Heaven and the Heather (23 page)

“Agnes,” he said, lifting the cup to his lips. “I was wondering when ye’d come with yer witchery and potions. Just keep them to yerself. I’m well into my healing.” He took another drink of whisky.

A woman, with long hair the color of grain in autumn, stood between Niall and the hearth. She bent down, affording him a full, close view of the attributes straining behind her moss-covered gown. The strange twinkle in her amber eyes told Niall one thing—trouble.

“
Niall maiseach,
” she cooed. “
Ciamar a tha thu?
”

“Well and good,” he replied stiffly. “Ye came for naught.”

“I came to see the
Fràngaich
.” Agnes gave him a lingering stare before standing upright. Niall noticed a hide pouch at her hip, could hear the tinkle of glass when she moved.

He lunged from the chair and slammed the cup to the table. “Ye’ll no’ give her any of yer poison, ye witch!” he shouted. The pain in his shoulder flared without mercy, causing a satisfied smile to cross Agnes’s lips.

She stepped quickly away to Sabine who stirred under a wool blanket.

“Leave her be!” Niall ordered.

The witch reached down and took the blanket away.

“Fine brocade on a fine-boned figure. Hair as dark as a raven’s wing. A chin she keeps tipped up even in sleep,” Agnes said methodically, her assessment deliberate.

Niall grabbed the blanket and began to place it back on Sabine, when Agnes suddenly dropped to her knees. Eyes wide and dancing, she cradled Sabine’s ruined hand in her own. Niall’s mother stepped up beside him, and gasped.

“What is this?” Agnes breathed. “A wounding to such a fine lady?”

Sabine moaned lightly and tossed her head back and forth on the pillow. Agnes released her hand.

“This she cures herself. She doesnae need me,” she said.

“Well, that’s a blessing to us all,” Niall scoffed.

Agnes laid her hand flat on Sabine’s forehead.

“Her mind, betrays her strength,” she said. “It torments her in sleep.” She looked at Niall. He froze in her stare. “Does it torment her in waking?”

“What know ye of this lass?” his mother asked suddenly, before he could reply to Agnes’s biting question. “What have ye brought to us?”

“A lass who can help us,” he answered immediately. He just wished he knew exactly how. She had been living in Campbell’s castle, had heard him plot the queen’s murder, had been blamed when Campbell’s plot failed. Niall’s shoulder flared. The arrow was shot by an unseen hand from behind the standing stones. Who’s? The question was a plague on his mind.

Niall glanced down at Sabine’s hand. Such deformities were common in Highland folk, those who lived like his kith and kin, fighting for their very existence, or hiding just to stay alive. Sabine was not of that life. She had been in royal service, in France. She had lived a privileged life in her father’s château. He stared at her hand. How privileged?

“Look at yer son, Mistress MacGregor,” Agnes said. “From the look in his eyes, I fear your late husband’s want for us to join.”

Niall could only stare at her. What a muckle mess he was in if Sabine found out about Agnes and him.

Agnes had come to the glen by order of his father. She was to be Niall’s bride. But so much had changed since that day, since Niall became chief, since Sabine had entered his life. He could not tell her, confuse her more by trying to sort out his troubles.

Sabine’s lids fluttered open. At first her dark eyes mirrored confusion, then fright. Niall quickly knelt beside her bed.

“Niall,” she whispered, voice husky with the remnants of sleep, “
tu vas bien?
”

“Aye,
je suis.
”

Niall did not glance at his mother or Agnes. He knew what was on their faces, in their minds. He bitterly agreed with them that Sabine could not stay in the glen. He stared into her dark eyes. His heart told him she would stay until it was safe for her to return to her life with the queen, one of refinement and security behind palace walls. Sabine would have to leave. This was not the place for one like her, and he could not possibly be the man for one like her.

chapter 13

The Waulking Party

A
gathering.

That was what Niall announced around his mother’s table. Sabine looked at him, over her plate of tough meat and mushed root. He did not offer her an explanation nor did she expect one. He continued to discuss the “gathering” with Rory, his mother, and a woman about Sabine’s age, with straw-colored hair and penetrating eyes. Her name was Agnes.

Niall spoke of Highland things. She did not wish to know of them. She wished she were anywhere but here, where she was clearly unwelcome.

Agnes continued to stare at her with those unsettling eyes.
Oui.
Sabine was most unwelcome.

“Rory,” Niall said, “at first light ye will ride to all corners of our land and rally the clansmen for a gathering.”

“A gathering,” Rory repeated around a mouthful of meat, raising a thick black brow.

“Aye.” Niall scooped up a large piece of meat and root with his Highland knife and dropped the food into his mouth. He chewed vigorously. No one could guess that earlier in the day he had been close to death.

“Can I ask ye what for?” Rory said.

“I was gonnae ask the very same,” said mistress MacGregor.

“Campbell,” Niall said.

Rory and mistress MacGregor quickly nodded. Agnes just stared vacantly ahead. Sabine could imagine what roiled through their minds. Campbell had affronted these folk longer than he had been a bane to her existence.

Mistress MacGregor was the first to break the stillness. She rose from the table and took Niall’s empty plate, and ladled a generous amount of meat on it and gave the plate back to him. He tossed her a wink and continued to eat. His mother paused and eyed Sabine. “The lassie has hardly touched her meal. ’Tis no’ good enough for her well-born tastes?”

Sabine straightened and took up another piece of the tough beef on her knife, one of several Niall had kept on his person and had lent her. Of course, his mother was not without her own weapon, her stares and curt comments were sharper than any blade.

“She doesnae belong here. The queen’s guards will find her,” mistress MacGregor said.

“No one has found us here,” Niall said. “What makes ye think they’ll find one lass?”

“She should leave!” mistress MacGregor shouted, her hands balled into fists on either side of her plate. “She doesnae belong here, I tell ye!”

Sabine knew she was not welcome. Her right hand cramped a little. Quietly, she rose from the table. The conversation ceased, faces turned toward her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words evaded her. She swallowed hard and found her voice. “I must go back to my queen and protect her.” It was all she could think to say, all she wanted at that moment. Her own needs and hopes had evaporated on the needs of her queen.

She turned away from those pale Scottish faces and stepped toward the door. She was between lives with no path before her.

A heavy hand laid on her shoulder. She did not have to turn around to see it was Niall.

“Come back to the table. Eat yer supper.”

She shook her head.

He leaned into her, lips brushing her ear. “No one will bite ye…except, perchance, me.”

She could not keep her smile at bay. His breath warmed her ear. And…”Ouch!”…he did take a small nibble on her earlobe.

She looked into his eyes, at the path he offered her. One with him. For now, her only choice.

“Bring the lassie back to the table, m’lad,” mistress MacGregor ordered. “She needs a full belly before her journey.”

“Her journey willnae be farther than this glen,” Niall said. He took Sabine by her right hand and guided her back to the table.

“Eat. ’Tis a sure way to me mum’s heart,” he whispered in her ear.

Sabine took her seat. Niall released her hand. The warmth from his touch lingered a second then was gone. She took up the knife in her right hand and brought a piece of the beef to her mouth.

Agnes smirked at her, gaze so deliberate, so rude, and oddly familiar.

Sabine squeezed the knife’s handle as hard as her twisted fingers would allow.

“I am not a painting in the royal Salon,” she said. “Why do you stare at me so?”

Agnes sat up a little straighter. “Ye tip yer chin up,
outeral
, and look down at us.”

Sabine shifted her gaze to Niall who looked at her expectantly, silently urging her to explain that which he knew. She looked back at Agnes and slowly raised her knife. Everyone around the table stared at her. Sabine tipped her chin high. She squeezed the handle then released it. The knife clattered to the center of the table.

“With every squeeze,” she said, “my hand gets stronger. With every squeeze I can lift my chin a little higher.”

Sabine slowly shifted her gaze to Niall. He was smiling, blue eyes shining. But it was his mother who spoke.

“Ye show a wee spark of the Highland spirit, lassie, and my lad for his own reasons wants ye here. I’ll let ye bide a wee.”

Sabine looked at her. “Bide a wee?”

Mistress MacGregor offered her best imitation of a smile. “Ye can stay.”

S
abine’s bed was a crude linen bag stuffed with straw, and was as comfortable as sleeping on a sack of pins. She rolled to her side for the hundredth time that night. Her gown bound about her legs. She did not bother to unbind the layers of silk and fine linen from her body. The extra warmth her garment provided was most welcome.

The scratchy wool blanket mistress MacGregor had given her scraped against her cheek, releasing a moldy scent. She wrinkled her nose. The scent was a part of this land as much as the lichen and moss that grew on everything.

Sabine glanced to the other side of the hearth at her begrudging hostess who slept under a heap of wool blankets before the hearth. A harsh melody of snores and grunts had earlier broken the chilling night, but now the Highland woman lay still and quiet as the gray light of morning began to seep in through the tiny window.

Sabine closed her eyes. She pulled the wool to her chin, trying to force her mind to want the rest her weary body craved.

She was an exile.

That very thought scratched against her consciousness all night. She burrowed under the wool. No matter how much she tried, she could not relax even to feign sleep. Nasty thoughts swirled in her mind, taunting her.

Campbell was out there beyond the mountains and the forests.

“Sweet Saint Giles,” she whispered. “I must get proof of Campbell’s treachery…somehow….” The next voice she heard must have been in a dream. Maybe she had mercifully fallen asleep.

“We’ll find proof…together….” Warm breath brushed her face.

Sabine opened her eyes, meeting Niall’s incredible blues. He was lying beside her, on his side. For an instant she could not breathe. Slowly she loosened her grip on the wool blanket. Niall pressed a finger to her lips.

“Shh,” he whispered, “get dressed. I want to take ye somewhere before the glen awakens.”

“I—,” she began.

He shook his head, cutting his gaze to his mother still asleep under her heap of blankets.

“I—,” she said under his finger.

“Shh.”

She pushed his hand away from her mouth.

“I’m already dressed. It is chill here.”

Niall smiled, wide and long. He slipped off of the bed to his feet and offered his hand. She took it and sat up on her pallet. The wool blanket slipped from her body. She glanced down at her feet clad in silken stockings. With a dramatic sweep of his other hand, Niall gathered the slippers that she had carefully placed beside the pallet and knelt before her.

He did not serve her, no, he was doing this because it pleased him. Sabine could tell this in the dawn light from the small smile on his lips. He wrapped warm fingers about her ankle and guided her foot into the slipper.

Before her, head bowed, he executed his task with far more care than was necessary. Compelled by his tenderness toward her, she touched his hair, tracing her fingertips across the contours of the thick locks. Niall took up her other ankle and placed the slipper on her foot. He released her and looked up through a roguish lock of hair that had fallen over one eye. Sabine did not mean to gasp at his gaze, but it startled her emotions. Niall smiled reveling in this small victory over her, no doubt. She knew he had meant that.

Mistress MacGregor shifted and snorted under the covers. Sabine flinched and abruptly stood up.

“Let’s go,” Niall whispered. He, too, leapt to his feet.

“
Oui
,” Sabine breathed. She did not have the slightest notion what she was agreeing to, just as long as it got her out of that cottage. She willingly followed Niall outside.

As soon as she stepped into the morning air, Sabine halted and looked up at grandeur only Heaven must know.

“
Mon Dieu,
” she breathed.

“Aye,” Niall said proudly. “God used the muscle of His talent when he made
Beinn Tualichean
.”