Kate rushed into the barn next, with Angus and the others. Hearing them enter, Callum turned and lifted his finger to his lips for silence, then motioned for Angus to search the barn. Something had triggered his sister’s terror. Where the hell was Jamie?
Callum moved toward Maggie so softly his boots made no sound. When he reached her, he did not touch her but squatted before her. “Maggie, ’tis Callum,” he said, his voice riddled with love and tenderness. If she heard him, she made no show of it but sank deeper into the shadows, a low moan vying with Matilda’s honking.
Callum looked away from her only once to watch Angus hoist an unconscious Jamie out of the barn. Maggie’s dear champion appeared to have fallen from the rafters. A trickle of blood covered his face, but Angus assured them with a quiet nod that the lad was still breathing.
“’Tis all right now, lass.” Callum returned his attention to his sister. He knew she was in another place. And he knew where that place was.
“Callum?” her delicate voice touched him so profoundly it pulled a sob from the back of his throat.
He picked her up and cradled her body close to his chest, then turned and almost walked straight into Kate.
“Let’s get her to bed,” he whispered, holding Maggie closer. He closed his eyes and kissed the top of Maggie’s head, then left the barn.
Chapter Twenty-Three
KATE LEANED against the doorframe of Maggie’s chambers in silence. As she watched Callum bend to place his sister inside her tent, Kate’s heart broke so completely for both of them that it numbed her. She felt the tears burning behind her eyes, but she was careful to hold them in check, for fear they would never stop falling. Her kin had done this—her own grandfather. When Callum rose to his feet, he turned and looked away from Kate’s sorrow-filled gaze. He did not want pity. Kate knew it, but it was all she felt at that moment . . . besides the certain knowledge that she had fallen in love with the Devil MacGregor.
“She’s asleep,” Callum told her and ran his hand through his hair. “Hopefully she will sleep through the night.”
“What happened to her today?” Kate asked when he turned to go to the window. “Please. Speak to me about it. What frightened her so, Callum?”
He looked out, remaining silent until Kate thought he would not tell her. Or he could not bring himself to. Then, with a muffled groan that seemed to wilt his broad shoulders, he finally spoke. “She is afraid of blood. It covered her, smothered her . . .” He turned to look at the tent again and swallowed back a well of emotions Kate feared he might never release. “Ye would think she’d abhor the confines of such a wee place, but it comforts her.” Slowly, he faced Kate, ready to tell her what he had wished, had prayed to forget since the day they had escaped six years ago. “Liam Campbell kept my sister in a cage suspended just a stone’s throw away from me.” He forced himself to go on even though the horror on Kate’s face clearly made him want to cease. “At first, I thought she would go mad. She was just a babe. Imagine what it must have been like cramped in a prison an inch larger than yer crumpled body.” He ran his palm over the soft leather of Maggie’s haven, his voice a loving whisper. “Argyll’s men used to come and drag her oot and stretch her until she screamed from the agony of it.” His haunted gaze found Kate’s again. “I had to kill them, Kate,” he said, moving toward her. “I butchered them. I killed them all with my sister clingin’ to my back. I could no’ stop, even knowin’ what I forced her to witness.”
“I understand,” Kate told him softly, barely able to breathe. She suspected he was asking for her absolution. She gave it.
He took her hand and sat on the bed, pulling her down gently to sit beside him. “Nae, lass, ye dinna understand. D’ye know what she saw? ’Twas ugly, Kate. So ugly she makes herself ferget. But sometimes . . .” he paused, looking like he could not go on. “Sometimes she awakens from her dreams and she remembers.”
It was then that Kate saw in his eyes the thing that plagued him, that had utterly destroyed him. It was not the years of horror spent in a dungeon but guilt and self-reproach at what his sister had watched him do to escape it that twisted his features and dulled his eyes to a lifeless blue. “My sister would rather go back to the cage than to that one day and the blood I poured upon her. Yer uncle is right to call me a devil.”
Kate walked along the shoreline, letting the frothy surf soak her feet. She barely felt the water chilling her flesh. Her thoughts were fixed on the dark, foreboding fortress before her, and on the man inside.
Callum MacGregor had survived the abyss of hell. He saved his sister from it, but what he had to become in the process near brought Kate to her knees.
Her tears fell heavy into the waves rolling beneath her feet. She could not weep this way in front of Callum, for his shoulders already carried enough, so she had left him and wept with unabashed abandon until the sun dipped below the loch. He had killed the men of her grandfather’s garrison in a massacre that had made him a legend, and he believed it cost him the only thing he’d ever had the chance to love. His sister.
But Maggie did love him. Dear God, if Robert had saved her from such a cruel existence, Kate never would consider him anything less than the bravest of men. Maggie had many evils from her past with which to live, but Kate was certain that Callum was not among them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CALLUM WAS NOT in Maggie’s room when Kate returned. Aileen sat by the bed, working a small piece of embroidery by the light of a single candle. She looked up when she heard Kate enter.
“I’m to call Callum when she awakens,” the handmaiden advised her, laying the embroidery in her lap. “Mayhap ’twould be wise if she did not see ye when she . . .” Her voice faded as she set her eyes on the tent. “Ye are a Campbell, after all.”
Kate squared her shoulders and crossed the room to stand in front of her. “I will not leave. Whether you like it or not, I care for her.”
Aileen peered at her through narrowed eyes, and Kate braced herself for the contempt bequeathed to her because of her name.
“Ye wield a sword right fine, ye do,” Aileen complimented instead. “Even Graham is impressed with ye.”
“My brother taught me.” Kate began to smile, but then her eyes opened wide. “Oh, heavens, I did not clean Callum’s wound!”
“Aye, everyone’s talkin’ aboot how ye clipped the laird.” Aileen’s deep blue eyes fair glimmered in the soft firelight of the chambers. “Would ye teach me to fight like that?”
“Of course, but it was not my intention to hurt him, I assure you.” Kate began looking around the room for what she would need to tend to Callum. She found a small basin of water and a strip of cloth beside Maggie’s bed. “But I should tend to him. Aileen, please send him to me posthaste.”
“Aye, m’lady.” Aileen gathered her things, offered Kate a swift curtsey, then headed for the door.
When Aileen left the room, Kate crossed the rushes and crouched before the tent. She peeked inside. The wee lass was sound asleep, snoring, in fact. Kate gently removed a piece of straw from Maggie’s hair and sighed. “Bless you, sweeting.”
