Healing the Highlander (4 page)

"Oh, no I'm not." She spoke with more strength this time, denying into the dark as she straightened her back and dropped her hands to her sides.

She had been a frightened sixteen-year-old when the Nuadians had kidnapped her, helpless to change her situation. While she might still be frightened, at twenty-eight, she had long ago sworn she'd never be helpless again. She would take charge of her own destiny.

All she needed was to come up with a plan.

"Which sure as heck isn't going to happen if I just sit here on my butt, feeling sorry for myself," she muttered, pushing herself to stand. However many hours she'd wasted moping over this was that many hours too many.

There. That was better already.

"Deciding to take action makes all the difference in the world." A shiver ran down her spine as she uttered the words, but she shook it off.

Okay, maybe not all the difference, but it certainly beat waiting passively for someone else to decide her fate.

Someone like Dick.

Grabbing up the long metal poker, she leaned down and prodded at the embers in the fireplace before tossing in another stick of wood.

How was she going to avoid Dick's plan to hand her over to some old English guy as breeding stock?

"I could run away," she said decisively, dusting the ashes from her hands. It was what she'd done before. She'd run from her time to this one to escape the Nuadians. She could run again.

Even though this time running away was easier said than done.

Guards were posted throughout the keep and at the gates. And even if she could somehow manage to work her way past them, where would she go? It wasn't as if she had neighbors or family to run to. With Robert's supposed death and Dick's abandonment of the tiny clan, there had been no marriages to seal alliances with other families. She certainly hadn't been any help to them in that regard either. Perhaps if she'd ever indicated any interest in marriage, there might be an alliance for them to rely upon now. As it was, clan MacQuarrie was on its own with no one to turn to for help.

Not to mention, it was a big, empty Scottish countryside out there, with plenty of bad guys wandering around.

Leah scrubbed her fingertips against her forehead, trying to ward off the headache that threatened. She needed to stay calm. Focused. There had to be a reasonable way around this nightmare situation, if only she could think of it.

"I need a brainstorming session." Just like back in high school in the college prep classes she'd taken. The fancy whiteboard and markers might not exist yet, but that didn't mean she couldn't use the process. All she needed was another brain or two.

And she knew exactly where to find them.

She slipped out of her room, and hurried along the darkened hallway. When she reached her destination, she rapped her knuckles quietly against the heavy wood but didn't wait for a response before pushing the door open and calling out as she stepped inside.

"Grandma Mac?"

Margery sat at a small table next to the fireplace, her head bent forward as if to catch the words of her companions, Maisey and Walter.

All three started guiltily as Leah entered, giving her the distinct impression she had been the topic of conversation only moments before.

"What are the three of you up to?" Even in the dimly lit room, Leah could see the lines of concern marking her grandmother's face.

"It's yer grandpa Hugh. He's in need of rest and food to regain his strength after such a long trip, but Richard's put him in the auld tower. There's no even a proper fireplace out there."

"What can I do?" Leah asked, recognizing her grandfather's problem to be more immediate than her own. Her concerns could wait until later.

The auld tower was little more than the crumbling remains of the original building on the MacQuarrie property. Nothing much was left but stairs spiraling up around three floors. Only the lower level was in use anymore and that only for storage. She'd been warned against setting foot in the top tower room for years. With the floors and roof rotting away, it was just plain unsafe. Adding in their frequent rains and no heat, it was an even more dangerous place for a man Grandpa Hugh's age.

"We have to get him out of there. Have you spoken to Dick? Um . . . Richard," she corrected when three sets of confused eyes turned her way.

Margery clasped her hands in front of her on the table, her grip so tight her fingers paled from lack of circulation. "He refuses to see me, sending word by one of his men that he'll consider my request in the next few days. When he has the time."

"When he has the time, my arse." Pounding her fist to the table, Maisey snorted her disgust. "Begging yer pardon, Lady Margery, but that one was always a spoiled little bastard. He's waited the whole of his life to challenge his father. Like two warring rams they are and always have been. We've no time to lose if we're to help our laird, but it's clear we canna do this by ourselves. We need help." Her determined gaze rested on each of them in turn. "From them what would be willing to drive these English-loving bastards out of MacQuarrie Keep before it's too late. From them what has the power to do it."

Her husband nodded his agreement, his pale, watery eyes fixed on Margery, waiting for her decision.

Margery nodded slowly. "What would you say we should do?"

"Send a messenger to bring us aid, my lady, just as we discussed this very evening."

Again Margery nodded. "As you say, my friends. But it will needs be one of us. We canna trust any other; with our plan."

If they were limited to sending one of the people in this room, their plan was in danger before it even began.

Walter was ancient. His exhaustion from the journey to Inverness with Hugh showed in every one of the deeply etched lines on his face. Maisey could barely wobble up and down the stairs without a stumble. And Margery? No way Leah was letting her grandmother do something so dangerous.

That left only one option.

"Me," Leah squeaked as all three heads turned her direction. "It should be me," she repeated, her voice stronger now.

"Aye," her grandmother acknowledged after a long pause. "There's little doubt that you would be the best choice to send from the keep. And before this Lord Moreland of Richard's arrives."

"Exactly," Leah agreed, more confidently than she felt.

Richard had informed them that Moreland's party would be arriving any day now. Time had become her enemy as much as Dick and this lord he planned for her to marry.

There was no other choice. Her serving as messenger addressed her own problem as well as her grandpa Hugh's. But that didn't mean there weren't still obstacles she had no idea how to overcome.

"But where would I go? And how do I even get out of here? There are men posted at the gates."

It was as if she'd managed to come full circle back to her earlier idea of running away, smack into the same problems she'd found insurmountable the first time she'd considered the idea.

"There's the auld water passage," Walter murmured, his fingers idly scratching his scraggly beard. "The stairs down have been closed off since Laird Hugh and I tried playing in there as bairns, but wager we could open it again easily enough. 'Tis no more than a matter of moving the barrels stored on top of the trapdoor."

Margery's fingertips covered her lips, her eyes blinking rapidly, a sure sign the woman's mind was whirling with her plans. "I'd completely forgotten Hugh's stories about that," she murmured.

"What water passage?" This was something Lea had never heard a single mention of, not once in the twelve years she'd been here.

"When the keep was first built, Hugh's grandfather had an opening to the sea put in place. According to the family stories, he may have had business dealing with . . ." She paused and grinned, her eyes lighting a she continued, "Um . . . let's just say they were men c questionable reputation. The passage into the keep is accessible only at low tide. At all other times the opening is below the water level and the passageway itself is filled with water from the loch."

Amazing. It was like something out of a storybook Next thing they'd be saying there were secret tunnels in the walls no one had thought to tell her about.

"So, okay, we get this passageway opened up, and I can sneak out that way. But that still doesn't answer where I'm to go for help once I'm out of here."

Margery cleared her throat, looking down at her clenched fingers before answering. "We've no family outside the castle proper other than a few shepherds and their families and it's no as if any of them would be a match for the men Richard has brought into our home. Whether or no they'll agree to come to our aid I canna say, but there's really only one place I can think of to ask for help, Leah. The one place yer father said you should seek help if ever you found yerself in need. The MacKiernans of Dun Ard."

"Oh Lord, no," Leah breathed, taking a step backward. Not the Faerie descendants. For all these years, she'd tried to put their very existence out of her mind, as if by not thinking of them they couldn't inhabit her world. As if by not thinking of them, she could cause the Faeries themselves not to exist.

"Through you, they're the closest thing we have to family. By our taking you in, there's a debt of honor they owe us. We have no one else to turn to. They're our only hope, lass. Yer only hope." Margery looked up to meet her eyes at last. "Yer grandpa Hugh's only hope."

So not fair. For herself she might say no. Surely a forced marriage to a Mortal couldn't be any worse than having to put herself back in the hands of the Fae. But how could she refuse anything that might save Hugh MacQuarrie?

She couldn't.

All those years ago, she'd sworn two things after her ordeal at the hands of the Nuadians: first, that she'd never again willingly associate with anyone of Faerie blood, and second, that she would do whatever was required of her to insure her own safety and that of the people she loved.

Now it seemed that in order to keep the second vow, she had no choice but to break the first.

The MacKiernans of Dun Ard it was.

FOUR

The smell alone was enough to set Leah's stomach roiling, but when she touched the wall to steady herself and the thick, wet slime squished through her fingers, she wanted nothing so desperately as to turn around and race back up the narrow, slick steps she'd just descended.

"I'm a braver woman than that," she muttered, half under her breath. She couldn't allow a little dead-fish stench to stop her now.

"Of course yer a brave one, my lady," Walter replied, hunching down ahead of her in the dark, wet tunnel. "But might I suggest you be watching where you put yer foot, lass. It's fair slippery along this way."

No kidding.

Once the decision had been made that Leah should go, her coconspirators had wasted no time in formulating a plan and putting it in motion. As Grandma Mac had pointed out, there was no time to waste. The longer Grandpa Hugh was kept in the auld tower, the lower his chance of survival became.

So it was that Leah found herself creeping down a dark, wet tunnel sometime in the wee early morning hours when the waters lapping at the back of the castle were at their lowest.

Walter had taken a boat out earlier in the evening, supposedly to net a catch for the next day's meal, a perfectly normal activity that drew no attention from the unwelcome occupiers of their home. The soldiers had been much more concerned with their desire to have fresh fish on their table than with any idea that old Walter might be up to something sneaky.

Leah, her small bundle of essentials slung over her shoulder, had waited impatiently in the back of the big storage room along with her grandmother and Maisey. It had taken the three of them well over an hour to move the barrels around to expose the old wooden covering in the floor. When a faint knocking had sounded from the other side of that wooden covering, the older women had looked as rattled as she had felt.

With the long metal bar Walter had left for them, they pried up the trapdoor to find Walter hunched in the dark below.

"Wait," her grandmother had urged, her hands fumbling about her own neck. "I feel the time has come for you to have this."

With those words, she held out her hand. A length of ribbon draped across her palm and hanging from the cord, a stone. The sight sent a shock of recognition coursing through Leah, landing in her stomach like a lump of heavy dough.

"But how?" Leah had asked. "It's not possible. I saw with my own eyes, Isabella had that in her hands when the Magic took them." It had, in fact, been that stone from her own mother's necklace that had provided the final piece of the Magic needed to send Robert and Isabella forward in time.

"No this one, sweetling. I've worn this close to my heart from the time I was small child, waiting for the day it would be needed." Margery held up the ribbon and dropped it down over Leah's head to hang around her neck. "This feels to be the right time to pass it along as it was given to me. It's time you were about meeting yer own destiny, lass."

"But . . ." Leah's mind reeled in confusion as the stone slid down her neckline, warming the spot against her skin where it lay. It was a perfect twin to the carved hematite stone she'd given to Isabella all those years ago. The one that had belonged to her mother.