“Dara, when can she be moved?”
“Another day, Connor. Two at the most,” the servant woman replied.
Through the corner of her eye she watched as he turned away and strode to the door. Dara followed him, twisting a cloth in her hands. Reaching out to him, she stopped him with her hand on his arm.
“And you still intend to see this through?” she asked.
The dread in her voice was so clear that Moira’s stomach turned inside her. The fear within grew and taunted her until she could feel the sweat beading on her forehead and rolling down her neck. What could he have planned that was so gruesome the servant woman feared it? She must not ask. She must not beg.
“Aye. There is no choice in this. As I told the girl, it would have been easier for both of us if she’d only been true in her aim.”
When the woman faced her with an expression of pity in her eyes, Moira lost her battle to keep the fear of what was to come at bay. Even the demons that chased her in her sleep were preferable to facing this. When her efforts to stay awake lost their strength, it was much easier to fade into the darkness.
And, she did.
Chapter Five
The day dawned bright and breezy, as many days had as summer progressed toward its end in the islands. Even the shackles on her feet and the guard who dogged her every step could not make her despair on a day like this one. Moira turned her face to the warming sun and breathed in the air. The tightness of the bandages wrapped around her chest kept her from taking a full deep breath, but at least this time she did not collapse into coughing.
Clutching the wooden stick under her good arm, she hobbled toward the main house from the barn where she was kept at night. The shackles that slid down nearly to the ground and the man set to watch her were unnecessary, for it would take many more sennights or even passages of the moon in her path across the sky for Moira to be able to run as she had before.
If she could ever run again.
These last few weeks had been their own kind of torture, giving her a chance to live and breathe away from the clutter and crowding of the keep with its cold walls and conspiracies at every turn. Here, on this farm, she had a glimpse of what her life could have been like if not for that terrible day all those years ago. The family who ran the farm for their lord were kind, though distant, in their care of her. Clearly torn between common decency and their loyalty to their master, they’d seen to her wounds and injuries and prodded her along toward recovery. Even in the first days when she still longed for death.
Now, her bruises faded in color and her scars no longer looked as pink and puffy as they had. Her legs ached constantly from several broken bones, but even that lessened each day. Standing up straight for a moment, she pressed her hand against her ribs and assessed the soreness. It was definitely less than yesterday. She tossed her head back, as the wind tousled her short hair—one of the other prices paid for failure.
Pol cleared his throat, and Moira realized she’d been dawdling. Positioning the stick beneath her once more, she made her way to the large manor house and whatever reckoning she faced. She entered from the back, into the large storage room on the main floor, and then followed Pol as he led her to the woman who’d summoned her. When they approached the stairs that led to the second floor of the house, Moira took a deep breath and prepared to climb them.
The door next to the stairs opened, and Dara motioned for her to enter. Pol stepped aside, and she followed Dara into a room that must have been used by the women on the farm, to gather. Dara pointed to one cushioned chair next to the hearth, and Moira gratefully sank onto its comfortable surface. Surprised when Pol carried a small stool over and lifted her splinted leg onto it, she nodded her thanks as he unlocked the chain between the shackles, giving her legs more freedom.
Dara sat near her, but she did not speak until Pol left the room, closing the door behind him. For a moment, Moira imagined this was what a guest felt like: comfortable, warm, and safe. At least, for now. Dara surprised her yet again when she held out a cup of tea to her. Taking it, Moira drank the warm, strong brew and allowed it to refresh her.
“Lady?” she asked, waiting to learn the true purpose of this encounter.
“I am called Dara, Ceanna,” she replied, using the name Moira used when she came to Lord Diarmid’s keep on Mull.
“Dara,” she said. This was the woman who’d warned off the Seer from something he’d planned involving her. This woman had brought her to this farm and overseen her care for almost a month now. Shifting her leg on the stool, she waited for Dara to speak. From the shadowed expression on her face, it could not be good.
“Are you his woman?” Moira asked. “Or his slave?”
Dara blushed then, her face looking even younger than before. “Nay, Ceanna, I am not Connor’s woman, nor his slave.”
Moira shrugged, now that her curiosity was satisfied.
Dara looked away and cleared her throat before speaking again. Then, she leaned over and spoke in a soft voice.
“When Lord Diarmid’s men took you from Connor’s chambers, did they…?” Dara’s glance shifted away from hers, and the pause allowed her to think on the missing words. When she did not answer, Dara looked at her intensely. “You have not bled since you arrived here.”
“I cannot carry,” Moira said quickly. Though she’d planned her attack understanding what the consequences would be to her, picking a time just as she bled as she would be least likely to conceive then if things happened as she suspected they would.
As they had.
“How do you know that?” Dara asked in a quiet voice.
“Through enough years of living when it would have happened if it could have happened,” Moira answered calmly.
Bairns were not for her, not for someone whose only purpose was living long enough to kill her enemy. She’d long ago resigned herself to it and no longer regretted it. Truth be told, she had not thought on it in a long time.
“You did not answer my question. Ceanna, did Diarmid’s men…take you?”
A memory of Connor—carrying her across his chambers, filling her body with his, breathing her breaths and tasting every part of her—flashed through her mind.
He had taken her.
She closed her eyes, banishing the memory of it from her thoughts. What Diarmid’s men did could not even be thought of in the same way and had meant nothing more than the pain it was meant to inflict.
“It matters not, Dara,” she answered. Moira handed the empty cup to Dara as she slid her leg off the stool and pushed out of the chair. “I should return to my work now, if that is all you wanted of me.”
Dara handed her the stick she used to aid her in walking, and she turned to the door.
“He’s sent a message for you to return in a sennight’s time.”
A shudder she could not hide pulsed through her, causing her to lose her tenuous balance and stumble into the frame of the door. Dropping the stick, she grabbed for the door and righted herself.
Had she recovered this much only to be tortured and killed now? When the pain of her injuries was almost bearable and her strength was returning? Now? She turned to face Dara.
“He believes you must know something about the other assassination attempts,” Dara said, her eyes filled with sadness, much like the expression Moira had witnessed that day in the keep.
“Diarmid?” she asked. Her voice cracked, and she was not embarrassed by the hitch as she repeated his name. “Diarmid summons me back?”
“Nay, Ceanna. ’Tis Connor that orders your return. Lord Diarmid has given Connor the first chance to discover what he must know before he turns you back over to his men.”
Moira must have fainted, for when she came back to awareness of herself, she was sitting back in that comfortable chair with Dara and Pol both hovering close over her. She sipped the tea handed to her and did not try to refuse it.
Were the Fates laughing at her once more? Not content with the destruction of her entire family
and clan, they now would not allow her efforts at justice. She had nothing to do with any other attempts on Connor’s life—she concentrated only on her task and ignored all else that could distract her from her purpose. But this time, such ignorance would be her undoing.
And the poor timing of her attempt made it even more ironic, for it now caught her up in something bigger and more dangerous. If she had any humor left inside of her, she would have laughed. All these months and years of no life, no one else had seen to her needs, and now that she had been given a taste of what could have been, she must return to face her enemies and her worst fears.
It wasn’t dying that she feared; it was that time before dying that made her recently healed skin crawl and made her throat dry. She’d been that close and had seen the weakness that had crept into her soul. Though a threat to no one, save the Seer, she would have to divulge too much to make anyone believe her and put others who had helped or hidden her in danger. Something she decided long ago she would not do.
“Your pardon, Dara, for keeping you from your duties,” she said once she had finished drinking the tea. Moira put the cup down on the table next to her.
Moira shifted and began to stand once more. Dara and Pol backed away slowly as though waiting for her to fall. Grasping her stick and moving slowly this time, she made her way to the door without saying another word, for what could she say? Dara could do nothing to help her, especially while she herself served the Seer.
It wasn’t until she’d nearly reached the barn, with Pol following a few paces behind, that Moira realized the chain had not been replaced on the iron shackles on her ankles. Fearing that to look at him would be to alert him to his error, she continued to hobble along the path, taking the same small steps that the chain had forced her to before. Uncertain of how long this small measure of freedom would last, she let the length of her gown drag along to hide it. Walking was ever so much easier without the weight and tug of the chain.
Moira paused in front of the door, hesitant to give up this time in the sun, but she accepted the restrictions placed on her and tugged it open with her free hand. Pol reached around to open it wider, and she walked inside, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior. She stumbled as she misjudged the level of the ground, and Pol’s strong grip kept her from falling until she had her balance.
She nodded her head, and he released her, as though such polite behavior was the usual way to treat prisoners. None of this made sense to her, and she feared it was part of a plot to allow her to believe she was safe. Then, just now as she regained her strength, they reminded her that her life was not her own.
Moira crossed the straw-covered floor to the bench where she sat to do whatever work was assigned to her by Dara or her husband, who worked this farm for the Seer. Pol lit the small lantern on the table as she placed her stick on the floor next to her.
It was a busy place, with cattle and a few crops, far from the intrigue of Lord Diarmid’s holding, where he ruled in the name of Earl of the Orkneys and the King of Norway, both named Magnus. Though not of the families of most of the lords who owned lands here in the isles, Diarmid was powerful, with many influential friends, and he’d carved out his own little fiefdom, answering to very few, if any.
It was only when Pol left that Moira allowed her fears to erupt. The news of her return surprised her, though she knew not why. She yet lived, she was certain, only to give them some information they thought she had on the other attempts on the Seer’s life.
She had none to give.
Moira leaned over and rested her face in her hands. For six years, nothing had slowed her or stopped her from her pursuit of justice for her family. She’d given up everything, everyone, along the way to find this man and kill him. Now, he knew about her, he knew her quest, he had her in his control. Taking in as deep a breath as she could and releasing it slowly, Moira accepted her failure and realized something more important.
She was still alive.
Alive and healed enough to try again.
A bubble of hope formed in her soul at that thought. Surely, they would imprison her, but as long as she lived, she could try again. And she would try again.
Tilting her head, Moira smiled in spite of the pain in her legs and her face and nearly every part of her body, as the crushing weight of failure lifted from her shoulders now. Pulling the woven basket closer, she began to clean and sort the vegetables left there by Old Peg, the woman who oversaw the kitchens.
It kept her hands busy while her mind now turned to other things. There were plans to be made, for she must be ready when the chance came. Minutes turned to an hour or more as several possible plans came to mind. When the darkness fell and the call to the evening meal came, Moira was feeling better than she had in weeks and weeks. She would bide her time as she’d taught herself to do in the past and wait for her chance.
And when the fear about her future returned, as it did in that next week as her return to Diarmid’s keep grew closer, she pushed it away and concentrated on the necessary things: staying alive, gathering any possible weapons, and getting close to the Seer—close enough to strike him down.
This time, she would also make certain to end her own life just after she ended his.
The sun, as though sensing the bleakness she felt, stayed hidden. Clouds ran across the sky, obscuring any light and most of the heat, and swirling into shapes large and small as the winds pushed them relentlessly on. The small cart she rode in wobbled along the mountain path, moving closer and closer toward the sea, where the boat that would take her to her fate sat waiting.
Pol said not a word, though he’d looked as if he wanted to argue when the two men arrived last evening to take her back. Dara was none too happy, nor Old Peg, nor any of the inhabitants on the farm. A surprise to her, for she had tried to kill the man who owned their loyalty. Moira did not fight them. It would do no good, and she might end up in worse shape and be unable to take her last opportunity.
The cart creaked along, and she tried to balance herself on the plank seat. One man rode ahead and one behind, neither ever taking his gaze off her, as though she would jump down and run away. After much arguing between Dara and the men, the chain was left off, but the shackles remained at the ready for its replacement. Moira had no doubt that once Pol left her behind, the guards would use them.
She reached down and rubbed her leg. The aching itch grew strong within it, a sign of its healing, but she could not soothe it. Pushing her windblown hair from her face, she watched the shoreline come into view as they reached the final hill. The sun chose that moment to break through, and she lifted her face to its warming light.
“He tends to be a fair man,” Pol said quietly. “Tell him what he wants to know, and it will be over quickly.”
Moira turned to face him, unsure if he spoke of Diarmid or the Seer. She knew the words to be false about Lord Diarmid, for she’d witnessed his rough justice in her time in his keep and village. The Seer then?
She had watched him being treated as though he were royal for the power he brought to Diarmid. His every wish and whim were met, and anything or anyone he wanted was his for the asking. And all because his visions and words proved true and valuable for one such as Diarmid.
And cost countless lives of those unimportant in the schemes woven by more powerful or wealthier men.
Neither man was fair. Neither would stop until he had what he wanted, and if she suffered for it, it would matter to no one. And neither would allow her to live after her crime against the Seer.
“I can tell them nothing,” she said.
Hers had simply been the last attempt and the one closest to success, but she’d not heard the slightest hint of others during her planning time. After spending the night in his bed those months ago, Moira had left the keep, seeking refuge in a small fishing village on the southern shore of Mull. Far enough to stay out of sight, close enough to continue her plans.
She noticed the sad glance Pol threw in her directi
on and hated the way it made her stomach clench. She owed him nothing and refused to allow some soft consideration of his opinion to matter. Well, she tried not to let it matter.
The path steepened, and she had to concentrate on holding on to her seat in the cart. When the ground leveled beneath them, she lifted her head and watched the shoreline and the small wooden boat grow closer. Since the ground was covered with grass and firm there, Pol steered the horse and cart almost to the edge and stopped. The two guards climbed down from their borrowed mounts and walked toward the cart.
Moira gathered her skirts and lifted her leg over the side of the cart, balancing on the better one as she moved to the edge. Leaning over, she grabbed for the stick she used to support her weight, but the guard got it first and broke it in two. Pol jumped down from his seat and rushed around to her, pushing the guard away and lifting her down. Once she gained her feet, Pol motioned for the two men to come closer and whispered furiously to them. From the glances thrown in her direction, she knew it was about their treatment of her.
It mattered not, for once in their charge, Pol would have no say, and there would be no one to stop them. Taking a deep breath in and feeling the tight support of the bandages wound around her chest, she tried to calm the fears that threatened and began to walk toward the boat. The firm ground turned to shifting sands as she neared the edge, making it difficult to move with any speed. Without the stick to help her balance, her walking became waddling as she lifted the splinted leg up and swung it forward with her hip before stepping on her stronger leg.
Moira focused on the pain in each step, and that helped clear her mind of the fear of what yet faced her. By the time she reached the water’s edge, the men had quieted behind her. Turning back toward the hills, she noticed them standing and staring at her now.
Then Pol reached into the cart and took out two sacks, one clearly heavier than the other. As he tossed one to each of the guards, she heard the clinking sound of chains and shivered, in spite of her resolve. The other, lighter and silent, landed easily in the man’s hands. Moira turned away and watched as the sun glinted on the water’s moving surface, reflecting back at her and sparkling as though tipped with gold.
A Storm of Passion Page 5