“Where are you away to?”
“North. To the glen.”
If Drew had been standing on his own two feet, the surprise of Colin’s answer might have toppled him over. The Faerie Glen!
“None of Mother’s stories ever told of the Fae having shown themselves to any but the MacKiernan women, and damn few of them. What hope do you have in going there?”
A line of tension worked in Colin’s jaw, his eyes darkening with his emotion. “Perhaps no more than I had with Ellie, but I canna be at peace with the answers I have now so I’ve no choice but to see if our ancestors will respond to my pleas. Even the prince himself should be concerned for the survival of his descendants.”
Prince Pol? The name had been handed down through the generations as the Faerie who was their ancestor, but Drew’s read on the ancient story wasn’t of a man who cared what happened to anyone. Some unknown millennia ago he’d given his blessing and curse in a fit of anger before retreating behind the curtain of the worlds, never to be seen again.
Colin would be better off counting on Mortal help than on the mysterious prince of their family fable.
“Dair and Simeon? Do they ride with you?” The two men, one all but family since childhood, the other family by virtue of his aunt marrying their laird, had become almost inseparable companions to Colin. Warrior blood and honor bound them together.
Drew tried hard not to resent the fact that he could never be one of their number.
“No. This I do alone.” Colin reined his horse around, pulling up alongside Drew’s mount to face him. “The need to ken the truth of what’s to come is my own demon to face.”
No one understood personal demons better than Drew. Nodding his acceptance of his brother’s decision, he clasped Colin’s arm, each man’s hand tightening around the other’s forearm.
In an attempt to lighten his brother’s mood, Drew grinned. “Too bad you dinna think to seek yer answer from True Thomas before his death, aye?”
Colin’s face stiffened into the strained mask he seemed to wear so often over the last few years. “Whose answers do you think have stolen away my peace if no the ones I received in the Rhymer’s home?”
His brother had consulted the infamous Thomas of Erceldoune? Colin had become one surprise after another.
Rumor had it that Thomas the Rhymer had been taken lover by no less than the Faerie Queen herself, giving him the power to see into the future. No doubt about it, he and Colin needed to find time to have a long talk one day, though, clearly, this was not that day.
“Go in safety, Col. I pray you find that which you seek.”
“I wish the same for you, my brother.”
Drew watched in silence as Colin rode away, puzzled as to his brother’s parting comment.
Colin couldn’t know. None of them did.
Drew had carefully cultivated the image his family had of him. That they should all see him as a disappointment, a second son who wasted his time in thoughtless pursuit of pleasure was highly preferable to their learning the truth. No one knew of the countless hours he’d spent searching, the painful experiments he’d endured at the hands of alchemists and those who claimed to be healers, or the vile potions and the disgusting plasters he’d tried.
And no one ever would if he had his way of it.
He’d rather a thousand times over see disappointment in the eyes of his family than pity.
With a long breath, Drew swung his stiffened leg over his horse’s back, bracing himself for the fresh wave of pain that would hit when his weight shifted to that limb.
As he’d suspected, no amount of mental preparation could overcome the all-encompassing shock of pain. His leg gave way and he stumbled backward, catching himself against the nearest stall.
The wounds he’d received in the battle to rescue his cousin Mairi and his sister Sallie a decade past should have ended his life. But, thanks to his Faerie blood and the amazing potions his cousin had brought from the future, he hadn’t died.
Not literally, anyway.
No, his heart beat on, his chest expanded and contracted with every breath, and he awoke to greet each empty day. But the muscles that had been carved through continued to wither away as the years passed. Under his skin, his scarred hideous skin, the meat shrank and twisted, contracting into hard painful knots.
Scar tissue, his new sister Ellie called it.
The daily workouts in the lists helped, but forego the exercise for even a day and he paid for the lapse with an overall stiffening and intensified pain. Already, despite his efforts, the once-injured limb was shortening, requiring great concentration on his part to avoid displaying the awkward limping gait he noticed in himself when he tired.
The scars on his body were hideous, but what they kept him from doing was even worse. The constant pain and growing deformity slowed him, robbed him of his speed, his flexibility, his fighting skills.
Though the injuries had spared his life, they’d resulted in his living as only half a man. His dreams of finding glory and seeking happiness had been stripped from him at the tender age of eighteen. Dreams stolen by the deceitful Fae who’d endangered the lives of his sister and cousin.
Fae he hated with every shred of his being. Vile uncaring creatures who’d taken from him all that mattered.
With his body as it was, he couldn’t follow the warrior’s path as Colin did, as they’d spent their youth planning to do together. Any hopes of a loving wife and family were gone on the edge of the sword that had carved into his flesh. A man such as he had become couldn’t support a wife and family. He spent his days working his body to exhaustion or scouring the land seeking miraculous cures which more and more frequently these days he feared did not exist.
In time, he’d be forced to retire to his bed, a useless lump of meat to be cared for by someone else.
A burden such as that was not something to expect any woman to shoulder.
“Master Drew! I dinna realize you’d returned.”
The young stable boy’s feet came to a quick halt only a few paces away.
“Aye, James, I’m back, but no for long.” Pushing his weight away from the stall, he tossed the reins in his hand to the boy. “Care for him well, lad. We’ll be off again on the morrow.”
It took all his concentration to avoid favoring his leg as he crossed the distance to the great stairs leading up to the entrance of Dun Ard.
Argeneau, the alchemist he’d spent the last week with in Inverness, had heard of a potion used at the abbey on Iona. A good night’s rest and he’d be off once more, chasing the elusive miracle that might allow him to be whole again.
Three
Was this what Fate had planned for her, no matter how hard she worked to escape it?
Leah huddled in the corner of her darkened room, the unattended fire dying down to embers as she clutched her arms around her legs, her forehead balanced on her knees. Stomach-squeezing fear swirled and melded with hateful memories, growing into a harsh burden too large to fight. The whole of it swarmed thickly around her head and she tightened her arms, as if she could hide from the oppressive weight by shrinking into herself.
The tactic didn’t work any better this night than it had when she’d been held captive by the Fae all those years ago. She could not ignore the threat away.
Her wrist tingled and she jerked her head up, her eyes darting to the spot on her arm as if she expected the metal chain that had held her prisoner to be fastened there once again.
“This is crazy,” she whispered into the silent room.
It was happening all over again and she was just sitting here, waiting to be a victim once more.
“Oh, no I’m not.” She spoke with more strength this time, denying into the dark as she straightened her back and dropped her hands to her sides.
She had been a frightened sixteen-year-old when the Nuadians had kidnapped her, helpless to change her situation. While she might still be frightened, at twenty-eight, she had long ago sworn she’d never
be helpless again. She would take charge of her own destiny.
All she needed was to come up with a plan.
“Which sure as heck isn’t going to happen if I just sit here on my butt, feeling sorry for myself,” she muttered, pushing herself to stand. However many hours she’d wasted moping over this was that many hours too many.
There. That was better already.
“Deciding to take action makes all the difference in the world.” A shiver ran down her spine as she uttered the words, but she shook it off.
Okay, maybe not all the difference, but it certainly beat waiting passively for someone else to decide her fate.
Someone like Dick.
Grabbing up the long metal poker, she leaned down and prodded at the embers in the fireplace before tossing in another stick of wood.
How was she going to avoid Dick’s plan to hand her over to some old English guy as breeding stock?
“I could run away,” she said decisively, dusting the ashes from her hands. It was what she’d done before. She’d run from her time to this one to escape the Nuadians. She could run again.
Even though this time running away was easier said than done.
Guards were posted throughout the keep and at the gates. And even if she could somehow manage to work her way past them, where would she go? It wasn’t as if she had neighbors or family to run to. With Robert’s supposed death and Dick’s abandonment of the tiny clan, there had been no marriages to seal alliances with other families. She certainly hadn’t been any help to them in that regard either. Perhaps if she’d ever indicated any interest in marriage, there might be an alliance for them to rely upon now. As it was, clan MacQuarrie was on its own with no one to turn to for help.
Not to mention, it was a big, empty Scottish countryside out there, with plenty of bad guys wandering around.
Leah scrubbed her fingertips against her forehead, trying to ward off the headache that threatened. She needed to stay calm. Focused. There had to be a reasonable way around this nightmare situation, if only she could think of it.
“I need a brainstorming session.” Just like back in high school in the college prep classes she’d taken. The fancy whiteboard and markers might not exist yet, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use the process. All she needed was another brain or two.
And she knew exactly where to find them.
She slipped out of her room, and hurried along the darkened hallway. When she reached her destination, she rapped her knuckles quietly against the heavy wood but didn’t wait for a response before pushing the door open and calling out as she stepped inside.
“Grandma Mac?”
Margery sat at a small table next to the fireplace, her head bent forward as if to catch the words of her companions, Maisey and Walter.
All three started guiltily as Leah entered, giving her the distinct impression she had been the topic of conversation only moments before.
“What are the three of you up to?” Even in the dimly lit room, Leah could see the lines of concern marking her grandmother’s face.
“It’s yer grandpa Hugh. He’s in need of rest and food to regain his strength after such a long trip, but Richard’s put him in the auld tower. There’s no even a proper fireplace out there.”
“What can I do?” Leah asked, recognizing her grandfather’s problem to be more immediate than her own. Her concerns could wait until later.
The auld tower was little more than the crumbling remains of the original building on the MacQuarrie property. Nothing much was left but stairs spiraling up around three floors. Only the lower level was in use anymore and that only for storage. She’d been warned against setting foot in the top tower room for years. With the floors and roof rotting away, it was just plain unsafe. Adding in their frequent rains and no heat, it was an even more dangerous place for a man Grandpa Hugh’s age.
“We have to get him out of there. Have you spoken to Dick? Um . . . Richard,” she corrected when three sets of confused eyes turned her way.
Margery clasped her hands in front of her on the table, her grip so tight her fingers paled from lack of circulation. “He refuses to see me, sending word by one of his men that he’ll consider my request in the next few days. When he has the time.”
“When he has the time, my arse.” Pounding her fist to the table, Maisey snorted her disgust. “Begging yer pardon, Lady Margery, but that one was always a spoiled little bastard. He’s waited the whole of his life to challenge his father. Like two warring rams they are and always have been. We’ve no time to lose if we’re to help our laird, but it’s clear we canna do this by ourselves. We need help.” Her determined gaze rested on each of them in turn. “From them what would be willing to drive these English-loving bastards out of MacQuarrie Keep before it’s too late. From them what has the power to do it.”
Her husband nodded his agreement, his pale, watery eyes fixed on Margery, waiting for her decision.
Margery nodded slowly. “What would you say we should do?”
“Send a messenger to bring us aid, my lady, just as we discussed this very evening.”
Again Margery nodded. “As you say, my friends. But it will needs be one of us. We canna trust any others with our plan.”
If they were limited to sending one of the people in this room, their plan was in danger before it even began.
Walter was ancient. His exhaustion from the journey to Inverness with Hugh showed in every one of the deeply etched lines on his face. Maisey could barely wobble up and down the stairs without a stumble. And Margery? No way Leah was letting her grandmother do something so dangerous.
That left only one option.
“Me,” Leah squeaked as all three heads turned her direction. “It should be me,” she repeated, her voice stronger now.
“Aye,” her grandmother acknowledged after a long pause. “There’s little doubt that you would be the best choice to send from the keep. And before this Lord Moreland of Richard’s arrives.”
“Exactly,” Leah agreed, more confidently than she felt.
Richard had informed them that Moreland’s party would be arriving any day now. Time had become her enemy as much as Dick and this lord he planned for her to marry.
There was no other choice. Her serving as messenger addressed her own problem as well as her grandpa Hugh’s. But that didn’t mean there weren’t still obstacles she had no idea how to overcome.
“But where would I go? And how do I even get out of here? There are men posted at the gates.”
It was as if she’d managed to come full circle back to her earlier idea of running away, smack into the same problems she’d found insurmountable the first time she’d considered the idea.
“There’s the auld water passage,” Walter murmured, his fingers idly scratching his scraggly beard. “The stairs down have been closed off since Laird Hugh and I tried playing in there as bairns, but I wager we could open it again easily enough. ’Tis no more than a matter of moving the barrels stored on top of the trapdoor.”
Margery’s fingertips covered her lips, her eyes blinking rapidly, a sure sign the woman’s mind was whirling with her plans. “I’d completely forgotten Hugh’s stories about that,” she murmured.
“What water passage?” This was something Leah had never heard a single mention of, not once in the twelve years she’d been here.
“When the keep was first built, Hugh’s grandfather had an opening to the sea put in place. According to the family stories, he may have had business dealings with . . .” She paused and grinned, her eyes lighting as she continued, “Um . . . let’s just say they were men of questionable reputation. The passage into the keep is accessible only at low tide. At all other times the opening is below the water level and the passageway itself is filled with water from the loch.”
Amazing. It was like something out of a storybook. Next thing they’d be saying there were secret tunnels in the walls no one had thought to tell her about.
“So, okay, we get this passa
geway opened up, and I can sneak out that way. But that still doesn’t answer where I’m to go for help once I’m out of here.”
Margery cleared her throat, looking down at her clenched fingers before answering. “We’ve no family outside the castle proper other than a few shepherds and their families and it’s no as if any of them would be a match for the men Richard has brought into our home. Whether or no they’ll agree to come to our aid I canna say, but there’s really only one place I can think of to ask for help, Leah. The one place yer father said you should seek help if ever you found yerself in need. The MacKiernans of Dun Ard.”
“Oh Lord, no,” Leah breathed, taking a step backward. Not the Faerie descendants. For all these years, she’d tried to put their very existence out of her mind, as if by not thinking of them they couldn’t inhabit her world. As if by not thinking of them, she could cause the Faeries themselves not to exist.
“Through you, they’re the closest thing we have to family. By our taking you in, there’s a debt of honor they owe us. We have no one else to turn to. They’re our only hope, lass. Yer only hope.” Margery looked up to meet her eyes at last. “Yer grandpa Hugh’s only hope.”
So not fair. For herself she might say no. Surely a forced marriage to a Mortal couldn’t be any worse than having to put herself back in the hands of the Fae. But how could she refuse anything that might save Hugh MacQuarrie?
She couldn’t.
All those years ago, she’d sworn two things after her ordeal at the hands of the Nuadians: first, that she’d never again willingly associate with anyone of Faerie blood, and second, that she would do whatever was required of her to insure her own safety and that of the people she loved.
Now it seemed that in order to keep the second vow, she had no choice but to break the first.
The MacKiernans of Dun Ard it was.
Four
The smell alone was enough to set Leah’s stomach roiling, but when she touched the wall to steady herself and the thick, wet slime squished through her fingers, she wanted nothing so desperately as to turn around and race back up the narrow, slick steps she’d just descended.
Healing the Highlander Page 3
