“Tell me what happened.”
And she did. Well, most of it at least, leaving out the more intimate details, although she suspected Cliff filled in the gaps well enough. When she was done, his mouth was pulled in a hard, angry line. “I’ll kill him.”
“No! Please. I just want to forget any of this ever happened.”
She took the folded square of linen he handed her and dabbed her nose and eyes.
Cliff’s expression was no less fierce, but his voice softened. “Are you sure about that, Rosie-lin?” He stopped. “I’ve fought against Boyd for a long time, and I’ve never known him to hesitate. But something caused him to pull back, and I suspect that something was you.”
Rosalin sniffled and took a deep breath. She shook her head. “Even if he changed his mind about the attack, it doesn’t matter. It would never work. Who I am will always be between us. I cannot be with a man who does not trust and love me.”
He squeezed her tighter and sighed, as if a great weight had been lifted off him. “I hate to see you in pain, but I won’t say I’m sorry to hear that. You can’t see it now, but this will be for the best. Anything between you would have been all but impossible.”
Rosalin blinked up at him. “But not impossible?”
He looked away, his mouth pursed as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. It was much the same look Robbie got when her brother’s name was mentioned. “I want you to be happy, but handing my sister over to that barbarian would be asking a lot. And I would never have done it if I wasn’t certain that he could make you happy. The brigand would have been hard pressed to prove it to me.” He squeezed her one more time and kissed the top of her head. “Forget about him, Rosie-lin. He doesn’t deserve you.”
“I’ll try,” she promised. “And Cliff?” He looked at her. “Thank you for not trying to make me hate him.”
His mouth lifted. “Hell, if I thought it would work, I would have. But I suspect that battle was lost years ago.”
“What do you mean?” He cocked a brow and held her stare. The blood slowly drained from her face as the truth dawned. “You knew?”
He shrugged. “Not right away. It was the guards who gave it away. I knew there had to be a reason Boyd didn’t kill them. God knew, he had every reason to, so I suspected someone had helped him. From the way your breath stopped and face paled every time he was mentioned, it didn’t take me long to realize who that might be.”
“Why did you never say anything? You must have been so angry with me for betraying you.”
“In truth, I was rather relieved.” His jaw hardened as if from something unpleasant. “It evened the score.”
Rosalin was shocked when she realized what he was saying. “Did you trick them into surrendering, Cliff? I refused to believe it of you.”
“I didn’t—at least not intentionally. The king didn’t tell me what he had planned. I gave my word the meeting would be held under truce not knowing they would be arrested. They wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer and the result would have been the same, but I didn’t like that it had been done at the expense of my honor. I was ashamed of what had been done, but had to do my duty.” He smiled crookedly. “You saved me from having to make a decision I didn’t want to make.”
Rosalin was stunned. “I can’t believe you knew all these years and never said anything.”
“I suspected why you did it and hoped you’d forget.” He smiled ruefully. “I guess that didn’t work very well, did it?”
She shook her head, emotion balling up in her throat again. “What am I going to do, Cliff?”
“I don’t know, little one, but we’ll figure something out. It will get better.”
If only she could believe him.
When the two thousand pounds arrived from Clifford a week after Rosalin and Seton left, Robbie wondered if his desperate plan might actually have a chance of working. Clifford could have reneged on the truce, but he hadn’t. That and the letter agreeing to meet that had arrived a day too late had to mean something.
Robbie rode north to Dundee with Fraser and a handful of other men to bring Bruce the much needed coin, but also to speak with MacLeod. If his plan was going to work, he was going to need the help of his brethren.
He didn’t inform the king of his intentions, suspecting Bruce wouldn’t agree. But unsanctioned missions involving wives (or God willing, future wives) were hardly unusual for the Guardsmen. MacLeod himself had ordered one to rescue his wife at the beginning of the war, so Robbie expected a sympathetic ear.
Still, it had taken him a few days to persuade the leader of the Highland Guard to agree. But a week after he’d arrived in Dundee, Robbie and the nine other Guardsmen were standing in the forest near Berwick Castle going over the final details of his plan. Actually, he was going over the details, and they were doing their damndest to talk him out of it.
“It’s bloody suicide, Raider,” Lachlan MacRuairi said. “Just because we’ve managed to get out of there before doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do so again. It took me over two years to free my wife from that hellhole—with a failure that nearly got us captured. If you are imprisoned there is no guarantee of a rescue. I’ve been in that pit prison, and believe me, you don’t want to spend much time there.”
Robbie remembered, and if there was anyone in the Guard who knew about getting in and out of dangerous places it was MacRuairi.
“It won’t come to that.”
I hope.
