Lady Miracle (31 page)

She arched away, but he would not let her go. “You have no right to do any of this.”

“Rights? I have many, for I have been wronged. Sorcha has not done her duty as a wife. The king has not rewarded me properly for the service I have given him. Glas Eilean should be mine. And Diarmid Campbell took the woman I wanted most, and divorced her. His actions led to her death. I seek my rights, and I will seek revenge for what is owed to me.”

“No one meant you harm!”

He gripped her so hard that her arms felt bruised. “I have the power here,” he said simply. Then he pushed her sideways over the raw crust of the cliff, still grasping her arm, so that her head and shoulders leaned into open air. Terrified, she clung to his arm for safety.

“I can hurl you from this cliff and have the castle through your death.” He yanked her toward him and held her. Breathing hard, she rested her head unwillingly against him, just for a moment. “Do you want that fate, or this? Marry me, Michaelmas. It will be simple enough to arrange. You need a husband. I need a wife who can give me a son.” He dragged her hips to his, grinding himself against her. “I want a son.”

She cried out in repulsion and pushed away. “Let me go!”

“I offer you a simple choice.”

“Diarmid will never let you do this. He will take Sorcha from you! He will see that you pay for these evil plans!”

“Diarmid Campbell of Dunsheen,” Ranald said precisely, “has been investigating my private matters. I will not tolerate that from any man. What has he told you of his activities here at Glas Eilean?”

“Nothing,” she said flatly.

“I have made an arrangement that is delicate in nature, and requires precise timing. I suspect he has discovered part of it, but he will not live to destroy what I have carefully planned. And he will not live to wed you himself.”

“He has no interest in me,” she said.

“I have watched him look at you. The man is smitten. He must not take you to wife. Has he taken you to his bed? Has he?” He shook her, but she did not answer. “When will he come back here for you?” he asked.

“I do not know.”

He released her suddenly. Surprised to be freed so quickly, she stumbled backward, away from the cliff, away from him.

“Diarmid Campbell will be back for you soon, I feel it,” he said. “And I will be waiting for him.”

Afraid to reply, she stepped back on trembling legs. Ranald made no move to stop her. He shrugged. “Go back to the castle,” he said. “I know you will not dare to speak of this to anyone. And you will not leave this island.”

She felt anger overtake her fear. “You do not know what I will do!” She quaked inside, but the bold declaration felt good.

“You will keep your mouth closed,” he said. “Your caring nature will not allow you to put Sorcha and the child at risk. You fear for Dunsheen’s life, and so you will keep silent. You know he would come after me, and then I would have him. I know your weakness, lady,” he sneered. “It is your caring heart. I do not share your kindness. I will win what I want. You will see how caring destroys a person, in the end.”

She turned and broke into a run. Ranald’s words haunted her, made her ill. Quickly, half stumbling, she ran into the castle and up the stairs to her chamber, where she threw herself, sobbing, to the bed.

During the following week, Michael kept Ranald’s threats to herself, just as he had smugly predicted. If she had spoken of his vile plans to Sorcha or Mungo, or had sent word to Diarmid, she knew she risked bringing harm to those she had come to love.

Ranald said no word to her about their encounter, either nodding politely to her or watching her with a flat stare whenever she saw him in Sorcha’s chamber or in the passageways.

But the strain and danger of his presence disrupted her sleep, broke into her waking thoughts, and took her appetite.

She stayed near Mungo as much as possible, finding his humor and steadfastness calming. She made certain that Mungo guarded Sorcha’s room at night, and slept better herself knowing that he lay rolled in his plaid in the corridor. Ranald no longer slept in his wife’s bedchamber, having taken a small mural room on another level of the castle.

Sorcha had a particularly uncomfortable night that kept Michael on her feet until after midnight. She slept late the next morning from sheer exhaustion, and awoke to the raucous cries of gulls. Washing and dressing quickly in a fresh gown and surcoat of black serge, she pulled on her shoes, meaning to go to Sorcha’s bedchamber as she did every morning.

But as she fixed a braided band of silk ribbons over a white veil to cover her braided hair, she heard a knock on her door. She opened it to admit Sorcha, barefoot and clothed in a shapeless white woolen tunic, her face swollen with tears. “Michael,” she said, falling into her arms. “You did not come. I waited for you all morning—”

“I overslept. What is wrong?” Michael put an arm around Sorcha’s thick waist and walked her toward the rumpled bed, urging her to sit down. “Has your labor started?”

Sorcha shook her head. “Ranald came to me this morning. He said he had to sail to Ireland for a few days.”

Michael tilted her head, puzzled. “And so the tears? Are you sad to see your husband leave again, when you have had so much difficulty and draw nearer your term?”

Sorcha bit her lip. Her pale skin was blotched from crying, her coppery hair hung lank over her shoulders, and her lips and eyelids were puffed from tears as well as pregnancy. “He told me that I must deliver him a healthy son or he will set me aside.”

Michael stopped deathly still. “What else did he say?” she asked softly.

Sorcha wiped her hand over her eyes. “He will find another wife. Someone who can give him sons.” She caught back a sob.

“Lie down,” Michael said sternly, and helped her, pulling the covers up and plumping the pillows.

“I knew that marriage to him would never bring me real happiness,” Sorcha said. “But I hoped to be content with him. My father wanted this match, not I. The elder MacSween had English favor and Ranald was loyal to King Robert. A position of security for me, my father thought. And Ranald wanted an alliance with the Campbell clan. He was charming, courteous—” She drew a shaking breath. “My father was dying. I wed Ranald even though he was not the man I loved.” She looked away.

“I know he is not,” Michael said softly, taking her hand.

“Ranald has changed. He was ambitious, intelligent, always courteous. Now he has become cruel and cold.”

A cold blast of anger filled Michael. She knew Ranald’s true nature, and hated him thoroughly in that moment for upsetting Sorcha at such a fragile time. But she reminded herself that her concern was Sorcha; she resolved to calm her patient and keep silent about the rest for now.

She took Sorcha’s hand. “Perhaps Ranald suffers the strain of your latest confinement in his own way,” she said tactfully. “You must not let his fit of conceit disturb you. There will be time enough to think on this later. Rest and be calm, and I am sure you can deliver a strong babe. Remember that is what is most important here.”

Sorcha nodded, sniffling. “He wants to wed you,” she said.

Michael started. “He said that?”

Sorcha shook her head. “I suspect he thinks it. I have failed him, and Glas Eilean is your property by charter. He might mean to set me aside and take you to wife.”

“He could never do that,” Michael insisted firmly.

“If Diarmid were not wed to Anabel, he would offer for your hand,” Sorcha said. “I have seen the longing in his eyes.”

Michael stood abruptly. “I will wed neither of them. When your babe is born, I will go home to Kilglassie. If Ranald persists in this, Diarmid will take you and your child to Dunsheen with him. Do not fret, Sorcha. Please.”

Sorcha nodded, her lower lip trembling. Michael turned away and paced toward the window, determined to give Sorcha no clue to her own fright. She would do whatever necessary to protect Sorcha and Diarmid from Ranald’s anger. She was the only one who knew that his threats were real.

She sighed. The world teetered on a framework of
ifs
—if Sorcha delivered a healthy son, if Michael returned to Kilglassie and gave Glas Eilean’s charter to the king, if she never saw Diarmid Campbell again—she had no assurance that all would be well. But she wanted safety for these people, and she would sacrifice anything to ensure it. Even if she had to leave them. She turned toward the window and covered her mouth to block a sob. Her heart was irrevocably lost to these Dunsheen Campbells and their laird. Leaving them was unthinkable—and imperative.

She leaned her cheek against the cool stone tracery of the window frame, and gazed at the sea below the cliff, praying for a solution to make itself clear.

The day was clear but gray. Rain clouds hung heavy in the sky, far out to sea. From her high vantage point, Michael could see a group of seals sleeping and playing on rocks near the base of the cliff. She watched, blinking back tears, as a few smaller seals swam away from their elders. They climbed onto a large jagged rock and made a kind of game of flipping in and out of the water like mischievous children. Watching them, her attention was suddenly caught.

The smallest seal climbed to the highest point of the rock and fell, unseen by the others. Michael leaned forward, narrowing her gaze, and saw the little seal floundering on a slippery ledge. It was clearly hurt, unable to crawl on its belly toward its companions. The other seals slid, one by one, into the sea and swam toward the older seals as if on some signal, leaving the little one hovering unseen on the ledge.

Michael realized she was holding her breath. When the tide swept in toward the cliffs, the little seal would drown. She thought about about Sorcha’s songs of the seal children, and her poignant conviction that she thought of her lost babes as tiny selkies, magic mer-children lost to her, but happy out there.

Tears came to her eyes as she watched the seal’s dilemma. She could not turn away and go about her day. She had to help. Turning, she caught up her cloak and walked past Sorcha.

“Rest, dear,” she said. “Dream of the child to come. I must go outside for a bit.” She needed to clear ter thoughts. Sorcha nodded and curled under the covers as Michael opened the door.

As she ran down the corridor, she saw Mungo coming up the stairs. She grabbed his wrist and turned him to follow her. “Mungo, you must take me out in a boat,” she said.

”
Ach
, I cannot,” he said. “You were the sickest girl I ever saw the day we came here.”

She pulled him along the lower passageway toward the sea entrance. “But you must row me out to sea!”

“Shall I row, or hold your head?”

“Mungo, please,” she begged, running ahead of him.

“Something tells me I will regret this,” Mungo grumbled as he came along behind her.

Michael nearly regretted it herself. Once the boat glided out of the cave entrance and cut through the rolling swells, she grabbed the side of the boat and fought an onslaught of nausea and dizziness.

“Your face is green,” Mungo muttered, as he pulled on the oars. “I knew I would regret this. Dunsheen will have my head if he finds this out.”

“This is my decision,” she said. “I will not be ill.”

“Luck to you, then,” he said, “for you surely look as if you are losing that vow.”

Michael took in slow, even breaths and trained her eyes on the far horizon, determined to maintain control over the dipping world and her protesting stomach.

Mungo shook his head. “All of this bother for a seal. Young seals are injured all the time around the rocks, from falls and from fights with larger seals. Their own kind leave them when they are badly hurt. Your heart is too tender. Fishermen club the creatures for their skins, for they fetch good prices in trade. That seal will die a more gentle death now than if he lives to be an adult.”

“We must rescue him,” she insisted, facing the direction of the rock that she had earlier showed him. “There! Do you see him on the ledge?”

Mungo glanced over his shoulder and sheered the boat toward the small shadow on the rock. When the boat drew alongside the surface of the huge boulder and knocked against it, Michael leaned out, reaching toward the seal.

“Hold on, mistress. You are impatient and soft-hearted both, I think,” Mungo said gruffly. He tossed a looped rope over a jagged part of the rock to secure the boat. Then he helped Michael climb out and stepped out with her. They moved cautiously toward the seal and squatted down.

The small pup had a mottled gray and black coat, large black eyes and a round face, and seemed to Michael to be but a few weeks old. It lay prone on an outthrusting shelf of the rock, its tail flapping, its fat body swaying as it tried in vain to drag itself toward the water.

“Poor thing,” Michael crooned as she crouched low. “Look at all the blood. Its left flipper is torn and he cannot use it to crawl to the water.” She stepped down, and the pup squealed and bleated as she came near.

“Careful,” Mungo said. “You do not want a cow to come after you for touching her pup. They can be mean creatures, for all the pretty tales of mer-folk that you’ve heard.”

Michael looked toward a cluster of boulders several hundred yards away, where the rest of the colony slept and played and fished. One cow barked repeatedly as she sat alone on a high point of a submerged rock.

“If that is his mother, I think she will not mind if I help her pup,” Michael said calmly. She reached down and felt along the flipper carefully. “I do not know anything about their anatomy, but there are bones inside here that feel almost like a hand,” she said, as she touched gently. The seal barked pitifully, nudging her. Michael felt the bony structure under the flipper wobble oddly. “Ah, a break,” she said with sympathy.

“He has not tried to get away.” Mungo sounded astonished. “You have a gift, to be able to touch him like that.”

She smiled. As a child, birds and animals had always let her handle them when no one else could come near. “Little one, we will get you back to your mother, but first we must tend to you. Mungo, there is a lot of bleeding here. I will need a needle and silk thread to stitch it up.”