Never Love a Highlander (McCabe Trilogy #3)(72)

“Why?” he asked. “Why did you do it? If you’re going to kill me anyway, then tell me why you destroyed my clan eight years ago. We were no threat to you.”

Cameron rose and took a step back, a hatred that mirrored Caelen’s own reflected in his gaze.

“You’d never heard of me until that day, had you?” He shook his head. “How like your father to have never mentioned me or my father. You aren’t the only one with reason to hate, Caelen. Your father took what was mine. I returned the favor.”

“You’re daft,” Caelen said hoarsely. “My father was a peaceful man. He wouldn’t wage war against anyone. Not unless provoked.”

Cameron pressed his boot to Caelen’s throat, pinning him to the ground. “Oh aye, he was a peaceful man. Do you want to know why? He made a vow after my father’s death. His guilt was too much for him to bear. He swore on my father’s grave never to pick up arms again. I know. I was there. I heard his vow. I heard his apology to my mother. He patted me on the head as he walked away. Patted me on the head as if that would bring me a measure of comfort when my father was in the ground. If I’d had a sword, your father would have died that day and bled to death atop my father’s grave. I would have seen to it.”

“You lie,” Caelen ground out. “My father never spoke of you or your father.”

“Your father was a coward. He fought alongside my father and when my father was felled from his horse, he left him to die there. He turned his back on the man he called friend, and he ran from the battlefield. And do you know, just before your father drew his last breath, I reminded him of that boy he patted on the head at my father’s grave. Do you know what his last words were, Caelen?”

Caelen swallowed against the rage knotting his throat. His blood pumped so furiously through his veins that he feared exploding.

Cameron leaned down again so that he was close to Caelen’s ear. “He said he was sorry again. And then he begged me to spare his grandson’s life.”

“And so you murdered and raped the boy’s mother instead,” Caelen snarled.

“If I could have found the brattling, I would have spitted him on my sword. My only regret is that you and your brothers were not there the day I attacked. It would have brought me great satisfaction to have destroyed every last McCabe.”

“I’ll see you in hell for what you’ve done,” Caelen vowed.

Cameron straightened and motioned toward his men. “Take him to the dungeon. I cannot bear to look upon his face a moment longer. Killing him now is too good a fate. I want him to suffer as my father suffered when he slowly bled to death on that battlefield.”

Three of Cameron’s men yanked Caelen to his feet and dragged him toward the small entryway with the steps leading into the darkness below. A fourth man bore a torch down into the cold, damp corridor.

At the end of it, a yawning hole opened in the floor, and without warning Caelen was shoved down. He pitched forward into the blackness and was suspended momentarily in the air before landing on the stone floor below. His injured shoulder took the brunt of the fall and he cried out as agony tore down his back and arm, numbing his hand.

He sucked in deep breaths as he battled unconsciousness. He tasted blood and realized he’d bitten his lip.

As he lay there shivering, pain his only companion in the darkness, he closed his eyes and conjured an image of Rionna’s smiling face. He imagined he was home, in the privacy of their chamber, as she thought up some new way to drive him mad with lust.

He imagined tracing the swell of her belly and talking with her long into the night of their hopes and dreams for their child.

“Protect her well, Ewan,” he whispered. “For I have failed her. And you.”

* * *

Rionna was near collapse when she ordered her clan to surround Duncan Cameron’s holding and remain in hiding until she gave the order to attack. If God was with them, Ewan McCabe would arrive with reinforcements before her clan was forced to take action. But if not, she and every one of the McDonald warriors would go down fighting.

She prayed for strength. She prayed for God’s guidance for what she was about to do. She had to be convincing or she and Caelen would both die.

Gathering the reins of her tired horse, she started forward, her heart pounding as she broke from the cover of the forest, and rode down toward the gate of Cameron’s fortress.

’Twas an imposing sight of stone, wood, and metal. The walls were tall and she only prayed that her men could scale them rapidly enough to avoid detection.

Her plan had to work. If God truly sided with the righteous, her clan would win the day and she would return home with her husband.

Still, she prayed, for perhaps God needed convincing on the matter.

When she reached the gate, the watchman called down to her. Rionna surveyed the top of the wall and found at least three crossbows aimed in her direction.

She pushed down the hood of her cloak and then called up. “I am Rionna McDonald and I wish to see my father, Gregor McDonald.”

There was a long wait and then Duncan Cameron appeared at the top of the wall, her father beside him.

“Tell me, Rionna, have you come to beg for your husband’s life?” Cameron called down.

She fixed him with a haughty stare and twisted her lips in scorn. “I’ve come to see if what my men have told me is true. And if ’tis true, and my father has felled the McCabe warrior, I want to claim the right to kill him if the task is not already done.”