Wouldn’t that be a bad bit of luck for you, my sister, if he were dedicated to celibacy.
“Careful, brother,” she snapped, “or I’ll poison your soup.”
Lachlan watched the interchange intently. “I don’t mind the questions,” he ventured as a great howling wind rustled the roof. “It must seem like a curious thing, for a man to go all the way to Rome.”
Dairine said, “Did you swim the whole way?”
“I took a ship.” He gave Dairine a wink. “Easier on the fins.”
Niall persisted despite her sharp kick. “So, Lachlan, you’re not a priest then?”
“My uncle is a priest. He offered me a place to stay and granted me entry to the best private libraries in the city. I begged my father to let me go. I wanted to study architecture and there was no better place.”
Niall’s eyes had begun to dance. “So you plan to build a coliseum by the North Sea?”
“Nothing so grand.” Lachlan waited until a new roll of thunder abated. “I want to build bridges over estuaries. There are lots of them where I come from, difficult to pass even in low tide. The mud can swallow a sheep.”
Dairine said, “What’s an estuary?”
“A place where the sea sends a finger across the land,” Lachlan said. “It empties at low tide, fills up again at high tide. There are always lots of seals.”
I like him. I hope Cairenn marries him so I can visit the seals.
Lachlan glanced up at her again and Cairenn felt for a moment like he’d heard Dairine’s thought—but of course he couldn’t have.
“My compliments to you, mistress,” Lachlan said, sliding a nod toward her mother. “I haven’t tasted such fine soup for years. I like the winkles.” He gave Dairine a wink. “I’ll have to remember that when I return to the sea.”
Dairine pressed close to the table. “So you’ll be going back, then?”
“I’ll be healed soon. Then this Scotsman will be gone from here and no more trouble to any of you.”
Cairenn heard her mother speaking kind words about how Lachlan was no trouble at all, words lost in the whip-crack of another burst of lightning.
But all Cairenn heard was I’ll be gone.
Her mother stood up. “Will you be having more, Lachlan?”
“I’d welcome it.”
Then her mother came to Lachlan’s side and did what her mother rarely did. She looked straight into Lachlan’s eyes.
Lachlan jolted in his seat. Her siblings went wide-eyed. Cairenn’s stomach tightened. What was her mother doing? He was an outsider. She tried to read her mother’s thoughts, but the idea had no sooner passed through her mind when Ma broke the spell by patting Lachlan on the arm and taking the bowl to the burbling pot on the hearth.
It had only been a moment, but Lachlan sat blinking, following her mother’s path with a confused gaze.
“Your bowl is empty, Niall.” Cairenn stood up and swiped his bowl. “I’ll get you more.”
She joined her mother at the hearth where they stood with their backs to the room. She held out Niall’s bowl as her mother began to ladle. Cairenn stretched out her thoughts to read her mother’s mind, but her mother spoke first.
“He’s a good man, daughter.”
Cairenn frowned because she didn’t know that—not for sure—and wasn’t that the root of all the trouble? “What did you see, Ma?”
“You know better than to ask me such a question—”
“Ma.” She gripped her wrist. “Tell me what you saw.”
Her mother had the gift of the Sight. With one look, her mother could read a man’s future—if the man could bear to stand strong under that swirling, unearthly gaze.
“I saw what he’ll suffer, my daughter,” her mother murmured, “if he persists in his path.”
“And?”
Her mother looked up at her and lifted the veil between their minds.
Cairenn heard one billowing word.
Death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lachlan stood in the courtyard squinting against the bright sky as he mentally measured the length of the cottage’s eaves against the pile of wood at his feet. Beside him, Niall rose up from his knees from where he’d been perusing Lachlan’s plans drawn in the dust—sketches for a sluice to capture the moisture dripping from the thatch and shuttle it into a rain barrel.
“We don’t have enough iron nails.” Niall rubbed the prickle on his jaw. “Can’t we tie the gutter to the thatch with rope?”
“Rope will rot in the salt air.” Lachlan lifted his bad arm to shield his face from the sun and felt a sharp pinch in his shoulder, where, after a long week of rest, his body’s weakness had narrowed and focused. “You’d have to change the rope whenever you changed the thatch. Wooden stakes will do.” He toed over a few pieces of the spare wood. “You say you can carve?”
“Six harps, yew and ash and oak.” The young man flashed a cocky smile. “Including the one you admired last night.”
Lachlan remembered that it had been a fine harp, chiseled with a precise hand. “Digging a channel in a stretch of wood will be cruder work than that.”
“It’s always crude work when you’ve got nothing but a block of wood in front of you. I can carve a channel as you direct, especially if it means Ma won’t have to lug as many pails of water from the spring.”
Lachlan’s mind shifted to the problem of the wooden stakes just when Cairenn walked into the courtyard through the cows’ shed door. The sight of her blasted all the numbers and sketches and plans right out of his head.
She walked right up to them, all wind-teased hair and rosy lips. “Should I ask what you two are doing?”
Trying to get you out of my mind.
Niall said, “We’re building a rainwater sluice.”
“Getting out from under chores, that’s what I think.” She turned her bright gaze upon Lachlan. “So the books in the sickroom weren’t enough to occupy you?”
His chest tightened. The dusty, dry tomes in the sickroom that she was referring to were no match for his growing restlessness this week, nor his heated thoughts about this woman. “Half of them are in Greek,” he said. “The others in languages I don’t recognize.”
Her gaze flittered back to her brother. “You know you shouldn’t be whittling away on all this wood without asking Da.”
“You know Da won’t mind after I tell him it’s for Ma’s good.”
“And you,” she said, turning back to Lachlan. “Do you think you’re healed enough to drive stakes into mortar?”
He knew he wasn’t, but how he itched for the feel of a mallet in his hand. At Loch Fyfe, when his family was besieged by cattle-raiders and highwaymen, worn down by the complaints of clansmen, the gray weather, or a blight upon the sheep, he used to build something in order to occupy his hands, his people, and his mind with something other than claymores and fruitless searches for sly enemies.
“I didn’t think so,” she said into his silence, “but if you’re feeling so hearty, there are other ways to hurry your healing. Today we’ll take a walk to the height.”
“Listen to you,” Niall said. “Da puts responsibility in your hands and suddenly you’re a tyrant—”
“And aren’t you the one lording over us from the end of the table?”
“I’m man of the house now, and I won’t be going on some idle walk—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of taking you away from carving, Niall. You stay here and whittle away.” She tilted her head to a boy who’d sidled up beside her. “Seamus will be coming along with Lachlan and me.”
Niall did not look happy about this. Since the first night Lachlan had spent dinner with the family, Niall had taken it upon himself to follow Cairenn into the sickroom whenever she brought Lachlan his meals. Her brother loitered while Cairenn changed his dressings. Against his baser instincts, Lachlan had welcomed the young man as a reminder of his better intentions—and his promise to her father.
But the forced inactivity and Cairenn’s frequent nearnes
s made Lachlan half-mad with frustration. Niall’s complaints about lugging water and the patter of frequent rain upon the thatch had brought to Lachlan’s mind this idea for a sluice.
“Come, Lachlan,” she said, squinting beyond him to the sky. “There’s a skift of rain coming, I can smell it. We’d best go now.”
Lachlan eyed the boy who would be a chaperone in Niall’s place, a half-grown hulk of a man-child who didn’t look like he’d be paying nearly as much attention as a wary sibling. Lachlan’s blood surged despite his better intentions, but he couldn’t come up with an excuse not to go with her.
She turned on her heel and headed toward the fort’s wooden gate. Ignoring the glowering face of her brother, Lachlan set out after her, not watching the sway of her bottom. He didn’t watch the way the breeze pulled at her sleeve as if to tug it off her slim shoulder. He didn’t notice the way streaks of mud stretched across her sweetly curving hips where she’d wiped her hands, probably after tending to the cows this morning.
The stout hulk of a boy raced ahead, twirling and stumbling and half-dancing like a child set free of his tutor. They followed him through the cow-fields toward the rocky higher places. Lachlan hadn’t been out of the courtyard since they’d carried him up the hill to the sickroom, and though he could see the world through the window, being surrounded by all this openness disoriented him.
Up ahead, the boy had already half dismantled one portion of the rock-pile fence to make it low enough for Cairenn to step over. Lachlan strode ahead to join Seamus picking up the fist-sized stones.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said as she hurried up from behind.
“My arm will be limp as an eel if I don’t use it.”
“If my da—”
“Is he here, lass?”
“No, but if—”
“Then it’ll be our secret.”
He dropped to one knee to ease the stretch of his back. The stones were gritty and cold in his grip. Already the walk had done him good, for he could taste the salt in the air and smell the rain clinging to the grass. Even his ears seemed sharpened, for he heard not just the roaring of the ocean but also the lowing of the cows in farther pastures and the screech of a gull as it wheeled on an updraft.
Cairenn passed over the rock wall and Lachlan helped the boy seal it up behind her. He could tell the woman had something on her mind by the way she concentrated on the path as if it would lead to answers. Her back was stiff, her shoulders tense. As he caught up to her, he resisted the urge to recapture her attention by running a finger down the furrow of her back. She was a woman meant to be held and gently mussed and kissed until her lips swelled and she breathed her deepest wanting.
Enough.
He curled his hands into fists. This would end badly if he didn’t lighten the air between them.
“It’s a fine, lovely day, wouldn’t you say, Cairenn?”
“I would, but it’s not the fine, lovely day you’re staring at.”
So she’d noticed. No doubt it was his staring that had made her tense. They’d never be easy around each other if they didn’t talk about this thickening awareness between them.
“Talking about the weather,” he said, “is just my way of saying what I’m thinking without saying it.”
“So it’s a lie, then?”
“It’s not a lie, lass. Just an easier way of letting my thoughts be known.”
“If you want your thoughts to be known then you should speak them. Loud and clear so that everyone can hear.”
“The world would be full of fighting and fury if everyone spoke so.”
“So what you’re thinking will shock me?”
He gazed at the far horizon as he sought a way to get out of this mess of his own making. “I’m saying your father wouldn’t like it much.”
“Wasn’t it you who just reminded me he wasn’t here?”
Caught as sure as a fish in a net. “He’s a good man, your father. He saved my life, I owe him my respect.”
“Yet you allow your thoughts to run free about things you dare not speak.”
“Come now, lass. A man’s thoughts are best kept to himself when he’s walking with a lovely woman.”
Her eyes narrowed in that contemplative, puzzled way. “You’re flirting with me, aren’t you?”
“You’re surprised.”
“I know what flirting is,” she retorted. “I’ve seen it happen during the thatching season.”
I’ve seen it happen. Like she’d never experienced it herself. “Are there no men on this island with red blood running in their veins?”
She tilted her head and a little line appeared between her brows. “Is that a compliment? Are you saying—”
“—that you’re a fine-looking lass as any I’ve known, if a bit slow when it comes to flirtation.”
“Well, how am I to know what you’re talking about, if you veil your true thoughts with false words?”
“The same way a man comes to know the mind of a woman. By getting to know her better.”
A blush spread right to the roots of her hair. He watched it rise, then, distracted by the way strands of her hair flew around her face, he became jealous of the sea wind.
He tore his gaze from her and sought the far horizon. He’d spoken too bluntly. The sooner he changed the subject, the better for both of them.
“Wherever you’re leading me, lass,” he said, “will there be a pint of ale at the end?”
“Not unless the fairies see to it. We’ll be climbing to the dolmen stones up there.”
In the distance he could see a lonely structure limned against the sky, two upright stones supporting a long, horizontal capstone. It brought to mind the hilltop at Loch Fyfe, at least the way it had been in his youth. In truth, this whole island stirred up a strange cauldron of youthful memories. There was something in the brightness of the white sun after a gale, the briny smell in the air, the way the rain clung to each blade of grass, glittering in the sideways light of the morning. He could almost imagine he was chasing Fingal and Elspeth across the hills, playing hide-and-seek amid the stones on the council height.
“Lachlan,” Cairenn said, in a voice that sounded as if it were forced through her throat. “You’re thinking of home, aren’t you?”
Yes, but only to distract himself from thinking of what it would be like to kiss her until her knees faltered. “I’m always thinking of home. That dolmen reminds me of the place where my clan chooses their chieftain.”
“And you want to go back soon.”
“Considering what befell me, I won’t rest easy until I lay my eyes upon my father again.”
“But isn’t it foolish to be eager to return to whatever made a man plunge a knife into your back?”
“Shall I abandon my people to our enemies, then?”
She raised her brows. “You talk of ‘your people’ as if you are lord over them all.”
He reached for deflection. “Your sister thinks I’m a king.”
“That’s my fault, because I told Dairine that your father is the king of North Sea seals. I told her that you ran away from your father because the princess he was trying to marry you off to has a chin full of whiskers.”
He suppressed a snort. “You do have an imagination.”
“But me, myself,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I’ve been thinking on this for some time now. I can’t decide whether your father is a merchant fighting over trading privileges, a baron fighting over borderlands, or the king of a pack of common thieves.” She slid that piercing green gaze toward him. “Any of the three could end up in a knife-fight on a sea-bound ship.”
He knew he should tell her nothing. He’d kept quiet about his situation for her protection and the protection of her whole family. But if he didn’t tell her the truth now—a truth that would put a gulf between them as wide as that between a plowman and a king—he might find himself unable to resist those rosy lips much longer.
“My father,” he said, “is a cl
an chieftain.”
He saw her quick little swallow.
“A chieftain, is he?” Her voice was forced. “We’ve had O’Flaherty and O’Brien chieftains find their way here, and plenty of those English barons and knights sporting tournament wounds.”
“Before long, I suspect every outcropping of land you see will be full of those English barons, and they’ll be sporting wounds not from tournaments, but from war.”
“The English wouldn’t dare start a war here. Have you seen the O’Flahertys fight?”
“Irish fighters are fierce. So are the Scots. But when it comes to fighting the English, fierceness isn’t enough.” How isolated she must be on this island to not feel the encroachment of the enemy that had harried his father’s lands most of his life. “The English are united, but the Scots are divided by clan. Our landholdings are small chieftaincies, and every passing of the rod causes infighting. Divided as we are, we’ll never hold out against the English, our true enemies.”
“Was it an English knife that put a hole in your shoulder, then?”
“Nay, lass. It was a Scottish one.”
She gifted him with the sight of her upturned face, those rosy lips parted in surprise, those winged brows raised high.
He was telling her too much. She didn’t need to know why someone had aimed a blade at his heart. And yet, when she looked at him with so much concern and curiosity, he wanted to tell her everything.
“When my father became chieftain,” he began, “he decided to change the old traditions. No longer would the next chieftain be chosen by deliberation among the brothers, uncles, or cousins of the late leader. From now on, our clan would pass the rod of leadership as the English do—to the firstborn son—and in that way keep the lands undivided and strong.”
She mused on this for a moment. “Then your father—”
“—declared me his heir.”
Heir to the chieftaincy of Loch Fyfe, as well as the three septs of the clan—the MacEgans, the Ewings, and the MacGilchrists. Thousands of souls and tens of thousands of Highland acres.
Her gaze fluttered away. She buried her fingers in her skirts, worrying the wool of her kirtle as if ashamed of the rough weave. Oh, he’d put a gulf between them, but Lachlan was beginning to wonder if even the width of a sea could stop him from wanting to slide his fingers into her hair and draw her face toward his.
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 6