Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(32)

She sat in stubborn silence, plucking at a loose fiber by the knee of her kirtle. He cast back to the few people he knew on the island, trying to think of who would dare do this and risk the wrath of her father. The answer came to him in a flash.

“Cairenn,” he said. “Tell me you didn’t do this to that poor boy—”

“He’s not a ‘poor boy.’ He’s hard-working and loyal and wise in ways that you or I will never understand—”

“—and he’ll do anything you say, even when it’s wrong.”

“Seamus understands why I did this.” Her brow furrowed deeper, and she began to wince as if the sun was too bright. “He believes me.”

“He’s a dead boy the moment your father realizes who helped you—”

“My father will forgive him,” she insisted, pressing her fingers against her temple as if in pain, “because my mother knows what I’ve done and why.”

“In the meantime, your father will live with the torment of thinking another daughter has been stolen from home.”

“I wasn’t stolen.” Her voice faltered. “And I’m not lost.”

Then she suddenly bent forward, clasping her head in her hands. Her knuckles went white. Alarmed, he ran the back of his hand across her cheek and found her skin clammy and cold.

“Woman, when was the last time you ate?”

She lifted her hand and waved it as if batting away a cloud of flies. He barked at the sailors for food—anything—a crust of bread, a bite of cheese. One sailor paused rowing long enough to pull an apple out of a sack and toss it his way.

He caught it with one hand and held it under her face. “Take a bite, Cairenn. You’ll feel better.”

“Too many people…”

“We’re almost at the quay.” He stretched an arm across her narrow shoulders as she started shaking. “Come, just one bite.”

She shook off his grip and shot to her feet. She looked down at him, her gaze unfocused and wild, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

Then she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Oblivion was a balm. It was like being dropped into the depths of a calm sea. The noise of the world muffled to nothing. But the very moment she became conscious of the oblivion was the moment she rose out of it like a bubble wending its way toward light.

She drew in a breath as her senses slowly awakened. She recognized the crackling of a fire, a pillow that smelled of fresh goose-down and a mattress that squeaked with new hay. With some hesitation, she turned her mind toward the world around her, anticipating the noise of thousands of thoughts, dreading the pounding that would begin in her temples under that pressure.

But no one was close. The first minds she touched were those of three men conversing on a lower floor. One was a merchant by the name of Angus O’Donnell, and the other two his clerics. Their bellies were full and their wine cups more so, and they all brooded about the witch in their midst.

Witch.

Her eyes flew open. With a start she realized that Lachlan’s face was so close that she could see a crease deepening between his brows.

Then the crease softened, as did the expression of worry on his face.

“I’ve been waiting too long,” he said, in a low, rumbling voice, “to see those eyes of green.”

Shadowed by his growing beard, the corners of his lips lifted. His eyes were the velvet blue of a sky just before it darkens into night. She opened her mouth to speak but her throat was dry. She licked her lips, and at the motion he reached for a skin of ale sitting on a table beside him.

He pulled out the cork. “Drink.”

As she struggled to rise, he slid his arm beneath her. He eased her up as if she weighed nothing and then he lifted the skin to her lips.

The ale tasted cool, like it had just come from a cellar. She drank deeply, so deeply that she sputtered.

“Easy,” he said, pulling it away.

His arm felt warm and strong against her spine. His face was close enough that she felt his breath. In her chest came a strange tightness that made her shy. She lowered her gaze to her hands lying on a fine linen covering edged with lace.

“How long have I been…?”

“A day and a little more. Those church bells you hear are ringing for vespers.”

She spread the tentacles of her deeper senses out into the world despite the dull ache in her head. She realized that they were lodged in a place apart from the center of Derry. She sensed the bright stridency of a dense gathering of people, but at a distance. Far enough for her to set it aside, to push it out of her attention. There were others in this building, a dozen souls scattered about. Cooks in the scullery cleaning up from the supper soup and setting dough to rise on the warm mantel. Maids sweeping the dogs out of the main hall. Stable boys dozing in the hay.

A manor hall, then.

“Don’t drift away, Cairenn.”

He brushed a curl off her brow, a gentle touch that made her long for so much more. She dared to look at him. She resisted the urge to reach up and wind a lock of his hair around her finger. Was it any wonder that a woman would fall so easily under the spell of a man, when his thoughts were hidden and his face so beautiful?

He said, “How are you feeling?”