Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(53)
“Dangerous business, this.” Angus slapped his hands free of crumbs. “You should not fail to arrive well-armed to the next council.”
“I won’t fail,” Callum said. “The next council takes place tomorrow.”
So soon.
Lachlan stared blindly at the tankard of ale someone put before him, but did not take it in hand.
“It’s good that your porters and clerics are already well-armed,” Callum said. “Your announcement will certainly cause a stir.”
And perhaps make the assassin nervous enough for Cairenn to find him within the crowd. Lachlan hoped she identified the murderers quickly. Trying to remain unrecognized in MacEgan lands would be nigh impossible.
Frustrated, Lachlan ducked deeper under his cowl, frowning at the noise in the room and the chewing and the slurping and the murmurings of the men around him. His mind drifted for a moment to the memory of Inishmaan, of Cairenn’s family around the small trestle table, eating fresh fish grilled upon the hearth stones while they bantered and laughed. A weariness settled upon him, bone-deep and out of proportion to the exertion of the march here.
His heart was torn in two. By his blood, name, and lineage, he was duty-bound to travel to Loch Fyfe to seize back what had been stolen from him by treachery and to avenge his father’s murder. But his connection to Cairenn was not a simple one, bound up as it was with her gift, his unexplained appearance on Inishmaan’s shores, and the unworldly, thrumming communion they experienced when wrapped in each other’s arms. Perhaps he was meant to have stayed on that island, to have taken Cairenn to wife, and to live a peaceful life.
Perhaps, for his own sake, he should have just stayed dead.
The rattle of pewter and knives startled Lachlan out of his thoughts as Callum slapped his hands on the trestle table.
“Let’s talk of happier things, Angus.” Callum dropped his voice so that Lachlan had to strain to hear it. “Dare I ask after the fair-haired beauty travelling amidst your porters and clerics?”
Lachlan tensed.
“Ah,” Angus said. “You’ve noticed.”
“A tender bite, that one, and as shy as a field mouse. She tried to hide herself behind one of your clerics the whole time we spoke on the road. You once favored the buxom and burly, old friend.”
“Your Scottish nights are cold enough to freeze a man’s balls.” Angus shrugged his shoulders. “Should I travel all this way without comfort?”
“At our age, we must find our pleasure where we can.”
Angus raised his cup in salute. “Mead now, swiving later.”
“Fortunately for you, I’ve already made arrangements. You’ll find your fair-haired little morsel in a storage room by the gates. There, my old friend, you two won’t be bothered.”
***
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Cairenn paced in the windowless room while the stub of tallow she’d been given when she’d been led to this small space sputtered. She cut a path around the spears, a dented shield, two stools, and a pile of old leather tackle. A straw pallet lay on the floor with linens and a soft wool blanket, her discarded tray of supper beside it. Outside the walls, she could hear the murmuring chatter of the guards, the occasional bark of a dog, and the chuffing and movement of the horses in the stable nearby.
All this she could hear with her ears.
She could hear nothing with her mind.
She clutched her hands to keep them from trembling. This unnerving sensation reminded her of a time when she and her brothers and sisters took to the sea to swim during a rare hot day of summer. Normally, they never dared the surf or the tide because the water was heart-bracingly cold, but that day they’d stripped to their shifts and dived in. The force of the surf tumbled her willy-nilly. When she finally pulled herself onto the strand, she had to tilt her head and slap one ear and then another, dropping her jaw wide to try to dislodge the plug of water within each ear. Every sound had a hollow tone to it, as if she heard it through a narrow, distorted tunnel.
Seeing Leana did this to me. She was convinced it was so. Knowing the woman existed and seeing her in all her glory were two different things. Knowing Leana was Lachlan’s betrothed and hearing Callum Ewing re-stitch the agreement in his mind were two different things, as well. That shock was the only explanation for her deafness that made any sense, for although she’d been fuzzy-headed since the morning, everyone’s thoughts had grown more and more opaque after that awful moment. All during the long walk to Ewing’s castle, she’d felt increasingly alone in the thickening woolliness, no matter how many times Lachlan touched her hand, brushed his shoulder against hers, or laid his lips upon her hair.
She shook her head as if she could shake loose the walls in her mind. She sensed nothing from the people in this castle other than an indistinct murmuring, like the wash of the tide on the strand heard from the height of Inishmaan. What kind of mind-sickness was this? Ever since she’d discovered her gift, she’d wished she’d had any other gift at all—her sister’s gift of the healing hands, her brother’s gift of music, her father’s endless youthfulness—and not to be cursed, like her mother, with a fairy blessing that brought equal amounts of pain. Yet here she was, her gift leaching from her with each passing hour, and what she wanted with all her heart was to have it back.
She jumped at a knock at the door, unnerved that she heard such an earth-bound sound without having been warned of the approach by her visitor’s thoughts. It could be Lachlan behind that door—or it could be anyone else.