By Fire and by Sword (26 page)

She was greeted by the same scent of candles as before, and saw that someone had come along to light the torches that cast a dim light down the passageway. She hurried on and was almost to the chapel when she heard the scrape of the parapet door; the sound of it closing loudly behind her.

The rapid staccato of footfalls echoed down the passageway, telling her he was coming after her. She quickened her step and felt, a moment later, the tight grip of his hand close around her arm. He whirled her around to face him.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Please do not touch me like this. Someone may come by.”

He looked around. “In here,” he said, and pulled her into the dim chapel.

She made a scoffing sound. “The chapel, a perfect choice. Are we here to create new sins, confess our old ones, or just to pray for the forgiveness of them?”

He crossed his arms and leaned against a column. “How do you see it?”

“All those ways,” she said.

“Damned if I understand you.”

“I have not noticed you trying.”

“I have invested more effort into understanding you than you know.”

“Ha!”

“Do you know what I think the problem is?” he asked. “You wear your feelings on your sleeve, and
your heart is too easily bruised because everything bypasses your intellect.”

She shrugged and kept her gaze focused on the floor. This was going nowhere. She could not bare her heart to him because he gave her no reason to. She was glad, at least, that he could not see her feelings for him in her eyes, her face. She sighed deeply.

She would not be the first lass to lose her heart to a man who cared naught. It was a painful realization, but it would not be forever, she knew. The pain she felt now would eventually heal, and in the gaping hole where love had dwelled there would be wisdom.

“You must have someone special. A fiancée? A certain woman waiting for you in America?”

“No, there is no one special in my life.”

His words stung. Well, what did she expect? Did she truly think he would say that she was his someone special? Foolish woman. Couldn’t she understand how easy she would be for him to forget?

She was nothing more than someone to amuse him while he was in Scotland. She would not boost his ego any further by allowing him to think it bothered her. It was best this way, she told herself. There was no time for her to deal with matters of the heart.

“I think it is time for you to go,” she said. She turned and, without a word, fled from the chapel.

The only way to be absolutely safe

is never to try anything for the first time.

—Attributed to J. A. D. Ingres (1780-1867),

French artist.

K
enna was waiting for Josette in the great hall the next morning, when she walked in. “I did not mean to be so late,” she said.

“It is all right, but unlike you. I have grown accustomed to your punctuality. Did you oversleep?”

“No, I had breakfast and Colin was there. He was getting ready to leave, and I offered to ride down to the bay with him so I could bring the horse back.”

“He left? How did he go? His ship is not yet ready.”

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you told him it was time for him to leave.”

Kenna stared at Josette in amazement. “Are you taking his side in this?”

“I am not taking sides at all, but I think you were wrong to say that to him.”

“He was wrong to tell you.”

“I asked why he was leaving when he had only just arrived. He said it was time for him to go. Of course I disagreed, but he said I should talk to you about it, because those were your words, not his.”

“How did he leave without a boat?”

“He heard there was a large ship in the bay that just happened to be heading to Edinburgh. You did not know he was leaving, did you?”

“No, but it does not surprise me. We have not had the smooth road of love running between us for some time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, so am I, but at least now I can focus all my energy on besting you each time we have a match.”

“Then by all means, come and we will let you beat me…if you can.”

“That is the problem. Each time I get better, you do as well.”

Josette smiled. “That sounds remarkably like something I told the
comte
when he first began to teach me.”

Kenna placed her foil on the table and folded her arms across her middle. “How
did
you and the
comte
end up together?”

A wan smile settled upon Josette’s mouth and her face took on a faraway look, as if she had traveled back to another place, a special event in her life that she held a particular fondness for. “He found me in Aix.
There was a dispute at a fair. Everyone blamed it on the Gypsys. The
gendarmes
began to round us up. My parents and a great many others were arrested and taken to the
gendarmerie—
the police station. The
gendarmes
did not want to bother with me, so I was left behind with the ragged remnant that escaped arrest. When the fair was over, the rest of the Gypsies broke camp and left. No one bothered to look for me.”

“Where were you?”

“Asleep under a tree near one of the wagons. I like to think they simply climbed up and did not notice me, because Gypsies are very close and most of them are good parents.”

“And the
comte
found you there?”

“No, when I became hungry I wandered into Aix. The children there ran after me, taunting me and pulling my hair, while they called me assorted names, none of them kind. I tried to run away, but I fell near a…the English word escapes me. That happens sometimes when I get emotional. I lose my English. In French, it is a
fontaine
, a
petit réservoir.
”

“A cistern.”

She smiled. “Yes, I fell and cracked my head against a cistern. The children all ran away. No one came to help me. My head, it was very painful and it bled all over my new dress. I did not know where to go, so I sat down by the cistern. I stayed there all day. It was hot and the flies kept buzzing around my head. Sometimes one of the children would come by and laugh. It was almost dark and I started to cry…for the first time, mind you.

“I heard a coach approach and it sped by the cistern,
throwing dust over me, and stopped at a nearby inn. It was a beautiful coach with a crest on the door and six matched gray horses. There was a footman, and four liveried postilions. I thought it was the king of France. And then a man stepped out. He was tall, slender and so graceful; and his clothes looked as if they were spun from silver. He started toward the inn. I was still crying. He must have heard me, for he turned around. For a moment, he simply stood there looking at me. I remember I stopped crying and stared at him, because I decided he was not the king of France or an angel. In my eyes, he looked more like God. And then he did the most remarkable thing. He came across to me and I was suddenly afraid and scrambled to my feet. In that split second, between the time I was on my feet and the moment the command to run reached my brain, he smiled at me, and said,
‘ma petite.’
”

Tears began to spill down Josette’s face, but she did not pause. “He stopped in front of me in a squat, and he said,
‘Ne pleurez pas. Je prendrai soin de vous, ma petite.’”

Kenna was not even aware she whispered the translation: “Don’t cry. I will take care of you, my little one.”

“His voice was like music. I had never heard anyone speak such educated French, you understand. I was frozen, captivated by this beautiful man, whom, by this time, I had demoted, for he was no longer God, but back to being an angel in my mind, because I knew angels were beautiful, and I had never seen a picture of God. He picked me up and took me inside the inn. He ordered a bath and sent someone to find me new
clothes. It was late, but they found the clothes and they were so beautiful I did not at first want to put them on. I was afraid I would be arrested, but he assured me I would not. And then, when I was in my new dress and shoes, and my hair had been dressed by the innkeeper’s wife, he picked me up and he carried me down to dinner, and on the way there he said,
‘Personne ne vous blesseront jamais encore. Vous avez ma promesse.’”

Kenna translated again, only this time Josette was crying and she spoke loud enough that Josette heard: “No one will ever hurt you again. I promise.”

“And no one ever did, until the night he was murdered.”

They had to cancel their match that morning.

Instead of fencing, Kenna took Josette on a tour of the distillery. In the afternoon, they met again in the great hall for their afternoon match.

Afterward, Josette went upstairs to see if everything had been moved into her new room. Kenna was on her way to change out of her fencing clothes when she decided to go back to the distillery to see if Dougal and Owen were still there, or if they had locked up and gone home.

She had become quite attached to these two men in the short period of time they had been working to get the distillery operational. At first, Dougal Allan hadn’t been certain he wanted to run a distillery again, but after Culloden things had not been so good, so he decided to take the position Kenna had offered him. He’d started to work only a few days ago. It was good that
he already knew Owen Fletcher. The two of them had previously worked together, and they promised they would soon have the malt barns full and the peat stores enough to last several months, and would fill the new storage barns with oak barrels to age the premier whisky.

The kilns were next on the list of repairs, and before long, they would be drying malted barley around the clock.

When she reached the distillery, she was about to put her key in the lock, when she noticed it had been forced.

She pushed the door open slowly and quietly stepped inside.

The cabinet door was ajar.

A lone candle burned on the long, wooden table. Her heart pounded and then stilled.

Dear God…he was here.

Lord Walter, the devil incarnate, was on the opposite side of the table, his back toward her. She could see that he was rummaging through papers he had removed from the cabinet.

She took a step back, intending to turn and slip back through the door, but before she could do so, he turned around slowly.

He had not changed all that much. He was thinner, but he had always been the thin sort, and his hair was peppered with more gray than when she had seen him last. But the evil eyes that burned like Satan’s furnace were the same.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I would stop by for a visit. I was here once before, but I missed you. I did leave a message. Did you find it?”

He came closer, until he was standing dangerously near, not more than a foot away.

He backhanded her. Her head snapped back and whipped around. The force of the blow sent her slamming against the table, her hip receiving the brunt of it, sending an excruciating pain shooting down her leg.

“Bitch, how do you feel about that midnight ride to Edinburgh now? Do you think it has been worth it? No? Well, don’t worry. There are a lot more surprises to come, so many creative things I have in store for you. Do you know, I bet that by the time I am through, you will be begging me to kill you.”

“I don’t beg weak, cowardly bastards for anything.”

He hit her again and she could feel her lip bleeding. Spots flashed in her eyes and she wobbled dizzily on her feet. She turned her head away. He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her around to face him. “Do not call me a bastard again, or I might decide to kill you sooner than I planned, and that would rob me of so much pleasure.”

She wiped the blood from her mouth. “Take your hand off me or I will scream, and whether you kill me or not, you won’t leave this place alive.”

She stared into vacant pits of hell, for his eyes were void of any spark of life—nothing more than two orbs, of a flat black color. No windows on the soul there.

He released her. “I like a woman who fights back.” He grabbed her and shoved her against the wall, and
kissed her, rudely, while he pressed himself into her. When he broke the kiss, he kept his forearm against her throat and began raising her skirts, until he could touch her.

Her left hand was behind her back, caught against the wall, but she could move it slightly because it was trapped in the cove of the small of her back. She had to endure his groping as she inched her fingers slowly along her waist until she felt them close around the handle of her dirk.

With one coordinated move, she slammed her knee into him, while at the same time bringing the tip of her dirk to rest against his throat. She pressed the point until a trickle of blood seeped out. “Back off, you bastard. Do it now! Step back… Move, I said! Ten paces back, right now!”

He leered down at her. She pressed the point and the trickle became a thin but solid flow. “Move, you bastard, or I will sever your windpipe and enjoy every minute of it.”

He began to back away.

She was breathing heavily, both from exertion and fear, but the fear had already begun to leach away in the face of self-confidence.

“I will be back, you bitch.”

“I am hoping you will be, and when you come, you better bring your rapier, otherwise I will take pleasure in carving your stinking carcass into so many wee pieces I’ll prove you don’t have a spine.”

As soon as she said the words, she knew there would be no turning back now. She was committed. The Rubicon
was not only behind her; it was off her map. If she was ever going to get the chance to bait him, it would have to be now. Her mind was searching for the opening, and it surprised her when he was the one who provided it.

“This is not the end of this,” he said. “I will return and you will be sorry.”

“You don’t have the courage to come back and face me again. Your liver is too yellow for that. You aren’t very smart, but you are smart enough to know it will be the end of you the next time we meet, because from this moment on, I will have my sword strapped to my side even when I sleep. I’ve known for a long time that you lack the nerve to face another man in a test of skill with a sword, but now I know you’re even less of a man than I thought, because you are too cowardly to even fight a woman, which is a good thing for you, because I would soon have your heart dangling from the tip of my foil.”

She paused and stared him in the eye, never looking off, not even once. “Now, get out before I change my mind and carve you up.”

“I will be back to finish you.”

“I long for the moment.”

She watched him slither toward the door, and like all of hell’s creatures, he vanished completely. She would not have been surprised to catch a whiff of sulphur.

After it was all over, Kenna collapsed weakly against the wall, her limbs jellied. She kept thanking
God, repeating over and over, how thankful she was that Colin had made her wear her dirk.

From now on, she would not be without her sword, and she prayed she would have the guts to use it. She wiped the blood from her mouth and waited a moment to let her breathing return to normal. A wave of nausea hit her, and for a moment, she thought she would be sick. Her hip throbbed, and she wondered if that would impede her fencing skill.

She was still leaning against the wall, weak and in pain, when Josette walked in. “There you are—
Mon Dieu!
What happened to you?”

Kenna started to explain what happened when several of the MacKays rushed into the room. “I am glad to see you and your men, Gavin MacKay.”

Gavin came toward her. “We saw a man run out of here. I don’t think I need to ask if it was the Englishman. Are you all right?”

“I have felt better.”

“I will have one of my men take you back. Do you think you can walk?”

“I can walk, and Josette will help me. If you would not mind locking everything before you go, I will be in your debt.”

“First I will have the distillery searched to make certain no one else is here, then we will lock it. I have already posted extra guards around the castle.”

“Thank you, and now I think I’d like to go lie down.”

She leaned on Josette’s arm and the two of them walked slowly out.

Once Kenna was back inside the castle, she decided
to rest awhile downstairs before she tried to tackle the long climb up the stairs. Her hip still throbbed, her lip was swollen and she felt defiled where he had put his hand on her. Already the maids were heating water for her bath so she could wash his taint and scum from her body.