by Tracy Fobes
Usually Sionnach bounded up to see her when she entered. So where was he, then? She searched for glimpses of his little red body and saw only the yellows and golds of cut straw and hay.
Pulling her panflute from her pocket, she called to him with sweet, high notes.
He didn’t answer.
Frowning, she waded through the straw, gently kicking it up to see if he’d hidden himself somewhere. Her alarm growing, she checked his food dish and discovered the remains of a meal. She was just about ready to go for help when she discovered him lying atop a bale of hay, near the small mullioned window that offered a view into the yard beyond.
“Sionnach!” She rushed to his side and fell onto her knees. Her hand trembling, she ran it over his soft red fur. To her relief, she discovered that his heart still beat strong and he breathed normally.
Blinking, Sionnach opened his eyes and stretched.
He’d been sleeping.
Her brow furrowed. The fox never slept this late. What had he been doing to make himself so tired?
He sat up on his haunches and shook himself. His gaze went directly to the window. Measured yips emerged from his throat. He admitted that he no longer bothered to awaken early, for he couldn’t chase rabbits who hopped about in the first rays of dawn anymore. Who cared what time he awoke?
Her spirits sank. She didn’t like that disinterest in his eyes. And she could see he wasn’t eating. When she asked if he’d caught any mice lately, he said no.
Stiff legged, he walked over to the window and peered out, yipping about the day being a glorious one — a glorious one that he couldn’t enjoy.
She scratched behind his ears.
Licking himself listlessly, he seemed only half aware of her presence. Then he lay down in a little ball, evidently ready to go back to sleep.
Growing more worried by the moment, she examined his coat. It looked dull. He hadn’t been cleaning himself as he usually did. With an insistent melody on her flute, she demanded Sionnach tell her what was wrong.
He yawned in response.
And yet, when she went on to accuse him of not doing anything to make him so tired, he did the human equivalent of a shrug.
She tightened her lips. She was going to get him out of this barn, and told him as much. This place wasn’t good for him. His coat was dull, his eyes blank, and all he seemed capable of was staring out the window or sleeping.
The little fox lifted himself onto his front legs, until he half sat, half reclined, and pointed out in a tired, yet knowing voice that he wasn’t the only one who slept the day away. She slept, too.
Of course, she denied it. She’d arisen this morning at eight o’clock.
Even so, her denials meant nothing to him. He asked her when she’d last visited her animal friends in the forest.
Suddenly uncomfortable, she knotted her hands together. When had she last walked into the forest? Not for several days now, at least.
Not finished with her, the little fox demanded that she play as many animal songs as she could remember.
She thought back to the many harmonies she’d learned over the years, each one specific to a different type of animal. The sheep liked flowing songs, and cows, deep staccato marches. Each animal had his own preferences and, together, these melodies formed the music of the Highlands, a song she had once known by heart. She wasn’t certain if she could recall it perfectly now, though. Her discomfort grew.
His yips growing quieter, he questioned how many times she’d been to see the white beast.
Defensively she reminded him that she’d gone to see the unicorn twice since their first visit. The beast still sat by the waterfall, and the image he drew in her mind didn’t change.
Expecting Sionnach to yip in agreement, she almost drew back in surprise when he bristled angrily and pointed out that so far, she hadn’t done a thing to help the unicorn. And when she suggested that the unicorn was beyond the kind of healing she was capable of, he really became furious, and growled in his throat. The fox evidently felt she could heal the beast, but chose not to.
Eyebrows drawn together, Sarah wondered how he expected her to accomplish such a feat. How was she to find a female unicorn that had been captured centuries before?
The fox lay his head down on the hay. He yipped tiredly. He no longer wanted to argue about the unicorn. Instead, he reminded her that he was both beauty and ugliness. He possessed grace and valued friendship, and yet killed to survive. And while many aspects of his personality contrasted, they made him a unique being. Without each and every aspect, he was no longer whole.
She caressed him softly behind the ears, her gestures telling him how much she loved him, too, and accepted him for everything that he was.
He placed a paw on her wrist, explaining that on the day he’d allowed himself to be locked in a barn, he had become incomplete. He had lost his freedom, which is essential to every living being, and his music had gone out of tune.
Then he asked her a question that made her catch her breath: Do you see yourself when you look at me?
Unconsciously she caressed her panflute. She had changed since she’d come to Inveraray. Wasn’t that the point of her coming, though? To change her from a simple country girl into the daughter of a duke? Yes, she had forsaken many of the things that had brought her happiness in Beannach, even if she hadn’t done so with forethought. Still, her life was different now, with different priorities and goals. Of course she was going to forget certain melodies . . .
The fox demanded she think on it, then closed his eyes.
She leaned down and pressed a kiss against his side, then backed away. Instinct told her that Sionnach was right. Her friend was always right.
Then why in God’s name didn’t she leave, and take Sionnach with her?
Because she didn’t want to leave Colin.
She’d fallen in love with him.
Numbed by these thoughts, she shambled through the barn and stumbled back into the sunlight. All around her, horses neighed with lazy indolence, birds chirped, and goldenrod prepared to open in deference to late summer. Though warmth enveloped her, she nevertheless stood frozen with icy despair, understanding at last that while she’d fallen in love with Colin, she could never be a wife to him, or the mother of his children. The duke, in an effort to protect her, would forever keep her from the one man she loved.
The sound of horse’s hooves against gravel caught her attention. She glanced at the archway leading into the stable yard. There, astride a horse, sat Colin. He was coming her way and, though he appeared the worse for wear, she had to admit he still looked provocatively handsome.
A groom emerged from one of the barns and began walking toward Colin. His face unshaven, Colin caught sight of her and steered his horse in her direction. When he dismounted at her side, his eyes had a shadowed look that reminded her of Sionnach’s.
Reeking of whiskey, he handed his horse over to the groom. “I haven’t been out whoring, if that’s what you think.”
She couldn’t think at all. Just seeing him was enough to make her heart ache and her body tense with longing for his touch.
When she didn’t reply, he offered her a mocking bow. His eyes were hard and merciless. “Here’s to you, my lady. You’ve ruined me so thoroughly that I couldn’t lay another woman if I tried.”
She shivered. That one glance from him had roused a coiling heat between her thighs. She thought of the poems he’d written about her, and her heart quickened in response. God help her, she wanted him so badly she could hardly think of anything else. Still, the exchange she’d overheard between him and Lady Helmsgate remained with her the strongest, and the only words that came to her lips were angry ones. With difficulty she managed to hold her tongue, instead throwing him a fulminating glance.
He finally was the one to speak. “How is your fox?”
“Sick,” she replied shortly.
He nodded, as though he’d expected as much. “Hope he improves. In any case, I wish you the be
st with that whelp Nicholson.”
Her heart demanded she tell him that Lord Nicholson meant nothing to her, that she’d decided within an hour of meeting him that she’d tolerate him only because he might make Colin jealous. Pride, however, forced her to hesitate, and Colin walked away before she could utter a syllable.
She let him go. Why put them both through another nasty round of accusations, particularly with him in such an ugly mood? Rather, she walked over to the groom and asked him to bring her mare around. Sionnach’s insistence that she could help the unicorn had puzzled her. She decided to ride out this morning and visit him again.
In short order she was atop her mare and headed off toward the cliff. The groom had insisted on escorting her, as he always did, and had objected mightily to her refusal, but she’d remained firm. No one could know about the unicorn. If word of his existence ever circulated, the poor creature would end up in a menagerie faster than lightning, and she could only imagine a horrible life for him from there on.
Once she reached the cliff, with its swaying grass and boulders, she tied her mare to a sapling and carefully picked her way down the cliff face. Images of the carriage accident assaulted her, just as they did every time, but she noticed with a sigh that they’d grown weaker. She hoped that in time, they’d disappear entirely.
At the bottom of the cliff, mist enveloped her and clung to her overheated skin. She skirted the rocks and boulders and walked toward the waterfall. There, beyond the worst of its tumbling waters, lay the unicorn, his head bowed. His white coat, gilded with silver droplets of water, glowed in the lambent sunlight that fought its way through the mist.
Despairing at the unchanged picture he presented, she moved to his side and ran one hand along his coat. Soft he was, and unbearably vulnerable. He made no movement to indicate he knew she was near.
“Sionnach says I can help you,” she whispered. “Tell me what I must do.”
The unicorn took a deep, shuddering breath, shook his head slightly, and then grew still again.
Moodily she studied him. Then, her lower lip caught between her teeth, she grasped his horn.
The same scene as before played out in her mind. A warrior with a golden breastplate, helmet, and plaid slung around his shoulders. A castle in the background. Two unicorns frolicking. And then, silver men with nets. The dainty unicorn being hauled away by these men. Her unicorn sinking into a bottomless well of despair.
“You helped me once,” she whispered, shaken. “I know you did. Show me how to help you.”
All at once, a new image began to form in her mind, of a dry and dusty road. A carriage was hurtling down the road at top speed. Several men atop horses, their pistols drawn, chased it.
Sarah fisted her free hand. Her mouth drew up in a grimace. The vision was powerful. With it came utter panic. She knew two women and two children were huddled together inside the carriage, terribly frightened at the carriage’s jostling and breakneck pace, even though the unicorn hadn’t shown her the inside of the carriage.
Hurtling over a bump, the carriage careened viciously near the edge of a cliff. When Sarah saw that cliff in her mind, she grew very still, for she seemed to know its every nook and cranny. One might say she was acquainted with that cliff in a very intimate way. Abruptly she understood what the unicorn was showing her and a scream built in her throat.
The carriage rushed headlong over the cliff, and at that moment, the full enormity of the vision blasted through the waves of terror fogging her brain. She cried out and fell slumped against the unicorn’s warm body. She didn’t feel his warmth, however. In her mind, she was weightless, her body tangling first with her mother’s, then with Sarah’s, and then with the grand lady’s. Her head banged against the roof. Then her shoulder rammed into the door. The grand lady’s foot slammed her in the stomach. A great concussion rocked the carriage.
“Mama,” she whimpered.
And then nothing.
Slowly, the blackness faded. Sarah felt pain in every part of her tiny body. She looked down. Her feet were small, her hands were small . . . everything was small. She’d become a child again. In the deep recesses of her brain, she understood that she remained within the grip of the unicorn’s vision, but for the moment, she couldn’t quite grasp that fact.
Her mother’s broken body lay across her. She began to cry, great hacking sobs of grief. Where was her friend, Sarah? What had happened to the great lady? Surely even a bump such as that couldn’t have hurt the lady.
Sarah lifted her head out of the shattered carriage. There, on the ground, the great lady lay like a rag doll. She fisted her hands and pressed them into her eyes.
She was alone.
Still crying plaintively, she shrugged out from beneath her mother and climbed out of the carriage. Mother was gone. Her friend Sarah was nowhere to be found. Threads of terror invaded her grief. Water had come to lap at the sides of the carriage. Squinting in the sunlight, she glanced across the expanse of blue water. A ship bobbed on the waves far away.
The unicorn came a little while later. It raced through the water that had risen to knee height and stood patiently while she climbed on his back. Just about the size of a sheep, he brought her across the water and carried her back up the cliff. She clung to his mane and discovered a strange toy hanging around his neck.
When she touched his horn, he spoke to her in pictures. She saw herself taking the toy — a panflute. So she took it. And she understood that he would bring her to safety. The panflute, she knew, was a gift, for as another picture of a grown lady near a unicorn filled her mind, she realized that someday, she would help the unicorn just as he’d helped her. Until then, the panflute would remain a constant reminder of the truth of his existence, and his need of her.
The vision faded. Sarah released the horn convulsively and fell to the ground next to him. Her fingers trembling, she examined her face to see if any bruises marred it. Discovering she was still whole, she sat up and hugged her knees to her chest.
“I’m not Sarah,” she whispered, her mind still trying to grasp that fact. She felt dizzy with it. “I’m . . . Nellie. Nellie.”
Nellie the serving girl. Not the duke’s daughter. Her blood wasn’t blue. God above, her blood was as red as a Highlands peat bog. She had no pedigree. She was a fraud, a fake. And the duke had made a mistake. A terrible mistake.
14
“Y our timing is inopportune,” Colin told Mr. Cooper, who had just arrived from Inverness. He glanced at the watch fob that dangled from his waistcoat, not in the mood for pleasantries. “The duke has invited all of the local gentry to a card party this evening. The guests should be arriving at any moment.”
The Bow Street runner lifted an eyebrow. “Is this Lady Sarah’s first introduction to society?”
Colin nodded, then looked away. A gulf had opened up between himself and Sarah, and he couldn’t find any way to cross it. At the same time, that whelp Nicholson drew ever closer to her, flattering her and charming her with his smooth words and handsome looks.
Turning back to the runner, he asked the man in a defeated voice to return on the morrow, after the card party.
“If I may say so, my lord, what I have learned cannot wait, even for Lady Sarah’s introduction. And once you hear my news, I believe you’ll agree.”
Eyes narrowed, Colin heard the excitement in the runner’s tone and was intrigued despite his low spirits. He briskly walked the man to the study, where he closed the door behind them to insure their privacy. “Tell me what you’ve discovered in Inverness.”
The other man remained standing, and Colin didn’t bother to ask the runner to make himself comfortable. This business about investigating her had become abhorrent to him as time wore on. He preferred to end their meeting as quickly as possible. Still, he wouldn’t stick his head in the sand and refuse to hear what Cooper had uncovered.
“All of the shipyards opened their ledgers to me . . . for a price,” Cooper said in that understated way of his. “It
took some digging, but I did find mention of a ship called Nederlander, which had sailed from the port at Inverness in enough time to place it in the general vicinity of the carriage accident.”
“Nederlander.” Colin rubbed his chin with two fingers. “Dutch, I assume.”
“Dutch, indeed. She made port in Marseille a few days later.”
“Is that all?”
Sidling closer, Cooper lowered his voice confidentially. “While I was in Inverness, I made my rounds through the taverns. One of the men there, a Frenchman by the name of LeBlanc, vaguely remembered sailing the Nederlander. He claimed that on a day he described as Satan’s own, when the wind refused to blow and the ship foundered in the ocean for several hours, they plucked some wreckage from the sea: ladies’ silk dresses, shoes . . . and a little girl, clinging to a wooden door of some sort.”
Colin stilled. “God’s blood, man, are you serious?”
“As a nun,” Cooper confirmed.
“Then your reputation as the finest bloodhound in England is well deserved. Did this LeBlanc have any idea who the girl was, or where she had come from?”
“At the time, LeBlanc didn’t speak English, and neither did his crewmates, so they didn’t understand her babbling. They simply took her to Marseille and dumped her in a convent there.”
“How old was the girl? Does the timing fit?”
“LeBlanc’s memory is that of an old man’s. Fuzzy. From what I can tell, there’s a good possibility the girl they found is approximately the same age as Lady Sarah.”
Mouth tightening, Colin nodded, then walked over to the window, where he stared out at the grounds which sparkled in the moonlight. He saw nothing, his mind intent on the dilemma Cooper had presented him. If he sent Cooper to France, the runner could return with the serving maid’s daughter.
