Taveon made eye contact with his brother, gave a quick nod, then released Viviana's hand. She was cast into darkness for only a fleeting second before Keegan cupped her elbow.
Through Keegan's eyes, she watched Taveon approach the child. Garbed in a purple and green plaid with the silver hilts of three blades poking out of his belt and boots, he bent to a bare knee and leveled his eyes with the small girl.
"Good den, Lily." He pushed straight brown hair from her sad eyes. "Is your mum about?"
She simply nodded.
"Lily is the soothsayer's daughter?" Viviana's surprise was evident in her question.
"We assume so. The lassie doesnae speak, so one cannae be certain."
Taveon stepped before the door and rapt his knuckles against the wood. "Noreen, are ye about? 'Tis Laird Kraig."
A shuffling sounded from within that turned into a ruckus. Then all at once the door jerked inward. Viviana waited for the wart-covered face of a wrinkled old hag to grace the threshold. Instead, a young woman filled the doorjamb; smooth skin, brown hair, haunting green eyes...
"Oh,
cazzo,"
Viviana whispered when recognition took hold. Taveon's soothsayer was... "Sister De Rosa?"
The woman's head snapped side to side. Her yellow-green eyes flew wide and locked on Viviana.
The wind kicked up a notch, blowing at odd angles. The stone between Viviana's breasts began to vibrate. Heat seeped into her pores. "
Uffa!
" She pulled the talisman out of her bodice, fearing its power would burn straight through her skin.
"Run!" Sister De Rosa burst passed Taveon, palms outstretched toward Viviana.
"Shite!"
"Christalmighty!" Monroe cursed in unison.
"Do not let me touch you!" Sister De Rosa's words contradicted her actions and sent Viviana's heart into palpitations.
Keegan whipped Viviana behind him just as the woman might have attacked, but Monroe caught her around the waist. Taveon had already spurred into action when Monroe showed signs of a struggle with a woman half his size.
Holding the amulet tight in one hand, Viviana clung to Keegan's elbow and watched them pin Sister De Rosa to the ground. Her back arched. Her fingertips dug into the silt at Keegan's boot tips.
Evil was present. Viviana knew it. She felt it to her very core.
"Ye know her?" Keegan asked Viviana over his shoulder, but his gaze remained fixed on the woman writhing beneath Taveon and Monroe's grasp.
"She worked as a caregiver at the orphanage in Italy where I was raised. She was a devout nun."
And the closest thing I had to a mother.
The sting of betrayal filled the rims of Viviana's eyes with tears.
"S'truth? The soothsayer is your Sister De Rosa?" Taveon gathered her wrists at the base of her back, obviously not concerned with the purple hue filling her fingers. The vessels in his neck bulged to match the forked veins webbing through his forearms. "Ye lied to us!"
Viviana swallowed, wishing she was wrong, wishing she didn't feel the need to reach out and help her.
"I warned you not to become familiar with her. You should not have involved Viviana."
"Involve her?" The muscles in his arms sharpened as he jerked Sister De Rosa to her feet. "I took her to wife."
"Oh,
vae
!" Sister De Rosa's face tilted upward, her green eyes flooded with tears. "Forgive me, Viviana."
Taveon met Keegan's gaze. The concern Viviana saw etched in the lines of her husband's face made Keegan's rock solid form go slack.
"Jesu," he whispered and wavered.
"Ye bitch!" Taveon shook her with a force that would have sent the bravest of warriors into night sweats. "What of your promise to end the curse?"
She held silent behind quivering lips. Tears poured out from beneath her lashes, calling to the frightened child inside Viviana. "Taveon, please. You are hurting her."
But Taveon showed her no mercy. He raised her off the ground by the backs of her arms until the tips of her toes skimmed the broken grasses. "I traveled half-way across the damn world to retrieve the amulet."
Sister De Rosa's chest heaved, then a queer smile lifted her lips at the corners. She laughed outright. "You daft witch. How is it you think I can—" Her smile flipped. "No! I will not." Her green gaze bore a direct path toward Viviana making her skin crawl.
"Keep the amulet away from me," she issued the warning just before her legs gave out, and she buckled over at the waist.
Viviana gasped the same time Sister De Rosa cried out. The sound shook Viviana to the bone. She wrapped her hands around Keegan's forearm, but quickly realized the man would be of little comfort. He hadn't moved or blinked since discovering their soothsayer's betrayal.
What was happening? Who was she talking to and why was Sister De Rosa even here in Scotland claiming to be a soothsayer? The questions multiplied in Viviana's head at an alarming speed, but before she could ask a single one, a child's cry broke through the chaos.
Keegan slowly turned, moving his gaze away from the scene. Lily stood beside unmoving, her eyes round and shining with terror. Having seen too many children go uncomforted at the orphanage, Viviana held a hand out to the girl only feet away. "Do not be afraid."
"No!" Sister De Rosa screamed. "Do not touch her! Run, Lily!"
Without hesitation, the girl tossed the foxtails to the ground, spun, and raced into the wood behind the cottage. Her fawn-colored kirtle disappeared amidst the brambles almost instantly.
Viviana feared Taveon would pop Sister De Rosa's arms from her body when he dragged her to his mount. "Monroe, fetch up Lily and bring her to Ravenhurst." Without releasing his hold, he retrieved a strand of rope from the saddlebags and bound the woman's hands and ankles. Without care or respect for Sister De Rosa's station, he tossed her over the nape of his steed on her belly. She hardly put up a fight, nor did she protest when he secured another rope from her ankles to her hands beneath the horse's neck. He mounted behind her and took up the reins.
Keegan remained stock still. "Jesu. What am I to do?" His voice cracked, and his entire being began to tremble.
Putting her own fears aside, Viviana moved around his broad form wanting to comfort the man, wanting to assure him the wife he loved would be well. She held his limp hand and opened her mouth.
Words never formed.
"This is not over, brother. I give ye my word on Da's grave," Taveon assured him in a tone filled with determination.
Keegan remained silent, his gaze fell to his boot tips, then his eyes slid shut.
"Escort my wife back to the keep. We will learn the truth behind
Sister De Rosa's
manipulations if I have to beat it out of her myself."
* * *
Taveon's anger kept his blood running hot, albeit the chamber was cold enough to freeze fire. "Come now, Marea. Tell me I dinnae waste the last three months of my life for naught." With his words came a swirling cloud of mist. The only bit of information he'd managed to coax from the bitch's tongue was her name, and he couldn't be certain even that were true.
A single pitch-pine torch illuminated the small chamber in a dungeon that hadn't been used since Da caught border thieves stealing his chattel. Seepage glittered in two paths down the stone walls to the chains that bound Marea's bruised wrists. Stripped to her undertunic, her back faced him, and her forehead pressed against the rough-hewn stone. Kneeling, she'd been poised for whipping for hours, but Taveon couldn't bring himself to issue the first blow.
How could he? She was Makayla's only friend's mother, not to mention the person who'd cared for Viviana half her life. The worried look on his wife's face stared at him in his mind's eye. She'd been repulsed by his lack of compassion at the cot-house, but what was he to do?
Eyes burning from exhaustion, Taveon rubbed the back of his neck with the hand not holding the whip and prayed for strength. "I have provided for ye nigh a year. Given ye shelter and used my own coin to pay the miller to keep ye and Lily's bellies from suffering the hunger pains. Have ye naught to offer me aside from your name?"
Her silence only added to his humiliation and further incensed him. He'd been foolish to believe her false promises. She'd stirred her damn leaves in the sugar water and said she could break the curse if he went to Italy and retrieved the amulet. 'Twas a lie. A lie that had devastated Keegan.
The grief he'd seen in Keegan's blank stare was painfully familiar. Da had worn the same look for ten years before it finally took his life. He'd died a coward's death. A warrior should die in battle so that he might stand proud before God on his day of judgment.
Keegan would know the splendor of such a day. He would not suffer the same fate as Da.
"Damn-it-to-hell. Must I draw your blood to gain a smidgen of truth from your traitorous lips?" Spurred by determination, Taveon stood, braced his legs apart, and willed himself to warm her shoulders with the knotted whip. "How is it a nun living in Italy knew about Clan Kraig's curse? And how did ye know the location of the amulet?" He snapped the whip beside her ear, gaining the pop that might scare her into submission.
The chains rattled when Marea jumped, but she only curled her fingers around the links to brace herself for the blow. The woman didn't even have the sense to beg for a reprieve.
Fueled by anger and agitation, Taveon latched onto her undertunic at her nape and jerked downward. The rip of material prefaced her cries and set Taveon's skin to crawling. He stared at her bare back pebbled with goose-flesh and marred with a handful of pink scars. Her ribs swelled with every deep intake of breath, and the gentle curves that defined her as a woman stilled his actions.
Shite.
He turned away. If only she were a man or mayhap English. Mayhap then he could deliver the blow.
"M'laird," a male voice came behind him.
Thankful for the distraction, Taveon turned to find Monroe at his back, Remi stood beside, both blowing tendrils of curling air out of their nostrils.
"We cannae find the child." Monroe stared at the woman, then at the whip in Taveon's hand, making him feel like the monster he knew he had to be.
"You must go back," Marea pleaded over her shoulder, shivering. "You must search until you find her."
"Tell me how to break the curse, and I will send three dozen warriors into the wood to find her." He intended to do so regardless. Lily was not to blame for her mum's treachery.
"I cannot."
Taveon wanted to shake her. He wanted to strangle the words from her mouth. "Then Lily will suffer this night in the cold. The dark willnae hide her from wolves. If ye love your daughter, ye will tell me how to break the curse."
"Please. She has suffered enough." Marea sobbed. Her head fell.
"And I will protect her if ye cede."
"Give me your word as a Christian, you will keep her safe should anything happen to me." Her entire body jerked as if Taveon had struck her. "Shut up!" The woman battled her conscious the same as she had the better part of her interrogation.
"I give ye my word on my da's grave."
"You will treat her as one of your own." Her breathing quickened. A mass moved beneath Marea's skin. "Give her every privilege you would your own daughter." The last of her bid came out strangled. She coughed.
Taveon stepped closer, anticipation making his palms itch. "Ye have my word."
"The woman who cursed your clan..." Two thin lines drew a pink path over her shoulder, whelping her skin. Marea cried out.
"Christalmighty," Monroe whispered and took a step back, as did Remi.
Taveon couldn't fight the chill sliding over his skin. He shivered and glanced at the knout in his hand, thinking he'd whipped her, knowing he must have. Where else had the marks come from? He dropped the whip and rubbed his eyes, trying to focus. Exhaustion had him hallucinating.
Marea pulled air into her lungs, but before she could speak, another furious red slash ripped across her back. She screamed again and clung to the chains. Her head fell back. "...she lives within me."
A bulge moved over her ribs. It looked like a small animal, a field mouse mayhap, beneath her skin.
But that was impossible.
Then five straight lines tore through her flesh from her shoulder to the base of her back. Marea screamed as blood spilled over her ribs and spread into her pale undertunic bunched at her waist. "Help me."
Taveon couldn't think. His head hurt, felt cold, numb. What did she mean,
lives within her
?
Marea's scream cut off abruptly, then the weight of her body sank and her breathing went shallow.
"Ye gods and little fishes," Remi whispered and gulped.
Taveon just stood there, staring at her, waiting for her to transform into some fiend with hooves and horns like he'd seen in the paintings at the Medici Palace. He'd been desperate for her to tell him something... anything, but he hadn't expected...
A caress brushed the hairs at Taveon's nape. He jerked toward his kinsmen, hoping to find one of them touching him, all the while knowing they hadn't. Monroe's skin was ashen. Remi's eyes were wide, unblinking.
"What in the name of Zeus just happened?" Taveon asked, needing to fill the silence with anything besides the jarring beat of his pulse.
Though not a religious man, Remi crossed himself—twice. Another step backward put him outside the chamber.
Monroe's head turned toward Taveon, but the dark orbs of his eyes remained fixed in the corners, as if to look away from the woman might leave his soul unprotected. "It might be a difficult task, but mayhap 'tis time ye drag a priest onto your land."
* * *
Taveon and Remi stood guard in the doorway while Meghan tended Marea's wounds atop a straw-filled mattress in a guest chamber. Though a fire blazed in the hearth, it seemed the cold had followed them from the dungeon to the east tower where they'd moved Marea's limp body. The cold frightened him. It was eerie, uncanny, unexplained, and yet something inside him whispered,
It's her
.
Elise was so close he could smell the decaying scent of her wretchedness, but still she was out of his grasp. He would return with the vicar by morn and mayhap learn more about how he could end the curse. With any luck, Lily would be found by then as well. Monroe had taken the bloodhounds and three dozen of the clan's finest hunters into the timber surrounding Marea's cot-house to continue the search. Taveon could seek out Makayla's assistance to make the girl feel at ease and mayhap even gain her assistance.