Beside him, Colum said, “I estimate forty.” His voice was not strong.
With icy calm, Ruark’s gloved hand tightened on Loki’s reins. “Are you sure you aren’t still seeing double,” he said, perturbed that Colum had insisted on coming, even with the head wound McBain had sutured. The thickness of his clothes, and a leather jack had saved him from three arrows. The two boys were safe as well.
Ruark’s gaze was riveted to the center of the line behind him. He had already given everyone instructions. He kickedhis heels and sent Loki to the ridge. For a savage moment horse and rider were motionless, a silhouette in ebony framed against the round lantern moon behind him. He came forward just a few feet, his horse restlessly pawing at the ground as if he knew Ruark’s mind and his heart. Then four hundred men followed him onto the ridge. Their horses stretched out for as far as he could see into the darkness. Ruark raised his sword high. All around him, a battle cry went up that resounded across the sky.
He would not give Hereford time to amass or organize. And he was trusting Duncan to guard Rose’s life with his own.
Ruark’s arm came slashing down. And four hundred screaming Scotsman thundered down the ridge.
Rose had once heard that same bloodcurdling battle cry in Jedburgh. But this time her heart soared at the sound. Duncan grabbed her arm before she could go two steps. She fought him. “Nay, my lady Rose,” he said, pressing her head to his chest. “I am here on Ruark’s command.”
She heard her father shouting orders. She caught his furious glare from across the camp where he had run to retrieve his pistols and sword. He had expected her price as hostage to bring easy surrender. Instead, it brought hell down upon him. Men scattered. Some on horseback. The others on foot.
Duncan pulled her to a tree and threw her on the ground beneath its boughs. He unclasped the wood broach and with a twist of his hands, it opened into a deadly knife. He cut the bonds on her wrists, then dropped the bearskin cloak over her. And she became a shadow in the night. Warm and protected by its thick pelt.
But no shot was fired, no arrow flew, no knife was thrown.
Only the mountebank, who had crawled beneath the wagon, was still present in the camp when Ruark reached the glade. He dismounted while the horse was still moving, already at a run when he hit the ground. His spurs jangled with each step and Rose was suddenly in his arms, where she remained. Duncan beside them ever watchful.
Within ten minutes, the Scots had routed the small group of reprobates and scattered the lot into the woods, and the skirmish was over. Still, Rose did pull away from the bristled cheek pressed against her temple, and he did not force her. No words were spoken between them.
His eyes on his uncle over Rose’s head, Ruark asked, “Where is Hereford?”
“On foot,” Duncan said. “I saw the one called Geddes following on horseback. There is only one way out of these woods for anyone looking for the border. I will take some men ...”
Rose pulled away and looked up into Duncan’s face. He touched her shoulder. “I should no’ have hurt ye earlier with the lies, but I had no choice. I needed ye to believe I was against Ruark.”
“Oh, aye,” she said, gently indignant. “You convinced me well enough.”
While Ruark’s men gathered up the horses, he remained with Rose beneath the trees. He gently tilted her chin, looked at her face and examined the dark bruise on her swollen lip. “I would have been here sooner, but I had to find a way to get someone into this camp. Duncan would allow no other.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
He laughed softly against her hair. “You ask that, love, when you have my heart and I have yours? I will always find you.”
Hehadfound her, she realized.
Or she had found him, he might argue.
“Will we ever know all the answers, Ruark?”
In the end, it was Rolf, the mountebank, who told Ruark everything.
Rolf confessed that it was Geddes who had murdered Ruark’s father for the gold Hereford paid him to do the deed, a dissolution of the partnership after Ruark’s father could not pay the enormous debt owed to Hereford.
If Ruark would have surrendered tonight as Hereford had wanted, Hereford would have made sure he never made it to England alive.
But Ruark would never allow Hereford the chance to threaten any of them again.
Before Ruark would ever find peace, he had to first find Hereford. So Ruark and Duncan left Rose at Stonehaven.
Three days later, they found him dead at the bottom of a hollow near where he had vanished in the woods. He had apparently fallen or been pushed, as Duncan surmised, as it looked as if a fight had taken place on the ground above the drop.
Geddes was found two days later outside Castleton, riding the black cavalry horse Ruark had stolen some months prior from the captain of a dragoon regiment, and was promptly arrested, which was why he was in custody when Ruark found him. Ironically, the horse had been the one Geddes had taken the day he took Rose. It had been the horse Jack had ridden to the falls. Ruark did not linger long but returned to his wife and family and found Rose in the sitting room, her hands clasped in Mrs. Simpson’s, for she had already received the news about Hereford’s death. But that wasn’t why she was crying.
“I thought it time to reveal everything,” Mrs. Simpson said.
Ruark stared as Mrs. Simpson turned to him and told him she was Rose’s great-aunt, sister to her grandmother. Using a lace-edged handkerchief, she dabbed at her eyes. “I married quite young, you see, and quite outside the expectations of the family. I did not care a whit. Marrying my husband gave me a freedom in my life I could never have had with the strictures of my family.” Her eyes on Rose, she said, “After your mother died, Friar Tucker and I knew you were in great peril. No one could know about me.”
