Her stomach still hurt, in that strange way, and she wanted something to take her mind off it. Later today she’d talk to all the women — ask Marianne in particular about what the dream could mean, what new insights they could draw from what Morag had shown her… but for now, she just needed to be with someone who would make her feel better. And ideally, someone who was already awake, thanks to his work on the night shift of the castle guard. That was her excuse — it was much more considerate to bother Gavin at this time of the day than to bother Marianne, who was probably fast asleep. Of course. That was the only reason, she told herself. She was being considerate.
So for the second time in so many nights, Delilah climbed out of bed, put her shoes and a warm jacket on, and set out through the halls of Castle MacClaran, headed for Gavin’s quarters.
Chapter 17
This was probably very silly of her, a remote part of Delilah’s mind thought as she trekked through the pre-dawn hallways of Castle MacClaran. There were a couple of servants about, looking bleary and tired as they headed toward, presumably, their own quarters for slumber — she wondered idly how shifts worked here, whether the night shift was shared between servants or there were a handful of nocturnal ones that day-dwelling people never saw. Probably not that important, in the grand scheme of things, but her mind seemed intent on finding things to think about that weren’t the fact that she was going to see Gavin in the middle of the night.
It was dawn, she told herself irritably, it was basically day time. This wasn’t suggestive, or provocative. She hadn’t had half a bottle of wine this time, either, she thought with a little pang of embarrassment. She hoped she hadn’t been too over-the-top the night before, though she knew she had been. Well, she couldn’t exactly say the night had been a bad idea — it had broken the awkwardness between them, finally gotten them into the same space and talking to each other. Mended a lot of the divide. No, if she was being honest, she wouldn’t change what she’d done the night before even if she could have. The wine was an essential part, too, as well as having been absolutely delicious.
She hesitated outside his door, starting to wonder whether she should just turn around and go back home, try to get a few more hours of sleep before breakfast. Her body was beginning to ache from the exertion of the day before and the thought of bed was tempting. But her heart was still pounding sickly in her chest, and she knew she wouldn’t feel better until she’d talked to someone about what she’d seen. Someone who would believe her. Someone who had even been there — someone who would know right away that she was telling the truth, that her dream had been an accurate account of real events. Someone who knew how awful it was to be hurt so badly.
So she knocked hard on the door, authoritative — and to her surprise, it opened straight away. There stood Gavin, still wearing most of his armor, though his helmet was sitting on the table in the middle of the room and some of the buckles had been undone. This was absolutely perfect timing, and she felt a little burst of gladness that she’d decided to come here. He must have just gotten in from his night shift — she smiled a little at how bleary and exhausted he looked, and the ginger way he was moving. She wasn’t the only one who’d been put through her paces yesterday, it seemed. Well, good. If he was going to protect the castle from witch-hunters, she wanted him to be in good shape.
“Delilah. What’s wrong?” His hand went automatically to his hip — she glanced over at the table and saw his sword in its scabbard, lying there, and his eyes flicked there too, irritated by his own sleepiness.
“Nothing. I just — I wanted to talk to you.” Suddenly she felt extremely awkward. This had all felt a lot more sensible and obvious in her head. Now she realized she was standing in his room in the middle of the night, about to tell him that she’d had a bad dream. It felt childish, suddenly, to have been so frightened.
“In the middle of the night?” He raised an eyebrow, a strange look in his eyes — something like hope, but he was working hard to hide it. She put that particular observation away to be dealt with later, not trusting herself to give it too much thought now, in this vulnerable state.
“Yeah. You know how I told you today that I dreamed about you stabbing me?”
He tilted his head to the side, clearly not understanding.
“Well. I had another dream. And first of all, it wasn’t you that I dreamed about stabbing me, it was — someone who looked a lot like you. And second of all, it wasn’t me that he stabbed. It was Morag.”
He flinched at the sound of that name — and she saw a host of warring emotions flicker rapidly across his face. Her name still had such power over him, all these years later, she thought sadly. No matter what the other women said, was she an idiot to be thinking that maybe they could have a future together, he and Delilah? Much later, of course — after everything with the witch hunters and the curse had been sorted out… but she had to admit, there had been a hope steadily growing in her chest. But the way he was looking at her now wasn’t doing great things for that hope. He stood aside from the doorway, woodenly, gestured her into the room. She remembered sitting on his bed the night before and flushed — that had been quite a bold move for a woman in a strange man’s room in the middle of the night. This time, she sat at the table, in front of his sword in its scabbard. He took a seat opposite her, his face closed off the way she was used to. That was the old familiar Gavin she knew, Delilah thought bitterly. He hadn’t disappeared after all — just hidden for a little while behind the one that she was actually starting to like. That was a shame.
“What exactly did you see?”
“I saw — I was in some kind of prison cell. I dreamed about it the first night I was here, but I didn’t know anything about Morag or anything back then — I thought it was just a regular dream, you know? But it wasn’t. I usually have complete control over my dreams, but I had no control at all of this one.”
“Control over your dreams? Truly?” He was frowning as though she’d just confessed to witchcraft and she sighed.
“It’s called lucid dreaming. It’s not magic, it’s just — something I’ve always been able to do. It’s no big deal. When I dream, I’m in control of what goes on… just something about how my brain is. It’s not magic,” she added again, warningly. He was looking at her with wonder in his eyes, and it was making her feel strange things.
“It sounds like magic. But you dreamed of Morag?” Morag again. That hadn’t taken long. Her heart sank again.
“No. I dreamed as Morag. I was — looking through her eyes, experiencing what she experienced. I was her.”
This was clearly hard for him to listen to — she could see the tension in his jaw, the way he kept swallowing hard as though to get control of himself. His face was full of conflicting feelings, and she felt a bizarre urge to reach out and smooth those worried creases away with her fingertips. Yeah, sure, Delilah, make him feel even more invaded and creeped out by you. Great idea, she scolded herself, trying to focus. She wasn’t going to get much comfort here that was for sure. She just needed to talk the dream out — maybe get something useful out of the experience. It was always good to talk difficult things through, right? Even if they made the man you had a huge crush on look at you with a horrible combination of suspicion and distrust and grief…
“And I saw — the first dream, I saw a man. He looked like you — the same green eyes. I’d only seen you for a second at the time, that’s why I thought it was you at first… but it wasn’t you. He — he pulled out a knife, and he —” She gestured toward her abdomen, not wanting to actually say it out loud, hating the way pain was twisting his face now, even twenty years after the event itself. Even the retelling was hurting him. How had he managed to look her in the eye as often as he had, when she looked so much like the woman he’d clearly loved so much? The woman who had cursed his family, who had caused so much more death and destruction after her own murder?
“Aye,” Gavin breathed, and his voice was hoarse with feeling. “I know the
man.”
“Last night — tonight — I dreamed what happened next. I was — I was still her, and I watched — I watched him fight you. It was definitely you, but — years younger. No gray in your hair,” she added, hoping for a smile from him — but he was only staring at her as though she was something dangerous, a combination of fear and anger in his eyes that made her swallow hard and keep speaking. “You fought him — he kept taunting you, trying to get you to make a mistake, but you didn’t. You got him. Took him down — did something to his face, I think, there was a lot of blood — you fought so well…”
“That’s not true,” he said roughly. “I did make a mistake. I let the bastard live. Gouged out his eye when I should have caved in his skull.”
“You came — you came over to me,” she continued with some difficulty. Her body was shaking with the effort of reliving it — some element of the trauma of it seemed to have infected her, and was upsetting her even now. She could feel the pain pulsing in her abdomen, worse than it had even been in the dream, starting to make her breath quicken with how bad it felt. She almost wanted to check if the wounds had appeared there — spectral, perhaps, ghostly injuries haunting her from a murder that had happened twenty years ago. “You held me as I —”
“Don’t,” he breathed, and suddenly he’d moved around the table and lifted her up onto her feet. Then, completely unexpectedly, he took her into his arms and held her — just as he’d held Morag, twenty years ago. His arms were firm and warm and he smelled like sweat and armor oil and it was so unbelievably comforting that Delilah felt herself on the edge of tears of relief. She carefully put her arms around his neck, hugged him back, sensing on some level that he needed the embrace as much as she did. They stood like that for a long time — but Delilah hadn’t told him the full story. He deserved to know — he needed to know what Morag had been trying to do when she died, what she’d spent her last breath on.
“Do you remember what she said?” she murmured into his ear, not breaking out of the hug. She felt him shake his head a little, but he didn’t ease his grip on her. He seemed to need her — and she knew she needed him too, so she let him keep holding her as he spoke.
“Her voice was so soft — I couldn’t make out what she was saying.”
“She was putting a blessing on the Clan,” Delilah said, tears trickling from her eyes onto his armor. “Gavin — I think she was trying to undo the curse.”
He went very still at that, and when he pulled away from her his green eyes were full of wonder. They looked at each other for a long moment, the cold gray light of dawn slowly creeping through the window, lightening the space in which they stood together.
“Are ye sure?”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t undo it —”
And then, completely unexpected, he kissed her. His hand cupped her face, surprisingly gentle for such a huge man, and the other curled gently around her lower back, drawing her into his body with the casual expertise of someone who’d done this before a hundred times — but she hardly noticed, so swept away by the feeling of his lips, finally, on hers, his body pressed against hers not for fighting practice, but out of passion. Her arms were still around his neck and she tightened her grip, pulling him closer to her, deepening the kiss — and then there was a crash of plates in the corridor outside, and a servant cursing. The sound was enough to startle them apart — and then the spell was broken. It was just Delilah, staring up into Gavin’s face, not sure what had just happened, or what it meant that Gavin was breathing so hard—
“I’m sorry,” was all he said, scrubbing at his face with one hand. “I didn’t mean to —”
“It’s okay. It’s fine, I wanted — I mean —” She had no idea what to say. What could she say? She was the spitting image of his dead lover, they’d just been talking about her, she’d even talked about Morag in the first person, as though some part of her wanted to be Morag. And wasn’t that natural? Of course she wanted to be the woman who Gavin had loved so passionately — the clever, powerful witch, bright and brave and powerful. But she wasn’t, was she? She was just some ordinary little woman from the twenty-first century. All she had to her name were some rudimentary sword fighting skills and a resemblance to the woman he’d loved. How could she have thought they could have a future together, when she was nothing like Morag?
“I better leave you to get some rest,” she whispered, trying to maintain her dignity for at least long enough to get back to her room — she was walking stiffly to the door, willing herself not to fall, willing the tears that were welling up in her eyes to give her at least a few minutes before they fell. She couldn’t bear to let him see her cry. It would feel like weakness — it would feel like admitting fault.
“Delilah — “ his voice came from behind her, sounding as lost and confused as she felt, and she squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the tears trickle out from her closed eyelids as she did. Not trusting herself to speak, she simply opened the door and bolted out of it, almost slamming it shut behind her and leaning against it for a minute to get her breath back. All she wanted was to run back to her room and hide for a thousand years. How could she have been so stupid? He loved Morag — he was always going to love Morag. And Morag was dead and gone.
What a cruel joke, to make her look so similar — what an even crueler joke, to make her fall for a man who could never love her back. Not like he’d loved Morag. She and the witch had nothing in common but their faces, and a few silly dreams.
God, what was she going to do?
Chapter 18
She just wanted to spend the rest of the day in bed. So she trudged back to her room, keeping her head low so that nobody would see the tears in her eyes, and locked the door behind her once she was inside. The air was cold in the room, the little fire having long since burned out, so she kicked off her boots and climbed into the bed, yanking every single blanket over her until she’d formed a warm little cocoon with only a tiny little gap for air to creep in. There. Now she was all set up. No need to leave this little nest — not until the twenty-first century came back to claim her. Maybe if she slept deeply enough she could enter some kind of suspended animation state and simply return to her own time that way. Sure, she’d probably age a little, but at least all of this misery would be behind her.
It wasn’t so much the rejection that stung — she just felt so profoundly stupid. To fall so heavily for someone, to let herself get so carried away with a stupid crush… she’d known how dumb she was being the whole time, and it still hadn’t stopped her. He loved someone else, and whatever she did, whatever she became, Morag would always be standing in between them.
“What would you do?” she mumbled aloud into her pillow, thinking of Morag. She had no idea what the woman would have looked like. Just like her, she assumed — but what did a witch wear? Some stereotypical images of black cloaks and pointed hats sprang to her mind, then were immediately dismissed. From what she knew about the women who’d been persecuted for being ‘witches’, they traditionally dressed just like regular women — usually because they were just regular women. Possibly with an unusual knack for healing, or a knowledge of herbs that aroused the suspicion of the Church or god-fearing men — or, most harrowing of all, they were just regular women and it was good old-fashioned misogyny that was responsible for their persecution at the hands of so-called ‘good men’.
But Morag — Morag had been a real witch. She’d had the gifts for healing, if the story about Gavin’s wounded leg was anything to go by… but that had been before Audrina was present at the castle, hadn’t it? Morag may well have just had an intuitive understanding of basic wound hygiene, or known a few herbs that helped to speed healing and keep infection at bay. The healing wasn’t necessarily witchcraft. But the cursing absolutely was. The curse that had dragged Delilah back in time. She wondered idly if the curse was also responsible for her falling helplessly for Gavin.
“Good curse, Morag,” she muttered irritab
ly. “I know you were going to lift it eventually, but still…” She’d certainly caused a lot of pain and suffering to the Clan who’d refused to let her marry her beloved. It had been effective. “You hurt your lover more than you hurt anyone else. Good job.”
But was that true? The ancestors of the women who’d been brought back in time had been subjected to terrible suffering before their untimely deaths. Gavin had lived in misery for twenty years, true, but at least he was still alive — not tortured to death, like Cora and Audrina’s ancestors, or burned at the stake like Marianne’s. And it seemed that there would continue to be deaths like those ones until the curse was lifted. There were witch-hunters in town, right now — she knew that. What was she going to do, lie here in bed all day? What if the witch-hunters grabbed hold of some poor young woman who’d caught the eye of one of the MacClaran men? There were hundreds of them, it seemed like — at the very least there were dozens. And hadn’t Karin’s ancestor been from Ireland? How had that worked? Even women further abroad weren’t safe from the curse, it seemed (though the woman in question had died in childbirth — not an uncommon way to go.) Whenever and wherever there were MacClaran men, there was a chance of a woman falling in love with them — and that put them at risk of being killed young and tragically by the curse.
And it wasn’t Delilah’s fault, she knew that — it was irrational to feel the guilt that she still felt, pressed down under her ribcage like a coiled snake. Morag may have been her ancestor, but her actions were her own, not Delilah’s. Nevertheless — she was a kindred spirit to Morag, somehow. Her descendant — her replacement in this strange time, hauled back through time to serve a specific and so-far impossible to discern purpose. She was here to break the curse, she had to assume that — but how? What was she supposed to do? How did you break a curse laid by a dead woman? How did someone with absolutely no magical powers to speak of go about not only casting magic — but undoing the magic cast by a powerful witch?
Highlander Cursed: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 16