Her slivered gaze defied him but he matched her look with a glare that warned her to say nothing.
“She belongs back under her father’s care,” he said. “The sooner I get her back, the better.”
“Find another berth,” the captain said.
“Captain—”
“Off my ship, Brochan, and take your witch with you.” The captain gestured to the open hold. “The rest of you, back to work!”
The sailors wandered back to their posts, but Lachlan saw the looks they gave him and Cairenn. So he curled his hand around her arm and drew her to the gunwale, glancing down to the men in the boat arranging what casks they’d already loaded so as better to balance. Relief swept through him when he realized he didn’t recognize any of the Derry men therein.
This was the last of his luck, he was sure of it.
He climbed down the rope ladder and stepped foot on the stowed barrels, waiting as Cairenn, the self-proclaimed witch, followed him down. As soon as he could reach, he seized her by the waist, swung her through the air, and set her down in the boat with more force than necessary.
He sat on a barrel beside her and leaned into her, turning his face so the Derry men in the boat couldn’t hear him. “Have you utterly lost your senses, woman?”
“I didn’t sit cramped in a stinking hold for five days,” she said between her teeth, “just to be sent back home.”
“So you declare yourself a witch in front of two dozen sailors.”
“I expected them to dismiss my confession.” Her throat flexed. “They’re outsiders, you’re an outsider, and that’s what you did.”
“I am not a sailor.” He flattened his hands on the wobbling casks as the Derry men reached for the last barrels. “Sailors won’t sail on Fridays because it’s thought to be bad luck. They don’t like women on board ship because it’s bad luck. They won’t whistle while at sea lest they whistle up a storm because it’s bad luck—”
“—so you decided to tell them I wasn’t right in the head.” She turned those piercing green eyes upon him. “And that’s why my father never let me off the island.”
“I’m trying to keep you off a burning stake.”
He saw a quiver shudder through her. She turned away. Maybe she wasn’t as foolhardy as she seemed.
As the boatmen pushed away from the galley and started rowing toward the quay, he switched his attention to the approaching shore. The sailors would talk in the alehouses. Soon word would spread about an Inishmaan girl—a witch—who’d stowed away to chase after a wounded sailor by the name of Brochan. The two of them would be the focus of too much attention. There’d be no careful approach to Angus O’Donnell now. He’d have to drag her to his cousin’s door and beg not just for warriors to avenge his father’s murder, but also for the coin to send her home.
“Ruari and Tadgh,” he said, running his hand across his unshaven jaw, “swore up and down that they didn’t see you climb onto the galley. How did you manage without attracting their attention?”
“They were blind drunk.”
He raised a brow. “No one could be blind to a beautiful woman climbing down a hatch.”
“It was dark, and they were distracted by the barking of the seals and a boat rowing by. While they were, I climbed over the gunwale and hid.” She frowned and rubbed her brow as if a headache loomed. “When they fell asleep, I snuck down the hatch and found a space among the barrels.”
“Falling asleep on watch is a whipping offense. They’ll never admit to it.” They’d attribute her appearance to witchery before they’d admit to it, which would give credence to her admission, damn it. “This boat that distracted the men, who was in it?”
“How am I to know? I was at the other end of the ship.”
“Don’t lie, Cairenn. I know you didn’t swim your way out to the galley, not in that rough surf.”
“Of course not. That would be madness. Something only a girl who has fits and delusions might do.” Her jaw tightened. “Or a witch.”
His lips thinned. He did not want to have this conversation about her so-called gift. He’d hurt her enough when he’d called her on her bluff in the sickroom at Inishmaan.
He said, “You had help getting out to the ship. I know it wasn’t Niall, he has too much sense. It was another man.” He felt a twist under his ribs, a sting that felt suspiciously like jealousy. “Whoever he was, he then distracted the sailors so you could climb on board.”
She sat in stubborn silence, plucking at a loose fiber by the knee of her kirtle. He cast back to the few people he knew on the island, trying to think of who would dare do this and risk the wrath of her father. The answer came to him in a flash.
“Cairenn,” he said. “Tell me you didn’t do this to that poor boy—”
“He’s not a ‘poor boy.’ He’s hard-working and loyal and wise in ways that you or I will never understand—”
“—and he’ll do anything you say, even when it’s wrong.”
“Seamus understands why I did this.” Her brow furrowed deeper, and she began to wince as if the sun was too bright. “He believes me.”
“He’s a dead boy the moment your father realizes who helped you—”
“My father will forgive him,” she insisted, pressing her fingers against her temple as if in pain, “because my mother knows what I’ve done and why.”
“In the meantime, your father will live with the torment of thinking another daughter has been stolen from home.”
“I wasn’t stolen.” Her voice faltered. “And I’m not lost.”
Then she suddenly bent forward, clasping her head in her hands. Her knuckles went white. Alarmed, he ran the back of his hand across her cheek and found her skin clammy and cold.
“Woman, when was the last time you ate?”
She lifted her hand and waved it as if batting away a cloud of flies. He barked at the sailors for food—anything—a crust of bread, a bite of cheese. One sailor paused rowing long enough to pull an apple out of a sack and toss it his way.
He caught it with one hand and held it under her face. “Take a bite, Cairenn. You’ll feel better.”
“Too many people…”
“We’re almost at the quay.” He stretched an arm across her narrow shoulders as she started shaking. “Come, just one bite.”
She shook off his grip and shot to her feet. She looked down at him, her gaze unfocused and wild, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
Then she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Oblivion was a balm. It was like being dropped into the depths of a calm sea. The noise of the world muffled to nothing. But the very moment she became conscious of the oblivion was the moment she rose out of it like a bubble wending its way toward light.
She drew in a breath as her senses slowly awakened. She recognized the crackling of a fire, a pillow that smelled of fresh goose-down and a mattress that squeaked with new hay. With some hesitation, she turned her mind toward the world around her, anticipating the noise of thousands of thoughts, dreading the pounding that would begin in her temples under that pressure.
But no one was close. The first minds she touched were those of three men conversing on a lower floor. One was a merchant by the name of Angus O’Donnell, and the other two his clerics. Their bellies were full and their wine cups more so, and they all brooded about the witch in their midst.
Witch.
Her eyes flew open. With a start she realized that Lachlan’s face was so close that she could see a crease deepening between his brows.
Then the crease softened, as did the expression of worry on his face.
“I’ve been waiting too long,” he said, in a low, rumbling voice, “to see those eyes of green.”
Shadowed by his growing beard, the corners of his lips lifted. His eyes were the velvet blue of a sky just before it darkens into night. She opened her mouth to speak but her throat was dry. She licked her lips, and at the motion he rea
ched for a skin of ale sitting on a table beside him.
He pulled out the cork. “Drink.”
As she struggled to rise, he slid his arm beneath her. He eased her up as if she weighed nothing and then he lifted the skin to her lips.
The ale tasted cool, like it had just come from a cellar. She drank deeply, so deeply that she sputtered.
“Easy,” he said, pulling it away.
His arm felt warm and strong against her spine. His face was close enough that she felt his breath. In her chest came a strange tightness that made her shy. She lowered her gaze to her hands lying on a fine linen covering edged with lace.
“How long have I been…?”
“A day and a little more. Those church bells you hear are ringing for vespers.”
She spread the tentacles of her deeper senses out into the world despite the dull ache in her head. She realized that they were lodged in a place apart from the center of Derry. She sensed the bright stridency of a dense gathering of people, but at a distance. Far enough for her to set it aside, to push it out of her attention. There were others in this building, a dozen souls scattered about. Cooks in the scullery cleaning up from the supper soup and setting dough to rise on the warm mantel. Maids sweeping the dogs out of the main hall. Stable boys dozing in the hay.
A manor hall, then.
“Don’t drift away, Cairenn.”
He brushed a curl off her brow, a gentle touch that made her long for so much more. She dared to look at him. She resisted the urge to reach up and wind a lock of his hair around her finger. Was it any wonder that a woman would fall so easily under the spell of a man, when his thoughts were hidden and his face so beautiful?
He said, “How are you feeling?”
“Weak,” she confessed.
“Five days in the hold without food or water will do that.”
It wasn’t a lack of food and water that had made her weak, but she didn’t contradict him because his words were soft. This was the softness she’d hoped for when she’d first risen out of the hold of the galley. Maybe he wasn’t angry at her anymore for daring to follow him, for causing him so much trouble.
She hadn’t come here to cause trouble. She’d ventured into this unfamiliar world for one reason alone: To convince him of the truth so she could help him.
Well, maybe there was another reason, too.
She reached for the skin of ale again. She meant to drink slowly, but the ale was fresh and she hoped there was courage at the bottom.
“Easy, lass. The doctor said if you drink too quickly you’ll get sick.”
“Doctor?” she sputtered.
“Of course I sent for a doctor.” A strange expression passed across his face. “He left an herb mixture for when you awakened to help expel the…madness.”
Her public confession came to mind, and along with it a rush of fear. “Perhaps I should not have started that foolishness.”
“Perhaps?”
“I misjudged the sailors. But you gave me no choice.”
“And so you took all choice away from me, as well.”
He pulled his arm out from behind her. It felt like he pulled away a hundred thousand miles. He sat back in the chair by the bed and crossed his arms. A look passed across his face, a look that she’d seen once before, while he puzzled out the wooden pieces of the rain sluice he’d started to build on Inishmaan.
He passed his fingers through the scruff of his growing beard. “What am I to do with you, lass?”
“You’re going to keep me with you,” she said, courage rising. “You’re going to let me help you find the man who demanded your death.”
“Lass, I’d sooner swim the distance from here to Inishmaan with you strapped to my back.”
“You will let me stay,” she insisted, “when I tell you about the vision my mother had concerning you.”
She was disappointed to find no change in his expression, not even the shift of a jaw or the flicker of an eyelash.
“My mother’s gift is prophecy.” Strange how easily such forbidden confessions slipped off her lips, now that she’d escaped the island. “She took one look at you and saw your future as clear as day.”
“A grim one, no doubt.”
“Death.”
A lift of a brow was his only reaction. It unnerved her that he’d be so unruffled. But, then again, if he didn’t believe in her mother’s gift, why would he believe in the revelation, even if it was foreboding?
She said, “You can’t deny that my mother has unusual eyes. I saw my mother turn her gaze upon you that night, when you first supped with us during the storm.”
She thought she saw a flicker of acknowledgement on his face. But when he didn’t deny it, she took his silence as an invitation.
“My mother is the reason we live on a place as remote as Inishmaan. I can hide my gift, my older sister and brother can conceal theirs, and my father walks unnoticed in the world. But my mother’s eyes mark her in a way that’s unsettling to outsiders.”
“So she says I’ll die,” he said, “but death comes to every man.”
“My mother speaks not of what will happen in twenty years, but what will happen within weeks or even days.”
“She knew the circumstances of my situation just as you did. It’s a wonder another dagger hasn’t been plunged in my back already.”
“I came here to change that fate.”
“Fate is unchangeable.”
“That’s not true.” She pressed the heels of her palms against the mattress and pulled her weight up so she was sitting upright, even though it made her head swim. “If you change circumstances, then your fate will follow.”
“Or my fate will consume you, Cairenn, and your parents will lose another daughter.”
She winced because she couldn’t avoid the guilty impact of those words. She remembered how Ma and Da had suffered after Aileen disappeared from the strand. Now that another daughter was gone, Cairenn imagined that her mother had taken anew to rocking by the fire, silent with worry and care, while her father isolated himself in the sickroom crushing herbs in mortars.
He said, “I take it from your silence that you understand why I have to return you home—”
“My mind,” she interrupted, “is not changed. If you take me with you to Loch Fyfe, I can tell you whether a man is an ally—or an assassin.”
He breathed hard through his nose. “Are you to step between me and a blade then? Or do you think your so-called gift can help?”
She flinched. How very different the world must be to outsiders who knew nothing of magic. It seemed that whenever magic appeared before them, their first instinct was to deny—or to burn.
She had to offer Lachlan the kind of proof that he couldn’t deny.
“We are in the home of Angus O’Donnell,” she began. “He’s your father’s second cousin, and one of three men in Derry who run shipping between Cork, Bantry, Kilrush, Galway, Donegal, and up to Scotland and the Western Isles. He ships wine, timber, hides, salt, spices when he can get them—”
“Your mind is quick to pick up idle sailor’s talk with you five days in the hold.”
She frowned and focused on odd facts, personal ones. “Angus is longing for more pepper on his meat. He has determined that if some comes in on one of his boats, he will keep most for himself, no matter the cost.”
Lachlan made a point of glancing at a tray on the table by the bed—his dinner, she supposed, for she had not yet eaten. On it was the remnants of a stew, speckled with dark flecks that looked suspiciously like pepper.
“He had a wife, a beloved wife,” she continued. “Everyone called her Aunt Eva but she was Eveline to him. She died from childbed fever after giving birth to his sixth child, a son. He mourns her every St. Stephen’s Day by lighting candles in St. Columb’s Cathedral.”
Lachlan went still.
“Right now,” she persisted, sliding toward him, “Angus is lingering in the great hall below with two of his clerics. One of them is from Don
egal. He took his orders in Armagh, he’s an Augustinian. He wears a hair shirt beneath his cloak and flogs himself during Lent to purge himself of a sin he’s never committed but is tempted by frequently. He also has a small dog he feeds from the table. His abbot doesn’t approve, but he named the dog after an old Irish deity, Dagdá—”
“A priest’s dog with a pagan name? Come, lass—”
“—Angus loved your father like a brother,” she said, despite the rising glower on Lachlan’s face. “In their youth, they went to war together against the Campbells. Angus would never betray him, nor you, not for all the pepper in the world. I tell you true: Angus O’Donnell is not your enemy.”
“Enough.”
Lachlan shot up from the chair so fast it clattered backwards. Then he turned on a heel and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Impossible.
Lachlan gripped the railing of the second-floor balcony and stared down at the great hall below. He saw the clerics Cairenn had mentioned standing up from the trestle table. He heard the rustle of their clothes, the scrape of their feet, and the last-minute orders from Angus as they headed out of the hall. He told himself that noises carried easily in this house. Much of the nonsense she’d just said she could have guessed from things she’d overheard.
The rest she must have made up—like Angus’s pet name for his wife and the damn pagan dog.
Pushing away from the railing, Lachlan made his way down the stairs and laid eyes on his shaggy-headed kinsman. How had she guessed Angus’s loyalties? Lachlan had learned the truth yesterday when he roughhoused his way into Angus’s mead-hall, carrying a woman in his arms. His burly, big-bellied kinsmen had looked at him with the elation of a father glimpsing his prodigal son.
Now Angus bellowed from the head of the table, “There you are, cousin. How fares our madwoman?”
“Delirious.” He planted himself at the end of a bench and reached for the pitcher of ale. “Nothing a hearty meal and another night’s sleep won’t cure.”
He poured himself some of the brew while Angus barked for one of the servants to bring a tray to their guest upstairs. Lachlan took a long gulp of ale and remembered how, at Inishmaan, her curious green eyes used to bore into him as if she were trying to penetrate his skull.
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 10