Angel of Skye

by May McGoldrick

  “There are others with more faith in my character. I’ve told you I’m not here to destroy MacLeod lands. Neither am I here to destroy their heirs.”

  Neil MacLeod eyed the warlord, obviously considering his next words carefully. Finally, he chose to say nothing and turned back to his ale.

  “Malcolm is coming back to Dunvegan.”

  “To stay?” Neil asked, a note of surprise in his voice.

  “To visit, at first. Once he feels comfortable, he’ll stay.”

  “The prioress will never let him go,” Neil answered, recalling the old woman’s barely controlled fury when she came personally to fetch the child back the last time.

  “It was the prioress’ idea,” Alec said, adding with an air of finality, “The lad will be coming.”

  “It was that bastard Macpherson who rode Walter down.”

  “I tell you, Father Jack, it couldn’t be,” Fiona said with equal force.

  When she and Walter’s grandson Adrian had gotten to the hermit’s hut this morning, Walter was in great pain. As they walked Adrian explained what had occurred. After Fiona’s departure just before dawn, Walter, Father Jack, and Adrian had started toward the priest’s hut. They had been taking one of the less traveled roads when, out of the mists, a rider had appeared. Adrian told her that the rider had slowed upon seeing them, but then had spurred his horse into a gallop. They had all watched in horror, paralyzed as the charger descended upon them. Then, at the last moment, Walter had stepped out toward the attacker, and the black charger’s hooves had trampled the old leper, breaking the brittle bones of his right leg.

  Fiona and Father Jack had worked throughout the day, carefully setting the leg as best they could and trying to ease the old man’s suffering. By nightfall, the medicines she had brought from the Priory began to take effect. Her old friend was now resting fitfully, but at least resting.

  Fiona moved quickly to the window and hung her cloak across the opening. The stretched-skin shutters over the two small windows were doing little to keep out the wind-driven rain pounding against the walls of the hut. The last thing Walter needed now was to get a chill.

  “I tell you it was the Macpherson plaid,” the hermit asserted. “Before I found my place here by the wood, I traveled the length and breadth of Scotland, and I know their tartan as well as I know the back of my hand.”

  “He would have stopped,” Fiona countered fiercely. “I know he would.”

  “Then you tell me how many others race across this island—Macpherson plaid flying—with a hawk on their arm.”

  She could not believe it. She did not want to believe it. The man she met this morning would not purposely trample a harmless old leper. Even if it was an accident, Lord Alec would have stopped.

  It had to be a mistake. But she had to convince Father Jack of this. He was an important spiritual force on the island, albeit a reclusive one. But when he chose to speak, the people of Skye listened. The short, brawny man disdained the company of those in power, but his words and his advice moved across the island like an ocean swell—an undercurrent that reached and affected all.

  Fiona shuddered to think what damage news like this would do to the warlord. Everything he had done would be for naught. People would either become openly hostile or would go back to being invisible. Things would get worse. Things would go back to the way they were.

  “I know it sounds like him, but even a laird cannot be in two places at one time.”

  The old priest stared at Fiona. He knew her, and he knew that she had no reason to lie for the new laird. Walter was as much family to Fiona as anyone else she had. She owed no loyalty to the Macpherson warlord.

  “What do you mean?” he asked gruffly.

  “Lord Alec was with me this morning.”

  “With you?” the priest asked, his gray eyes flickering in surprise. “You know the man, Fiona?”

  “Aye, since this morning. He went with me to the Priory.”

  “How did you meet? When was this?” The old man was perplexed. She had been with him at the leper’s village and hadn’t mentioned any of this. “Come, Fiona. What is this all about?”

  She knew she could not tell him what had occurred in the misty morning hours. Despite the priest’s approval of Fiona’s mission with the lepers, she knew he would try to stop her from coming to the wood if he knew of the men who had attacked her.

  “I met him near the Priory lands when I was going back this morning.”

  “When, Fiona?” he pressed. “He could have ridden down Walter and still caught up to you before you reached the church lands. Do you realize if Walter survives, he could be a cripple? A crippled leper!”

  “But he didn’t do it!” she exclaimed. “Why are you so determined that he is guilty? You do not even know the man! There are many Macphersons on Skye now. What makes you so sure it was him?”

  “It was him. I saw him with my own two eyes.”

  “When have you seen him before, Father?” Fiona argued. “Do you know of his size, or his build, or the color of his hair? You have never met the man, Father. Why are you so determined that was him?”

  “It was the same man who rides across the land like some crazed fool every morning,” the priest growled stubbornly.

  “Father, with all respect, you cannot even see your way home without Adrian. What makes you so sure?”

  “Because, with my own eyes—dim as they may be—I saw him ride down my friend.”

  “Nay, you didn’t, Father,” a small voice was heard to say.

  Adrian stood beside the straw bed where his grandfather lay. His big eyes looked steadily at the two.

  “I saw Lord Macpherson with Fiona at the Priory, and I was beside Grandpa when he was trampled.” He looked directly at the priest. “It was not Lord Macpherson, Father Jack. If you were to see him up close, you would agree. The laird’s hair is like gold. The rider’s hair was like dirt. The boots the laird wears are lighter-colored than the man we saw. They’re much finer. I saw him, Father. The man who rode down my grandfather was carrying a brown-colored hawk. At the Priory, the warlord had the white peregrine.”

  The old priest gaped at the lad, looking as if the wind had been knocked from his body. After a long moment he sagged onto the block of wood that served as a chair. Fiona placed her hand on his stooped but still broad shoulders.

  “Father, Lord Alec is nothing like the last laird.”

  “Only Satan himself could match Torquil MacLeod, lass,” the priest said, looking up at Fiona.

  “This one cares about us. About the people of Skye.” She remembered his fearless concern for her. “He is a good man, Father Jack. You know he was the one who stopped the hunting of innocents.”

  “I know, lass. But public power and private weakness often abide in the same man,” the hermit said with a deep sigh. “Then who did this terrible thing?”

  “We will find out, Father,” Fiona responded, turning to her injured friend, who was groaning with pain. She put her hand on his forehead. It was burning with fever. “Right now we need to tend to Walter.”

  Chapter 5

  Alone as I walked up and down,

  In an abbey fair to see,

  Thinking what consolation

  Was best in this adversity.

  —Robert Henryson “The Abbey Walk”

  Oh, God. He’s gone.

  Fiona wrung her hands and whipped the veil from her head as she paced her small workroom adjoining the prioress’.

  She had heard stories of the dungeon at Dunvegan Castle. Of how enemies of the MacLeods could languish there for years. Of how death would come violently and painfully to those who even thought to oppose the power of the laird.

  And now Malcolm. How could the prioress let him go?

  Fiona had returned to the Priory when, after four restless days and nights, Walter had at last regained consciousness. Though he was far from being out of danger, he now showed signs of improvement, and Father Jack had ordered her to go and get some re
st.

  Then, on returning, she had learned from David that Lord Alec had taken Malcolm to Dunvegan for the day.

  Standing beside the small window, Fiona shook with anger and fear, recalling the nightmares that had haunted the child’s sleep for so long after his last visit to the MacLeod stronghold. She remembered the little boy’s sobs. She remembered the promise that she had given never to allow anyone to take him back there.

  She angrily pounded her fist into her open palm. How could they let him go? Why could they not at least have asked him? Malcolm was not a five-year-old child anymore. He was a young lad with brains, with intelligence. He would have told them no. Why did the prioress not wait for her return? Fiona slumped into the chair at her work table and buried her face in her hands.

  Malcolm’s mother had died delivering him. She had been no more than a child herself, and when she made her way to the Priory, a victim of Torquil’s lust, the prioress had taken her in.

  Fiona had only been twelve the night Malcolm was born. In the months before, she had befriended the shy, frightened girl who was not much older than Fiona was herself. And during those months she had shared with Fiona all the sorrows of her young life.

  The prioress had allowed Fiona to stay beside the pale girl during labor, sponging her face as the contractions increased both in duration and intensity. Once, after her friend’s wrenching cries had proved too much for Fiona, she’d burst into tears. It was then that she had looked at the prioress, her eyes pleading to go, but the prioress had said gently that this was how she would learn to tend those who needed help.

  Sitting alone in the darkening workroom, Fiona felt the tears begin to slide down her face. She closed her eyes and remembered the helplessness that she’d felt. Remembered the overwhelming sense of loneliness in her friend’s large, anguished eyes—in the death grip with which she held Fiona’s hand.

  Looking into the sad brown eyes, Fiona’s resolve had strengthened. She could not turn her back on the girl.

  She no longer wanted to go. She was needed.

  The hours of labor had dragged on interminably. Through the night-long ordeal the young woman had become weaker and weaker. Her panting breaths seemed unable to take in enough air to sustain her. Fiona had held her hand, trying to support her with her own strength, willing her to go on.

  Finally, the young mother had cried out once more in pain, and then the sound of an infant’s cry had rung out in the torchlit room. When the nuns had finished their ministrations and the bairn had been laid in the fading mother’s arms, the girl had smiled and looked into Fiona’s face. Reaching out for her, the mother had placed Fiona’s hand on the infant’s head.

  Then she had closed her eyes, never to open them again.

  Malcolm had been Fiona’s responsibility ever since. She’d bathed and fed him. She’d watched him crawl and had helped him walk. And they had grown together.

  Until Torquil took him. In the late winter two years ago, the MacLeod chief had decided to bring his heir to Dunvegan. He was gathering the Highland clan leaders at Skye after the king’s death at Flodden, and he’d wanted to show off his son. Despite all the women that Torquil had lain with in his violent and lecherous life, Malcolm had been the only child of his to be born alive.

  But the bairn had been a disappointment. Young Malcolm, faced with the boisterous brutality of the father he’d never seen before, had been silent, teary-eyed, and homesick for the Priory. The five-year-old was not the tough and unruly youngster Torquil had wanted to display, so Malcolm had been kept hidden away in the dark chambers of the damp and grim castle keep.

  Malcolm had been away for six months, and that had been the longest half-year of Fiona’s life. The prioress had strictly forbidden her from ever trying to visit Malcolm, and something within had told her that this was one time she had to obey for fear of her life.

  Then the news had reached them of Torquil’s imprisonment at Sterling Castle, and the prioress had gone herself to Dunvegan to take Malcolm back. The neglected, wild-eyed boy who had returned to them had required much love and patience—and Fiona had supplied both.

  Fiona leaped to her feet, pacing the room again. She could not believe the prioress would allow the same thing to happen. Not again.

  True, Lord Macpherson was not Torquil MacLeod, but Malcolm was not what these men expected him to be. He was not a brute.

  Malcolm was kind and considerate. He was patient and intelligent. His blood might be noble, but so was his soul. He could never be a chieftain among the savage warriors of the Highland clans. And Fiona feared for him, feared for his survival in a place like Dunvegan—even if he were beside a man like Lord Alec Macpherson.

  Why had he taken Malcolm?

  “You enjoy beating me, admit it.”

  “You are pretty slow, for being so big.”

  “I am not slow,” Alec protested. “You cheat.”

  “I do not.” Malcolm giggled. “It was a straight race from the refectory. You just eat too much.”

  “You don’t eat enough,” Alec answered sternly.

  “You sound like Fiona,” the boy responded seriously. “She eats like a bird, yet she still complains that I don’t eat enough.”

  “She’s right,” the warrior said as they entered the chapter house.

  “I’ll beat you to Fiona’s workroom,” the boy blurted out, springing ahead of Alec.

  “You are cheating again, you elfin thing,” he called after Malcolm, chasing him through the darkened entryway. “You know the way.”

  Following the lad through the maze of corridors, Alec hung back enough to let Malcolm lead him all the way to Fiona’s workroom. But when the boy reached a door at the end of one hallway, Alec crashed thunderously into the heavy oak portal right behind him. Without knocking, Malcolm lifted the latch and shoved his way into the candlelit room.

  Alec stepped into the room right behind the laughing boy, but then the world stood still.

  She must have been asleep at the table because her look was one of a person in total disarray. Her dream-clouded eyes cleared with comprehension and then joy as Malcolm threw himself onto her lap.

  Alec stood mesmerized by the sight of the two before him. But then it was her beauty that made his pulse rise.

  She was perfection.

  Her red hair hung in a tangle of ringlets about her face and flamed in the light of the candle sputtering on the table. Her perfectly sculpted features—her nose, her mouth—were too real to be the work of any artist. The warlord’s breath caught in his chest as she raised her eyes to him. She was even more beautiful than he remembered.

  But then Alec’s eyes narrowed as a flicker of recognition passed through his brain. Something in the way she looked, in the way her eyes brilliantly reflected the glow of a thousand lights. A sense of warmth swept over him as a question formed somewhere within him. His dream. She had the face of the angel who haunted him. The one that he could never reach. The one beyond the king…brilliant, beautiful, and unattainable.

  When Fiona looked up at Lord Macpherson, something ignited within her. His blue eyes seemed to penetrate her flesh, searing her soul with an intensity she had never before experienced. Uncontrollably, her eyes swept over the magnificent man filling the doorway. His blond hair hung in loose waves across his shoulders. Her eyes lingered on the strands that dangled over his chiseled features, around the strong line of his jaw.

  Fiona’s eyes took in every bit of him. His perfectly white shirt, pulling across broad shoulders, highlighted the sun-kissed skin of his neck and exposed forearms. The Macpherson tartan that was draped over one shoulder and cinched at his narrow waist with a belt drew her eyes downward. Her gaze followed the curve of his kilted hips to the exposed tan of his legs to the knee-high boots and all the way back up again. They halted at his face, arrested now by his smiling azure eyes.

  She blushed uncontrollably and hid her face in Malcolm’s mass of curls, now resting on her shoulder.

  “Fiona, I am glad you a
re back. You’ve been away so long. I missed you,” the young boy said, his voice muffled as he hugged her fiercely.

  “It hasn’t been so long, Malcolm.”

  “It’s been four long days,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been counting.”

  Fiona laughed, ruffling his hair. “So I can see. And I’ve missed you, too!”

  “Is Walter feeling better?”

  Fiona nodded and opened her mouth to answer, but Malcolm’s enthusiasm got the best of him.

  “Oh, Fiona, we had the best day!”

  She could still feel the heat of Lord Alec’s gaze. She dared not look up. She had been caught doing something she had never dreamed of doing before.

  “Alec made me king for the day,” the youngster blurted with excitement. “I could command whatever I wished.”

  “Lord Alec, Malcolm,” Fiona corrected gently. “So tell me, what was it that you wished?”

  Malcolm squirmed out of Fiona’s lap and scampered to the laird in the doorway, taking hold of the giant’s hand. “My first wish was for you to be there...with us at Dunvegan. That was Alec’s wish, too. He told me so. But my second wish...You tell her, Alec. Ple-e-ease!”

  Fiona raised her eyes to the courtly nobleman. Flattery, she thought. Lord Alec has taught Malcolm flattery. The laird stood where he was, smiling. And then she looked at the excited and expectant Malcolm.

  “Would you like to come in, m’lord?” she whispered, standing up. Even to her own ear, her voice had a strange quality.

  Alec entered the workroom, his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder as they crossed the room. Glancing about, the warlord noted the orderliness of the workplace. An open cabinet, with a crisscross of pigeonholes holding hundreds of scrolls lined one wall, rising to the unpainted wood ceiling. Two tables and two chairs were the only other furnishings. There was no sign of any adornment present in the room, and Alec was mildly surprised at the efficiency evident in the chamber.

  “Would you care to sit, m’lord?” she asked, indicating the chair by the table across the room.