Graham lifted his goblet to purchase a moment to answer, but when Marion slammed her goblet down, he knew he’d made an error.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” Marion growled. “Your brother in all his infinite wisdom has decided he will live separately from his wife. He intends to leave Isobel here with us while he goes to make his home at Brigid!”
A splash of red wine hit Graham’s hand, and he twisted around to see Rhona gaping at him. “Dunnae fash yerself, Rhona,” he said while glaring at Marion. “And hold yer tongue, aye? I dunnae wish for idle gossip.”
Rhona surprised him by gripping him by the hand. “Dunnae despair, my lord. Nae a soul will be displeased with ye, if I may say—”
“Away with you!” Marion snapped, shocking Graham further for she never had a cross word for anyone.
Rhona scrambled off the dais without a backward glance.
“Marion,” Iain said in a warning tone as she speared Graham with an angry gaze.
“Iain MacLeod,” Marion growled, “if you wish to lie beside me tonight or any other in the near future, you will not stop me from speaking.”
Iain waved his hand to his wife in submission while his gaze moved to Graham. “I’m sorry, Brother, but I agree with what my wife says.”
Marion gave Iain a pleased smile, which made Graham grind his teeth. “Get on with it, then,” he growled.
“You are a clot-heid,” she snapped.
“Aye,” Bridgette agreed from her seat. “An eedjit to be certain. Ye will lose her if ye do this.”
He curled his hands into fists. “It is nae yer concern.”
“Brother,” Lachlan said, setting a hand on Graham’s shoulder, “it is all of our concern because ye are important to us.”
Graham rose up to leave at that, but Iain clamped a hand on his arm. “Sit.”
Isobel awoke to a knock. Sitting up in darkness, she rubbed her bleary eyes. “Enter,” she bid, sucking in sharp breath when Rhona came into the room.
“Isobel?” Rhona twisted her hands together. “I am so terribly sorry,” she cried out as tears leaked from the woman’s eyes.
Isobel scrambled off the bed and came to stand in front of the obviously distraught woman. She reached a hand out to her but then pulled it away, fearing her touch would only worsen matters. “What has occurred, Rhona?”
The woman wiped at her tears and sniffed. “I only just heard that yer husband is leaving ye here while he makes his home in Brigid.”
Isobel sank to the bed as her knees gave in shock. Graham had told his clan? Had he made an proclamation? Shame and rejection blanketed her. “Did he…did he tell ye this?”
Rhona nodded. “I feel so ashamed! I was certain ye were ban-druidh, but yer husband would nae leave ye if ye had cast a spell. I blamed ye for my own husband’s death because of yer family, but now I see ye are simply a…a pawn!”
Isobel rubbed at her chest. Her heart felt squeezed in a vise. “Dunnae fash yerself. Ye were beset with grief,” she said, her mind turning on how little Graham must care for her to announce to his clan he would be leaving her there while he made his home elsewhere.
“I’ve been sent to fetch ye by yer husband to make yer farewells,” Rhona said, giving Isobel a pitying look.
“My farewells?” Isobel murmured, her thoughts jumbled.
“Aye.” Rhona took her by the hand and led her to the door. “Yer husband departs soon. He has decided to sail out on the full moon. He is down at the water waiting to say farewell.”
Rhona led Isobel across the passage to the side stairs. “This way is faster, and he is impatient to depart.”
Isobel gave a bitter laugh. “Certainly. I must not keep my husband waiting,” she replied and followed the woman down the tiny set of steps that led directly to the courtyard. The moon was bright in the sky and shone down almost mockingly on Isobel as she moved toward the seagate stairs. When they arrived, Rhona moved the heavy bar and motioned Isobel ahead.
The wind had picked up from earlier, and as Isobel started to walk down the long, winding stairs, she grappled with her hair, which was being whipped into her eyes and obscuring her vision. She eventually caught her hair and looked down toward the loch in the distance. It was dark, but there was enough moonlight that she could see no birlinn awaiting departure.
She frowned. “Rhona,” she said, stopping.
“Death to ye, ban-druidh!” the woman snarled a second before Isobel was knocked over the head and all went dark.
“Ye will hear this, whether ye wish to or nae,” Iain said to Graham while still clutching his arm.
Graham jerked out of his brother’s grasp. “I’ll hear ye out of respect. Ye dunnae need to hold me.”
Iain inclined his head in acknowledgment. “We have watched yer foolish choices for weeks. We have given advice that ye have overlooked. Ye depart on the morrow, so ye will listen now. Ye leave yer wife with me, which I have agreed to, but the price of my agreement is yer listening.”
Graham nodded, anger flowing through his veins thicker than blood.
“Ye are letting yer past once again dictate yer future,” Iain said, and Graham noted that Lachlan was nodding his agreement.
“I’m nae,” Graham denied. “It is because of my past that I make the choices I do for my future and for Isobel’s. Around her—” He jerked his hand through his hair. He could not say out loud what she did to him. His emotions ruled him where she was concerned, just as they had with his need to prove himself to his mother, a need that had cost Lena greatly, and just as he had with his jealousy and desire to take from Lachlan, who had only ever given to him. “My past is in my mind with every breath I take, but it dunnae rule me.”
“It does,” Marion challenged. “I see how you feel for her in your gaze, but you deny her and yourself happiness. You are sentencing both of you to a lifetime of loneliness. Or perchance not,” Marion said, cocking her head. “Perchance Isobel will find solace in another man’s arms if you set her aside and act as if you are not married. Perchance Isobel will leave you.”
Fierce possessiveness gripped him. “My wife will nae ever leave me or take another to her bed. She would nae do such a thing to me, in spite of what I do. She is faithful, honorable, and all that is kind and good.”
“She is that!” Father Murdock boomed as he approached the dais.
Graham started to scowl at the priest for eavesdropping, but then he recalled Isobel mentioning Father Murdock did not feel needed. Graham cleared his throat. “It’s good to have ye returned, Father Murdock. Ye’ve been sorely missed.”
The priest blinked. “I have?”
Graham nodded, seeing the shocked looks of his brothers and their wives, but he refused to be gainsaid in this good deed. “Before I leave on the morrow, I’d like to give ye my confession.” Suddenly recalling that he had meant to ask Father Murdock what he and Isobel had talked of, he added, “Perchance as my wife did?” He stared expectantly at the priest, who shifted in front of Graham.
“Yer wife did nae give me confession.”
“What did the two of ye discuss, then?” Graham demanded.
Father Murdock glanced uneasily down the length of the table and then leaned forward. “Well,” the priest said, tugging on his beard. “I fear I may have caused her a bit of trouble as I made a careless comment that she had bewitched ye and Rhona overheard me and looked as if she truly feared yer sweet wife. I told yer wife I would speak with Rhona, but in my haste to get to my ill sister, I forgot to do so before I left. But if there have nae been any problems since I have been away—”
Lena gasped beside Graham. Disquiet gripped him at his sister’s obvious dismay. As far as he knew, Rhona had only called Isobel a witch the one time and he had taken care of it. But mayhap he didn’t know all.
“Lena, have ye heard any continued whispers about Isobel being ban-druidh since I told the clan she was nae?”
Lena bit her lip. “Aye,” she whispered, her face crumbling as she started to softl
y cry. Graham’s blood froze in his veins. “I’m sorry, Brother. I fear the whispers are all my fault. I tried to correct Rhona and the other women who are saying she is ban-druidh, but their grief twisted their hearts. Perchance if ye speak to them again?”
He nodded distractedly, barely controlling his urge to race from the hall. Control. He had to maintain control. Didn’t he?
“I need to speak with Isobel,” he said, his emotions rising up to choke him. Had she heard the whispers? Had she known the fate of rejection he was forcing her to accept from him, from his clan, as she had been forced to accept rejection from her father? Oh, what had he done?
His thoughts swirled in a vicious circle as he made haste from the great hall and up the stairs toward her bedchamber. When he saw her door ajar, the uneasiness that had been rising flooded him. He abandoned his restraint and ran the rest of the way to her chamber only to find it empty. Every instinct for survival he had spent years honing to a deadly sharpness told him that Isobel was in mortal danger. He could not say how he knew it, but it was there in his gut, with every breath and every beat of his heart. Without hesitation, he took the stairs back to the great hall, burst through the door, and shouted, “Come with me! Isobel is missing!”
He ordered Cameron to search the castle for Rhona, but he had a terrible feeling she would not be immediately found. Running into the courtyard with his brothers and Marion by his side, he turned for a moment, uncertain where to start. He glanced to Iain and Lachlan, but Marion spoke, her face white with fear. “She may have fled you.”
Graham stared at Marion for a long moment, feeling as if he had lost the ability to speak as the weight of her words sank into his mind. “Did she say she would?”
Marion bit her lip but nodded. “Yes, but only if she had no other choice. It was to be her last attempt to try to get through to you. She does not want to live her life with a man who refuses to love her.”
“Marion,” Iain growled, but Graham interrupted.
“Whether she has fled me or been taken,” he said, his throat so tight that the words caused him pain, “I will find her now.”
Before he could say more the watch tower horn blew, announcing that a vessel had been spotted in the water. Shoving the men who were in his path out of his way, he raced toward the seagate stairs and took them three at a time, hearing only the hammering of his heart in his ears, despite the fact that he knew hundreds of men were behind him. Near the end of the stairs, he saw out in the middle of the loch, under the bright moonlight, was the skiff he and Isobel had used earlier that day. It bobbed in the rough water, one end much higher than the other. It was sinking!
“Isobel!” he shouted, fear sweeping through him and causing him to shake. She was in that skiff, and she was not so foolish to have tried to escape in a skiff with a leak. He ran toward the shore and raced into the now-freezing water. It stole his breath, along with his ability to move for a moment, but then he thought of her and dove under to swim hard and fast. When he broke the surface with a gasp, raised his head to get his bearings and judge the distance to the skiff, a scream of terror—Isobel!—broke through the noise in his head to confirm his worst fear. She was on that sinking skiff, and for reasons he could not see, she was sinking with it instead of swimming to safety.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was going to die. It was the first thought that struck Isobel when she awoke. The second was that everything hurt. Her head pounded, her body ached, and she was terribly cold. She blinked, unsure where she was. She tried to sit up to look around only to realize her hands and feet were bound. Her breath caught with fear that intensified when cold water touched her back, then her feet, her legs, and her hands. And her head.
Confusion muddled her thoughts as her world seemed to rock. Oh God, she was in the skiff, and it had a leak! She sucked in a shocked breath, remembering Rhona hitting her over the head. The woman must have tied her up while she was out and set her to sea.
Another scream of horror ripped from her and then yet another. She didn’t want to die. She was not ready to die. She wanted to be loved, but she was not. The water filled the boat at a rapid pace that ripped a sob from her, and then as it crested her chin, she gulped one more breath and screamed once more. She yelled Graham’s name, sure he could not hear her, but just as sure that she had heard him. Mayhap she was near dead, she thought as the water sucked her under and she started to fall much like a heavy rock, down, down, down.
Pain cut into Graham’s side, his head, his lungs, and his heart, but he pushed himself onward. He had to save her. Her screams filled the night, followed by a sob, and then his name on her lips—a plea that ripped at the muscle holding his heart within his chest. He reached the place he had seen the skiff three breaths after the water covered her, but as he swept his arms around, not feeling her, despair that it was three breaths too late choked him.
He dove under the water and swam as far down as he could—once, twice, three times. Each time he broke the surface and his lungs screamed and protested the lack of air, making him acutely aware that it was a great deal more than she was getting. He heard his brothers calling him then. They were near but not close enough to help. He dove under again, his lungs burning as he swam deeper. They tightened painfully, and he knew if he went any farther he would die with her, but he refused to let her go. He made one last surge toward the bottom and reached into the darkness, knowing this was his last chance. His finger brushed something soft and silky, like hair. He curled his tingling fingers into it and held on as he swam closer, circled his arm around her waist, and kicked toward the surface.
Hands reached out of the darkness, touching him, tugging him, and within a breath, he broke the surface with his brothers, Isobel in his arms. They all sucked in air while Isobel’s head slumped forward in a soundless acceptance of death.
“Isobel!” he roared, gripping her hard as he surged toward land. It seemed to take even longer to reach land than it had to reach her, but finally, he staggered out of the water with his limp, bound wife hanging in his arms as his men gathered around them.
Graham lay her on the sand and looked to Marion helplessly. “Save her,” he pleaded. “Ye must save her.”
For all his physical strength, he had a sudden clarity that he was weak without this woman. He wanted the chance to rip down the walls he had erected, to worship her as she deserved to be worshipped, to show her the love that was in his heart. He wanted the opportunity to let her see what was inside him and know what he feared the most, even if she turned away from him.
Marion kneeled above Isobel as she pressed her hands into the space under Isobel’s breasts and then pushed hard. “Turn her head,” Marion commanded him as Cameron dropped beside him to unbind her hands and Bridgette worked to unbind her feet.
Graham gently took her head in his hands and turned it, and as he did, Marion pressed hard with a cry, and Isobel began to cough up great amounts of water. Marion leaned over her and then began to cry. Tears sprang to his own eyes.
“She lives,” Marion sobbed.
He could not move. He stared at her, grateful, astounded, and fearful that he had heard incorrectly. Marion pressed her hand to his. “She lives, Graham. For now.” She squeezed his hand. “But she may yet die,” Marion added. “We need to get her warm.”
It was all the encouragement he needed. He gathered Isobel into his arms, and tilted her head to his chest. She slumped as he started toward the stairs.
“Graham,” Cameron said. “Let me take her. Ye are weary.”
“Nay,” he answered without slowing. She was his wife. His beloved. He had failed her as he had feared, but not exactly as he had imagined. He had pushed her away, afraid that needing her love made him weak, but now, only when she might be taken from him forever, did he understand that loving a woman such as Isobel would make him stronger and better, because to keep her love he had to give his in return, and that took a sort of bravery he had lost long ago.
When he reached his bed
chamber—which should have long been theirs—he turned and met his brothers’ concerned gazes. “Ye must find Rhona,” Graham said. “I ken she did this, and I’m nae certain who else was involved. Find her for me.”
They nodded as one. “We will, Brother. Watch over Isobel.”
He entered the bedchamber with Bridgette, Marion, Lena, and Marsaili hovering by his side, and as he laid Isobel’s cold, near lifeless body on the bed, he was vaguely aware of the door being shut. Bridgette and Marion went to Isobel’s side and quickly stripped off her tattered clothing while Marsaili squatted near her sister’s head and whispered soothing words to her. Cuts and bruises marked Isobel’s legs, arms, stomach, and face, and he stood there, helpless with anger, as they cleaned the cuts quickly, then started to pile blankets atop her.
“What are ye doing?” he asked, feeling as if his thoughts were hard to grasp.
Marion waved a hand at Isobel. “We are trying to warm her. It’s the cold gripping her that could kill her.”
He glanced at Isobel’s face, and that same icy fear that had frozen him before rushed through his veins. Her lips were tinted blue, and her skin was beyond white and appearing stretched too thin over her bones. Her eyelids were blue, as well, and her hair lay in wet knots around her face. She appeared weak, yet he knew her to be strong. She had to live!
“I will warm her,” he croaked and glanced at Marion, Bridgette, and then Marsaili.
“That is best,” Marion said.
“She will be comforted knowing ye are there,” Bridgette said on a sob, which caused Marsaili to let loose a sob of her own.
Christ. They thought she was going to die. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them to all three women openly weeping. He wanted to weep, as well, but he clenched his jaw. “How long?”
When a Highlander Loses His Heart (Highlander Vows: Entangled Hearts Book 4) Page 29