Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (12 page)

Elspet was quiet for a long time and Rowan was almost afraid to ask her anything else. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what had happened to her. Eventually, when her breath had calmed and her hands no longer shook, she looked over her shoulder at Elspet sitting in the gloom, her fingers plucking at the blanket in her lap, her brow furrowed in deep thought. Rowan filled a small earthen bowl with the tepid broth and brought it to her.

“Auntie, what does it mean—falling walls, pressure beyond comprehension, searching for a way out of me, and blinding panic?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it, as if it would not be suppressed.

Elspet reached out for the broth, taking the bowl with trembling hands. “I do not understand,” she mumbled, as if to herself. “How?”

“What?” Rowan asked, not understanding.

Elspet waved one hand and soup sloshed from the bowl over her lap but she didn’t seem to notice. “Fetch Jeanette. I need to speak to Jeanette.” Her words grew more agitated as Rowan tried to steady the bowl. Elspet shoved the bowl at her, sloshing the rest of the broth over the edge of the bed where it dripped to the floor. Rowan grabbed the bowl, setting it on the table, then began to pull the wet blankets from her aunt’s lap.

“Nay, leave that. It is not important. Get Jeanette!” she said, her voice forceful even as it trembled. “Please, get my
daughter
!”

The words sliced through Rowan. Never had Elspet made such a clear distinction between her niece and her daughters as she did in that moment. She struggled to swallow the lump that clogged her throat, hating that whatever had overtaken her during the blessing, whatever a falling wall meant, had caused her aunt such turmoil. How could it be anything but evil?

“I’ll fetch her immediately, aunt.” Rowan set the bowl down on the foot of the bed and left the chamber in a rush.

CHAPTER SIX

R
OWAN CROUCHED BY
the side of a rushing burn, her body so tense she ached everywhere. She crushed her hands against her ears and she hummed loudly to herself trying to drown out…

Yelling. Angry, hurtful yelling.

She hummed louder, a tuneless effort to keep the words from getting into her head. She must keep them out of her head.

But she couldn’t. They grew louder and louder until, with a shriek, they took form, pummeling her with wind, with noise like the world was ending. She looked up to find huge stones hurtling toward her. Fear shattered inside her—

“NAY!”

A crash woke Rowan suddenly from the nightmare. She was sitting straight up in her narrow bed, her arms flung forward as if she’d pushed something away from her. The ewer that usually sat on a small table near the door lay shattered on the floor.

The chamber door flew open and Jeanette stood there, her blue eyes wide as she took in the room. She moved quickly to Rowan’s side, and perched next to her.

“What happened?” she asked, gently pressing Rowan’s arms down from their outstretched position.

Rowan shook her head. “A dream. A dream.” Panic still gripped her hard and she dared not even blink for fear whatever she had dreamed of would return as it had each night over and over again since the blessing.

“Do you remember anything of it?” Jeanette asked.

Rowan tried to grab hold of the wisps of dream that lingered. “I was afraid. So afraid. And then…” She tried to find words to describe
the feeling, for that was all that remained of the dream, the fear so much greater than anything else she had ever experienced. She shook her head again. “It is gone.”

“Perhaps for good,” Jeanette said, rising and moving to the shattered ewer. She picked up the largest pieces, looking at them, then at the table. “Curious.”

Rowan rose from her bed and began to dress, pulling her gown over her kirtle as she tried to shake off the remains of the dream.

“How fares my aunt this day?”

Jeanette collected the rest of the ewer pieces, setting them on the table. “She is agitated.” She dusted her hands off. “I was on my way to my still room to get more of the herbs for her sleeping draught when I heard you cry out, and the crash of the ewer. How do you think it fell?” she asked, once more pondering the broken crockery.

“Fell? Scotia probably left it too close to the edge of the table, as she is wont to do.”

“Aye, that is the likely answer, but I heard you cry out almost at the same moment I heard it crash. I was sure you had hurt yourself and dropped something.”

“Nay. I was abed, dreaming of…” The dream was like that elusive memory that had plagued her all her waking hours since she’d questioned Elspet about the blessing two days past—disturbing but always slipping through her grasp before she could see it clearly. “Has Auntie asked for me?” She belted her arisaid in place and drew the ends up over her shoulders, pinning them securely with her mother’s ancient broach.

“In a way.”

Rowan whirled to face her cousin. “What does that mean?”

Jeanette paused for a long moment, chewing her bottom lip, a sure sign she was worrying. “She wants us to take her to the wellspring, Rowan.”

At the word
us,
hope surged, but she quickly damped it down. “She has not been there since this illness overtook her.”

“She has not had the strength. She has been fretting about it for a while, but for the last two days it has become an obsession. She
does not seem to think she will overcome this illness, Rowan. She says it will set her mind at ease if she knows one of us has taken her place.”

“You.”

“Or Scotia.”

“It will surely be you. Scotia is too…” She could not find the word to explain, but Jeanette didn’t need her to. They both knew that Scotia was not the one.

“Mum wants you to come, too.”

The knot in Rowan’s chest loosened. “Of course. And Uncle Kenneth?”

“She does not think he will let her go so we are not to say anything to him.”

The knot tightened again. “She is that determined?”

“Aye. She is adamant that we must go immediately.” Jeanette’s breath hitched. “I do not think she believes she will be with us much longer.”

“Nothing is sure.” Rowan grabbed Jeanette’s icy hands in hers, squeezing them and wishing she could keep the impending grief from her cousin, from all of them. “It never is.”

Jeanette closed her eyes, and squeezed Rowan’s hands.

“When does Auntie wish to go?” Rowan asked quietly.

“Soon. She is making an effort to eat, though I think she truly does not have much appetite. She sips on broth all day and when she is awake in the night. It has helped strengthen her. As long as the weather holds she should be able to travel very soon.”

“Truly?”

Jeanette was the one with the healer’s touch but Rowan knew she had been unable to find any infusion, anything of any sort, to aid Elspet, and neither had Morven. She could not believe something as simple as sipping on broth had helped her aunt so much. She did not think it could, but she would not tell Jeanette that.

Rowan knew that what had happened during the blessing had shaken her aunt. That was what drove her in this quest. She was sure of it. Elspet knew something that she was not telling her, and Rowan was determined to learn the truth.

“So she has not asked for me.” She swallowed a lump in her throat that wanted to block not just her voice, but her breath, too.

Jeanette sighed. “Nay, she has not, and I find that very odd. She was quite agitated when you fetched me the other night.” She looked at her cousin with determination in her eyes such as Rowan had never seen before. “What passed between you?”

“She did not tell you?” Was that possible?

“Rowan? What happened?”

“I asked her a question she either could not, or would not, answer.”

Jeanette’s lips flattened at the lengthening silence. She put her clenched hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Well? Are you going to tell me what you asked her?”

“How is it that she did not tell you?” Hope that Jeanette might have some answers drained away. “Jeanette, I never would have asked if I thought it would upset her so.”

“I ken that. You love her as if she were your own mother.”

“I do, and I thought she loved me as a daughter.”

Concern flashed across Jeanette’s features and she closed the small distance between them, laying her hands on Rowan’s forearms. “She does, Rowan. You ken that. This is but a temporary rift between you. Can you not tell me what caused it? Perhaps I can help?”

Jeanette’s caring dulled the pain of Elspet’s distance a little and Rowan suddenly found herself unwilling to chance Jeanette reacting the same way.

“ ’Twas nothing important, Jeanette. I think I must have caught her when she was too tired and she did not have the strength to deal with my impertinence in her usual gentle way. ’Twill pass and all will be well.”

“Are you sure?” Jeanette asked.

Rowan smoothed the scowl she could feel on her face. “Do not fash over me. Let us get Auntie as strong as we can and take her to the wellspring. If that can be resolved ’twill ease her mind and she will rest easier, regardless of what the future holds.” And if Rowan’s question was the thing that spurred her aunt to want to get to the
wellspring as fast as possible, then perhaps, if she were lucky, the answer to it lay in that sacred place.

N
ICHOLAS STOOD UNDER
the shelter of an overhanging outbuilding roof near the ruined wall. He watched Rowan dash across the bailey from the tower to the great hall, her arisaid pulled up over her head as protection against the sudden downpour of cold heavy rain. Nicholas let out a frustrated sigh.

He’d been watching Rowan for two days, but she would only glance at him, then hurry away the minute he moved in her direction. The urge to hear her husky laugh again was chafing at him, never mind the need that surged through him every time he thought of the kiss they’d shared.

He pulled the old plaid he’d acquired when first he arrived in the Highlands more firmly about him, using it as a cloak to shut out the bone-deep chill that came with the torrential rain, but the only thing that seemed to warm him was remembering the slide of her palm against his chest and the faint honey taste of her lips. It was daft. He was no besotted lad untutored in the effect a pretty young woman could have upon him, yet he could not remember the last time he’d been as taken with a woman, as distracted by her. He’d found himself looking for Rowan again and again as he moved through the last two days of endless toil.

But he couldn’t let her distract him any longer or he’d never complete this assignment—and that was not an option.

Duncan, of course, stood next to him, seemingly unaffected by the weather except that he leaned against the wall of the outbuilding in the shelter of the overhanging thatched roof.

“The rain is different here than in the borders,” Nicholas said when the silence began to grate on him. “ ’Tis harder, like the land itself.”

“Is it?”

“Aye.” There was a long silence between them until Nicholas asked, “Do all of the women go up to the shielings for the summer pasturage?”

“You mean will Rowan go?” Duncan slanted a grin at Nicholas. “I’ve seen the two of you watching each other. Perhaps.” He looked back out at the rain, his expression sobering. “I suppose ’twill depend upon Lady Elspet’s health.”

“She looked very frail the night of the blessing.”

Duncan nodded his head slowly. “She must be very ill. I had not seen her in nigh on a month before that. She did not even leave her chamber for the Beltain festival, nor the blessing of the beasts. I cannot remember a time she did not attend those.” The man’s whole countenance fell and his shoulders drooped when he talked about Lady Elspet.

“Her lasses must be very concerned about her. Kenneth, too.”

Duncan nodded slowly, casting his gaze toward the rubble or what was beyond it.

Nicholas took a long, deep breath, taking in the rich earthy smell of mud, the fresh scent of the rain, and the tang of wet granite, savoring them. This was what his home had smelled like. Here, a person could breathe. For the space between one heartbeat and the next he let himself imagine what his life would have been like had he never left the Highlands. He scraped his fingers through his hair, and shoved the thought away, though the image of a sweet-faced woman with riotous coppery-brown hair and eyes of palest green would not be banished.

He glanced toward the dark doorway where Rowan had disappeared a few minutes ago. “Duncan, it looks as if it will rain for a long time yet. Do you not want to get inside?” Nicholas pointed at the open door to the great hall’s undercroft, forty feet away from them.

Duncan leaned out from his place against the wall far enough to observe the sky beyond the eaves. “ ’Tis settled in, to be sure.” He leaned back against the building. “There shall be no more work on the wall this day.”

Nicholas quirked an eyebrow at the man who had yet to answer his question.

“You wish to see Rowan.”

It was true, though Nicholas could not account for why this lass had so captured his attention.

“We shall get drenched,” Duncan grumbled as he pushed off the wall, “but at least there is ale and a fire to be had.”