An expression rippled through the fury on the doctor’s face, an expression of grief and unbearable loss.
“If you want to repay me,” the healer said, “then swear not to do the same.”
CHAPTER SIX
“The selkie?” Dairine’s gray eyes widened. “He’s coming here?!”
Kneeling by the hearth in the kitchen, Cairenn tugged at the soaked laces of her ten-year-old sister’s pampooties, sensing Dairine’s mental squeal of excitement and anticipation. It was good to know that Cairenn wasn’t the only one who felt those things when considering their mysterious stranger.
“Aye,” Cairenn said, as the sound of thunder rumbled through the thatch, louder than the babbling of their brothers and sisters in the room. “With this storm brewing, am I to leave our guest all alone under a separate roof?”
“But we haven’t found his skin yet.” Dairine gripped the edge of the stool and leaned forward so no one else in the room could hear. “With the rain coming and the fog sweeping in, he’s sure to realize he doesn’t belong. He’ll rush to the strand and find his skin and go away and then he can’t come back for seven years.”
She caught an image in Dairine’s mind of the young girl’s frantic search for sealskin on the strand, dangerous forays below the waterline, and squealing races away from the pounding surf. Cairenn knew she should scold her sister for recklessness, but no harm had come of her antics. Dairine’s gift seemed to be that she always had an angel watching over her.
“This selkie thinks he’s a normal man, remember that.” Cairenn slipped one of the wet booties off and tipped it to pour rainwater upon the hearth. “If you say nothing, he’ll act just like any other man.”
“Like Da and Niall?”
“Aye,” she said, then leaned in and whispered, “but with less brooding and dreaming.”
As Dairine giggled, thunder cracked overhead, shivering the rushes of the roof. A drop slipped through the thatch and hit the back of Cairenn’s neck. Flames jumped under the two pots burbling over the peat fire.
“Speaking of our guest,” her mother said, twirling a wooden stake in the soup. “You’d best fetch him now, Cairenn, before you can’t get across the yard.”
Cairenn put the booties beside the hearth to dry and gave her sister a tweak on the nose. Clambering to her feet, she avoided her brother Niall’s eye though she heard his thoughts clearly enough. The moment her da had announced he was off to the mainland and that it was Cairenn’s responsibility to see to Lachlan, Niall’s mind had it up with mischief. Now her brother was mentally dancing in glee, his thoughts running with ideas for love-match songs to sing once the so-called selkie swept into their presence.
She gave her brother a sharp kick as she passed. He jumped, but then grinned and thrummed a chord on his willow-bark harp.
Outside, the rain fell slantwise. It was hours before sunset, but the world had gone gray. Black-bellied clouds boiled in the sky above. It was an angry summer storm, and she’d seen enough of those to know it would be full of harsh wind and biting rain and earth-shaking thunder and lightning that would brighten the whole sky. The heavenly fire might even touch down, here and there, leaving ashy spots upon the heights.
It would be a breach of courtesy to leave a stranger alone in his room to weather such gales, wondering if the end of days had come. At least, with her family around, she’d be less likely to make a fool of herself as she had yesterday sitting on the peat-pile.
She ran across the courtyard and flung herself into the surgery, pressing the door shut against the wind. Scraping her hand through her hair to clear it from her eyes, she blinked into the room and saw him standing with his back to her, outlined by the red glow of the fire.
Her breath caught. Sporting only his linen braies, his skin was burnished by the firelight. A long furrow defined the valley of his spine, from between his shoulders to just above his braies, a narrow hollow she couldn’t help but linger upon. Such was the shape of the legendary Fenian warriors, she thought, of Cú Chulainn, and of Deirdre’s handsome Naoise. Her experience was limited, but surely there wasn’t another man in the world who looked like this.
She glanced up and felt his gaze like a rough hand on her throat.
“You didn’t have to brave the rain.” He turned his attention back to the fire. “Your father left me enough food to last days.”
“It’s not dinner I’ve come to deliver.” She glimpsed an uneaten loaf of oaten bread and a pot of fish stew warming upon the swing arm. “There’s a gale coming.”
“I hear it.” He planted a hand on the stones above the hearth, leaning in. “It reminds me of the winter storms of my home, the way the wind and rain shiver the air.”
An image came to her mind of a cold, shroud-covered place, but the image was born of his words, not of his mind. If she did not believe the evidence of her eyes, she would think she stood in this room alone.
She mustn’t brood over that now. “We’ve made a place for you at our table in the kitchen.”
“I’ll do well enough here.”
The muscles of his outstretched arm tightened. She had more than an inkling about why his words were short and his voice tense. Her father had given Lachlan a talking-to after he’d caught them at the peat-pile yesterday. It frustrated her that she didn’t know the full of the discussion, for she’d only caught fragments from Da. Da, having Sídh blood like everyone else in her family, could sometimes be hazy to read.
Well, Da might want this Scotsman to keep his distance from her, but Da had also demanded that she look after the man.
“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “The gales sweep in from the far edge of the world. Even the easiest of them can rip the thatch from the roofs.”
“A bit of rain won’t do me harm.”
“I won’t leave a guest here while the storm rages. It would bring shame upon my family—”
“I’m an intruder. Not a guest.”
“You’re my father’s patient, and thus far more important than the cows, and we’ve already brought them in under a roof.”
“I’d prefer this pallet than sleeping among cows—”
“Don’t be foolish. The cows are in the storeroom that opens to the lee side. We’ve got a pallet made up for you in the main room with the rest of us.”
Heat rose to her cheeks, for in the silence after she’d spoken she realized that they’d be sleeping in the same room together. Her mother would insist that she and her sisters stay on one side of the room and Lachlan and her brothers on the other, but now she couldn’t help imagining blinking her eyes open in the night and catching his gaze across the space that separated them.
“I cannot join you,” he said, “wearing nothing but my braies.”
Lightning flashed bright, painting his all-but-naked body in silver. She stood still while the image burned into her mind until the thunder followed, startling her into breathing again.
“My father,” she said, feeling strangely tingly, as if the lightning had hit close, “keeps some of his clothing here in case his tunic gets—” bloody “—soiled.” She walked behind the table to a chest pushed against the wall. The wet hem of her tunic slapped against the rushes as she kneeled. She pulled out a linen shirt and an overtunic. “You’re of the same height, so these should fit.”
His shadow fell over her. She handed the linen shirt up to him blindly. When he didn’t take it from her, she dared to meet his eye.
He tilted his head toward his injured shoulder, his face grim.
Da had told her that it would take weeks for Lachlan’s shoulder to heal, weeks before the man could even raise his elbow to the level of his shoulder. Her heart did a skip-jump as she realized she’d have to help him dress.
Better he be clothed, she thought, than standing above her with the firelight gleaming off all those naked, swelling muscles.
She stood to face him, feeling very small in the dark corner of the room. She smelled the pungent herbs from the salve her father used upon his wound
. She shook out the linen shirt. The arm-holes were generous, but she loosened the drawstring to make the neckline as wide as possible. Rolling the shirt up from the hem, she stepped closer.
She raised her arms as he ducked. She swept the linen over his head. His soft hair brushed her cheek as he straightened. His gaze was a blade, inches from hers. She didn’t need to see into his thoughts to know that he was remembering that moment out in the sun.
She fell back on her heels, stuttering, “The bad arm first.”
She tugged the shirt down his arm as far as it could go so that he could slip his hand into the armhole of the sleeve. She couldn’t meet his eye, but she saw the tightness of his jaw, and the way a pulse throbbed under the crescent scar on his temple. The muscles of his neck strained as his hand caught on the seams, but with a grunt he slid his arm through.
His other arm slipped through with less trouble. The linen strained across his shoulders and outlined the muscles of his chest. She reached for the overtunic but he snatched it away from her.
“I’m not so much of an invalid that I can’t do this myself.”
Pride, she thought. She turned back to the chest to let him struggle in privacy.
She put her hand amid the cloth in the chest, seeking a belt, but she hardly saw anything. Her body was cold and hot at the same time, shivery and flushed, and it wasn’t because she was still soaked from the rain. It occurred to her that these uncontrollable feelings that flowed through her might be the cause of her faltering extra sense. If she could stop feeling like her heart was in her throat every time he looked at her, then maybe that blackness would shift.
He said, “Well?”
She startled and reached for the first thing she found—a length of hemp rope. As she rose to her feet he lifted his good arm, giving her leave to wrap the rope around him. For all his muscles, he had lean hips. When she tied the belt, there was a lot of rope hanging.
He looked down at himself. “I look like a monk.”
Cairenn thought he didn’t look at all like a monk, though she had to admit that such clothes, on another man, might.
“That rope belt may be from a monk,” she said, as thunder rumbled above them. “They still come to the island, now and again. They live in the little rock huts that face out to the sea. They fast and pray and sometimes get sick and need a doctor.”
He gestured to the trunk. “Is there a stretch of canvas in there as well?”
“For what?”
“To shield us from the storm when we cross the courtyard.”
She hazarded a glance toward the door. “My father left his cloak. We can use that.”
He walked toward the door and slipped the mantle off the hook. He took one end of it with his good hand and she took the other. Pressing against his bad arm, she helped pull the billowing wool over their heads.
In the circle of his warmth, she was suddenly reluctant to leave. “I should warn you about my family.”
“Why? Have they horns and goat’s feet?”
“People think we’re odd, living up in this lonely place on the height.” She bit her lower lip, wondering what to tell him without actually telling him. “Keeping so much to ourselves, sometimes we act in ways that outsiders find strange.”
“Are you all trying to kill each other?”
“Of course not.”
“Then we’re sure to get along better than my own clan.”
He put an end to the conversation by pushing the door open with his foot. The rain hit them like cold needles as they stepped into the courtyard. Bowing her head against the wind, she curbed the urge to race across the yard in deference to his injury. The door to the main house opened before they reached it—Niall had been watching. They ducked in.
Through Dairine’s mind, Cairenn saw the two of them sweep into the room, the black woolen mantle flying around them like a loose seal’s skin. The thought was echoed in the minds of her younger brothers whose terrified wonder blossomed like the morning glories that opened at sunrise where they climbed upon the walls. She saw Niall’s surprise at the size of the man, his sudden insecurity about being the protector of the household. Her mother’s thoughts were guarded but Cairenn felt a curiosity flood through her, and something else, too, something muted but warm that Cairenn could only guess was welcome.
The table was set, the bowls of soup steaming, everything ready, and every last one of her family had been waiting for them.
Lachlan tugged the mantle until she released it. He caught it with his good hand and hung it on the wooden hook by the door.
“A blessing upon this house,” Lachlan said, bowing his head toward her mother, “and all those under its roof.”
“A hearty welcome to you, Lachlan,” her mother said. “Join us at our table.”
There was a great rush toward the trestle table as Cairenn’s younger brothers and sisters climbed over one another to take their places, excited and fearful at the same time to be the one who sat closest to the selkie. Her mother sat at one end of the table, her brother Niall at the other. She took the place on Niall’s right.
“Lachlan,” she said, as she gestured for him to sit across the table from her, “this is my brother Niall.”
Lachlan lifted a leg over the bench, “The harpist?”
Niall nodded. His mind was racing, sizing the man up, and cataloging every possible weapon within reach.
“I know a harpist,” Lachlan said, “by the name of Donal MacLean. He’s famous through the Western Islands. You’ll play later?”
I’ll play a sleep-song for sure.
Niall’s thought was like a slap. There was magic in Niall’s music, and her brother was fixing to use it as a weapon.
“Niall plays only if the feeling moves him,” she said, giving her brother an eye. “But maybe we can coax him into playing something soft and harmless.”
A love song then?
“No.”
Lachlan glanced at her sharply, and that’s how she knew she’d spoken aloud to Niall’s unspoken thought.
“Please,” her mother said, drawing everyone’s attention. “This soup is best eaten while it’s still hot.”
Cairenn dipped her spoon and lifted it to her lips like everyone else at the table, but she didn’t taste a drop. Dairine quivered beside her like a plucked harp-string and Cairenn sensed the instant her curious little sister couldn’t keep silent anymore.
Dairine blurted, “You talk funny, Lachlan.”
Her mother tsked. “Dairine—”
“But it’s true! It’s like he rolls his words in his mouth before he says them.”
Lachlan smiled. “You’ve never met a Scot, little lass?”
“I met a Gascon once,” she said. “Ma talked to him, babble babble babble, and it didn’t make any sense at all.” Dairine’s face crumpled in concentration the way it did sometimes when Ma was trying to teach her numbers. “And once Da healed a sailor whose skin was as black as charred peat. He even let me touch his skin to see if the darkness would rub off.”
Lachlan’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Such creatures you’ve had at your table.”
“You must be a really good swimmer,” her sister continued, “to have made it to the strand the day Cairenn found you.”
“I am, though I’m glad to be out of the sea now.”
“But why?”
“So I can be sitting near a warm fire, eating this fine soup with kind folk like you.”
Will you take Cairenn to be your wife in the sea?
“Eat your soup, Dairine,” Cairenn said, before the girl could speak her thought, “and stop asking so many questions.”
“But—”
Cairenn raised a brow. Disappointment and frustration rippled through the girl, as well as a bit of rebellion. But though Dairine was reckless, she wasn’t thoughtless.
Lachlan ventured, “So your name is Dairine, little lass?”
Her sister nodded.
“I have a half-sister a little older than you. I haven
’t seen her in a while, she’s living with relatives. Elspeth is her name. She’s just as curious and full of questions as you are, but she doesn’t have any older sisters to boss her around.”
Dairine covered a giggle with her hand. Cairenn wrinkled her nose at her playfully, but her mind was elsewhere. This talk of his siblings made her realize how little she knew about Lachlan’s larger world. Normally when she looked into anyone’s mind, she sensed the nearness of those they loved—parents, siblings, husbands, wives, lovers—so many points of warmth that permeated their thoughts.
In her mind, Lachlan had been as lonely as a wolf on a mountaintop.
Naill spoke up. “Cairenn tells us that you’ve been to Rome.”
“Did she?” Lachlan’s gaze slid to hers.
Dairine piped, “Is Rome under the sea?”
“No, wee lass,” he said, his gaze making Cairenn blush. “It’s far away from here where it is always warm.”
“Da has been to it,” her brother Declan ventured from the other end of the table. “He says it’s full of roads paved in stone and great bridges and it was a wonder to behold until the Vandals came.”
Lachlan’s brows twitched. “The Vandals you say? It’s been centuries since that happened. Your father looks young for his age.”
A joke, she thought, he meant it as a joke, but not a soul at the table laughed. From the cradle, they’d all been taught never to speak a word about their special gifts to strangers, and this kind of talk came perilously close.
Everyone turned at once to Ma as if they’d been the one to say too much. Then a great crack of lightning shook the timbers and everyone startled.
“Tell my brothers what you were doing in Rome, Lachlan,” Cairenn said to smooth over the awkwardness. “It’ll give them something to think about when they’re laboring over their slates.”
“I was studying.” Lachlan looked from face to face with a deepening line between his brows. “There are great churches full of statues and paintings, and buildings made of massive blocks of stone the likes of which I’d never seen.”
Niall said, “Most men go to Rome to become priests.”
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 5