Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (35 page)

“I told you to be wary,” his da minded him, making it worse. “The Devil crew from the ghost galley’s done and snatched all three of ’em. I can feel it in my bones!”

His bones jellied with horror, Magnus pressed an icy-cold hand against his chest and swept the hall with a furious glare.

His kinsmen, each one looking as stricken as he felt, averted their gazes.

The remnants of their raucous fast-breaking told him why.

The evidence taunted him from the tops of trestle tables in a disorderly welter of overturned ewers, empty ale cups, and trenchers of half-eaten bannocks—puddles of spilled ale speaking the loudest.

That, and the damnable bridal sheet still tacked proudly to the wall behind the high table.

The bastards had been reveling.

The whole merry lot of them, carousing in jest and good cheer, whilst his lady and two other kinswomen had been spirited away right from beneath their fool noses!

And while he, mayhap the greater fool, had been standing watch in the lofty laird’s solar, peering through curtains of rain for nonexistent ships.

“’Tis the curse again, I tell you,” his father insisted. Rocking back on his heels, he stared up at the stone-vaulted ceiling. “I knew we’d not seen the end of old Reg—”

“A pox on Reginald and his curse if e’er there was one—which I still do not believe!” Magnus jerked, a muscle leaping in his jaw. “Ghost galleys and long-dead ancestors do not abduct innocent, living women.”

The old man’s lower lip jutted. “Then what happened to them?”

“Saints alive!” Magnus exploded. “Think you I’d be standing here like a dimwit if I knew?”

His gut tied in more knots than he cared to imagine, Magnus pulled a hand down over his face and tried to think. There had to be an explanation. Like as not, they were off in some remote corner of the castle, entertaining themselves by watching the storm. Counting lightning bolts to pass the time.

No one of any intelligence would venture out into a tempest of such gale-gusting ferocity . . . and his braw lady wife had more wits about her than most men.

Even Janet and old Dagda, vexing as the seneschal could be, knew better than to tempt fate by hieing themselves into the full fury of a Highland storm once unleashed.

So where were they?

A soul-deep ache, dull-edged and throbbing, beginning to replace his initial hot burst of fury, Magnus paced before the trestle tables, the muscle jerking at his jawline keeping an annoying rhythm with his fast, long strides.

“Think!”
he groused at his brothers as he strode past them. “And you!” He shot a look at Colin. “You are e’er trailing after Janet—have you any notion what could have happened to them? Where they could have gone?”

But Colin only shook his dark head, his expression grim. There could be no help there, no spark of sudden and bright inspiration.

Colin Grant, for all his earlier jollity, looked a man suffocated by the crushing weight of his own dread and fears.

And seeing his friend’s e’er-so-carefree face drawn tight and pale only increased Magnus’s own alarm.

Think, he had to think.

He glanced at his brothers again. “Is it certain they are not within the castle walls?”

“We have looked everywhere,” Dugan said, and Magnus’s heart sank.

“Then we must search the whole of the isle—storm or no.” He flickered a glance at the peat fire, noting at once that old Boiny’s favored place before the hearthstone loomed empty.

He stopped his pacing at once, looked around. “Where is Boiny? Is he gone as well?”

“Och, nay, Magnus,” a kinsman standing near the back of the hall called in answer. “That old cur is still about—he’s just casting around for scraps. Been o’er by the door the best part o’ the last hour.”

O’er by the door?

At last, Magnus knew what had been nagging at him. Scarce noticing his kinsmen’s stares, he tore through the hall, running for the great shadowed arch of the keep’s main entrance.

The one that opened into the bailey and the rain-lashed morning beyond.

And sure enough, just as the old dog had done at the closed door to the laird’s solar, Boiny now fretted back and forth in front of the keep’s heavy, iron-studded door. His stumbly, hitching steps and stiff-legged gait lanced Magnus’s heart, but it was the dog’s pathetic whines and the look of terror in his milky brown eyes that curdled his blood.

“They’ve been taken,” he said, his voice deadly calm and all the more dangerous for it.

Never more sure of anything in his life, he whirled to face the men who’d followed him.

“Which one of you searched my bedchamber?” he demanded, curling his fingers around the hilt of his sword.

“’Twas me, sir.” A timid-voiced laundry maid with a shock of bright red hair squeezed her way forward. “Your brothers had some of us searching abovestairs. I be the one who looked round your bedchamber,” she confessed, her face flaming scarlet. “I even peeked beneath the bed, I did.”

Magnus eyed the lass, tried to school his features into a less fierce scowl. “Did you notice if her cloak hung on its peg by the door? You’ll ken . . . the fur-lined one she’s e’er complaining is too cumbersome to wear?”

The girl clapped a hand to her cheek, shook her head. “Nay, my lord. Looking back, I don’t think the mantle was there where she hangs it. Aye, I am certain it was gone.”

Nodding his thanks, Magnus turned to his men. “Those of you not afeared of a bit of rain or bloodshed, buckle on your sword belts and be prepared to overturn every stone and clump of heather on this island until we find my wife and our kinswomen,” he said, already yanking open the hall’s massive oaken door.

A furious welter of wind and rain gusted inside, guttering torches and blowing clouds of choking smoke into the men’s faces as they surged forward to scramble down the rain-slicked outer stairs to the courtyard below.

And the moment the last one hurried past, Magnus made to follow them—but not before he dropped to one knee and gave Boiny a fierce hug.

“I owe you one, old friend,” he said, hooking his fingers into the unhappy beast’s heavy collar until one of the more stout-armed kitchen lasses stepped forward to take hold of him.

Boiny’s heart may have been burning to tear off in search of his two-legged friend, but the dog’s advancing age and his weak legs would ne’er survive the brunt of the storm.

His throat tightening again, Magnus reached to tousle the dog’s rough fur before he turned to race down the stairs. “Never you fear, old boy, I’ll find her,” he said, as much for his own benefit as the fretting dog’s. “And when I do, may God have mercy on whoe’er took her.”

A furious ride and much rain later, Magnus halted his garron atop the high dunes hemming the isle’s crescent-shaped boat strand and . . . frowned at the hellish scene before him.

He drew a sharp breath. Indeed, if he believed in such foolery, he would have sworn some ancient Celtic deity bent on wreaking her wrath on God’s good earth had conjured the morning’s storm.

Ne’er had a worse fury blasted across the Hebrides—not since the raging tempest that had destroyed the MacKinnon fleet some years ago.

And if the wild-winded squalls howling around his ears were any indication,
this
storm stood a good chance of smashing the score of half-built new galleys lining the golden-sanded beach.

Hoping to find his lady down there somewhere, of her own free choosing or otherwise, he spurred down the dunes, pulling up as close to the tossing surf as his garron would venture.

He flung himself out of the saddle, straining his eyes to see through the sheets of driving rain, the prickling of his scalp and the gooseflesh erupting on the back of his neck a sure sign that she had to be near.

Somewhere.

And close.

He knew it with every inch of his body, each thundering beat of his heart. Sakes, he could
feel
the connection crackling between them—a living thing, holding them close even when he could not see her.

He just knew, and his heart gave a great bound at the surety of it.

No one else had believed him, the lot of his kinsmen charging off to the high moors, the whole fool band of them declaring the women would seek shelter in one of the many cairns and hollow-walled brochs dotting the isle’s interior.

Certain he knew better, Magnus scanned the rows of unfinished galleys. Sakes, there were more than he’d realized. They littered the beach!

But with each sweeping gaze, he promised himself he’d see her, catch sight of her huddled beneath some upturned hull, shivering with the cold and rain, but safe.

Whole.

He could not, would not, lose her now.

Sweet images of her flooded his mind, crazing him as he raced up and down the empty strand, calling her name even if the wind snatched away his cries almost as quickly as they left his lips.

Not willing to lose heart, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the rain and stared out at the two recently completed galleys moored in the deeper water just offshore.

The first two vessels his kinsmen had built—or what remained of them—bobbed on the surf, smashed by nature’s unforgiving fist.

The largest, a fine twenty-six-oared beauty, lay on her side, half-submerged beneath the churning waves, the single mast snapped in two like so much kindling to float impotent and useless in the surf.

The other, equally fine but with only twenty oars, was still afloat, but just barely. Indeed, it appeared to be sinking fast.

But of the three women, naught was to be seen.

Magnus swore, dashed the rain from his eyes for what had to be the hundredth time in mere moments.

By the living God, even without the rain coursing down his forehead, he could scarce see two feet ahead of him much less hope to spot a sooty-haired lass on a morn darker than the crack of the Devil’s own arse!

“Ho, Magnus!” Colin thundered up beside him, his winded garron as uneasy as the howling storm.

“Come, let us be gone from here,” he urged. “Your brothers are off on the moors, searching the heather. I say let us join them. In God’s name, why would the women come here? We are wasting precious time. . . .”

“Nary a moment is wasted if it can be used to find them.” Magnus glared at his friend, but Colin’s own ill ease stood etched in his face, and Magnus remembered too late Colin’s deep affection for Janet.

“Forgive me,” he said for the second time that morning, forgetting his pride. “I know you mean well, and that it is unlikely they are here, but . . . I just had a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Aye,” Magnus snapped, his tone daring Colin to deny it. “And so long as that feeling persists, I am not riding off elsewhere.”

Even if he spent the rest of his days stalking up and down the dune-lined strand calling his wife’s name.

“They cannot be here, Magnus,” Colin argued. “Come, see reason. Let us be off to where we may have a better chance of finding them.”

“Nay. They are here, I tell you!”

Scrunching his eyes against the rain, Magnus scanned the beach, the great rollers crashing on the shore, willed them to appear.

When they didn’t, he flung an arm toward the unfinished galley hulls. “Go you, if you wish. I am staying here. To search those boats—every last one of them.”

“’Fore God, but you are a stubborn loon.” Frowning blacker than his beard, Colin swung down from his saddle, strode across the wet sand to grab Magnus by the arms.

“Those are empty hulls, my friend. The most of them unfinished. Do you not see? The women will not be cowering beneath one of them. Not in this storm. Had they been caught unaware, they would seek more adequate shelter, wouldn’t you say?”

“And that is the heart of it, you witless dolt!” Magnus shot him an irritated look. “Do
you
not see? They were not
caught unaware.
This storm started raging last night and worsened with each passing hour. No sane person would venture out into the teeth of such fury. They had to have been taken by force, and whoe’er would do such a thing is capable of any infamy, would not care whether they were sheltered in the storm or no.”

The color drained from Colin’s face. “You are right,” he agreed, dashing the wet hair off his forehead. He held a flattened hand over his eyes and stared out across the tossing waves. “Think you they might be aboard one of those foundering galleys?”

Magnus followed his stare. “I pray not,” he said, praying indeed.

“Were they on the one already on its side, they’d have been long since swept out to sea.” Colin voiced Magnus’s own dread. “If they are on the second, the one that is fast sinking—”

“Then we must fetch them!”

“And how do you mean to get out there?” Colin eyed the wild-foaming surf, the high, pounding waves. “Would you swim? Only to find you’d squandered time when they are not there?”

That they could drown was left unsaid—not that Magnus cared. At least not for himself.

To lose Amicia now that he’d finally made her his would be to have the sun and all the stars extinguish. His world would lose all light and purpose—his life . . . an unthinkable grief.

“Well?” Colin stared at him through the rain.

“The currachs!” Magnus decided, already running for the nearest of the little skin-and-wicker boats.

Colin pressed his lips together, his bad leg forgotten. “A wee hide boat—a cockleshell! In those seas?”

“A currach will hold five people and is seaworthy enough.” His mind set, Magnus snatched up a length of rope from the sand, secured it to his belt. “We have no other choice,” he added, patting the coils of rope.

Colin heaved a great sigh, looked doubtful.

But, bless his true heart, he didn’t balk.

Not entirely.

“Just do not think I’m hieing myself out there alone,” he stipulated, eyeing the surging waters with more than a shade of trepidation. “I cannot swim, see you. . . .”

“We will both go,” Magnus assured him, feeling better now that a plan had been made.

But the instant he curled his fingers around the rim of the little currach, began pulling it across the sand, the prickling sensation along his spine increased a thousandfold.