A woman peeked out from a back room. She nodded at Grace but wore a wary expression. “Co thu?”
Grace smiled. “I am Grace Ellington. I was told I could find some herbal medicines here. That you are Maude MacDonald.” Could Maude help her escape?
“Ye have coin?” the woman asked, stepping into the room, her eyes dipping to Grace’s bag.
“Yes,” she said and pulled out a leather pouch, which jingled as several gold and silver pieces rubbed together. Coins could make some people very brave.
The woman waved her to the shelves that lined the back wall. Jars, filled with dried herbs, sat in orderly fashion. “You have quite a bounty,” Grace said sweetly. Her smile was reported to be her best weapon, and she used it whenever dealing with grumpy patients or apothecary crones who looked like they’d rather shoo her out the door than help her.
“What is it ye need?” Maude asked, her accent thick.
Grace studied the old woman. She seemed to live alone, but if she had a horse to sell, Grace might have a chance. “I’m not completely certain. Feverfew, one garlic cluster, burdock, roseroot, self-heal with goldenrod, and tormentil. If you have them.”
“Ye know the ways of medicines?” she asked, her frown smoothing into an assessing neutral look.
“Yes,” Grace said, helping the woman move a ladder to reach a clay jar on an upper shelf. “My sister is a wonderful healer. She and her husband’s mother have taught me much.”
“The husband, he is a Scot?”
“Yes. Ava and I have left England. We live with the Macleans of Aros on the Isle of Mull.”
Maude seemed to weigh her words, finally giving her a nod. She waved Grace toward a series of clay pots on a lower shelf. “Pick ye out a garlic while I scoop the feverfew.”
“I am fortunate to have found you,” Grace said, glancing around, but Keir was still freezing his ballocks off outside. “I was wondering if you might also have a horse for sale.”
Maude narrowed her eyes. “For the right amount of coin, I could possibly find ye a horse. What are ye needing it for, lass?” Maude asked, just as the door behind Grace opened. Keir stepped inside, his height and broad shoulders filling the space. Being confined within four walls reminded Grace how large he was.
Grace didn’t answer as she watched the woman’s face pale. Maude leaned back, knocking a jar from her shelf to shatter on the floor.
“Oh,” Grace said, rushing to help, but the woman stood there staring at Keir. “Are you well?” Grace asked, studying her fear-filled face, which told her that she absolutely wouldn’t be helping Grace if it meant going against Keir.
Keir said something in Gaelic, his deep voice without warmth. Grace frowned at him. He must know he was frightening the old woman, but considering his comments when riding into Mallaig, scaring her was probably his intent.
Grace smiled reassuringly as she picked up the broken pottery to set the shards on the shelf. She patted the woman’s arm and leaned in to her ear. “He isn’t as fierce as he looks.”
The woman turned her head to Grace, her expression full of worry. “God be with ye, lass.”
Keir said something else, and Maude began throwing herbs and a few other clay pots into a linen. Grace added her garlic cluster, and Maude gathered the cloth, tying it at the top. “How much does it cost?” Grace asked, looking to Keir for him to pay. After all, it was his nephew.
“Nothing,” Maude said. “A tribute to the Devil of Dunakin.”
Grace looked back and forth between the woman and Keir. He nodded, and Maude’s shoulders relaxed. Grace huffed softly. “We are paying,” Grace said and pulled two shillings out of her own bag. She wouldn’t steal from the woman, especially if she could be a future ally. As she placed them on the table, the woman’s eyes went wide. “A fair coin for your medicines,” Grace said, but Maude shook her head.
Grace jumped as Keir’s hand slapped down on the wooden top over the coins, and slid them back. He grabbed the bag Maude had fastened and nodded to her. “Thank ye,” he said. “I will be sure to let Rab know ye wish his son good health with your gift.”
Maude’s mouth fell open, and she nodded quickly. “Aye, that I do.”
He looped his arm through Grace’s and guided her out the front door. “Thank you,” she called, but as soon as the door shut, she rounded on Keir. “The woman needs that money.”
“She needs to feel like I will protect her more,” he said, tucking the shillings into the palm of her hand. He curled her fingers around them and then produced a much richer sovereign from the leather pouch he wore at his waist, dropping it on the woman’s front stoop. “Let her feel lucky to find it while still procuring my favor.”
Grace stood there, her lips parted, staring at the gold coin on the lip of Maude’s doorway. “Wouldn’t you protect her anyway?” she asked, following Keir to where he secured the wrapped herbs into a bag tied to his horse.
“Aye,” Keir said, “but it gives her ease to know I will do so not from the kindness of my heart, since she’s certain that the Devil of Dunakin has no heart.” He lifted her into the saddle, where Grace flipped her leg over to straddle the horse, tucking her skirts around her. Keir climbed on behind. As he leaned forward to take the reins, questions swarmed inside Grace’s mind, but she kept her mouth firmly shut. The boulder of anxiousness, which Grace tried to deny, cracked further open as she thought about the woman’s palpable fear. Who exactly was Keir Mackinnon, the Devil of Dunakin? She must keep her attention focused on finding a way out of this mess.
Chapter Twelve
The boat creaked as the oarsmen rowed the stout vessel across the channel. The moon crept out from the clouds, only to retreat again as if frightened. Grace understood. Surrounded by grim men, tossing among the dark, choppy waves, she felt rather like hiding, although the only place that seemed safe was with Keir. Yet she was hating him for tricking her, leading her on in her belief that he cared for her. Her face felt hot in the biting wind as she replayed her naïvety back at the cabin.
She glanced at the four stout oarsmen, whom the ferryman had gathered, and almost laughed. Obviously fearful, they wouldn’t look directly at Keir. Even if they appeared trustworthy, which they did not, none of them would come to her aid. Keir’s ability to withstand the cold and his dark, swirling marks and fierce face gave him an unnatural essence. He was also larger in height and brawn than all of them. Bloody hell, if he put on his leather mask, they’d probably foul themselves.
The hulking shape of the Isle of Skye lay in shadows, but the men knew the way and eventually pulled the pitching ferry against a dock where several warriors stood, swords in hand. They yelled something out in Gaelic, which Brodie answered in the same booming voice. Keir lifted Grace onto his horse but left her on the ferry to walk forward with Brodie. If they were still on the mainland, she’d be tempted to wield Little Warrior around and charge away, but on the island she had no idea which way to go to find sanctuary.
Keir walked up to the men guarding the shore. He didn’t even have his sword out, but they all took a step back as he advanced. One by one, they lowered their weapons. Brodie offered some words that sounded like a demand, and each man bowed his head, and Keir sauntered back to retrieve her.
He lifted himself easily into the seat behind her. “Kinsmen?” she whispered.
“Defeated foes,” he answered near her ear. He wrapped an arm securely about her middle, and with barely a warning, the horse surged forward off the ferry, making Grace gulp in a quick breath of salty sea air. She clasped the saddle horn as they rode straight toward the gathered men, making them leap out of the way of Little Warrior’s thundering hooves. Horse and riders tore up the shore, diving into the darkness of the forest, Brodie bringing up the rear.
After long minutes of dodging trees along the narrowest of paths, Keir slowed his horse. “Was that necessary?” Grace asked.
“Aye,” Keir said. He twisted behind and yanked his heavy wrapping out of one sack, pulling it around himsel
f.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For regaining your mind and putting some covering on. Watching others suffer makes me suffer.”
“I wasn’t suffering.”
“Humph. Of course you were. Or does the Devil of Dunakin not suffer?”
Keir didn’t answer, and she looked behind her. Shadows and moonlight slanted across his face as they rode under leaf-bare trees. His eyes were obsidian, filled with night, and his lips, which she knew to be warm and tender, pinched together in determination. Gone was the man from the snowy cabin where they’d spent five days. Gone was the man who had kissed her with gentleness, playfulness, and molten passion.
Tugging at her glove, she shucked it and raised her naked fingers to his bearded jaw. She stroked upward to his cheek, and he glanced down at her. “You do suffer. We all do. It is not a weakness. Suffering can make one stronger.”
The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “How do ye think I became the Devil of Dunakin, lass? The strongest warrior in the Highlands?”
His gaze turned outward again, and after a long moment, she turned to face front. The forest thinned until they crossed a snowy moor where the horses ran as if sensing home. “Is this Mackinnon land?” she asked when they slowed to enter more forest.
“Nay,” Brodie said from his seat a few yards away. “MacDonald. That’s who met us at the shore. It is the closest shore to Mallaig, though, so we land there and ride the rest of the way to Mackinnon land. Until we reach it, we must be on guard.”
“How do you know when you’re on Mackinnon land in the dark?” she asked, looking around suspiciously at shadows, all of which now seemed sinister. Could MacDonalds of Skye be hiding to ambush them like the thieves?
“Oh, ye’ll know, lass,” Brodie said, his usual light tone coming out hard.
Curiosity made her sit higher in the seat, waiting to see something that would mark the boundary. “Is it much farther?” She was nervous and could use the privy if presented with one. She blamed both on the darkness and Keir’s fierce transformation since Mallaig.
“We open up onto a moor after this forest,” Keir said. “It sits before the village that leads up to Dunakin Castle.”
Through the forest, Grace could see the flash of firelight. “I see torches,” she said. Perhaps Mackinnons guarded the boundaries.
Keir slowed his horse within the trees and threw off his fur wrappings. He pulled them around to the front of Grace. She opened her mouth to tell him once again how foolish it was to go without clothing in winter when she felt his warm breath touch the side of her face.
“Grace,” he said, a hint of the Keir she’d known in the cabin in his tone. “Ye will want to hide under my cloak as we cross.”
A prickle of dread skittered across her back, and she almost ducked under without asking. Grace inhaled, finding bravery in the fact that she sat before the fiercest warrior in the Highlands, half godlike and half devil. “I am stronger than you think.”
“Granted,” he whispered, “but ye may want to close your eyes.” He straightened in the saddle, and Grace looked out over his horse’s head. Little Warrior must know they were almost home, but instead of relaxing, the horse’s ears flicked as if he sensed danger. Keir clicked his tongue, and they rode forward, building speed as they neared the edge of the woods. Grace could see torches set in a curve fifty yards back from the tree line. They burned upward into the sky from some type of brackets, but what caught at Grace’s inhale was the roundish objects hovering before them.
Keir pressed them into a gallop as they neared the line of fires. Despite the speed, time froze as Grace clung to the saddle horn, her legs clutching to hold her steady. She blinked, trying to draw breath until the stench filled her nose, and she gagged. Good Lord and Mother Mary. Her gaze swung around as they rode between the torches where human heads sat on spikes jutting out from the torch shafts. A line of them stared outward, guarding the perimeter. Dozens of torches, and from what Grace could see, each one had a ragged, decaying head attached to it, stabbed up through the neck.
Her body grew numb, and nausea bubbled in her stomach. Only Keir’s arm around her middle kept her firmly in the seat. He said something about taking longer breaths, but Grace could focus only on the images of impaled heads, their eyes black as if crows had already pecked them clean, their mouths frozen open in grotesque grimaces, showing their last moments of anguish. Arms tingling and her breath coming so fast her throat hurt, Grace let the blessing of darkness close in until the images dissolved into oblivion.
…
Keir halted Cogadh in the bailey. They’d been spotted riding across the moor, and Liam had raised the portcullis for Brodie and him to ride through. Holding Grace against one shoulder, Keir dismounted, pulling her off into his arms. Damnation. If she’d shut her eyes or gone under the cloak, she’d be awake right now, asking him more questions he couldn’t answer instead of looking… Keir leaned over her until he could ascertain that breath issued from her parted lips. Och, those beautiful, soft lips. He looked away, knowing that they were probably lost to him forever.
The front doors of the keep banged open, the space filling with firelight from the great hall inside. Brodie dismounted to walk across to meet Rab next to Keir.
“Ye’ve returned sooner than I’d expected,” Keir’s brother, Rab, said. His dark hair stood out in disarray, and his shirt sat about his waist untucked and stained. He’d been considered handsome before, but too much grief had beaten against him when Bradana died.
“I hurried to bring help for Lachlan,” Keir said.
“What did ye do to her?” Rab asked.
“She saw the heads,” Brodie answered, leading the way into the empty hall.
Rab chuckled. “They are a beautiful sight, ain’t they.”
“I will be back after I lay her down to recover,” Keir said and headed for the stairs that curved around on themselves, leading to two more floors above. The wolf bite ached slightly at the climb, but it barely registered. Aye, the lass was a talented healer.
At the very top, he walked along the dark, cold corridor to his bedroom, pushing the door open with his boot. Pitch black met him, but he knew his way. Laying her down gently on the furs across the large down-filled tick, he went to the hearth, throwing in kindling and peat he kept ready along with a flint. Within minutes he had a small, growing fire splashing light about the stark room.
Standing, he touched the small portrait of his mother that sat on the mantel, as he always did when returning home. He looked over to the lass laid out on the bed. What would Margaret Mackinnon think of Grace? Despite fainting from the sight of bodiless heads, Grace Ellington was brave, even if she didn’t know it. For one, she stood up to him, the only woman, the only person besides Aonghus Mackinnon, who ever had. She’d worked to keep them alive and had healed him in the cabin instead of abandoning him, which also showed how kind she was. Kind and brave and beautiful like…an angel. Perhaps Brodie was right, and she was dangerous to the Devil. The thought brought a lightness to his chest.
He grabbed a fresh shirt from the chest at the end of the bed and stepped around to Grace. He raised the fur on the bed up to her chin. It was best for her to sleep off the blow, because she might be up all night with Lachlan. And if she woke with him still there, she’d have questions about the heads, his family, and the Devil, questions for which he had no good answers.
Shutting the door, he signaled to one of the maids down the hall, who walked toward him like a woman condemned. “There’s a lass in my room,” Keir said. He thought the maid’s name was Peigi, a girl from the village. “She has fainted. Sit with her and keep her calm when she wakes.”
Peigi nodded and swallowed, probably wondering what he’d done to make Grace faint. “See that she receives food and ale, and a bath if she wishes. I will be up later.”
“Aye, sir.” She hurried past him and pushed into his room.
Keir frowned as he p
ulled on the fresh shirt. Normally, he ignored the fear he raised in everyone around him, but since Grace had disliked the reaction, the maid’s scurrying irritated him.
Mo chreach. He was the Devil of Dunakin. The only things that mattered were his ability to induce fear and his strength to fight for his clan. Grace knew nothing of his life here, his place and duty, and she most likely never would. She’d help Lachlan, and he’d take her safely home.
Keir strode into the great hall below, where Rab sat with Brodie and Dara’s new suitor, the tiresome and scarred Normond MacInnes.
“Where is she?” MacInnes demanded.
“She’s resting from the journey,” Keir said, glancing at Brodie. His friend shook his head, telling Keir what he already knew. Brodie wouldn’t say a word about Grace, or the journey, without him present.
“I want her brought to my chambers,” MacInnes said, turning to Rab. “Mairi Maclean MacInnes and I have a matter to discuss.”
Rab had the alertness to frown over the request, although he looked pale with circles under his eyes. Normally by now his brother was drunk past caring, but they’d arrived before he’d downed too much whisky. “What matter would ye discuss with a beautiful lass alone, when ye’ve just asked my sister to wed?”
MacInnes ran a dirty hand up through his cropped wheat-colored hair, his mouth twisting under his badly crooked nose. “’Tis personal, and I would see it done before I pledge my life to your sister.”
Keir narrowed his eyes at the man’s tone, knowing he wouldn’t let the bastard near Grace. How could Dara wish to wed this man? “I did not bring Mairi Maclean here,” he said, watching MacInnes closely.
“What?” The word burst from his twisted mouth, followed by a line of foul cursing. “Where is Mairi?”
“Who did ye bring?” Rab asked, his face growing red. He leaned back in his seat as if the chair held him up. Maybe he had been drinking. “Ye were tasked with finding the Maclean healer. ’Twas your duty.”
“I know my duty,” Keir said softly, his hands curling into fists. “I made a choice to help Lachlan instead of helping this bastard seek some sort of revenge on a lass,” he said, looking to MacInnes. “And I have reason to believe Mairi Maclean isn’t a healer like you said.”
The Devil of Dunakin Castle (Highland Isles) Page 10
