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His blue-black hair was rough and tousled, and the features not covered by his short beard were sharply defined, his mouth having acquired a bitter line.
‘The lassie’s name is Lorne McBryde, Iain,’ John told him. ‘Ye canna have forgotten the wee girl who betrayed ye brother’s whereabouts to the Galbraiths of Kinlochalen.’
Only the collective breathing of the men in the room and the crackle of the fire could be heard above the silence the memory of that day evoked in each and every one of them—in Lorne, too. It was all around her and inside her, still alive, not quiet as it had been when she had lived at Astley Priory. She saw Iain’s body stiffen as he pinned his rapier gaze on her face. She met his hard, discerning stare and forced herself to return his assessment with a measuring look of her own, but he emanated a wrath so forceful that she felt fear begin to uncurl inside her.
‘I know who she is,’ Iain hissed. ‘Get her out of my sight.’
John was always ready to do Iain’s bidding, but this was one order he would not obey. ‘Nay, not when Andrew an’ me have gone to the trouble of bringing her here. We’ve waited too long to let an opportunity to entrap Edgar McBryde slip by.’
Astounded, Iain glared at his friend. ‘Are you mad? You abducted her?’
John nodded, unperturbed by Iain’s anger. ‘How else do ye think she got here? When we stopped to sup at the inn on the Edinburgh road, I couldn’t believe me good fortune when I saw the McBryde lassie come in. Seven years may have gone by, but I wouldna mistake that face—or that hair.’
‘Was she alone?’ Iain asked sharply, his eyes alert.
‘Aye—more’s the pity—apart from a maidservant and the coach driver and a couple o’ grooms, that is.’
‘Who did you expect might be travelling with me?’ Lorne snapped, speaking for the first time since Iain Monroe had entered the room.
‘Yer father—Edgar McBryde,’ John growled.
Lorne stared at him in bewilderment. ‘But—my father is in France.’
‘Not any longer. ’Tis a known fact that he’s returned to Scotland—to organise a network o’Jacobite sympathisers in the Highlands, I suspect,’ he told her, his lips twisting with scorn.
Lorne’s eyes shifted to Iain. ‘Is this true?’
‘It’s true,’ he clarified coldly.
Lorne paled. When her father had escaped to France seven years ago, the wrench of leaving his beloved Highlands had been almost too painful for him to bear. She had always known he would not remain in exile and that one day he would return, despite the shadow of the noose hanging over him. And now he had, endangering his own life and others. She was longing to plead her own cause, to tell Iain Monroe, who was looking at her with cold contempt, of all the suffocating horror she had endured since that day in Kinlochalen—if only he would listen.
But he refused to listen. Even now, after seven years, any words she said would not pierce through the armour he had built around himself. As she started to speak, he held up his hand in warning, his expression stern and unyielding. ‘Be quiet. I want no pretty speeches from a McBryde,’ he hissed fiercely through clenched teeth, the glitter in his eyes as hard and cold as steel as they imprisoned hers.
Now Iain hated the flaunting abundance of her golden hair, the beautiful face, and in particular those green eyes that looked at him with an urgent pleading. They disturbed him, evoking an unreasoned disorder of distant anger and pain. Someone else had looked at him like this long ago, a child who had begged him to listen to her, a child he had shoved away as he would now she was a woman grown. He recalled how she had clung on to his reins, and how brutal he had been when he had prised her small fingers off the leather straps, his huge hands capable of snapping each one of them in two. His jaw hardened and he coldly rejected the memory.
‘I know, remember? I know I had a brother I adored, a brother your people slaughtered as they would an animal on a butcher’s slab. I saw what those savages did to him.’
‘I know,’ Lorne whispered brokenly. ‘I saw him, too.’
These simple words, innocently spoken, were enough to bring Iain’s wrath to boiling point. Grasping her shoulders, he brought her close, thrusting his rage-filled face close to hers until only a hand’s-breadth distance separated their noses.
‘Then I pray his image never leaves you—that you never forget the part you played in bringing about his death, Lorne McBryde. What did you see?’ Iain demanded, his eyes burning with the fever of unspeakable agony. ‘Tell me.’
‘Please,’ Lorne breathed, uttering the word as she would a plea for absolution, raised out of a vast sea of despair that threatened to drown her every time she revived the memory of that day.
Iain’s fingers bit cruelly into her flesh and he went on, ignoring her plea. ‘Did you see how those butchers dragged him down the glen so that his youthful body was torn and bleeding, before thrusting a dagger into his heart to finish him off? Did you?’
Scalding tears rose to Lorne’s eyes. ‘No—you don’t understand. It wasn’t like that. David—’
‘Silence,’ Iain roared, flinging her away from him with such force that she fell to the floor.
Shocked by his violent outburst, Lorne stared at him. ‘Please—will you at least listen to me before you condemn me and cast me out?’
Iain’s face tightened as he glared down at her, his eyes pinned on hers. Her whole heart and soul seemed to scream at him through those eyes, which gazed hard into his, but he felt no weakening. When he spoke his voice was ominously soft. ‘If you ever speak his name to me again, just one more time, I will make your life hell. I could strangle you for your treachery—and if you hadn’t been a child at the time, I would have done it then.’
Looking into those glacial, murderous eyes that showed no mercy, Lorne fully believed he would carry out his threat. She realised it was useless trying to explain what had really happened. What did it matter anyway? David Monroe was dead and nothing she could say would bring him back. His brother’s hatred and contempt and the injustice of it all gave her back some of her courage. Clearly everything about her and her family infuriated him, making vengeance blaze inside him every time he was reminded of that day. Propping herself up on her hand, she glared up at him.
‘Or condemned me to the gallows—as you did my father.’
‘My only regret is that he didn’t hang beside Galbraith.’ Stepping back, he looked at John. ‘Take her back to the inn,’ he bit out. ‘The very sight of her sickens me. I don’t want her here.’
‘Yes,’ Lorne said, getting to her feet and brushing herself down. ‘I demand you return me to my maidservant at once. Nothing can be achieved by keeping me here. If you refuse, you will be called upon by the Privy Council to answer for abducting me. You can count on that.’
‘Nay,’ John said, stepping forward. That Iain would release her stirred his anger. ‘I say she stays—and so does every man here. The McBrydes and the Galbraiths have cost us and our neighbours dear in the past. Think, Iain,’ he said fiercely, fired up by old grievances he would not let die. ‘Take yer mind back to when the Highland Host came sweeping down to the Lowlands like scourings from a dung heap, called up by the King’s Ministers in the hope that their wild and arrogant presence would persuade us to accept Episcopacy with all its religious obligations—when authority seemed to sanction thieving and blackmail.’
‘For God’s sake, John—that was twenty years ago.’
‘Aye—and no’ forgotten—and I’ll never allow myself ta forget. Nor is it forgotten that it was the Galbraiths and the McBrydes who descended on Norwood when they were returning to the hills like a swarm o’locusts—terrorising women and children and stealing everything they could carry and any stock they could drive. Do I have to remind ye that I was born in the Highlands and it was the McBrydes and the Galbraiths who wiped