He ripped it away as if her comfort scalded him. “I’m not done. You wanted to know; now you’ll hear all of it.”
The mask of detachment had slipped. The fury of emotion revealed itself in the angry sneer of his mouth. “I should have died along with them.” He pointed to a two-inch-wide circular scar on his shoulder. “Unconscious, with a spear pinned through my shoulder, the English left me for dead. Which I would have been in a few hours, had I not been found by my kinsmen—and enemies—the MacDonalds. I ‘recovered’ in a MacDonald prison for a few months, before my cousin, Angus Og, for reasons of his own, decided to help me escape. He was the one who asked me to join the Bruce,” he said as an aside. “He tried to warn me about my wife, but I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t realize the truth until I returned to Dunstaffnage Castle, to find Juliana betrothed to another man—a much more rich and powerful man.”
The lack of bitterness and emotion in his voice made her heart go out to him all the more. She wanted to touch him but knew that he wouldn’t accept her comfort. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
“Juliana pretended to be glad to see me, right up to the point that her brother threw me in his pit prison and gave me these,” he pointed to his back, “while trying to get me to confess my alleged betrayal.” He laughed. “I think even he started to have doubts about my guilt after a while.”
Horror washed over her at the calm manner with which he spoke of the cruelties inflicted on him. It was almost as if he were talking about someone else. She knew she was getting the barest sketch of what had happened and that he was leaving out things she didn’t even want to imagine.
It certainly explained his reaction in the tunnel and to going into the pit prison at Peebles. She, better than anyone, understood that particular source of fear.
Their eyes met, and it was as if he knew what she was thinking. “Ah, yes, you discovered my little secret, didn’t you? I’ve no fondness for dark holes.”
He said it as if it should lessen her impression of him. But how could she not but admire him after all he’d been through? He’d been betrayed by those closest to him, had been imprisoned, and withstood suffering she couldn’t imagine. He’d scraped and fought back after everything had been taken from him.
He’d survived.
Just as she had. “And I have no fondness for small rooms and bars.” Their eyes held for a moment in shared understanding. She glanced down at the lock by his foot and understood something else. “The manacles. The lock in the tunnel. Is that why you are so good at getting past them?”
He lifted a brow in a mocking salute, obviously surprised that she’d made the connection. Reaching down behind his ankle, he slipped something from the leather sole of his boot and held it up for her inspection. It looked like a nail, but without the sharp tip. “I keep a spare in my boot, in case I am without my sporran. Unfortunately, working locks is a skill I learned only later. I escaped Dunstaffnage in a much less civilized way.”
She tilted her head in question.
“There were so many rats they’d made wide holes under the walls. I dug my way out by following their path.”
She shivered. Rats. She abhorred the vile creatures. One was bad enough, but hundreds? Good God, what must that have been like?
He stopped for a moment, but she knew he wasn’t done. When she put her hand on his arm again, this time he did not shake her off. “What happened to your wife?”
“I should have just left, but I waited for her on a beach I knew she liked to walk on by the castle.” Bleakness had crept into his matter-of-fact tone. “I confronted her. God knows what I was expecting. An excuse? An explanation? A denial? I was so angry, I neededsomething. She was shocked to see me, of course. I suspect she thought her brother had already had me killed. She feigned ignorance of my accusations, and God help me, I wanted to believe her. But as soon as my back was turned, she came at me with a dirk.” Her gaze went to the jagged scar on his cheek. He smiled. “Aye, my reminder never to turn my back on a beautiful woman.”
He said it in jest, but she suspected there was far more truth in it than he wanted to acknowledge. His wife’s betrayal had molded him as much as his mother’s rejection. Trust. Love. He knew neither. Anger and bitterness would have been easier to contend with. Cold acceptance was so much worse. How could he believe in something he didn’t know existed?
“We struggled for the knife. I tripped and fell on her. When I stood up, the knife was lodged in her stomach. So you see, the rumors are true, at least in that respect.”
“But it wasn’t your fault! Good God, Lachlan, she was trying to kill you.”
“She was a woman,” he said tightly.
Bella stared at him in disbelief. “And so there can be no excuse?” She shook her head. “You claim to have no rules, no code but your own, but you are more conventional than you want to admit, Lachlan.”
He gave her a sharp look, clearly not liking her observation. “When I returned home to my family at Castle Tioram, it was to find that I had been found guilty of treason, and my holdings, with what wealth I did have, declared forfeit.”
“But surely your family—”
The muscle below his jaw jumped. “My family believed as everyone else.”
“But didn’t you explain?”
“Why? I realized my presence made it difficult for them, so I decided to go to Ireland and make what fortune I could as a gallowglass.”
“So you expected blind loyalty from your family but won’t give it yourself?”
White lines appeared around his mouth. “Leave it, Bella. Don’t think you understand me; you don’t.”
But she couldn’t leave it. For the first time so many things were clear to her. Why his reaction to her bothered him so much, and why he’d resisted it so strongly. He thought his feelings for his wife were to blame for the death of his men. That his desire for her—his lust—had made him fail his duty to his men.
It was clear he thought she posed the same threat. She understood why he didn’t trust her. He’d known only unkindness and betrayal from the women who should have loved him. But she wanted him to trust her. “I’m not your wife, Lachlan. I would never betray you.”
