Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (16 page)

“Well, this is done. Let’s find the women and see what they are up to,” Archie said, the tiniest hint of a challenge in his attitude.

Nicholas quickly sorted through his options and found he had none. “Aye, let’s, but you must not be seen. I can explain away my following them, especially if I take no pains to keep my presence secret from them, but it would be suspicious if I showed up with you.”

“Fine. For now I’ll keep out of sight, but I’ll not spend the rest of this mission huddled in this God-forsaken wood.” He rubbed his hands together in a familiar gesture of excitement. “Let us hope the wenches lead us to this Highland Targe and we can be away with the prize this very day.”

An odd hollowness opened up in Nicholas’s chest at the thought of leaving Dunlairig and Rowan, but the prize was what he was after. The Highland Targe was the goal, and if he had to sever the unexpected
feelings roused by Rowan, then that was what he would do. As soon as he must.

R
OWAN STOPPED TO
let the others catch up. The trail had grown narrow and she knew from many treks to the sacred wellspring that they would soon reach their destination.

“Pray, slow down,” Jeanette said as she caught up with Rowan. She held the reins in her hand, the pony, with Elspet atop, following her carefully up the rocky path. Scotia drew up the rear. Jeanette pulled the stopper out of her water skin and took a long drink, then offered it to Rowan.

“Nay, I just want to get there.” And back to the castle.

This trip was ill advised. At least, if anyone asked, Nicholas could tell when they had left, and the guard could say what direction they had traveled.

“The wellspring is not going anywhere, Rowan.” They were not the first words Elspet had spoken with an edge of irritation. Jeanette handed her mother the water skin, but she refused.

“I ken that, Auntie—” A red squirrel crying warning down the slope stopped Rowan. She placed a finger to her lips and motioned Jeanette to take the others up the path and hide. When they were out of sight, Rowan stepped off the path, melting into the riot of spring growth, and waited, the squirrel still scolding whatever had invaded its bit of forest. Before she’d even calmed her breath, her thoughts flew to a certain dark-eyed man who increasingly occupied both her waking and her sleeping thoughts.

Had he followed them when she’d made it clear he should not? She could not decide if she thought that possibility a good thing or bad, but she found it comforting either way, just as she’d found his presence in the bailey this morning both arousing and comforting. The urge to make her way down the ben to see if it was him was strong, though she knew it unlikely. She forced herself to breathe slowly, and to stay as still as a rock. Another few minutes and
nothing had changed except the squirrel lost interest in whatever had set it off. No one had come up the path behind them.

Not Nicholas. Disappointment settled over her.

Saints and angels! If she had not let him comfort her last night, had not kissed him… again… had not dreamed about him… thoughts of him would not be plaguing her. She listened for another long moment, then stepped back on the path and hurried up the ben.

“Well?” Jeanette asked, falling back to walk beside Rowan as they followed the others up the path.

“No one was there. I am just a wee bit skittish, I suppose.”

Rowan let Scotia lead the pony a ways ahead as she took another look down the trail they had climbed. The wellspring was no secret so there was no reason she should feel so jumpy today except for Elspet’s ill health. ’Twas surely her imagination conjuring up the idea that someone followed them.

“Rowan? What is it?” Jeanette’s voice was quiet, nearly a whisper, yet it still startled her from her thoughts.

“Nothing. I am being daft. We are almost there.” She reached for her cousin’s hand and squeezed it for a moment. “Perhaps, finally, you will be chosen as Guardian.”

Jeanette gripped Rowan’s hand as if she meant to hold Rowan there. “Mum wishes you to join us this time.”

“Why?”

“She would not say, but she was adamant that you be with us at the wellspring. It is not as if you have not been here before.”

Rowan had ventured into the beautiful grotto that cradled the wellspring a few times when she had first come to live at Dunlairig Castle but it had quickly become her habit to keep watch. She had not ventured near it since…

Another long-buried memory whispered to life, but this one came to her as clear as the water that flowed out of the mountain, and as fast.

She had not ventured near it since she had experienced the same odd sensation she had felt at the blessing. It had not been as strong long ago but the pressure, the sense of something trying to escape
through her,
that
had been exactly the same. Gooseflesh raced over her skin.

“Nay,” she said, shaking her head. “I will stay with the pony. I shall keep watch, in case we were followed. I would not have anyone disturb Auntie at the wellspring.”

“But she wants you there,” Jeanette said.

“Nay,” Rowan repeated, hating the sweat that was popping out between her shoulder blades and at her forehead. “I cannot.”

Jeanette looked at her oddly. “It is not like you to deny Mum.”

Rowan could not look her cousin in the eye. “I cannot,” she repeated. “I am sorry but ’tis impossible.”

Jeanette sighed and hurried ahead to where Scotia was helping their mother down from the pony. She talked quietly to Elspet as they moved along an almost invisible track that led around the side of an outcropping to the hidden wellspring. Elspet started to argue, but Jeanette shook her head. Elspet glanced over her shoulder at Rowan and Rowan couldn’t decide if she saw disappointment there or anger, but she could not bear any of it. She grabbed the pony’s reins and pulled him back toward the main path where there was a little moss for him to browse on.

She stood by the pony, fretting at her cowardice, but she could not make herself follow the others into that grotto. She could only pray that the ritual her aunt performed this day would finally transfer the mantle of Guardian of the Highland Targe from Aunt Elspet to Jeanette, or even Scotia, though she did not believe Scotia was capable of taking on such responsibility. Maybe someday, but not yet.

The urge to move away from the beautiful grotto, with the slice of pure water flowing out of a crack in the mountainside, had her pacing away from the pony and around the face of the outcropping, but then she would turn, pacing back to her place by the pony, over and over again, drawn back toward the wellspring in spite of herself.

She remembered the first time she had gone there and watched Elspet kneel next to the pool of water fed by the spring. There was a large flat rock that stretched over the pool a little ways, and there she opened the ermine sack, spreading it out flat, laying it leather-side up
to display the three faint drawings there. She had placed the Targe stone in the center upon a circle filled with swirls and then she began a series of chanting prayers in that same language of the blessing.

Rowan had not known at the time that each Guardian repeated this ritual in her daughters’ presence until one of the younger women was chosen and the… power, for Rowan could not think of another way to describe it… passed to the new Guardian of the Targe.

She clenched her fists and paced away from the pony again. This would very likely be Elspet’s last trek to the sacred wellspring. Rowan swallowed down the grief that threatened. Jeanette
must
be chosen today. Given the times, the political upheaval in Scotland in recent years, and the constant threat of the English king, it was no time to be without a Guardian and no one seemed to know what would happen should Elspet die before the next was chosen.

A chill ran through her at the thought, sending her back in the direction of the pony, and the grotto.

Jeanette must be chosen
today
.

A tuneless whistling threaded through the trees, stopping Rowan in her tracks. Someone
had
followed them up the ben and she had not a single moment’s doubt who the whistler was, though she could not say if that knowledge was based upon hope or something more tangible.

She looked toward the pony, but there was no sign that her kinswomen were returning to him. She stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do, as the whistling grew closer. The only thing that was clear in her mind was that she could not let anyone disturb the ritual, not even herself, so she started down the trail to head off Nicholas of Achnamara before he came close enough to do just that.

N
ICHOLAS KNEW
R
OWAN
moved down the path toward him before he could even see her, as if they were connected somehow. He grinned at his own foolishness. Who else would it be but Rowan?
Not Jeanette, who wouldn’t leave her mother’s side. Not Scotia, who would crash through the woods without a thought to anyone else. Only Rowan would come down the ben almost silently, keeping watch over her family, keeping anyone who might bring harm—keeping him—as far away from her aunt as possible.

He rounded a bend in the path and stopped, his breath taken away by the woman who slowed as she spied him. The sun glinted in her hair, casting bright copper lights through the riot of curls pulled loosely back to frame her face and the irritation that gathered in the furrow of her brow.

“I kent it was you who followed us.” She closed the distance between them, stopping just far enough away that he couldn’t reach out and touch her.

She was a canny lass, for the one thought in his mind now was to take her into his arms and kiss her again. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—lest he reveal his growing feelings for this woman to the watching Archie.

“I thought I made it plain you should not follow us,” she said, hands on her hips. “Why do you spy upon us?”

For a moment he thought she had found him out, but it was not possible. “Spy, Rowan? Nay. I did not ken you had gone this way.”

“Then why are you here?”

She looked tired, worried, and he wished he dared drag her into his arms and comfort her, take the worry from her. He stepped a little closer, not wanting Archie to overhear whatever passed between them.

“Well, let us see.” He grinned, hoping to coax a smile from her. “There was no work to be done on the wall today and Uilliam had naught else for me to do so I went fishing, but nothing was biting, so I decided to do a bit of exploring and this trail seemed well traveled so I took it.” He made a show of looking about him at the fresh springtime greenness of the forest, once more taking it all in. “ ’Tis a beautiful place to walk,” he said, his voice unintentionally quiet and reverent, as if they stood in Westminster Abbey itself, instead of a wild wood in Scotland, “and a beautiful day to do so, do you not think?”

Rowan smiled a little, and nodded. “This is one of my favorite places,” she said, her voice as quiet as his as she lifted her face to the sun filtering through the leaves and closed her eyes. They stood there silently, Rowan basking in the sunlight and Nicholas basking in her company. She sighed and opened her eyes.

“There is little more to the trail”—she waved a hand generally in the direction behind her where he knew something must be going on with Elspet and her cousins—“so you might as well turn round.” The softness of a minute ago was gone. She crossed her arms and stood in the middle of the path, blocking the way.

“Where are your aunt and cousins? I thought you were off to visit someone yet this does not look a likely place for anyone to bide in.”

“ ’Tis none of your concern what we are about. Turn round and go back to the castle.”

He let her think he was considering her command for a moment, but in truth he wasn’t prepared to give up on his quest. “Your aunt looked so frail when I saw her this morning. Is she even well enough to make this trek?”

She pursed her lips and glared at him. “My aunt’s health is none of your concern.”

Given the stubborn lift of her chin, this might not have been the right tack but his instinct wouldn’t let him abandon it. Not yet. “True enough,” he said, taking a half step back. “She is no kin to me.”