Highland Sword

by May McGoldrick

  “I’m finished intentionally injuring you.”

  “So you admit that this last blow you delivered to my eye was intentional?”

  “I admit to no such thing.”

  “You said ‘intentionally,’ proof that there was premeditated malice involved. You clearly had control over your actions.”

  She turned around to face him. She was standing on the step above him, and they were face-to-face. They had another flight of stairs to go to reach the top, but light poured down on her, bathing her in a beatific glow. She might have been an angel appearing from the heavens.

  “I’ve apologized too many times already.”

  She peered closely at his eye. He stared at her lips. They were only inches away from his. He inhaled the scent of mountain pine in her hair. Thoughts raced through his mind of tasting her lips, gathering her in his arms, running his hands over the curve of her breasts.

  Suddenly, he felt as awkward as a schoolboy.

  She touched his bruised cheekbone with feathery softness, and Aidan felt his breeches tighten. Schoolboy or not, he wanted her.

  “The swelling is almost gone. The black and purple are giving way to a greenish tinge. The colors improve your looks.”

  “Improve, did you say?”

  “Of course. You look tougher. More battle-tested. A face like that says you’re not afraid to go after what you want.” She turned on her heel and ran up the rest of the steps to the tower.

  Aidan remained where he was for a moment to give his body a chance to recover. How was it that this woman was so constantly in his thoughts? Wherever he was, he found himself looking for her. Wondering where she was, what she was doing, and when he’d see her again.

  Over this past fortnight, beauty had been redefined for Aidan: she was tall with dark brown eyes and auburn hair, and she kept a sgian dubh in her boot.

  He shook his head to clear it and continued up the stairs after her.

  Stepping into the open air, he saw her immediately. Morrigan was standing in a gap in the crenellated parapet. She leaned over the edge to get a better view of the men in the training yard.

  “Were you down there today?”

  “Not this morning. Niall started everyone early.”

  Aidan knew Niall Campbell from their time in the military. Sebastian was a longtime friend of his. Campbell had been a career soldier and a good one. A lieutenant in the 42nd Royal Highlander Regiment, he had been recognized many times for his bravery and service. To have him now siding with Cinaed was a major coup for the son of Scotland.

  “Does he mind you training with the men?”

  “Of course not. Neither does Cinaed. Nor any of the Mackintoshes, for that matter,” she told him. “Here in the Highlands, the men like their women tough and ready to do battle beside them.”

  “I know. I’m a Highlander too.”

  “My apologies.” She gave him a side look. “It’s easy to forget.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well … a barrister? A politician?” She paused, searching for the appropriate words. “Your chosen professions evoke certain qualities. A refined disposition. A certain genteelness of behavior, speech, attitude, dress, and bearing. I believe all of those things are necessary for one to be successful as a member of Parliament. You, sir, possess all of them. I’m certain you’ll be the toast of society in London. I can’t imagine you driving a herd to market or sweating behind a plow.”

  “Genteelness of dress?” he scoffed. “Why do I feel like I’ve just been insulted?”

  “You shouldn’t. I meant it as a compliment.” She turned her attention back to the men training in the yard.

  Her comments and her conspicuously detached manner hinted at her true feelings. She now saw him as a politician, and she didn’t care for it. He didn’t know why. Someone needed to represent the people of the Highlands. Someone who knew the law and didn’t have an agenda of personal advancement. This was the life he’d been preparing for.

  “Well, before I schedule the requisite hours with my tailor, I have a few responsibilities as barrister that I need to see to.”

  “Good idea. Your clients will be grateful.”

  On their way back from Inverness two days ago, Aidan told her about the list of names he’d gotten from the Chattan brothers. He also explained briefly why Wemys’s cooperation was critical in finding out which name belonged to the agent-provocateur in the government’s entrapment scheme.

  “Right now, my clients have nothing to pin their hopes on, unless your … unless Wemys agrees to cooperate and tell me who was helping the authorities.”

  Somehow, he needed to get through to her.

  “Andrew Hardie and John Baird were sentenced to death and executed in Stirling on September 8. Hanged and beheaded.” He spoke plainly, knowing she was not skittish about such bluntness. Perhaps that was what was needed to convince her to go downstairs and listen to what her uncle wanted to say. “Edmund and George Chattan are facing the same fate. They’ll surely lose their lives if I can’t secure Wemys’s help.”

  Morrigan walked along the ramparts, and Aidan followed.

  “He has the answers but refuses to help me unless you see him. If he lives to see next month, he’ll renege on his promise to testify in court.”

  “He is of no use to you, then. I can help you, however, if you choose to throw him off this parapet.”

  She continued to walk along the perimeter of the tower. There was no hint of joking in her tone. Aidan had a strong suspicion she was dead earnest.

  “I’d take you up on your offer, if the lives of two men weren’t at stake.”

  She leaned to a dangerous degree out over the edge to stare at some people in the gardens below.

  “Don’t jump. I have no wish to lose you or your friendship. I promise, after this, never to ask you again.” He touched her elbow, hoping she’d face him. “But for this one time, will you consider hearing what Wemys has to say? He promises they are the last words you’ll hear from a dying man.”

  Morrigan turned and Aidan was stunned to see tears pooling in her dark eyes. “I can’t, Mr. Grant. I’m sorry about your clients. Dreadfully sorry. But nothing you say, nothing he says, will ever convince me to go to that man.”

  Without uttering another word, she went around him and disappeared down the stairs.

  CHAPTER 17

  MORRIGAN

  For the next three days, nightmares hung about Morrigan like spirits of the dead. Every dark corner of her bedchamber seemed to be inhabited by shapes that shifted and changed and disappeared when she mustered her courage to approach them.

  It was the coming observance of Samhain. It had to be. The ongoing preparations in the castle and the village were affecting her.

  She had no desire to sleep. Closing her eyes would surely bring these spirits and fairies creeping across the wood floor, their fangs and claws out and gleaming in the moonlight.

  She wouldn’t give them the chance. With a blanket around her and a lit candle in her hand, she paced like a caged beast. Like a condemned prisoner waiting for the dawn. Waiting. Finally, she could walk no longer. She’d settle in her chair, fighting to stay conscious and alert. Then she’d doze, awaken with a start, and resume her nightlong watch into the dark places, praying for the rising of the sun. Praying for release from these night terrors.

  As soon as the sky began to lighten, she’d descend to the kitchens, where the fires were lit and the smells of bread filled the air and bleary-eyed workers went about their daily tasks. She was safe here.

  The Mackintoshes of Dalmigavie had a kirk in the center of the village, and a chapel in the castle. Both had seen changes in services performed within their walls. Several times. But the folk held to the auld ways for the most part, in their language, their traditions, and their beliefs. Christianity itself was still a newcomer in the Highlands, where the belief in fire and stone and oak and wind and rain and darkness was as old as the earth and the sky. There was the world that cou
ld be seen and the world that could not be seen.

  Morrigan had come to learn that these Highlanders had a special reverence for the threshold places and threshold times. Borders, bridges, crossroads, doorways. Dawn and dusk. The spring and autumn equinoxes. Samhain marked the transition between summer, a time of growth and light and order—and winter, a time of death and darkness and chaos.

  Morrigan had heard the Highland folk believed that time lost all meaning at Samhain. Past, present, and future became one. Now, living among these people, Morrigan knew it to be true.

  She’d run from her past, ignored and hidden from it. But the past had caught up to her here, weighing on the present, and threatening all of her tomorrows.

  For the three days since talking to Aidan on the tower roof, she’d walked past that door. Morning, midday, and evening. The words he’d spoken tormented her. If she rejected his plea and Edmund and George Chattan died because of her, Morrigan would not be able to live with herself.

  Every time she approached, she broke out in a cold sweat. Bile rose up in her throat. And each time, an inner rage rose in response, fierce and hot. She couldn’t trust herself to go through that door. Morrigan didn’t know if she trusted herself to be alone with him. She didn’t know if she could see him, talk to him, and not put her dagger in his shriveled heart.

  By Sunday, guilt and exhaustion threatened to drive her insane. Morrigan had heard that Aidan and his brother were going to Inverness the following day. If she was going to help him, if Wemys was going to give Aidan the name, then now was the time. But she still couldn’t bring herself to face him.

  Knowing that Isabella visited Wemys twice every day, Morrigan went to her infirmary room around noon. She was dressing the burned arm of a young boy who was stubbornly holding in tears while his worried mother looked on.

  When they were finally alone, Isabella turned to her. “I see nothing bruised or swollen. But from your mood of late, one would think you’d been kicked by a horse.”

  Morrigan had been rolling a strip of linen, but Isabella took it out of her hand and put it on the table.

  “What has he done? Or rather, what has he said to you?”

  She knew who Isabella was talking about. Everyone had gotten the wrongheaded notion that some sort of attraction existed between her and Aidan. From Sebastian, most likely.

  “Mr. Grant has done nothing wrong.”

  “You always say that.”

  “It’s the truth.” She heard the quaver in her own voice.

  Isabella noticed, as well, and took hold of her hands. “Morrigan, you can tell me what’s wrong.”

  For years she’d hidden the truth from Isabella and everyone else. Remembering her past was painful. In that moment, however, with Samhain nearly upon them, Morrigan realized she no longer wanted to carry the weight of that past in her heart.

  “It’s Wemys. He has information for Mr. Grant that will aid in the defense of the Chattan brothers. But he refuses to help unless I agree to see him.”

  “He’s said nothing to me about the trial, but he has asked me repeatedly to use my influence with you. He desperately wants to speak with you.”

  Morrigan turned her face toward the window and forced down the lump rising into her throat.

  “I’ve never been much of a mother to you, never mind a good one.”

  If there was one person who carried no blame, it was Isabella.

  “I was always pressed for time because of my patients, and you were a capable and mature fifteen-year-old when your father and I married. I let Archibald keep his past, your past, and your family’s past as private.”

  Perhaps this was where everything had gone wrong. Morrigan was suffocated while her father pretended all was well.

  “But I knew something was wrong because of the way he treated you. He was worried about you when I could see no cause. He watched you constantly. He wanted to shield you from the dangers of the outside world, it seemed.”

  Too late. Far too late.

  “So he kept you close at hand. He had his students, of course, but he always wanted you at his side, in the clinic and when he went to visit a patient. He needed to know where you were at every hour of the day.”

  Morrigan thought back over those years. Maisie came and went as she pleased. Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, she was living the life of a radical reform activist, but no one ever noticed. Morrigan, on the other hand, was always under the watchful eye of her father.

  “At first, I assumed it was because of your interest in becoming a doctor. That pleased me, to be honest. But that wasn’t the reason, was it?”

  She shook her head. Isabella took hold of her hands. Morrigan welcomed the connection.

  “As the years passed, I came to realize that Archibald was watching you in the same way that a doctor looks for symptoms. At night, he often had nightmares, calling out your name. In his dreams, you were always lost, and he was searching for you.”

  Morrigan tried to steady her breath, but there was no hope. She tried to hold back the tears, but her eyes burned. When they began to fall, the droplets scorched her cheek. The last image that she had of her father was on the day the soldiers attacked the house. His eyes were fixed on her. He tried to speak, to get the words out, but it was too late. And then he was gone.

  “Robert Wemys.” Isabella said the name slowly. She tilted Morrigan’s chin up and looked into her eyes. Her thumb gently wiped away fallen tears. “I saw the way you reacted to him. You’re not the person you were before they brought him to Dalmigavie. Would you like to tell me what he’s done to you?”

  She knew. Morrigan felt a sob rise into her chest and expand, filling her with sharp pain. This time she let it go. Her anguished cry had been held in too long. It was a cry silenced for nearly a decade. The tears that followed could not be stopped. She didn’t try to hold them in.

  Isabella’s arms encircled her protectively. Her body shook as she wept, but this loving woman didn’t tell her to hush. She didn’t ask any questions or demand the story. She simply held her tight and allowed her to empty out the agony.

  When Morrigan tried to speak, to share the horror of her past, it was her decision. She wanted to speak. Isabella was her mother and sister, protector and friend. Morrigan trusted her. She felt safe with her knowing. In Isabella’s eyes, she’d never be less of a person once the ugly truth was spoken.

  “I was twelve years of age,” she began. “My mother had passed, and my father was at a loss as to what to do with me, I think. He took me to Perth and left me with my maternal grandparents. We’d been to their house many times when my mother was alive. He assumed I’d be better off away from the city. I’d grow up near uncles and aunts and cousins. I’d have family around me. He thought I’d be safe.”

  Morrigan pulled out of Isabella’s arms and stabbed at the tears on her face.

  “Wemys is my mother’s younger brother. I knew him from the time I was very little. I was happy to see him when he came back to Perth to visit his parents.”

  She’d been so innocent and trusting. She’d listened to his stories and been entertained by him. Impressed by him. He seemed to have traveled everywhere. He knew important people. He was clever and drew pictures with his words so easily. She never imagined someone could hurt a member of their own family. She never thought he would. She let her memories pour out. There had been no sign, no warning of what was to come.

  She tried to continue, but she couldn’t. Her throat had squeezed shut, robbing her of the ability to breathe. Isabella’s eyes shimmered with tears, but she waited.

  “I woke up one night and he was there … in my bedroom … on top of me.” Her voice broke, but she forced herself to continue. “Even now I remember the smell of whisky and smoke. I couldn’t move. He held me down. He forced me. I tried to scream for help, but he had his filthy hand over my mouth. And when he was done, he told me I was to say nothing. If I was so stupid as to go crying, he’d deny it.”

  Morrigan didn’t k
now if she was the one who reached for Isabella or if it was the other way around. But she was once again enclosed in her protective embrace.

  “His family would never believe me, he told me, if I accused him. They’d throw me out on the street.”

  Even now, nine years later, she still lay awake in bed at night, listening. She should have heard him coming. She should have been prepared to do something. How could she have been so naïve? So trusting? So weak?

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you, my love.”

  The rush of words could not be staunched now. She had to say them all. “I ran away that same night. I took my bag and my coat and left my grandparents’ house with only a few coins in my purse.”

  Morrigan knew where she was going. She had to get back to her father. He was the only parent she had left. The only person in the world she could trust. She walked all night and most of the next day. She caught the mail coach at an inn in some village. She sat eyeing every person she saw, fearful they meant her harm. That they knew her secret, and that shame … that guilt … terrified her. She was alone and vulnerable. Before she reached Edinburgh, she swore she’d never be defenseless again.

  The two women sat on a bench side by side. Morrigan spoke of her worries and vulnerability, of a child who was lost.

  “I was exhausted when I finally arrived at our house in the city. By then, my father had received a message from my grandfather that I’d gone missing. But he had no idea why.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  The words hitched in her chest. “I had to. I felt so … so broken. I needed help.”

  Isabella leaned her forehead against Morrigan’s. Their tears mingled and landed on their joined hands.

  “What did he say? What did he do?”

  “He said he was going to fix it. He was going to take away my pain.” As if he could, she thought bitterly. “He took me to a husband and wife, close friends of his in Edinburgh. People he said he trusted like no one else. I was to stay there until he returned.”

  “He went to Perth?”

  She nodded. “I never saw him with such rage. When he packed his pistol, I knew what he would do. He intended to go and kill Wemys. Part of me was happy. But I was also afraid. He was so angry. I worried that he’d never come back.”