In contrast, pathetic moans, scarcely audible, issued from Sir John’s gray lips, his eyelids flickering as he tried to focus on the men peering down at him.
Biting back his anger, Sir Marmaduke cradled the man’s head. “Unburden your soul before you breathe your last,” he said, lifting his voice to cut through the confusion. The growing swell of heated mumbles and darker slurs, the yapping of his lady’s little dog.
“Speak,” he tried again. “All listen.”
When Sir John remained silent, Marmaduke glanced up at the men thronging near, raised a hand to still their grumbles. Then he reached for Sir John’s blood-drenched tunic and lifted its hem.
The wound, an angry red slit just beneath the earl’s ribs, was his only injury. Not even a bruise or scratch marred the whiteness of his flesh.
“But he was smeared with his own blood,” Gowan observed. “We saw-”
“Not his own blood.” Ross spat onto the rushes. “The bastard sullied himself a-purpose, wanting us to think he’d been cut down.”
“A sack of chicken or pig blood beneath his tunic, most like,” Marmaduke agreed.
“Foul bastard,” Ross snarled.
“It scarce matters now.” Marmaduke looked up at the battle-hardened Highlander, signed for him to hold his tongue. “He is leaving us.”
“Good riddance,” Sir Alec growled.
“My lord of Kinraven,” Marmaduke began, lowering the shirt, then leaning down to speak into the dying man’s ear, “your treachery has cost you all. We would have helped you win back your home had you but asked.”
Sir John’s lips moved, but no words, no explanation of his duplicity poured forth.
Only a welter of pink-flecked froth.
“N-never lost Kinraven-” A mere rasp, pushed from lips by death itself.
“Never lost Kinraven?” That from James. He stared at Sir John’s waxen face, his own paling. “How can that be? All know-” He broke off at a warning glance from Marmaduke, and an elbow in the ribs from Alec.
Sir John’s eyelids flickered again and he met James’ astonishment as best he could. “’Twas Dunlaidir he wanted…all along… p-promised to leave Kinraven untouched if…if…”
“--If you’d help him gain Dunlaidir,” James finished for him, his face darkening when Sir John gave him a silent, agonized nod.
“Soulless craven!” James shouted, his hands fisting. “To think we welcomed him, gave him sanctuary.” Whirling away, he stormed from the hall, his long-strided gait as straight as the fine red line across Sir John’s belly.
“M-my regrets…sorry…” Sir John wheezed, his glassy-eyed stare fixed on some distant point beyond Sir Marmaduke’s shoulder.
Perhaps beyond this world.
And then he was gone, his feeble peace offered, his troubled eyes dulling, his last breath spent.
Equally troubled, Marmaduke lowered Sir John’s head to the floor, then stood. His gaze finding his wife’s, he shrugged off his cloak, and, after swirling it over the dead man’s body, he went to her.
She ran toward him, her arms extended as those in the hall made a path for her. He opened his arms as well, and waited. His courage, so bold on the field of battle, proved not quite stout enough for him to believe she’d fling herself into his embrace.
But she did, and in that precious moment, the world tilted beneath his feet.
The glory of her acceptance, her joy at his safe return, felled him with a far greater blow than any English steel could ever deliver.
His heart swelling so quickly he could hardly breathe, he wrapped his arms around her, letting her cling to him, marveling that she did, blood-sullied and grimed as he stood before her.
“My lady, but I love you,” he breathed the words against her temple, too overcome to care that she stiffened upon hearing them.
Setting her from him, he clasped her face with his hands and touched his forehead to hers. “Do not say it,” he murmured into the warm silk of her hair, “just calm yourself, and let me hold you.”
He slipped an arm beneath her then, lifting her to him before she could object or ruin the moment.
