Collecting Isobelle

by L. L. Muir

  The woman in the transept pushed aside her wayward hair to watch the newcomers, but still Gaspar could not see her face clearly. He was pleased she hadn’t damaged her head, then chided himself for wasting his concern. Was he not prepared to reprimand the woman for defiling the chapel only a moment ago?

  That hair. It was all the fault of that hair. A mane of red, marking her for the devil, some would say. So perhaps it was the devil who had sent her to tempt God’s Dragon and not God reminding him of the weakness of his past. But if so, the devil had underestimated him. A simple head of red hair was not enough to erase twelve years of discipline.

  “Young woman,” the abbess hissed in Italian. “You will be silent in God’s house. God’s Dragon may still be lurking about, and I won’t have him bothered by the likes of you.”

  Ah. So. Someone had noticed him after all, but no one cast a glance at the screen.

  “I doona understand ye,” came the woman’s muffled voice. “I’d be much obliged if ye’d help me. I tried to tell them it wouldna fit over me hair. Now it’s tryin’ to strangle me, aye?”

  Scottish!

  Gaspar exhaled carefully, wishing he could expel the woman from his sight so easily. And so silently. The chaos increased in his chest, but with stark fear added, Gaspar felt true pain and clutched his tunic. The face and form of a different red-haired Scotswoman tried to rise from his memory, but he forbade it. At any moment, he might be forced to cry out just to keep all his old demons at bay. He only hoped the nuns would take their charge and depart before that happened. Leaving one hand clutched over his heart, he released his tunic with the other and clamped it firmly over his mouth, just in case.

  “You don’t speak Italian?” the abbess asked in English while she untangled the red lock of hair, then placed her hands on her hips. “Any Latin?”

  “Latin?” The young woman straightened. Her hair fell away from her face and Gaspar’s breath grew cold in his chest.

  Perhaps it was he who had underestimated the devil, for she was a beauty. As beautiful as he’d once been himself, he admitted, before he’d removed that curse.

  “Some Latin,” she said. “Me brother is a Highland Chieftain. We were educated—or more like, he was educated and m’ sister and I spied in most days.”

  “So. You are not Sophia Pedrotti,” the abbess said, though she could not have suspected the woman to be Italian once she’d opened her mouth.

  The redhead gave a wide smile. “Alas. I am not.” She reached for the rope at her waist and began picking at the knot.

  The abbess gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders. “Pity. But you’ll do.”

  The Scotswoman stilled. “I’ll do what?”

  The abbess shook her head and smiled. “You’ll do in her stead. You intended to take her place, certainly, if you donned her habit and allowed our order to remove you from the ship without a word of protest.” She nodded at the nuns behind her. “Gag her and bring her along. We’ve got to get her hidden before that dragon pokes his head in the church.”

  “Oooh, no,” said the woman. “Me...me husband won’t take kindly to me takin’ the veil, I assure ye.” A couple of brave nuns took her by the arms while another peered closely at the discarded wimple, then at the woman’s mouth. Surely they didn’t expect to shove all that cloth between her teeth.

  Gaspar considered that mouth for a moment. Pink, plump. The lower lip a bit fuller than the other, as if the woman pouted too often. There was nothing more to observe, and yet he could not stop staring. It was so rare that he considered a woman’s mouth. He rarely looked at women at all, and rarer still did he look them in the eye, let alone study their faces.

  The chaos had settled. The dread had ebbed away while he’d watched and listened. This woman would not be his downfall, nor had she managed to unearth his demons enough to be a threat to him. He turned his head aside again to break the spell, for a spell it must be if she was able to distract him as she had. It would be best if he slipped away and left the woman in the abbess’s capable hands. It was no business of his how the large woman ran her abbey—unless an order from the patriarch instructed him otherwise.

  A scuffle, a yelp and a grunt, brought his attention back around to find the two women who had been holding the Scotswoman lying on the floor. The third, the one who’d been holding the wimple, pulled one corner of that large white cloth from her own mouth while the final three sisters advanced to finish what the first three had started.

  The devil’s temptress grabbed the fumbling nun before her, spun her around, and pulled the teetering woman back against her like a shield. Then she turned her head and looked through the screen as if it weren’t there. Bright green eyes stared into Gaspar’s own as she mouthed the words, “Help me.”

  Gaspar was suddenly affixed to the stone floor upon which he stood. The fear that had ebbed away returned and washed over him like a baptistery poured over his head.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A great roar erupted outside the church. If Gaspar wasn’t mistaken, and if his memory served, they’d just heard a Scottish war cry. His Gaelic was a bit rusty. He couldn’t understand a word of it. But an entire clan of Scotsmen might well be surrounding the church and preparing to attack it.

  The nuns needed warning and possibly protecting. So for the second time, he raised his hands to the gate intent on taking charge of the situation. But the doors crashed open again, and he paused to assess the danger, to determine if his position might give him the advantage of surprise after an enemy entered. But surely, even a hoard of Scots wouldn’t defile a church…

  Then again, hadn’t their countrywoman already done so?

  One of the church guards flew, prone, through the opening and slid to a stop at the baptismal font. His fellow fell just inside the narthex. A single man entered afterward, stepped over the second man, then put his hands on his hips and glared toward the front of the church. But it wasn’t the abbess at whom he glared. It was the Scotswoman.

  “Isobelle Ross,” he snarled. “It would serve ye rightly to leave ye here. I dare ye to tell me I am wrong.”

  “Ye’re wrong, husband,” she said, stressing the last word.

  Scots spoke so oddly, Gaspar could not say for certain whether or not she was trying to give the man a signal of some sort—possibly to tell him the role he must play before the nuns. Was she not married in truth?

  He ignored the small thrill caused by the question.

  The Scotsman started up the aisle nearest Gaspar, in no rush, as if his thoughts were impeding his progress.

  “I’m nay so sure, Izzy,” he said, halfway to the transept. “Ye’re nothing but trouble. It makes no mind where we go. Perhaps yer antics and meddlin’ have finally brought ye to a safe place, aye?”

  He spoke to her as if they were the only two in the room and Gaspar felt as if he were eavesdropping where he had no right to do so. But he determined to wait and see if these two were married in truth. The abbess might have a new initiate after all. And it was only right that he should observe in case his opinion were requested in the matter. It had nothing at all to do with the woman’s devil hair or her interesting mouth, or the way she seemed to soften when the man called her Izzy.

  Gaspar was tempted to test the name on his own tongue, but pushed the thought aside. It was simply a strange affair inviting strange thoughts, not his youthful weaknesses rising again in his blood. After all, he was standing on holy ground; the devil could not truly touch them there. Could he? If he were a priest, he’d know.

  “Ossian,” she called the Scotsman. “I couldna just stand aside and watch another tragedy. Surely, ye ken that. I’d be haunted, I would, if I let another lass be torn from the arms of the lad she loves. Or would ye have me try to fix Sophia and Trucchio with some witch’s spell? Must I be buried alive again?”

  Another one!

  The nuns gasped and crossed themselves. Gaspar could not resist doing the same.

  Could the woman be a witch? A true witch? Even af
ter all the women he’d had arrested, he’d never reported one. Guilt wasn’t a judgment he relished making. And on those rare occasions when he’d been ordered to judge a woman’s guilt, he’d never believed one to be guilty of witchcraft. Guilty of other sins, yes. But never witchcraft.

  Scotland was an odd place, filled with more than its share of odd people. Clever people. A place where the word witch might not cause others to cross themselves. A word that was used for a good many characteristics. And the way the woman used the term in God’s house made him suspect she had no notion of the danger witch engendered.

  No. He would not report it. But neither would he be surprised to be called back to the abbey in a day or two to investigate a report of a witch, even if the Scotsman managed to remove her. It was still uncertain whether or not the pair of them were truly wed.

  The man stopped ten feet from where the redhead still held the nun as a shield.

  “I do understand, Izzy. You couldna stand by. I must admit young Sophia is shrewd for her age. She kenned just how to win ye to her side. Whether she exaggerated her feelings for the boy, I canna say. He was the only young laddie available to her—”

  “Ossian!” The woman shook her head, horrified by the man’s words for some reason. “Just because no man can truly love me, that doesna mean I doona ken real love when I see it, aye?”

  The man sighed and gave her a pitying look, and Gaspar wondered what might make such a beauty unappealing.

  “Let the nun go, Izzy.” The Scot gestured for her to come to him. “Let us be away from here and hope we’re nay tossed from Venice before we’ve tried the place.”

  Again, the redhead looked at the screen, frowning.

  Gaspar took a step backward into the shadows just as the Scotsman began to follow her gaze.

  Suddenly, she released the nun. “Beg yer pardon,” she said sweetly, though sincerely. Then she bent forward, took hold of the bottom of her brown robe, and pulled it up and over her head before Gaspar had a chance to avoid the sight. But instead of the woman standing nude before them all, she was clothed like a man, in hose and a tunic.

  While the nuns stood in shock, the man took his countrywoman’s hand, and together they ran to the near aisle and raced the abbess to the doors. Gaspar didn’t know who he hoped would win until the last locks of red hair disappeared from sight and his gut clenched. The abbess stopped at the last pew and sat, breathing furiously.

  Damn, he thought, and in a church too.

  ~ ~ ~

  Isobelle’s heart beat like the hooves of a heavy horse across a thin wood bridge. The little stone house was everything their home in Spain had not been. This one had windows in all three rooms, and better still, sunlight shining through them. In Spain, the windows had been small, the single room dark and smelling of the parade of people who had come before. She and her cousin had been forced to leave Spain quickly, however, before she’d been able to do much about the smell. She ought to feel contrite about it all, but she did not.

  Her cousin, Ossian, had done an admirable job of caring for her since they’d left Castle Ross nearly two years ago. He’d promised Monty, her brother and laird of the Ross clan in the Highlands, that he’d see her settled and happy somewhere. It was no fault of hers if they were still looking for a place where both those needs might be met. And Ossian had all but given up ever going home again. She should regret that too. But the idea of being left behind while Ossian returned to their home and their clan was unbearable.

  She had no ear for languages. Hadn’t she tried to learn Spanish? So close to French, but not close enough to make her feel as if she could remain there alone when neither the Spaniards nor Moors could understand her. If Ossian had left her there, she’d have been dead in a week if only from frustration. The men were the worst, choosing to believe Isobelle was flirting with them, making up their own interpretations to fit their moods. It was no wonder their wives were so suspicious.

  And before Spain, it had been France. Before that, Denmark. She’d refused to freeze in Norway. Now she wished she would have tried harder to convince Ossian to try Ireland from the first. At least she might have been able to look out over the Irish Sea for a glimpse of home. But Ireland wasn’t far enough, he’d said. And one familiar face might mean her destruction.

  But the farther they travelled, the more danger she faced from simple differences. Her cousin had jested once that in Mesopotamia, her hair could cause war.

  Venice might well be her last hope. And standing in front of the cheery cottage, in spite of the light and fresh breeze blowing from the lagoon nearby, she felt the weight of the moment. There was a tender balance beneath her feet and the slightest disturbance might destroy it. Her last chance. A promising chance, but still her last.

  The choice was at hand. Did she want this life? If Venice was her last prospect and then something went wrong, would Ossian give up trying and take her home? And if home meant death for her? Would she rather go home to die than live a half-life here?

  A hundred times, she’d wondered what the difference might have been between water and spirits. If, when she’d escaped the tomb in which she was supposed to die, Ossian and Ewan had given her water to sooth her twelve-day thirst instead of heady spirits, would she have argued against leaving Scotland? Would she have taken a moment or two and decided for herself? Or could it be that she’d been fighting happiness all this time simply because leaving home had been someone else’s decision?

  She thought of all the places they’d laid their heads since that choice was made. If she’d wanted to find happiness, could she have found it long ago? If she wanted it now, was it hers?

  Isobelle inhaled slowly. Her chest expanded with excitement. It was time to decide, but she didn’t want to rush. She would consider first, then the choice would be hers. Not Ossian’s. Not Ewan’s. Not Montgomery’s.

  Venice was a busy city with little space between houses and waterways, let alone people. Not like the Highlands. Even Edinburgh sprawled like a stretching beast compared to this place. But the people smiled. The sun shined. And perhaps the sea would give up a rain storm every now and again to help a lass feel at home. She would never see snow again, surely.

  And she could keep her hair covered if she wished to. She hated plaits, but she could get used to them. At night, she could close up her shutters and let her hair do what it willed. Perhaps she could convince Ossian to take up farming, or raising chickens, or anything that might keep him close to hand. Everywhere they’d lived, the trouble began only because Ossian found work with his sword arm. A man-at-arms was rarely at home. But he’d promised things would be different here, and there had been a surety in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. She only hoped this sunny house was the first of many differences.

  As she stepped outside into the sunshine, leaving her cousin inside to negotiate with the owner, she realized her decision was already made. Life. She would choose life. And when she lifted her face to the Mediterranean sun, the warmth and glow of it sunk into her very bones.

  Ossian emerged with a frown marring his handsome face, and Isobelle couldn’t stop the tears from collecting behind her eyes. The house had been so perfect. Would they be able to find another so fine as this?

  Her cousin came to stand before her and toed the dirt at her feet. “The house is yours,” he muttered, then looked up and grinned.

  Isobelle jumped forward and nearly knocked him off his feet when she hugged him. “Oh, Ossian! I’m going to love it here. I know it. We’ll both love it.”

  He cleared his throat and took hold of her waist, setting her back a bit. Still grinning, he shook his head. “I’m glad ye think so, Izzy. But it matters not how I feel about it.”

  “What do ye mean? Ye’ll have to stay at least long enough for me to learn the language, will ye not?” But they both knew she wouldn’t learn quickly.

  He raised his brows. “Perhaps a husband can teach ye.”

  She put a hand over his mouth and looked up and do
wn the little street to see if anyone had overheard. They were thankfully alone for the moment.

  “Wheesht!” she hissed. “All must believe ye are my husband, aye?”

  He winked at her and pulled her hand from his mouth. “Nay this time, lass.”

  Emerging from the house was the old woman who owned it. She sent Ossian a wink, then headed down the lane from whence she’d come.

  “What do ye mean, cousin?” She tried not to grin. The reason he always played the husband was so she wouldn’t be bothered while he was away. If he was going to come home every night, he could go back to being her cousin. “Are ye done with livin’ by the sword, then? Will ye raise chickens? Please tell me ye’re not going to come home every night smellin’ like fish.”

  Ossian grimaced. “Nay, lassie. I doona plan to smell much like fish.”

  “What then?” She released him and stepped back. Then she folded her arms and mustered the sternest look she could. For the first time she could remember, he returned the stare.

  “Isobelle.”

  A bad sign, that. He only ever called her Izzy, even when they were children.

  He took a big breath and huffed it out, then tilted his head back as if preparing to take a blow on the chin. She fisted her hands to oblige him if needed. “After the trouble at the convent, how close ye’d come to marrying God and all, I started to thinkin’.”

  “Ossian,” she warned.

  “Ye need to marry. The men will never leave ye be until ye are.”

  She shook her head. “It never matters where we are. The men never leave me be when they thought ye were my husband. The lie was folly. I see that now.”

  “Aye. The lie was folly. In time, men came to realize it was a lie. I told the old woman ye’re me cousin, that we’re hoping ye find a good man to marry—”

  She swung with all her might, but Ossian caught her wrist. She cried out from the pain of it.

  “Ye’ll marry, Isobelle.” He shook her fist until her hand relaxed. “Ye’ll marry, and I… I’ll be returnin’ home, Izzy. To Scotland. I’ve never once caused trouble. And I’m finished with coddlin’ ye. Monty himself would ask no more of me.”