A Storm of Passion

by TERRI BRISBIN

  Diarmid set the tone for their discussions, keeping them general to ascertain this new possible ally’s opinions about various leaders and his role in the power structure of the isles that now belonged to Norway, without objection from the King of the Scots. All of it would help Diarmid decide if this man was worthy of his interest.

  Before Diarmid could leave the table, Connor turned to him with his request. It was time to begin gathering as much information as he could about the pattern and substance of the visions, which would hopefully tell him what the next several months would bring.

  “My lord,” he said to Diarmid as the men began to leave. “May I have a moment of your time before you seek out your duties?”

  “Of course, Connor,” he said, drawing him to one side of the dais. “What do you need?”

  “You have kept a record of my visions since the beginning, have you not?” he asked. He tried to keep his tone light and almost disinterested.

  “Aye, I have.”

  “I would like to examine those records, if I may,” he said.

  Diarmid looked around them to make certain no one overheard their words on something as important as this. “You have never asked to see them before, Connor. Why do you wish to see them now?”

  Connor decided that honesty was probably best right now, and the least dangerous path. “You mentioned to Anakol about the patterns of seven years, something I’d not realized before. I know that the visions are changing now, as my seventh year of this gift approaches, and I would seek knowledge from those records about any other patterns in them. To be prepared for the increase in their strength and clarity, if nothing else.”

  Diarmid stared at him, considering this request. He should have no reason to refuse him, but Diarmid could be contrary sometimes.

  “They are in my outer chamber with the rest of my books, Connor. Ask Ranald for his help in finding any particular one,” he finally gave permission with a nod. “And Seer, let me know if you find anything interesting in them.”

  “Of course, my lord,” he said, bowing his head as Diarmid turned away, called out to Steinar, and followed him out of the hall toward the yard where their men would train today.

  With a sense of anticipation growing within him, Connor decided that he would go directly to Diarmid’s chambers and seek out those records. And he would examine the maps of Scotland and the surrounding isles to see if Quinag was a place, as he suspected. He wanted Moira to trust him, and mayhap if he found out something from Diarmid’s records and shared it with her, she would begin to open up to him about her life and what she knew of his.

  Five hours later, he suspected more than he could share with her, but he knew where she’d come from on her long journey to avenge her family.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For the second day in a row, the sun shone brightly on the island. But for the first time, she could walk its path around his chambers and let it warm her skin as it moved across the room. It came through only one window that was shuttered during the night and opened during the day to let the fresh air into the room. As she felt the warmth on her face and closed her eyes against the brightness, she realized that her entire world had changed in the last day.

  Agnes had appeared twice with a tray of food for her, and she’d eaten it all, as the Seer had ordered her to do. For the first time in her memory, her belly felt full, and hunger did not follow her around every minute. In spite of the absence of the chain tying her to the corner, she chose to sit there and work once again on mending and sewing, for it helped her to sort through her confused thoughts. Moira may not have been chained, but she was still a prisoner and in danger from many sides if she left the protection of the Seer’s chambers.

  Breac was there to oversee the removal of the tub, but then Agnes stayed the rest of the time that the Seer was gone. And he’d been gone for hours now, since right after his bath. The sun had crossed the sky heading to the west, so it was well past midday, though there were still many hours before dark at this time in the summer.

  She watched the two servants exchange quiet words several times before realizing it: Agnes was Breac’s woman. No wonder Breac always whispered words of warning to her when he left. He feared that in his absence Moira would turn her rage on his woman. Once she realized their connection, she noticed many more personal things about the way they spoke and even touched, for Breac rarely walked past the woman without making contact or a gesture of some kind. She’d missed it all these days and was fascinated by it now that she knew.

  Her mother and father had done those kinds of things, too. Her father reaching out to stroke her mother’s cheek as she cooked. A touch on his arm as she passed him in the village. They always…Moira reached up and wiped the tears that came silently now. She’d never thought on those memories before either, for they did not give her strength. They made her soft and weak, and she could not afford to be such things.

  If Agnes noticed the tears, she did not speak about them; instead they sat in silence, each working with their hands as the hours passed. Moira took advantage of her new freedom to walk the length and width of the room several times when her leg ached, and it eased the pain and tightness there. As the day passed, Moira grew curious about Agnes. She knew not how to approach it, so she just blurted out her question.

  “You are Breac’s woman?” she asked, darting a glance at Agnes, then staring down at the mending on her lap.

  “Aye, Ceanna,” Agnes replied softly.

  But she said no more than that. She was forced to ask more questions to find out what she wanted to know. “Have you children?”

  Agnes put her mending down, and a sad smile lay on her face. “I had children, but they were taken from me…Breac and I are too old for that now.”

  Moira did not understand her answer. “How long have you been married to Breac?” she asked.

  “We have not had the blessing of a priest, Ceanna.”

  ‘Twas not an unusual occurrence between men and women. Arrangements were made between families, and permission was only needed from their chieftain or village leader. Priests were not always available to those who had not money to pay for them.

  Moira found that knowing a little made her want to know more. “And your children? They were not Breac’s?” At first, she thought Agnes would not answer, but she did after a few moments.

  “My husband decided he did not want me anymore, for he had found a rich woman in our village who wanted him. He put me aside, and when I would not leave, he had me beaten,” she said softly. She did not speak of her children, but only of her own fate.

  “I beg your pardon, Agnes. I did not mean to…” If Agnes had been married, no priest would have blessed her union with Breac while her husband yet lived, no matter the reason, no matter that it was not her doing.

  “’Tis many, many years since then, child,” she answered, that sad smile back in place. “Breac found me and took me in. I have been with him since.”

  Moira had seen other women like Agnes during her six-year search that took her all over Scotland and to many of the isles. Only the wishes and desires and needs of men mattered, and women were the ones who bore the burdens. But Moira had grown up in a village and in a family where marriage was the way of things, and her parents had been happy together.

  She blinked away the gathering tears and stood to walk around the room again. Nothing could be as it was before. Now, memories of the good kind, times with her mother and father, her sister and brothers all flooded back. She’d managed to keep them all under control from the time she left her aunt’s home until just yesterday, but now they overpowered her and burst forth, and she felt emotions she’d long buried.

  Her sister Eibhlin had nearly ten years then and loved to run by the sea. Her brothers Cailean and Dòmhnall, the twins, rode as well as their father and were two years older than her and close to manhood. Their betrothals to two girls in the village had just been announced.

  She had buried their lives as surely as she’
d buried their bodies that day long ago. Now, it seemed important to remember them, to keep them alive in her thoughts and in her heart, where now there seemed to be more room for such things.

  Could the Seer be right that living and keeping her family alive in her memories was a better way to avenge their killings than to let them slip off into oblivion? She knew about the lives of her grandparents through the stories told of them by her mother and father. If there was no one to speak of her or her family, the memory of them would die as surely as they had.

  Turning back to the woman who sat quietly working, she decided that someone must know about them if she did not live to tell.

  “My name is Moira, daughter of Seumas and Grainne of Quinag,” she offered quietly. The feeling of speaking of something so personal, so guarded in the past, made her stomach ache.

  “Not Ceanna?” Agnes asked.

  “Nay, my name is Moira. I only…” became, she started to say but changed her mind, “used Ceanna because it was too painful to remember.”

  Agnes looked at her and then stared more at her face. “You are the Moira he searched for?” Moira sat down and nodded. “He was like a madman, searching every room in the keep, checking every woman here, to find you.”

  “I do not understand why he did that. He has taken many women to his bed and will take many more,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “It meant nothing.”

  Agnes offered a smile then, not the sad one from earlier, but a womanly one that spoke of secrets known. “He never asks a woman her name when he beds her. In the years I have served him, he could not tell you the name of one.” Agnes brought the fabric to her mouth and bit off the extra thread above the knot. “Only yours.”

  “But why? What do I offer him that others have not before? Some bed play? A place to bury his prick in and seek a moment or two of pleasure? Any woman can offer him that,” Moira admitted.

  Then she remembered that spark of something else between them and wondered at it.

  “I think that’s what bothers him the most. Whatever happened between you two made him realize that the others had not mattered.”

  “So he but seeks the answer to that and keeps me alive?”

  Agnes laughed then, and Moira felt stupid, as though she missed some important detail.

  “Oh, child, I do not think he knows what he seeks. And if he knows, he does not admit it to himself or others.” Agnes smiled at her then and reached out to touch her arm. “I suspect that you made him question things about himself and his life in a way no one ever did before. I think he hopes that you can give him other answers.”

  “But I know nothing. I have nothing to offer him that he cannot find elsewhere with any other woman,” she argued, but Agnes shook her head denying it.

  “From what Breac tells me, you know more about Connor than anyone else, save mayhap Diarmid, who shares nothing.”

  “The Seer,” she corrected. “I know only the Seer.”

  “But if you have put aside your need for vengeance against the Seer,” she began, “will you be able to help Connor, the man?”

  “I will see to his needs,” she said, offering the only thing she knew how to do for a man.

  Agnes looked as though she had other counsel to offer, but shook her head and stopped for a moment. In that moment, Moira missed her mother so much it stole her breath. There should have been times like this with her mother, who could have answered her questions and guided her in making decisions about her life. Instead she sat here talking with the servant woman of the man responsible for her mother’s death.

  “When Breac found me and took me in, I thought he only wanted a warm body in his bed and it was all I had to offer him. I was wrong then, and mayhap you are now?”

  She would have answered, but the door opened and the very man of whom Agnes spoke entered. She watched as he carried in another tray of food and placed it on the table, and then as he looked first to Agnes and then at her. Agnes met her gaze and smiled, a blush now creeping into the older woman’s cheeks and making it very clear to her that there was much more between these two than sharing a bed.

  “Come, eat as the Seer ordered,” Agnes said, rising from her chair and walking over to the table. Lifting the cloth from the tray of food, she smiled. “He convinced the cook to send you one of his favorite sweets.”

  Moira walked over to see what the cook had made, when Agnes clutched her hand and pulled her closer.

  “You have suffered much more than I did, child. Worry not and give yourself time to heal.” Though Moira would like to believe that Agnes spoke of the injuries to her body, she allowed herself to consider that her soul and her heart were more the matter of the woman’s advice. With a nod that surprised her, she turned to the tray on the table.

  A concoction of golden baked dough, sugared fruits, and cheese lay under the cover, steam still rising from its surface and giving off an aroma that made her mouth water. Breac reached into his pocket and brought out a spoon for her, but there was more here than she could eat alone.

  “Are there more spoons here?” she asked, wanting to share this treat with them. “There is enough for the three of us.”

  She did not miss the glance exchanged between them and did not examine the reasons behind her offer too closely yet. Breac nodded and retrieved two more from the wooden box on the Seer’s trunk. Soon, the tasty treat was gone, and her stomach was filled again.

  The afternoon moved on, the sun dropped toward the horizon, and Moira waited on the Seer’s return to his chambers.

  Connor returned to his chambers only to change out of his soiled clothes and into clean ones for Diarmid’s table, barely exchanging words with anyone but Breac inside and Ranald, who waited with instructions outside his door. After deciphering the records of his visions for hours, he’d sought some relief by training in the yard with Diarmid’s men. Though he never used his skills in battle, he could wield a sword or bow as well as any of Diarmid’s warriors and enjoyed stretching his muscles and working out with the men.

  The evening meal brought two strangers to Diarmid’s table and lasted longer than the evening before. The waning moon showed less than a quarter of its face in the sky this night, warning him of the beginning of the madness that led to the visions. With this month’s full moon coming near the end of the month and September’s closer to that, it meant that October’s full moon would fall on Samhain and the twenty-eighth anniversary of his birth.

  He shuddered now at all the connections to the Sith and their history of stealing human bairns and replacing them with changelings, of consorting with human women, of their powers and their gifts and their curses. It was not going to end well—that much he felt in his soul. He did not expect to live through whatever happened and needed to make arrangements for those he was responsible for to see to their safety and care.

  It was long after nightfall by the time he returned to his chambers to find the scant light on one lamp and Breac resting in his chair by the door. Rousing him, Connor nodded to him and sent him off to his room.

  He spied the remnants of a meal on the table and hoped she’d eaten her fill this day. She needed to regain some flesh on her bones and her strength, and a full belly was the first step.

  Walking around the screen, he found Moira asleep on her pallet. He leaned over and tucked the blanket around her shoulders as he passed her on his way to his bed.

  After using the water in the basin to clean his face and hands, Connor blew out the lamp, undressed, and climbed into his bed. He settled down to sleep, tired from his work with the sword today, but it eluded him for some time. He’d just closed his eyes when he heard the noise. He shifted in the bed, trying to appear asleep so that he could jump out quickly, when she whispered in the dark.

  “Seer?”

  He could just make out her form standing next to his bed. Lifting the blankets, he moved over to allow her in beside him. His cock responded, and desire surged in his blood as he felt her naked skin next to his, though
not with the desperation that would choke him soon. This was a man desiring a woman, a woman who had just climbed in his bed. Connor smiled in the dark, waiting for her to settle at his side.

  “Breac said you trained with Diarmid’s men today.”

  Her soft words startled him then, for it had not been her custom to initiate talk between them. She answered his questions reluctantly or he could goad her into it, but this was something new between them. “Aye, I did.” He laughed softly as he turned to face her. “And they pummeled me like the novice I am at swordplay. When there are sometimes weeks between my work with them, I lose strength in my muscles and become winded easily.”

  There was a hesitation, as though she struggled to find words to say. “I watched you work with his men. You did not look like a novice to me.” He laughed once more, trying to determine if she was complimenting him or telling him the truth.

  “Breac brought some of the healer’s oil. May I ease the pain of your hours of practice before…?”

  She did not specify before what, but they both knew how this would end. His cock surged at her words, anxious for any touch she would give, and his voice cracked as he accepted her offer. “Oh, aye,” he said.

  She slid from the bed, and he heard her moving toward the hearth and back to take something from the table next to his bed. Then she tugged the bedclothes down and out of her way. His cock sprang up.

  “Turn over and put your hands under your head,” she ordered. He moved quickly and positioned himself as she said.

  The oil was hot as she drizzled it along his shoulders and arms and down his back. Not hot enough to be painful, but hot enough to soothe the pulls and strains of overdue exercise. When she used her hands to spread and massage the balm over his skin and into his sore muscles, he swore he let out a groan of pleasure. His cock surged against the bed, waiting for her touch there. But she moved slowly, working her strong hands over his arms and across his shoulders, applying more of the oil to his back.