Elena took a deep breath, not sure how much of the story she ought to reveal. Part of her wanted to unveil everything to Anna, to tell her about Una and everything, to beg her to be on their side instead of the men’s. But something made her hold her tongue — something that Una had said about the power men held over women. The power of love. Anna adored her husband Donal, that was clear from the way they looked at each other. And besides, they already had a child together, an infant baby… how could Elena expect her to leave all that behind, to risk her daughter’s safety to protect a woman she hadn’t met, a woman she’d probably believe was an Unseelie monster? No — Elena realized, with a pang of sadness, that she’d have to leave Anna behind.
So she told her a truncated version of the story. It was more or less true, but where the story should have included descriptions of her conversations with Una, it only described peaceful evenings by herself on the jetty. So Anna was beside herself with anger when she reached the part about the mob in the village square wanting to put her to death — and Brendan’s rather lukewarm response.
“He just stood there? He didn’t even try to help? I — Elena, I’m so sorry. I feel awful for vouching for him. I’m shocked that he’d behave so poorly.” She gnawed on her lip, clearly taken aback.
Elena sympathized — it was exactly how she’d felt.
“I guess you never really know somebody.”
“A friend of mine used to say that you never really know men.” She shrugged. If pressed, she’d describe a friend from back home who occasionally had similar ideas to Una — or at least, she did whenever she’d been on a bad date. “She believed that men were all bad — it was just a question of how long it took you to figure it out.”
“I don’t believe that,” Anna said immediately.
Elena sighed to herself, pleased at least to have been right about the side Anna would take… but feeling a little lonely, regardless. Was there hope for Nancy, maybe?
“I don’t know. All of it sucks. I hate being in here already, and it’s only been a day.”
“I’m sorry, darling. Truly, I am. It’s awful. But…” And Anna looked down, clearly not willing to look her in the eye for this part. “I’m racking my brains, but I can’t think of a better way to prove you’re innocence.”
Elena’s jaw tightened a little to hear that from her friend. “Prove my innocence. So my innocence is in doubt.”
“No, babe. Not from me. Not in a million years. I could find you covered in the blood of a murdered man, screaming at the sky, and if you told me you didn’t kill him I’d believe you. But these men…” She shrugged helplessly. “They don’t know you. They’re superstitious, about women and witchcraft, about the secret power we have.”
“That’s misogyny, you know. They hate that they experience sexual attraction to women, so they turn it into some evil spell we’re casting on them, not them just not being in control of their own dicks —”
“Maybe that’s true,” Anna said carefully.
Elena could tell she was worrying her a little — there was a watchful look in her eye that was getting stronger with every bitter, angry thing she said. But somehow, she couldn’t help it. It felt so good to get ideas like that out — to spit out her venom, finally, instead of trying to keep it buried deep inside her, trying to give men a fair go.
“But darling. Please be patient for a few days. They’ll let you out once they realize it can’t be you doing all this.”
“I want to be out now,” Elena growled. “I want my freedom. I’ve a right to it. I’m going to go mad in here, and then they’ll be proved right, won’t they? That I’m some crazy bat who wants every man she’s ever met dead?”
“I know it’s awful, Elena.” Anna was rising to her feet, and Elena blinked.
“You’re leaving already?”
“I have to.” She hesitated. “They … they don’t want me spending too much time with you. Just in case you can… you know, bewitch people.”
Elena’s eyes widened as she noticed what Anna was wearing for the first time. Another of those iron crosses, on a chain around her neck. “You’re not serious.”
“I don’t believe it, Elena. You have to believe me — I’m on your side. They just wanted me to wear this, so I did — to prove your innocence! To prove blessed iron doesn’t do anything to you — because you’re human! I’m on your side,” she said again, desperately.
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Elena said coldly. “Thanks for the porridge.”
Thankfully, she was able to hold back her tears until the door slammed shut behind the woman she’d thought was her friend. This just got worse and worse.
Chapter 51
Elena ate the porridge. It tasted like cardboard — she’d never been less hungry in her life. But she didn’t like putting food to waste. And she didn’t like the idea of letting Anna get to her — of letting her imprisonment start interfering with her basic body functions. She was going to eat — she had to keep herself strong, had to be ready to get out of here as soon as she could. But there were tears running down her face as she ate, sitting at the table, hunched over as she worked her way through the tasteless meal. Anna had put honey in it, just the way she liked it… but that made her feel worse, not better. She’d really thought her friend would have her back. To think, she was even hoping that she’d be able to get Anna to speak to Donal for her, maybe get him to overrule Brendan. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that, she knew from all the complaints Brendan made about how Donal chose to run the castle. God, men are pathetic, she thought with a flare of anger. If it was women who ran the place — ran it properly, that was, making the political and military decisions as well as the economic ones — there wouldn’t be conflicts like that. Why, Blair the Headwoman probably had more leadership in her little finger than all the men of the castle put together.
But sitting and stewing wasn’t doing her much good. She sighed, feeling restless and impatient, wanting nothing more than to go for a walk around the castle… she hadn’t realized how much that kind of thing did for her mental health. How long were they going to keep her trapped here? A few days? A week? She scooped the book up from her bedside table after walking irritably in circles for a few minutes, sitting down hard in the chair at the table and trying to read it… but now the pile of empty dishes were annoying her.
She strode over to the front door and hammered on it, narrowing her eyes a little as she heard the guards stationed out there murmuring to each other. She didn’t let up, though, and after a solid few minutes of hammering, she heard one of the guards swear softly — then the bolt was slid across and the door was opened a crack. To her irritation, she saw the guard peering through, his cold iron dirk clutched in one of his hands.
“Thanks. Thought I was going to beat my fists bloody on the door.”
“Aye? What d’ye want?”
“Well, for a start, I want you to know that iron doesn’t do anything to me, because I’m a perfectly normal human being like both of you,” she said levelly, gesturing at the iron dirk he was pointing at her. “I could lick that thing, and nothing would happen to me. And secondly, I want these plates out of the room. It sucks to sit here watching the flies gather on my dirty plates.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you poisoned poor Eamon,” the other guard snapped at her.
She couldn’t see his face through the crack, but she could tell by the expression on the other guard’s face that the two of them were in agreement. She narrowed her eyes in vexation.
“The first time I met Eamon, he was following me around, clearly already sick as a dog. I had nothing to do with his illness. I was working on helping Brendan figure out its cause so we could cure it, actually, before they decided it was a smart idea to lock me in here.”
The guard holding the door open hesitated a little. She could hear the other guard talking, and she leaned in to pick up what he was murmuring to his friend.
“ — and ye shouldn’t
listen too closely to the voice of a witch, either, for she’ll enchant you mind and bewitch your senses, turning you all about —”
The guard squeaked, and before Elena could stop him, the door had slammed shut. She growled in frustration, shouting at him to open it again — but this time, there was no response, even when she pounded with both fists on the door. Furious, feeling like a trapped animal, she swept across the room, seized the empty bowl that had held her porridge, and hurled it at the doorway. The satisfaction of the sound of shattering pottery was significant — but it didn’t last long. And when it faded, she was standing in a room with broken pottery and bits of porridge all over the floor. Not really her best move, tactically speaking.
The morning dragged on. She kept herself busy with the book, torn between her anger at her captors and a quiet, desperate hope that they’d bring her more to keep her mind busy than just this. At least they were feeding her… they’d have to come through and feed her lunch. Maybe it would be someone less traitorous than Anna. Maybe Nancy wouldn’t come in wearing an iron cross. She felt tears prickle at her eyes again. She knew, intellectually speaking at least, that Anna was just doing what she was told, just playing along with the investigation. But she couldn’t forgive her for it. Not just yet, at any rate. Not when she felt this raw, this betrayed, this abandoned and imprisoned and awful. It was hideous. Elena had always enjoyed solitude — but what she enjoyed about it was the freedom to go where she wanted and do as she pleased. When she was alone but trapped in a room… that was the worst of all worlds.
A servant came to bring her lunch. By that time, she was huddled in her bed again, her eyes getting heavy and sore as she tried to work her way through the book of creatures. She’d read what felt like forty descriptions of the same kind of goblin, and she was tired and bored and miserable… and seeing the servant with an iron cross round her neck didn’t help. The little woman didn’t even look at her — just swept into the room with a bowl of stew and a breadroll, then peered at the ground in dismay when she kicked a piece of crockery across the floor. Shooting Elena a dark glance, she pottered out into the hallway — one of the guards stepped into the doorway, as though Elena was going to try to take advantage of this brief reprieve to make a run for it — and returned a minute later with a broom. Deftly, she swept the shards of pottery outside the room… then slammed the door behind her.
Elena grinned to herself, feeling petty about how satisfying it had been to inconvenience her captors. And when she’d finished the bowl of stew and polished off the breadroll, she gave it some thought… then hurled that bowl against the wall, too. Another satisfying smash, and a floor covered in pieces of broken pottery. This time, she busied herself for a little while collecting the shards into a pile on the table. Then she re-arranged them into the worst swearword she could spell with what few shards she had. Maybe by the time dinner was done with, she’d have enough shards to add to it. Look at that, she thought with amusement. She’d only been in jail for a day or so and she was already picking up a new artistic pursuit.
But once that particular smug satisfaction had faded, she was faced with the long, boring afternoon stretching out in front of her. What was the point of staying awake? All she ever did was either read that boring book, or talk herself into a furious, towering rage with one of her so-called friends… rage that she couldn’t do anything useful with, unless you counted smashing plates. So, feeling a little pathetic, she took her boots off (what had been the point of even putting them on in the first place?) and climbed back into bed. Soon enough, she’d dozed off, and the afternoon passed mercifully quickly, in a haze of strange dreams about Una shouting at her from amidst a stand of trees.
It was the door opening that woke her. Dinner, she supposed, not opening her eyes as she came to. Which servant would it be this time? Would they appreciate her art, she wondered? She kept her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, listening closely to the footsteps that came into the room… and stopped. A low chuckle sounded… a familiar chuckle. Surely not. He wouldn’t have dared come in here. Not if he knew what was good for him…
“Are you asleep, or just pretending?”
She’d recognize Brendan’s voice anywhere — and despite her determination to ignore him, she couldn’t help but scowl when she realized who had come to visit her, and that gave the game away. Her eyes shot open — sure enough, there he stood, wearing his riding clothes and looking some brooding combination of exhausted and furious. There was a new bowl on the table behind him, and she narrowed her eyes at it.
“Planning to shatter this one too, are ye? Yes, we heard what you did from the servant who came this afternoon. Very mature of you.”
“It was an accident,” she said blandly, daring him to challenge her.
“Oh, aye? And the pieces fell accidentally into these rather scandalous shapes up here, did they?”
“They must have. I don’t know, I was asleep. Maybe a little faerie did it.”
“Elena, I know you’re angry,” he said heavily, drawing out her chair and sitting down on it heavily. She scowled at him, doing her best impression of a sullen teenager being interrogated. She’d broken her silent treatment — he wasn’t getting anything more from her. “But please try to see this from my point of view. It’s impossible to prove you innocent.”
“It’s impossible to prove a negative at all,” she corrected him irritably. “Which is why it’s so goddamn stupid for you to be trying to prove I’m not a witch. Prove I am one, then we’ll talk. But I should be presumed innocent until you can do that. Which you can’t, because I’m not.”
“Elena. We could argue about this all night but try to be reasonable.”
“Reasonable!” She heard a strange, ugly note in her voice, leaned into the hysterical feeling of it. “You want me to be reasonable! You’ve locked me in a tower with iron on the door and the window, with two guards out there who are convinced I’m a witch because of whatever stupid thing you’ve told them about that Eamon creep —”
“And you’re behaving like a child,” Brendan snapped. “Smashing plates, pounding your fists on the door. Can’t you just trust me? Can’t you just sit tight for a few days so I can prove to everyone else that you’re not this thing they think you are?”
“Everybody else?” she demanded, voice low and flat. “Does that mean you already believe I’m not a witch?”
He hesitated, just for a second, and that was enough for her.
She scoffed, turning away from him, trying to emphasize with her body language that this interview was over.
“Elena —”
“Go away, Brendan. Come back when you’ve decided to let me out.”
“I understand why you’re angry,” he said gently, making her grind her teeth. “If you need to snap at me, that’s okay. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. If you think of anything that might help with the case —”
“The case! No way, buddy. You made your choice when you locked me in here. If you want my help as a detective, you treat me like a person, not an animal you lock up in a cage. Colleagues trust each other. I’d never take a partner who treated me like this.”
He was stung by that — she could tell by the way he’d recoiled, and she realized belatedly that he’d probably interpreted the word ‘partner’ a little differently to the way she’d intended it. Well, both were true. She’d never date a man who thought she was a monster… and she’d never let herself be paired with a cop who did, either.
After a long moment, Brendan heaved a sigh and left the room. And if Elena cried herself to sleep that night after she finished her soup, well, she certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of finding out about it.
Chapter 52
In the end, they kept her prisoner for a week. She kept track by making marks in the cover of the book that was her only entertainment for the first few days… at least until Nancy came to visit her, finally, a few days after Anna did. By that time, she was about to start bouncing off the walls
… and though she was furious with Nancy for staying away for so long, the sight of the books in her arms was just enough to stop her from screaming at her for not coming to visit earlier. There was a lot of anger swirling around in her thoughts, but with nowhere to vent it — no visits from Brendan, no more visits from Anna — it was starting to turn inwards. She was starting to feel downright crazy, in fact… and that would have worried her if she hadn’t been so full of rage.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t come earlier,” Nancy said, her eyes full of worry. “Malcolm didn’t want me to. He said it would be too stressful for me, that I’d risk losing the baby if I got upset…”
“So sweet of him,” Elena growled, “to care so much about your wellbeing. It’s a shame I’m not having a baby, maybe then I wouldn’t be locked up in here like some kind of animal.”
“Elena, it’s awful, what’s happening. Truly. I’m sorry.”
“Are you wearing an iron cross?” she demanded to know. “Anna was. She blamed Donal. Are you going to blame Malcolm? Do you have any of your own agency anymore, or do you just do what he says?”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” Nancy snapped, and Elena was surprised out of the bitter spiral her thoughts were taking by the anger blazing in her friend’s face. “For your information, Malcolm doesn’t know I’m here. He told me he didn’t want me to come, but he respects that I’m going to do what I’m going to do. Now I get why you’re upset, and I get why you’re bitter, but I’ll thank you not to attack my husband just because you’re having trouble with your — with Brendan. And I’m not wearing a cross, either,” she snapped, pulling down the neck of her tunic to demonstrate it. “You idiot, I’ve seen you handling iron. I know you’re not a witch. Don’t be stupid.”
“Anna wore one —”
Swept By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 3 Page 31
