And then he realized Rowan was the only silent person in the room. She pulled against her aunt’s grip. She sheltered her head with her other arm, and he realized her silence wasn’t absolute. Whispered words spiked through the chaos: “I do not want it. I do not want it.”
He did not know what was going on, but he knew from Rowan’s posture that she was in pain, that she feared whatever was happening to her. In the next breath he was by her side, shoving Kenneth off of her, cradling her against his chest as he slid his hands along her arm toward Elspet’s hand.
He ignored the odd snapping sensation that leapt from Rowan’s skin to his and worked to free her from Elspet’s remarkably strong grip. When he finally slid Rowan’s hand free she slumped against him. Elspet’s keening immediately quieted and the MacAlpins all froze, their eyes on him and Rowan.
“What happened?” he demanded of the trio that quickly formed a shield between Rowan and Elspet.
No one answered.
“What happened?!” he shouted. Rowan tried to push out of his lap, but he was not prepared to let her go until he knew what they had done to her. He sat back on the floor and pulled her tight against him. He settled his arms tightly around her. “What did Lady Elspet do to you?” When Rowan didn’t answer, didn’t even meet his gaze, he looked from Kenneth to Jeanette, then to Scotia, but they were all wide-eyed and breathing hard as if they’d just fought a battle.
And perhaps they had.
He looked down at Rowan, pushing her tangled hair off her face and lifting her chin so she would look at him. “Are you all right, love?”
She was dazed, her eyes wide as if she’d been through some terrible ordeal.
“I did not want it,” she whispered to him, but turned her attention to her family, still standing guard between her and Elspet.
“What, lass? What did you not want?” he asked quietly.
“Mum’s power.” He looked up to find Jeanette staring at her cousin.
“Power? You mean the power of the Highland Targe?” he asked before he realized he should not know anything about the Targe.
Jeanette’s gaze moved from Rowan to him, her eyes narrowing. Suspicion rolled off of her like waves crashing ashore in a gale.
“It should not have happened this way. She is not of the blood. She is no blood relation.” Jeanette turned back to her mother, though Nicholas still could not see the Lady. “Why, Mum? Why Rowan?”
A raspy croak was all the answer she got.
“Wheesht.” Jeanette sat on the bed, her palm against her mother’s cheek as if she wiped away tears. “Do not fash yourself. ’Twill be fine.” He heard her heavy sigh. “I can teach her what you taught me. There will be another Guardian after all…” She glanced over her shoulder at Rowan, her face shuttered as surely as a window against a winter’s storm. “Just not who we thought.”
Another raspy croak answered her.
“Wheesht. Sleep now. Your work will be continued.”
She turned to Rowan and Nicholas. Rowan, still held captive in his lap, pushed to her feet, swaying slightly until Nicholas slid an arm around her waist and steadied her.
“I am sorry, Jeanette,” Rowan said.
“Take her out of here,” Jeanette directed her cold, emotionless words to Nicholas. “Take her to her chamber and wait with her. I will attend her shortly.”
Jeanette had been nothing but sweet, quiet, almost docile, since he had met her a sennight ago. Now she was hard and commanding, and still no one had explained what had happened between Elspet and Rowan.
Slowly he led Rowan to the door. As he passed close to Kenneth he stopped.
“There is something of great importance we must speak of,” he said to the chief.
“Not now.”
“Agreed, but it cannot wait long.”
Kenneth glared at him, his gaze softening as he reached out and touched Rowan’s shoulder. “I shall find you as soon as I may.”
ROWAN STOOD IN the middle of her chamber, grateful that Nicholas was there. He sat quietly on her bed, hands on his knees, watching her but not pushing.
She had to move. She went to the window, but that wasn’t far enough so she paced to the door, and back to the window, over and over, her mind a whirling mess. She couldn’t stop her thoughts from caroming through the events of the last few hours any more than she could stop her feet.
She turned back from the door again, stopping short of crashing into Nicholas. She stepped around him and kept going.
“Rowan, stop,” he said. “Tell me what happened to you.”
She reached the window, placed her hands on the sill and leaned into the fresh air. What could she tell him? How could she share with this man, this stranger, this spy of King Edward, that she was now the Guardian of the Targe? How could she give him the information that if he or the hateful Archie were to complete their mission, they would have to take not only the Targe stone, but her, too?
She could not tell him that. No matter how much she wanted to trust him, how much her instinct said she could, she dared not give him that much knowledge or that much power over her and the clan.
But she had to tell him something. He had seen too much. Knew too much already. But what?
“Lass.” He came up behind her and gently turned her to face him. “Something happened in there. Lady Elspet sounded like she was dying. You were in pain. And I felt crackling along your skin when I helped you let go of her hand. You kept saying you did not want ‘it,’ but I do not ken what ‘it’ was.”
Instinct warred with logic. She wanted to explain it all, knew she needed to, that he would help her, but…
“Tell me what you ken of the Targe,” she said.
“Ken is a strong word.”
She stared at him, waiting to see how far down this path he had already travelled.
“I think the stone Elspet carries in the ermine sack is the Highland Targe, a relic, not an actual shield. I believe there is real power associated with it, though it is beyond my ken what it is or how ’tis even possible. I know I felt something pass over us when Lady Elspet performed the blessing in the bailey, and I know you felt it even more powerfully than I or anyone else did. And that leads me to believe that Elspet is needed to invoke whatever the power is that comes from the Highland Targe.”
He knew everything, or almost. Rowan waited, letting him hear his own words, letting him put the truth together for himself. One breath. Two.
His eyes grew large. “You.”
Still she stared at him, telling him nothing herself.
“Whatever Elspet’s role was, it is now yours. That is what happened in her chamber, is it not? She gave the position to you. You are the keeper—”
“Guardian,” she corrected him.
He cocked his head, reached out to cup her cheek in his palm. “You did not want to be the Guardian,” he whispered.
“I should not be.”
“Jeanette? It passes from mother to daughter?”
“Usually, but not this time.”
“I should not know this,” he said, concern gathered in his eyes, though she knew not if it was for her or for himself.
“Aye, you should not. It would be far better for you if you did not.”
“We cannot let Archie or Edward learn any of this.” Now he was the one to pace to the door, turn and pace back to her. “Archie already suspects there is something special about you after you threw him off.” His gaze leapt to hers. “Was that from the Targe?”
All the turmoil in Rowan went still with that question. “It could not be,” she said, thinking out loud. “I was not chosen yet.” Her pulse jumped. Such an ability, though she didn’t understand exactly what it was, enhanced by the Targe would be a formidable defense for the clan.
She knew far too little about the Highland Targe to do more than guess that this was why she was chosen, but Jeanette had been taught to take up the role since she was born. Jeanette would have the answers Rowan needed.
JEANETTE AND
SCOTIA cleaned their mum’s solar while Kenneth stood at the end of his wife’s bed, as if he were afraid to take his eyes off her. Elspet still lived, though Jeanette was truly surprised by that, but Elspet was diminished even more than before. She looked so tiny in the big bed, and so frail, as if the slightest touch would shatter her bones. Somehow ashes had ended up everywhere leaving a thin layer of grey powdery dust on everything, including all the bed linens and Lady Elspet. Helen had tended the fire and helped wipe down the chamber. Jeanette and Scotia changed the bedding and at last, Jeanette took a scrap of linen and dipped it in the bowl of fresh water Helen had fetched for them.
“Scotia,” she said quietly as she wiped the ashes from her mother’s face as gently as possible, “get some broth and bring it here. Mum? Can you hear me?”
Elspet’s lids fluttered open and after a moment she focused on her daughter’s face. Regret swam in her eyes and Jeanette had to take a deep breath to keep from letting the same emotion show in her own. She didn’t know what failing had made her unfit to follow in her mother’s footsteps, or what gift Rowan had that made her an acceptable Guardian, but the Targe had chosen and it was too late to make whatever amends might have shifted the choice to Jeanette.
“ ’Twill be all right, Mum.” She blinked hard. “I am sorry I let you down, but all the preparations you gave to me, Rowan will have. I will do whatever I must to make sure the clan stays protected. I promise you.”
Still, Elspet looked at her eldest daughter with sadness and regret.
“Will you take some broth, Mum?” Scotia stood next to Jeanette with a small cup in her hand. Elspet closed her eyes and turned her head away. Jeanette leaned her head against her sister’s arm.
“So Rowan is the one?” Scotia asked.
“Aye, ’twould appear so.”
“But why?”
“Why, indeed?” Kenneth said, the first words he had spoken since taking up his vigil at the end of the bed.
“I do not ken,” Jeanette said. “ ’Twas not how Mum said it would be when the Targe chose a new Guardian. It should not have hurt either of them.”
“Could it have hurt because it was not meant to be?” Scotia said.
Jeanette closed her eyes and tried to remember everything that she had seen and heard in those long moments when the power had been taken from Elspet and…
“It was forced on Rowan and she did not want it,” Jeanette whispered.
“What?” Kenneth asked.
“She did not want it. Rowan. She said she did not want it. She must have been fighting it.” She rose and looked at the room, remembering how things had been tossed about the room by an unnatural wind. Suspicion rose in her like a thunderhead sparking with lightning.
“I must speak with her,” she said more to herself than to her father and sister. “Scotia, you stay here. If she wakes, try to get her to drink some broth but do not speak of what just happened. She is upset by it and she should not spend her strength on fretting over what cannot be undone.”
“Are you sure it cannot be undone?” Scotia asked. “It is not right. It should be you.”
Jeanette agreed, but for the sake of her family she could not indulge herself in such feelings. “ ’Tis done. Now we must determine why so Rowan can be taught how to use the Targe.”
She picked up the ermine sack that held the ancient Targe stone that focused each Guardian’s unique gift. It belonged to Rowan now, but Jeanette would not give it to her until she was sure that Rowan would accept the duty that had been bestowed upon her this day, however unexpectedly. Though if she did not…
“I shall be with Rowan. Fetch me if Mum needs me.”
Scotia took Jeanette’s place at the edge of the bed, settling the cup on the table where the ermine sack usually sat.
“Da.” Jeanette waited for him to react. When he didn’t, she said his name again, but still he stared at Elspet. She stood next to him, wrapping her arm around his waist and leaning against him. “Come with me?”
He looked down at her then, his face ten years older than it had appeared that morning. “I will stay here,” he sighed and his shoulders sagged. “Nicholas said there was something important to talk about. Ask him what it was and if you think it needs tending, find Uilliam.”
Jeanette wished she could stay here, too, holding their family together with her will alone, but she knew her duty lay in preparing Rowan for the tasks before her. And in order to do that, she had to find out what secret her cousin had been hiding from her, from them, for all these years.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NICHOLAS WATCHED AS Rowan’s patience frayed. He knew she did not wish to return to Elspet’s chamber, or she would have done so already. He had considered fetching Jeanette himself, but decided, given his uncertain position at the moment, that was not a good idea. He knew there was more than one confrontation with Rowan’s family ahead of them and he would do whatever he could to take their anger onto his own shoulders, sheltering her from at least that much.
Rowan rubbed the spot between her brows and reached for the door latch just as the door swung open. Jeanette stood there, staring at Rowan, as if she were a stranger, before she scowled at him.
“You may leave.”
“Nay.” Rowan stood almost nose-to-nose with her cousin. “He must stay. We must speak to Uncle Kenneth and then I must speak with you.”
“Da said to call Uilliam if I had need, but not to disturb him. The… What happened… Mum is very weak. He will not leave her side.”
Rowan seemed to fold in on herself. “I am so sorry,” she said, reaching for Jeanette’s hands, but Jeanette stepped around her into the room. “My being chosen should not have been possible.”
“Unless you were keeping something secret, something important, powerful.”
“I am not keeping anything from you, Jeanette. I had no idea I had any gift until Nicholas helped me to see…” Her gaze flickered to him, then back to her cousin.
Jeanette’s gaze had followed Rowan’s and now rested on him. “We should not speak of this in front of him.”
“He kens—not everything, but enough.”
There was more he did not know?
Jeanette’s shoulders went rigid and her hands fisted by her side. For the first time Nicholas noticed the ermine sack she gripped. “He kens? How? Why? It is forbidden.”
“Do you think I do not ken that? I did not tell him. He figured out most of it on his own.” Rowan stepped between Nicholas and Jeanette. Nicholas leaned a little to the right so he could still see the blonde woman. “He was sent here to steal the Highland Targe.”
Jeanette cocked her head and her eyebrows rose, as if she had not heard correctly. “Steal?”
“Aye.” Rowan seemed to hold her breath while she let that information sink in.
Jeanette’s chin went up and she moved the sack behind her, holding it so Nicholas could no longer see it.
Nicholas rose and faced the women. “I was sent by King Edward, but—”
“ ’Tis too much.” Jeanette turned and strode to the door. “Rowan, do not say another word to this man.” She wrenched open the door and shouted for her father.
Rowan started forward. “Jeanette, you must—”
“Wheesht, Rowan. You have said too much already.” She screamed for her father this time and Nicholas heard the door at the far end of the corridor bang open, followed by heavy footfalls coming toward them.
“I told you not to—” Kenneth said as he came into view.
Jeanette held up her hand to stop her father, both physically and verbally. Then she pointed at Nicholas. “He was sent here to steal the Targe.”
Kenneth’s shaggy brows drew down as he looked from Jeanette to the pair in the room. “Is this true, Rowan?” He stepped in, leaving Jeanette out in the hallway and very effectively blocking the only way out.
“ ’Tis, Uncle, but—”
“For who?” Kenneth said, cutting her off.
Rowan glanced at him
and was about to answer but Nicholas stepped forward. “For King Edward,” he said.
“Jeanette, fetch Uilliam and Duncan. Now!”
“Uncle?”
Kenneth glowered at Rowan. “You would bring him into our midst, into your aunt’s chamber, when you knew this about him?” It was a question, but it was also a condemnation.
“We were coming to tell you. There is another spy.”
“Another? Within these walls?!”
“Nay, sir,” Nicholas said as he moved away from Rowan, hoping to draw the chief’s anger with him. “Not within these walls, but he will be back, and he means to have the Targe for Edward whether I deliver it or not.”
“And you will NOT!” The bellowed words were matched by the menace in Kenneth as he strode further into the room.
Nicholas said nothing.
“You will not,” Kenneth repeated, shaking his head. “Rowan, you would go to Longshanks with this man?”
“Nay, Uncle.”
Emptiness unfurled inside Nicholas.
“Then you cannot take the Targe to Longshanks,” Kenneth said to Nicholas. “You shall not have my niece now that she is… She was not supposed to be—” The man scraped his fingers through his hair. “You shall not have my niece.”
“I ken that.” The emptiness spread, hollowing him out at the thought of all the reasons he could not have Rowan for himself, her lost trust heading up the list.
Kenneth stared at him for a long time. “He does not ken it all though, does he?”
“Most, Uncle, but not all.” Rowan said.
Confusion. He does not ken it all? There was definitely more to the Targe than he had sorted out. There was the stone, there was power, and there was the Guardian who called upon that power, but there was something about the passing of the Guardianship to Rowan, beyond that she was not Elspet’s daughter, which was not expected. He still had so many questions—but this was not the time to ask them.
There was a thick silence in the room as the men faced off. Rowan sank down on the bed.
Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) Page 18