Heaven and the Heather (28 page)

“Implying what I am doing is futile?” she asked.

He shook his head, disturbing his pose. Sabine cleared her throat reminding him to sit still. Niall settled back into his pose. “I wouldnae say what ye do is a waste, not as long as it brings ye happiness. I’m just saying that I’ve not an artistic bone in my body.”

Sabine smiled a half-smile. “From my vantage, Niall MacGregor, there’s much art about you. However, your true talents are best kept in private company.”

He grinned, and Sabine quickly sketched the furrows on either side of his generous mouth.

“Ye enjoyed that, did ye? My ‘talents’ on the pallet, against the wall, and dangling from the rafters?”

“Dangling from the rafters?”

“Aye. Well, perchance, I’ve not shown ye the full extent of my abilities.”

He slipped away from his place on the opposite side of the fire.

“
Mon Dieu
, Niall!” she protested. “How can I complete my sketch when you—”

He ended her words with a kiss that rivaled the heat of the flames snapping over the bricks of peat.

“Enough sketching,” he said taking the drawing from her lap. “’Tis time I showed ye my prowess on the rafters.”

“But, Niall,” she said, “the paper…be careful….”

“Dinnae fash,” he scoffed holding the sketch from her reach.

Sabine looked at him, at the paper between his fingers, at the tears she had repaired from Lady Fleming’s cruel damage.

“Hold me,” she said suddenly, throat tightening so hard she thought it would strangle her.

Niall placed the paper carefully before the fire and gathered her in his arms. He lifted her into the strong security of his lap. Sabine rested her cheek against his chest, the flesh warm under a cool sheen of perspiration that plastered the auburn hairs to his skin. She drew a finger up through the hair, up to his neck, to the bristles on his chin, pausing at the cleft.

“The beauty is in the details,” she said, remembering a lesson of long ago in her past.

“Lovely sentiment,” Niall remarked combing his fingers through her hair and down the side of her face. The sensation of hundreds of butterfly wings danced up and down her flesh.

Sabine sighed. “’Twas not mine, the thought, I mean.”

“Whose thought, then?”

He pressed his lips to the side of her neck.

She could not keep her memories to herself. Without intent, Niall had given her the desire to tell of her life, the need to purge her soul.

“’Twas from
mon maître.
” The tears came much too easily. She gasped and covered her eyes with both hands. Niall grasped her wrists, taking her hands away from her face. “Who is this person?
Mon maître.
”

“I cannot tell you.” Of course she could, wanted to desperately. She had never trusted anyone as much as she trusted Niall. Yet, her truth was too terrible to speak.

“Aye, ye can,” he whispered, calmly urging her to reveal the truth of her past.

“
Non!
” She tried to pull away from him. But held her firm with one arm and reached for her
sac
with the other.

“’Tis mine!” she cried. She wanted him to have it, despite her protests, wanted him to know.

“Why d’ye guard these bits and pieces of paper as if they were the royal jewels?”

“Are you jealous?” she accused.

“I’m never jealous.”

He thrust his hand into the
sac
and brandished the papers over her head before the fire. He dropped all but one to the ground. The sketches fluttered about her. He stared up at the sketch that remained in his hand. In a second, so did she.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

Please do, she thought. Free me, Niall. I know of no one else who can.

“Answer one question,” he said, did not demand.

“I hate it when ye torment me.” She gathered her sketches and placed them back inside the
sac
. All but the one he held.

“I havenae asked ye the question yet.”

Niall showed her the sketch in his hand. A ghost on paper stared back at her, one with a neat beard, a neck like a swan, and body as stout as an Alpine ram. “Is this
mon maître
?”

“I tell you nothing,” she said folding her arms across her breasts. “You are jealous.” Of course, he was not. He was concerned. She should be as much for herself.
Tell him
, her mind screamed.

Niall laughed. “Jealous? I’ve not been jealous in my life.”

“Your tone tells me otherwise.”

He rattled the paper before her nose and gave her a heartrending grin. “Please?” he begged.

Her heart melted. She could not deny him.

“Do not beg. Does not suit you.”

He kissed her, and her wall crumbled.

“
Mon maître
was my, how do you say? My teacher?” she said.

“Teacher.” Niall regarded the sketch. His lips formed into a smirk. “Is that what he told ye?”

She sat upright on his lap. “
Signore
Rinoletti was a fine teacher. He apprenticed under the great da Vinci.”

“Da Vinci? Couldnae have been so great. I’ve not heard of him.”

“Why would you? Living here in this wilder—” she stopped.

Niall sighed. “I’ll admit that news takes a wee bit longer to make it to this glen.”

“I did not mean—”

He placed finger to her lips. “No apologies, no regrets…Come here.”

He dropped the sketch and held her close.

“Niall….”

“Aye?”

“Is the past so very difficult to forget?”

“Only if it blinds us to the future.”

“So, you do not wish to know more about
Signore
Rinoletti?”

“It can wait, can it not? We are alone here, with a few hours before the glen stirs. ’Twould be a shame to waste it.”

Sabine smiled. “Another time then, I will tell you.” Or perhaps not at all.

She snuggled against him. “When you took me…when I took you before the fire and the times before…I never felt so free of the troubles that plague us, the past…everything.”

“I’m always willing to oblige ye again with my Highland hospitality.”

He laid her down on the pallet before the fire. Slowly, he worked his body on top of hers. He cradled one hand under the back of her head, and helped her to join him in another enchanting kiss.

“Sabine,” he whispered, his Scots burr rolling over every letter of her name. “I lo—Oh, bollocks!”

“What?”

Niall rolled off of her as quickly as if Her Majesty had just walked in.

“Shite!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” Sabine asked. She watched him as he scrambled toward the hearth. “Oh, no!”

Niall slapped the flames into nothing on the earthen floor, the flames that had singed one corner of her mended sketch, the one of him.

“I should not have put it there. ’Tis my fault,” he said.

Sabine slid the paper from beneath his hand. He was doing more damage by beating the flames into oblivion. She held the paper up and tried to wipe the soil from it.

“Wait!” he shouted.

Startled, Sabine dropped the paper. He caught it before it met the ground.

“What now?” she asked.

He held the paper before the flames. His azure eyes reflected the fire as he studied the sketch. No, he was not. The sketch faced her. Niall was reading the scrawl on the other side.

After a long moment, he looked up at her. “Sometimes the past has to come back to us, even at the most inopportune moment.” He held the other side of the paper for her to see. The words were in that Scottish language she did not know. “Where did ye get this?” he asked.

Sabine pulled back from his predatory tone.

“I cannot remember,” she lied.

“I
dinnae believe ye,” he snapped, but did not mean to.

Sabine’s expression was downcast. He hated himself for causing her any pain, for breaking this most beautiful night. But the paper…the bloody paper! It had changed everything.“Sabine,” he said, calming his voice and the roiling sea inside his soul, “I’m not accusing ye of anything. This paper is written in the Gaelic. I know ye couldnae have written it, much less read it. Where did ye come by it?”

She wrapped herself in his plaid, tucking her legs up under herself. She looked at him as if she had lost trust in him.

“D’ye wish me to apologize, before ye’ll answer my question?” he asked. He was met with silence. “Aye, well, I apologize, dear Sabine, from the depths of my heart. I would never, with intent, do anything to cause ye pain.”

He knelt before her, taking her gnarled hand from the plaid and delivering a kiss upon it. “I give ye my word, and the word of a—”

“
Oui
,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “and the word of a MacGregor is as true as the mountains that surround this valley.”

“Ye learn well.” He glanced at the paper crushed in his fist. “Sorry, again, I apologize.” He smoothed out the paper on the spill of plaid coming down from Sabine’s shoulders. He rubbed his hands over the drawing of himself, as naked as a bairn. “Ye have captured me well,” he remarked. “
All
of me.”

“’Tis as God made you.”

“As God made me….” A proper excuse for rendering one without a stitch on his body. She was a bold lass with her art. He could not help but love that about her, but there were other matters that must be addressed and quickly.

“Where did ye get the paper?” he asked again.

“Tell me what it says, translate, and I’ll be better able to tell you,” Sabine said, “because I really do not remember.”

He took the paper up, gently this time, and read her the searing words.

“Call to action! The goodly sum of five Royal sovereigns is promised to the man who brings proof that the plague set ashore of this country is no more.”

Niall swallowed. He rubbed his thumb over the small red wax seal, the mark of his enemy: a stag’s head inside a tower. Anger gripped him by the throat and squeezed hard.

“This is yet another threat against my clan—a warrant for my execution,” he said, voice strained with anger.

“’Tis not a threat to Clan Gregor,” Sabine said, quickly.

Niall stared at her. “What say ye? How can this not be what I suspect, a another affront to my clan?”

“How long has your clan been in these mountain and valleys?” she asked.

“Since the Danes, the bloody Norsemen, were driven out, and before that,” he said. “Campbell should be sent to the bloody Danes.”

“I’ve heard Campbell mention this in reference to you. What does it mean, exactly?”

“The worst possible punishment. Scotland sells wool to their merchants at a very fair price, and, in turn, we send them our worst prisoners, those devious, dire folk who would see simple execution as a blessing. The Danish prisons make them pray for death. Campbell deserves worse for what he has done to my—”

“Are you so blinded by the affront done to your people, that you have missed tow very important words written there? The same words you translated for me?” she said leaping into his words. He said similar to her one time long ago.

“What say ye?” he repeated. “Make sense.”

“I know where that paper came from.”

“Campbell, but what of it?”

“Dare you say, Niall, Chief,
non
…
king
of Clan Gregor, that paper affronts you and your people. Yet, in truth it affronts Her Majesty in the worst possible way, it calls for her murder. She is the one who had ‘set ashore,’ as the paper states, not your clan.” She paused, took a long swallow. “Campbell has given us proof with his seal…
mon
Dieu…I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“The man contracted to murder Her Majesty, a brute, who spoke in a guttural tongue. Campbell was searching for this paper to give him, but could not find it because it was in my possession. I did not know what I had until you translated it.”

“Sabine, ye’ve got to remember, who was this person with Campbell?”

“His back was to me. He kept in shadow.”

“Remember.”

“Does it matter?” she asked. “Does it matter that Her Majesty may be dead by this person. I did not warn her, but was here enjoying myself.”

“Remember, Sabine. Remember the details of him. Ye’re an artist. Tell me what ye know, and perchance I will know this hired assassin.
We
can save the queen.”

Sabine paused. “Save Her Majesty,
us
?” she asked.

“Aye, we have evidence, proof, should ye deem to remember all of the details of this man in Campbell’s chamber.”

Sabine nodded. “I will think, place the details of the brute upon my mind. He was in shadow, his back to me, but I will think on it.”

“Perchance this’ll help clear your mind.”

He took her in his arms and placed a light kiss upon her lips. Sabine returned his kiss just as the door burst inward, slammed the wall in a shower of turf.