Sins of the Highlander (12 page)

As soon as Rob laid her on the pallet, her breathing went shallow and quick.

“I Saw it,” she said, her eyes wide, her brows furrowed. She put a trembling hand to her temple and pressed her palm flat. “I knew the
each
uisge
was coming, but I didna warn ye in time.”

“Hush,
leannán.
” The endearment passed his lips before he realized what he was saying. “Rest yourself. Only a little while,” he said softly. He snugged his body tight against hers for warmth, careful to stay on her uninjured side. “Angus knows where we’ll find the help ye need.”

“Aye, we will.” She nodded and closed her eyes. “A bolt in the dark finds its mark.”

Those were her very words when she was staring sightlessly over his shoulder, just before they struck the rope snare. He’d feared at the time she’d gone a bit daft, but now the words made sense to Rob’s mind. Somehow Elspeth had known the crossbow bolt was coming for her.

And Lachlan Drummond was the
each
uisge
she meant, the cruel water horse come to claim his bride. Elspeth Stewart had the Sight, but her Gift’s warning came to her too late to do any good.

“Open your eyes, lass,” he urged, palming her cheek. “Talk to me, Elspeth. Ye dinna want to sleep now.”

“Aye, I do.” He heard pain in her voice. Her skin was clammy and moist. When his hand slid down to her neck, he had to search for the pulse point. Her heart raced, but the beat wasn’t very strong.

The deerhound tried to join them in the cabin, creeping in a crouch toward Elspeth, but Rob ordered him out. Fingal whined but wouldn’t go far. He lay across the entrance to the cabin with his muzzle resting on his forepaws, his watchful eyes glowing in the dark.

“How long have ye had the gift of Sight?” Rob asked. It was all he could think of to encourage her to talk. If she slipped into sleep, surely the sleep of death was only a short step farther.

“All my life.” Her words were slurred. “Oh, my head!”

If her head ached so that she didn’t complain of the bolt in her thigh, the pain at her temples must be excruciating.

“But it didna serve me well,” she said with a sob in her voice. “I ne’er See what I wish. Only what I’m shown. Sometimes, I dinna even know if the things I See are true.”

“What was the first thing ye ever Saw?”

“A boy,” she whispered, turning her head this way and that as if she could move away from the pain. “He was playing by a well. He lost his balance and fell into it.”

Rob’s breath caught. He’d fallen into a well when he was very young. He hadn’t seen more than three or four summers. It was his earliest and most vivid memory.

“He was so afraid,” she went on, pausing between phrases to take shuddering breaths. “It was so dark and cold, and evil things were crawling on the walls of the well.”

The water was so frigid, all the breath had rushed out of his body. Rob couldn’t swim, but once he bobbed to the surface, he’d clung to the sides of the well. He’d broken his nails trying to claw his way up the slick rock walls. Worms and creeping things had haunted his dreams for months afterward.

“Did ye see him being pulled out?”

“No,” she said sadly. “I ne’er did. The vision ended, and I dinna know if he lived or died.”

“He lived,” Rob assured her. “And after his father hauled him out, clinging to the bucket and screaming at the top of his lungs, his sire tanned the boy’s backside for wandering away from his mother.”

“Ye’re sure?”

“He had to carry a pillow about with him for a week in order to sit.”

Her lips turned up in a slight smile, then a whimper escaped them. Her eyes squeezed shut, and Rob’s gut roiled in sympathy for her pain.

Fingal inched his way into the cabin, refusing to go when Rob ordered him away this time. The deerhound crept around Elspeth, careful to avoid the bolt sticking out of her leg, and lay down next to her, resting his head on her shoulder, his wet nose near her ear.

“Well, then, lad, if ye’re set on it, ye can help me keep her warm.” Rob reached across to pat the dog’s head then looked down at Elspeth. She seemed to rest easier with the combined warmth of the man and the dog on either side. “Do ye want some wine for the pain?”

She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “Angus’s wine? No thank ye.” Then her eyes closed again. “The headache is fading. My leg doesna hurt so much now. I can…hardly feel it…at all.”

This time, no matter what he said or did, Elspeth didn’t twitch an eyelash.

Rob hadn’t had much to say to God since Fiona died. Now he laid his hand between Elspeth’s breasts, so he could feel her heart beating, and spoke a few words to the Almighty.

He doubted God answered the prayers of madmen, especially one bound for perdition as he undoubtedly was. But if he was willing to seek out a witch to see Elspeth well, he was willing to ask God to keep her alive long enough to get her to the wisewoman’s croft.

***

“Rob!” Angus’s voice dragged him from sleep. “We’re almost there.”

Exhausted, he’d fallen into slumber with his hand between Elspeth’s breasts. Her heart still beat beneath his palm, but it was faint. Dawn was breaking around them, and her skin was so pale, if he hadn’t felt her heartbeat and seen the curl of her breath in the frosty air, he’d have thought her dead.

Fingal lifted his head.

“Keep her warm. There’s a good lad,” Rob told the deerhound before he crawled out of the cabin. He wrapped his plaid about his shoulders against the cold.

“There bides the witch of Loch Eireann.” Angus pointed to the small croft coming into view round a rocky point. A few pines rose behind the thatch-roofed cottage, and then the steep Highlands shot up in a wall of rough grass and granite. The place was accessible only by water. If there was a passable way to the wise woman’s home through the mountains, he doubted any who didn’t have goat’s feet could manage it.

Cloven hooves. Well, that’s what folk said of the devil’s feet, wasn’t it?

Angus steered his craft toward the shallows, while Rob stood watch in the prow, eyeing the clear water for any submerged rocks that might splinter the hull of an unwary sailor’s vessel. A disreputable-looking skiff was pulled half out of the loch and tied to a large boulder.

Angus made for that spot and eased the prow of his boat alongside the skiff. Rob leaped to dry land and pulled the craft’s nose up on the winter-brown grass.

“Wait here,” Rob said. “I’ll see if she’ll help us.”

“And if she willna?”

“Then the world will have one less witch.”

Though it belonged to one who was reputedly in league with the devil, the farmstead looked remarkably ordinary. Rob strode toward the cottage, a wattle-and-daub construction that listed only slightly. The thatch on the roof was a few years old, but he expected it still turned the rain. There was a cow staring out the open door of a byre. A flock of hens scattered before him. It might have been the home of any of his crofters.

A woman appeared at the door before he reached it. Her iron gray hair was long and flowed over her shoulders like a young girl’s. But her face was wrinkled and sunken-cheeked as a winter apple. She wrapped her red shawl more tightly around herself and cast him a wry smile.

“Come to see me, are ye, Mad Rob?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Ye know who I am.”

“I have eyes,” she said. “Ye wear the MacLaren plaid, d’ye no’?”

“Aye, but—” Plenty of men sported the same weave.

“And ears too,” she went on. “I listen when folk talk, ye ken. Even though ye’re a madman, all the lasses I doctor say as ye’re the finest, brawest lad in the Highlands. Well favored, strong of limb. Reckon they didna stretch matters by much.” She waved him forward. “Come in then.”

He stood his ground. “I have a woman in the boat with a crossbow wound. Can ye help her?”

“How could ye allow that to happen?” she snapped. Her gray brows drew together, and she narrowed her gaze at him. “I canna tell until I see her. Bring Elspeth Stewart in.”

He flinched at her foreknowledge.

“Muckle of beauty, little of brains.” She shook her head. “Dinna waste time puzzling o’er it. D’ye think ye can steal a bride from the altar and not have the story wing through the Highlands swifter than a eagle’s flight?”

She turned and opened the door to the cottage. Then she cocked her head him, like a robin eyeing the worm she intends to eat for breakfast. “Dinna ye want to know who I am afore ye place your woman in my care?”

Rob grinned. “I have eyes. Ye’re the witch of Loch Eireann.”

“Cheeky.” She frowned at him. “My
Christian
name is Hepzibah Black.”

A witch with a Christian name. Rob sprinted back to the boat, feeling as if he’d just had his ears twisted.

Elspeth didn’t stir when he lifted her from the pallet. She seemed like nothing in his arms, a disembodied spirit. Her arms hung limply, and unless he supported her head, it lolled.

His chest felt as if someone had placed an anvil on his ribs.

When he ducked to enter the croft, Fingal tried to follow.

“No, ye don’t, Master Hound,” Hepzibah Black said.

The deerhound thumped his bottom down on the stoop and whined at the doorway.

“He’s attached himself to the lass,” Angus explained as he followed Rob in. “If ye dinna let him come in, he’ll howl and pine and make a horrible racket.”

“Verra well.” Hepzibah palmed Fingal’s muzzle without a hint of fear. “Dinna bother the cat or the bird or I’ll turn ye into a rug.”

Angus’s red brows shot skyward at that, but he said nothing. Fingal accepted the invitation and slinked into the cottage. The hound shot only the quickest of glances at the raven on a roost in the corner and the gray tabby, who eyed him calmly from the chair by the hearth.

“Put the lass on the table,” Hepzibah ordered. “And we’ll see what’s what.”

Rob laid Elspeth down carefully. Hepzibah Black took a knife from above her hearth and slit Elspeth’s skirt open, baring the length of her leg from groin to ankle.

“No place for modesty in a sick room,” the witch said with a shrug.

Then she unwound Rob’s shirt from Elspeth’s leg. It was matted brown with blood and stuck to her skin in places. She didn’t move while Hepzibah peeled it off.

“I have some salts ye’ll want to rinse this in afore ye wash it.” She handed the shirt to Rob and turned back to Elspeth. She snapped her fingers before the girl’s face but got no response.

“The lass is insensible,” she said. “That’s for the best, but we canna count on her remaining so.”

Hepzibah leaned down to examine the bolt. She sniffed at the wound.

“No putrefaction yet. That’s all to the good.”

She put a hand to the shaft and gave it a slight tug. Elspeth’s eyes popped open, and her mouth went wide in a silent scream.

Hepzibah released her hold on the bolt and put a hand to Elspeth’s forehead.

“There, there lass,” she said in a motherly tone. “’Twill come round right. Ye’ll see. Ye’ll feel better after I make ye some tea.”

“Ye’re no’ a witch, after all,” Angus said, slapping his thigh.

“Of course, I’m no’ a witch.” Hepzibah rolled her eyes at him. “But how did ye come to that astounding knowledge?”

“Ye didna shrink from touching iron,” he said. “Everyone knows witches canna abide iron on their skin. Burns them something fierce.”

“Of all the dunderheaded…a woman has eyes and ears and the wit God gave her, and the eejit thinks her a witch!“ She mumbled several things that sounded like spells, or at the least curses, to Rob, before she pointed at Angus. “Ye! Keep her company while Mad Rob helps me.”

Angus took Elspeth’s hand and began a running one-sided conversation with no discernable topic, while Rob followed Hepzibah into what she called “the still room.”

“Put the shirt in that bucket,” she ordered.

Rob dropped it into some evil-smelling liquid, which turned blood red and foamed as the shirt sank to the bottom.

“A berry or two of belladonna,” she muttered as she gathered herbs from the drying bunches hanging over her head. “And some poppy. A pinch hemlock, I think.”

“Ye’ll poison her!” Rob said.

“Nay. Well, perhaps. But with luck, I’ll send her spirit to bide someplace else while we do what we must,” Hepzibah said as she pounded the herbs in a stone crock. “Are ye at all squeamish?”

“What? No.”

“I had to ask. Some men faint dead away if they’re allowed to see their women lying-in.”

“This is no’ a lying-in. I’ve dressed my share of battle wounds,” Rob said.

“Aye, but no’ on a woman ye fancy, I warrant.”

“Who says I fancy her?”

“The worry in your eyes,” the witch said. “D’ye no’ ever look at yourself when ye peer into the water sometimes? Your face is as easy to read as the signs of the seasons.”

Hepzibah scurried back into the main room and returned with a kettle. She poured boiling water over the crushed herbs and set it aside to steep.

“Ye’ll kill her with that,” Rob said.

“Or the pain will kill her.” Hepzibah drew her lips into a tight line. “The problem, ye see, is when a crossbow bolt flies, it turns. When it strikes flesh, it continues to turn. If ye pull it out, the barbs tear the meat afresh, and the wound is ten times worse. We canna draw the bolt.”

“Then how—?”

“We must push it through. Straight and even, missing the bone, of course, and any spots that will make the blood gush out.”

“She’s already lost a lot of blood.”

“Aye, but if we draw the bolt, we’ll damage so much, she’ll likely be a cripple. If we push it through, the wound may close and grow healthy flesh. If she lives, it’ll heal cleaner.” Hepzibah fixed him with an intense stare. “’Tis no’ an easy thing, pushing a bolt through living flesh. Is it in ye to help me?”

“Merciful God,” Rob said, not sure it shouldn’t count as another prayer. Then he gritted his teeth and nodded.

“Drink this, dearie,” Hepzibah Black said.

“Will it end the pain?” Elspeth asked through clenched teeth. She didn’t want to cry out, but she was screaming on the inside. Her whole leg was afire. She put the noxious smelling concoction to her lips and forced herself to take a sip. The old woman had added a healthy dollop of honey to the “tea,” but something bitter in the dark cup set Elspeth’s teeth on edge.

“It will dull the pain some, but it will no’ go away completely,” Hepzibah said truthfully. “Ye’ll feel a bit drowsy, and if ye wish to sleep, that’s all to the good. Dinna fight it.”

“But I’ll still feel everything?”

Hepzibah had explained in detail what she was going to do though Angus had protested that Elspeth didn’t need to know things that might scare her. The wisewoman had argued that truth was necessary, because all truth was God’s truth, and they’d need help from every realm of spirit if they would meet success.

Rob hadn’t said a word. He just stood beside Elspeth, propping her upright with an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t resist the urge to lean on him.

“Aye, lass. Ye’ll still feel, but I canna say ye’ll feel pain exactly,” Hepzibah said as she tipped the cup up again, encouraging Elspeth to drink. “The important thing is, even if ye do, the tea will help ye forget the pain, and that’s almost as good as not having it at all, is it no’?”

Elspeth wanted to argue that not having pain at all was infinitely better than not remembering it. But with each sip of the vile liquid, her brain grew fuzzier and her tongue seemed to grow to twice normal size.

All her limbs felt heavy, and her head became too much for her neck to support.

“Just a wee dram more,” the woman said, holding the cup to Elspeth’s mouth and massaging her throat to help her swallow. “Good! Now we wait a bit.”

The room took a decided tilt, and Elspeth clutched the edges of the table.

“Oh.” She put a hand to her head, her movement slow and deliberate, lest she miss her temple and keep going. “I’m dizzy of a sudden. I need to lie flat.”

Rob eased her down on the table.

Overhead, the thatch teemed with bright green wiggling things, squirming through the gray dried grasses. Then she blinked hard, and when she looked again, they were gone.

Angus was speaking slowly. She knew because his lips were moving. She watched his words float across the room, lumbering yellowish blobs, but she couldn’t hear them.

“I hurt for ye,” Fingal told her from the place Hepzibah had assigned the deerhound on the hearth rug. His voice sounded oddly like Rob’s. Then the dog stood upright on his hind feet as if he were a man and leaned on the mantel, hooking one ankle over the other.

The red shawl on the witch’s shoulders hummed a disjointed tune, and the raven in the corner woke and fixed a one-eyed stare on Elspeth. She knew without the bird saying a word that it didn’t like her a bit. But she was sure it could speak if it felt she deserved the effort.

Rob squeezed her hand, and warmth flooded her chest and upper body. She couldn’t feel her legs. Either of them. His lips moved, but the blue of his plaid started a high-pitched whine that drowned out his words. He reached over her and tied her to the table. It should have alarmed her, but she was too entranced by the sparks of color trailing his hands to care.

She smelled bread. Hot and yeasty and comforting, it filled her nostrils and made her mouth water.

The wisewoman propped Elspeth’s knee up. Rob grasped her ankle. Hepzibah tied a rope around her upper thigh so tight, Elspeth knew it should hurt, but instead she fought the urge to giggle. Then she stopped fighting. Her laughter danced through the air in flashes of light, borne up on grains of dust, sparkling in the sun.

Why had she never noticed how miraculous the world was? How filled with the fire of God? Everything swirled into everything else, all connected, all the same, all different, ever changing, and never changing. She could See back to the beginning and forward to the future at the selfsame time. And all the millions of moments, from deep in the past to those yet to come, stretching forever into the mist of tomorrow, converged in a single beat of her heart.

Angus clamped his beefy paws on either side of her head…to keep it from floating away, she supposed.

“Forgive me,
leannán
,” someone said. It might have been Rob. Or maybe it was the dog again.

And suddenly she was cast into hell.

***

Rob stumbled out of Hepzibah Black’s house and down to the loch. Blood was smeared all over his chest and arms. Who knew she still had so much in her? If he didn’t wash it off, he feared he’d go mad, finally and completely.

If Elspeth died, he was sure he would.

By rights, that bolt should have found him in the dark. Instead, it had ripped through Elspeth’s sweet flesh. He’d have given his mortal soul, and gladly, for the chance to trade places with her.

Why did God make others pay for his sins?

He knelt by the loch and washed himself, praying after a fashion as he did so. God knew he was not the contemplative sort by nature, so he didn’t try to dress up his requests with religious-sounding words.

Christ, they say ye be merciful. If ye would prove it, let her wake.

Elspeth Stewart was not a screamer. She’d faced a wolf pack with grim silence, but she had screeched like she was being murdered while he and Hepzibah worked as quickly as they could to push the bolt on through her thigh. Rob had thought it a kindness when she slipped into oblivion. Now that her wound was packed with healing herbs and dressed with bandages soaked in the last of Angus’s execrable wine, his gut was all jumbled up because her eyes remained closed.

Let
her
walk
again.

Hepzibah assured him the damage would have been greater had they drawn the bolt out, but it seemed to him that now both sides of her leg were equally offended by the cold iron. Elspeth was young. She should be dancing and skipping, not leaning on a cane like a crone. Or worse.

Let
her
live.

He could bear anything if that prayer was answered. But she was so pale, her skin practically translucent.

He looked down at his wavering reflection in the water. There was one more request swirling in his brain, but he hesitated to lift it to God. It almost seemed like too much to ask.

Let
her
forgive
me.

He rose and trudged back to the cottage. Only Elspeth Stewart could answer that last prayer.

***

Elspeth burned with fever for the next three days on Hepzibah Black’s straw tick mattress. When her eyelids fluttered open, she didn’t seem to see a thing. There was no recognition in her blank stare. When she did speak, she answered Rob’s questions in a babbling language no one knew.

“Except the angels,” Hepzibah had said.

Or
the
demons.

Rob still blamed the old woman’s poisons for Elspeth’s state.

“No,” Hepzibah assured him. “The concoction I gave the lass before we worked on her has done its work and already passed. If that was going to harm her, it already would have.”

“Then why are ye trying to give her more?” he demanded. Each time Elspeth showed the least responsiveness, Hepzibah forced more fluid down her. Despite her protests to the contrary, Rob wouldn’t swear the old woman wasn’t a witch.

“This is no’ the same mixture as before,” Hepzibah said. “’Tis, but sweet basil and
blavers
.”

“Blue cornflowers?”

“Aye, pressed down and steeped twice. They’ll strengthen her will to return to us,” Hepzibah said. “Her spirit wanders now.”

Whatever the cause—the witch’s brews, the blood loss, or the raging fever—it was obvious that Elspeth teetered on the cusp of life and death, and Rob feared she leaned too close to the edge. He barely left her side.

When she convulsed with chills, he climbed into the bed with her and warmed her with his body. Fingal would have joined them, but Rob threatened to tie him outside if Angus couldn’t keep the hound away.

“Dinna be so surly, Rob,” his friend had muttered as he stomped outside with his dog. “Ye’re not the only one who suffers on the lass’s account, ye know.”

Maybe not. But Rob was the one responsible for the lass’s injuries. If he hadn’t stolen her away, she’d be safe now. But she’d be Lachlan Drummond’s wife.

He decided a body could learn to live with guilt.

***

The
water
was
delightfully
warm. Elspeth let the liquid sluice down her bare body to the cloth she’d spread on the plank floor. She was back in Angus Fletcher’s homely bedchamber, thankful to have peeled out of her road-weary clothes.

A
creak
on
the
steps
made
her
turn.

Rob
was
standing
there, just looking at her. The hunger in his cobalt eyes made them go even darker.

Her
belly
clenched
and
her
nipples
drew
tight
as
his
gaze
traveled
over
her.

“Let me,” he said.

Or
maybe
he
only
thought
it, for his lips didn’t move. His voice resounded in her head just the same.

She
held
the
cloth
and
jar
of
soap
out
to
him.

He
was
suddenly
beside
her
without
having
walked
across
the
room. And she felt his hands on her, smoothing his palms over her. The calluses at the base of his fingers nicked her skin and set it to dancing.

He
scooped
out
a
dollop
of
soap, and his touch glided over her, across her shoulders and neck, around and under her breasts. She draped her arms over his shoulders. He toyed with her nipples, circling them with his thumbs. He made her ache. Then he rolled the needy flesh between his thumb and forefinger, giving a slight tug.

The
core
of
her
being
throbbed.

He
kissed
her, and their souls mingled, all tangled up in their shared breath. Rob made love to her mouth with his lips, teeth, and tongue while his hands continued to wash her.

He
soaped
her
ribs, her navel, the mound of her belly. He reached around to stroke the length of her spine.

“Spread your legs.”

Again, she couldn’t be sure if he’d only thought the command, but she was powerless to disobey. She wanted him to touch her. She ached for it.

He
invaded
her
softly, spreading her gently. The whole world went liquid and warm. He pressed the wet cloth to her and squeezed till the water ran down her legs and puddled under her feet.

She
was
a
river. A loch. A place of deep secrets and hidden magic, but he knew them all. She ached for him to dive into her so she could keep him forever, like the water horse keeps its mate. Greedily, hungrily, because need has no sense of right or wrong.

It
just
is.

He
cast
a
spell
with
his
fingers, stroking and teasing, working the convoluted charm on her flesh. Marking her as his with each caress. Her insides twisted back on themselves, coiling tighter.

He
dropped
to
his
knees
before
her
and
found
her
secret
spot. Joy raced in her veins beside the anguish of longing. Bliss called to her, washed over her, bearing her up on its gentle waves, rushing her toward the fall.

Then
he
stroked
harder. Her limbs jerked.

Elspeth’s eyes flew open. Her heart pounded between her legs in unrelieved wanting. Her thigh screamed at her, and her body’s deep need receded in the face of agony.

She welcomed the pain. Pain meant she was alive. Biting her lip to hold back a groan, she ran a hand under the coverlet and found a thick bandage on her leg. The bolt was gone, but she couldn’t remember anything about how that happened.

She poked about for a memory but couldn’t even find the dark hole that time had fallen into.

Dawn was creeping in through thin places in the thatch overhead. The blanket covering her was worn and much patched, but someone had tried to keep her warm and comfortable.

She didn’t recognize whose bedchamber she was in, but she knew the man lying beside her with his head on her pillow. And his hand resting on her breast. She couldn’t find it in her to be offended by the simple, possessive gesture.

Rob’s mouth gaped with the relaxation of sleep, but there were dark circles beneath his eyes.

She felt as if she’d journeyed a long time. Wherever she’d been, he’d obviously stayed with her. A warm knot of tenderness tangled itself in her chest. She smoothed his hair with one hand.