CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dair entered the library in answer to his father’s summons. He expected Padraig wished to talk about how Fia had worked magic with a song in the dark. Instead, the chief informed his son that he was leaving for Edinburgh the following morning.
“I’ve had news, Dair,” he said, waving a letter. “An English ship has sailed into Leith, the Worcester. She was damaged in a storm, needs repairs. They say her captain hates Scots, is known to have ordered the taking of Scottish ships at sea, killed the crews, and stole the cargoes. Does that sound familiar? We’ve arrested the crew. Do you know what this means?” Dair felt a knot of dread in his chest. His father shook his fist, didn’t wait for a reply. “Revenge, Dair. Revenge for what the English bastards did to you, what they’ve done to other Scots. They won’t get away with it this time. I’ll see them hang.” Padraig Sinclair’s eyes burned with fervor.
“No good will come of persecuting the crew of one English ship,” Dair warned. “In fact, it will make things worse with the English. You will, I trust, be the voice of reason in this. Let them go.”
The Sinclair’s nostrils flared. “You can say that, after what the English bastards did to you, and to Jeannie?”
Dair hesitated. Revenge. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Not against innocent men. He pictured the faces of the men leaning over Jeannie. He’d memorized all of them. “They aren’t the ones. They weren’t at Berwick.”
“They’ve called the Sinclairs pirates for years,” Padraig said. “Treated us like vermin. Now it’s our turn.”
“We’ve never been pirates. We abide by Scottish law. We were merely clever, found ways around English laws and their unfair trade practices,” Dair said. “We’ve prospered while they’ve managed to crush other Scots traders. We grew rich and cocky. It made us—me—a target. Others got caught up, innocents—”
Padraig snorted. “Nonsense—you’re smarter than the rest, Scot or English. Thanks to you we put our money into things that offered a solid return, earned a fortune while others lost theirs. Jealousy made us unpopular.”
“It made us targets,” Dair said again, feeling the weight of exhaustion. His leg ached, and he stretched it out, easing it. “The English want to crush Scotland, rein us in, force the union. They’re looking for excuses. Hanging English sailors on a pretense will only provoke more violence. Where will it end?”
“What does it matter? We’ll show them we’re made of strong stuff, that we won’t be cowed. We’re not a colony, by God, even if we share a queen. Queen Annie’s forgotten she’s a Stuart and a Scot. This will serve to remind her. We’ll make the crew of the Worcester pay the price for what they did to you.”
Not to me; to others, perhaps, but not to me, not these men. It would be murder . . . He shut his eyes.
“I’m leaving you in charge while I’m gone. You’ll have the running of things,” Padraig said.
Dair opened his eyes. “No.”
“No?”
“You know I cannot. Choose Angus Mor, or let Logan—”
“Logan is not my heir. You are. This is your duty, and an order. You will do this.” Dair met his father’s hard glare. A clansman did not disobey an order from his clan chief.
“Will our people follow a madman, one who got an innocent woman and eight men killed?”
Padraig raised his chin. “They respect strength, Dair. They trusted you in the past, and they know you’re my heir. You’ll be their chief someday.”
“They doubt me now, fear what will come when—if—I take your place.”
Dair saw a flash of uncertainty in his father’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by arrogance and anger. “Curse it, will you sit in the shadows forever? Everything this clan is, everything we have, is due to you. Pirate? Maybe. But you made this clan, kept us from making bad choices during times of famine and foolishness. We survived. For you—and for myself—I am going to take revenge for what the Sassenach bastards did to me and mine. It will end there, and you will forget her. I order you to do so. You will do your duty to me and your clan.”
“It’s not your revenge to take. It’s mine, and mine alone,” Dair insisted.
“When? We have an opportunity now,” Padraig said.
When I’m strong again. He thought of the cairn, growing with painful slowness. Was he healing? Could he? He could not explain that to his father, who wanted a miracle. He changed the subject instead. “What will folk think if I must give an order? They won’t obey a madman. Would you?”
Padraig’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “You’re not mad. I saw the virgin heal you. I was there.”
Dair folded his arms over his chest. “Fia MacLeod is no more magic than John or Ina or Angus. She’s just a lass. I’m not cured.”
“You haven’t had another nightmare. Not in three days. Coll tells me you were out with the goshawk. You’ve not had a drink since—”
“Ah yes, your spies. Will they line up to report when you return from Edinburgh or send their messages to you there? Will they follow me around every day to make sure I don’t harm myself—or anyone else for that matter? Did you not fear for her, poor wee Fia MacLeod? I punched Angus while trapped in a nightmare, broke his ribs. I blackened John’s eye when he got too close. Think of what I could do to a woman, especially one as fragile as Fia.”
“Then I will find another healer, another virgin,” his father said, without a shred of compassion on his face. “Donal MacLeod has twelve daughters. He doesn’t expect Fia to wed. She’s a burden to him. I have no doubt he was thinking exactly that when he sent Meggie along with her sister. I’ve no doubt that he has hopes she’ll marry you, become the next Lady Sinclair . . .”
Dair felt a shudder pass over him. “Did the MacLeod say such a thing? Her own father?”
Padraig Sinclair had the grace to blush. “Not in so many words—but he let her come, sent her to tend a mad—” He paused. “To tend you. While I’m gone, you will be chief in my stead. From what I’ve seen, sweet Meggie MacLeod likes men of power and wealth. I’ve no doubt she’d be happy to stay on here at Carraig Brigh as your wife. Take the opportunity while I’m gone to spend time with her, as a good host—a chief—should. Charm her, woo her, seduce her. A wedding is what’s needed here. The clan will love you well enough with a pretty wife on your arm. They’ll forget all about Jeannie—you’ll forget her.”
Dair grinned coldly. “What makes you think I’m capable of winning a pretty wife? Come now, even you must wonder if I’m still man enough for it.”
Padraig Sinclair looked up at the portrait above Dair’s head, and Dair knew he was comparing the scarred, broken madman before him to the son he’d once been. Padraig swallowed and got to his feet.
“You know what’s required of you,” he said, and left the room.
Dair waited for a moment. Then he rose to his feet and turned toward the window seat. “You can come out now, Mistress MacLeod.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fia hadn’t heard Padraig and Dair enter the room and shut the door—not until they began to argue. She should have excused herself and left the library at once, but she had been afraid to interrupt.
She was curled in the corner of the window seat, hidden behind the curtains, with a book on her lap. She was lost in the wonderful love poems, verses filled with lush, sensual imagery—kisses stolen in leafy bowers by day and under starry skies by night, tales of lovers who lived for the rapture, beauty, joy, and yearning of being in love. The poems were written in Italian, which she didn’t speak, but someone had begun to translate them into English. The handwritten pages were tucked in between the book’s gold-edged pages. Fia had never read anything so marvelous, so romantic. It took her breath away.
By the time Fia realized she wasn’t alone, Padraig Sinclair’s voice had risen as he spoke of revenge and pirates. She’d heard the tales. The clan called Alasdair Og an almost-pirate, the canny Laird o’ the Seas, who could outwit or outrun the fastest English ships. They hunted him
for his rich cargoes and his arrogance. Dair had always been lucky—until he wasn’t.
There really was no easy way to slip out of the room—she’d have had to walk right past them—so Fia decided it would be better to stay where she was and wait in silence until the conversation ended. She heard the Sinclair command his son to take charge, heard Dair’s refusal.
When the Sinclair told Dair what a wonderful wife Meggie would make, Fia’s heart had dropped to her knees. She wasn’t jealous of her sisters when the lads courted them and ignored her—the daughters of Fearsome MacLeod were winsome, charming women. If men were smitten in the company of one, they were dazzled out of their heads by five or six of them. But Dair and Meggie? She felt something hot in the pit of her stomach, a hard, bitter knot. Is that what had been intended all along?
She imagined Papa arriving at Carraig Brigh with her sisters for the wedding. They would leave for home after the nuptials, only to realize halfway back that they’d forgotten Fia yet again. She’d told herself all her life that it didn’t matter. But this time it did. This time, she wanted Dair Sinclair to notice her, not her sister, to desire her company, not Meggie’s, and to—well, admire her. And not marrying her sister would be nice too, while she was making impossible wishes.
It wasn’t that she loved him. It was just that Dair Sinclair made her feel things that no one else ever had. Perhaps it was just that he’d flirted with her, talked of the sea, was kind when she’d burned herself after he’d been so monstrous the day they met. Oh, she was so confused!
The conversation ended abruptly, and she heard clipped footsteps leave the room—Padraig, then, since the steps were sure and quick, not limping.
“You can come out now, Mistress MacLeod,” Dair said.
Mortified, she wished she could slide through the floor. She forced herself to peer around the curtain. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I—I was asleep,” she said. She wasn’t good at falsehoods, and he raised one eyebrow and sent her a level look of disbelief. She felt her face burn with shame. Her heart drummed against her ribs. Perhaps she did love him—a little.
“I saw your plaid on the chair,” he said, and pointed to it.
“Oh.” It was quite warm in the sun—or perhaps it was the nature of the poems. She’d taken it off, tossed it aside. She got to her feet to retrieve it now, and the book fell to the floor. He bent to pick it up.
He looked at the gold-embossed title on the spine. “Italian poetry. Do you read Italian?”
She thought of the sensual images in the poems and felt her cheeks flame all over again. “No, but someone has translated some of them. I was reading those.”
“Let me guess—the poem about a beautiful lady who lives in a tower in a forest, and the prince who was mad with love for her unreachable, incomparable beauty.”
“You know the poem?” she asked, surprised.
“I do—I did the translations,” he said, running his hand over the page. “I bought the book in Venice, a gift for—for my cousin. She did not speak Italian either,” he said, and trailed off. His eyes scanned the page.
“You did not finish the translations,” Fia said.
His mouth pursed. “Romantic poetry did not appeal to Jeannie. She had a book of hours she preferred . . .” His gaze snapped back to hers. “Did you enjoy the poems?”
“Very much,” she said.
“Why?”
She considered. “I suppose because I shall never have adventures like these, be loved from afar, fought for, seduced. It is, um . . . pleasant, to read about those who do.” She kept her chin high, her eyes on his. She would not sob over him when he married Meggie. She would bank her feelings like embers in ashes, hide them.
He blinked, perhaps taken aback by her honesty—or her silliness. He reached out, put a hand under chin. He brushed her hair away ran his thumb over the scar that marred the left side of her face. She stood still, his touch sending sparks and icy shivers through her body. “How did you come by these? You never said.”
“I—fell—as a child,” she said, stumbling over the usual explanation. It seemed unfair, dishonest to say just that to a man who had endured so much more. She took a breath and shut her eyes. “My father wants a son more than anything in the world—a lad to be the next Fearsome MacLeod. I was—am—his third daughter. My mother had two sons after me, both born dead. She grew melancholy, fearful that there was a curse upon her, and on me, too. She held my dead brother in her arms for two days before she’d allow them to take him. When they did, she came to see me in my nursery. She picked me up and held me tight. I hugged her back. She walked to the window and jumped out, still holding me.” Fia opened her eyes and looked at him. “She died, but I survived. They thought it was my clumsiness, you see, that I must have tripped her, or fallen out the window, and she leaned out to save me, and died. They blamed me.”
His throat bobbed, but he said nothing. There was no disdain in his eyes, or disgust. He looked at her the way he’d done in the kitchen, as if he were trying to see into her soul, understand her. The lump in her throat thickened, filled her chest until she couldn’t breathe. She had never told anyone what had happened. She was unable to speak for many months after the accident. She had never even told her father, since he hadn’t asked. Dair was the first person to ever ask.
She lowered her gaze and stepped away from him, clasped her hands together. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
“Were you truly asleep, the whole time?” he asked.
“I—” she began, unsure what to say. She shook her head. “I think you will make a fine chief while your father is away, and—”
“Begging your pardon, Alasdair Og, but there are three little ones outside asking for Fia,” a maid said from the doorway. “They have a wee lamb, mistress. The creature’s mother died, and none of the other ewes will take it. They swear you’re the only one who can help, since you helped Katie Sinclair’s wee dog.” She looked pitying, as if it was already too late to help.
“I’ll come,” Fia said, glad of the interruption. Dair didn’t try to stop her. He picked up her plaid, handed it to her, and her fingers brushed his, igniting the sparks all over again. She hurried across the room as quickly as she could. Dair didn’t follow, or even move as far as she could tell, but she could feel his eyes upon her back, as clearly as she’d felt his fingers on her face.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been a fortnight since my last confession.”
Father Alphonse sat in the darkness behind the curtain and made the sign of the cross. “What is your sin?”
“Hatred, father.”
“Whom do you hate?” the priest asked blandly, fingering the rosary in his long fingers.
“Alasdair Og.”
The priest let his brows rise. “Why do you hate him? Has he wronged you?”
There was a pause, the sound of restrained tears. The voice was thicker when it spoke again. “He killed her, let her suffer—Jeannie. He should have been the one to die.”
“Perhaps God has another purpose for him. Have you thought of that? Perhaps He called Jean Sinclair to Him for a reason—”
“What reason is there for a young woman to die in such a way—tortured unbearably, raped, murdered?” There was passion in the rising tone. “And to believe the blasphemy that a virgin will heal him, a pagan, a witch—” The final word was hissed between clenched teeth. “She’s a witch, father—Fia MacLeod—I’m sure of it. They say she worked magic over Alasdair Og, sang to the devil inside him, charmed it, cast a spell. She didn’t drive it out. She’ll raise the demon, make it stronger, and he’ll do more evil. She’ll bewitch the whole clan.”
Father Alphonse sat in stunned silence. Was the song a simple Gaelic lullaby, or had it been something else, something evil, the language of the words older and darker? He spoke very little Gaelic. “How do you know this?”
“Do you not see it?” the voice asked, anguished. “Am I the only one who sees i
t? The cat, father, the cat. The beast is evil. It’s her familiar. The clansmen do the creature’s bidding, feed it.”
“Yes,” Alphonse murmured. “Yes. I’ve seen that.”
“Does the Bible not tell us we shall not suffer witches among God-fearing folk? Where there’s one, there’s more. They are gathering.”
“The girl’s sister? Meggie?”
“No, not her. They will use her, though.”
“How?” Alphonse leaned closer to listen.
“They want to marry her to Alasdair Og, to give her virtue to the devil inside him. That’s why they brought her here, to sacrifice her, the way they sacrificed Jeannie.”
The priest felt his skin crawl, and his eyes bulged in the darkness. “Deus,” he murmured. His fingers shook, and he dropped his beads. He clutched the crucifix around his neck.
“Don’t you see? They had to be rid of Jeannie, since she was good and holy. Once she was gone, they began to gather—witches, people who don’t belong here—English John, Moire o’ the Spring, and now Fia MacLeod.”
“How can you know this?” the priest said, his eyes burning holes in the darkness as he strived to recognize the whispering voice, to see the person behind the curtain.
“They’ll kill you too—you’ll be next, father. You are God’s last holy instrument at Carraig Brigh, and the witch must destroy you before they can work her evil on this place, call Satan forth . . .”
“Who are you?” Alphonse said, his hands icy, his legs trembling with fear. His fingers crept toward the edge of the curtain, ready to tear it aside, to see who was behind it.
Someone clasped his hand, stopped him, the grip strong.
“I’m someone who would help you rid Carraig Brigh of this evil forever. Have I your blessing?”
Beauty and the Highland Beast Page 12
