Fairy Tale

by Jillian Hunter

  She leveled her unperturbed gaze on his. “I don’t think you understand. I gave my word that Marsali would be protected until a husband is found for her, and I do not go back on my word. She is not leaving this cloister until then if it is in my power to prevent it.”

  Duncan curbed the impulse to grab her through the gate and steal her keys. “Listen to me. Jamie MacFay and his men don’t give a damn about religious sentiment—”

  “I’ve turned away ardent suitors before, and please watch your language. God will protect us.”

  “This is a personal attack on me, Judith. His men are liable to trample your nuns down like snowdrops. Where is Marsali?”

  “Banished to the washroom until after breakfast as penance for breaking the convent bell, the convent loom, and for leaving a puddle of water on the cellar steps again, which nearly caused me to break my neck.”

  Duncan beat down the beginnings of a black panic. If he didn’t whisk Marsali out of here in the next half hour, they’d end up sailing home in a dark misty sea in a battered lobster boat. If they waited until morning, they would undoubtedly run into Jamie, and blood would be shed on these quiet grounds. Blood that would be blamed on him, and rightly so.

  The bell for complines rang to interrupt his thoughts. White-veiled nuns abandoned chores to scurry to chapel, drifting like wraiths through the convent’s colonnades.

  “Please,” he said. “Unlock the gate and let me in. I’ll take her while everyone is at prayer. I’ll pay for whatever she broke. I’ll build a new belltower, Judith. I swear to you, I will not defile the purity of your convent. I will not bring a weapon inside. Not a single drop of blood will be shed by my hand. On your mother’s grave, I swear it. On my daughter’s soul—”

  Her startled look stopped him. “Daughter? What daughter is this?”

  “I’ll explain it later. Please. I’m giving you my word.”

  “And I’ve already given mine.” Judith turned away in a graceful swirl of her long skirts, her face set and serene. “Now do not make me late for chapel, Duncan. Marsali is staying under my protection.”

  “Hell.”

  Duncan paced the outcrop of rocks, waves breaking against his booted feet. Only honor kept him from breaking his vow and behaving like one of the Viking invaders who had conquered this tiny island centuries ago. The nuns would faint dead away if he went tramping through the cloister looking for Marsali. Damn it, why did his sister have to be so much like him? Stubborn, iron-willed, determined to have her own way.

  “Why don’t you scale the wall and carry Marsali off?” Owen suggested, flung out flat on his back from exhaustion in the anchored lobster boat.

  “Because I gave my word that I would not disrupt the convent.”

  “I canna see the problem.” Lachlan clambered up on a rock to escape a wave. “All ye have to do is break yer word, my lord. No one will die.”

  “It’s not as if anyone would be surprised,” Johnnie added from the rock where he sat fiddling with his spyglass.

  “Aye, my lord,” Owen said in agreement. “Everyone knows ye’re a bastard.”

  “Thank you for reminding me,” Duncan said dryly. He cast a morose glance up at the convent, or what he could see of it in the mist. “Is there any sign of Jamie’s ship yet?” he demanded, turning back to Johnnie.

  “No. No sign, my lord.”

  Lachlan teased a crab with his toe.

  Owen began to whistle.

  Duncan blew out a sigh of frustration.

  Owen interrupted his whistling long enough to indulge a moment of passing curiosity. “Why do ye care if ye displease yer sister anyway? Forgivin’ ye will only give her something else to pray about. ’Tis sinners like us that keep them busy.”

  Duncan didn’t answer. How could he expect anyone to understand? Judith was the only person in the world who had witnessed him commit murder. How would he ever convince not just her, but himself, that violence was not the primary motivation of his soul?

  All ye have to do is break yer word.

  It’s not as if anyone would be surprised.

  He unbuckled his sword and let his belt and weapon fall to the wet sand beneath his feet. There had to be a way to get Marsali back without resorting to force. Damn it, he would not confirm his sister’s worst convictions by another act of violence.

  But violence is all you know, an inner voice mockingly reminded him. Without your physical power, you are nothing.

  He stared at the locked gates, frustration slowly giving way to resolve. It was time to wage the ultimate battle from the bedrock of his being, to confront the black demon that had overshadowed him his entire life. It was time to challenge his own deepest beliefs about himself.

  Chapter

  31

  Today was laundry day in the cloister.

  Every convent inmate owned only two changes of clothing. One of these was worn an entire month before it could be washed and replaced with its alternate. As penance for breaking the loom, Marsali faced the arduous task of washing and hanging out a mountain of veils, habits, and stockings in the garden.

  Laundry day.

  She sighed. The unpleasant chore reminded her poignantly of the morning she had ambushed and undressed Duncan on the moor. She had believed in him from the moment he’d flattened his seven attackers and commanded the clan’s attention. She had lost her heart over a laundry trough.

  And I still believe in him, she thought sadly, dragging her heavy wicker basket to the wall. She believed in him even if he had abandoned her out of some misguided impulse for good.

  “The laundry will never dry if you leave it sitting there all day,” Sister Anne scolded from her bench, where she sat overseeing Marsali’s efforts. “Why do you keep looking over that wall anyway?”

  Marsali sighed again. “I like to look at the sea.”

  “Well, I dinna ken how ye can see even two feet in front of yer face.” The elderly nun crossed herself, huddling into her mantle. “I’ve no seen such a mist in my life. ’Tis only by God’s grace that the good sisters from the Irish abbey willna run aground in their wee boat.” She paused to fix a suspicious look on Marsali. “If they make it here at all. ’Tisna natural, this mist, is it?”

  “Um, no, Sister Anne.” Guiltily lowering her gaze, Marsali turned back to the tedious ritual of hanging up laundry. Rankly, she was good at casting mist, but she hadn’t quite figured out how to make it go away yet.

  The heavy black habit she had just slung over the clothesline slowly plopped to the ground. She bent; the whiff of lye soap and wet wool so reminded her of Duncan’s cloak that an aching lump rose in her throat.

  As she straightened, she felt a tingle of excitement in her spine. It was strange. Suddenly she could sense his presence, the power of him, as if he were standing right in front of her. Perhaps her magic was working, after all.

  She backed away from the clothesline in confusion, clutching the damp wool to her chest. A delicious tension gripped her, as if Duncan’s dark gaze had actually reached out across the miles.

  Sister Anne looked up, alarmed by the girl’s strange behavior. She had been instructed by the Mother Superior to guard Marsali, but against what had never been made clear. “What is it?” she whispered, rising from the bench.

  “It’s… I’m…” Marsali frowned. How could she explain to someone like Sister Anne that the smell of wet wool made her imagine the chieftain’s presence? “I think I’m having a vision.”

  Sister Anne stared at the veils hanging on the clothesline, her voice dropping in wonder. “A vision of Our Lady?”

  “Not exactly, Sister Anne.” Marsali hid a little smile and resumed her work, trying to ignore the pleasantly disturbing feeling that persisted.

  She was so close that Duncan, on the other side of the wall, could barely restrain the urge to shout her name. He controlled the impulse out of concern that the frail old nun guarding Marsali would take a heart attack. It was a delicate dilemma.

  “I’m hungry, my lord,�
�� Lachlan whispered loudly. “Can we climb over the wall yet?”

  Duncan ignored him. All he could see through the chink in the crumbling stones were Marsali’s small feet marching back and forth to the basket—and the fact that she kept dropping clean laundry in the dirt.

  He heard her swear under her breath too, and the sound was music to his ears. Obviously an atmosphere of prayer and solitude hadn’t penetrated deeply enough to damage her true nature.

  He was starved for a glimpse of her. If it wouldn’t scare that old nun to death, he’d scale the wall like a Viking warlord and carry off the hellion.

  “I’m finished, Sister Anne,” Marsali announced wearily, reaching down for the basket.

  Duncan pressed his face to the wall. Anticipation quickened his pulse. If the chink were a little bigger, he could reach his hand through the mortar and grasp her hand. Of course she’d probably scream bloody murder if he did. But he needed to touch her.

  The bells for vespers began to ring.

  “Hurry. Hurry,” Sister Anne urged, nudging Marsali onto the path. “The entire convent will be beseeching God with prayers that the abbess and her companions willna drown in this mist.” She stopped to shake her head, her figure obscuring Duncan’s view. “ ’Tis verra strange, unnatural, this mist. I dinna like it one bit.”

  The three clansmen crouched behind the jagged rocks, anxiously awaiting their chieftain’s return. They were silent, except for the loud rumbling of Lachlan’s stomach, and Owen biting his nails. Duncan had only been gone on his mysterious mission for about fifteen minutes, but to the nervous trio, it felt like an hour.

  “I canna stand the suspense,” Johnnie said at last. “What could have happened to him in there?”

  Lachlan grunted. “Nothing too excitin’. Tis a nunnery, after all.”

  A broad shadow on top of the convent wall caught their attention. They fell silent as Duncan dropped a heavy object between the rocks.

  “All right, men, to the gatehouse. I have a plan for us to get Marsali without causing a commotion.”

  “ ’Tis a laundry basket,” Owen said, peering down at the rocks in disappointment. “What are we supposed to do with a load of women’s clothes?”

  “Which one of you idiots took my other stocking?” Duncan worked his thickly muscled left leg down into the cumbersome woolen skirts that hung about his feet. The sound of fabric rending followed. It was as dark as a grave in the small gatehouse above the convent gate, where the four men hid with their basket of stolen habits.

  A damp stocking hit Duncan in the head. He grabbed it, but he couldn’t fit the hose on farther than his shin. A telltale expanse of bulging calf protruded above the soggy wool.

  “How did you manage to put your veil on, my lord?” Lachlan whispered in between the sound of Duncan cursing about his stockings and Johnnie complaining that his petticoats were going to give him a rash.

  “You have to pin the blasted thing on.”

  “What about these strings that are hangin’ down from it?”

  “I haven’t figured out what to do with them yet.” A white linen wimple framed Duncan’s scowling face. “I’ll help you as soon as I finish getting Owen’s habit on over his paunch.”

  “It’s Johnnie’s paunch, my lord,” Johnnie informed him. “Owen is sulking in the corner because ye gave him the veil that Marsali dropped in the mud. By the way, ye’ve put these sleeves on upside down.”

  “Well, I’m not a damned lady’s maid, am I? Owen, get over here. Give me the pins.”

  “Ouch, my lord! That’s my delicate flesh ye’re stabbin. Ouch!”

  Duncan whirled around, muttering to himself as his feet became tangled in the unaccustomed layers of heavy material. “Let me unshutter this window so I can see what the hell I’m doing. It’s a damn good thing I shaved this morning.” He gave the warped shutter a fierce tug, and it popped open, dust motes dancing in the diffused gray light that filtered across his face. The three other men recoiled from him in mute horror.

  “What is it?” Duncan snapped. He straightened, flicking back the drawstrings dangling around his chin. A shadowy white veil fluttered downward to accentuate the rugged angles of his jaw. “Well, what are you staring at? Do I have my wimple on backward?”

  Johnnie recovered first, studying Duncan with a pained grimace. “It might be better if it were on backward, my lord. I dinna mean any disrespect, but ye’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Aye,” Owen agreed, swallowing in distaste. “The ugliest, and the biggest too.”

  The gray light of gloaming had fallen by the time they managed to get dressed, and Duncan, who’d gotten a horrifying glimpse of himself in the window, thought that the darkest night couldn’t hold enough shadows to disguise them. They were as homely as hell.

  God, however, must have seen humor in the situation and decided to give him a hand.

  Duncan had wandered off on a reconnaissance mission toward the kitchen quarters in search of Marsali. As he skulked about the back door, he was caught by a tiny energetic nun who almost dropped her ladle at the sight of him.

  “Glory be to God!” she exclaimed, her ruddy cheeks like polished apples. “The Irish sisters are here, and this must be the abbess herself come to humble her soul by helping with supper.” Beaming with delight, she dragged him into the hot cramped kitchen to introduce him to the two other nuns busy ladling soup into earthen bowls.

  Now, in the refectory itself where meals were served, the nuns were not permitted to speak unless to utter a prayer or to read Scripture. But here in the kitchen, Sister Bridget and her helpers followed no such restriction. They chattered excitedly about how their prayers had been answered: that the Irish sisters had not gotten lost in this unusual mist, and how fortunate that the abbess herself had arrived to hear the devotional during supper.

  And all Duncan could think as he listened in cynical silence to the happy chatter was how fortunate it was that the convent couldn’t afford to burn many candles, and that no one had gotten a good look at his face yet because he suspected he was sprouting beard hairs by the second. God willing no one would look down at his legs.

  “Here, let me help you carry that porringer, Sister Bridget,” he said, hoping a falsetto Irish lilt would detract from the deep baritone of his normal voice. “You should be letting the schoolgirls do the heavy work.” He moved around the table, grateful his veil fell forward to overshadow his jaw. “And where would the young misses be off to anyway? Employed in some beneficial pursuits, I pray?”

  A smile brightened Sister Bridget’s heavily lined face. “Why, of course. Reverend Mother Abbess. They’re setting the table for supper and cleaning up the chapel. We had a wee accident there today, but the perpetrator is paying her penance—”

  She broke off with a gasp of alarm as Duncan reached across the table to lift the heavy platter a nun had just removed from the oven. Duncan hesitated at her look of horror. Had she noticed his hairy forearms? His stubbled chin?

  Or had she, like him, just noticed the poignant face that had appeared in the window, shock registering on its perfect little features?

  Marsali. He grinned slowly, resisting the impulse to run outside as everything else around him faded to insignificance. She was safe, his naughty fairy. He’d found her, and he was never going to let her out of his sight again.

  “No, Reverend Mother Abbess!” he heard Sister Bridget cry in warning, but her concerned voice barely dented his dazed relief at seeing Marsali. Finally, realizing he wasn’t paying attention, the nun gave him a sharp whack on the back and shouted in his ear like a drill sergeant, “ARE YE DEAF? DINNA TOUCH THAT PLATTER!”

  It was too late. He had already grasped the red-hot pewter handles in his bare hands. In fact, it took several moments before the searing pain reached his nerve endings, and then he threw the platter of baked fish on the floor; a curse rolled off his tongue before he could stop it.

  “Hellfire and damnation!”

  Sister
Bridget dropped her ladle, whispering, “Reverend Mother!” in a shocked voice. “How could—”

  “Hellfire and damnation is the price one pays for impulsive behavior and false pride,” Duncan amended through gritted teeth, bending to retrieve the platter while a delayed reaction of burning pain sizzled up his palm into his fingertips. “I was so anxious to prove my humility that I foolishly ignored your warning. Scourge me with a whip, Sister, for my wicked conceit.”

  “Ah.” The nun gave him a doubtful look, her face puckered in an effort to understand. “Well, very good, Reverend Mother. A little strongly put, but quite profound. False pride is a frequent sin among the sisters. However—” A muffled snort of laughter drew her attention to the window where Marsali watched, her hand pressed to her mouth to muffle her irrepressible snorts of amusement.

  Sister Bridget wagged an admonishing finger at the window. “Ye’ll not be laughing so hard when ye have to pay another penance for laughing at the Reverend Mother’s accident, Marsali Hay. Get ye to the refectory this instant, and dinna give me cause to scold ye again tonight.” She turned apologetically to Duncan. “A new student, Reverend Mother, brimming over with human nature and all the willfulness in the world. She’s the challenge of the convent.”

  “Perhaps I could have a word alone with the wee spitfire,” Duncan suggested in a casual tone. “I might pray with the lass later tonight in private, offer her a few words of guidance.”

  Nodding gratefully as another nun handed her a clean ladle, Sister Bridget replied, “That’s awfully good of ye. I’m sure Mother Judith would appreciate yer intervention, especially since she herself is spending the evening in the infirmary nursing several of the sisters who’ve come down with coughs. It’s this mist, ye ken. I’ve never seen the likes of it. Thank God ye didna drown on your way here.” Humming a hymn under her breath, Sister Bridget returned to the task of ladling cabbage broth into bowls. Duncan bowed his head as he sailed past the three nuns to the door with his two platters of baked fish.