“No, I needed to hear them. If anyone owes an apology, it’s me.” He reached out and touched her shoulder, a surprising gesture of kindness, and she fought the urge to grin like an idiot.
Keep it together, Delilah. Play it cool. He’s only just started being nice to you, don’t blow it completely the minute he touches you on the shoulder…
“Well. Call us even, then.” She smiled up at him, feeling a warmth in her chest despite her concern about the witch hunters. “I suppose you’ve got extra guard shifts, what with witch hunters on the loose?”
“Ach, no. The castle’s well-guarded, I assure you. And my shift’s not til this evening.”
She hesitated — but she felt an impulse to take advantage of the seeming good feeling between them. “Then would you like to spend some time sparring with me?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve trekking into the middle of the forest,” he replied, raising an eyebrow at her — and she laughed, pleased by the positive response.
“I’m fine to fight in the yard — if you don’t mind all your guard mates seeing you get dumped into the dust by some stranger from the future.”
He laughed — an honest, pure sound that filled her heart with joy to hear. It was so strange to see him looking happy — she was used to his face being so drawn and miserable all of the time. Could what Mary and Marianne had said be true? Could he be finally working his way through his problems, coming out of the self-imposed shell of isolation he’d been in since Morag’s death? She hoped so. He was a good man, and he deserved some happiness in this life. Whether that was with her or not was almost beside the point — she realized with a start that she honestly just wanted him to be happy regardless. Well, that was an interesting development. Something she’d deal with later. For now, she had a sparring match to win.
“Come on, then. Show me what you’ve got.”
Chapter 16
“You know I dreamed about you stabbing me, the first night I was here?”
Gavin blocked her strike, twisting his body away from her and spinning to face her again with his wooden blade angled toward the centre of her body. There was a look of surprise on his face, but it wasn’t interfering with his readiness to block her from attacking him. Not that she’d expected him to fall for such a simple trick, but still — it would’ve been quite a coup to disarm him that way. After all, a dream about someone you don’t know stabbing you was a decent distraction.
“Me? Stabbing you? I must have frightened you,” he said, tilting his head to the side and giving her a somewhat mocking look.
She snorted, dove toward him and knocked his blade aside to hit him squarely on the arm.
“Point. I think that’s ten, don’t you?”
“It is.” He sketched her a courtly little bow.
They’d been sparring for a few hours, now, and she was starting to tire out. At first, they’d had a little audience — the strange newcomer and the closed-off guard, sparring with one another? Members of the guard had flocked to watch their comrade fight, calling good-natured advice and encouragement to Delilah to hit him as hard as she could. It had made her feel a little bit anxious, but the training at the SCA had paid off — everything was a performance, after all, and it was easy enough to fake confidence. It even worked on Gavin, who circled her rather warily as she played the part of a seasoned fighter. That had been particularly gratifying, she had to admit — seeing him go from the arrogant jerk who’d been shocked at the very idea of a woman fighting, to someone who treated sparring with her seriously.
But after a while, the novelty had seemed to wear off, and their little audience had dissipated. Quietly, Delilah hoped word would spread of her reasonable sword fighting prowess. The more people in the castle who knew she wasn’t to be trifled with, the better. She made a note, too, to start keeping an actual sword in her quarters. If there were witch-hunters about, the last thing she wanted was to be caught unarmed. She probably couldn’t take on five men by herself… but damnit, if the worst thing happened and she was captured, she wanted to at least do some injuries first. A few scars, maybe take some eyes out… it wasn’t much to ask for, but she could hope.
She and Gavin had sparred for half an hour or so before lunch, then headed in for a meal… and he’d headed straight out again afterwards, which had surprised her. Did he enjoy spending time with her? He was difficult to read. There was a lot less open hostility from him, but there was still that air of reservation — like he was worried about getting hurt.
Still, she appreciated his company — and it felt good to get some really solid training in. She could already feel her body getting stronger and her reflexes sharper as a result of sparring with such an experienced partner. And though he was better than she was — a lifetime of real practice would do that — she was certainly holding her own in their bouts. She realized with some surprise that the sun was already low in the sky. They’d been sparring all afternoon! No wonder she was so sore — and so covered in dust. Surprising, what good company he was. Time didn’t usually fly that way around her — she usually had a good sense of how quickly the day was going by. Not so this afternoon.
“I’d best clean myself up a little before my shift,” Gavin said, gesturing at the dust that coated him as well with a grin. They’d both had their fair share of spills into the dust of the courtyard, and she laughed, crossing the space between them to pat him down, getting rid of the worst of it from his clothing, trying not to seem as though she’d been waiting for an excuse to touch him.
“Sorry if I’ve worn you out before your watch,” she joked, grinning. It was difficult not to think, looking at him, about other ways of tiring him out… ways that were still physical, but probably far less appropriate to do in a crowded courtyard…
“Ah, some things are worth bein’ tired at work,” he replied easily, then took her wooden sword from her hand and headed off without a word to return them to where they were kept.
Delilah looked after him. Had that been a compliment? Almost. Well, she’d take it, anyway. He’d moved from being openly hostile and unpleasant to her, to saying things that were almost compliments, in only a few days. Who knew what the future held, right?
She could hardly wait for dinner — she sat herself down in the main hall well before food had even begun to be served, impatient and ravenous. Fighting really took it out of a person. Gavin had shown her a range of new tricks, which she was keen to practice the next day. Maybe Marianne would spar with her, if Gavin was busy working or resting after his long shift? Even Cora had said she enjoyed fighting, so maybe she’d come out to play — though Delilah got the sense that she’d prefer to spend her time indoors. With children to chase around, she supposed the women didn’t get a huge amount of time to themselves. Especially having to do so many chores by hand. Delilah was quietly dreading laundry day — she knew once she ran out of clothes, it was going to take a bit more than a trip to the laundromat to resolve the issue. She’d never actually scrubbed clothing by hand — she’d washed a few of her more delicate scarves by hand in wool wash before, of course, but she had a feeling that this was going to be an entirely different situation. Perhaps she’d go and visit the laundry rooms later — or even ask Dolores about it. The woman would definitely be able to help her figure out the most efficient way of getting the chore done, she knew that.
Dinner was finally served, and she wolfed down heaping servings of everything, eager to replenish her reserves of energy. Cora and Fiona sat with her, and they spent the time chatting about the witch-hunters. Rumors were rife in the castle, of course — nothing based on anything other than speculation, of course, but it was a lot of fun to examine the more ludicrous suggestions as a group. They got quite ridiculous quite quickly, describing a torturer who had various implements implanted into his body, each one of his fingers replaced with a knife… the downside, of course, being that he kept slicing his own body up whenever he forgot about his surgical modifications. They giggled a lot, even though the
ir subject matter was rather dark. Sometimes, laughing at a frightening idea was the best way to overcome it. But once Delilah had finished her meal, she felt herself swaying a little. She was completely exhausted. She’d probably pushed herself harder today than any time she could remember. And she was definitely going to feel it in the morning, that was for sure… she could already feel the tell-tale shakiness in her forearms and hands that suggested that tomorrow was going to be an achy, achy day.
“You made quite an impression on the men of the Watch today, Delilah,” Marianne told her, passing by — she was sitting with Eamon at the high table tonight, but she often spent a good part of the dinner hour circulating through the hall. “He was telling anyone who’d listen about how well you fight.”
Eamon nodded solemn agreement. Both of them looked so smug and knowing about the whole situation that Delilah blushed to the roots of her hair, ignoring the triumphant cackling of the women around her. What could she say that would make them stop suggesting she and Gavin were going to fall for one another — when she was increasingly growing to hope that they were right? They were half right already, she reflected, interrogating her own feelings about the man — her stupid little crush was getting stronger by the day. How inconvenient. But in the cozy, crowded dining hall, with a belly full of delicious food and a body that was pleasantly achy after a long day of doing something she loved, it was hard to feel anything but happy. Even in the face of witch hunters. Maybe, in a strange way, the threat of witch hunters was actually making her happier. It made her appreciate the safety she had now, knowing that it could so easily be taken away from her at any time…
Delilah barely made it up the stairs, so tired and sore was she from her day of exertion, and she was all but asleep by the time her head hit the pillow of her bed. Sleep claimed her like a thick, warm blanket. And then — abruptly — she was somewhere else. Dreaming? Dreaming, definitely. The space was familiar, and she realized with a shock that it was the same strange room she’d dreamed about before — a prison of some kind. Was this in the castle somewhere, this strange place? Stupid of her — she should have gone looking for it. Too late now, she was trapped. A medieval dungeon, bars keeping her hemmed in — and blood, she realized with a shock, far too much blood soaking her body and her clothing. This wasn’t right — this couldn’t be right, she couldn’t be dying, she still had something to do — something so important that she could hardly put her finger on it —
But she wasn’t alone in the dungeon. Through the bars of the cell she was in, she could see two men, swords drawn and circling each other. One had blood on his hands and his clothing, and she recognized him with a horrible shock as the man who had stabbed her. Gavin — it had been Gavin who’d stabbed her, in the dream she’d had. Hadn’t it? But no — that man wasn’t Gavin. He looked like him, true, there was a family resemblance there that was strong — but she knew Gavin’s face better than that, now. She’d been staring at it all day, in fact, as they sparred (that memory felt strange here, like a thought that belonged to someone else.) The man who was covered in her blood wasn’t Gavin. And now that she knew that, she felt silly for even thinking he had been — why on Earth would Gavin ever do her any harm?
But the other one — that was him. That was Gavin. Here to protect her, she thought with a rush of warmth and affection, even through the fear and pain. As they circled, his face came into her view, and she gasped with recognition. She’d know those bright green eyes anywhere. But he looked so different to the man she’d been sparring with all day! There was no grey in his dark hair, for a start, and his face was free of the lines and wrinkles that indicated his age. Why, he had to be twenty years younger if he was a day — who could this be? A younger brother, or a cousin, or something? No — Delilah felt a jolt of recognition in the pit of her stomach that couldn’t be shaken away. No, this was definitely Gavin MacClaran. But it was the Gavin MacClaran of twenty years ago. The Gavin who had loved Morag, who had fought so hard to be with her, whose heart had been so terribly broken by her actions.
And then Delilah knew who she was. This was the day Morag had died. This was — she looked down at her stomach, full of horror at the deep, vicious wounds she saw in her belly, gaping through the holes torn in her dress. She knew she should feel pain — but blessedly, the dream had kept the pain from her recollection, at least a little bit. She was aware of the pain — if she thought about it, she could feel a strange cold keening feeling creeping in — but overall, it was kept at bay. A relief, honestly — she wasn’t sure how high her threshold for agony was. Here she was, in Morag’s living memory, seeing events through her own eyes… how? How was this happening? Could this be part of the spell, part of the curse? Had Morag reached out to her somehow, from beyond the grave? She must have tried to do the same thing earlier in Delilah’s time in Scotland — that very first night, the dream she’d had. But she hadn’t known enough about what was happening to understand. So the spirit had waited — waited a few days, waited for her to have more information, before bringing her here again, showing her what had happened in what Delilah was coldly realizing was Morag’s last few minutes alive.
And she understood now — and she flinched as the men fell upon each other, yelling bloody murder as their swords clashed again and again. She could see the grief and fear in Gavin’s face as he fought the man — his movements were erratic, powerful blows but clearly altered by grief, rage and fear at what had been done to his beloved. The other man was goading him, trying to take advantage of his anger to gain the upper hand — but it didn’t work. Gavin’s blade flashed, and suddenly the strange man was screaming, clutching at his head as blood spurted from between his hands. Her eyes widened in horror. Had Gavin torn the man’s eye out?
The other man dropped to his knees, and Gavin turned away from him, clearly only interested in Delilah — in Morag, she corrected herself, feeling dizzy. Her view of the room was turning grey, beginning to fade, and she desperately tried to hang on — what was happening? Was someone waking her up from the dream? No, she realized with a sick lurch in the pit of her stomach that she wasn’t waking up. It was Morag whose vision was beginning to blur and fade — it was Morag whose life was ebbing away from her even as her blood pooled on the dungeon floor. This was it — this was what it felt like to die. She felt dizzy, full of disbelief. This couldn’t be happening — there was no way this was possible, the intensity of this memory, the clarity of it all… how could she possibly be sharing this memory from beyond the grave, from a woman who’d died twenty years ago? No, not twenty years… nearly four hundred, she wanted to scream! She was from the twenty-first century! None of this had anything to do with her… and yet here she was, bleeding to death in a dream that felt all of a sudden far too real, far too horribly, crushingly real.
Gavin was kneeling over her, clutching her in his arms, and she almost wept at the sight of his face, so torn with grief that he was almost unrecognizable. He was sobbing her name, over and over again, clutching helplessly at her body as though he could somehow heal her wounds if he just believed strongly enough. But she was distracted by the pressing sense of something she had to do, something hugely important… if she could just find the right words, gather the last fragments of her energy and speak into being the blessing she so desperately needed to utter before it was too late—
“Let the MacClaran brides live,” she croaked, in an accent that was as unfamiliar to her as Gavin’s had been the first time they spoke, “and return to their loves…” And then the grey faded completely to black. The last thing she heard was Gavin’s scream of grief as her body went lax and limp in his arms — and then she was wide awake, sitting bolt upright in her bed in the castle, twenty years later, her heart pounding. She yanked back the sheets of the bed as quickly as she could, clutching at her stomach — and thanked God to find her stomach, fully intact and unharmed, though decorated with a fresh bruise or two from sparring with Gavin. Still the phantom pain lingered, the sensation of having
been stabbed through the stomach so viciously, and she placed a protective hand where the deepest of the injuries had been as though she could somehow prevent the injury like that.
Gavin. She couldn’t shake the sight of his face, so full of grief and helplessness. He must have charged into the dungeons to save Morag — and he’d been too late. The poor man, no wonder he blamed himself for everything that had happened. She felt her eyes well up with tears. Poor Morag, too, to have died while trying so desperately to … to do what? It was a blessing she had been trying to utter, she knew that much from being inside the woman’s head. She had been trying to put a blessing onto the Clan. But why, when they had given her nothing but pain? Why bless the family who’d allowed her to be killed?
“Let the MacClaran brides live and return to their loves,” Delilah whispered, breaking the silence of the room. That sounded like magic to her. She grabbed the little book from her bedside table and wrote the words down before she could forget them, as well as all the details of the dream that she could remember, dropping quickly into her strange little shorthand that let her get things down as quickly as possible. She jotted down a floor plan of the room, a detailed description of the men, all the furniture, everything each man had said… it didn’t feel necessary — the dream’s every detail felt as though it was burned into her consciousness — but nevertheless, she thought it best to keep a record. After all, dreams could be slippery, and she didn’t want to forget anything that might help break the curse.
There were still tears running down her cheeks when she finished. There was a grey light in the sky when she glanced out of the window — it was close to dawn, then, but not quite dawn. Would Gavin be finishing his shift any time soon, she wondered idly? Something in her desperately craved his company — wanted to see him, to try to make him laugh again, to help ease some of the pain he’d felt so long ago. Pain he’d so clearly carried with him for twenty years. And if she was honest, she was in need of some comfort herself. It wasn’t every day that you experienced death from a first-person perspective, and she was feeling incredibly shaken after the ordeal, even though it had been extremely valuable to get the information she’d been given.
Highlander Cursed: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 15