Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(27)

“I’ll be living like an outlaw.” He dared to look at her, but she hadn’t yet covered that sweet, swelling white breast, so he looked quickly away. “I’ll be camping in wild places, alone. Stealing from travelers. Lurking in alehouse shadows to listen to the talk. It could take me months to know who my enemies are, and, more importantly, who are my friends—”

“I’m the one who told Da about the Derry men.”

He frowned. “Told him what?”

“That those sailors are trustworthy.” She tugged at her sleeve until she’d covered the breast he could still feel like a soft pressure against his mouth. “I’m the one who knows that they have no bad intent.”

“You can’t know such a thing.”

“Yes, I can.” She all but dropped onto the stool on the other side of the hearth. “I know, Lachlan, because I can read minds.”

He heard the words but didn’t understand them. Not all at once. He heard them, and he knew what nonsense they were, but it took him a few moments of contemplation to figure out what she was really trying to do.

When the assassin’s dagger had first plunged into him, Lachlan, in the heat of a brawl, had felt nothing but pressure. Then came a cold, sucking feeling. Then warmth spread across his back—the blood pouring through—before sharpness registered, a slicing pain so agonizing that it had driven him to his knees.

Looking at the hope upon Cairenn’s face, he felt like the tip of that blade had just reached his heart.

“I speak the truth,” she stuttered into the silence, knitting her fingers together and apart. “I can gather your friends and identify your foes, and tell you the truth in their hearts in an instant. You won’t have to be an outlaw living in the rough. I can find out what you need to know. I can identify the man who killed your father.”

“Lass,” he said softly, “you’re calling yourself a witch.”

“It’s not witchery.” Her winged brows drew together. “Why does everyone call what they don’t understand ‘witchery?’ Accusations of witchery can get a body burned at the stake. Is that what you’d accuse me of?”

“I know no other word for what you claim you can do—”

“It’s a gift I’ve been given. I did not ask for it. I did not want it. At least…not until now.”

How Elspeth would have adored this creature of vivid imagination, if Lachlan could have brought her home.

“It’s not so strange,” she said, clearly sensing his doubts. “I know much about the Derry men I could not know otherwise: I know they work for a man called Angus O’Donnell. In that galley, they’ve got a hold full of Spanish wines they’ll be bringing to his warehouse on the hill beyond the village. The captain, Eoin, has a wife and three daughters, as well as a mistress in Galway. He sails constantly to get away from all of them. He spends sixteen pounds a year on their dresses alone—”

“Enough, lass.”

Alehouse gossip, no more. If his heart wasn’t so heavy with mourning over his father’s death, and if his shoulders weren’t crushed under the weight of duty, and if he didn’t feel so guilty over what had just happened between them, then he might have given in to her wishes and taken her away with him—just because of the length she was going to, for the chance to live by his side.

Oh, lass, what a wonderful, loyal wife you will be, to some better man.

Instead, he said, “Are you determined to come with me?”

“Yes.”

His heart turned over. There was only one reason why a woman would leave her home and her family for a man, but if he heard those words fall from her lips, he’d be lost.

“I will take you with me,” he said, a sigh slipping out of him as if it squeezed from the weight of his guilt, “but only on one condition.”

In the blink of an eye she was on her knees at his feet, reaching for him. He seized her wrists to hold her still.

“Cairenn,” he said. “Tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

Her excitement hardened to an unnatural stillness. She stared, wide-eyed, as the light of the flames flickered over her hair. He watched emotions flash across her face: Dismay, disbelief, panic.

“You’re thinking that I’m out of my mind,” she said, her voice a quaver. “You’re thinking that I’ve made this all up. You’re thinking that I’ll say almost anything to get you to take me away.”

He’d had those thoughts, indeed, but they weren’t the ones that he now held foremost in his mind. Everything would change if she could read what he was truly thinking, and they would change in a thousand strange and heartbreaking ways. Still, he couldn’t help himself. He mind-spoke those three words again, over and over, distinctly and undeniable, to the woman at his feet staring with increasing desperation.

He whispered, “Try again, Cairenn.”





CHAPTER ELEVEN


The truth hovered on the tip of Cairenn’s tongue: Lachlan, Lachlan, I can read all minds—except yours.

She felt his doubts pulse in the silence around them, broken only by the crackle of the peat in the hearth. Yes, she’d expected a measure of disbelief when she’d admitted the truth, but her fears had focused on alarm, suspicion, or even horror. Against that, she’d prepared herself to prove that her gift was not witchery or the devil’s work.