Page 35 of Awoken
Leading the horse over to a grassy spot where it could graze for a short while, Campbell eventually turned to Leanna.
It was the first time their gazes had met all night, and the impact of it made Leanna grow still. Back in Dunan, Ross Campbell’s expression had often been aloof, his gaze shuttered. Yet there was no veil over his face this morning.
His features were strained, yet his eyes were the most intense she’d ever seen them.
Leanna’s pulse accelerated as the stare drew out. Eventually, she swallowed, before licking her lips. He was starting to make her feel nervous. “What is it?” she finally asked huskily.
His mouth quirked. “I owe ye an explanation, do I not? Ye wish to know why I freed ye? Why I’ve put a price on my own head as well?”
Leanna didn’t answer. She merely stared at him, awaiting his answer.
After a drawn-out moment, Campbell sighed and raked a hand through his shaggy dark hair. He had beautiful hair—as black and shiny as a raven’s wing, it fell in soft waves around his face. “I don’t claim to be the best of men, Lady Leanna,” he said, still holding her gaze. “But I’m not a beast either … I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d let MacKinnon force himself on ye, and then make ye his wife.”
Leanna frowned. “I asked ye for help before, and ye didn’t give it … I still don’t understand what changed?” She watched him closely then, noting the way those midnight blue eyes shadowed, the tension that rippled along his chiseled jaw.
Campbell favored her with another wry smile. “As I said before, I’m not the best of men.”
Heat kindled in Leanna’s belly at these words as her anger rose. That explanation wasn’t good enough. “MacKinnon is a brute,” she said, suppressing a shudder at even uttering the man’s name. “How can ye follow someone so black-hearted?”
Campbell’s smile faded, and she watched his gaze shutter. “We come from different worlds, milady … I wouldn’t expect ye to understand my motives.”
Leanna folded her arms across her chest. “Well, explain them to me, and we shall see.”
Campbell inclined his head, his gaze narrowing. “When ye grow up among brutes, a man like MacKinnon seems no worse.”
Leanna frowned in response. “Go on.”
“I’m the youngest son of Iver Campbell … he’s not a man many would dare cross,” he replied. Tension rippled off him now, the cloak of arrogance he usually wore sloughing away. “Growing up, I was terrified of him … we all were. He beat my mother, and he thrashed me and my brothers and sister. Dogs cowered whenever he came near. It was a harsh environment, and my elder brothers grew up as hard as their father, while my sister, Una, found herself a husband and fled our broch as soon as she was of age.” Campbell paused, his mouth twisting. “Una’s a survivor. She’s now on her second marriage … to the MacLeod clan-chief here on Skye. But like me, she’s avoided any tripshome.”
“Was it really that bad?” Leanna asked, her tone still guarded.
“Aye … it was,” he replied, his voice flat now. “As the youngest bairn, I bore the brunt of my brothers’ bullying. When I had twelve winters, one of them tried to drown me after I bested him at Ard-ri. Da beat him so badly for it that Doug lost the sight in one eye. Life in the broch became even harsher for me after that … and when I got the chance to foster on the Isle of Skye upon my sixteenth winter, I grabbed it with both hands.”
Ross Campbell halted there. Reaching out, he tore off a stem of pine from the tree next to him and began to shred it. His handsome face was now pale and strained. Leanna could see that the words cost him; he was not used to revealing himself before someone like this. He didn’t like to divulge his unhappy past.
An uncomfortable silence settled between them, and Campbell’s gaze shifted to the pine he was pulling to pieces. “Ye grew up in a loving environment, Lady Leanna … and yer father went to great lengths to protect ye. My father wouldn’t have done the same for his daughter.” He glanced up then, and met her eye once more. “When I arrived at Dunan, I found a place where I was wanted, appreciated. If I’d stayed with my kin, I’d have amounted to nothing, yet here I quickly rose in the ranks, and when Duncan MacKinnon became clan-chief, he made me Captain of The Dunan Guard. I grew up being told I was worth nothing … but MacKinnon changed all that.”
Leanna watched Campbell, and a little of the heat in her belly cooled. She wanted to rage at him, to vent the fury she still held within at her abduction and treatment over the past few days. And yet, seeing the vulnerability upon his face, she couldn’t muster the stinging words she longed to hurl at him.
He was right. Until her abduction, she’d never known cruelty and brutality. She’d grown up in a brash, yet loving, family, and then had entered the safe confines of Kilbride Abbey.
She had no idea what it was like to feel unwanted, unloved.
Looking at Ross Campbell, she imagined he was a few years older than her—in his late twenties perhaps—and yet his eyes belonged to a much older man. She wondered if he’d ever been in love, had ever made himself vulnerable to anyone. She had the suspicion he hadn’t.
“So ye could no longer pretend that yer master wasn’t the devil?” she asked finally.
Ross huffed a bitter laugh. “Aye … there comes a time in every man’s life when he must decide what he stands for.” He cast aside the now naked sprig of pine and stepped toward her. “Last night I decided that time had come.”
17
What Do Ye Stand For?
“AND WHAT DO ye stand for, Ross Campbell?”
The question was bold, and yet Leanna felt compelled to ask it. This conversation had changed things between them. Until now, she’d merely seen him as MacKinnon’s henchman. She hadn’t given even a passing thought to the events that had made Campbell into the man he was, hadn’t cared. But now she did.
And try as she might to deny it, Ross Campbell fascinated her. He had from their first meeting in that clearing. There were layers to him that made her want to dig deeper.
