“I’ve seen enough dead people to know if one is dead or not. Hewasdead,” she said with a conviction she didn’t feel, because to portray otherwise would seal Iain’s fate. “I know it.”
“No,” Palmer said with regret. “He wasn’t.”
“I killed him.”
Cait swung around to see who had said that. Rory stepped forward, looking scared and pale but standing his ground. “I found Cait after Donaldson beat her, and when she told me where she had left Donaldson, I searched for him to bury his body, but he wasn’t where she’d said she’d left him. I found him wandering down the road. His head was bleeding, and he was talking nonsense and could barely stand up. I slit his throat and stabbed him.”
“Ah, lad,” Iain said on a breath.
Rory squared up against the officer. “I killed the others, too.”
“Rory, no!” Cait cried out.
“Is that true, lad?” Iain asked.
“Aye.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. Rory hadn’t killed those men. He wasn’t capable of such a thing. Not Rory, who always had a smile for her and a ready laugh. Cait moved closer and put her palm against his rough cheek. He looked at her with tears in his eyes.
“I had to,” he said, sounding more like the little boy she knew than the man he had become. “They wouldn’t go away. They needed to go away. Scotland is ours, not theirs. And the things they were doing to our people. It’s not right, Cait.”
“Killing them isn’t the answer,” Cait said. “Just like the English soldiers killing our people isn’t the answer. We all need to work together to find a solution.”
One of Rory’s tears rolled onto the back of her hand. “Forgive me,” he whispered.
The officer stepped up next to him. “Rory Graham, you are under arrest for the death of five English soldiers, including Lieutenant Donaldson.”
Rory nodded but didn’t take his gaze off Cait. “Tell Grandfather that I’m sorry.”
“No,” she choked out.
“Please, Cait. Tell him.”
She nodded, unable to speak through such a tight throat. There were no words, anyway.
Rory was stripped of his weapons, then Palmer and the officer walked him away, each holding one of his arms. Iain put his arm around Cait and hugged her to his side.
—
They spent the night at a local inn because none of them wanted to leave Rory, even though there was no hope for him. He was too well guarded, according to Palmer, who wouldn’t agree to help break him out of prison but was supplying necessary information. Rory was all alone and heavily guarded.
Cait tended to Iain’s wounds, setting his broken finger and cleaning his various scrapes and cuts. “We’re a matching pair,” she said.
He huffed out a laugh, then grimaced when it pulled on his split lip. “Come here,mo gradh.” He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her. They remained that way, he sitting, his arms around her waist, while she ran her hands through his hair.
“I missed ye,” she said. “Don’t ever go and do such a thing again.”
“When I was sentenced, all I could think about was you and how I’d let you down after I convinced you to start living again and how horrible it was that we were going to be separated forever.”
She drew in a deep breath, overcome by the despair in his voice.
“I didn’t think I was going to get out of that,” he whispered. “And I didn’t want to die without seeing you one more time. And then there you were, running toward me, and I thought I was seeing things.”
“Oh, Iain. I was so afraid of what I was going to find when I saw ye. I’ll admit that I thought yer injuries would be much worse. But one thing I didn’t think about was leaving that place without ye. I was damned if ye were going to tell me about the light after the dark and then ye not be there in the light.”
He chuckled, his breath warm on her stomach. “I want to make love to you, Cait, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me tonight.”
“Just hold me,” she said softly. “Just hold me.”
