He felt, somehow, as if he knew her, and that he should give her some greeting to acknowledge that fact. Her look was compassionate, but there was something else about it. An understanding, as if she could peer inside his soul and see all the holes there. All the worthwhile things he’d done, and all the lacks and omissions of his life. With that look, she forgave him in an instant, offered absolution and forgetfulness.
He closed his eyes, willed himself away from the temptation of senselessness. It was too easy to drift into idiocy. He did not know this woman. Until today had never seen her.
He felt her cheek against the back of his hand. The softness of her skin lured him to think of the last opened petals of a rose in summer. How eloquent his thoughts when paired with pain. At least he was not so foolish as to utter the words aloud. He was no poet.
Upon his knuckles the faintest brush of her lashes. One side of his body too alert. The other adrift in searing agony.
He opened his eyes, studied her. Her eyes were closed, the look on her face one a madonna might wear, peace and comfort and effortless ease. He wanted her to take him to that place where she dwelled.
“Are you a student of poetry?” he asked, the words no more than a rasp of sound. Would she know how much they cost him?
She looked up then, her eyes warm with empathy. He wanted to tell her that such a look would not make him braver or urge him to silence. He was at that mark now. A line, perhaps, scratched in the dirt with his sword. Beyond this point he could not go. But it appeared as if he could, after all.
“No,” she said, “Not truly. The only words I know are those of Alexander Scott, and they are not appropriate for this moment.”
“Tell me anyway,” he said.
Her cheeks grew a deeper rose as he watched. He smiled, charmed by it. So she was not as filled with confidence as he’d thought. It equalized them—he, with his wish to scream, and her with her embarrassment.
“I came to thank you for your kindness,” Anne said. Did she understand his sudden wish for any diversion? A conversation about rabbits would not be amiss at this moment. “And for intervening this afternoon. I do not know what would have become of us.”
Psalm singer or Royalist, either side in this war was capable of atrocities. Two women in a sea of men were not safe. But surely she knew that.
“Has your friend awakened?” Richard asked.
“A while ago,” she said, looking up at him. Stephen noted that she kept her gaze carefully averted from what Richard was doing. If he could have distanced himself from the preparations, from this very moment, he would have. “She is in some pain, but I think she is more irritated with her horse than she is with her injuries.”
“A good horse is a good thing,” Stephen said. His ramblings were those of a schoolboy conjugating his Latin verbs. The trunk of my sister. The book of my father. A good horse is a good thing. He closed his eyes in disgust.
“I have a good horse,” he said. An expression of speech not appreciably better, but at least it would lead to another topic. “Faeren,” he said. “All the horses belonging to the earls of Langlinais are named Faeren.” There, an entire sentence. One with some lucidity. “A legend, perhaps. One that stretches back so far no one knows its origin.”
He opened his eyes again. Her face was truly lovely in candlelight. All shadows and cream. Her hair, curled about her shoulders and tied back with a crimson ribbon, was the deep brown shade of her eyes. Were they a matched pair, requested at the moment of birth?
Chestnut eyes, please. And hair to match. Here, then, an infant of promise. She will be a beauty when she grows. Is that what you wish? Yes, please
.
“Do you favor your mother?” Another whole sentence. He caught Richard’s compassionate glance out of the corner of his eye. The worst, then, was to come shortly.
“Is she the woman I treated?” Richard asked. “There is some resemblance between the two of you. Something about the chin and mouth.”
Anne blinked at him. Stephen thought she looked startled by the question. She shook her head as if to negate it.
“My father,” she said, but he’d lost the thought as Richard moved to the fireplace.
“I think you might be wise to bind me,” he said, a confession more onerous than any he’d ever made. It shamed him, even as it swam in truth. Another image then of rum in a keg and the tiny part that was his courage bobbing like a cork.
She did not bind him. Instead, she shook her head when Betty would have moved closer. Such faith in him. He did not know if it was misplaced. He closed his eyes again. There was some security in not knowing when it would come.
She drew closer until he could feel her breath upon his cheek. His knuckles were against her breast. He wished he might lay his head against her there, extend his arms around her. A bit of weakness that he’d never confess aloud. Not yet, anyway.
She spoke in Gaelic to him. A harsh, guttural language that she made lyrical. Her lips were close to his ear. Richard was using a brush inside the wound. More than that he didn’t wish to know. His mind was capable of furnishing his closed eyes with enough images.
He clung to each word she spoke, as if they strung together a net to hold him. The smell of the poker was a warning. So, too, her startled gasp. Didn’t she know that it was the treatment for wounds such as his? Her hand pressed flat against his cheek. Her fingers were cool; he curved his face toward her touch.
“Talk to me,” he said, when she was rendered silent. She began to speak again, nonsensical words in a language he’d never known.
It became a cradlesong, the sound of her voice. A calmative that held him sane as Richard laid the poker against his open wound. He walked through the blood-red landscape with her as his companion. Her voice was a thread he somehow followed, a blessed sound, far more welcome than his silent, muted screams.
Until even those faded away, and he knew nothing else.
Dunniwerth, Scotland
Robert Sinclair, Laird of Dunniwerth, was furious. “What do you mean, she’s not here?” he roared.
“Did I not set a guard in place?” This question was asked of the most senior of his troops left at Dunniwerth. Alex nodded but did not move his gaze from the floor.
“Do you not understand what it means to guard Dunniwerth, Alex? It is not to watch the bricks, man, but to protect the people!” This was said in an earsplitting roar. It had the effect of making the man wince, but it did not furnish Robert with any more of an explanation.
“Where did she go?”
Alex looked up then. There was petition in his look and a sorrowful lack of pride mixed with fear. He could almost be forgiven for that. Robert wanted to pull the head off his shoulders.
“All we know is that Hannah went with her, Robert. And Douglas. Ian, too.”
“Should I be grateful, then, that there is anyone left at Dunniwerth? Was it a migration?”
Not one person in the hall could answer him. Or chose to. And Hannah? Leaving the island after all this time?
He looked over at Maggie.
His wife stood before a fire, intent on the blaze. She turned then, as if sensing his gaze. She still wore her traveling cloak, a long cape with a hood of soft red wool. The color accentuated her green eyes and auburn hair. She was still beautiful, even after all these years. A thought that did nothing to lessen the leaden feeling in his chest.
They had been married when they were both very young, a union of land and clan more than inclination. He’d seen her once from a distance, and she’d seen him not at all before they’d wed. It had not been love at first sight, and they’d only tolerated each other for years. But time had a way of gathering up respect, and somehow, respect had turned to love.
He turned back to the men arrayed in front of him. Once more he prayed for patience, and once more he listened to the story again. Told a hundred times, it would be the same. The four of them had ridden out of Dunniwerth’s gates more than a week ago. No one knew where they went. Or why.
Maggie came and stood beside him, her face a study in calm acceptance. He knew that anyone looking at her would think her unmoved by the tale. In actuality, she did not easily show her feelings, being more stoic than even he upon occasion. Later, perhaps, she would come to him and lay her head upon his chest and allow him to comfort her. But for now her misery was complete and personal and solitary.
Their daughter was missing.
“Go,” he said, waving a hand to the men in front of him. Outside, people were congregating in patches, conversation muted. The men who’d accompanied him home would be speaking in low tones to their wives. Children would be shushed, and mothers would be weeping sympathetic tears.
Where was his daughter?
He rubbed his hand over his eyes, pressed against them with thumb and forefinger, willing himself to cease thinking the worst.
“Has Hannah taken her, Robbie?”
He turned. Maggie stood watching him. The question had been his, too.
“Anne is a grown woman, Maggie. It’s a bit late to be stealing her away.”
“Then she would have wanted to go. Why?”
He studied her face. There was love between them. Hard won but there, nonetheless. A question lingered in the air between them. One she had never asked. Had she thought it all this time?
“I never went to the island, Maggie.”
She moved toward him, smiling. She reached up her hand and cupped his face. “I know, Robbie. I know.”
He extended his arms around her, and she sighed against him. It was a moment for fear and worry and questions. But it was also, Robert Sinclair thought, a time of forgiveness. There was no way to wipe away the past, but Maggie had eased it a bit with her simple gesture and her smile.
Harrington Court, England
H
er laughter was full and rich, coaxing forth his own. His hands at her waist were her only support as they twirled in a circle, her arms thrown out, the cloud of her hair shining in the sun. An angel flying in the air
.
He had never known such joy. Such utter freedom of the senses and the soul. Would that this moment were his forever. To feel again and again. To pluck from his memory and recall when he grew old
.
In the way of fevered dreams, she grew closer and then further apart. Finally, she walked away from him for the last time. He called to her, stretched out his hand, but she continued to walk away. At the edge of the horizon, where the sea met the sky, she turned and blew a kiss to him. A smile was his last link to her as she became no more than mist. There had been tears on her cheeks. And in his heart
.
My beloved. My own true love
.
A voice came to him, one rough and impatient. A band of something cold and wet bound his forehead, cooled his skin. He wanted to thank the hand that placed it there but was cast into another dream before he could frame the words.
He made a sound in his sleep, a cry of terror, as his world became black again. The voice above him eased him. The hand upon his forehead was cool.
An angel, then. The voice of an angel commanded that he rest or he would never heal. And so he tried. One did not gainsay God.
Someone pressed something to his lips. A bit of cheese, some wine? Only water. The sound of a lute seemed oddly familiar. There, her laughter again.
Come with me, love
. A voice that sang with the sound of bells.
He turned and she was there, holding her hand out to him. Her hair was black as night. No, brown as a chestnut. A sweet face. A lovely one. Eyes a shade of green. No, deep, dark, with gold at their centers. Eyes to lure and warm
.
I am so very tired. A thought. Into it came her voice. Or his. God’s again?
I am here. Sweet love, remember me
.
The dream shifted again. A woman’s face again. A smile, a beauty patch, a cloud of scent. A laugh, his own.
Home. Sleep.
Rest now. It’s the only way you’ll heal. I’ll be here
.
Voices in his head. He gave himself up to the angel’s voice, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
“You still have not found him?” Anne asked.
“Do you think the soldiers took him?” She looked up at him, horrified.
They stood in the garden. Ian had asked to speak to her, so she’d walked here with him. She’d never imagined, however, that his news would be so terrible.
He nodded. “It is the likeliest possibility.”
“What will they do to him, Ian?”
“Shouldn’t you have worried about that earlier, Anne?” Ian asked, his voice tight with anger. “Before we left Scotland?”
She looked down at clasped hands.
“The earl’s men and I have scoured the countryside, Anne. There’s no sign of him.”
Douglas was a sweet boy. But just as humor was something oddly missing in his nature, so was initiative. He would not know where to hide. Or where to come, if he managed to escape the soldiers.
Shame sat on her like a wet woolen cloak. He was a member of her clan, and she was the daughter of Dunniwerth. Therefore it had been her responsibility to assure his safety. She had not. The condemnation was there in her thoughts as well as in Ian’s words.
“Are you never going to tell me why we left Scotland?”
He’d agreed to accompany her only because he’d been given the responsibility for her safety. And, he’d told her that he wasn’t at all sure she would remain at Dunniwerth if he’d refused to come to England with her. In that, he was correct.
Ian had not approved of the journey, nor of his traveling companions. He had said that Hannah was too old, a remark that caused Hannah to cease talking to him for one whole day. His comments about Douglas were even less charitable.
“If you treat him as if he can do nothing,” she had told him, “then that’s exactly what he will do. Give him an opportunity, Ian. Let him show you how helpful he can be.”
Unfortunately, Douglas had vanished. Not very helpful.