Wishing For a Highlander (36 page)

The auld woman turned in their direction, all but the tip of her hooked nose hidden beneath her hood. “Apples,” she mumbled in a voice dusty with age and disuse. “Spring apples, ripe and ready for baking. Treat for your lady, sir? Just a half groat for a bag.”

He suspiciously eyed the bag she held out with a filthy, trembling hand. It being only the first of June, he worrit the spring apples would be too green to be of worth. But if they were truly ripe, he’d happily buy the treat for his wife. “Let me see the fruit,” he said, leaning over the arm of the bench.

“Ooh, I could make a pie to share with Fran and Edmund,” Malina murmured as she tried to peer around him.

The auld woman loosed the tie on the bag, her dirty fingers shaking to make her clumsy at the task. Finally, she pulled the bag open and he bent close to look inside. Though a touch of green remained, the apples were mostly red and yellow. He fingered out a half groat from his sporran, and didn’t bother to haggle with the poor woman, who likely needed the coin far more than he.

“Thank ye, sir,” she said as she took the coin.

He curled his fingers in the rough fabric of the bag.

Malina put Janine on his lap and reached for it while Janine let loose a gurgling laugh and clapped her hands.

The auld woman tried to pull the bag back, but he didn’t relax his grip. “Ye canna change your mind now that I’ve paid ye,” he quipped, giving the woman a smile, but she didn’t tilt her face up to see it.

Seemingly reluctantly, she released the bag and the significant weight of it surprised him. Mayhap he’d gotten a bargain for such a weight of rare spring apples. He let Malina snatch it from him and peer inside. Her exclamations over the fruit made him preen.

“Look, baby girl,” she cooed to Janine. “Apples for Mommy! I can make you some nummy apple sauce and a pie for daddy!”

When he went to thank the auld woman, he found her already hurrying away without looking back. He shrugged and nodded to Aodhan, who urged his horse onward. He slapped the reins, thinking vaguely that the woman smelled strange. For her tattered cloak and threadbare plaid, she ought to have smelled of dirt and decay, but what had pricked his nose instead had been the feminine fragrance of roses.

Chapter 24

Never in her former life would Melanie have imagined a burlap bag of apples in early June would make her nearly weep with joy. Gone were the days of simply driving to the store and picking up a perfectly-ripened pint of strawberries or a juicy honeydew melon or a slightly-green bunch of bananas regardless of the season. She still missed that kind of convenience, but what she’d traded it for was well worth it.

That night in her office back at the museum, she’d made a tongue-in-cheek wish for a sexy Highlander to sweep her off her feet. She’d gotten her wish and then some. She’d gotten a treasured friend, a passionate lover, and best of all, a wonderful father to her child–their child.

She had her heart’s desire. Everything was perfect.

Except she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her parents. If she could have changed just one thing and left everything else the same, it would have been that. She wished she could tell them she was happy, that she missed them and loved them so much her heart ached when thoughts of them snuck up on her. She wanted to tell her mom how much she loved being a mom herself, tell her that having a baby without an epidural had been the worst kind of torture but the moment Janine had been placed in her arms, she’d forgotten the pain. She wanted to tell her dad that she’d married a good man, a man just as responsible and loving as he.

Breathing the moist, salty air deep into her lungs, she leaned on Darcy’s arm and stroked Janine’s baby-fine hair as she took her afternoon nap in her arms. White-gray cliffs rose to their left, and to their right, the ocean stretched pewter and choppy into the mist. Brora lay about an hour’s easy pace behind them. While she gazed out over the North Sea, Darcy tried to sneak an apple from the bag at her feet.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said with a swat. “I’ve got big plans for those apples.”

He pulled his hand back as if stung. “Mayhap, but I’m the one who bought them for you,” he answered with a smirk. “I only seek my fair share.” Hooking a long foot around the bag, he inched it toward his side of the foot well.

She hooked her foot around his ankle, impeding his attempted thievery. They grinned at each other as they played their high-stakes game of footsie.

Suddenly, he jerked his leg away. “Christ! Get away with ye!” He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her away from him until she clenched the rail to keep from tumbling out of the cart with Janine.

“Jeez, Darcy. If you want one that bad–”

His face turned red as a beet before her eyes. With jerky movements and labored breaths, he grabbed the sack of apples and threw it out of the cart.

The fruit pattered onto the road and rolled in every direction. The burlap thrashed, seemingly of its own accord. Then a huge brown snake slithered out and disappeared into the roadside bracken.

Darcy tried to call for Aodhan, but his hands went to his throat, the reins forgotten. Froth formed at the corners of his mouth.

A wave of horror doused her as a scream built behind her sternum. “Aodhan! Snake! Help! I think Darcy’s been bitten!”

She set Janine behind her in the cart and caught him as he swayed. Struggling with the weight of his limp torso, she laid him along the bench and yanked the horse to a stop.

“Calf,” he choked out, spittle flying.

She followed his panicked gaze and ripped the loosely-tied boot from his foot. It took all the strength in her fingers, since his foot had already swelled until the skin was tight and painful looking. Blood trickled from a pair of puncture wounds several inches above his ankle.

“Oh, God, Darcy!” Her heart pounded. She clutched uselessly at his kilt, and looked desperately at his face only to find his handsome features disappearing behind the puffy evidence of poison coursing through his veins. His wild eyes darted to Aodhan as he jumped up into the cart.

He tried to speak, but she couldn’t make sense of his wheezing. It sounded like he was saying, “Roses” over and over again. It made no sense to her, but a stream of curses erupted from Aodhan, who sliced his dirk across Darcy’s ankle and squeezed out enough thin, bright red blood to fill a cup.

“It’s too late,” she murmured, half to herself. The venom was in him, and it was potent enough to be deadly within minutes. She was going to lose him.

No! Her soul rebelled at the thought. She couldn’t lose him. Her love wouldn’t permit it.

Janine’s frightened cries faded into the mental background, as did Aodhan’s urgent commands for Darcy to stay awake. The entirety of her concentration narrowed to a single memory. It was the morning after Darcy’s return from Inverness. He’d told her about the albino, Timothy, and the gypsy with the fake French accent, Gravois. Darcy had given her a small box wrapped in fabric and tied with twine and told her it was a gift from the gypsy.

When he’d relayed to her Gravois’s words,
“He said it is only to be opened when the sheet hits the fan, whatever that nonsense might mean,”
she’d stared at him, dumbfounded.
“Do ye ken what he might have meant?”
he’d asked, frowning at her expression.

Yes, she’d had an idea, but she had only shrugged noncommittally, granting Gravois the same kind of instant trust her husband had described having upon meeting the man. If her instinct was right, Gravois had used his accent to hide the meaning of his colorfully-worded and very modern message from Darcy. And if he’d taken the trouble to do that, she’d take the trouble to treat his gift with respect. And caution.

She’d initially tucked the box away in a drawer to keep it safe, but while packing for their return to Ackergill, she’d felt compelled to keep it on her person at all times. Her neck prickling with certainty, she pulled it from a pocket in the folds of her skirts.

“Aodhan, your dirk.” She held out her hand. He gave it to her without question, and she sliced through the twine.

“What are ye doing?” he asked in a tight voice.

“Saving his life. I hope.” If the “sheet” had ever hit the fan in her life, it was now. She hoped she was doing the right thing and that Gravois was worthy of the trust she was placing in him.

Inside the box was a pear-shaped vial of milky-white liquid. Without daring to think, she wrenched the cork out with her teeth and climbed over Darcy. “Open his mouth,” she commanded Aodhan. She refused to contemplate the fact that the red of Darcy’s face had given way to a grayish pallor, that his eyes were swollen closed and his chest was hardly moving.

Aodhan obeyed, and she dumped the contents of the vial into Darcy’s mouth. “Sit him up to help him swallow. Darcy, baby, you have to swallow this. Please. Oh, please,” she added in a whisper. Her composure hung by a thread.

He didn’t look conscious, but by some miracle his throat worked. When Aodhan laid him back down and she wiped the froth from his mouth, only the barest trickle of the milky liquid leaked out.

“What was that?” Aodhan asked.

Tears flowing, she said, “I don’t know, but I hope it was magical.” An unassuming box had brought her through time to find the man of her dreams. She hoped with every fiber of her being that a mysterious gift from a gypsy could cure a snake bite.

She met Aodhan’s eyes, searching for an ally in her hope. He only shook his head and averted his gaze to Janine, who had quieted and now held out her chubby arms to him. He picked her up and put her on his hip while Melanie sagged on the bench seat and cradled Darcy’s head on her lap. His damp hair clung to her fingers, face slick with cold sweat. His chest shuddered once, then froze in place, refusing to rise and fall with another labored breath.

“No.” Her blood turned to ice. The universe came to a screeching halt. Every moment of her life, past, present, and future blew away on a fickle wind, leaving her all alone in this one pinprick point in time. “Come on, Darcy. Breathe for me.” She bowed over him, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed.

“He’s gone, lass.” Aodhan’s voice trembled with grief. His hand fell like a lead weight on her shoulder.

Fiery denial shot through her, but before it could sear her soul, Darcy’s chest stuttered under her hand. Though he looked no different, she could swear his sternum rose and fell ever so slightly.

“Aodhan, I think it’s working.”

“Lass,” he warned.

“No, look.” She stared at his chest and sure enough, his breathing, though labored, was even.

“Och, you’re right.” Their gazes locked. “Can ye drive the cart?”

She nodded and took up the reins, seeing on Aodhan’s face the same tenuous hope holding the pieces of her heart together.

“If this is magic, I dinna trust it on its own. Let’s get him to a physician back in Brora. I’ll carry your bairn.” He hopped down from the cart and, cooing to Janine, mounted his horse.

She agreed with his assessment. Darcy wasn’t improving nearly as quickly as he’d succumbed to the poison. He could breathe, and under her fingers, his wrist gave a thready pulse, but there was no guarantee he’d survive this. Whatever was in that vial might have only bought them a little time.

Aodhan wheeled his horse around, then grabbed the bridle of her cart horse and made him turn back the way they’d come.

She slapped the reins. As tears dried on her cheeks, they raced back to Brora.

* * * *

Anya wasn’t satisfied.

As she guided her nag over the rocky hills and away from Brora, she tried to find peace in the fact that her vengeance was at long last complete. But peace eluded her. She told herself ’twas because she hadn’t witnessed the results of her plot, that she didn’t even ken whether it had been Darcy or his accursed wife who had been bitten or if the snake had yet awoken and struck at all. But she couldn’t quite believe her satisfaction waited for confirmation of her success. Rather, she had an unwelcome feeling her conscience was to blame.

She had bent the truth to her advantage and used her beauty to manipulate men all her life, but she hadn’t ever done true harm to another. Until now. A corner of her innermost self trembled to ken she’d most likely caused someone’s death today. Mayhap ’twould be the death of the strangewoman, but mayhap ’twould be her clansman or even a wee ane whose only crime was being born to a witch.

She wished that doubting part of her had shown itself before she’d stepped into the road to pose as an auld villager selling fruit. Then she remembered all she had lost. Her home. Her chance at living up at the keep and being the object of Steafan’s desire, of bearing his children and having the honor of the entire clan. ’Twas only dishonor she had now, that and a pitiful income and the occasional pleasure of a talented lover at the bawdyhouse. And Seona, if she ever returned.

If she’d done wrong today, ’twas really her sister’s fault; Seona should have been there for her and helped her come up with a better plan. Aye. She was not to blame for aught ill that had occurred today.

Her conscience appeased, she squared her shoulders and focused all her attention on navigating the treacherous rocks. There was no trail here, nor any way to be followed since there was no soft ground to leave tracks upon. But one wrong step by her mount and they could both tumble into a ravine.

Glen was a hog’s fart for leaving her to find her way to the inner road by herself. But she’d kent better than to agree to marry him and then try to back out of it. Glen wasn’t one to let another deny him what was his, and if she’d agreed to be his, he’d hold her to it. ’Twas for the best she’d refused him. Even if she broke her bloody neck out here on the rocks. She’d rather be dead than chained to a conniving, controlling, bald-faced disgrace of a husband.