“Come in!” a voice called. Amabel looked across to the seat which was set in the back wall and smiled at the woman who sat before the fire.
She had a strong face, with high cheekbones and a shock of white hair, pulled back from her skull into a severe style. The family resemblance was there, except, where Amabel's mother's face had been gravely lovely, this woman's face was far from grave. Her eyes were warm and friendly, her cheeks round, a face that was a little like that of Chrissie, only aged and warmed and softened. They were gray-blue eyes, almost the same shade as her own, but paler, and brimful of life. They twinkled at Amabel.
“Welcome, niece!” The older woman slowly stood and walked forward. “My, but you look like your mother. Bonny and lovely.”
“Aunt Aili.” She bent to embrace the woman, who smelled of rose-water and gardenia.
“Oh, stop your fussing, sweet Amabel. Call me Aili if you will. We do not observe strict courtesy in this place.” She turned and clapped her hands. “Come on! We have visitors. Let us fetch lady Amabel some cakes and ale. We have not all forgotten our manners, for all that we live outside the constraints of Lochlann Castle.”
Amabel smiled and she saw an elderly servant appear seemingly from nowhere and rush to do her auntie's bidding.
“So. Have ye come tae visit yer puir wee auntie?” Aili grinned winningly, changing her accent to a broad dialectic burr.
Amabel rolled her eyes at her and laughed. “Oh, Auntie! It is good to see you.”
“Nonsense! It is good to see you, dear.” Aili smiled. She sat down at a small table, carved and polished and fine, wincing as she bent her knee. “I hear little of the outside world, but I miss nothing. I am sorry I could not attend your wedding. I was unable to leave my bed.”
Amabel reached across to pat the older woman's hand. Fingers that were bent and thickened with arthritis rested on the table, reaching to grip those of her niece.
“I knew you were with me in heart, if not in body,” Amabel replied.
Her aunt grinned.
“I was, dear. Now. Have you come to ask me about your husband? Or is Alina asking me about hers? The one she wants.”
Amabel stared at her. The rumors, she was sure, were almost true. There was certainly something uncanny about her aunt. “How do you know?”
Her aunt chuckled. “I don't know, dear. It feels like a guess. But if it's a guess then I should bet on races at the spring fairs, and it doesn't work so well for me then.” She giggled.
Amabel shook her head in wonder. “I did want to ask you about him, Auntie. Yes.”
“Good,” Aili said cheerily. “Oh, here we are. Put them on the table, will you? Thank you.”
The maid had appeared with a jug of ale, two goblets and a plate of jam tartlets. Amabel took one, smiling as she bit into the intensely sweet red-currant jam. Aili poured ale for them and grinned.
“Now, dear. Whatever your husband is doing, he's doing it for some misguided reason of his own. 'Tis not your fault.”
Amabel felt as if someone had opened a little door in her heart and let light enter it. “Really?” She swallowed a mouthful of cake, staring at her aunt with amazement.
Aili laughed. “Of course, dear. I remember my own dear Alec. Complete fool sometimes, may he rest in peace, but whenever he was being difficult it was as a result of something worrying him.”
Amabel sighed. “That makes things seem clearer.”
Aili smiled. “And your husband is a troubled soul, is that not right? Haunted, he is. So many demons. Duty, honor, guilt... it's a wonder he can sleep at night.”
Amabel stared at her. “That is all true.” She would have been frightened, had she not known Aili all her life and been used to her ability to see things. Knowing her, she was simply grateful for her abilities. “Thank you.”
Aili chuckled. “Anytime, dear. And you should ask Alina to see me when she has a chance. That girl could be a gifted healer, if she let herself. Lots I have to say to her.”
Amabel felt her brow lift. My sister is a healer? That made sense. She could fully imagine it. And if Aili said so, she knew it was right. “I will, Auntie. I am sure she wants to talk to you as well.”
Aili smiled. “Oh, I have no doubt, my dear. Your sister's heart is troubled. She will seek me out when she wishes to. She always does.”
Amabel nodded. She lifted her glass and let the warm ale flow through her, warming her blood. It did nothing to warm the chill that crept over her. Aili was... disconcerting. She always was.
“And so, this man of yours is not here now, then?” Aili asked questioningly. “I understand there's a raid on?”
“Yes. There is. You saw it from the walls?”
Aili chuckled. “Impossible to miss news in this castle. Doesn't matter where I was when they left.”
Amabel was left with the slightly discomforting notion that Aili did not need to obtain information from human sources. “Yes, Auntie.”
Aunt Aili chuckled. “Well, all I can say is, mind your man is fighting on the right side. Seems to me there's more to raids than who's raiding. There's more to blame than who's doing.”
Amabel frowned at her. That made no sense. But she knew Aili, and knew it would in time.
“Yes, Auntie.”
Aili raised a brow. “Don't ‘yes, Auntie.’ I know full well you think I talk nonsense, young lady. But mind me. It will make sense one day.”
Amabel swallowed hard. “I know. I trust you.”
Her aunt chuckled. “Good.”
She fixed her with that stone-blue gaze. Then, as abruptly, she looked away.
“I was meaning to ask you, dear... when you go into the town, do you think you could fetch me up a bolt of cloth? Only I wanted to put a tapestry on that wall over there. I was thinking perhaps gray velvet?”
Amabel blinked. From prophecy and enigma to down-to-earth and ordinary, in an instant? That was Aunt Aili. She was a dear, adorable auntie one moment, and then a spine-chilling soothsayer the next. Amabel was not sure whether she loved Aili or if she was terrified of her.
All she knew for certain was that she was always right.
She stayed on for another half an hour, chatting and talking and sharing village gossip and news of the castle, and then she left.
In her bedchamber, she curled up on the bed, shivering. She was relieved, scared and baffled all at once. She had a lot to say to Broderick when he came home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BACK TO THE LIVING
BACK TO THE LIVING
Broderick sat up.
“Lord. Lord!”
He groaned. Everything hurt. His head. His back. His chest. His legs. Even his hands hurt when he tried to flex his fingers. And he was cold. So cold! He opened his eyes.
He could see gray. Gray walls, gray floor. A grayish ceiling that had been whitewashed many years ago and was now soot-stained and darker than it was meant to be.
He licked his lips. “Where?”
He heard someone sigh. “Oh, thank heaven!”
Blaine.
He turned his head, which felt as if it had been beaten with sticks, slowly. It hurt.
He found himself looking into the dark, wide eyes of Blaine MacNeil. The boy's eyes glowed.
“Lord!” He grinned. “I said you'd be back. I knew you weren't dead. They cannae kill ye like that.”
Broderick grinned. His lip hurt and when he drew it back he tasted blood. He sighed.
“Where are we?”
“In the monastery!” Blaine explained, enthused. “We brought the wounded here. It was my idea. We're all here. Me an' Fergall and Al and Cam and Douglas...”
“Are we all wounded?” Broderick asked incredulously. He cast an eye around the room. He could see linen-white mounds and guessed them to be beds, with wounded men.
“Most of us.” Blaine grinned happily. “I'm not. Fergall's not, though he doesn't say that...”
“Aye, young man!” a voice boomed from behind them. “I'll show you
wounded! Have ye seen yon fingers?”
Fergall. Broderick grinned. His heart was warm with joy. They all survived. He turned to Blaine, who was grinning and, amazingly, had eyes that were so bright he would have thought the boy about to weep.
“We won the fortress?” He almost did not want to know. They were alive. He was alive. And Blaine, Fergall, Al, and all the others, they were alive, too. It was, for the moment, enough.
“Yes, sir!”
Broderick lay back. He stared at the ceiling. All the tension drained from him. They had taken the untakeable fortress. They had won.
Strangely, all he felt was relief. He did not feel joy, or wonder, or even satisfaction. The vengeance had died within him and with it had died the lust for blood. All he cared about, all that mattered to him now, was the fact that he and his friends were alive. That they had the precious gift of living, feeling. Loving.
“We did it,” was all he said. He sat and reached for the boy's shoulder and cuffed it playfully. “Well done, young man.”
Blaine lifted his hand and scrubbed furtively at his cheeks.
“Oh, stop it, sir. Or I'll get the monks to come and give you Valerian again and put ye out, I shall.”
Blaine was laughing, voice rough with held-in tears, and Broderick also laughed. His ribs hurt and so he stopped.
He leaned back against the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. The room was strangely peaceful. If he breathed in, he could smell the scent of incense and herbs and resin and he guessed the monks had doctored them. If he listened, he could hear the slow shuffle of their sandaled feet outside the window as they headed down the path to the chapel for prayers.
They stayed in the monastery for a fortnight.
By the end of it, Broderick could walk out to the gardens and, very slowly, negotiate the paths. Blaine, unhurt and full of youthful liveliness, became his companion and guide, chatting excitedly as they walked through the gardens.
An evening two weeks after waking, Blaine and Broderick walked around the long paths between the fragrant herbs.
“An' ye can see the valley here, sir!” Blaine was saying. They had reached the corner where the garden dropped away, leaving one staring out across the blue water.
Broderick breathed in. “It's bonny, so it is.”
Blaine nodded.
Broderick felt his ankle start to ache.
“I'm going to sit down over there,” he said decidedly. Leaning on the stick a monk had carved for him, he limped toward the bench.
“You're a right mess, sir,” Blaine said encouragingly.
Broderick cuffed his head. “Thank ye, Blaine. I'll remember that.”
They laughed and sat together on the bench. They had become good friends. Blaine was of the age to be a son to Broderick, and somehow, they had fallen into the pattern without trying.
Blaine chatted to Broderick every day. From him, Broderick learned the tale of his own almost-death.
He had fallen from the fortress wall and landed on his back. The monks said he had broken ribs, a broken arm, a fractured skull. They said his ankle was cracked, and he was lucky he had not broken his legs. They had set his bones and half-expected him to die – from the wounds in his arms and shoulder if nothing else. But he had lived.
Broderick scratched his scalp, wondering. He had lived. Against all expectation or even likelihood, he had lived. And now he valued that life. Would use it as the gift that he knew it was.
He was going back home. To Amabel. And he would make things right.
“Blaine?” he said after a moment. They were watching insects in the late-flowering lavender, listening to the drone and hum of them as they flew drowsily to fetch the nectar. It was a peaceful time.
“Aye?”
“Muster the men for me, will you?”
Blaine nodded, a small frown twisting his face. “Yes, sir...”
He sounded cautious. Broderick jostled his shoulder. “If you're thinkin' I'll fall over, you can place a sovereign on the chances.”
Blaine grinned. “I's not daft, sir. I'd be working my debt off 'til I was old.”
Broderick chuckled. “Exactly. Call the men, you young rascal. And tell them we're going home tomorrow.”
Blaine looked at him, eyes shining.
Broderick smiled. He leaned back, letting the autumn sun warm his back and shoulders.
He was going home. And this time, he knew more than when he left. He knew how to love. And he was going to do that, deeply, fearlessly and always. For as long as there was breath in him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RETURN TO THE CASTLE
RETURN TO THE CASTLE
The raiders were returning.
Amabel stood on the roof of the castle, feeling the wind tug at the fine linen of her dress. She was wearing a long cream-linen gown, bound with a kirtle of pale pink. Her headdress fluttered with a pink chiffon scarf. Alina stood beside her. She gripped Amabel's arm.
“They are here.”
Amabel strained to catch a glimpse of them where Alina pointed. She followed the line of her vision to the distant hills. In the far distance, snaking between the low hills, was a whitish line. As they watched, it came closer and resolved, slowly, into tiny figures of men, marching through the misty light.
Amabel leaned heavily on the vast stone merlon behind which she stood. She watched as the line wound its way over the green-gray moorland. As they neared, she could hear chanting.
Her eyes widened. They were singing, and beating drums, and as they neared, she heard laughter floating over them.
She turned to look at Alina, eyes shining.
Her sister's dark eyes gazed tranquilly back.
“Alina!” Amabel whispered. “They're here! They won.”
Alina smiled. She gripped Amabel's arm. “I am glad for you, sister,” she whispered.
Together, they watched the line draw closer.
Down below them, they could see Lord Lochlann standing on the walls. Clad in a long gown of white linen, white hair brushed back in a shining mane that hung to his shoulders, he looked coolly relaxed.
Amabel looked down at him indifferently. He was smiling, laughing, joking with his men at arms and visiting lords. As if every day he sent men to their deaths, and every day they won battles for him.
If one hair on my man is harmed, you will pay for it. Her blue eyes slitted as she looked at him.
Heath was standing beside him, shiny-eyed, which meant Chrissie was down there, too. As she watched, she saw the girl catch sight of the men. She clapped her hands, enraptured. “Uncle!” she said excitedly. “They're here! They're here! Is not this wonderful?”
Amabel smiled. She saw Heath pat her fondly on the shoulder and saw her smile up at him caringly. She watched as they stood together, looking out over the fields. As if the whole of the group on the wall disappeared and they were alone together, lost in their closeness.
Watching them, she felt a little stab of wistfulness. My husband has returned. And this time, I will realize that whatever is wrong with him is not my fault. I will love him as I choose to. It is my choice to love.
She smiled down at the young pair and waved.
Chrissie turned to shout up to her and Alina.
“They're here! He's coming back!”
It was unladylike to shout, or Amabel would have called a greeting down to her. Instead she waved cheerfully and looked out to the line of marchers.
Which was closer, now.
She leaned forward, gripping Alina's hand where it rested at her side. “They're here. He's here! Oh, Alina...”
She slit her eyes, searching the ranks. She felt a wild, pounding excitement well up in her heart. He’s here! Is he not? Please, please let him be here... If he was here, would he not be near the front?
She searched the lines of faces, feeling a growing panic. Please, let him have survived. Let him have come back! The depth of pain amazed her. She had not known she felt so deeply for him. Had not known she loved him.
/>
She was gripping her sister's hand and had not realized she was doing it. Alina stiffened.
“Oh, sorry!” Amabel gasped. She looked at her sister's pale, tapering hand. Red crescents showed where her fingers had gripped it. She covered her mouth with her own hand in shock.
“He's here,” Alina whispered. “I am certain he is here.”
Amabel bit her lip and resumed her frantic seeking. He was not on the horse in the front row. He was not in the second row. Not in the third...
“There!”
She covered her mouth with her hand. Tears flowed down her cheeks as the relief coursed through. She leaned on Alina, who hugged her. Together, tears silent, they watched as the line of troops snaked through the moors and closer to the gate.
He was here. She could see his dark hair, the dark beard, the way his back was always straight. He was riding in the third row back, which surprised her. The beautiful white destrier was still carrying him, but he looked so very different from the man who’d left.
He was lighter, somehow. Face softer, eyes bright. He looked content, and proud and... happy. It was the only word she could think of. He radiated an easy, confident air that he not had before. Before, he had been all brittle pride and wounding. Now, he was at peace.
Broderick! She wanted to shout it, call it, cry it! She looked out over the fields and up into the sky. A swallow dipped and wove between the autumn clouds and then another. She smiled and felt fresh tears fall. It was as if her mother had sent them as a message, to tell her all was well.
Crying, she leaned against the merlon, feeling her knees buckle. All she wanted to do was run down and see him.
Below, they were lowering the drawbridge. She could hear men shouting, laughing, whooping. Somewhere inside the castle, a piper began to play. She heard the hooves as the first men rode under the bridge.
She looked down as Broderick looked up. She saw his face change, a smile flash across his features.
For the first time in over a month, she felt as if her heart was full of light. The moment was only a second, for he looked away and disappeared under the arch, heading up the streets into the town and thence toward the great hall itself.
Heart Of A Highlander (Lairds of Dunkeld Series) (A Medieval Scottish Romance Story) Page 12
