Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(33)

“Weak,” she confessed.

“Five days in the hold without food or water will do that.”

It wasn’t a lack of food and water that had made her weak, but she didn’t contradict him because his words were soft. This was the softness she’d hoped for when she’d first risen out of the hold of the galley. Maybe he wasn’t angry at her anymore for daring to follow him, for causing him so much trouble.

She hadn’t come here to cause trouble. She’d ventured into this unfamiliar world for one reason alone: To convince him of the truth so she could help him.

Well, maybe there was another reason, too.

She reached for the skin of ale again. She meant to drink slowly, but the ale was fresh and she hoped there was courage at the bottom.

“Easy, lass. The doctor said if you drink too quickly you’ll get sick.”

“Doctor?” she sputtered.

“Of course I sent for a doctor.” A strange expression passed across his face. “He left an herb mixture for when you awakened to help expel the…madness.”

Her public confession came to mind, and along with it a rush of fear. “Perhaps I should not have started that foolishness.”

“Perhaps?”

“I misjudged the sailors. But you gave me no choice.”

“And so you took all choice away from me, as well.”

He pulled his arm out from behind her. It felt like he pulled away a hundred thousand miles. He sat back in the chair by the bed and crossed his arms. A look passed across his face, a look that she’d seen once before, while he puzzled out the wooden pieces of the rain sluice he’d started to build on Inishmaan.

He passed his fingers through the scruff of his growing beard. “What am I to do with you, lass?”

“You’re going to keep me with you,” she said, courage rising. “You’re going to let me help you find the man who demanded your death.”

“Lass, I’d sooner swim the distance from here to Inishmaan with you strapped to my back.”

“You will let me stay,” she insisted, “when I tell you about the vision my mother had concerning you.”

She was disappointed to find no change in his expression, not even the shift of a jaw or the flicker of an eyelash.

“My mother’s gift is prophecy.” Strange how easily such forbidden confessions slipped off her lips, now that she’d escaped the island. “She took one look at you and saw your future as clear as day.”

“A grim one, no doubt.”

“Death.”

A lift of a brow was his only reaction. It unnerved her that he’d be so unruffled. But, then again, if he didn’t believe in her mother’s gift, why would he believe in the revelation, even if it was foreboding?

She said, “You can’t deny that my mother has unusual eyes. I saw my mother turn her gaze upon you that night, when you first supped with us during the storm.”

She thought she saw a flicker of acknowledgement on his face. But when he didn’t deny it, she took his silence as an invitation.

“My mother is the reason we live on a place as remote as Inishmaan. I can hide my gift, my older sister and brother can conceal theirs, and my father walks unnoticed in the world. But my mother’s eyes mark her in a way that’s unsettling to outsiders.”

“So she says I’ll die,” he said, “but death comes to every man.”

“My mother speaks not of what will happen in twenty years, but what will happen within weeks or even days.”

“She knew the circumstances of my situation just as you did. It’s a wonder another dagger hasn’t been plunged in my back already.”

“I came here to change that fate.”

“Fate is unchangeable.”

“That’s not true.” She pressed the heels of her palms against the mattress and pulled her weight up so she was sitting upright, even though it made her head swim. “If you change circumstances, then your fate will follow.”

“Or my fate will consume you, Cairenn, and your parents will lose another daughter.”

She winced because she couldn’t avoid the guilty impact of those words. She remembered how Ma and Da had suffered after Aileen disappeared from the strand. Now that another daughter was gone, Cairenn imagined that her mother had taken anew to rocking by the fire, silent with worry and care, while her father isolated himself in the sickroom crushing herbs in mortars.

He said, “I take it from your silence that you understand why I have to return you home—”

“My mind,” she interrupted, “is not changed. If you take me with you to Loch Fyfe, I can tell you whether a man is an ally—or an assassin.”

He breathed hard through his nose. “Are you to step between me and a blade then? Or do you think your so-called gift can help?”

She flinched. How very different the world must be to outsiders who knew nothing of magic. It seemed that whenever magic appeared before them, their first instinct was to deny—or to burn.

She had to offer Lachlan the kind of proof that he couldn’t deny.

“We are in the home of Angus O’Donnell,” she began. “He’s your father’s second cousin, and one of three men in Derry who run shipping between Cork, Bantry, Kilrush, Galway, Donegal, and up to Scotland and the Western Isles. He ships wine, timber, hides, salt, spices when he can get them—”