Awoken: A Medieval Scottish Romance (The Sisters of Kilbride Book 2) Read online

  Campbell’s smile faded, and she watched his gaze shutter. “We come from different worlds, milady … I wouldn’t expect ye to understand my motives.”

  Leanna folded her arms across her chest. “Well, explain them to me, and we shall see.”

  Campbell inclined his head, his gaze narrowing. “When ye grow up among brutes, a man like MacKinnon seems no worse.”

  Leanna frowned in response. “Go on.”

  “I’m the youngest son of Iver Campbell … he’s not a man many would dare cross,” he replied. Tension rippled off him now, the cloak of arrogance he usually wore sloughing away. “Growing up, I was terrified of him … we all were. He beat my mother, and he thrashed me and my brothers and sister. Dogs cowered whenever he came near. It was a harsh environment, and my elder brothers grew up as hard as their father, while my sister, Una, found herself a husband and fled our broch as soon as she was of age.” Campbell paused, his mouth twisting. “Una’s a survivor. She’s now on her second marriage … to the MacLeod clan-chief here on Skye. But like me, she’s avoided any trips home.”

  “Was it really that bad?” Leanna asked, her tone still guarded.

  “Aye … it was,” he replied, his voice flat now. “As the youngest bairn, I bore the brunt of my brothers’ bullying. When I had twelve winters, one of them tried to drown me after I bested him at Ard-ri. Da beat him so badly for it that Doug lost the sight in one eye. Life in the broch became even harsher for me after that … and when I got the chance to foster on the Isle of Skye upon my sixteenth winter, I grabbed it with both hands.”

  Ross Campbell halted there. Reaching out, he tore off a stem of pine from the tree next to him and began to shred it. His handsome face was now pale and strained. Leanna could see that the words cost him; he was not used to revealing himself before someone like this. He didn’t like to divulge his unhappy past.

  An uncomfortable silence settled between them, and Campbell’s gaze shifted to the pine he was pulling to pieces. “Ye grew up in a loving environment, Lady Leanna … and yer father went to great lengths to protect ye. My father wouldn’t have done the same for his daughter.” He glanced up then, and met her eye once more. “When I arrived at Dunan, I found a place where I was wanted, appreciated. If I’d stayed with my kin, I’d have amounted to nothing, yet here I quickly rose in the ranks, and when Duncan MacKinnon became clan-chief, he made me Captain of The Dunan Guard. I grew up being told I was worth nothing … but MacKinnon changed all that.”

  Leanna watched Campbell, and a little of the heat in her belly cooled. She wanted to rage at him, to vent the fury she still held within at her abduction and treatment over the past few days. And yet, seeing the vulnerability upon his face, she couldn’t muster the stinging words she longed to hurl at him.

  He was right. Until her abduction, she’d never known cruelty and brutality. She’d grown up in a brash, yet loving, family, and then had entered the safe confines of Kilbride Abbey.

  She had no idea what it was like to feel unwanted, unloved.

  Looking at Ross Campbell, she imagined he was a few years older than her—in his late twenties perhaps—and yet his eyes belonged to a much older man. She wondered if he’d ever been in love, had ever made himself vulnerable to anyone. She had the suspicion he hadn’t.

  “So ye could no longer pretend that yer master wasn’t the devil?” she asked finally.

  Ross huffed a bitter laugh. “Aye … there comes a time in every man’s life when he must decide what he stands for.” He cast aside the now naked sprig of pine and stepped toward her. “Last night I decided that time had come.”

  17

  What Do Ye Stand For?

  “AND WHAT DO ye stand for, Ross Campbell?”

  The question was bold, and yet Leanna felt compelled to ask it. This conversation had changed things between them. Until now, she’d merely seen him as MacKinnon’s henchman. She hadn’t given even a passing thought to the events that had made Campbell into the man he was, hadn’t cared. But now she did.

  And try as she might to deny it, Ross Campbell fascinated her. He had from their first meeting in that clearing. There were layers to him that made her want to dig deeper.

  His mouth lifted at the corners. “I’m not rightly sure … all I know is that from the moment I agreed to ride to Kilbride and abduct ye, my conscience has not given me an instant of peace. With each passing day, as MacKinnon’s behavior worsened, I have felt as if I am traveling into a land that I have no wish to explore. I knew that if I journeyed much farther into it, I’d be lost forever.”

  He took a few steps closer, and suddenly he was towering over her. Leanna didn’t shrink back though. Even when she’d been a captive at Dunan, Ross Campbell’s presence had never intimidated her.

  “I owe ye an apology, Lady Leanna. Because of me, ye did not attend yer father’s burial, and have been frightened and abused.”

  The directness of his admission threw Leanna. She tilted her chin up, something that was necessary to meet his eye. Heat flowered out from the center of her chest as the moment drew out.

  She didn’t know how to respond. Warmth crept up her neck now, and she realized that his proximity, and the fierceness upon his face, flustered her. She’d had little to do with men of late and was suddenly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before.

  Likewise, he seemed to be affected by the moment. His eyes darkened, and his throat bobbed. He looked like he wanted to speak, and yet he didn’t.

  Instead, slowly, almost hesitantly, he reached out, the back of his hand brushing her cheek. Leanna caught her breath, yet didn’t step out of his reach, didn’t shrink away. That feather-light touch set her pulse racing.

  After MacKinnon’s brutal treatment the night before, she’d flinched away from contact with Campbell during their escape. Yet as the soft light of dawn filtered over them, and a sky lark warbled above, something shifted within her.

  Honesty had a way of shattering reserve.

  “Ye are lovely, Leanna MacDonald,” he said, his voice turning husky. “Lovelier than men like MacKinnon, or myself, deserve. Ye were meant to be treasured. I vow I shall get ye to safety, no matter what it costs me.”

  His knuckles feathered across Leanna’s cheek once more, before he dropped his hand and stepped back from her.

  Cold air rushed in between them, and for an instant disappointment lanced through Leanna. She wasn’t sure exactly why her heart suddenly felt as if it was shrinking.

  Surely, she hadn’t expected him to kiss her? After everything that had transpired between them, that would have been an enormous breach of trust. And yet as Ross Campbell stepped away, their gazes still holding, she felt strangely bereft.

  His words had surprised her. She had no idea how to respond to them, and so she held her tongue. Truthfully, she felt out of her depth.

  “Come on.” Campbell crossed to the courser and gathered the reins. “We have rested here long enough. MacKinnon is likely to be on our trail by now … but if we ride hard, we can make Duncaith by sundown.”

  Ross’s mood was oddly dark as he guided the horse to the top of the wooded slope. They wound their way down the other side, their pace slowed, for the courser had to pick its way through clumps of bracken. It was rough country for travel and would slow their progress south-west into MacDonald territory. However, this route was necessary.

  MacKinnon would send men ahead along all roads out of Dunan. Cross-country was now the only way to travel.

  Ross’s brooding was not due to their situation though, as serious as it was, but more to do with himself.

  Leanna had asked honesty of him, yet he felt as if he’d revealed too much. He’d bled out in front of her, giving her details of his past that he’d not revealed to any other soul. His near drowning was a memory that he preferred not to dwell on. His brother Doug was a man cast in his father’s mold. After losing sight in one eye as the result of nearly killing Ross, he hadn’t been sorry. Instead, Ross had become his enemy.

>   He hadn’t scripted any of his responses to Leanna, and had been unprepared for how raw his answers had been. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to draw close to her, and to have the audacity to reach out and stroke her face—twice. He was lucky she hadn’t slapped him for his trouble.

  After what he’d made the lass endure, he deserved no less.

  Aye, he’d more or less ripped himself open when he’d told her why he’d come to her aid, and then apologized, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  Words were easy. He would show Leanna how sorry he was by taking care of her, by ensuring she reached her kin safely. He would die before letting MacKinnon capture her again.

  Ross’s belly knotted at this realization, and he frowned, trying to push aside the discomforting sensation. After years of hard-won self-control, he felt as if his life was unraveling before his very eyes.

  There had been security in his old existence, but this new path was carrying him into the wilds, literally and figuratively. He wasn’t sure he was going to emerge unscathed.

  At the bottom of the valley ran a shallow burn. They splashed through it and then turned, following the water-course south-west. Wooded hills rose either side, at the feet of huge sculpted mountains that reared up. In order to catch a glimpse of the pale sky, Ross had to crane his neck right back. And when he did, he saw an eagle circling, its screech echoing through the valley.

  “Do ye know where we are?” Leanna asked, breaking the tense silence between them.

  “Roughly enough,” he replied. “I’ve hunted stags in these valleys before … if I’m right, this vale lies around half a league north of MacDonald territory.”

  “Won’t MacKinnon just follow us onto my father’s land?” He could hear the tension in her voice, the worry. Like him, she knew the chase had not ended. Just because they couldn’t hear dogs baying at their heels didn’t mean that MacKinnon wasn’t tracking them down.

  “Of course he will,” Ross replied. “He’ll be desperate … and with yer father dead, he’s bolder than before.”

  “My uncle, Bard, will be chieftain now,” she reminded him. “He’s probably still got men looking for me … and he’s got no more love of MacKinnon than my father had.”

  “Good to hear … with any luck we’ll cross yer uncle’s path. That way he can set his dogs on MacKinnon and send him back to his own lands.”

  “What will ye do, Ross … once ye have delivered me to my kin?”

  Ross didn’t answer immediately. Her abrupt change of subject and the use of his first name threw him. Few called him ‘Ross’ these days besides Carr. At Dunan he was simply known as ‘Campbell’. And, in truth, he’d given little thought to the future.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, deciding that he might as well be honest. “I’ll tackle that once ye are safe at Duncaith.”

  “Ye won’t return to yer kin on the mainland?”

  Ross snorted. “Ye heard the sorry tale of my upbringing … would ye?”

  “But there must be other Campbells throughout Scotland?”

  “Aye … but none that I like well enough to impose upon.” Ross paused there. “Maybe I shall go to the capital.”

  “What will ye do there?”

  “I hear that a man named Edward Balliol has laid claim to the Scottish throne. Perhaps I shall join his guard and make a name for myself there instead.” Even as he said these words, they depressed Ross. All his life he’d been ambitious, had fought to climb up through the ranks so that he might lead men instead of merely follow them. Suddenly, he was exhausted at the thought. He patted the leather pouch he wore under his vest. “Or since I carry a purse of silver—all my wages over the past decade—maybe I’ll just find myself a wife in some sleepy backwater and make a living as a farmer.”

  Leanna went quiet for a spell after this admission, and when she spoke once more, her tone was reserved, slightly shy. “And do ye wish for a wife, Ross?”

  An unexpected smile stretched across Ross’s face. “Aye … I have even wooed a few ladies in the past years, but to no avail.”

  “Really … who?”

  He could hear the curiosity in her voice, and his smile widened.

  “Lady Caitrin MacLeod for one,” he replied. “After she was widowed, her father became desperate to find his daughter another match. “I was one of three suitors who traveled to Dunvegan to vie for her hand … but in the end, she chose none of us.”

  “I heard she wed her dead husband’s brother,” Leanna replied. “There were whispers about it all over the isle afterward … I’m surprised ye were one of her spurned suitors?”

  Although he knew Leanna couldn’t see his face, Ross raised an eyebrow. “And why’s that?”

  “Ye are a handsome man … I can’t imagine a woman resisting yer charms.”

  Ross actually laughed at that, the sound rumbling across his chest. It felt good to laugh after such a fraught night; it lightened his heart. “Not all women think as ye do, Lady Leanna. But fear not, my pride is intact. Lady Caitrin cast me aside in favor of Alasdair MacDonald … a man she secretly loved. And I’m now glad she did.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Ross’s smile faded, and his mood suddenly sobered. “Because if I’d wed Lady Caitrin, my path would likely have taken me away from Dunan. Ye and I might never have met.”

  As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. What was it about Leanna that made truth pour from him like an unstoppered barrel of mead? They’d been having a light-hearted exchange, something that was sorely needed after their conversation at dawn, but he’d just ruined it.

  Leanna’s arms were loosely looped around his waist, yet he felt the tension in them nonetheless. She fell silent and didn’t question him further about Lady Caitrin. It had all happened nearly two years ago now. Ross had been in a position to look for a wife, and when MacLeod had sent word throughout the isle that his lovely widowed daughter sought a new husband, he’d thought to try his luck.

  However, he hadn’t been at Dunvegan long when he’d realized that Caitrin’s heart was already spoken for.

  The tense silence between Ross and Leanna drew out, and Ross was considering how best to break it, when the snap of a twig underfoot tore him from his thoughts. His chin jerked up, his instincts suddenly on the alert. The courser snorted, its nostrils flaring. Ross’s ears hadn’t deceived him; the horse had heard it too.

  “What’s wrong?” Leanna asked, her voice low and tense. “Is there—”

  She never got to complete her sentence, for at that moment, figures emerged from the trees around them. Ross drew up the courser, his gaze swiveling left and right.

  A circle of leather-clad men emerged from the shadowy undergrowth, drawn longbows at the ready.

  18

  The Outlaw

  LEANNA FROZE AGAINST Ross, her arms instinctively tightening around his midriff.

  Mother Mary, where did all these men come from?

  Ross had obviously heard something, a moment before they’d emerged from the trees, yet it had come too late. They were now surrounded by a band of outlaws. Even if Ross was to draw the claidheamh-mor at his waist and swing for them, he’d be cut down before he ever reached his first victim.

  Wisely, Ross did no such thing.

  Instead, he sat still and watchful, as yet more men emerged from the thickets of pines that surrounded the banks of the burn. Silent in leather hunting boots, the men approached.

  At a glance, Leanna saw they were very different to the men who’d attacked her party on the way to her father’s burial. Those had been a much smaller, ragged band that had possessed an aura of desperation.

  The men encircling them now didn’t appear desperate. Most of them looked well fed, and all were dressed in hunting leathers. They wielded longbows, carried dirks, and had swords strapped to their sides.

  Leanna’s pulse quickened. Who are they?

  At that moment, as if answering her silent question, a tall, broad-shouldered figure em
erged from the trees.

  Unlike the others, this outlaw didn’t wield a bow. A claidheamh-mor hung by his side, the scabbard knocking against his leg as he walked, yet he didn’t draw it.

  Leanna stared at the newcomer. A prickle of recognition flared, and for an instant she stopped breathing, ice settling in the pit of her belly.

  Duncan MacKinnon.

  But as the man drew closer, she realized that although he bore a striking resemblance to the clan-chief, it was not him.

  Even so, the similarity made nausea roil in her belly.

  Just like MacKinnon, the man was tall—although he was possibly even bigger, broader, and more muscular than the clan-chief. He had the same ruggedly handsome face, while his rich-brown hair was longer and wilder. But what really set them apart was the thin white scar that slashed vertically from his temple to cheek, only an inch from his left eye.

  Leanna swallowed hard as realization dawned. She’d heard about this man—all of Skye had by now. Even the walls of Kilbride couldn’t stop the rumors.

  This was ‘Craeg the Bastard’, the outlaw leader who’d spent the last decade living in the territory’s forgotten places—and all the while causing problems for Duncan MacKinnon. He’d drawn the angry and disillusioned to him, and regularly stole from MacKinnon’s coffers, attacking supply wagons and tax collectors.

  Leanna stared at the outlaw, fear and fascination warring within her. Meeting her gaze, the man’s sensual mouth curved. “Do ye know me?”

  “Aye,” she whispered. “I think I do.”

  “Craeg MacKinnon,” Ross murmured, his tone flat. “So, this is where you’ve been hiding.”

  The big man inclined his head, gaze narrowing. “MacKinnon, eh? I suppose it’s a better name than ‘Craeg the Bastard’.”