Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (24 page)

A long, low moan came from Elspet and she grew suddenly restless in the bed. Jeanette and Rowan made haste to her side. Her eyes opened, a wild-eyed look there as her gaze careened from one person to another.

“Mum,” Jeanette said, kneeling and brushing her mother’s hair off her face. “Are you in pain?” Jeanette’s voice cracked on the last word.

Elspet didn’t respond but shifted her stare to Scotia who sniffled as a single tear ran down her cheek. “Mummy?”

Elspet shifted back to Jeanette as if she expected something from her.

“Auntie, are you thirsty?” Rowan said, lifting the cup that stood filled by the bedside.

Elspet finally looked at Rowan, glaring at her, shaking her head rapidly. She pulled her hand from Kenneth’s and flailed it in the air until Jeanette took it, shushing her agitated mother. Elspet pulled her hand away again and reached for Rowan.

Rowan could feel the weight of her cousins’ and uncle’s eyes on her as she stepped closer and took Elspet’s hand in hers. “I’m here, Auntie.”

But Elspet didn’t calm. She grew more agitated, her hand gripping Rowan’s with a strength Elspet hadn’t had since she had been stricken on the ben yesterday. She gripped it so hard her nails bit into Rowan’s skin but Rowan had the strangest sense that her aunt was trying to let go, that some other power made her…

“Nay,” she whispered. “Nay, Auntie.” She tried to pass her aunt’s hand into Jeanette’s but Elspet would not let go.

Elspet’s breath grew harsher and harsher, as if she were running a great distance… or fighting something. Fear filled Rowan just as she was hit with a maelstrom that forced its way inside her, pushing through her skin from every direction to fill her. Her skin crawled. Her muscles cramped painfully. It was a stronger, brutal version of what she had experienced at the blessing. She tried to push it away, but the pain of fighting it was almost more than she could endure.

“Nay, Auntie, I do not want it!” She dropped to her knees on the cold wooden floor, but Elspet still would not release her hand, or perhaps Rowan could not let go. Through the blackness that threatened her sight, and the bright, sharp pain that ran underneath her skin, she heard a high keening sound like a banshee let loose in the room. Shouts tangled around the keening, but Rowan was so lost in
the pain and the fear, so lost in the determination that she would not take this into her that she could make no sense of anything but the battle she waged.

N
ICHOLAS CRASHED OPEN
the door and stopped, stunned at the scene that confronted him. Wind filled the room, whipping the fire into a frenzy of writhing flames, throwing ashes into the air to sweep around the people huddled about the bed. The people.

Jeanette and Scotia crouched over their keening mother, sheltering her from the debris that was caught up in the wind. He looked to the window for the source, but it was closed. Kenneth gripped a huddled Rowan by the shoulders, pulling her away from the bed, away from where her hand and Elspet’s were clenched. Above the wind was a sound like a wounded animal, high, piercing, full of pain and fear, and lower were the shouts of the MacAlpins, the crying of Scotia, the entreaties of Jeanette, the bellowing of Kenneth.

“Let her go!” Kenneth shouted over and over again but Nicholas could not tell if he was shouting at Rowan or at Elspet. “Let her go! You are hurting her!” Again, he could not tell which woman Kenneth spoke to.

And then he realized Rowan was the only silent person in the room. She pulled against her aunt’s grip. She sheltered her head with her other arm, and he realized her silence wasn’t absolute. Whispered words spiked through the chaos: “I do not want it. I do not want it.”

He did not know what was going on, but he knew from Rowan’s posture that she was in pain, that she feared whatever was happening to her. In the next breath he was by her side, shoving Kenneth off of her, cradling her against his chest as he slid his hands along her arm toward Elspet’s hand.

He ignored the odd snapping sensation that leapt from Rowan’s skin to his and worked to free her from Elspet’s remarkably strong grip. When he finally slid Rowan’s hand free she slumped against
him. Elspet’s keening immediately quieted and the MacAlpins all froze, their eyes on him and Rowan.

“What happened?” he demanded of the trio that quickly formed a shield between Rowan and Elspet.

No one answered.

“What happened?!” he shouted. Rowan tried to push out of his lap, but he was not prepared to let her go until he knew what they had done to her. He sat back on the floor and pulled her tight against him. He settled his arms tightly around her. “What did Lady Elspet do to you?” When Rowan didn’t answer, didn’t even meet his gaze, he looked from Kenneth to Jeanette, then to Scotia, but they were all wide-eyed and breathing hard as if they’d just fought a battle.

And perhaps they had.

He looked down at Rowan, pushing her tangled hair off her face and lifting her chin so she would look at him. “Are you all right, love?”

She was dazed, her eyes wide as if she’d been through some terrible ordeal.

“I did not want it,” she whispered to him, but turned her attention to her family, still standing guard between her and Elspet.

“What, lass? What did you not want?” he asked quietly.

“Mum’s power.” He looked up to find Jeanette staring at her cousin.

“Power? You mean the power of the Highland Targe?” he asked before he realized he should not know anything about the Targe.

Jeanette’s gaze moved from Rowan to him, her eyes narrowing. Suspicion rolled off of her like waves crashing ashore in a gale.

“It should not have happened this way. She is not of the blood. She is no blood relation.” Jeanette turned back to her mother, though Nicholas still could not see the Lady. “Why, Mum? Why Rowan?”

A raspy croak was all the answer she got.

“Wheesht.” Jeanette sat on the bed, her palm against her mother’s cheek as if she wiped away tears. “Do not fash yourself. ’Twill be fine.” He heard her heavy sigh. “I can teach her what you taught me. There will be another Guardian after all…” She glanced
over her shoulder at Rowan, her face shuttered as surely as a window against a winter’s storm. “Just not who we thought.”

Another raspy croak answered her.

“Wheesht. Sleep now. Your work will be continued.”

She turned to Rowan and Nicholas. Rowan, still held captive in his lap, pushed to her feet, swaying slightly until Nicholas slid an arm around her waist and steadied her.

“I am sorry, Jeanette,” Rowan said.

“Take her out of here,” Jeanette directed her cold, emotionless words to Nicholas. “Take her to her chamber and wait with her. I will attend her shortly.”

Jeanette had been nothing but sweet, quiet, almost docile, since he had met her a sennight ago. Now she was hard and commanding, and still no one had explained what had happened between Elspet and Rowan.

Slowly he led Rowan to the door. As he passed close to Kenneth he stopped.

“There is something of great importance we must speak of,” he said to the chief.

“Not now.”

“Agreed, but it cannot wait long.”

Kenneth glared at him, his gaze softening as he reached out and touched Rowan’s shoulder. “I shall find you as soon as I may.”

R
OWAN STOOD IN
the middle of her chamber, grateful that Nicholas was there. He sat quietly on her bed, hands on his knees, watching her but not pushing.

She had to move. She went to the window, but that wasn’t far enough so she paced to the door, and back to the window, over and over, her mind a whirling mess. She couldn’t stop her thoughts from caroming through the events of the last few hours any more than she could stop her feet.

She turned back from the door again, stopping short of crashing into Nicholas. She stepped around him and kept going.

“Rowan, stop,” he said. “Tell me what happened to you.”

She reached the window, placed her hands on the sill and leaned into the fresh air. What
could
she tell him? How could she share with this man, this stranger, this spy of King Edward, that she was now the Guardian of the Targe? How could she give him the information that if he or the hateful Archie were to complete their mission, they would have to take not only the Targe stone, but her, too?

She could not tell him that. No matter how much she wanted to trust him, how much her instinct said she could, she dared not give him that much knowledge or that much power over her and the clan.

But she had to tell him something. He had seen too much. Knew too much already. But what?

“Lass.” He came up behind her and gently turned her to face him. “Something happened in there. Lady Elspet sounded like she was dying. You were in pain. And I felt crackling along your skin when I helped you let go of her hand. You kept saying you did not want ‘it,’ but I do not ken what ‘it’ was.”

Instinct warred with logic. She wanted to explain it all, knew she needed to, that he would help her, but…

“Tell me what you ken of the Targe,” she said.

“Ken is a strong word.”

She stared at him, waiting to see how far down this path he had already travelled.

“I think the stone Elspet carries in the ermine sack is the Highland Targe, a relic, not an actual shield. I believe there is real power associated with it, though it is beyond my ken what it is or how ’tis even possible. I know I felt something pass over us when Lady Elspet performed the blessing in the bailey, and I know you felt it even more powerfully than I or anyone else did. And that leads me to believe that Elspet is needed to invoke whatever the power is that comes from the Highland Targe.”

He knew everything, or almost. Rowan waited, letting him hear his own words, letting him put the truth together for himself. One breath. Two.

His eyes grew large. “You.”

Still she stared at him, telling him nothing herself.

“Whatever Elspet’s role was, it is now yours. That is what happened in her chamber, is it not? She gave the position to you. You are the keeper—”

“Guardian,” she corrected him.

He cocked his head, reached out to cup her cheek in his palm. “You did not want to be the Guardian,” he whispered.

“I should not be.”

“Jeanette? It passes from mother to daughter?”

“Usually, but not this time.”

“I should not know this,” he said, concern gathered in his eyes, though she knew not if it was for her or for himself.

“Aye, you should not. It would be far better for you if you did not.”

“We cannot let Archie or Edward learn any of this.” Now he was the one to pace to the door, turn and pace back to her. “Archie already suspects there is something special about you after you threw him off.” His gaze leapt to hers. “Was that from the Targe?”

All the turmoil in Rowan went still with that question. “It could not be,” she said, thinking out loud. “I was not chosen yet.” Her pulse jumped. Such an ability, though she didn’t understand exactly what it was, enhanced by the Targe would be a formidable defense for the clan.

She knew far too little about the Highland Targe to do more than guess that this was why she was chosen, but Jeanette had been taught to take up the role since she was born. Jeanette would have the answers Rowan needed.