sitting here right now.

There was nothing Jamie Campbell could say to him that Patrick hadn't already said to himself. “I imagine the only thing staying your hand is the same thing that stayed mine—killing me will hurt her.”

Jamie didn't appear very happy about it, but he reluctantly appeared to accept the truth of the observation. Two enemies bound by the happiness of the woman they both loved. “Mine is not the only hand itching to strike,”

Campbell warned him, referring to Argyll and Auchinbreck. “Lizzie's feelings will not keep you alive forever.”

Patrick's head hurt, and he was tired of Campbell's subtle interrogation. “What will, since I assume that is your purpose for being here?”

Jamie smiled, though it lacked any pretense of friendliness. “Cut to the quick, is it? Fine. My sister might claim to care for you, and given what you did out there today, I'm willing to concede that her feelings are reciprocated, but I want you out of her life. Though I am not without sympathy for the plight of your clan, it doesn't mean I want my sister tied to an outlawed MacGregor.”

His gaze turned shrewd and unyielding. “You will have your freedom and the tenancy of the land near Loch Earn, which I understand was the reason for this pursuit of my sister in the first place. I will find a way to mollify Glenorchy. In return, you will repudiate the handfast and never seek her out again.”

“No,”

Patrick answered without hesitation. Jamie Campbell was offering him the two things he thought he'd wanted most in the world, but Patrick had been wrong. Lizzie had given him something much more important. She'd brought him back from the very edge of darkness. Without her, he would be the empty, cold shell of a man he'd been before.

He would be like his doomed brother.

Patrick's fight to reclaim his land would never end until once again it belonged to the MacGregors, but it would not be won at the cost of the woman he loved.

Wincing, he thought of the argument they'd had before he was captured. He might not yet have had the chance to convince her of his love, but he'd spend the rest of his life proving it.

He thought of all Lizzie had been willing to give up for him; he would do no less for her.

No smile marred the hard set of Campbell's jaw. “Even if it is the best thing for Lizzie?”

“Who are you to judge what is best for your sister?”

“Apparently,”

Campbell intoned darkly, “I'm the only person thinking rationally around here. God's blood, did you see her? Gowned in rags, bedraggled, weary to the point of exhaustion, looking as if she'd been through hell the past few days?”

Patrick clenched his jaw against the accusations, but she had been through hell.

“If you care for her, you will not drag her under with you. You will not see her denied the life that should be hers.”

Patrick could see where this conversation was going, but damned if he would give her up without a fight. “It's her choice to make.”

The other man was fast losing his patience. He stood up from the chair and strode toward the bed, all pretense of equanimity gone. But if Campbell thought to intimidate him, he was dead wrong. Patrick stood and met him eye to eye.

“You might make her happy now,”

Campbell thundered. “But how happy will she be in a few years after hardship has worn her down? I don't know what my cousin will do, but would you have her risk losing everything?”

Patrick stiffened, knowing he'd argued much the same to himself. “Is this what she wants?”

“She's confused right now. She doesn't know what she wants. But if you walk away now, she will recover.”

Patrick flexed his jaw. “Let me talk to her.”

“You'll only make it harder.”

Campbell paused and then said quietly, “If you truly care for her, as I think you do, you'll do the right thing. Doesn't she deserve better?”

Truth twisted like a knife in the gut. Campbell was only saying what Patrick already knew and had tried to ignore. She deserved everything, and a man who could give it to her. But he was so damn tired of trying to do the right thing.

Lizzie …

His heart cried out for her. She was all he wanted.

“Even if I agreed, what makes you think she will accept it?”

Patrick was grasping, but if there was anything he'd learned about Lizzie, it was that she had a mind of her own.

“If you know my sister as well as I think you do, you will know the answer to that.”

The land. Jamie would make it look as if all he'd wanted had been the land. Patrick wanted to think that she wouldn't believe it of him, but after their last conversation, when she'd discovered that he'd witnessed her humiliation, she was vulnerable. Maybe even vulnerable enough to believe it. “She'll hate me,”

Patrick said dully.

For a moment, he thought he saw a streak of compassion in Campbell's granite gaze. “Aye, but it's for the best.”

It might be for the best, but it didn't stop Patrick from feeling that he'd just had his heart eviscerated from his chest with a rusty, jagged blade.

Never had he felt so empty. It was as if the last light had gone out of him—and the hope that something good might come out of this bungled situation, extinguished.

Chest burning with emotion and not trusting himself to speak, Patrick nodded.

“I'm sorry, lass, but he's gone,”

Jamie said.

No. Every instinct rejected what her brother was saying. It can't be true.

Lizzie sat in an upstairs chamber of the drover's inn near Callander, where she'd been awaiting news of Patrick since Jamie's men had pulled her off him on the field near Balquhidder. Stunned, she stared at her brother. “Tell me again—everything—that he said.”

“I offered him the tenancy of the land near Loch Earn and his freedom if he would repudiate the handfast,”

Jamie repeated. “He accepted.”

“Just like that?”

He wouldn't have left me without saying anything. Though her pride had been wounded by what she'd discovered, his last words had resonated: Can you really doubt my feelings for you? Deep in her heart, she couldn't. Lizzie shook her head, refusing to believe it. “You must have misunderstood.”

Patrick would never give up that easily, unless … No. He cares about me.

Poor, pathetic … She wanted to close her eyes and put her hands over her ears to block out the memories. But there was just enough doubt lingering from the discovery that what he'd seen that day might have caused him to target her as an easy mark.

Jamie gave her a sympathetic look, though he would never understand the pain he'd just unwittingly inflicted. “I'm sure he cares for you, lass, but the land was what he wanted—isn't that what you told me?”

Unable to speak, she nodded. She'd told Jamie what had happened, how Patrick had sought her out for her land. But I didn't mean it. I thought …

She looked to her brother, hoping to find a kernel of hope to hold on to, but the sympathy in his eyes only made it worse.

Jamie loved her too much. He was so overly protective of her. Her eyes narrowed. “You didn't force him to agree to this, did you?”

Jamie arched a brow, a wry look on his face, as if he wanted to be offended but knew he couldn't be. “I didn't need to.”

Her heart squeezed at the blunt honesty. It hadn't been only about the land … had it? To the last, she'd wanted to think she'd been wrong about his motives. But he hadn't stayed to convince her or make her forgive him. “Why didn't he come see me and tell me himself?”

“I'm sure he thought it would be easier this way. A clean break.”

She made a sharp scoffing sound. A clean break? As if it were something as inconsequential as a bone and not her heart that had been broken. “What if I don't want a clean break? I have a year—”

“Is that what you want, Lizzie? To drag this out? To run after a man …”

Lizzie sucked in her breath. She gazed up at her brother, horrified. The blood drained from her face. To run after a man who has made it very clear that I'm not important enough to him. That was what Jamie was trying to say. Humiliation crawled over her in a mottled flush. Was that what she'd been doing, throwing herself at a man who didn't want her?

She'd practically asked him to marry her. Looking back at it now, she saw that her well-constructed argument had been just as much about what she could bring him as it had been about her.

But he said he loved me.

The cold, hard truth hit her square in the chest. Even if he did love her, it hadn't been enough. He'd taken the land and his freedom and left her behind with nary a fare-thee-well.

Jamie came over to stand beside her, placing his hand on her shoulder consolingly. “With what has happened between our clans, I can't say I blame him, Lizzie. Can you?”

Tears blurred her eyes, and she shook her head. She'd been thunderstruck to learn the truth from Jamie. Patrick's accusations against her cousin and Colin had been horribly accurate. Though Jamie had no idea of their cousin's intentions when he'd negotiated the surrender of Alasdair Mac-Gregor and his men, Archie had played them false and sent them to their deaths. And just as horribly, Colin was indeed responsible for the rape of Patrick's sister.

The thought that her own brother …

She shuddered, utterly repulsed and shamed.

The actions of her kinsmen were appalling. After what they did, how could she blame Patrick for not wanting to tie himself to a Campbell?

“You won't pursue this, will you, Lizzie?”

Jamie asked.

Lizzie's heartbeat drummed in her ears. Everything she'd always wanted was slipping through her fingers like rain through a sieve. A husband. A family. A dream lost. For having been in love, she knew marriage without it would be impossible.

She gazed at her brother through watery eyes, knowing what she had to do. Even if they couldn't be together, she couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to him. She would do what she could to keep him safe. “On one condition,”

she said thickly.

Jamie eyed her warily. “What's that?”

“He won't just have his freedom for now, I want Archie to see to it that he is pardoned in full.”

Jamie gave her a long look and then nodded.

It was done.

Her chest, her throat, and her eyes burned with the knowledge that it was truly over. With a Campbell and a MacGregor, how could any ending other than heartbreak and disappointment ever be possible?

The pain was unbearable: Tears streamed from her eyes, and her shoulders were racked with heart-wrenching sobs torn from the depths of her soul.

Jamie pulled her from her chair and held her against his chest, stroking her hair. “Come, lass, I'll take you home. You'll see, you'll forget about him in no time.”

That's where Jamie was wrong. Lizzie would never forget about him. She would love Patrick Murray, née MacGregor, for the rest of her life.