But it was only her maid, looking harried as she rushed toward the kitchen with an armload of fabric.
When Fiona didn’t appear behind her, disappointment flared within Brogan, which in turn only irritated him even more. He took another pull of whisky, then grabbed one of the extra blankets that had been left for them and found a place on the floor to wrap himself up and go to sleep.
Though he closed his eyes, sleep didn’t come easy. Nay, instead he was haunted by the haughty, floating face of a daring and foul-mouthed phantom—Fiona.
Five
As planned, they left Dòchas before the sun rose, heading southeast toward Ruthven. Fortunately, the rain had ceased for the interim, giving them a reprieve from the wet and their clothes a chance to keep them warm. Though the miles between them and the battlefield grew, the fear at being on the road surrounded by the enemy did not diminish.
Fiona could smell blood in the air, the smoke of burned-out cottages, and despair. Surprisingly to her, she was relieved for the company of Brogan and his men. They gave her a sense of security, and when things grew too quiet, one of them rattled off a bawdy jest that had them all, including her, in stitches.
Every so often, she found her gaze sliding toward Brogan, where she studied his profile and wondered at his thoughts. But inevitably, her mind would ping its way back to the reason why they were together.
Her heart was never going to stop racing. The duty to the rebellion that she’d fully embraced for years had always been dangerous, but things had changed overnight. And now the danger was more imminent. Eight Jacobites traveling on the road were bound to be noticed.
Despite her enjoying their company more and more, it was better that she part ways with them as soon as they arrived at Ruthven, for their sake as well as her own.
The first light of morning hit the icy moors, and their party woke, stretching out the stiffness a night of sleeping on the cold ground brought. They’d been on the road no more than a quarter hour when bloodcurdling screams had them all stopping short, their veins freezing on the spot. Wails of devastation.
Someone needed help. Fiona turned in her saddle one way and then another, trying to determine the exact location. The men seemed frantic to find the source of the cries too. Another scream rent the air, coming from the left, and Fiona swiveled in that direction, urging her mount to veer off the road and into a field.
“Fiona,” Brogan called after her, but she ignored him.
If he wanted to remain complacent to those who suffered, that was his choice, but she would not.
Thick black smoke curled above the trees lining the road as she led her horse into the dimness of the forest, following the sounds of anguish and the ever-increasing scent of burning. Before she’d reached the location, a series of pops cracked the air. Gunfire. And just as suddenly as the cries had pierced the wind, they were silenced.
Fiona’s heart ceased its pounding against her breast. Her eyes widened impossibly, and her breath held painfully in her lungs.
There was only one reason for those cries for help, screams of pain to be silenced—death.
She forced her horse forward, one step at a time, until she could see in full view what had happened. Redcoats burning out a small cottage, poised with their pistols over prone bodies. Several Jacobite soldiers and a woman lay facedown in wet grass thick with their blood. Shot dead. Silenced.
This was what the dragoons had inadvertently warned them about on the road. Cumberland’s plan to eradicate the opposition.
Fiona swallowed the scream rising in her throat, biting her palm to make sure it didn’t escape. Through the miasma of her emotions, she felt rather than heard Brogan’s approach. He stopped beside her, watching the carnage taking place just a short distance away.
She looked up at him, tears blurring her vision, and he raised his finger to his lips, indicating she should remain silent.
Though she nodded, she didn’t trust herself. Tremors racked her body, and she kept her hand to her mouth, biting her fingers as tears flowed down her cheeks.
Those nameless faces could be any one of them. Could be Annie with the men she’d seen rushing from the battlefield, could be Jenny hiding out in a cave or running in the woods with her rebel soldiers. Could be her brother Ian, or any of the MacBean clan. Could be Gus and Leanna if they somehow returned to Scotland at the wrong time. Could be every single person at Dòchas.
They stood silent for several more minutes, and then Brogan’s fingers brushed her elbow as he reached and tugged at the reins of her horse with a cock of his head back toward the way they’d come.
Warmth tingled and prickled her skin from that slight touch, and she wanted to lean into it. To crawl onto his lap and curl up. To feel safe for once, totally and completely sheltered.
But to feel that protected again she’d have to return to a state of naivete she never wanted to revisit. To feel completely secure would mean becoming ignorant to everything in the world.
And there was no going back. Not with everything she’d seen and done.
They should leave, run the horses as hard as they could before they were discovered, and yet she couldn’t turn away from the carnage displayed before her. The bodies bleeding into the ground. The way their deaths mirrored a possible fate in store for her and the seven men she traveled with. If the dragoons turned, if they caught their scent on the wind or happened to hear the tinkling of a bridle, all they would have to do was look. And they’d see Fiona and Brogan hiding in the woods. They, too, would be shot dead on the ground.
Silenced.
And still she wouldn’t go. Whether it was shock or bravery or downright stubbornness, she shook off Brogan’s hold.
Should she honor them in death, or flee and save herself?
Tearing her eyes from the brutal scene, Fiona nodded to Brogan. She was no good dead. And neither was he. She turned her horse back in the direction of the road, trembling and fighting back tears, while in the distance the dragoons celebrated the lives they’d taken.
* * *
It took everything within Brogan not to gather Fiona in his arms. He’d never experienced such raw emotion before, watching her suffer. It punched him repeatedly in the gut. Tears gushed down her face, horror written in every angle of her features.
It made him wonder what horrors she had witnessed before now.
When did seeing such horrific things over and over again finally make one numb? And when did the horror end?
The men waited back on the road, as he’d instructed, having guessed what they would come upon in the glen. They all took one look at her tearstained face, glanced at Brogan as he shook his head, and knew instantly what they had witnessed.
They hung their heads, all of them riding mournfully on in silence. Hurrying away from the destruction, the danger.
Fiona raced off at breakneck speed, taking turns too fast, urging her horse to leap over boulders when it was easier to go around them. Each option she took was more dangerous than the last, until finally Brogan grabbed her reins and pulled her horse to a stop. Sweat glistened on her features, mingled with tears, and the look on her face was enough to stop him cold.