Sins of the Highlander (13 page)

His eyes opened, and he blinked at her with a sleepy, puzzled expression.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked.

“If ye are, I’m having the same dream.”

He sat up suddenly. A smile, the first genuine smile she’d ever seen on him, lit his face. “Ye’re awake! And in your right mind.”

“In my right mind?” she repeated. “That’s high praise from a madman.”

“Ye canna ken a madman unless ye’re a bit daft yourself, they say.” He pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into her palm. “That’s two answers, in any case. Ye’re going to live. Ye’re awake. D’ye think ye can stand?”

“I dinna know,” she said as he leaped and ran around the bed to offer her his hands. “It looks as if I’m about to find out.”

He pulled back the blankets, and she didn’t recognize the shift she was wearing. She ran her fingers over the thin linen and looked askance at him.

“That belongs to Hepzibah Black.”

She tossed him a puzzled frown.

“Never mind. Ye dinna remember some things. She said ye might have a hole or two in your memory, but that’s a small matter. You’re awake now, and it all may come back to ye, though it might be a mercy if some of it did no’, she said.”

“Who said…what?”

“Dinna fret. It matters no’ a bit.” Very gently, he lifted her legs and set her feet on the floor beside the bed. Pain streaked up her leg, but she fought back the wince.

“Here, take my hands.” He didn’t give her a choice and fairly lifted her to her feet. “Aye, ye can stand! Ye’ll be walking again afore ye know it.”

“D’ye mind if I wait a little longer?” she said as she plopped back down. The pain made her slightly dizzy.

“Oh, aye, I’m a dunderhead.” He dropped to one knee before her. “It’s just I’m so glad to see ye awake and to see the light shining out of your face.”

“And I to see your face.” She cupped his cheek. His beard had grown long enough to be a soft pelt.

He covered her hand with his. “I’ve got to ask ye now before your mind returns to ye entire.”

“When ye set yourself to be charming, Rob MacLaren, ye do go all out.” She snorted. Evidently he thought her mind faulty, but baring a few gaps in her memory, she felt clearer about everything than ever in her life. “Ask me what ye will.”

His smile faded. “I did ye a grave harm, Elspeth Stewart, when I stole ye from your wedding. I put ye in danger and brought this injury upon ye. Do ye think ye can ever forgive me?”

All that he’d told her about his wife and Lachlan Drummond bubbled to the surface of her mind. She should probably wait to hear her betrothed’s side of the story, but Rob’s was pretty convincing.

And Rob wasn’t the one who shot her with a crossbow. That she remembered very clearly.

“Aye, Rob, I forgive ye. But…” She gnawed her lower lip.

“But what?”

“Even if I pardon ye, I dinna think ye’ll have any peace until
ye
forgive the one who’s wronged ye.”

A wall slid down behind his eyes. “Forgive Drummond, ye mean?”

“Aye. There are two sides to every tale, and—”

“This is naught but the poison talking. Hepzibah filled ye with evil humors afore she did her work,” he said. “She claims she isna a witch, but I wouldna swear to it. Your mind is no’ yet clear.”

“No, I’ve never been so clear.” She reached out and caught one of his hands. “It’s a truth written in the rocks and trees and the beating of our hearts. Forgive.”

“No.” He shook off her hand. “Ye canna ask it of me. He took so much…”

Elspeth’s heart ached at the enormity of Rob’s loss, but she feared for him as well. For his soul.

“Aye, he did.”

“And his offense wasna only against me.” Rob was pacing now, agitation showing in every muscle and line of his body. “’Twas against Fiona. Tell me ye would forgive one who drove someone ye loved to their death.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I suppose I could.”

“Then ye’re either a saint or a liar.” He glared at her.

“At least ye must forgive yourself,” she said. “Fiona’s death was no’ your fault.”

Rob wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Bitterness is like death. I see it growing in your heart, Rob, wild as a cankerwort and as hard to root out. Forgive yourself while ye can.”

“I’ll no’ forgive Lachlan Drummond. And I’ll no’ forgive myself for letting it happen. Never!” Rob strode toward the door. “I’d rather roast in hell.”

Drummond watched his guest shove food around his trencher without eating a bite. After he reported Elspeth had been shot in the failed attempt to recover her on the loch, Drummond convinced Alistair Stewart there was nothing to be gained by following Mad Rob any longer. Once they returned to his stronghold with the sad news, Elspeth’s mother had collapsed, too weak with grief to travel home.

“If I call in my men now,” Stewart said as he chased a bit of root vegetable with a crust of barley bread across his trencher, “I can have three hundred ready to march on
Caisteal Dubh
by month’s end. How many will ye bring?”

Drummond set down his empty drinking horn. “Ye expect to lay a siege with winter on the wind?”

“We canna arrive at the MacLaren’s seat without a show of force at our backs. The only thing a coward like him understands is strength. There’s no point in going to him with a handful of fingers.”

Lachlan didn’t think there was much point in going to
Caisteal Dubh
at all. Elspeth was probably dead. Mad Rob had likely already consigned her body to the loch.

“What would you have us do if he refuses to give her back? The Dark Castle has never been taken from without,” Drummond said. “There have been rumors of a secret way in, but no one has ever found it. All we’ll do is shame ourselves before our own men when we must go home empty-handed, or freeze to death camping outside the walls.”

“What other choice do we have? Would ye have us do nothing?”

“Ye could send word to the queen.” Lachlan leaned toward his ally. “After all, she is your cousin, is she no’? I dinna think she’ll approve of one of her ladies-in-waiting being abducted from the altar. The right word in her counselor’s ear, and she might well divide MacLaren’s land between us to settle the matter.”

“No amount of land will settle this.”

“Sometimes a man must take the best of a bad bargain,” Drummond said, signaling for his servant to top off Lord Stewart’s ale. Old Normina toddled forward, but Alistair covered the rim of his horn with his hand and waved her away.

Alistair buried his head in his hands. “Why would the MacLaren shoot Elspeth?”

“I dinna think ’twas his intention. It makes no sense for him to,” Drummond said. Stewart had accepted without question his lie about who released the fateful bolt. Lachlan could afford to put a charitable face on the incident. “It was dark, ye ken, but I believe he was aiming at us on the raft, and your daughter put herself in his way.”

“Then he must still mean to return her. He said ye could collect her at month’s end.”

“Since when can the word of a madman be trusted?”

“If he willna give her up, we have no choice but a siege.” Stewart pounded his fist on the table in frustration. “Besides, her mother wishes it. She willna give me peace until I do something to bring Elspeth home.”

Drummond bit off a hunk of venison and chewed. The haunch was gamey and sorely in need of salt, but his larder was strained by the extended stay of Stewart and his household. And since the marriage ceremony wasn’t completed and the union unconsummated, none of the promised dowry had been forthcoming. Yet by virtue of his troth, Lachlan was still obligated to help Stewart retrieve his daughter. Mad Rob probably timed his interruption of the ceremony with that outcome in mind.

“D’ye hear yourself, man?” Lachlan shook his head. “Ye know full well the girl may already be—”

“Dinna say it.” Stewart’s knuckles turned white as he gripped his meat knife. “Elspeth’s yet alive. I ken it in my heart. D’ye no’ think a father would sense it if his daughter were no more?”

Stewart wouldn’t be so certain if he’d seen Elspeth go down. Even if a crossbow wound didn’t kill outright, Drummond knew it could still take a life. A bolt left a gaping hole. It had been too dark to see exactly where Elspeth was struck, but removing a bolt ofttimes did more damage than the initial hit. If loss of blood didn’t do for her, then putrefaction almost certainly would.

“No, I’ll no’ believe she’s dead until I see her body with my own eyes,” Stewart said, his gaze fixed unseeing at his trencher.

His ally had set his feet, and there’d be no budging him. “Verra well. Since ye wish it, I’ll go with ye and yours to
Caisteal Dubh
. And bring my men too. I should be able to muster a hundred and fifty by month’s end.”

If Lachlan was going to have to play this hand, he might as well go all out. It would serve to cement his tie with the House of Stewart, even though he fully intended to expand his alliances with a new bride from a different clan as soon as decently possible. James Grant’s youngest was said to be a beauty.

“Even though our clans are no’ yet bound by marriage, we are bound by our common foe,” Lachlan said. “For now and all time, may God smite the MacLaren.”

He offered his hand to Stewart, and the man clasped it.

“For now and all time, may God smite the MacLaren,” Alistair Stewart said. “And may He use us to do it.”

***

It was a full week before Elspeth could walk unassisted, but drinking beef tea and Hepzibah’s special brews helped her grow stronger each day.

Angus found a length of green birch and shaped it into a cane for her. She was able to transfer enough of her weight to use the walking stick to get around on her own.

“It’ll also come in handy to use as a cudgel if ye wish to drive a point into Rob’s thick skull,” Angus said when he presented it to her.

Everyone laughed at the time, but Rob stayed well out of range, in case she should take the suggestion to heart. In fact, he’d barely spoken to her since she asked him to forgive Lachlan Drummond. And himself.

Hepzibah taught her to change the dressing on her thigh herself.

“Once ye leave here, ye’ll have to do it, so ye may as well start now,” Hepzibah reasoned. When the week passed with no hint of corruption in the wound, the wise woman stitched the seeping openings closed.

“Ye’re a fortunate lass, Elspeth Stewart.” Hepzibah lit her pipe while she and Elspeth sat on the stoop before her cottage. They were comfortably out of the wind, catching the last bit of the sun’s warmth while watching Rob and Angus preparing the boat to continue their journey. “Verra fortunate indeed.”

“To be sure, any lass with two holes in her leg is twice blessed.”

Hepzibah shot her a sour look. “Ye still have your leg. That’s the main thing, but I was talking about the lad.”

Elspeth frowned at her.

“Ye’ve the love of a fine man.” Hepzibah nodded toward Rob and followed his movement with her sharp-eyed gaze. “That makes ye fortunate beyond the lot of most.”

“Ye’re wrong.” Elspeth cast a lingering glance at him as he worked, admiring his easy stride, his broad-shouldered strength, his fine, long legs. When he caught her looking at him, she lowered her gaze to her lap. “Rob doesna love me.”

Hepzibah took a few quick pulls on her pipe to make it draw well. “Ye wouldna say that if ye’d seen him fretting over ye whilst ye wandered between the worlds.”

“He was only feeling guilty, I warrant,” Elspeth said. “I wouldna be here, wouldna have been hurt if he didna still love his dead wife.”

“I should hope he does still love her.” Hepzibah puffed approvingly on her pipe and blew out a trio of smoke rings. “That’s all to the good.”

Elspeth shook her head, confused. First, Hepzibah said Rob loved her. Then she hoped that he still loved Fiona. “Why is that good?”

“A soul that knows how to love deeply is a rare thing in this world. Rob knows, ye see. And a soul that does, never really forgets how to do it.”

“Do it? Love isna something ye
do
,” Elspeth said. “’Tis something ye feel, surely.”

“Where did ye hear that daft idea?”

“’Tis in all the sonnets and—”

“Sonnets!” Hepzibah’s laugh cackled so, Elspeth would have named her a witch if she didn’t know better. “What a kettle of goat’s piss! Only a dreamer’s scribblings.”

Elspeth stiffened. She’d been enchanted by the idea of all-consuming courtly love described in her little collection of poetry. Was there anything finer than the adoring praise of a devoted swain?

Maybe
the
touch
of
devoted
hands
, she answered herself.

The memory of the way Rob’s touch, Rob’s kiss, had wakened her to something hot and dark and forbidden made her cheeks heat.

“But ye make it sound as if love isna a matter of the heart,” Elspeth said.

“Oh, it is that too, ye ken. But ye may feel all ye like and never do a bit about it,” Hepzibah said. “If a body willna put feet to the feeling, what good is it?”

Rob laughed at something Angus said, and the rich, deep timbre of his voice made some wild nameless thing inside Elspeth shiver with anticipation.

“He’s a fine, braw lad, and it stirs the blood just to look upon him, aye?” Hepzibah’s voice sank to a whisper. “But the heart is a fickle beastie, changeable as the loch. There may come a time when the feeling some call love has flown. Then what does a body do?”

Elspeth couldn’t imagine her stomach not doing flips each time she caught sight of Rob MacLaren. Not that she loved him, of course, but she couldn’t deny there were definite feelings for the man, feelings that showed no sign of abating. But Hepzibah was wise about so many things, she allowed that the old woman might know a bit about this as well.

“Tell me, Hepzibah, what
does
a body do if the feelings go away?” Elspeth asked.

“That’s when a soul
decides
to love anyway, with mind and breath and body,” Hepzibah said. “Feelings come and go. And come again. But when your soul and your will unite to act, that’s when ye know love goes clear to the bone. A body canna forget how to love once it’s done that.”

Rob started walking back toward the cottage, his frame casting long shadows on the dead grass. His mouth turned up in a smile when his gaze met Elspeth’s.

Hepzibah made a clucking noise with her teeth and tongue. “Whether yon laddie wants to admit it or not, his heart loves again. ’Tis only a matter of time before his soul and body decide to follow.”