That shell had shattered into a thousand shards. He’d never known such helplessness. He was facing a terrible dilemma. He had to choose between Mahri and Gavin. His brother needed a doctor, not tomorrow or the next day, but right now. Mahri had to be rescued from her own rashness. She could become lost in the hills and die of exposure.
He went downstairs. “Dugald,” he said, “it’s not the soldiers Mahri has to worry about. They’re not really interested in her. It’s the professor she is running from. Am I right?”
“Aye,” Dugald replied, drawing the word out as though he was reluctant to say it.
“Can you track her?”
“I can try.”
Juliet said, “Where are you going, Alex?”
“I’m going to Ballater to kidnap a doctor for Gavin. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. And Dugald”—he paused at the door—“say good-bye to Mahri for me. Tell her I wish her well.”
Juliet was wringing her hands. “What are you talking about? Surely Dugald will bring Mahri back here?”
Dugald responded as though Juliet had not spoken. “I’ll tell her, lad.”
“Take good care of her, Dugald.”
“Ye can count on it.”
The back door creaked open, and a gust of chill mountain air blew in. There was the sound of voices in the back hall. Alex waved everyone to the side of the room. With his revolver in one hand, he edged behind the kitchen door.
Two people entered, a tall muscular woman in her midforties and a boy with a tartan tam.
“Mahri!” said Alex, then more fiercely, “Mahri!”
Dugald’s grin was slow and wide. “Mistress Napier,” he said, “the Witch of Pannanich Wells.” He turned to Alex. “Mahri has brought us home a healer.”
She had changed from her boy’s getup into her day dress, and Alex could hardly take his eyes off her. Though Miss Napier had taken charge and cleaned the festering wound, Mahri was right beside her, next to the bed, using a clean linen rag to mop up the trickle of blood. Cool, calm, and competent under duress—that was Mahri. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that there was more to her than that. She was like one of the complex codes that came across his desk. Bit by bit, he invariably unlocked its secrets, and he was bound and determined to do the same with her.
He wondered how much she’d told Miss Napier. The woman was the least curious female he had met. No questions asked. No explanations necessary. He wasn’t uneasy or anxious about her motives.
Trust your instincts,
his grandmother had told him often enough, and his instincts were telling him that the witch wished them all well.
His gaze shifted to Gavin. He was resting quietly now, but his cheeks were pale, and there were bruises under his eyes. Mahri had told him that she’d given him a mild dose of laudanum before she left to fetch the witch. She hadn’t broken faith with him. She hadn’t deserted Gavin and left him to fend for himself. She’d gone for help. She did what had to be done, she’d said, that was all.
“More,” said Mahri, practically glaring at him.
“Right.”
It was his job to spoon the witch’s herbal tea past Gavin’s lips in order to bring down his fever. She’d brought the herbs with her as well as water from the famous wells of Pannanich. And it seemed to be working. He thought that there might also be a mild sedative in the tea. Certainly, Gavin was out of it. It was just as well. Alex did not think his brother would take kindly to having two females doctor him when the only thing between their eyes and his nakedness was a decorously draped sheet.
She’d told him that she’d seen her share of naked men. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. Frankly, he didn’t care. The kiss they’d shared was like one piece of the code he’d broken. Mahri was innocent of a man’s passions, but she was ripe for the plucking.
And he’d break the arm of the first man who stretched out his hand to take her, even if he had to break his own arm.
Miss Napier said, “Mahri, fetch me the salve.”
Mahri obediently felt around in a jute satchel and produced a jar, which she opened and handed to Miss Napier.
“The wound,” said Miss Napier, “never had a chance to heal. See how the dressing has rubbed it raw? Your brother must have overexerted himself. Either that or a speck of dirt or something was left inside it. Keep it clean, apply the salve as often as you change the dressing, and keep your brother off his feet.”
“Mind over matter,” said Mahri. To Miss Napier’s questioning look, she answered, “Gavin thought he could make the wound heal by sheer force of will. He fooled us all.”
“There’s something in what he says,” said Miss Napier. “A positive attitude can help in healing, but it would be foolish not to employ all the accumulated knowledge of doctors and herbalists over the centuries.”
Alex had never heard of the Witch of Pannanich, but Miss Napier put him in mind of his own grandmother, the Witch of Drumore: educated, well-spoken, and gifted in ways that ordinary mortals could barely imagine.
To Miss Napier he said, “You have a gifted touch. Is that why the locals call you a witch?”
She was winding a strip of linen around the fresh dressing. “They’re confusing me with my aunt.” She looked up with a smile. “She believes in the old magic. I put my faith in my herbs.”
“If I’d known you lived close by, I would have sent for you sooner. Mahri, you should have told me. Pannanich is only two miles along the road, isn’t it?”
Mahri regarded him from beneath her brows. “If I’d told you that I’d gone to consult a witch, you would have laughed yourself silly. You wanted a doctor, a real doctor.”
His lips twitched. “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”
Miss Napier began to tidy up. “Make sure he rests for the next day or two, and I’ll leave the salve and bag of herbs in case he becomes feverish again. Mahri, you know what to do?”
Mahri nodded.
“Good girl.”
Miss Napier couldn’t be induced to stay and have supper or to take money for her labor, though she happily accepted one of the fat salmons Dugald had caught. Dugald was to escort her home, but she lingered on the back porch to have a private word with Alex.
“My aunt gave me a message for you before I left,” she said.
“Your aunt?”
“The Witch of Pannanich Wells.”
She seemed reluctant to say more, so he said seriously, “What’s the message, Miss Napier?”
She said with a laugh, “I’m not sure that I believe in this hocus-pocus.”
“Please,” he said simply.
She heaved a sigh. “‘Break your journey in Aboyne,’ that’s what she said. ‘Break your journey in Aboyne.’”
A remarkable woman, Miss Napier,” said Alex. “How did you come to know her?”
He looked at the cards in his hand and arranged them in order. He and Mahri were in Gavin’s room, keeping an eye on their patient. The Cardno ladies were downstairs, clearing up after they’d enjoyed Dugald’s mouthwater ing salmon, and Dugald was, as usual, prowling around outside.
Mahri threw down her cards. “I can’t concentrate. What time is it?”
“A few minutes after ten. You haven’t answered my question.”
Her mind did a quick inventory. She couldn’t see any potholes, so she replied naturally, “My parents rented a cottage one summer near Pannanich Wells so that my mother could take the waters. They’re famous for their curative powers. That was when I met Miss Napier. She’d come to look after her aunt. The old lady was ailing, you see, and had taken to her bed.”
“The Witch of Pannanich Wells?”
“Yes. There have been witches there for generations, if you can believe what the locals say.”
“Oh, I believe them. Go on.”
She gave him a sharp look. He was careful to keep his lips straight.
“I was just a child, but it seemed to me that the witch must be a hundred.” Dimples flashed in her cheeks. “In fact, she was in her sixties. There was something seriously wrong with her; I can’t remember what. At any rate, Miss Napier was an herbalist. No one can say what cured the witch, whether it was the waters or Miss Napier’s skill, but the old lady is still going strong.”
“Strange.”
“What is?”
He shrugged. “Miss Napier is obviously well educated and gifted. Why would she want to bury herself in the middle of nowhere?”
“Because,” she said sharply, “she was needed. She is her aunt’s only living relative. Who else would look after the old lady if not her niece?”
“And when her aunt’s health improved?”
“She’d fallen in love with Deeside and couldn’t bear to leave it.”
He looked at her over the cards splayed in his hand. “It sounds as though you knew her well.”
She shrugged. “Not really. I met her through my mother. I’d practically forgotten about her until Gavin took a turn for the worse. I was at my wits’ end. Then I remembered Miss Napier and her aunt. I wasn’t even sure that they were still there.”
He looked over at the bed. “Thank God they were.”
“Yes.”
“What about your mother? Was she cured?”
She shook her head. “My father was never happy with folk remedies. He said that the witch and her niece were charlatans. He put my mother under the care of what he called a real doctor, but the doctor said that he’d left it too late.”
“That must have been hard on you. I know when my mother died, I was inconsolable.”
Struck by his words, she gazed at him, then nodded slowly. “That’s how I felt, too.”
“You see, we’re not so very different.”
“In some things, perhaps.”
“Family is important, wouldn’t you agree?”
This was leading somewhere; she knew it was leading somewhere, and that put her on her guard. She picked up her cards and pretended to study them. “I suppose.”
He sat back in his chair. “You suppose? It sounds to me as though your family meant a great deal to you.”
Treading carefully between truth and fiction, she replied, “Well, they did, but they’re all gone now.” It was how she felt. “I won’t even have a niece to keep me company in my old age.”
Laughter gleamed briefly in his eyes. “I think I can say, without a doubt, that you’re talking nonsense. You’ll have your own husband and children. I guarantee it. I’ve kissed you, remember?”
Her eyes smoldered. “You can stop right there! Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a secret service agent, and this is an interrogation. You’re trying to throw me off stride so that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Now why would you think that? I paid you a compliment. I’m sorry it started off badly, but I can’t remember when I enjoyed a kiss more.”
Color bloomed in her cheeks. The memory of that kiss made her skin tingle. Then he had gone and spoiled it. Through her teeth, she said, “If this isn’t an interrogation, what is it?”
“I’m merely trying to understand your character.”
“I’ve told you all you need to know!”
“That piffle about a thwarted suitor attacking the queen to make you sorry for jilting him?”
“So, it
is
an interrogation! I knew it!”
There was no pretense at playing cards now. Though they kept their voices down, their glances clashed and held. He relented first.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I know that you were a member of Demos.” He was remembering his vision of Mahri accepting the dagger at the waterfall. “I don’t think you knew what they were really up to, and when you found out, you were devastated. I understand your loyalty to them. They’re the family you loved and lost.”
He gave a half smile. “I’ve seen the kind of person you are. You don’t desert your friends, no, not even when you don’t owe them anything. I’m thinking of myself and Gavin. But misplaced loyalty is dangerous. Demos has tried to assassinate the queen. There will be other targets. Can you stand idly by and see innocent people die?”
As though she had not suffered torments deciding what to do for the best! She’d started off with good intentions, but now the whole enterprise was turning into a nightmare.
Her silence tried his patience. “How can you be loyal to that scum? Do you have any idea what they do? No? Let me tell you. Your precious Demos killed three good agents who happened to be my friends. They were blown up by a bomb. I barely escaped with my life and only because I was checking out another part of the building. Do you know what carnage a bomb can cause? It was worse than a slaughterhouse.”
“Stop it!” She paused till she felt in control of her voice. “If you’re trying to play on my sympathies, it won’t work, because I can’t tell you what I don’t know. So stop badger ing me. I—”
He broke in roughly, “I’m telling you because I want to help you. We’re not enemies, Mahri; we’re allies.”
“Then let me go.”
He shook his head. “I can’t agree to that.”
She got up, spine straight, chin tipped up. “So now we know where we stand. Good night, Mr. Hepburn.”
He watched her as she walked to the door. “Who is the professor?” He called out and winced when she slammed the door shut behind her,
He’d made a bullocks of it. He didn’t know what had come over him. He never spoke of the day his friends died. What the hell did he think he was doing?
It was her devotion to Demos that riled him, a group of lunatic subversives who cared nothing for justice or law, except as it served their own ends. Demos. Assassins. Murderers. Misfits. How had someone like Mahri come to be mixed up with that fraternity of traitors?
Mahri was too loyal and too honorable for her own good. She was also strong-willed, compassionate, selfless, and an accomplished liar.
He frowned. She would leave him the first chance she got. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen. He wanted to keep her safe. He wanted to keep her . . .
That was the rub. He wanted to keep her.
Restless now, he got up and began to prowl. There was a movement at the bed. He crossed to it and felt his brother’s brow. The fever was down a little, and Gavin’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again against the light from the lamps.