By Fire and by Sword (25 page)

“Of course I do.”

“Wear it.”

“Wear it? What are you talking about?”

#8220;I am talking about safety. You’ve got a murderer running loose around here trying to kill people. You don’t know where he will strike next. I would feel better if you had your knife with you all the time.” She made a move to roll her eyes and thought better of it.

“Is it such a big thing to ask? Only a fool would go out unarmed when her life was in danger.”

He did not know why she was so obstinate. Was she this way with everyone, or just him?

“All right. I’ll wear it.”

“All the time.”

A sigh. “All the time…except when I bathe and when I sleep.”

“Keep it by your bed at night.”

“Agreed.
Now
may I go in?”

He bowed and she swept past.

They ended up in the small dining room because it was cozier than the great hall. They settled themselves and sat around, quietly talking until dear Ewen came in with a tea tray that also contained milk, honey and scones.

Kenna always gave him a smile to reinforce her words. “You always anticipate, and it is always appreciated. Would you mind bringing another wet cloth?”

With a nod, he scurried from the room in that endearing half walk, half hobble particular to him.

Kenna was relaxed on the sofa. Colin sat next to her, but he was careful not to get close enough that they touched.

“Do you realize we have on our nightgowns?” Kenna said.

“I do not care” was Josette’s emphatic reply. “Naked would have been fine, too, if that’s what it took to save my life. Kenna, if you had not awakened when you did, if you had thought to save only yourself… Why did you wake up? The fire wasn’t in your room.”

Kenna started with the clock striking thirteen times, twice, and gave them the entire story of what transpired: the noises she heard, the presence she sensed in the house; the certainty that someone entered her room; how afraid she had been lying in her bed; the smoke she mistook in the beginning for a swirling mist, and the terror that gripped her when she could not awaken Josette. She even mentioned strapping on her dirk, and thinking she heard a dog howl at some point.

Josette had an odd expression. “Where
are
the dogs?”

Ewen returned with a wet cloth for all three of them, and two small blankets he gave to Kenna and Josette. When he started from the room, Kenna called out to him. “Ewen, have you seen the dogs this morning?”

Ewen shook his head and hurried from the room.

“That was odd,” Kenna said, “and quite unlike him. Do you think he knows something and doesn’t want to tell? He was very attached to them. He would have noticed their absence immediately.”

“I will speak to him when the confusion has died down. Right now, he is going in five directions.”

Josette wiped her face and Kenna saw how exhausted she was. “If you want to rest, you can go in any of the empty bedchambers. Ewen can have the maids move what’s left of your things to whichever one you choose.”

Kenna wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, to cover her gown as much as she could. She noticed Josette left hers folded across her lap, as if someone seeing her in her nightgown was not on her present list of worries.

Kenna saw the grave expression of Colin’s face and it occurred to her that he was saying very little. “When did you arrive? I was surprised you repaired
Dancing Water
so fast.”

“And where is Alejandro?” Josette added.

“I got here shortly before I heard you scream for help.
Dancing Water
is in Edinburgh undergoing repairs with Alejandro and the crew.”

“Edinburgh?” Kenna asked. “You couldn’t have gone to Edinburgh and back so fast.”

“I did not go to Edinburgh. We sailed to Dunnet Bay where my grandfather lives, stopped long enough to drop me off, then they sailed on to Edinburgh. My grandfather had his men bring me back here.”

“Why did you come back here so soon?” Kenna asked.

“It was a strong feeling I had…instinctive, if you will. You would call it intuition. Whatever the term, I could not disassociate myself from it. I planned to go to Edinburgh. I needed to go to Edinburgh. I did not want to disrespect your wishes, but I am a man and, instinctively,
I want to protect. You are an independent woman—you want to take care of yourself. I understand the tension you live with, the constant worry about Lord Walter, but we disagree on how to deal with it. In the end, I decided it was better to return and be sent away, than to learn later that I should have come.”

“It was a good thing you listened to your inner voice and returned,” Josette said, “at least it is from my perspective.”

Kenna was conscious of the way Josette was looking at her. It lay somewhere between accusatory and sympathetic, and Kenna did not want to deal with that right now, so she brushed it aside.

“Why did you stop to see your grandfather, if you needed to be in Edinburgh?”

Colin spent the next few minutes detailing his visit, the securing of the gold in his grandfather’s dungeon, and the arrangement he had worked out for his grandfather to manage getting the gold into the hands of needy Highlanders. “I also realized the two of you did not get a share of the gold, and I made provisions for that as well.”

“Did you take a share?” Kenna asked.

“Are you wearing your dirk?”

She came close to smiling. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Good.”

“Did you take a share?” she asked again.

“No.”

“Did Alejandro?” Josette asked.

“No. Like me, he feels the Highlanders need it more than we do.”

“You must have wealthy families,” Kenna said.

“While there is truth to that, we like to seek our own fortunes.”

“The life of a privateer must be a lucrative one,” Josette said.

“I don’t make my living privateering, because I give away most of what I plunder, as you saw with the Spanish gold.”

“Then how do you seek your fortune?” Kenna asked.

“Shipping.”

“Shipping?” she repeated. “Isn’t your ship a bit small for that?”

“
Dancing Water
is not the only ship I own, love.”

“Really? How many do you have, then?” she asked, knowing she was being incredibly nosy, but allowing her curiosity to dictate.

A half smile played around his lips. “I haven’t been asked this many questions since I was in school. I have five ships, Lady Lennox, including
Dancing Water.
Is there anything else you would like to know?”

“Not at the present, but I may think of something later on.”

“Then you better hurry.”

“Why do you say that?”

“As I said, I came back because I felt I should, and that bit of instinct turned out to be on target. Now that the danger is past, I know you will want me to go and not interfere, even if it is against my best judgment.”

Josette stood and put her teacup down. “This sounds like a battle being waged between forces of opposing angels. Either both sides win, or neither one does. I know the sun is up and I have had breakfast, but I’m going to see if I can go back to sleep. I know that does not sound normal, but absolutely nothing has been normal about this day from the start.” She put the blanket around her shoulders and departed.

Kenna was thinking about offering Colin an apology when he stood and said, “I think I will go have that talk with Ewen now.”

She watched him go, and the emptiness of the room closed in around her.

Kenna went upstairs to survey the damage to her own room, which turned out to be only a faint smoky smell, thanks to the MacKays, who had opened the windows earlier in order to freshen the air. The room was a bit drafty, so she went to close all the windows but one. It was on the third window that she glanced toward the courtyard and saw two MacKays in a horse cart about to go through the gate. She caught a glimpse of Colin as he stepped into her view and walked toward the cart. She heard him call out, and the cart stopped. They spoke for a moment and one of the men climbed down. Colin walked with him to the back of the cart, and as the man pulled back a piece of burlap, Kenna gasped.

Inside, she saw the two deerhounds. Later, when Colin returned, he told her, “Their throats were cut.”

Everyone had their boiling point and Kenna had reached hers. It was the turning point; the final and unbearable
misfortune; the last horrible deed at the end of too many tragedies; the camel’s back that was broken by one little straw; the one occurrence that made the entire situation unbearable. And that is what prompted her to vow she would search for a way to force his hand—a way so compelling that Lord Walter would come out into the open and make his move.

The bright day is done,

And we are for the dark.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616),

English poet and playwright.

Antony and Cleopatra
(1606-1607),

Act V, Scene 2.

T
he candles had never shone brighter in Durness Castle than they did that night when the three of them sat down to dinner. The food was good, but dinner was a dreadful affair, and Kenna barely touched anything on her plate. It gave her an odd feeling to sit with two people she cared so much for, and to listen to their lighthearted banter, knowing that she was not a part of it.

Oh, she partook of the conversation, certainly, but her heart was not in it. She felt like a watch with some of its springs removed. It looked fine, but anyone who checked inside could see that it was broken.

As soon as the meal ended, she said, “It has been a long, exhausting day. If you will excuse me.”

But she did not retire to her room as she had planned, but found herself instead navigating the quiet passages of vaulted stone past the chapel, robed in the scarlet and gold of the past. How many heartfelt prayers had been sent heavenward like birds on the wing, now set free?

The fragrance of candle wax scented the corridors, and made her wonder if anyone had ever found their way, blinded, and guided by its scent alone.

She pushed open the heavy door of the tower and climbed the steps of timeworn stone, narrow and steep, until she reached the top and stepped out onto the parapet, to look out on the beauty of Sutherland, where the veins of rivers flowed through fallow fields and into lochs, cold and deep.

The sunlight was almost gone, the last thin slice of it perching like a bird on a craggy pinnacle, barely visible in the distance. Overhead a few small clouds floated by: a backdrop for an occasional swallow or kittiwake.

She found the stone ledge that ran around the parapet—and pegged it the perfect seat.

As she sat down, night embraced her, the warm russet and gold of the day now turned to a deeper, darker shade, the usurper stealing the last light, and replacing it with her colors of mulberry, indigo, violet and red; colors that bled into the purpled dye of a cardinal’s robe.

A quiet hush settled over the moors. The toothed rim
of crags disappeared beneath the cloak of night, moving across the horizon and dipping her hand into her silvered bag to glitter the sky with stars.

The peace of the evening penetrated, softening even her bones, and Kenna leaned her head back against the cold stones, and willed the cobwebs in her mind to be swept away. She felt stretched to a dozen points, unable to align herself on her axis. And as always, thoughts of Colin crept forward to curl at her feet, silent and mysterious as a cat.

The intimacy they previously enjoyed had been superseded by a discomforting constraint that stayed between them like a pane of clear glass. They could see each other and talk to each other, but the glass prevented them from actually stepping into each other’s world.

She missed the warm familiarity, but did not know how to go about getting it back…or if she should even try.

She did not realize she was so tired until she began to relax. She closed her eyes and listened to the tinkle of a sheep’s bell, the bark of a dog driving the herd home.

The door she had come through earlier clanked, then scraped across stones and was thrown back. “You little fool! Don’t you know everyone in the castle has been looking for you?”

She opened her eyes to the golden glow of a candle in a lantern, almost touching her face. She drew her head back, and watched Colin wave it over the parapet as he called out, “I have found her up here. She is safe.”

He put the lamp down. Light and shadow transformed the handsome planes of his face into that of a gargoyle, reminding her of the one that had fallen and hit her shoulder; was Colin her bad omen? Still groggy from having dozed off, she closed her eyes and wished he would disappear, but when she opened them again, he was still there, too handsome by far to be looking at her so angrily.

“There was no need to sound the alarm. I was not planning to jump from the parapet. I don’t know why you are so upset. Perhaps it makes you feel important.”

“I am important, at least to some people. But, that isn’t the issue here.”

“What is the issue?”

“How about your total disregard of others. Where is your empathy? Are you so wrapped up in your own world that you can effectively cut everyone else out? What do you mean, you don’t see why we are upset? Someone tried to kill your friend and burn the place down last night. How can you be flippant and act as if it never happened? You tell us you know it was Lord Walter, and we believe you because he has already killed your father, three brothers and now the
comte.
Then you disappear tonight while we frantically search for you. Would it have stressed you too much to tell us where you were going? I guess it was too much to ask someone devoid of empathy, which is, in case you are unfamiliar with the word, the ability to understand another person’s feelings, to put yourself in their place and see it from their point of view.”

“I did not think…”

“Well, lady, you better damn well start thinking before you end up getting what you want and find yourself completely alone. What in the hell were you doing up here all this time? Without bothering to tell anyone that you never intended going to bed?”

“I didn’t know I was coming up here until I was almost to the staircase. I do not see why you are so furious because I sought a little peace and quiet in a place where I could think.”

A breeze ruffled his hair, and his face looked as dark as a pirate’s. She decided this was not a good time to discuss anything with him. “Is this some contest, then, to see which of us can stare moodily at the other for the longest amount of time? If there is a prize, you take it, because I am going to bed.”

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

“This is my home and you are neither my father nor my husband. I can go where I please, when I please and do as I please. I am not your responsibility or your concern. I can support myself and take care of myself. In other words, I don’t need you….”

She intended to say she did not need him shouting at her all the time, that she was new at this and would naturally make mistakes. She was a human being, for God’s sake, and therefore created imperfect, but she did not get to say those things because he cut her off.

“You’re right, you don’t need me or anyone. I saw how well you were taking care of yourself and those around you this morning when I came into Josette’s room and pulled her out of a burning bed. What were
you going to do? Stand there wringing your hands, calling for help and offering her moral support as she burned to death, all in the name of doing everything your way?”

“That was an exception.”

“Your entire life is an exception.”

“I was going to say it was an exception in that we normally don’t have fires intentionally started in our bedchambers when we are sleeping in there.”

“
Mea culpa!
You are right. I guess by now ‘normal’ in your life is to have a father and two brothers ambushed, another brother poisoned, your sister almost starved to death, a friend brutally stabbed and another almost burned alive. Have you become so desensitized by your suffering that you have lost all contact with what is factual, what is real?”

She glanced toward the door.

He crossed his arms and regarded her impassively. “Go ahead,” he said. “Try it, and see how far you get.”

She had come too far to back down now, and she swore she would not even try to mollify him. She stood and faced him, but he did not give her time to throw any words at him.

“I ought to turn you over my knee. If your father had done so when you were younger, you would not be so obstinate and uncaring.”

“I care, but not for you!” The minute the words were out, she wanted to snatch them back, but she could tell by the dark, angry look on his face that it was too late for that. His face was both stubborn and stern. I’ll not give in and ask his forgiveness, she thought with a hint
of desperation; I give in and melt each time he touches me.

The faint notes of a mandolin floated upward. Someone was playing in the courtyard below. The unfamiliar melody was lovely. She took a deep breath. The music had intervened at the right time; music to soothe a savage beast.

She heard voices carried on the wind and turned away from him to lean against the parapet. Below them, one of the MacKays was building a fire. She watched the orange flames leap hungrily upward, wild they looked, seeking something to devour. She had a sudden impulse to shove Colin toward the ravenous flames and say, “Here, take him.”

The thought of it pleased her, even if the reality of it did not. Someone plucked a few strings of the mandolin and began to play again.

She stood on her toes in order to see what was happening. “What are they doing down there?” She did not turn around.

“Ewen said some of the men were going to build a fire and play a few songs. They asked Josette to bring you when we found you.”

She might have known he would get the conversation back to that. She was trying, really trying not to have another argument like they had in the distillery, so she clamped her mouth shut in order to remain quiet, for tonight everything she said seemed to raise his ire. She did not know how long they stood there, neither of them speaking, but at some point, he must have grown tired, for he stepped up to the parapet and stood beside her.

They leaned into the stones and watched the activity below, standing side by side, their bodies touching lightly. Yet, neither of them spoke as they looked upon the shadowed courtyard, beneath the light of a gibbous moon.

She was about to speak when the mellow tones of violins floated over them, and the golden glow of the fire danced across the faces below. Those standing near the flames began to move back, and Kenna saw Josette, and knew she was going for the first time to see her dance.

Josette danced the same way she lived her life, with a passion, her eyes wide, head alert and her body ready to confront whatever challenge she was handed. Kenna did not need to be down there to know her exotic, dark eyes would be hypnotic to anyone who dared gaze into them.

Her well-controlled body twirled to each pulsing note, as if aware only of the passionate rhythm pounding in her ears. She was telling a story of her people, a tale that was seductive, oppressive and sad. It was so poignant and graceful, it was easy to confuse it with reality.

She had never seen anyone dance the way Josette danced. It was as if it were a part of her, an ancient rhythm placed inside her long before she was born. There was such emphasis on the graceful movements of her arms, hips and shoulders, and the expressive twists and turns of her hands, all from the wrists. And all the while, she held her black skirt, emphasizing each move with the skirt, played like an instrument with her hands.

It was provocative, worldly, seductive, carnal. Kenna could feel the coiling spiral of desire surrounding her and slowly drawing her forward, pulling her into its powerful embrace. Her throat was dry. Yearning made her aware of her body in a way she had never known. She wanted Colin, wanted him now; to kiss her, to touch her in all the right places. She felt warm and thick, as if a rush of feeling jammed in her throat, blocking her ability to communicate.

She hardened her resolve and felt her body stiffen in resistance—of him, of her desire for him, of any thought of there ever being something between them.

“Why must you be so hard-hearted and stubborn? Can’t we find a halfway mark in all of this? Couldn’t you at least try?”

“I cannot. You know I must keep my focus upon Lord Walter until I have settled the matter. And please do not say I should let you or anyone handle it. It is something I must do alone. I can’t face Lord Walter with my mind distracted.”

“Who said anything about breaking your heart?”

“I’m not asking to settle it for you…only to be here in case you need me.”

“I cannot risk another life lost because of me—especially yours. I know you don’t understand, but I can’t explain it any other way. I have always seen this as my fight, because it is. I have already lost someone dear to me by letting my guard down and thinking I could live a normal life, and I lost sight of the fact that I will always fail in that regard simply because Lord Walter is not normal. I’ve told you this dozens of times, but
you still do not understand, and now I think I know why—you don’t want to understand because you want everything your way.”

She studied his face, waiting for him to say something, to respond to her, to keep their communication open so they remained in the same army, instead of withdrawing into separate forces that would eventually evolve and start to grow apart, until they reached the point where they became enemies. But his face was hard; his expression inscrutable; his mouth unsmiling.

Sometimes, silence can be an answer.

She wished with all her heart he could understand, and his not doing so left her unsettled and disappointed. She had opened herself to him, and then she had pressed him, wanting—no, needing to hear some expression to tell her that he understood, that he loved her enough to stand by her, even when he did not disagree with her.

There was nothing—only the feel of his eyes boring into her. She was a fool for being too naive to understand that a man can want a woman but not
want
her; that he can want her body, but not the commitment; that he can draw out her spirit and her soul, and give nothing back.

And then she is nothing but an empty shell. She would not settle for that. It left her angry with herself for fishing for some assurance from him.

“It is getting late. I’m going back inside.”

He was left standing on the parapet, listening to the sound of her feet that hurried down the narrow steps. When he turned to follow her with his gaze, he saw her
use both hands to pull back the heavy door before she disappeared behind it.