He moved quickly then, unlocking the smaller portal with one of the keys on the ring attached to his belt. “I beg you add my prayers to yours, my lady,” he said with a nod and Isabella smiled agreement.
She ran through the gates, through the village, through the snow that had dusted the road during the night. She pushed open the heavy wooden door of the chapel and blinked at the darkness inside. She took a deep breath of the scent of beeswax and saw that a dozen candles yet burned at the altar. Isabella had time to cross herself and genuflect, to hear the heavy portal close behind her, before she was seized in an iron grip.
A gloved hand covered her mouth when she would have cried out in alarm. Her arms were trapped against her body and she was lifted from the ground, a man holding her captive against his muscled strength.
“Who is Rosamunde?” that man whispered into her ear, and Isabella almost fainted in relief.
Murdoch!
* * *
Murdoch did not loosen his grip upon Isabella. Her heart pounded, each pulse radiating heat into his own chilled body. She was so vibrant that holding her in his embrace seemed to call him back from some dark and dreadful place.
He knew that place, its name and its empress. He wished to never return there.
Although his sole choice might be death.
Desperation had driven him back into Kinfairlie village, in hope of meeting Isabella. The message had been from the laird to one Rosamunde, requesting her return most urgently. He had resolved that Isabella would know this Rosamunde, and he knew that Isabella intended to search the chapel’s crypt for the relics.
He and Stewart had ridden around the far side of Kinfairlie village during the dark of the night, letting the sound of the sea disguise the horses’ hoof beats. He had left Zephyr hidden with Stewart far beyond the cemetery. He had crept through the graveyard and into the village while its occupants slept. There was no guard posted on the side of the village away from the road, and the wall was laughably low.
Again, Murdoch had been struck by the confidence of those within this holding in their own safety. Of course, he supposed that during any assault, they simply retreated to the bailey and the tower, which did have a considerable wall and moat around it.
There was a strange rustling as he moved through the village, but Murdoch strove to ignore it. He had a sense of movement in the shadows, of some shadows being darker than they had a right to be, but he simply feared anew that he was losing his wits.
The chapel had been easy to find; he remembered it from the day before. The portal had been unlocked, as such places of sanctuary tended to be. But instead of sanctuary, Murdoch had found a hell within the chapel. The shadows had followed him from the cemetery, surging through the portal behind him, filling the chapel and surrounding him.
Watching him.
They were ghosts. Their stares unblinking and their expressions accusatory – though whether they condemned him for his deeds or for the simple fact that he yet lived, Murdoch could not have said. Either way, they obscured his passage to the crypt, forming a frigid barrier of mist and shadow. He had been unable to pass through their ranks. He also could not leave, for they slipped behind him and barred the portal.
It was the dead who filled his mind with images of disintegration, the dead who pressed against him on all sides. They filled his mind with sights of rotten corpses and maggots, flesh disintegrating in the forest as beings of all kinds returned to earth and dust. They ensured he understood how readily he might join them.
Had they been dispatched by the Elphine Queen to illuminate his choices?
They flowed restlessly around Murdoch, like the brush of a thousand butterfly wings, their presence making him taste his own mortality. He stood, wreathed in shadows and powerless to escape. He became aware of the slow death claiming his own body.
The coldness within him could have struck him to ice, fed by the chill of the stone walls and the presence of the dead. Murdoch feared he would join their ranks by the dawn, and dreaded whatever fate he had unwittingly brought upon Stewart. He tugged back his sleeve and watched the blue whorls grow over his flesh, steadily claiming him body and soul.
Would he simply die in this sacred space? Murdoch did not know but as the cold penetrated his very marrow, he had to struggle to care.
Until Isabella burst into the chapel.
* * *
The pink of the dawn’s light followed Isabella, the radiance of her hair making Murdoch gasp in relief. He seized her as much to silence her as to feel her vitality against him. He closed his eyes and held her tightly, savoring the way her touch drove the cold from his body. When he looked, the dead were retreating.
The lady twisted in his grasp and caught his face in her hands. “How long have you been here?” she whispered with concern. “You are so cold, Murdoch!” She hesitated, surveying him, then touched her lips quickly to his. When he caught his breath at the welcome heat that rolled through his body, she smiled.
Then she locked her hands around his head and kissed him fully.
Murdoch could not resist her. He caught her close and deepened his kiss, drinking of her sweet passion. He felt a thaw pass through his body, invigorating him with rare power. His mouth was on her throat, his senses flooded with the enticing perfume of Isabella. She might have been a rope cast to a drowning man, so tightly did he embrace her and the salvation she offered.
She said she learned the healing arts, he recalled belatedly. Perhaps that was why her presence aided him. He did not imagine for a moment that she could heal him fully, but he would take the reprieve and be glad of it.
Indeed, he could not get enough of her. He wanted to feel her again, and watch her find her pleasure once more. She kissed him with such ardor that Murdoch dared to believe their desires were as one. He shed his gloves, his fingers twining in her hair and setting it free of her braid. It flowed over her shoulders, surrounding her face like a corona of flame. He whispered her name and claimed her lips again, drinking deeply of the heat she shared with him so willingly. He could lose himself in this woman’s allure and never regret his choice.
Isabella framed his face in her hands and broke their kiss, studying him closely. “Why are you here?” she whispered. “I told you I would look for the relics. There was no need for you to risk your own safety.” She winced and took a step away. “Or do you not trust me?”
Something changed in her tone, Murdoch saw as much. He reminded himself that he had nothing to promise her, even as he wished to court her truly. “I trust you. If ever there was a lady who would keep her pledge, it is you.”
Isabella turned away, failing to hide her pleasure in his words. Murdoch caught her chin in his hand, tempted to kiss her yet again. He could have been standing in the sunlight on a midsummer day, given the radiant warmth that filled his body.
“All the same, you should not have taken such a risk,” she scolded softly.
“I came because your brother sent a message last night to one Rosamunde, begging her to return with speed.”
“How do you know this?”
Murdoch smiled.
“Not another messenger?”
“The same one and equally as unharmed as the last time. I took but three of his coins.” With a flourish, Murdoch dropped them one at a time into the alms box beside the portal to the church.
She gave him a look that was doubtless intended to be stern, but the sparkle in her eyes betrayed her. “You undoubtedly frightened him.”
Murdoch shrugged. “For only a moment. I even returned the message to him, resealed as if he had never encountered me.”
“Do not tell me that you change your ways for me?”
Murdoch smiled. “You cannot blame me for wishing to ensure I remain in your favor.” Isabella sobered at that and he wondered what he had said. “Who is Rosamunde?”
Isabella bit her lip and stepped away from him, her brows drawing together in a frown. Again, her tone had changed and she spoke to him as if he were a st
ranger. Where was the passionate maiden who had warmed him with her kiss? “Rosamunde is my aunt.” She frowned. “We call her aunt, although there is no blood between us. She was adopted by my grandfather’s brother when she was an infant, and raised as one of us. She was the one who used to trade in religious relics, before my uncle Tynan saw fit to be rid of them all. I think perhaps he meant to save Rosamunde from her trade.”
There was a new distance between them although Murdoch was not certain why. It bothered him, although he knew he should be glad that she drew away from him of her own accord. It might make it less painful for her to expect nothing from him, and she would be less disappointed when he disappeared. “Where is she?”
“Sicily, last I heard. Rosamunde was supposed to come for the Yule with Padraig, but they never arrived.”
“Do you know why?”
Isabella frowned. “My aunt is not conventional, but her word is her bond. She did not vow to be here at the Yule, so she might have changed her plans. In truth, no one made much of it at the time.”
“Why would your brother wish for her presence now?” The answer was obvious to Murdoch, but he wanted Isabella to see the connection. It made sense to Murdoch that the laird might suspect this aunt – and he might have greater cause to request her presence than mere suspicion.
Isabella held Murdoch’s gaze. “Perhaps he simply seeks her counsel.”
“Perhaps he believes she knows more of this matter than he does.”
Isabella clearly did not care for that suggestion, though Murdoch knew it was the most obvious one. “Let us not suspect another member of my family before we clear the first.” She pivoted and marched toward the altar. The ghosts of the dead eased away from her path, still watching, still accusatory, but also helpless against the vitality of her presence.
Murdoch swallowed then followed. He had been cornered by the dead and now would descend willingly into a crypt.
Because Isabella asked him to do so.
* * *
There was a panel in the wooden floor behind the altar, one that Isabella struggled to open herself. Murdoch stepped past her and hauled the panel upward, realizing that it was hinged like a door in the floor. He let it lean against the back wall, swallowing at the stairs that disappeared into the darkness below.
The ghosts rushed forward. He could not stifle the sense that he descended into a tomb, one from which he might not ever depart.
Isabella seized a candle from the table behind the altar, then rummaged for the flint that must be there. Perhaps it was not, for she could not find it. Murdoch reached into his purse and produced his own flint, striking it and lighting the wick of the beeswax candle. When the flame kindled and cast a golden light into the dark chapel, he wondered that he had not thought of lighting a candle sooner. The warm sweet scent of the beeswax soothed his fears and the light either dispatched the ghosts or made them harder to see.
While he was reassured by the candle’s light, Isabella was not.
“It has grown so fast as this?” she demanded. Before he could reply, she had put down the candle. She seized his left wrist with both of her hands and pushed up his sleeve, her gaze roving over the blue mark on his skin.
It had doubled in size during the night, Murdoch knew. It covered his arm from the root of his fingers to his elbow. Isabella turned his hand over and he saw that there were tendrils snaking across his palm as well as the underside of his forearm.
She looked up at him. “Do you pattern yourself apurpose?”
“No.” Murdoch shook his head and tugged his hand free of hers. He pulled down his sleeve and donned his gloves again, then gestured to the stairs. “The crypt,” he reminded her.
Isabella did not move. “It spreads. You had a small whorl on the back of your wrist, but now it is darker and broader. What is it?”
Murdoch swallowed. “A curse. A curse that will claim me body and soul before the moon is new again.”
“But...”
He saw the curiosity in her eyes, but gestured impatiently to the stairs. “There is little time, Isabella, and no cure.”
She held his gaze. “This is why you spoke so sternly to me yesterday,” she whispered and he should have been dismayed that she saw his truth so readily. “You would not promise what you cannot do.”
Murdoch could not deny it. Isabella surveyed him, then nodded once, evidently having made a decision.
Murdoch yearned to know what it was, but she descended four stairs before reaching back for the candle. Only then did Murdoch realize he should have preceded her. Their fingers brushed in the transaction, making his body heat anew.
Then Isabella continued down the stairs. As she disappeared into the crypt, the light from the candle went with her. As the shadows grew in the chapel once more, the dead eased closer. Murdoch leapt after her, convinced that he felt ghosts snatch at his cloak and his hair. They meant to claim him. No, they meant to keep him here, in this chapel, in the ranks of the dead.
Such was his terror that he reached back and hauled the door closed behind them, sealing himself into the crypt with Isabella. Only once it was done did he marvel at his own choice.
He could smell earth and damp stone. Murdoch swallowed and turned, spying Isabella in a pool of light at the far end of the cellar. He noted that the crypt was slightly smaller than the church above but of the same shape. The ceiling was so low that he would have to duck beneath the beams to follow Isabella to the other end. The floor was uneven, simply pounded dirt, and Murdoch refused to think of what might have been buried in this place.
It was so very cold.
He made to follow Isabella, and that was when he saw the skeletons. In the long walls of the crypt, there were niches carved out of the earth. In each was a skeleton, as if he looked into the sides of coffins long interred. Murdoch could see that the spaces were buttressed with stones above the head and below the feet of each skeleton. The face of the one on his right was turned to him, the vacant eyes of the skull and the bared teeth making him feel as if the dead man laughed at him.
Murdoch shivered.
“Those who die in the defense of Kinfairlie are entombed here in honor to their service,” Isabella said, noting his surprise. She cast him a smile. “We come to venerate them on certain holy days. Otherwise, they sleep untroubled.” Murdoch could not match her light mood, although he endeavored to do so. “It has been long since Kinfairlie was attacked and I understand their ghosts are long dispatched.”
She made a jest but she was right. Murdoch forced himself to take a deep breath and reclaim his senses. The dead in this cellar, to his relief, were merely bones.
Silent.
He had found sanctuary from all that haunted him, and in the last place he might have sought it.
* * *
What was the mark on Murdoch’s arm? Isabella had never seen the like of it. It covered his skin, almost like a rash, but it looked to be drawn. It was blue and consisting of a design of circles and swirls. She was reminded of the way that ferns unfurled in the spring, of the way water spun around the rocks in the river, of the way frost could draw a white path across the surface of a still water.
She had only caught a glimpse of it the day before, but she knew that it had been much smaller. He said he was cursed and she guessed that the mark on the skin was a representation of progress made.
Was he a condemned man as the smith implied?
Isabella had known at first glimpse of Murdoch this morning that something was amiss. She had thought him a man turned to ice, for he had been so pale and cold. He had appeared to be lost, as well, like one awakened abruptly from a bad dream. This was the mark of the malady, as sure a sign as the blue marks on his flesh.
After their kiss, though, Murdoch seemed to have recovered his usual manner. He was cavalier and daring, restored to the knight she had first encountered. Now, he strode across the floor to her side and Isabella glanced up at him. She was relieved to see the familiar glint of recklessness and humor in
his eyes.
’Twas then she wondered whether she might be able to heal him. He thought the malady incurable, and he would not make promises to her for fear of being unable to keep them.
What if Isabella could turn the tide? The notion made her heart skip. She was attempting to fit the key into the lock upon the trunk that held the treasures of the chapel, and having no success with the deed.
“It will not turn,” she complained, peering at the lock.
“Another stolen key?” Murdoch teased, taking the brass key from her hand. “A man must be careful of his treasures in your company.”
“Borrowed,” she corrected and they shared a smile that heated her to her toes. “I always return them.”
“After you have satisfied your curiosity.” There was no censure in his tone, merely affection. “The keys may be safe enough but the secrets have no chance.”
Isabella liked that he cast her an irreverent grin and liked even better that he crouched down beside her so that his shoulder bumped against her own. He lifted the key from her fingers and she thought he ensured that his hand lingered against her own.
Murdoch inserted the key again, jiggled it and the tumblers rolled.
“Sorcerer!” she charged, then realized she shouldn’t have done so. He seemed alarmed by her teasing accusation, which surprised her. What would a knight care about sorcery and superstition? That was the provenance of old women – like Moira.
“I thought that was the trade of the Lammergeier,” he said with care.
“So it is rumored,” Isabella acknowledged, tipping back the lid of the trunk. “Though I have yet to see any such powers at work.”
“Truly?” He was watching her with that intensity once again.
Isabella thought for a moment. “My sister, Elizabeth, claims to be able to see a spriggan, a troublesome fairy called Darg.” She rolled her eyes. “Darg apparently is concerned primarily with stealing ale and making dire pronouncements about our marital prospects.”
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