The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)(85)

Was it true what he’d said about Duncan and Christina? Had she so misinterpreted the feelings between them? What went on behind those closed doors?

Apparently more than she’d realized.

Suddenly, all those long hours in the bedchamber took on a very different meaning—one sensual rather than sinister. Her brother had always seemed so subdued afterward. She’d taken it for regret, but what if it was something else?

It was disconcerting to realize how little she knew about something that had been going on right before her.

She arched a brow, watching as Ewen fiddled with a bag tied to the horse, eventually removing a skin. How did he know so much?

After taking a long swig, he sat down beside her. It was nice, this, sitting here with him without a cloud of danger hanging over them. Apparently, in no hurry to continue their journey, she decided to ask him. “Did your parents love each other?”

He tensed almost imperceptibly. She sensed right away that the subject was not a welcome one. But he answered her question. “Aye, though they shouldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

“When my father abducted my mother—with her approval—away from the Chief of Lamont, it nearly destroyed my father and our clan. Had it not been for James Stewart, it would have.”

“Yet there is something undeniably romantic about it. Your father must have truly loved her to be willing to risk so much.”

Ewen’s face hardened. “My father was an irresponsible ruffian who did whatever the hell he wanted, without any sense of the consequences. He fought hard, drank hard, and apparently loved hard. Duty and loyalty didn’t mean a damned thing to him. He stole his chief’s bride, for Christ’s sake, knowing full well there would be war.”

Hearing him speak of his father explained so much. It seemed Ewen had done everything he could to distance himself from the type of man his father had been. His discipline, his sense of honor and responsibility, were the opposite of his father. Where his father had been wild and irresponsible, Ewen was the model soldier, doing exactly what was expected of him.

“What about your mother?”

His fingers clenched on the skin he still held in his hand. “His irresponsibility killed her.” She gasped. “What happened?”

“He couldn’t keep his bloody hands off her. She’d barely given birth to me before he got her pregnant again. She died in the birthing chamber ten months after my saint’s day. The child—a little girl—was stillborn.”

The way he said “little girl” made something in her heart catch. “Oh Ewen, I’m sorry. That is horrible. Growing up without a mother … It couldn’t have been easy.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know any differently. Fortunately, the Stewarts took me in to foster or I might have ended up every bit as wild and disreputable as my father. When he wasn’t fighting or drinking, he was trying to kill himself with some fool challenge. That’s actually how he died. The Lamont chief finally had his revenge, daring my father to climb a cliffside near Dundonald Castle in the rain.”

“He must have been devastated after your mother’s death.”

“He was building her a castle when she died. For years, all he would talk about was finishing that castle. But, of course, he never did. As a boy, it came so that I hated even the bloody sight of those half-constructed walls.”

Her heart squeezed. It must have been a painful reminder of his father’s failures.

He shook his head. “But you know what the worst part is? He somehow managed to get me to do it for him. So now, on top of trying to regain some of the Lamont lands, I also need to earn enough coin to finish the blasted thing.”

Emotion lodged in her chest and for the first time she admitted to herself what it was: she loved him. With every fiber of her being, she loved him. How strange after all these years to have finally lost her heart.

He was staring off into the distance, lost in his memories, the strong lines of his handsome face cast ablaze by the orange hues of the fading sunlight. Nay, lost was wrong. She’d found it. Her heart had always belonged to him.

“You are a good man, Ewen Lamont,” she said softly.

He turned to look at her and something strange flashed in his eyes. It looked almost like guilt. But then he smiled wistfully. “I’m a sentimental fool, and I think you’ve spent too many nights on this hard ground.” He stood and held out his hand. “Come. You’ve a warm bath, a hot meal, and a comfortable bed waiting for you.”

She sighed dreamily, slipping her hand into his and allowing him to help her up. “It sounds divine. But Ewen …” Steel-blue eyes met hers. “None of that will change my mind.”

He held her gaze for a long pause. And then he said something that she didn’t understand, but that held the vague sense of a warning. “I hope you’ll feel the same in a few days.”

The sight of the lime-washed walls of the wattle-and-daub farmhouse, nestled against a small hill on the banks of Lochend Loch, should have been cause for celebration. It was the first stop on the end of their journey. They would be safe here.

But to Ewen it represented a bitter return to reality. Free from the narrowed vision of danger, where getting Janet to safety and staying one step ahead of the English who stalked them was all that mattered, he could see clearly what the guilt, which had been building since he’d first realized how important her place in the king’s network was to her, had been trying to tell him.