He could see his own reflection behind hers, and the child’s, sitting on the floor with her doll.
“Let the child go. Send her to Craigmyle,” he said, and Bibiana turned, her lips quirking with dark amusement.
“Did you imagine it would be that easy, sealgair?”
She came across the room, bent and put her mouth against his. She ran her tongue along the seam of his lips. He forced himself to open, to let her tongue tangle with his, knowing what she wanted. She tasted of blood and the sweet ingredients of the potion. He pulled back, revolted. She slapped him again, hard, twisting his head.
The child scurried across the floor and crouched against the wall. Iain could see her in the mirror. The door was just a few feet to her right . . .
He forced himself to hold Bibiana’s eyes. “Try again.” He shut his eyes as Bibiana slid her hand down his belly. She caressed his cock through the leather breeks, and his body responded to her expert touch, though his skin crawled with revulsion. He shut his eyes. For Mairi’s child, for Laire, he’d endure this, please her . . . But Bibiana squeezed, hard, and he gasped in pain. She brought her mouth to his again. “Open your eyes, sealgair, look at me,” she purred, and brushed her lips across his.
The door opened, and he turned, caught sight of Laire’s reflection in the mirror, her arm twisted behind her in Rafael’s grip. Iain saw Laire blanch at the sight of Bibiana’s mouth on his, her hands on his body. He saw shock in her eyes, and hot color filled her face. He sat still, giving her nothing, not a shred of apology, or comfort, or denial. Later, he’d explain.
If there was a later.
Bibiana moved away from him with a grunt of annoyance at the interruption to her game.
“Tie her,” Bibiana ordered.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Isobel MacLeod woke from a strange dream. She’d been flying—fluttering really, looking at the sky through a pane of glass, beating her wings against it, unable to fly free. She sat up and looked around the bedchamber she shared with two of her sisters. The fire had gone out, and the room was ice cold. Cait and Jennet slept on without even noticing. Isobel slipped out of bed to pad across the icy floor. She touched Cait’s cheek. It felt as smooth and cold as marble. Her nightgown was trimmed with feathers, and there were feathers on her pillow. In fact, the whole floor was covered with feathers. How odd.
Isobel put a hand to her forehead. Her head ached, felt oddly heavy on her neck. Her limbs too . . . She picked up a shawl and wrapped it over her nightgown. She’d go and find Aileen or Ada or Papa. Aye, surely Papa would know why she felt so strange . . .
Sir Hamish spotted an interesting type of fungus next to the path and stopped to investigate, in case it might yield something promising.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were ye,” someone said. They turned to find an old woman behind them, carrying a basket. She looked them over sharply. “Who are ye?”
“I am Sir Hamish McEwan, good woman, kin by marriage to Laird Donal MacLeod. These are my companions.”
“Sir Hamish? Laire’s uncle, then. I’m Ada MacLeod.” She pointed to the fungus. “That’s poisonous.”
Hamish puffed himself up like a pigeon. “I am an expert on such matters. I study poisons. Is all well at the castle? The laird and his daughters—are they . . .”
“Alive?” Ada said. “There’s no way to know. No one from the village is allowed to go into the castle. No one in the castle comes out.”
“Laire did,” Hoolet said. “She came to Edinburgh to fetch Sir Hamish.”
“Did she now?” Ada said, running her eyes over Hamish again. “And can ye help them?”
“I do hope so, good woman,” Hamish said. “We’re seeking a cure even now.”
Ada nodded. “Then ye’d best come with me.”
Rafael had been waiting for her. He’d captured her easily as she opened the door to the hall. Laire had been so been shocked by the changes that she hadn’t seen him until it was too late. The great hall was full of birds, and there was not a soul to be seen save Rafael. He twisted her arm behind her back, and Laire gazed at the empty rooms as Rafael led her to the lady’s chamber. The doors to her father’s rooms were closed tight.
And when he shoved her into Bibiana’s chamber, the first thing Laire saw was Iain . . . he was kissing Bibiana, and her stepmother had her hand—
Laire looked away, feeling her belly flip and her face burn. He’d betrayed her, tricked her . . . Rafael bound her to a chair across from Iain’s. She gaped at the extraordinary changes Bibiana had made to the room. The walls were draped in rich, blood-red velvet, and thick carpets covered every inch of the floor. A glowing brazier heated the room almost unbearably. It was like walking into a living, beating heart.
She met Iain’s eyes, but he regarded her without expression, as if they’d never kissed, or touched, or fallen in love. He was clad in the all-too-familiar black, Bibiana’s cold-eyed sealgair once again. She felt her heart crack.
A sound in the corner made her startle.
Bibiana followed her glance. “This is Mairi. She’s named for her mother. She was conceived in adultery and sin and raised by strangers.”
Laire glanced at Iain, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the child. He’d said the babe had died . . .
“You didn’t know?” Bibiana asked her. “What do you talk about after you’ve bedded her, Iain?”
Rafael chuckled, a low, dirty sound that made Laire’s flesh creep.
Still Iain didn’t look at her.
“I could have killed you both in Edinburgh. In fact, I gave you enough poison to kill a horse, Laire. How is it you did not die?”
“I am a MacLeod,” she said fiercely.
Bibiana laughed. “As am I. But I’ve found the Fearsome MacLeods aren’t fearsome at all.” She paced the carpet soundlessly until she stood behind Iain. She put her hands on his shoulders. She bent and kissed his ear, licked it. Laire looked away. “Perhaps love kept you alive, which is a pity, because I wanted Iain to watch you die that night, powerless to help you. He has the power now, but will he use it? Tell me Laire, do you love my sealgair?”
Aye, her heart said. Aye. Even now . . . Still he did not look at her, and so she frowned and shook her head.
Bibiana laughed. “A pity. He really is a fine figure of a man. Your father said his daughters were particular about the men they loved. It doesn’t do to be overly picky. It makes you a coquette—” She snapped her fingers at Rafael. “What do they French say?”
“Cock allumeuse,” Rafael said in his native tongue.
“Yes, a cock tease. Are you a cock tease?” Bibiana asked. “Have you been tormenting my sealgair, distracting him from his duties?”
Laire felt her cheeks heat against her will.
Bibiana laughed. “The blush gives you away—you have been using your feminine wiles—as minimal as they are—to bind him to your will.”
Bibiana turned to Iain, ran the back of her fingers along his cheek, and bent to whisper in his ear. “Then it’s hardly your fault, is it? You’re the victim here. Young lasses can be so cruel.” She slid her hands down his chest, over his belly, and cupped his crotch. “You need a woman, Iain, not a girl. You could have me. I won’t even drug you. I’ll give you a choice, free will. I’ll let her live if you come to my bed and please me,” She glanced at the curtained bed. “Now. While she watches.”
Laire felt her heart contract. She felt shame and fury fill her.
Iain looked at her then, a quick glance that touched her and passed by. She read wariness, torment, anguish, and regret in the gray depths. And something more.
Trust me . . .
Did she dare?
“No,” he said to Bibiana, his tone flat, hard and cold as steel.
Bibiana reddened with anger. “No?” She stepped away from him, swirled her skirts around her as she folded her arms across her breasts. “Then so be it.”
She nodded to Rafael. He crossed to pour the all-too-familia
r dark-red liquid into a goblet. The scent of flowers filled the room. Laire held the Frenchman’s dark, malicious gaze as came toward her, knowing what he intended. She felt her belly curl with dread, but she would not beg. She heard Iain shift, knew he was trying to break the ties that held him but couldn’t. She braced herself.
Rafael forced her head back, pressed the cup against her mouth, hard enough to bruise her lips. She tried to turn her head, but he twisted her nose, and she had to open her lips to gasp for breath. The sweet drink splashed over her tongue. She closed her throat, tried to spit it out, but Rafael clamped his hand over her mouth and made her swallow.
She felt the liquid slither through her body, curl in her belly. The lights in the room grew brighter, and the red velvet walls glowed and shimmered, like a heart beating around her, pulsing. She met Iain’s eyes, met the torment there.
“Are you surprised?” Bibiana asked. “Did you think I’d drug you, Iain? Kill you? You are bound to me still, valuable to me. You’ll suffer more for if I let you live. I intend to punish you.” She reached out and dragged the child over to stand beside Laire’s chair. The wee girl looked like the beauty in the portrait at Lindsay House. In Laire’s drugged mind, she became Mairi, Iain’s beautiful, beloved wife . . .
“I will give you a choice, sealgair,” Bibiana said. “You can save one of them—Laire or the child. One must die, but the other can live. Now choose.”
Laire’s eyes were glassy and luminous. Her lips were bruised, and the potion had stained her cheeks and chin. The child stood beside Laire, small-boned and helpless, her blue eyes wide. Rafael stood behind them both with a dirk in his hand, waiting for Iain’s decision. Iain kept his eyes on Bibiana.
He slid the arrow out of his sleeve, gripped it awkwardly, and began to rub the sharp point against the rope on his wrists.
Bibiana raised one blond brow. “Well, sealgair? Which is it to be? Laire MacLeod or Mairi’s child? Make your choice or I’ll kill them both.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“What d’ye mean Laire can’t be poisoned?” Hamish MacEwan demanded after Ada made the incredible statement. He’d been telling her the woeful tale of the night of the ball and the poison that had nearly killed his niece, and she’d scoffed.
“Laire can’t be poisoned,” she repeated. “It wouldn’t matter if she drank the potion or not.”
Hamish gaped at the old woman. He squatted on a stool by the fire in her rustic wee cott. The room was divided in half, and a cow stared at them balefully from its side of the hut. There was barely room for all of them in the tiny room. Bear and Dux leaned against the wall, Hoolet sat on the little bed, and Angus Mor and Niall Sinclair were at the single wee window, weapons drawn, watching for trouble. The ceiling was hung with drying plants and roots, but Hamish hardly recognized any of them.
All his great, important books sat on Ada’s scrubbed table amid pots of salve, bags of seeds, and a dead rabbit, freshly snared and waiting to be skinned and cooked for supper.
Hamish frowned at her. “That’s impossible.”
Ada folded her arms over her thin chest. “Laire lost her twin to poison—ye know that, since the lad was your nephew. The lad took the brew they made, drank all of it, but for a few drops. Laire drank those. It wasn’t enough to kill her, or even make her sick. Instead, it made her strong. I gave her more, slowly and in careful amounts. And now, she cannot be poisoned.”
Hamish looked at Dux. “Look that up, lad,” he said, pointing to a heavy medical tome. Dux began to flip through the pages, and Ada grinned at Hamish and tapped her forehead with a gnarled finger.
“I daresay I have more knowledge here than ye have in a dozen books,” she said.
“I am a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a founder of the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh. I have conferred with the physicians at Leiden, Bologna, and Padua, the greatest centers of medical learning in the world. You can’t mean to suggest that a Highland herb woman knows more than I do, or the authors of these great books and all my esteemed colleagues.”
She tilted her head. “I know plants. I know where they grow and how to make them into useful medicines,” she said. “And I can promise you that my sweet lass cannot be poisoned.”
Hamish blinked. Even Dux stared at her, the open book forgotten before him.
Ada rolled up her sleeves. “Now then. Ye say ye need a sample of Bibiana’s brew to see what’s in it. We’d best put aside the books until we need ’em and get to it, don’t ye think?”
All that was left for Hamish to do was nod.
“We’ll go,” Hoolet said, rising. “It’s what we do—steal things. Now, how do we get inside the castle?”
Wee Kipper crept along the wall of the castle pretending he was a mouse, the way he did in the tunnels. Mice weren’t scared of the dark, or of big places. They could slip through small cracks, become invisible. He followed Laire into the castle. He held his breath, waited for the sound of running feet, the cry of “Thief!” but no one came.
He gaped at the grand room. There were birds fluttering in the rafters. They wanted out. Since there was no one about, he looked for something to prop the door open, so they could find their way to the sky.
Wee Kipper wasn’t used to big empty spaces anymore, though he’d been born in the Highlands. He’d learned how to be a city mouse, a thief, and it felt odd to be in a place that was silent and without people. Where was everyone? His eyes widened when he saw Laird Iain’s pack on the floor. He squatted beside it. Iain’s bow and arrows spilled from it, and there were sharp knives and a sword scattered around it. He sniffed the air and caught the faint hint of Laire’s scent. He knew it like he’d once known the smell of his mother’s skin, the familiar odors of home and happiness. He squinted at the stone steps that climbed up to another floor and knew she’d gone that way.
Hoolet, Bear and Dux crept out of the tunnel. It was old, Ada had warned them, an escape tunnel dug some four hundred years ago by the first Fearsome MacLeod when he was building his mighty fortress. “Ye never knew when ye might have to get out of a place by stealth,” Ada said.
“Or in,” Hoolet quipped.
Being the ones used to making their way through tunnels, the three members of the Clan of Thieves volunteered for the mission and left Sir Hamish and the big Sinclair warriors behind.
The tunnels were crumbling, overgrown, and tight. Dux and Hoolet had slipped through easily enough, but Bear had to be pulled out the end like a stopper from a bottle. He wiped the dirt off his face. “I think this’ll be my last mission,” he said. “I’m too big.”
Hoolet sniffed the air.
“What’re ye doing?” Bear asked.
“Finding the way to the kitchen. D’ye smell food?”
Dux wrinkled his nose. “I smell something, but I don’t think it’s food.”
They crept carefully along the hall that led to the kitchen and peered through the half-open door. An old woman stood at the table. They flinched as she raised a cleaver and brought it down with a wet thunk on the bloody wee body of a bird. Beyond her lay the stillroom. Ada was sure the potion would be there. Hoolet nodded at Bear. He took a pebble from his pocket and tossed it across the room. It hit the wall on the old woman’s left.
The old woman lowered the cleaver and turned to look. Bear did it again, sending the pebble right into the stillroom this time.
“Rats,” the old woman said. She tightened her grip on the bloody cleaver and went into the stillroom.
The three thieves slipped into the kitchen. Dux and Bear took their places on either side of the door the old woman had gone through. Hoolet stood in the middle of the room and waited for her to return.
She paused as she saw Hoolet. “Which one are you? You’re supposed to be asleep,” she said, mistaking her for one of Laire’s sisters.
“I’m thirsty,” Hoolet said. “May I have a drink?”
The old woman threw the cleaver into the wood of the table, where it stuck
and quivered.
She wiped her hands on her apron, grumbling under her breath. She grabbed a pitcher and poured a cup full of red liquid. Hoolet watched as Bear silently took a pot down from a hook on the ceiling behind the servant.
The old woman held the cup out to Hoolet. “Drink it down and go back to sleep,” she said.
Hoolet stared into the dark depths of the liquid. It had a sweet smell that made her nose quiver. Her mouth watered to taste it. She raised the cup slowly to her lips.
The pot made a metallic clang as it connected with the old woman’s skull. She dropped to the floor like a wet sack and lay still.
Hoolet sipped. “It’s sweet.” She grinned at her companions, feeling her cheeks flush. “Taste it for yourself.”
Bear licked his lips, but Dux took the cup. “No—” But he hesitated and peered into the seductive potion. He turned his head and set the cup on the bloody tabletop and backed away from it. “Find a flask, something with a tight stopper,” he said. “Hoolet, go and get Sir Hamish and Ada. Everything we need is right here—it will be faster.”
The condition of the great hall made Hamish shiver. It had always been a warm and welcoming place when he visited before, when it was under the care of Donal’s other wives.
Whatever else Bibiana MacLeod was, she was a terrible housekeeper.
He followed Ada to the kitchen and rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s get started.”
Ada sniffed the potion, dipped her finger into it and tasted. She licked her lips and frowned. “Not anything I know. It’s sweet.”
Hoolet looked at the flask hopefully, and Ada frowned at her and passed it to Sir Hamish. He sniffed. “It smells like flowers.” He sniffed again. “Like nectar . . .”
He went to his books, began to search.
“What if it’s not a plant at all?” Dux asked. “What if it’s something else?”
“Like what?” Hoolet asked.
The Lady and the Highlander Page 25