Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(29)
But not without one deep, implacable yearning, and a hundred thousand regrets.
The coracle bumped up against the hull of the galley, now bustling with sailors roused to unfurl the sails. As he climbed the rope ladder and stepped over the gunwale, he scanned the men aboard.
Strangers, all of them.
The captain approached, one questioning brow raised. “Brochan?”
“Aye.”
“The doctor said you’d pay your passage with work. Sail or oars?”
He rolled his bad shoulder and said, “Sails.”
The captain nodded and tossed him the end of a hemp rope to wind about one of the davits. Lachlan settled the clove hitch knot and then a sailor tossed him another rope to secure. Soon the wind caught the canvas as the boat swelled free of her anchorage. The ship tacked away from the island toward the open sea, piloted by the sleek, black bodies of seals rolling in its wake.
As he watched the island diminish, a tale came to mind, a tale Cairenn’s brother had sung one evening while the wind whistled through the thatch. It was a story of a man who, while wandering unfamiliar fields, stumbled into a strange place. Drawn by its music, light, and beauty, he stayed to drink the wine and taste the berries and dance in a cloud of happiness. When he finally stumbled out, disoriented and confused, he found that months had passed in what seemed like days.
Lachlan grabbed another rope and turned to a sailor beside him. “Tell me, what is today?”
“It’s Saint Brendan’s Day. The luckiest day of the year to set sail.”
St. Brendan’s Day. A month since he’d left his father. Weeks since he’d first seen her looming over him on the strand with the sun haloing her hair.
Not enough time. Never enough time.
***
On a small merchant boat, where every sailor knew one another and most were related by blood, Lachlan understood that a stranger was an object of dangerous curiosity. Fortunately, Derry loomed into sight on the fifth day of the voyage, just as Lachlan’s glib story about being stabbed in an alehouse began to wear thin.
He helped furl the sails as the men rowed the galley into the River Foyle. The stone monastery of Doire that formed the heart of Derry stood on a rise surrounded by the oak groves that gave the town its name. Clustered against the shore were the usual thatched warehouses and ale stands, a canvas-covered market, and wagons hitched to nags ready to pull casks of Spanish wine and barrels of fish straight to the monastery. His gaze drifted to one of the finer houses on the outskirts, the abode of his distant cousin, Angus O’Donnell of the northern O’Neill.
Angus was the man Lachlan had been sent to contact before an assassin with a sharp blade put an end to his mission. O’Donnell hadn’t known Lachlan was coming, so he should be innocent of the whole affair…but that was a reedy guess, full of assumptions and suppositions. The only way Lachlan could be sure Angus was truly an ally was to surprise him. Only by looking into his eyes at the precise moment when he found his cousin alive could Lachlan tell whether Angus was thrilled—or distressed.
“So, Brochan.” A sailor—Ruari by name—slapped Lachlan on his good shoulder. “What’s first for you, an alehouse or whorehouse?”
“It won’t be an alehouse,” Lachlan said. “In the last one I got a knife in the back.”
“It wasn’t the alehouse that did that to you.”
“Aye, but the ale had something to do with it.” Lachlan jerked his chin toward a peddler on the far end of town. “I’ll be visiting the ragman. I’m tired of wearing another man’s ill-fitting clothes.”
“When you’re done with that, come to The Goat’s Horn. I’ll buy you a pint and try to pry a story from you.”
“I’ll take you up on that another time.” Best not to show his face at The Goat’s Horn. He’d spent many a rowdy evening there with his cousins whenever he was in Derry on his father’s business. “I’ve got other business in town today that’ll keep me sober.”
“The only business I know that’s better when a man’s sober is the kind you’ll find at The Good Plough. Ask for wee Maura. She’s plump as they come, it’s like pounding on a pillow.”
“I’ll remember that.”
He wouldn’t, though, because his mind was filled with the memory of Cairenn stretched across his lap, her slender body going tight as he stroked her.
The captain’s shout brought him back to the moment. The rowers had eased and men were readying the anchor for dropping. He glanced to the shore and saw two deep-bellied boats shooting off from the quay to meet the ship and take on the cargo. He followed Ruari toward the hatch to haul up the casks of Spanish wine, despite the stress this would put on his twinging shoulder. The hatch gave him a quick place to duck and hide, just in case he recognized any of the Derry men in the oncoming boats.
Suddenly a frightened yelp came up from the hold. The men on deck cackled, because unpacking the wine casks below decks often rousted a herd of rats from their nests, rats that in their panic ran heedlessly over toes and sometimes up legs. Lachlan laughed with them while Ruari, hanging on the hatch ladder, ducked his head to see what was happening.
Ruari gasped, “Holy Mother of God.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
When she first grasped the iron welding of one of the wine casks in order to pull herself to her feet, Cairenn felt the shock wave of the sailors’ thoughts: She looked like a ghost shimmering up from nowhere.