“Rae, please share with me. I am yer kin, and I love ye.”
His smile was warm, and his hands no longer like ice. His cheeks had grown pink and healthy. A fire blazed nearby, and his belly was full.
“I heard the fish cry out as they…died.”
Izzy gulped, but did not release his hands. “Ye talk to animals. I doona’ believe it is less than miraculous.”
His eyes widened, and he pulled his hands free. “How? Who?”
“Keep yer voice down, if ye want to keep yer abilities secret.”
“I thought they were.” Rae grabbed the tankard and drained it. A pretty servant, with rosy cheeks and a long blonde braid, arrived. She winked at him, filling the empty tankard. He did not seem to notice. He sniffed the beverage. “Ale.”
Izzy waited until the pretty serving woman moved away. “The brownie told us about yer ability. ‘Tis fine. I wish I had such a gift.”
“Nay, ‘tis a curse.”
“Doona’ speak that way. What ye have is no’ witchcraft, aye?”
“Nay. I have no magic, just a sense. Animals understand me, and I them.”
“Jaden-Tog claimed to have started the fire in yer cell, but someone else has helped The Sinclair…a villain close to us, or someone with the ability to get information to the laird, and his warriors.”
“Who?”
“I canna’ say, but we must keep our eyes alert to treachery. In the meantime, what ye have is a gift, for sure. Ye can use it on the farm, or for our laird, Kirkwall Gunn.”
He scratched his head. “How?”
“The wild animals roaming the forest, near the laird’s tower, could warn ye of an attack. We could have used ye, when The Sinclair’s mercenaries attacked.” Her fear for Bull and Jenny’s safety had nearly consumed her that day, until Bull had come to her rescue by the river. When an image of Bull’s body draped over her filled her head, a sudden surge of desire made her tremble. Exhaling, she forced a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Bull asked. He appeared at her elbow, as if summoned by her thoughts. Someone had given him clothes. The loose-sleeved linen shirt was open at the collar. The light blue color intensified the blue of his eyes. “I thought we were heading to bed.”
Izzy forced her dazed mind to clear. Leaning closer to him, and willing her body to ignore the fresh scent of newly-washed linen, she whispered, “If I could talk to my chickens, I could ask them no’ to wake me so early.”
Bull nodded, realizing exactly to what she referred.
Before she could glance away from the visage of a handsome warrior, too unyielding to acknowledge his heritage, Bull looked away first.
“Rae needs rest, as do I,” she said, to fill the silence.
Fia, who had been talking to her husband, stood when Izzy did. When she touched her forearm, Izzy paused.
“Isobel, I shall have clean clothes sent to yer room.”
“My thanks, my lady.”
“Fia, please. Cinnie, show our guests to their rooms.”
The young rosy-cheeked servant, whose eyes had locked on Rae, turned and headed toward the stairs. Izzy helped her cousin from his chair and, without a glance in Bull’s direction, followed Cinnie. Izzy settled Rae in his bed, and shooed Cinnie from the bedchamber. After making sure Cinnie did not linger in the hallway, she whispered in Rae’s ear.
“Bolt the door.” She trusted no one around her kin.
Not until the spy is uncovered.
Izzy walked down the hall to her room, which stood empty and blissfully welcoming. The only things on the bed were the promised clean clothes.
“Praise be,” she sighed. The steaming tub in a corner, near a brazier, called to her. She stripped and piled the torn and dirty clothing by the door. Naked, she padded across the cold floor toward the beckoning water, but, remembering, turned on her heel. Digging through the skirt’s hidden pocket, she grabbed the two potion bottles and dropped them beside the new clothes.
Slipping into the heated water, she stared at the potion bottles sitting on the bed. Why had she chosen those two mixtures to carry through time? One liquid could burn the skin of anyone it touched, though she had little hope for its use as a defensive weapon, but any weapon could help in a pinch. The other…
She washed the travels from her skin. She stroked the coarse linen over each bruise, but failed to erase the images of her adventures, so easily. The hurts she could blame on a dastardly laird and his minions. The heat in her belly?
‘Tis all Bull’s doing.
Lowering her eyelids, Izzy soaked her worries away. She stopped daydreaming about a certain Highlander, about the same time the water grew too cool. Leaning over the side of the tub, she searched for a drying cloth. A gentle tapping at the door invaded her peace.
CHAPTER 23
“What am I doing?” Bull muttered. Turning from Izzy’s door, he had stepped no more than a foot away, when it cracked open a few inches. His gaze locked on the damp hair hanging in golden waves over her shoulders, and her petite body, wrapped in a towel. A very small towel.
“Did ye ask me what ye be doing? I am no’ a seer.”
“Well, I meant…”
“ ‘Tis a good question, but ye better have an answer ye can live with, because I will no’ be letting ye in, tonight.”
“I understand. Really, I do. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
She smiled, and her entire face lit up. His groin tightened, and he glanced down at his feet, keeping his hands rigid at his sides.
“ ‘Tis sweet, I shall mend. Tonight, I need my rest.”
Bruises colored her arms, yet she didn’t complain. “Your cousin. Is he okay?”
She glanced down the hall. “Aye. Ye?”
“I’m fine, just restless. Guess I’ll take a walk.”
“Take care.” Her lashes swept down, breaking their eye contact, and the door clicked shut.
Having Izzy refuse him entry to her bedroom, was for the best. She belonged in this world, while he needed to find a way back to his own time.
He kicked the wall. If Izzy wasn’t beside him, sleep would never come. When had she become a panacea for his loneliness? Leaving her, once he found a way home, would hurt, but she was better off here, with her own people.
“I need a drink.”
He marched down the castle’s worn stone steps, pausing at the quiet great room. Several warriors drank, while other slept in the corners. Not spying a familiar face, he headed out into the bailey. Drinking himself into oblivion wasn’t the answer.
By the time he had walked the bailey numerous times, clouds had rolled in, hiding the moonlight, and he smelled rain, and horses.
The familiar, homey scent drew him toward the barn. He’d gotten used to visiting Jake’s horses in their smaller barn, back home, and had ridden with him. The White Mountain National Forest bordered Jake’s apartment house, and a good ride was a pleasure he recently grew to enjoy.
An image rose so fast, he staggered. A sorcerer had attacked him the day he had followed Jake and Skye to Faerie Falls. His life had changed in an instant, the day his party was first sent here.
Tonight, no sorcerer had sent him to the doors of the rebuilt structure. He was here of his own volition. Hadn’t he helped in the barn’s rebuilding after the fire? Unsure if he could push through the fear, and enter the recently rebuilt structure, he hesitated. Balfour snickered from a nearby stall.
The old horse, somewhere in the darkness, was a familiar link to home. Still, he hesitated. Memories of the fire that scarred his back, and nearly killed him and a stableboy, were too fresh.
“Highlander! Ye came back!” The shadows lifted as a young boy with a lantern ran up to him.
“Careful with that lantern,” Bull said.
“Aye. I remember the last time. ‘Twas not my fault, I swear.”
Bull recognized the freckles. “You’re the boy I carried from the flames. I never accused you of having started the fire. You love these animals.”
&n
bsp; “Aye, ‘tis the truth.”
“You look healthy. I’m glad.”
“The healer made me better. She said if ye had no’ covered me with yer body, I would be as burned as ye…forgive me, Highlander.” He bowed, set the lantern on a hook on the wall, then glanced up at Bull.
Bull smiled, the best way to alleviate the boy’s worries. “The healer helped me, too.”
“The witch promised me ye would return.”
“She did, did she? How did she know? I hadn’t planned to come back.”
“She has powerful magic, silly.” The boy slapped a hand over his mouth, then turned and ran into the darkness, at the rear of the barn.
Bull picked up the lantern and found Balfour’s stall. The old horse nuzzled his shoulder, and Bull stroked his silky nose. “I am glad you’re healed, you old fart. I would thank the brownie, but he’s the reason we are in this mess.”
“Nay, Highlander. I am the reason,” a familiar voice growled.
As Bull turned, The Sinclair’s hand slashed out, with his fleshy fingers wrapped around the hilt of a dirk. Bull’s heavy leather belt deflected the blade, yet the tip sliced through his new shirt, nicking the skin above his navel.
When Bull grabbed the wrist holding the dirk, the older man grunted with pain, until several warriors pulled Bull off his attacker. Bull struggled, then went still, as someone beside him held a blade to his throat. Warm blood trickled down his cool skin.
“Yer not so high and mighty now,” said Ian MacGregor.
Great, the slimy bastard who jumped me and broke my nose, is here. “I still have the bruises you gave me. What’s the matter? Worried I might beat you to a pulp, again?”
The MacGregor swine growled, but a few Gaelic words from The Sinclair made him heel.
“You two can settle yer differences later.”
Balfour neighed, kicking against the stall, but the old horse couldn’t help him. The warriors held Bull against the barn wall. The rough-hewn wood raked his back, tearing the shirt. Blood from the injury dampened the front.
Trapped.
As the Sinclair sauntered closer, Bull yelled, “Sound the alarm. We’re under attack!”
A rear door slammed, and Bull prayed the stable boy had heeded his words. “You will all die, and soon.”
The blade at his neck lowered, as Ian turned and ran after the stable boy.
“Ye first, Highlander.”
As the old warrior raised his dirk to strike again, Bull flexed the muscles in both arms, pushed off the wall, throwing his captors forward. Roaring curses, they tumbled into The Sinclair, then fell to the floor.
“I think you’re under a misconception, Sinclair. I’m no Highlander. I’m an athlete. I let my strength fight my battles.”
“Get him, ye worthless dogs,” The Sinclair cried, as he struggled at the bottom of the pile.
Bull leapt over them, and ran into the open bailey. In the darkness, shadows flickered from several torches above a heap of festival equipment Marcus had mentioned. Bull dug beneath a pile of unrecognizable wooden items, as loud, angry voices grew closer.
He spied a tree trunk, a smaller version of a modern caber. Hefting the long, solid pole horizontally over his head, he turned toward the advancing men. Muscles bunched, he bent his knees, spreading his feet for support. Timing was everything.
When they grew close enough, he hurled the tree trunk. It landed squarely across the chests of the five men leading the assault, one of whom was Ian MacGregor. Bull prayed that the stable boy had escaped, and raised the alarm. Others tripped over their comrades, which gave him a moment to pull out the pike he’d seen earlier.
“Perfect.”
As the uninjured men jumped over their downed comrades, and ran toward him, he picked up a round wooden shield. His muscles strained under the weight of the decoration trimmed with leather, and covered with bronze spikes. He recalled it hanging from the ale wagon, at the festival held after Jake and Skye’s wedding. After witnessing several of Niall’s warriors deflecting sword attacks during the battle at the camp, he figured he could use it to his advantage.
Raising both weapons, he slammed the pike’s sharp, curved head against the shield. The gong-like alarm echoed around the bailey, piercing the silence.
“To arms! To arms!” The sentry’s cry was music to Bull’s ears. Would help arrive in time to thwart the attack?
When black spots dotted his vision, and he stumbled, he remembered the wounds on his neck and stomach. The clatter of hooves made him glance away from the Sinclair’s men, who had chased him out of the barn, and toward the castle’s open gate. He couldn’t see The Sinclair, but a dozen mounted warriors galloped through the breach. He raised the shield and pike, crouching into what he’d come to recognize, a warrior’s stance.
“I can do this.”
***
“What ‘tis all the noise?” Izzy rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The banging on her bedchamber door had stopped, but the thunder of running feet and the cries of men headed into battle, drove her from her bed. She dressed in moments, and placed the potions in the pocket of her borrowed skirt. Smoothing the lace-trimmed edges of her sleeves, her initial thought, was that she should have asked her host for a weapon. Her second thought was of Bull. If she had allowed him in her room, and into her bed, he would be safe, and at her side.
Protecting her.
Fingering the two potion bottles, she realized she was not weaponless.
Peeking out her bedchamber door, she followed the noise. Standing by the castle’s open door, she kept to the shadows at the top of the stairs that led into the bailey, which had filled with men. Many wore black, and fought the Mackenzie warriors. When her gaze fell on Bull, she clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a scream.
He was armed, fighting two men at once and calling out orders like a laird. When she saw his bloody shirt, she prayed it was the blood of others. His black hair clung to his head, while his warrior stance made heat pool below her belly. A brief glimpse of muscled thighs, as he twisted and parried another fearful blow, stole her breath.
“Magnificent,” she whispered, once air filled her lungs once more.
“Aye, he is quite the warrior, and an unintentional diversion.”
A steel blade slid beneath her chin. A heavy palm grabbed her midsection, and pulled her backward into cool leather. The whispered words, and the smell, announced The Sinclair.
“Ye set yer men against one lone, untrained warrior, while ye slither inside? I see ye use such a method, often. Ye attack defenseless women while yer at it?”
“I have come to believe ye be no’ so defenseless. I owe ye for the wound on my hip. ‘Tis a bloody reminder to kill an enemy, before I ravish the body.”
“Yer a disgusting pig.“ As he dragged Izzy back inside the castle, she glimpsed several of Marcus’ men push through the melee. When they fought at Bull’s side, she relaxed. Help had come his way, and would keep him alive. She could now concentrate on her own survival. “Ye will stay away from Rae and Gavin, or die.”
So caught up in the battle in the bailey, no one glanced toward the castle doors. The moon hid behind clouds, making the sky as dark as pitch. A few torches flickered, and shadows kept the warriors’ attention on their opponents. Squinting, she spied a smidgeon of light rising in the east. It was up to her to get The Sinclair away from Lady Fia, and the other women.
“Ye are my bonus, but the prisoner ye stole, is my treasure. Where have ye hid him?”
“Rae? Ye want Rae? Why?”
He chuckled, and pulled her past the great room. As The Sinclair dragged her down a hall toward the kitchen, she struggled to keep her feet beneath her. She feared that if she fell, his fleshy hand would slip upward from her waist and grope her. Even worse, his dirk might slit her throat.
“I want his magic. His abilities are profound. Surprised? Do ye even know?”
“I doona’ understand. Ye have a brownie, and now ye want a farmer?”
“A farmer
? Hah!” He leaned in, and whispered in her ear. “He lived at yer farm, so I assume he bedded ye.”
“Nay!”
He lowered the dirk and slipped it in its sheath. She tried to twist free, but even for an old man, he was strong. He was a warrior, and his other arm tightened around her waist so she could barely breathe.
When she gasped for air, he loosened his grip.
“Hmm. So ye say. My men’s surprise attack at yer farm was successful, but ye stole him back. I have a feeling that the muscular Highlander, who had interrupted us by the river, has thwarted my plans. Have I the right of it?”
She nodded.
“Has he been before me?” he whispered, his hand dropping to cup her womanly cleft.
Horrified, she shoved his hand away. “Nay, but yer son Gavin has had the pleasure.”
He growled as he dragged her into the kitchen. When he threw her against a door at the far end of the empty room, pots jangled. A clay pitcher crashed to the floor, and tripped over it. Free from his grasp, she inhaled sweat-tainted air. He was right behind her. When she turned and raised a knee, he thwarted her attack.
He slapped her already bruised cheek. When her head snapped sideways, the pain radiated down her spine. If she wanted to stay alive, and keep him inside the castle where the chance at capture was best, she needed him thinking about something besides escape. Their close proximity to the door that led out into the garden, made perspiration dampen her forehead. She could not allow him into the garden. If Tulac Castle had a secret door, she feared Castle Ruadh did, as well. He must not escape.
“Ye lay with my son?” Indignant, and possibly furious that she dare sully his boy, she strived to keep him talking.
“I canna’ lie. He smells so much better than his sire, and is in many ways more handsome, I suspect he is no’ from yer loins.”
“How dare ye! No one cuckolds me in my own castle.”
“Well, I suspect his mother spent several hours in yer castle’s garden. I suspect it ‘tis similar to the garden that lies beyond this door.” She nodded toward the garden. “I can see her making love behind the bushes, with a real man.”
My Lady Highlande Page 24
