Captured Heart (20 page)

Rachel stood close.

“I am strong and powerful,” Sarah said and swallowed. “I can do this!” she howled.

Meg checked the progress. A small head appeared. “Push now, Sarah!”

Sarah bore down.

“That’s it. Now breathe, and bear down.”

The little head broke free. The thick cord lay around the neck. With the next push, the shoulders slid out, giving Meg room to wedge her fingers between the cord and baby. Evelyn peered over her shoulder and gasped.

“What?” Sarah panted from above.

“Nothing,” Meg said, “just bear down one more time.”

Sarah pushed and the tangled baby came out, his body blue and still. Meg pulled the cord away from his neck. “Evelyn, the blade,” she said calmly, and sawed through the cord around the neck. Then she cut the baby’s cord at his navel and tied it. “Get Sarah down while I help him,” she said as confidently as she could. She turned to Rachel. “The afterbirth needs to come.”

“He’s not crying!” Sarah wailed.

Meg carried the limp baby away in a linen, wiping away the birthing fluid, opening his little mouth. Ann laid a blanket on the rug near the hearth.

“He’s dead,” Ann whispered.

Meg shook her head. The child was still there, his spirit. She sensed a weak flicker of life just waiting to be fed into an inferno. “His throat has collapsed so he can’t pull in breath.” Her hands trembled as she spanned his motionless chest.

“Aunt Rachel,” she called.

“Sarah is hemorrhaging, a rip that runs deep inside, Meg. I need to help her.”

Meg took a full breath. Could she save the baby? She had to try. She closed her eyes and imagined an open throat all the way into his little lungs. No fluid, nothing but open space.

“Yer hands,” Ann gasped.

Meg blinked. The blue light glowed along the part between her hands and the baby’s chest. “’Tis a gift from God, Ann. Pray for us. Pray for the babe.”

Ann began to pray softly next to Meg while Sarah sobbed in the background. The room lay still, waiting for Meg to rise, to pass judgment, to say the terrible words every mother shrank from. The babe’s life essence began to fade even though his airways were now open.

“Why aren’t you breathing, tiny one?” Meg whispered, and wiggled the baby. Did he need some air to start the process, to know what it was like to fill his lungs? She leaned over and covered his mouth and nose with her own mouth.

“What are ye doing?” Ann insisted.

Meg blew into him until she sensed his lungs were full. She pulled back and pressed down on his chest until the air funneled out of his small chest. “Just like that, in and out. You can do it.” She blew in again, sat back, and pressed the air out.

She sensed a gentle expanding of the baby’s chest. “That’s it, precious.” The air returned on an exhale. Two more inhales and exhales and the baby twitched his legs. He opened his mouth, and a small cough forced more fluid from his mouth. Meg tipped him to his side and swabbed his mouth. She wiped his small frame briskly, causing him to whimper and finally cry out weakly.

“Meg,” Ann laughed despite the tears coursing her face. “Ye brought him back to life.”

Meg wiped at her own tears. “God did that.”

“Is that…?” Sarah started from the bed.

“Your son,” Meg said and brought the boy over to his mother. He was beginning to pinken.

“He…he wasn’t moving,” Evelyn said and kissed her cross. “I saw him. He was the color of death.”

“Meg saved him,” Ann said. “There was this blue light and she breathed in his mouth and—”

“God saved him,” Meg insisted, but she was too tired to worry over what they all thought. Saving the baby had sucked the remaining energy out of her. She sat next to Sarah. Rachel collapsed on the other side.

Sarah grabbed Meg’s hand. “Thank ye, Meg. I…I am so sorry for before,” she said. “Thank ye.” She cuddled the baby’s cheek against her own. Jonet brought the girl from her cradle so Sarah could see them both.

“They are both healthy,” Meg said. “You are a very fortunate woman.”

“Fortunate to have ye and yer aunt here,” Fiona said and Ann and Jonet agreed. Evelyn made the sign of the cross, and somehow it didn’t annoy Meg. She soaked in the fresh beauty of the now-pink face of the boy. How could her magic be evil when it could bring that sweet babe back from the edge of death? Aunt Rachel was right. Her magic was a gift from God.

Rachel instructed Fiona from the bed. “Don’t pack her with anything; just keep her clean. I need to rest.”

“Of course ye do,” Fiona said. “Ye, too, Lady Meg.”

Meg concentrated on putting one foot before the other on her way to the bedroom door. A hallway full of anxious men greeted her. Silent. Expectant. Worried.

“You are a fortunate man, Eòin,” Meg said in his native tongue. “You have a healthy daughter and a healthy son.” The men around him cheered. The heaviness of Caden’s stare fell on her, but she ignored him.

“And Sarah?” Eòin asked, trying to peer into the room.

“She’ll be fine, thanks to Rachel Munro.”

Relief flooded the man’s face.

“Wash and then you can see your new family.”

Joy lit his entire face as he turned, the men following him. Caden stood alone in the hall. She turned down the corridor to her room. Her room? Their room? She hesitated, her hand supporting her on the wall. Where else could she go? She must lie down before she fell down. She took one step and her legs buckled under the boulder of exhaustion.

Caden scooped her up. “Ye are more worn than when ye healed the others.” He kicked their door open, and set her in the middle of the bed.

Meg finally allowed her gaze to fall on him. Concern furrowed his brow. Her touch told her that his blood pumped hard, and his heart hammered. His head ached and his stomach contained a large dose of bile. Good, he deserved a sour stomach. She sighed, closed her eyes, and relaxed into the plump tick.

Caden leaned forward, his breath tickling her ear. “Thank ye for my niece and nephew, for helping my sister.” As Meg drifted into the healing oblivion of sleep, Caden’s final words nestled into her aching heart.

“I am sorry I hurt ye, lass.”

…

Meg woke to inky blackness. Only the embers of her fire lit the room, barely enough for her to see that she was alone. She stretched. Much better. She peeked through the glassed window slit to a gray pre-dawn glow, and then stirred the embers in the hearth and struggled out of the once-beautiful gown.

Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. She was in a strange country far from home. Aunt Rachel had left her a prisoner of a blood feud. Rowland Boswell wanted to test her for witchcraft, and after yesterday’s public glowing there would be plenty of evidence supporting a guilty verdict. Even if she wasn’t his daughter, he wanted her dead.

And then there was the farce of a marriage she was caught in. The thought that Caden had tricked her, seduced her, was using her without telling her…her empty stomach pitched.

What choices did she have? Fiona could secret her away from Druim, but then where to go? Boswell had sent letters to all the surrounding chiefs. Maybe Colin Macleod would take her in.

“I need to think,” Meg murmured at the red coals and rubbed away the hardened crystals of tears that had dried in her sleep. She dressed in a plain gown of wool over her smock and pulled on a fur-lined cloak. With a tallow candle before her, she walked in its splash of light to the door leading to the castle roof.

She nestled the cloak around her head to shield her from the biting wind. The snow had stopped but lay in little drifts on the slick granite. Dawn blossomed at the eastern edge of the world, rays of sun soared from the golden center, lighting the day.

A guard walked around the corner and stopped. “Meg?”

Meg glanced at Hugh Loman and turned to lean against the waist-high wall. “Good day to you, Hugh. How is your arm?”

“Ahh…’tis good,” he mumbled. “Milady, what are ye doing out here?”

“Is a prisoner not allowed the view?” She caught sight of a flock of geese high above. They flew with such freedom.

“Milady? Nay…I mean ye aren’t a prisoner. Ye are Lady Macbain.” He grew silent for a long moment. “Ye look all ye want.” The door whispered open. Footsteps sounded, perhaps another guard to take Hugh’s place. When the footsteps halted behind her, Meg turned.

Caden stood tall, all washed and crisp. Probably smelled like bloody pine, too.

“”Tis slippery up here,” he said, and came to stand with her at the wall. “Ye could fall.”

“Mmmm…” Meg stared at him. “A dead hostage is much less valuable.”

…

Caden studied his wife. The darkness beneath her eyes had faded with sleep. She wore a fur that couldn’t possibly be keeping her warm enough up here. Her hair was a glorious tousled flow of reddish gold in the dawn glow. The long tresses tugged and twisted around her pinched face devoid of her smile. He’d known it would disappear the second she understood, but the absence stole some strength from him.

“’Tis not that, lass.”

“Then I am not a hostage?”

“Nay, not the second after ye became my wife.”

“Before that, though, the whole time, the whole journey here, my time here…I foolishly thought…everyone knew…everyone but me.”

He’d rather watch the back of her head. The loss of that sincere twist of her lips created an ache like a knife wound. He wouldn’t turn away, though.

“You used me, Caden. You bound me to you.”

“I was saving ye from Boswell, too. The plan was a good one.”

The sadness glistening in her eyes was a fist to his gut. He almost doubled over. He deserved these punches.

“A good one,” she said. “And you succeeded.”

She shook her head. “You should have told me. Maybe not at the beginning; I can see the reason in that. A happy captive is an easy captive,” she mocked. “Sometime before the wedding, before the wedding night. Somewhere in there you should have told me.”

“Ye are right.” He kept his gaze locked with hers so she would see he spoke truth. “Saying nothing was easier. We were happy. Ye knew that ye were ending the feud. I hoped ye wouldn’t have to find out—”

“That I was a prisoner. Don’t you think that would have slipped out from someone at sometime in my life here?”

“By then perhaps, well perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered.”

She turned back to the bailey. “Lies have piled up and I don’t know where I stand with anyone. Especially you.”

“My response to ye was no lie.” Caden pulled her hand and placed her palm flat on his tunic.

She yanked it away. “Your physical reactions to me could stem from a base need and nothing more.”

Was the simple need to tup her the cause for the ache piercing Caden, the chill freezing him as she turned away? If that were truth, this bloody pain would have disappeared by bedding Meg. Yet the plague of her sorrow, righteous anger, and betrayal infiltrated his every thought, his every muscle since the moment Sarah blew in with her own blizzard. Even with her powers, Meg couldn’t read his mind and he barely knew what lay in his heart himself.

Caden exhaled, ready to give her the only thing he could at this point. “I will tell ye whatever ye wish to know. Anything.”

“Was your mission to take me?”

“Aye.”

“To end the feud with the Munros?”

“Aye.”

“They burned the harvest?” Meg’s hand rested against her slender throat.

“The fields were too dry. The flames ate through them faster than we could haul water. We lost our grains, most of our root vegetables, and our herds.”

“Condemning you all to starvation.”

“My people…women, children, the elders…they would die this winter if I couldn’t find a way to bring food.” Caden ran his hand over his jaw. “So I’ve demanded a wagon of oats from the Munros as well as our herds returned. And with our marriage I’ve asked for a truce.”

Meg swallowed. “So you are using me to force this peace? Our marriage is just a tool to leverage the truce.”

Bloody hell, he couldn’t let her think that. “The original thought came from wanting to save ye from Boswell.” He could stop there, but that wasn’t all of it.

“Ye are very important, lass. We learned that Alec Munro had a niece in England. At first I meant to just ransom ye back to him for our herds and grain, but with the information that he loves ye like his own… Ye are like his own daughter, so our union forces the peace. The priest’s blessing and the consummation make it unbreakable. He has no choice but to agree to peace.”

“My uncle Alec thinks of me as his daughter? Aunt Rachel’s husband?”

“He loves ye and will agree to our terms to save ye,” he said but his gut hardened even more from the blank amazement on her face.

Meg’s eyes glistened frustration tinged with fury. “Perhaps if you’d explained things to me from the start you wouldn’t find yourself stuck with a useless hostage, tied in a useless marriage.”

“What are ye saying?” Caden’s hands formed fists at his sides as his blood raced hard, throbbing in his head.

Meg turned her full self toward Caden. “You’ve been tricked, Chief Macbain. I’ve never even met my uncle Alec,” she said, shaking her head. “I only just met my aunt this past week. I am not his beloved niece.”

Caden gripped the top of the wall, his fingers digging into the rough granite. “Bloody hell. Where is Rachel?”

At the same time Hugh Loman’s holler ripped through the breeze. “Riders, ho!”

“Now who the…” Caden stopped when he recognized the broad rider leading the long line breaking through the forest, his sword raised. “It’s about time.” He grabbed Meg’s frozen fingers. “Time to meet yer uncle Alec.”

…

Meg stood straight backed near the hearth in the great hall as Aunt Rachel blew into the room beside her son Searc.

“Anything more I should know before yer husband storms Druim, Rachel? Searc?” Caden asked. “Besides the fact that Alec Munro doesn’t even know Meg.”

Meg could hear the taut wire in his voice, like thin metal stretched near its breaking point. Guilt was irrational, so why did the emotion gnaw at her? She wrapped her arms around her chest. She wasn’t at fault because she was useless in all their foolish, idiotic scheming.