Page 58 of Sighs of the Highland Wind
“Fine, thank ye - just wet!” She laughed as she looked down at her skirt, and he was glad that she was not too proud to make fun of herself.
As he had helped her to her feet, he looked into her eyes anxiously and saw that they were a shade of hazel that was almost amber, fringed with long chestnut brown lashes, and that was when he had begun to fall in love with her. That had been five years ago, five years of hoping and longing, five years ofdreading the thought that she might fall for another man, five years of being frustrated that he could not offer her the life she deserved.
“Cam?” He came back to reality when he saw Ava waving her hand in front of his face, giggling. “Are ye daydreamin’?”
“Aye,” he said ruefully. “Wishin’ I was rich. I feel - powerless. My mammy left me a wee bit o’ land an’ the cottage after she died because it was a’ she had, but even though I have tried hard, I have never been able to do anythin’ on the land or in my life that would have made her proud o’ me.” He thumped the ground with his fists in frustration. “I have run up debts that I cannot pay, and you an’ your sisters have had to rescue me. I am a failure, Ava.”
Ava felt her eyes begin to sting with tears, which she blinked away. She put her hand over his where it rested on the ground. “We want to help ye because ye deserve it, Cam,” she said gently. “Because ye are a good man. You have done more than that for us, an’ we owe ye far more than ye owe us.”
“Thank you, Ava,” he murmured. “But I don’t feel like a good man.”
“Can your father no’ help you?” she asked, then realized it had been the wrong thing to say.
For a moment, Cameron’s face took on a thunderously angry glare, then he closed his eyes and passed a hand over them. When he opened them again he shook his head. “He is dead to me, Ava,” he said dully. “I buried him long ago.”
Ava was one of the few people who knew Cameron’s history. He was the last of his line. There would be no one of his name after him, and it broke his heart to think of it, not because of his name,but because he was so lonely. Dalziel was his mother’s surname, for his father had disowned him and would not share his name with his son, his bastard. He only thought of himself.
However, if Cameron died, the Struthers sisters might mourn for a while, but they had their own lives to live, and they had each other. No one would miss him.
Then suddenly, as he looked up at Ava, he was horrified at his self-pity. She and her sisters were going through a much worse experience than he was. He had never really known or loved his father, but she loved hers, and was watching him die a slow and horrific death. He felt completely ashamed, and looked away as he turned his hands around to clasp hers.
“I am sorry, Ava.” His voice was grim. “I am bein’ selfish. I have no’ got as much to worry about as you do. Forgive me.”
“My Da will die whatever we do. Everybody only has a wee bit o’ time on this earth an’ his is nearly up.” Ava’s voice was sad and resigned. “An’ no amount o’ misery will stop that, Cam. But we must care for the livin’ as well. My sisters an’ I will have a life after he dies, an’ so will you. You have a good future - I believe that - but you must look after yourself, an’ we can help you to do that.”
Cameron swallowed nervously and ran his thumbs over Ava’s fingers. She was watching him, he knew, waiting silently for him to say something he did not feel able to say.
What would have happened next, they had no idea, since they both looked up at the sound of horses’ hooves and men’s voices yelling at each other.
4
Ava and Cameron rose from the grass where they were sitting and crept towards the source of the sound. They were not seen by the horsemen since they were half-hidden by trees, but they could clearly see that there were two columns of twelve horsemen, clad in the livery of the Lewis Clan, riding abreast of each other. One of the second two riders had the limp body of a man slung over his saddle.
When they saw it, Ava gave a little squeal of fright, but Cameron froze. The figure was draped face down with its arms hanging down loosely, but even from two hundred yards away they could see that he had bright blond hair. Although the Scots had a great deal of Norse blood and were relatively fair people, there were not too many with such distinctive wheat-coloured hair. In fact, Cameron was the only man in the whole village with hair that was the same shade of blond as the corpse in the saddle.
‘My brother,’he thought. He barely knew Brian Lewis, since their father had seen to it that the two half-brothers had been kept as far apart as possible, but they had encountered each other once, when Cameron was seventeen and Brian was fifteen.
Cameron had often seen his half-brother from a distance riding with his guards or playing with his dog, but they had never come face to face with each other. In fact, for a long time he did not even know who the young man was, although he had often wondered at their resemblance to each other.
However, one day in the depth of the coldest winter Cameron could remember, when two inches of snow still coated the ground, he went down to the loch to fish for trout. He was very hungry and had virtually no food stores left, or he would never have ventured out in such weather, and he had just sat down when he heard the drumming of hoofbeats behind him.
He looked up and saw a lone figure cantering towards him on a huge grey stallion. He was wearing an expensive fur-lined cloak and stout leather boots, the likes of which Cameron had always envied, but had no hope of ever buying. He dismissed the man as just another rich lord who had no concern for the likes of him, and looked away just in time to feel the tug of a fish on the end of his line. Success!
However, success eluded his brother that day. Cameron heard the frantic neighing of the horse, then a thud and a crunch as both man and beast hit the ground. He looked around to see the horse lying on its side on the ground, neighing frantically and kicking the air. The man had fortunately been flung a few yards away, so had avoided being crushed by the animal, but he was obviously stunned and in pain.
He was moaning piteously, and Cameron rushed over to him at once to see how he could help. The stranger’s face was screwedup in pain and he was clutching his knee. Cameron felt it to see if there was a break, but there was no significant injury there, as far as he could tell. He could explore no further because of the boots, which covered his legs up to the knee, but the man was moving them, so there was no serious damage there, he reasoned. Cameron suspected that there would be severe bruising on every part of his body later on, though.
“How dae ye feel?” he asked the man, frowning. His helmet had been thrown off in the fall, and it was only then that Cameron noticed the color of his hair, which was exactly the same as his own.
The stranger opened his eyes. They were dark grey, the same color as the sky on a stormy day, but there was something about his face that looked familiar. It took him a few moments to see the cleft chin that was the same as his own, and his father’s, Laird Lewis. This man was his half-brother!
“Not wonderful,” the young man said, then groaned. “But I will survive. Thank you for your help.” His voice had the kind of cultured accent that marked him out as a member of the noble class.
Cameron nodded and helped the young man to his feet. The horse had already stood up and was shaking snow off his coat and pawing the ground irritably. “Looks as if he slipped on the snow,” he remarked. When he turned to the stranger again, Cameron found the stranger gazing at him, perhaps seeing the same resemblance between them that Cameron had seen.
Neither of them spoke, however, and just then they both looked behind them as a party of four guards came galloping towards them. The Captain of the Guard looked furious. It was obvious what had happened. Neither the Laird nor his son evertraveled without at least four guards, but today he had somehow managed to give them the slip. Cameron thought he might have done the same after years of being constantly watched and accompanied everywhere he went, without any privacy or freedom.
The Laird’s son sighed and frowned as the Captain of the Guard marched over to him. “M’Laird will have my guts for garters if anythin’ happens tae ye, Master,” he told him grimly.
