The brace of cold wind felt good on her face as she walked, remembering Conall’s warning that certain areas of rock would be flooded by the incoming tide and not to get caught on such rocks.
The physical exertion of climbing the rocks and the sound of the sea was good. Kat thought of how she’d once been watched day and night by Ronald and how she now moved about freely. Had Conall already started to grow tired of her? Did he now regret marrying her and offering her his protection?
She sighed, closing her eyes and turning her face to toward the sun. She didn’t expect she and Lorcan would ever be fully accepted into the clan. Mayhap that is truly where her anger sprang from. If Conall could not accept Lorcan, he could not accept her.
A wave of hurt washed over her, for she ached for his presence, his touch, to feel his eyes caressing her. She opened her eyes, knowing now why it hurt so much. She’d fallen in love with Conall.
A strange sound carried on the wind and she turned to look up at the rock face. It almost sounded like…laughter. Something flashed in the sun and Kat noticed for the first time, a small entrance to a cave.
Her first thought was that a child had wandered into the cave to explore and would soon be caught in it when the tide came in.
She strained her ears to listen again. This time, no sound greeted her.
She climbed up the rocks carefully, until she got to the entrance. She could only see a few feet into the cave; after that it was pitch dark.
“Is someone here?” she called. “The tide will come in soon. It will be dangerous to stay here, when the water rises ye may be trapped....”
Kat listened but still there was no sound. Perhaps she had merely heard the mournful cry of a seabird and imagined it to be someone’s laughter.
She turned to climb back down and a rock gave way beneath her foot; she managed to keep from falling as she watched it tumble below. She hadn’t realized how high she’d climbed and how dangerous the descent would be. She realized also the tide was rising.
Then there was the definite sound of laughter, high-pitched and feminine and unbalanced.
“’Tis ye who should be careful, wife of Conall Maclean.”
Kat peered into the cave but could not see who the voice belonged to.
“Do ye think ye’ll go to heaven when ye die, Katarina?”
Kat gasped as a petite woman stepped into the wan light at the entrance of the small cave. “I ken I will surely go to heaven, for I endure purgatory on earth.”
The woman’s face was covered in weeping ulcerations and she was missing fingers on her right hand. Her nose had collapsed. Kat knew she was looking at a leper; she’d seen one on occasion begging alms in chapel.
“Ye still dunna ken who I am, Katarina? Ye still dunna recognize me?”
The woman took another step so she was more visible in the light.
Kat’s hand flew to her mouth and nose as a foul odor struck her. Elspeth. Dear God, Elspeth had leprosy.
“My own clan banished me. I’ve been living here, in this cave, and in the hills, waiting for my opportunity to get ye alone, Katarina, for ye took everything from me. My husband to be, my future, my vera life. And here ye’ve come to me!”
“Elspeth, there are places ye can go, people who will help ye. There are leper houses….”
She laughed again. “Leper houses? Oh aye, I’ve heard about those. I willna live the rest of my short, miserable life among other lepers.”
She held her hand up to her face. “Ye see my hand, Katarina? My fingers were covered in lesions. The ones I couldna feel, I cut off. My other hand isn’t so bad.” She pulled a large dirk from her sleeve to prove her point. The metal glinted in the sunlight as she stepped closer to Kat.
“Most dunna recognize me now. Gone is my beauty. Gone is my future. Do ye ken I begged for scraps at the Maclean village chapel and no one kent me? Do ye ken how that feels? Of course ye wouldna.”
Kat stared at Elspeth, her silver-white hair tangled about her head and her dark eyes wild.
“People shun me. I am unclean. I canna enter chapels, fairs, marketplaces, or be in the company of others. I have to wear a leper’s costume. When I die, I canna even be buried with ordinary people.”
Because of her collapsed nose, Elspeth’s voice sounded odd.
“Will ye say a prayer for me, Katarina?”
The water was rising. Kat wondered, would it fill the cave at high tide? If she became trapped, could she swim to safety or would she be dashed on the rocks?
“I can help ye, Elspeth, but we must go now, for soon the cave might fill with water and drown us both.”
Elspeth laughed, the sound very much like the sound of a singsong child without a care in the world. Her skeletal fingers, the ones she still had, loosely covered with death-white flesh, clutched the dirk. On her forehead, where once Elspeth had worn a band of lace sewn with gems, were now patches of weeping, reddened skin. Kat remembered the kohl Elspeth had worn on her beautiful lashes; now one of her eyes was white and clouded, clearly blind. “I dunna want yer pity,” she hissed. “I see it in yer eyes!”
She began to sob. “I remember tales my father used to tell me and my brothers when we were bairns. We saw a leper begging for alms once. My father then told us of the Leper Knights, the Order of St. Lazarus. Those men donned their armor, picked up their weapons, and fought in battles. They couldn’t feel pain, Katarina. Imagine what an advantage that would be for a man in battle. To be struck by a sword or an axe and not feel it and fight on! They were brave. I am not.”
She rushed Kat then, and in reflex, Kat jerked herself out of her path. Kat fell hard but not far. She landed on a broad, flat rock, the wind knocked out of her. Elspeth was not so fortunate. She fell to the rocks below, her body broken and covered by crashing waves. She looked like a raggedy cloth doll, limp and unreal, as the sea clutched her lifeless body and claimed it, dragging it away from the rocks as a child might drag a doll behind it.
Kat tried to catch her breath and stand, but her foot screamed in pain. Mist from the crashing waves sprayed her face as water began to seep up into the cave. She would surely drown if she stayed where she was.
Silently she prayed to her brother Ragnar’s spirit for protection, to keep her from being dashed on the rocks. As she pushed off into the water, deep now, she prayed to God to let her live, to let her see Conall again, so she could tell him she loved him. She fought the waves and the currents as long as she could. She grew tired eventually, her body feeling heavy as a stone, and she began to sink below the surface. She prayed to God to help her fight off the overwhelming desire to shut her eyes and escape into oblivion, to fight the strange peace of letting go as the water took her under and twirled her about in darkness….
Chapter 40
Kat awoke to the mournful cry of seabirds and for a moment, she thought it was Elspeth laughing. A pair of hands gently shook her.
“She’s alive,” a woman cried. Kat coughed up water as the village woman turned her on her side and hit her back.
“Ye poor lass. Ye’ll be all right now. My husband Duncan’s a fisherman. He’ll carry ye to our small hut where it’s warm.” A burly man with greying hair and a face weathered by seasons at sea carried her inside. He set her in a chair by the peat fire and placed a blanket about her shoulders.
“I’m Jinty,” the woman said. “Who are ye lass, and do ye remember what happened?” Jinty put a pot of water over the fire to boil so she could make tea. The hut was full of small pieces of driftwood, strands of wool, traps for bait and fish, and mosses for dyeing. Dried and smoked fish hung from the ceiling.
The haunting memory of Elspeth’s broken, diseased body on the rocks, being pulled under the angry, foaming sea, assailed Kat.
“I am Kat Maclean,” she said.
Jinty and Duncan exchanged a glance. “I’ll go at once to the castle to inform Conall Maclean we’ve found his wife.” Duncan left and Kat stared at the crackling fire.
Jinty gave Kat a steaming
cup of tea.
“Thank ye,” Kat said. “I’m surprised to be alive. I…” Tears welled in Kat’s eyes.
“There, there, lass. Take yer time.”
“I was walking along the shore and I heard a noise. I spied a small cave but had to climb the rocks to get to the entrance.” Kat took a sip of the tea, grateful for the warmth of the beverage. “I thought a child might be trapped in the cave if the tide came in.”
“Aye, those rocks can be dangerous and bairns do like to wander off and explore.”
“A woman was hiding in the cave. She was a…leper. She was mad. She was once engaged to Conall, before….”
The woman listened and no flicker of judgment crossed her angular features.
“I wanted to help her. There are houses for people with…for lepers. But she did not want my help. She rushed me and instinctively I backed out of the way. We both fell. I landed on a broad rock but she fell far below. Her body….” Kat shivered and Jinty touched Kat’s arm.
“’Tis not yer fault, lass.”
“She’d been hiding in the cave, she said, waiting for a chance to…she hated me for marrying Conall. She said I stole her life away from her.”
Jinty frowned. “I met the haughty lass once, at the castle. I wouldna wish being a leper on anyone, but Elspeth MacDonald was a nasty one. She was rude and arrogant and carried a caged red squirrel with her everywhere she went. She was…odd. She would have been a horrid match for Conall, a strong, compassionate man like his father Malcolm. I didna like the way she treated that poor squirrel.”
“She came to visit the castle recently. She had the squirrel in a cage on the main table. It bit her.”
Jinty let out a laugh. “Oh, and she deserved it no doubt.”
Sometime later Kat became aware of a shadow filling the doorway of the small hut and looked up to find Conall’s warm hazel eyes on her. He knelt beside her and gathered her in his arms. When he finally lifted his head to look at her, there were tears in his eyes.
“I was beside myself. I didna ken where ye’d gone…I thought…I thought ye’d run off again because we argued about Lorcan.”
Jinty’s husband Duncan had entered the hut.
“We found the lass white as a ghost and washed up on the beach,” Jinty said. “She nearly drowned.”
“Yer husband told me,” Conall said. “I am eternally grateful to ye both that ye found her.”
Duncan nodded and Jinty smiled.
“Kat,” Conall said. “What happened?”
“I was restless. I went to visit Ragnar’s grave and sat in the chapel for a while. Then I went for a walk along the shores.”
“Because ye were angry with me.”
Kat nodded.
“Let this thing with Lorcan no longer be between us,” he said, still gripping her shoulders gently.
“I spied a small cave high up in the rock,” Kat said. “I heard something, like the laughter of a wee bairn. I thought a child might be trapped in the cave. But it wasn’t a child.”
Kat closed her eyes briefly. “’Tis all like a vera bad dream.”
Conall caressed her face.
“A woman was hiding in the cave, a leper. ‘Twas…Elspeth.”
“Elspeth!” he said.
“It was horrible, Conall. She was missing fingers and her body was covered with lesions. Her nose was collapsed in her face. She looked like a banshee, with one nostril and wild hair about her shoulders.”
“A Washer of Sorrow she’ll be now,” Jinty said. “Wailing for all eternity by water’s edge.”
“She was mad, Conall. She wanted to kill me for marrying ye, for taking away her life and her future, as she saw it. She was waiting for the right moment and I came to her!”
Kat started to sob at the enormity and chance of it all, and then with relief at being alive and in Conall’s arms.
“Elspeth rushed her at the entrance to the cave and they both fell,” Jinty said. “Kat didna fall far but she says the water was rising fast and she had no choice but to swim away from the cave into the mad sea.”
“Ye could have been dashed on the rocks,” Conall said, his voice gruff with emotion.
“Elspeth was not so lucky,” Jinty said. “She was dashed on the rocks below. Kat said she saw Elspeth’s body covered by the sea and dragged away.”
“Yer safe now, Kat,” Conall said. “Let’s get ye back to the castle so ye can rest. Yer shivering.”
Kat pulled away from him and his eyes searched her face. “Do ye truly want me to come back with ye, Conall?”
“Lass, what a thing to say! I was mad with fear when I couldna find ye.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m taking ye back to the castle whether ye like it or not.”
“Am I going back to a half a life, Conall, or a whole one?”
“We’ll discuss it when yer feeling better,” he said, lifting her in his arms and giving her no choice but to ride back with him. He helped her out of the hut and placed her on his great black horse, jumping up behind her. He wrapped his plaid about her so it covered them both. His arms were around her and his chest a solid warm, wall against her back.
“Dunna be so mournful, Katarina,” he said, his breath warm on her neck. “Yer not going to yer execution.”
“It feels a little like that. There are those who will be disappointed I didna drown. There are those who would rather see me dead.”
They’d left the bejeweled sea behind and ridden up the beach and into the hills, Castle Duart still a hulking fortress in the distance. He stopped the horse.
“I can see there are many things ye dunna understand. We will speak of these things, but first, ye need to get well. Ye’ve had quite a shock.” His hand caressed her cheek softly and she could not help but lean into his touch. Still, her feelings were jumbled. She was scared, she was angry, she was relieved….
“I understand ye’ve been obsessed with revenge against the MacDonald clan all yer life, Conall. That’s what I understand.”
“There’s only one thing I’m obsessed with, Katarina.”
“Dunna deny it is revenge against the MacDonalds.”
“I am obsessed with ye, Katarina.”
A great warmth spread through her being and she could not speak. Could it be true? “Sometimes I hate ye, Maclean. And sometimes ‘tis vera hard to hate ye.” A small smile lifted her lips, one he could not see. His arm tightened around her as he directed the horse forward with the other.
“Little Neep, I ken ‘tis so. But it makes the times we love that much more fierce.”
Nothing more was said on the way back to the castle.
Chapter 41
Kat spent a few days resting. Conall had nursed her through a fever. They had not spoken much; her dreams were fearful, fragmented, and dark. But always when she cried out in her sleep, he was there.
When she was awake, she felt listless, unable to tell him why she felt such a mess of feelings. Yet she felt if she did not do so soon, her heart would surely burst.
When the fever broke, she washed and dressed and sought Conall in the great hall. He stood with his back to her, looking down at the flames in the great hearth.
He turned at her approach and he took her breath away. He was even more darkly handsome than usual, firelight glinting off his midnight-dark hair, his plaid pinned at his throat by a jeweled amber brooch that sparkled. A hush stole over the crowded hall as he retrieved his sword from where it had been leaning against the wall.
“Conall?”
Conall had also gained the attention of those sitting at the main table—Malcolm, Sorcha, and Mollie. A broad grin spread across Mollie’s freckled face. Lorcan stood nearby and a smile danced on his face as well as Conall dropped to one knee before Kat, his sword in front of him, like an upright cross.
“Katarina,” Conall said, “Marry me again. I want ye to have a proper wedding this time.”
Kat was speechless.
“I declare before my clan that as yer husband,
I will give ye a whole life and nothing less.”
Kat searched his face. “Why?” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Because I love ye, Katarina, as I’ve never loved anyone before. Through disagreements, joys and triumphs, I will love ye always. Through the good and the bad, we will be together. I want us to start to live…now. We’ve wasted enough time.”
She nodded. “Yes, Conall, for I love ye too, with my whole being. I want a life with ye, a full life.”
He stood, put the sword aside, and gathered her in his arms.
Chapter 42
“I’ve been a churlish, dirt-eating, cretinous jackaknape,” Martainn said, adjusting his plaid outside the small Maclean castle chapel.
“Ye forgot sheep-biting, postulated, teat-sucking chamber pot, but if that’s an apology, it will do,” Conall said, fastening his plaid with an amber brooch.
“Truly,” Martainn said, “I am sorry for….”
“All is forgiven. Ye’ve always been like a brother to me. I ken, like me, ye’d do anything for the woman ye love. Now stop being a beef-biting, arse-breathed, pillock and tell me how I look.”
“Like the handsome devil ye are.”
Conall smiled.
“There’s to be another wedding,” Martainn said quietly.
Conall quirked his brow. “Aye?” Conall embraced Martainn and clapped him on the back. “Congratulations! ‘Tis another miracle!”
“’Tis not my wedding, though I do plan on asking Andrina when the time is right. I have to go carefully with her.”
Conall frowned. “Then who?”
“I can see by yer expression that ye ken, that ye guessed right. Mollie will marry Lorcan in a month’s time.”
Conall sighed. “Puking, rump-fed, MacDonald swine pen. He’s a good man. Truly. I am happy for my sister.”
Martainn laughed. “Best ye get married now and get to the stables. Yer bride awaits. Ye didna forget it’s tradition to spend the first night with yer bride in the Mull stables?”
“Nay. I didna forget.” Conall laughed. “But we won’t be doing much sleeping, Martainn.” He turned serious as he thought of Kat as a child, sleeping in the MacDonald stables to avoid the brutal fists of Angus and his men. Tonight, he vowed, as they lay on a pallet of straw as man and wife, truly, Kat would know only tenderness, pleasure, and love.
A Dark Highland Magic: Hot Highlands Romance Book 4 Page 20
