Nodding his head, he climbed onto the jetty and set off at a pace.
* * *
“Aye, I was here when they brought her in.” The jailer was a large, unkempt man who regarded Lennox with a wary stare. “The witch whore they called her. The Harlot of Dundee, one and the same.”
Lennox lifted a brow. Jessie had garnered herself quite a reputation. Before he’d even reached the tolbooth he’d heard about the lusty young witch who had escaped her jailer. They talked of it readily in the inns around the harbor.
The jailer frowned. “What of it?”
The man had obviously been admonished by the bailiff of the burgh. Together they were responsible for keeping the prisoners here until they could be tried, and this man had failed. Lennox fished for coins from the pocket of his greatcoat and offered them to the man. “Tell me all you can.”
“Why are you so interested? What concern is it of yours?” The man was wary, despite the fact he stared at the coins Lennox held out with hungry eyes.
Lennox had prepared his excuse. “I have my suspicions that the woman who was brought here is someone who did me an injustice in the past.” The lie passed his lips readily enough, for it was one he had used before when trying to discover the whereabouts of his sisters. He glanced down at the coins lest the truth be seen in his eyes.
The jailer nodded and took the coins.
“Her and her sister,” Lennox added. He knew that only one had been brought here under a charge of witchcraft, but this man might know something of Maisie, as well.
“Sisters?” The man grumbled beneath his breath. “It does not surprise me that there is more than one of them, for I heard they gather together in a flock like animals.” He frowned heavily. “I would not like to meet two of them. One was enough of a handful, a wild one she was.”
Lennox wondered if the man was exaggerating in order to cover up his failure to keep Jessie under lock and key. However, he also had to face the fact that he had no idea how his sisters had fared. Jessie had been the most fae of them, and when they were children they often had to search in the woodlands for her when she wandered off. It was hard for him to picture his sisters, who would be well over eighteen by now. The last time he’d seen them they were children. The two girls had been forced by the villagers to stand on the pillars by the gate to the Kirk and watch while their mother was stoned to death. This cruel act was done in order to teach them the error of their mother’s ways, to redeem them. The church gate was open to them—they could make the choice to turn away from what was called evil and wrong.
Even remembering it made the old familiar pain gnaw at his guts. He’d tried to stop it, let loose chaos through his magic, cursing them. But there were too many of them and they made the strongest man take Lennox before he could do any more damage.
“She wasn’t here long,” the jailer said, drawing Lennox back to the moment, “but I will tell you what I remember.” He pointed at the bruise on his forehead, indicating that he’d had a knock to the head.
Lennox nodded, encouraging him.
“She swore she’d done no magic, she did.”
The thought of her fear, enough to bring about the denial of her magic, made Lennox sick. It was little wonder, though, after all she had witnessed, their own mother being put to death. While there was comfort in the fact that she had escaped, he regretted that he had not got here earlier. What he wanted most of all was to have been the one to liberate her. He wanted to take her home to his people. When he’d quizzed the innkeeper that morning, he was told that she was known in Dundee and had lived there for a year or more. It was little wonder that he felt at least one of his sisters was still in the Lowlands. One of the final things their mother had said to them, when she knew of her own impending witch trial, was that they never should have left the Highlands. There, they were safe.
“Will you show me where she was kept?”
The jailer looked at him oddly but lumbered along the corridor.
Lennox was closer than he had ever been, since they were torn apart as children, and yet he hoped that she had gone far away. North, to the Highlands. Torn between the fear for her safety and grateful that she had been loosed, he felt increasingly tormented. He glanced at the huddled figures in the cells as they passed. None were witches.
The jailer gestured into a cell and raised his candle outside the bars so that it shed a little light, enough that Lennox could see. When Lennox looked at the sorry circumstances his sister had been kept in, like an animal, the dark cloud in his soul grew larger.
Angered, he could scarcely contain his feelings. “They say she outwitted you?”
The jailer scowled.
“Come now. All along my route people are talking about her escape.”
“She was helped.”
Lennox cocked his head, waiting to hear more. Had Jessie gathered a coven around her the way he had? He could only hope that was the case. “Not by her sister?”
The jailer shook his head. “It was a man, strong brute he was. Dressed as a minister he did and I left him with her in good faith, to share the Lord’s words with her sorry soul.”
A man had broken her free? A protector?
Lennox was about to turn away when he felt it—her residual vitality permeating the dank tolbooth. He wrapped his hands around the bars and imagined her there.
Where are you now, sister of mine?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was late when the Keavey carriage shunted into Edinburgh. As the coachman guided the team of horses through the outer reaches of the burgh the sun lowered in the sky and the buildings cast long shadows.
Chloris felt the darkness descending on her—both inside and out. For the early part of the journey she’d felt only the hurt of being torn apart from Lennox. They had not even had the chance to say goodbye. That pained her immensely. The taste of happiness she’d had with him was something she thought might strengthen her, but it only made her dread her return to Edinburgh. Her life there seemed futile, hopeless. She couldn’t even think about what would happen when she returned home to Gavin. When she tried to prepare for it, her mind seized.
Everything that was vital and alive in her was linked to her time with Lennox. As the journey progressed and Tamhas’s words flitted through her mind over and over again, she rued her sorry actions. Would he do as she requested and let Lennox and his people be? She covered her face with her hands, scarcely daring to consider the likelihood. No, Tamhas would not be placated on the subject of those at Somerled. He’d glared at her when she pleaded with him again on her departure from Torquil House that morning. It was to no avail. He scowled and slammed the carriage door shut, ordering the coachman to be on his way, before he turned on his heel and headed into the stables. Chloris’s heart sank as she watched him, her suspicions roused. He would not let it pass. She should never have gone to seek help from Lennox. She’d brought a terrible thing about, Tamhas’s anger and another reason to hate Lennox and his people.
She also wondered if Tamhas would inform her husband of her misdemeanors by letter. She did not care if Gavin cast her out now. She had done, before. Now it was as if her life was over. Yet she did not need another reason for Gavin to despise her. Foolish, foolish woman. All for a few hours of happiness, stolen moments of passion with Lennox.
The rituals he had undertaken meant so little to her now because it was him that she cared about. I love him, I have lost him, and I have left him in danger. She could only hope that returning to her real life would restore order for Lennox. It was her only real concern. She recalled walking into his parlor and rued that simple act. Thinking it would aid her, she had unwittingly started something that now threatened the safety of so many people. Chloris realized too late that a love affair between two not only involves those two, but everyone around them. Secret meetings and stolen kisses had repercussions.
As the journey progressed the emptiness and regret she felt only grew.
The carriage slowed as it advanced thr
ough the crowded streets within the city walls. She stared out at the city that she had become part of since her marriage, and she did not want to be there. Originally she’d considered herself lucky to have made a good match and moved to the capital, which had initially been exciting for her. It was most unusual for a woman to leave the place where she had grown up, but Tamhas had made the match on her behalf. He knew Gavin through a mutual acquaintance, Tamhas’s agent for selling wool hides. They had struck up a friendship and Gavin had introduced Tamhas to many notable people in Edinburgh. At the time Gavin was an established landlord in the city, and he had recently buried his first wife. As Gavin’s true nature revealed itself, Chloris often wondered about that first wife, but when she asked him about it Gavin grew angry and would not speak of it. In time her female acquaintances enlightened her. The woman had died in childbirth within five months of their marriage. Both she and the baby had perished. Her informers hinted the child had been conceived out of wedlock. It was because of the tragic circumstances and Gavin’s ongoing desire for a son that Chloris did not speak again of the matter. The fact that she subsequently failed to conceive when his first wife had been with child only made things more difficult.
As the coachman guided the carriage toward the older part of the city, where the well-to-do merchants had their homes, they passed through the more cluttered and ramshackle parts of the town. Here the street vendors and traders sold their goods along the narrow track left for the carriage, and noxious smells rose from the gully at either side of the street.
The coachman yelled from his perch, warning people out of his path. The man was weary, having been told to deliver Chloris and fast about it.
As she glanced out of the carriage Lennox’s description of the Highlands whispered through her mind. Previously she had assumed it a lonely, barren place, only fit for sheep and wild Gaelic speakers, but Lennox’s words had reformed her Lowlands view of the heathen north. What he had described to her was a romantic place, a place where people could live and love without censure, a place where kin, clan and coven were cherished. On that last fateful meeting he’d also told her that it would be hard, that they would have to build a new life together. It was a dream that would never be realized, an impossible dream. And now that she was forced back to the life she had known before, the yearning she had for Lennox and a life with him twisted like a knife in her chest.
The bitter irony of her situation made her eyes smart with unshed tears. She’d almost been ready to abandon her fears and leave with Lennox, and instead she had to return to the pitiful existence she’d had before in order to protect him and his people.
As for her lot, she could not go on living the way she had been. Gavin did not want her, had not done so for several years. She had failed him in every way. Barren, and now an adulteress, she knew what she had to do. She would be brave and talk to him, be honest and offer to leave, in order to relieve him of his burden. She would seek employment. He could marry again, have children with another woman. It was the best she could hope for.
The carriage drew to a halt in the yard at the rear of the house.
Mary, the downstairs servant, gasped aloud when she opened the door and saw her mistress standing there.
“Mary,” Chloris said in greeting as she stepped past her and into the hallway, removing her gloves as she did so. The hallway—so familiar, but somehow strange after her time away—was gracious and well-appointed. The walls were decorated with painted trellises and the stone slabs on the floor were highly polished. It was a fine home. Why did she feel like a stranger there now? The coachman followed, carrying her trunk. Chloris spoke again to Mary, who stood by looking amazed at her mistress’s return. “Would you please offer my cousin’s coachman refreshment and a bed for the night?”
“Yes, Mistress Chloris.” Mary curtsied. “We were not expecting you,” she added.
“I know, but don’t fret on it. Is Master Gavin at home?”
Mary seemed rooted to the spot. The girl was usually quick to speak out, but now she fidgeted with her apron and looked awkward.
Chloris awaited her answer.
Eventually Mary nodded.
Chloris looked down the hallway. At this time of the evening he would either be in the parlor, if they had company, or in his study if they did not. “Is he in his study?”
“Yes, mistress.”
Chloris noticed that Mary was quite flushed in the face as if shocked by her mistress’s return. “That will be all, thank you. See to the coachman, I will announce myself.”
Chloris headed off down the hall toward the study.
“But, mistress...”
Chloris paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Yes?”
Mary’s cheeks flamed as red as her hair. “There is someone with him,” Mary said, and nodded her head down the hall, “in there.”
It was the girl’s discomfort and her sympathetic glance that made Chloris realize what she was trying to convey. Gavin was entertaining a visitor. Quickly, she assessed the potential situation. If it was a friend or associate Mary might have warned her, but not with such a fretful stance. It was something potentially more upsetting and fraught.
Chloris wondered on it. She had to inform him she was here. She steeled her nerves, strengthened her resolve. Chloris was home, but she was not the same Chloris as before. “Thank you for your concern, Mary. You’re a good girl.”
When she nodded and smiled, Mary scuttled away as if relieved to be gone.
Chloris continued on to the study. She was about to knock, but thought better of it. Turning the handle, she opened the door. The sight that greeted her should have shocked her. It would have done several weeks earlier, but now it did not.
Gavin was there, and he was not alone.
The woman was facedown over his desk, her skirts pushed up to her waist, her ample buttocks on display. Gavin stood behind her, breeches around his knees, one hand pressing the woman to the desk at the small of her back. With the other hand he guided his erection into her.
Gavin’s face was contorted, his eyes all but closed, and he did not see or hear the door open. For the woman it was a different story. Her face was turned on one side and facing the door while she was pressed to the desk. Her abundant brown hair was loose, her breasts out and crushed against the papers there. She was an attractive woman, with dark and dramatic looks, and her eyes flickered with uncertainty when she saw Chloris standing there.
Chloris wondered if the woman knew who she was, and suspected she did.
The woman lifted her head as if she was about to say something, when Gavin grunted heavily at her rear. Before the woman had a chance to announce the intruder, Chloris stepped out and closed the door quietly behind her.
She felt strangely calm.
This was why Gavin had sent her away. Not for her health or to visit with her relatives, but so that he could bring his mistress into their home. She had known he had a mistress, but he had been reasonable about it and kept the woman in rented chambers in another part of the burgh.
Chloris had never seen him with another woman. But now she had, and it did not touch her. At one time it might have reinforced the futility of her existence—a sham of a wife with no children, a woman who had brought finance, but nothing else. Now it only served to show her that she had been right to grasp the few hours of happiness that she’d had with Lennox. That had kindled a flame in her. He’d made her different, for he had brought out the deep, essential part of her, and that would never be fully submerged again. Above all her sense of calmness on the matter solidified her plans to take action.
Gavin wanted his mistress installed in their home.
Chloris could give him the freedom to do that.
* * *
The following day Lennox crossed the Tay back into Fife. By the time he rode across the land toward Somerled, evening was closing in. He was weary, having not slept at his lodgings in Dundee the night before, but he did not want to rest. Dark clouds hovered over h
im, an immense sense of foreboding building all around.
And he longed for Chloris.
The need to continue the hunt for Jessie was also fierce. He had to assure Chloris that his plans for them to be together had not altered. At dawn he would begin again. Getting so close to Jessie had given him hope, knowing that she was still alive and had so narrowly escaped trial and persecution. The truth of it was that she could disappear completely again, afraid for her life. Wherever she’d gone, staying hidden was crucial. Despite the fact he wanted to find her, he hoped no one else would. Least of all those death-hungry witch hunters. Please, let her be safe.
Who was her cohort, the man who had set her free? Lennox could only pray it was one of their kind, someone who would continue to shelter and protect her. Tomorrow he would encourage his people to seek word of Jessie on this side of the Tay.
However, as he skirted Saint Andrews and drew close to the place where he’d made his home, the sense of foreboding he felt multiplied, and fast. Something was amiss. He felt it—he felt his coven reaching out for him, urging him to return quickly.
Troubled, he pressed on at a pace.
That’s when he felt magic rise from the ground. Beneath the horse’s hooves a spell had been set. Shadow huffed on the evening air and tension rose from the beast. Glancing across the landscape Lennox sensed it was one of many such warding spells, designed to keep enemies at bay. He passed through, however. For whom had these boundary spells been set? His already troubled thoughts were stirred afresh. Something was badly wrong.
“Nearly home, boy.” Shadow’s flesh shivered when Lennox stroked his neck. The horse did not falter on the familiar path, but there was a sense of fear and urgency building in the air around them and the beast sensed it, too.
When he got closer to the house, he saw candlelight flickering in the windows. Glenna and Ailsa always set them out to guide him home when he was away. However, this time it was not only so that he could see his way. The candles were many and they lit the area in front of the house, where he could see figures moving. They were going in and out of the house, carrying goods. Glenna, Lachlan, Ailsa and the rest. The largest cart they owned was at the steps, the one they only used to bring wood and goods for the carriage making. Two of the younger men were busy covering the contents over with blankets and tying them down with ropes.
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