The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(113)

He hesitated. She wanted to think him warring with himself. She wanted to think that he finally understood the truth of what she’d been trying to tell him. But his will—his hatred—was too strong.

He walked away, and with him, took the last embers of hope. It felt as if he were cutting her apart limb from limb. The pain—the heartbreak—was excruciating. She stood there until the sound of hoofbeats faded away into the distance.

Perhaps she’d been naive, and it was too much to expect that love could heal wounds as deep as his. Robbie had reasons for his hatred and distrust. But he’d let them consume him to the point that he struck back without questioning, and with a ruthlessness that enabled him not to care who he hurt in the process. Even her.

Rosalin had had enough. Enough of Scotland. Enough of war. Enough of loving a man who didn’t have the capacity to love her back. It was time for her to let him go. She went to find Sir Alex.

Twenty-five

Robbie and a force of nearly fifty warriors, including Douglas and twenty of his best men, crossed into England near Gretna. They skirted the heavily defended fortress of Carlisle to the west, taking cover in the forested countryside, and passed the old Roman wall at Burgh by Sands near the Solway Firth—the place where King Edward I had met his timely end five years before. It had taken them nearly a day of hard riding to get here, and it was still another twenty miles to Brougham.

A raid so far south of the border would have been a fool’s gambit a few years ago. But the tide had turned, and last year Bruce’s raiding parties had traveled across much this same countryside. Nonetheless, the raid was not without substantial risk. But Robbie had hours to consider every detail and plan for any contingency.

He was ready.

Or at least he should be. But every hour that took him from Douglas increased his unease and the growing sense of doom hanging over him. He couldn’t get the sight of Rosalin’s stricken face out of his mind or the sound of her voice out of his head.

It is wrong…You are not the man for me…Killing any chance of a future between us.

He’d told himself she’d spoken in anger and desperation to turn him from his path. That she didn’t mean it. But the farther they rode from Douglas, the more he feared she meant every word. It was like a weight pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

Damn her for doing this to him. Damn her for making him question his resolve! He could not let such a vicious attack go unanswered. Clifford had to pay.

An eye for an eye…

But she’d been so certain, damn it. Robbie ran through the lad’s account over and over in his mind, looking at it from every angle. The boy had identified the soldiers’ arms, Clifford’s men were there—there could be no doubt of that—but other details had been less explicit. The lad had been terrified. It had been chaotic. He’d escaped in the first few minutes. Enough to see what was happening, but had he gotten the entire picture?

Robbie grimaced angrily. What the hell was he doing? Was he looking for any excuse to turn from his course? She was making him weak, making him lose focus. If she was going to be his wife, she needed to learn she couldn’t interfere. And she would marry him.

Wouldn’t she?

My home…How could you hurt me like this…? I thought you loved me.

Love? What the hell did he know about love? But something was making him second-guess himself. If he did this, he knew he would lose her. And the thought was making his pulse race with something akin to panic.

Bloody hell.

He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Douglas turned to him. If there was anyone whose face was blacker than Robbie’s right now it was Douglas. Robbie hadn’t missed the argument he’d had with Joanna as they prepared to ride out and guessed that she didn’t approve of the course they’d set either.

“What is it?” Douglas said, looking around. They’d stopped well south of the wall to water the horses in one of the many lochs—or lakes, as the English called them—in the area. It was dark, and they planned to get some sleep before resuming their journey in the morning. The attack would come in the afternoon, giving them cover of darkness in which to get away. At least that had been the plan.

“We need to go back,” Robbie said.

Douglas was incredulous. “You are calling off the attack? Damn it, Boyd! What the hell is wrong with you? What did she say to you?”

“I’m not calling off the attack,” Robbie said. “At least not yet. But I need to make sure the lad was right about what happened. We need to go to the village and see the truth for ourselves.”

Douglas eyed him skeptically. “This is because of the lass, isn’t it?”

He would not deny it. But that was only part of it. “Bruce is counting on this truce with Clifford, and if there is any chance of holding on to it, it’s my duty to do so. No matter how much we personally hate the bastard.”

“And if you learn Clifford was responsible?”

“We will be back.”

There were a few grumbles. The men weren’t happy to be denied a chance to exact retribution for what had been done to the women and the villagers, but Robbie was their commander, and they trusted that he would not be doing this without a good reason.

He hoped to hell he had one.

It was a few hours after dark the following day when they neared Corehead, the small village tucked deep in the heart of the hills and forests of Ettrick, from where Wallace had gathered men to launch his first attack on the English nearly sixteen years before. As they crested the hill, Robbie got his first glance of the devastation. He expected to see the village razed to the ground, with nothing remaining but embers and the gruesome evidence of the slaughter that had occurred.