Just in Time for a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  “Is that so? Well, then I daresay you should prepare yourself to be a very lonely man.”

  Nab looked at him, thunderstruck. “Do you do what a girl tells you? Other than Lady Kerr, of course?”

  Duncan thought dreamily of the knife poised over his back and her throaty, “Too fast…too soon.” “I might,” he said. “If the reward was right.” He lifted his shoulders in an unregretful shrug. “I think ye’ll find with a woman you love that the reward is often right.”

  Grendel’s ears went up, and he bounded down the hall.

  Abby turned the corner, faltering when she saw Duncan. Grendel circled her, tail wagging.

  Duncan stood straighter as she made her way toward him. Nab bowed. Abby met Duncan’s eyes, and for a foolish instant his heart rose, imagining she intended to invite him in. Then he realized she awaited his bow as well.

  With a flush of embarrassment, he bent his head.

  “I’ve been expecting you, MacHarg.”

  “There’s more,” Nab said to Duncan.

  “Later,” Duncan replied. “I am here to give you my report,” he added to Abby.

  “Please come in then. And leave the door ajar.”

  Nineteen

  Duncan followed Abby to her desk. She sunk into the chair and Grendel settled immediately at her feet. The skin under her eyes was stretched thin, and she rubbed her temple with her palm. She made no indication Duncan should sit.

  He was at once aware a third person shared the room with them.

  “Mr. MacHarg, your absence this afternoon was the cause of some concern.”

  The witch. He turned to find her leaning against Abby’s bookcase, her pale, feline eyes considering him. If Abby had been concerned about his well-being, she was certainly doing a thorough job hiding it.

  “I—I—found myself diverted by another matter.”

  “Indeed. Well, we are glad to see you returned to us.”

  Abby reached for a ledger and opened it. “I hope you dinna mind if I review my accounts while you talk. Jock will be arriving soon, and I need to give him proper instructions.”

  “Do you ever allow yourself a distraction from your work, milady?”

  Their eyes met, and Duncan flushed. He hadn’t intended to make reference to their morning’s activity, and she struggled to hide the whirlwind of emotion on her face.

  Duncan had given up thinking any moment he’d shared with Abby would be unknown to the witch, who appeared to have the ability to peel back his skull and read his most private thoughts. Nonetheless, as he wished to tell Abby that their time together had meant a lot to him, he stepped closer to the desk to at least make what he said harder to overhear.

  “There can be no sin in the occasional pursuit of joy, milady, especially when your pursuit also brings joy to others.”

  The brilliant blue in Abby’s eyes turned transparent, and for an instant Duncan thought he could read every emotion they held. Then she returned her gaze to the account book, and he was once again on unsteady ground.

  “May I have your report?” She reached for the ink pot and uncorked it.

  Duncan’s mouth dried. The quill was duly swabbed and began to scratch across the page. If he had killed Harry, would she have heard the details of the final bloody thrust while totaling her expenditures?

  “I didna kill him,” Duncan said.

  The scratching slowed but didn’t stop.

  “He’s still alive.”

  “I heard what you said, MacHarg.”

  Duncan wished he could see her face, read his fate in those striking eyes, but she didn’t look up. “He ran for his life. He willna trouble you again, I think. But I—I—I couldna do it.” The muscles in Duncan’s throat felt as tight as violin strings, and he’d wanted to add that he’d had every intention of obeying her command, had willed himself to do it, but nothing in his twenty-first-century life had prepared him for taking the life of a man who was not, at that instant, intent on taking his.

  Abby laid down the quill and stretched her slender fingers, giving her hands the look of tiny pink starfish. Yet, these were hands that could kill a man, that had certainly wounded him—and pleasured him too. The relationship she had with life and death here was so different from his relationship with it in his own time.

  “Harry was the man who told me my mother died,” she said, gazing beyond the narrow window. “I’d been catching frogs at Candle Pool—the same place ye came upon today. I was but seven. My mother had been thrown from her horse. Killed instantly. Later my father said English soldiers had been chasing her. But ’tis just as likely that was a story he made up. My father threw himself over her body. Wouldn’t let anyone near. Wailing, crying, people running around—a fine stramash. But that was my father, ye ken. Harry found me at the pool. He told me God had called my mother to his side, which sounded frightening and beautiful to me. He said I wouldna see her again except in my dreams, and that that would be enough. He sat with me, catching frogs the rest of the day. When it was too dark to see, he took me to his house for a chicken pie and a mug of beer. He wouldna bring me back to that madhouse, ye see.” She closed the account book and looked at him. “But no man can challenge my authority and live, MacHarg. Not here. Not now.”

  “I’m sorry. I—I—couldna do it.” Duncan hung his head.

  “Do not expect me to thank ye for it. Your failure diminishes my authority. Every failure to obey an order diminishes my authority. You bear that.”

  Blood thumped in Duncan’s ears. Grendel made a sympathetic whine but stayed at Abby’s side.

  “Go,” she said to Duncan. “I’m done with ye.”

  Twenty

  When the door latch caught, Abby laid her head in her hands, fighting back the sting of tears. Harry, my dear Harry.

  Undine tsked. “That was shameful, Abby.”

  The rebuke was too much. “Shameful, was it?” she cried. “I lead a clan! I dinna have the luxury to forgive.”

  “Have you forgotten what it is to be a novice? To have the commitment without the ability? Did your brother cast you off when you failed in your reconnaissance and were taken by that English soldier?”

  “I was twelve!”

  “You grew up with the clans, Abby. He did not. This is a life he didna choose.”

  Abby walked to the fire to warm her shaking hands. Why did everything about Duncan MacHarg affect her in twice the proportion it should?

  “Where did he come from, Undine?” It was a question she should have asked the moment she saw him, but she’d been afraid to hear the truth. “Why is he so different?”

  “I canna tell you.”

  “Why?” she said, her irritation with Undine unexpectedly full-blooded. “Because ye deem me unworthy of your insight?”

  “No,” Undine said curtly. “Because I dinna know. My magic is not the sort of thing I can control with certainty. If it were, you and I would be walking the gardens of our new home, Versailles, and stuffing ourselves with brandy and cakes. As of late, it has failed me in ways in which it has worked perfectly before. I wonder, perhaps, if the more I use it to agitate in matters of the world, like this bloody war, the more tenuous my hold over it becomes…” She shook her shoulders as if shaking off the grasp of an unpleasant suitor. “However, if you’re that curious about where he is from, ’tis no hard matter to find out. Ask him.”

  Undine was right. It was easy enough, and yet she hadn’t done it. Why?

  “Perhaps it isn’t where he is from that concerns you,” Undine said, hearing Abby’s thoughts as always, “but rather that he will be returning there.”

  Abby blushed to the roots of her hair. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Though English by birth and disposition, Undine produced a flawless Scottish “Och.”

  “I am concerned about both,” Abby said pointedly. “I am responsible for the cana
l and the farms and the safety of people. I cannot afford to have the consequences of a miscast spell ready to wreak havoc here like an unexploded mortar.”

  “You have convinced me, but I don’t think I’m the one who needs convincing.”

  Abby ignored the jibe. “You canna know how matters of life and death change one’s responsibilities.”

  “Can’t I?” Undine’s eyes flashed.

  Undine had no more love for the clans than she did for the English army. Her wisdom was doled out equally to both sides, which was why she was allowed to walk freely between the two. In her words, her auguries were “neither facts nor lies.” They were illustrations of what might be—carefully fashioned reflections of the seeker’s pride or weakness or, more rarely, strength and, as such, carried tremendous power to affect the hearer. Men paid dearly for Undine’s counsel. And she never broke their trust. No English officer would hear of a clan chief’s craven fears, and no clan chief would hear of an English officer’s vainglorious ambition—which made Undine’s recent entrance into the dark business of working to undermine Colonel Bridgewater fraught with risk.

  “The secrets men tell me stay secret,” Undine had once told Abby. “But the secrets they withhold are fair game—and the ones they withhold are far worse.”

  It wasn’t that Undine loved the Scots. Abby had not fooled herself into believing that. Undine had made her dislike of the clansmen’s hunger for vengeance clear. It was that Undine had decided after a harrowing spate of attacks by both sides in the last few years that she would join the rebels who worked to foil those who sought war, no matter what flag they carried.

  Abby, too, harbored a deep desire for peace, and, therefore, supported Undine in her endeavors and occasionally benefited from her intelligence work. It was Undine who had brought the news of the troops amassing at the border and of Harry’s betrayal. But if the English army—and Colonel Bridgewater in particular—were to discover their favorite fortune-teller was working against them, her head, and the heads of her rebel friends, would decorate the tallest spikes the army could find along the border.

  Because of this, Undine’s “Can’t I?” was a fair question, and Abby regretted having strayed into a battle she would not win and had had no right to start.

  “I apologize, Undine. ’Twas a thoughtless thing for me to say.”

  “Especially as you seem to be quite content to benefit from my risk taking.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “As did MacHarg. Am I more deserving of your apology than he? The only quality that costs a king is compassion. And a king who spends not a shilling on it is nae more than an empty crown.”

  Overwhelmed, Abby shook her head. “I am nae a king, Undine.”

  “You are a queen. More is expected.” Undine put her hand on Abby’s shoulder. “We cannot be perfect. But we can always be better.”

  Abby laid her hand on top of Undine’s and, though she’d never had a sister, was reminded for an instant of what it had been to have the love of a mother. “How did you get to be so wise?”

  Undine laughed. “If ye believe as I do we only learn from mistakes, then the wiser the woman, the more foolish choices you will find in her past.”

  “If that’s true, I am certainly on the road to being the wisest woman in creation.”

  Undine must have heard more in Abby’s answer than Abby intended, for she said, “If you are thinking of taking him to your bed, I beg you to move cautiously.”

  “What an idea!” Abby examined the toe of her boot. “What would possess you to even say such a thing?”

  “I have been around enough young lovers to know where a kiss leads, and you have too.”

  Abby had almost forgotten about that kiss, so lost was she in the memory of this morning’s joining. The gentle warmth of his lips—aye, he was capable of great gentleness too—the scent that had filled her head from the moment he’d walked into the bedchamber, the rumble of his baritone as he offered his companionship for the night. Rosston had tried that tack once too. But with MacHarg the words had felt like a sweet and unplanned outpouring, not a maneuver on a long, fiercely fought campaign. She smiled. The words had to have been unplanned. They’d been too awkwardly offered to be anything else.

  Undine said, “The look on your face would inspire a dozen Leonardos. Have you told MacHarg ye are betrothed? And dinna say ye are not because the discussions have been started even if the conclusion is far from clear.”

  Abby shifted. “Our exchanges have not been the kind that lend themselves to that sort of conversation.” She touched her mouth, remembering the day’s more brutal kisses. “And in any case, that is not the sort of information that affects men much, I find.”

  “Dear friend, do not lie to yourself. That man has a heart—and a growing hope to be the man you’d like him to be. I can see it as clearly as I can see my hand.”

  “Oh, Undine,” Abby cried, “dinna steal into his thoughts too. He has not learned to harden himself to your wicked tools.”

  “I didna steal in,” Undine said haughtily. “The only tools I need are two eyes and a willingness to see. You might try it once.”

  An anguished howl split the quiet of the night. Grendel jumped to his feet.

  “God help me,” Abby said. “Not again.”

  A second howl followed, more piercing than the first.

  “Where is she? Where is the nurse?” Abby leaped from her chair. “Fetch Robby, would you? Hurry!”

  Undine and Abby parted in the hall, and Abby flew to the tower door and up the stairs, with Grendel on her heels.

  The man was tangled in his covers, his head on the floor and a foot kicking the footboard like an angry mule. The ropes meant to hold him hung useless from the bedposts. Bloodied spittle seeped from his mouth—he’d cut his lip—and he dug at the collar of his nightshirt, tearing the fabric and leaving bloody gouges in his flesh. Grendel barked furiously.

  “Stop it, stop it!” She grabbed his hands and pulled them from his neck. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  He was swinging his fists wildly now, and one caught her temple. The world blurred for an instant.

  “Stop it, you fool!” Where was the nurse? Where was Undine?

  She bent over his bulk, sheltering herself as best she could amid the swinging arms, and looked for a way to loosen the bedclothes. Another blow caught her head, and she lost her balance.

  With arms across her face, she held back the worst of the blows. “Stop! Stop!”

  “Bitch! Bloody, foucking bitch!”

  A pair of hefty arms scooped her from the barrage.

  With a well-placed shove of his foot, MacHarg disabled her attacker. He deposited Abby in a nearby chair and dropped on her attacker like a berserker, pinning the man’s arms to the floor as easily as if they were stalks of sparrowgrass.

  “Call her a bloody, foucking bitch again,” MacHarg snarled, “and I’ll break yer bloody, foucking arm. Who the bloody fouck are ye anyway?”

  Abby rubbed her aching temple. “May I present my father, Lachlan Kerr.”

  Twenty-one

  Ashamed, she watched as MacHarg blinked, owl-like, and lifted his gaze from her father’s face, now contorted in pain, to hers.

  “Your father?”

  “Aye.” The familiar heat crawled up her neck and cheeks. It happened every time she had to bring someone new into the particular sort of madhouse that existed within these walls. The new nurse had been the last, and she found herself wondering if Duncan thought less of her for having such a man as a father.

  Lachlan’s groans slowed and he opened his eyes. She hoped Duncan was holding his arms tightly. “He gets like this sometimes. I dinna ken why.”

  She watched Duncan take in the ropes on the bedposts and the relative obscurity of the location. “Does no one know he’s here, then?” he asked cautiously.

/>   Her father took a deep breath and let out a howl that filled the room and nearly split her head in two.

  Duncan jammed a hand over the struggling man’s mouth. “I withdraw the question.”

  MacHarg had had to gather her father’s wrists in a single hand in order to stopper the man’s mouth with the other, and she watched as he shifted his weight to keep his quarry contained. There was something about the way his orange-blond hair caught the firelight as he moved that made Abby think of a ginger cat with a mouse.

  “Then he’s not a…prisoner?” Duncan readjusted a slipping foot.

  A prisoner? Ha. If she could release him, she would have done it gladly. “Of his mind and body. Nothing more.”

  Lachlan relaxed and Duncan freed his mouth.

  “Does he…speak to you that way often?” Duncan asked.

  “Moira, Moira, forgive me,” Lachlan wailed. Grendel, who had taken an uneasy post in the corner, whined with him.

  “Da, it’s nothing,” she said softly. “You have to stop struggling. He doesn’t mean it,” she said to Duncan, “not all of it, at least. Moira is my mother. After the apoplexy, he couldn’t speak at all for the longest time. When his tongue came back, his memory was gone. Then the nonsense began—just a little at first—he’d left his pony at his gran’s, we needed to secure the portcullis, the dead king was coming to visit—and then it got so ye were just as likely to get nonsense as anything else. Betimes he’s violent. Others, he’s like a block of wood, unhearing and unseeing.” She gestured to the bed. “We need to get him tied up again, though. At least until he settles.”

  With Duncan doing the lifting and restraining, Abby was able to resecure the ropes with no more than two kicks and a mild scratch to thank her for her effort.

  Her father quieted, emitting only an occasional mournful sigh. The lax, unmoving side of his face drooped like a candle that had been held too close to the fire, while the other half twitched as if it were being struck by tiny bolts of lightning. The best thing now would be to get some food in him and get him to sleep. His untouched dinner sat on the table next to the bed.