"Would I like that, do you think?" she asked, a little wistfully.
"Aye, I think ye would. I have a bedchamber with a roaring fire and a comfy bed with a feather mattress and many soft pillows, and there are curtains of green silk to pull around us to keep us warm. There's a bath, too, big enough for two, and servants to carry the water up to fill it to the verra top. Some mornings, though, I go down to the loch and bathe there in the cold water with the fishes."
"God, you are medieval." Laughing, she reached for his hand. "Come on, let's go down to the car. The sooner we discover what Tamsin has to say, the sooner we can go home to Loch Fasail."
His big hand closed on hers and she hoped he didn't feel her trembling, and realize just how hard it was becoming for her to pretend it would be okay to see him go.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-five
Mrs. Forsythe had that English upper-middle-class reserve that Bella knew well from her own family. Good manners and politeness were everything and real feelings were scrupulously hidden. It was Mr. Forsythe who was the collector, not her, and she reminded them of it so many times after they arrived, Bella was certain Mr. Forsythe's wife was not entirely pleased with his line of business.
Mrs. Forsythe was bored, alone here at home, and Bella's plan to see the Tamsin Macleod document before dinner was thwarted when she insisted they take drinks first and chat.
"Of course I've heard of Martin's Journey? Mrs. Forsythe said, her eyes watchful behind their fashionable glasses. Her hair looked as if it had been recently cut and set, and she had the smooth, well-turned-out look that Bella was familiar seeing with Georgiana, although Mrs. Forsythe was older by at least twenty years.
"I've been pleased with the publicity," Bella said politely.
"I haven't read it yet, but I've ordered a copy. The bookstore was sold out, but I am told they are reprinting."
Bella made a sound that could have been approval at the reprint or commiseration at the wait.
"And you have another book on the way, Ms. Ryan? I've always wanted to write a book, but I've never found the time." Behind her glasses, Mrs. Forsythe's eyes were rather sharp and beady, and suddenly Bella didn't like her very much.
"I'm working on a new book, yes," Bella said, ignoring the rest.
"And you, Mr. MacLean." Mrs. Forsythe turned to him with her curious smile. "What do you do?"
"Em… I am Bella's… em—"
"Mr. MacLean helps me in my research," Bella said smoothly. "To be honest, I wouldn't be able to write the book without him."
"Oh, I see, another historian." Mrs. Forsythe's smile grew forced, and she was obviously bored by the subject. "I rang my husband, by the way. He's in Moscow bidding for some scrap of paper which was found in a tomb." She shuddered delicately. "He says you are welcome to look at the Tamsin Macleod document, but he would be very grateful if you mentioned him in the book."
"Of course."
Mrs. Forsythe gave a satisfied nod, and Bella wondered if the mention had been her husband's idea or hers.
Despite her sudden dislike of Mrs. Forsythe, the meal was pleasant enough and Bella found she was enjoying it. She had worried at first that MacLean might give himself away, not because he was a fool but because he was a man who had never had to watch what he did or said, and was not used to it. But when he didn't seem to be about to declare himself the Chief of the MacLeans of Fasail over the soup, she relaxed and let herself trust him.
Mrs. Forsythe was an experienced hostess, and MacLean was not averse to having his ego stroked. He fit into the surroundings—the meal being served by a discreet servant and the best wine poured into the best glasses—better than Bella, who had grown up in such situations but always found them stilted and uncomfortable. MacLean constantly surprised her. As he answered Mrs. Forsythe's questions on the eighteenth century—he had told her he specialized in that period of Scottish history—Bella realized again that this was no primitive Highland cattle thief. If he had been, then she might have felt as if she were his caretaker, but she didn't. MacLean was educated and clever, a leader of others, and he was certainly her equal in this century and any other.
"Well, I suppose you want to see the document now?" Mrs. Forsythe said at last, and rose from the table. She smiled at MacLean; she seemed to have taken quite a shine to him. "This way."
MacLean followed, his hand resting naturally on the small of Bella's back. His palm was warm and strong, and Bella felt desire curl in her stomach.
"We have security, of course," Mrs. Forsythe called over her shoulder as she led the way to the room where the collection was kept. "My husband insists on it. Sometimes I think he cares more about these pieces of paper than he does about me." She laughed, to show she was joking, but Bella thought that perhaps the subject had been a matter of dissension between them. "Of course, his collection is very valuable, so he's right to take precautions. Some collectors are not as scrupulous as he is. They will pay just about anything to get their hands on what they want, and they don't seem to mind how it is obtained."
Mrs. Forsythe punched in a code at the door, and the lock clicked open. Inside, the room was enclosed, with no windows, rather like a museum. The various pieces of the collection were on display in glass cases, and the only light in the room was artificial because, as Mrs. Forsythe explained, natural light faded the delicate paper and ink.
MacLean gave Bella a look of skeptical amazement and she could tell what he was thinking: A few scraps of old paper with bad spelling and they are treated like precious jewels? The people who wrote these diaries and letters would be surprised to see the reverence with which they were kept. For MacLean their importance was negligible compared to the truly important matters, like food and warmth for his people, things which would mean the difference between life and death.
Perhaps MacLean was right, and the modern idea of what was and was not important was skewed, but still Bella could not help the rush of excitement she felt as she looked upon the stained and wrinkled sheets of paper that told the story of Tamsin Macleod nee MacLean.
Mrs. Forsythe unlocked the case and handed Bella a pair of gloves to wear while she handled the document, to protect it from the oils from her fingers. "If you like, you can sit over there at the table to examine it," she suggested.
"Thank you. It may take me a little time to decipher the writing and make notes. It is rather faded. At least it's not written in Gaelic," she added.
"I know Gaelic," MacLean reminded her. "I was verra well educated. Private tutors, you know."
He was mimicking the way Mrs. Forsythe spoke, and Bella hoped she didn't notice.
Mrs. Forsythe carried the document to the table and, after hovering a moment while Bella and MacLean made themselves comfortable in the leather chairs, gave some excuse and left them to it.
Bella peered at the faded and stained script, a little crease between her brows as she puzzled out the archaic spelling. Then, with a tight little smile in MacLean’s direction, she began to read it aloud.
"My name is Tamsin Macleod and I was born in Fasail in 1737 in the time of Morven MacLean. My father was a tacksman for the Black MacLean, and my mother weaved wool into plaids and arisaids, while keeping an eye on me and my brothers and sisters. We lived well, better than many others, for the Black MacLean was a better chief than many others. I know it is not the done thing to say so now, and I do not usually speak out among the people I have made my life with, but I am old and I don't think anyone will deny me my opinions.
"She talks about her husband, who is dead, and her loneliness without him. She says that her children and their children welcome her, but they have their own lives and times have changed so much that she misses the old ways like an ache in her very bones."
"I know how she feels," MacLean muttered.
"Ah, here's something…"
"I came to the Clan Macleod at a time of great suffering, and not at all willingly. The man who saved my life was the father of my husband, but at the time
I hated him. I hated them all. I did not speak for a year after I left Loch Fasail.
"The man who saved my life… what do you think that means?" Bella looked up when he didn't answer.
MacLean was seated opposite her, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, his jaw rigid. She reached out to cover his fingers with hers, but he made no sign that he felt her, or even knew she was there.
Shocked, she realized then that he was in the past. Tamsin's words were a key that had unlocked the door in his mind. He didn't need to hear them all, he didn't need to be told what she had suffered.
MacLean was seeing it for himself.
MacLean shivered. The temperature had dropped, and when he looked across at Bella she was gone. The room was gone. He wasn't at the Forsythes' house anymore.
He was at Loch Fasail, two hundred and fifty years in the past.
It was the noise that struck him first.
The screaming and shouting, the roaring blast of fire as everything around him was set alight. Consumed. People staggered past him through the smoke. A pig bolted, almost knocking him over. MacLean fell against the wall of a cottage, coughing and trying to get his bearings, and that was when he saw the child.
Tangled red hair and a white face, bloodied across one cheek. The little girl was standing in the midst of it, shocked. Screams erupted from inside the cottage and she flinched. And then a man came riding out of the swirling smoke. MacLean recognized him. It was the same man who had tried to ride down Bella, the man he had fought and who had subsequently vanished. The rider's sword was swinging, and he was just as intent on murder as MacLean remembered. The child turned and ran, and disappeared into the smoke.
"That is Tamsin," a voice said behind him.
Shocked, he turned. The Fiosaiche stood there, her silver cloak flapping in the wind, her red hair brighter than the fires about them.
"Why have you brought me here?" he cried in his pain and fury.
Her eyes fixed on his, as terrible as he remembered. "Because it is time for you to know, and to properly know you must see."
A couple more men rode by in the dragoons' uniform of red coats and buff breeches.
"Is it true, then?" he asked her, his voice husky with pain. "Did the English follow me home to Loch Fasail?"
She didn't answer him. Around them women scattered, unprotected without their menfolk, although some stood and fought their foes. He saw faces he knew, one of them swinging her husband's broadsword at her attacker, using a strength of which he would not have believed her capable. The man grinned as if he found her desperate fury amusing.
"Och, ma bonny lass," he mocked, "ye are making me shake in ma boots. Dinna ye know your great chief is dead? He died like a dog on Macleod land and we sliced him to pieces. He canna protect you now."
Tears ran down the woman's sooty cheeks, but she held her ground. "Murdering Macleods," she hissed. "Ye have killed the Black MacLean and ye will pay for it!"
But the man just laughed. He wouldn't pay for it, not ever, and he knew it.
MacLean’s people hadn't been massacred by the hated English alone, but by the Macleods as well. Maybe Bella was right, and Auchry Macleod had seen a chance to take what was not his. Maybe his greed had overcome his cowardice.
"I canna abide it," he whispered. "Take me back."
"You must abide it," the Fiosaiche replied fiercely. "You played your part in this terrible thing, MacLean. Feel their pain, feel your guilt. Never forget it."
Farm animals scattered wildly, adding to the chaos, while the men he hadn't taken with him to Mhairi, the old and infirm, fought and died. And the children… MacLean cried out, looking about him, seeing the faces confused and dazed. His heart felt as if it were being torn from his chest.
"I should have been here," he said. "I should have been here!"
He was caught up in the nightmare, but they couldn't see him, couldn't hear him, couldn't feel him. He was useless. A ghost. Some of them were even calling out his name, as if hoping he would be able to protect them from beyond the grave, and it brought him to the brink of absolute despair.
An old man lay dying upon the ground with a terrible wound to his chest, and he gazed up at MacLean as he ran past. Something flickered in his eyes, a recognition, and he smiled. "M'lord," he whispered, "God bless ye." The next moment those eyes had dulled in death.
Cursing, his face hot with tears, MacLean struggled on. He no longer looked back at the sorceress or expected her to help him. She was here simply for her pound's worth of flesh, and he understood that. He deserved to suffer, just as his people had suffered.
MacLean turned, coughing as the thick smoke rolled toward him from the burning buildings.
There was something moving in it.
At that moment the smoke parted, and he saw the horse standing upon the rise. MacLean backed up a step and looked to its rider. Her booted feet were in the stirrups, her trews molding to her shapely legs. Her hair was like pale spun gold and her green eyes were burning with a fierce hatred.
"Ishbel?"
But just like the others, she couldn't see him. This was Ishbel as she had been in 1746, not the creature she had become.
"MacLean," she shouted toward the carnage, and her voice shook with her grief and her fury. "Tell me, do ye feel their pain? Do ye feel their suffering? Good! I want you to. I want you to suffer even in death. This is your punishment for what ye did to me."
Ishbel did this?
He should have known it; in a way, he had known it.
Ishbel raised her dagger and shook it to the sky, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "I have soaked my hands in MacLean blood this day!"
MacLean staggered. Ishbel had been part of the massacre, and then Auchry had lied for her sake. Begun the legend that was still believed today, so that his beloved sweet Ishbel could escape censure, and no one would argue when he brought his sheep to graze upon Loch Fasail land. Finally MacLean understood.
And it gave him no satisfaction.
MacLean started toward her, wanting to drag her from her horse and break her to pieces. But even as he came forward, the smoke thickened and she was gone, and when he spun about, so was the vision of the massacre of his people.
"It is not over yet," the Fiosaiche said, and for once there was a trace of compassion in her voice. "There is more, MacLean. You must remember the day you died."
He tried to take a step, but he was falling, falling further back through time. He felt his body jolt, and he straightened and reluctantly opened his eyes.
MacLean was seated upon his horse, at the head of his men, facing Auchry Macleod of Mhairi. He could feel the animal beneath him, the chill wind on his face, the smell of fear and sweat, the aching tiredness of his own body. And his raging pain and pride. Like a knot inside him, it twisted, urging him on, telling him he had no choice but to teach Ishbel, teach them all, that he was every bit a man like his father.
He wanted to tell himself no, he wanted to turn around and go home, but he wasn't able to do anything. He was MacLean, and yet he wasn't. The Fiosaiche was forcing him to be an observer only. His mouth opened and the words that came out were the ones he had spoken long ago.
"I have come for Ishbel," he said, and his hands tightened on the reins.
And there, behind Auchry, was Ishbel, smiling a strange little smile, and at her side gangly Iain Og, his eyes reddened by the cold and maybe sleeplessness. The boy was looking upon his own death and he knew it.
The Fiosaiche's voice was in MacLean’s head. "Remember. Savor the pain. Learn the lesson. It is the only way…"
He was back in the airless, windowless room where the Forsythes kept their collection, with Bella's worried face before him and the hum of the air conditioner in his ears.
"I know what happened," he said in a voice that sounded like a stranger's. "And I wish to God I did not."
* * *
Chapter Twenty-six
Brian put down his cell phone, his hands shaking so much he nearly dropped
it. Elaine, Bella's agent, had just called him. She'd been trying to ring Bella, but no one was picking up. Elaine didn't seem to know that Brian and Bella had split up, or if she did, she wasn't about to let on. Instead she launched into a diatribe about Bella's book Martin's Journey, and how it had sold out and was about to go into another reprint. Elaine finished the call with details of the publicity Bella had turned down, begging Brian to talk some sense into her. In ten minutes he knew everything about Reading England and all the chances Bella was letting slip through her fingers.
Bella's book was a bestseller.
He couldn't believe it.
Brian had been avoiding anything to do with writing since he left the cottage, and now he learned that Bella had finally done what he never thought she could.
He had walked out on her after all this time, and now she had a bestseller. He sat down heavily on the antique chair in Georgiana's gleaming entrance hall.
Anger built in him, a hot, self-righteous fury, with Bella and the way she'd treated him. She hadn't once tried to call him and apologize. It had been he who had gone back to the cottage to see her, to try and talk some sense into her.
He'd arrived to find the place empty, but there were plenty of signs that someone had been there recently. The smashed plates and smell of burning worried him, and he'd only waited a minute or two before deciding to climb the path to the castle ruins. She was probably up there. She was always up there, moping around, dreaming about MacLean. Brian had come to loathe the man. If he wasn't already dead, Brian would have wished death on him.
At first he couldn't believe his eyes. The mist had come down over the castle ruins, and the whole scene was just as cold and bleak as he remembered, but as he stood peering toward the gateway, he'd seen movement. He couldn't take it in at first. He'd kept watching, thinking it must be a hallucination. Bare skin and entwined limbs, an erotic living sculpture. Bella and her man were so caught up in their lust they didn't even know he was there. Shameless. Sickening.
Immortal Warriors 01 - Return of the Highlander Page 21