Highland Hearts 03 - Crimson Heart (11 page)

Marie glanced down the table and Elena followed her gaze. Pale faces and grim expressions had ruined the meal. She flapped her hand. “If you wish to go, do so before you swoon.”

Elena placed her hand on Searc’s arm. “Merci, your grace,” she whispered as he helped her rise.

Marie
tsked
but did not stop her. “We will talk more, ambassador to the Highlands.” The statement sounded like a threat and sent a shiver along Elena’s spine.

…

Searc matched Elena’s slow steps as they walked the halls to their room. Exhaustion and worry seemed to lay across her like a sopping, woolen blanket.

She stumbled on a raised cobble. “We are nearly to our room,” he said close to her ear as he supported her arm.

“What are we to do?” Her words were soft with an edge of fear.

“Carry on here, but be prepared to depart quickly.” He would keep his gear near Dearg. If they must leave in a hurry, he’d hide Elena up in the mountains. He glanced down at her pale features. “And ye are not to go anywhere alone.”

“No one should.” She glanced along the corridor as if looking for fiends in the shadows.

Searc held her behind his back as he opened their door and made a quick inspection inside. The room was empty.

Elena sat on the end of the curtained bed. Someone had started a fire in the hearth. It spat low and Searc added a small lump of peat from the basket on the side. He crossed and locked the door with the large, iron key that had been supplied. It added some security but he was certain that the maids and pages had duplicates.

“William Wyatt?” she asked and he noticed that her gaze was following him about the room.

“A friend of mine. One of the few honorable Englishmen I know, though he’s more of a pirate than an Englishman.”

Elena blinked at him. “My father is a pirate?”

“Actually I don’t think he’s an Englishman, come to think of it. Ye’ll meet him in the Highlands when I take ye there. He lives with the Macbains at Druim, the clan that borders Munro land. ’Twas the first name I could think of and one I won’t forget.” He crossed and sat next to her on the bed barely big enough for two. He clasped her hand in her lap. It was so small in his large palm, fragile. “We will play our part and journey to the Highlands.” If he was not responsible for her, he’d stay and try to find the fiend, but right now he needed to see Elena safely away.

Elena’s face turned to him and she gently pulled off the French hood, revealing the red-gold strands to him again. “I wasn’t counting on a murderer in Edinburgh.”

’Tis true, the regular thieves and leeches would have prayed on her, but with a sadistic killer stalking the lasses, she’d never have survived. “Once ye are safe at Druim, I will return to help find the sadistic bastard.”

Her eyes widened. “You will return?”

“If the killings continue.”

“Then we should stop the villain now, before we go. You will lose a month traveling back and forth. More girls will die.”

He caught a tawny curl along her shoulder, lifting its feather-weight. “I will not put ye in jeopardy by remaining here.”

Her lips tightened. “And I will not have ye sleeping in the forest two extra weeks because of me,” she said with a terrible Scottish accent. “We will find the killer before we leave.” She nodded as if that was the end of the conversation and turned her back on him. Glancing over her shoulder she sighed. “The lady Marie assigned to me looked rather ill. I don’t think she’s coming. The buttons?”

Searc’s mind snapped away from his plans to his new challenge, undressing Elena. It was one thing to lock the lass up in her dress. It was another to unlock that silky flesh.

Searc brushed the softness of her nape when she moved her hair to one shoulder. God help him. Elena was all roses and sun shine. It made him ache. He finished quickly and stood, moving to the hearth to lay out his woolen blanket. Another hard pallet, but at least it was indoors.

Searc heard the water in the basin as Elena washed. He rubbed down his blades in the light of the fire. Och, if the flames remained, it would be hot by the hearth. His ears caught the whoosh of her petticoats hitting the rug by the bed and she hung up the gown in the press next to it. After he heard her slide under the coverlet, he set his blades aside and drew off his shirt. He would sleep in his plaid again.

“The bed is very soft,” Elena called. “And big. Even with the rug, the stone must be hard.”

“I will survive.” Searc laid down on one side, his back to her.

He heard movement in the covers and Elena sighed. “If you wanted to harm me, you could have done so in the hut you made, or when I slept in the inn at the village, or while we napped when we arrived in Edinburgh, or when you found me asleep in my bath. Searc…” She waited and he turned over so that he could see her sitting up in the bed, the covers bunched in her lap to show the white shift that scooped along her collarbone.

She tilted her head. “I trust you. I would have you comfortable after all you’ve done to keep me safe.” She pushed her hands down in the tick. “This bed is exquisitely comfortable. If you want, you can sleep above covers while I’m underneath so you know I won’t mar your virtue.”

I trust you
. Her words rang in his ears. But she couldn’t really mean them, not after she’d seen him at his darkest. And the image of her naked beauty still seared his memory. He hesitated and she patted the bed again. She did seem to trust him not to take her honor. Did Searc trust himself?

She slid from the bed, and he watched her shiver. “I will sleep by the fire then. You take the bed.”

“Ye are the most stubborn lass.” He pushed up off the stone floor, meeting her halfway. “Get now, back under the warm blankets.” She grinned and dove under the thick quilts and fur. Lord help her if she thought it cold in Scotland in late summer. Who would keep her warm this winter?
Me.
He frowned at the thought. He wouldn’t even be in the Highlands.

Searc set his dirk on the small wooden nightstand and his sword on the floor. Elena had scooted over to the side, giving him ample room. He lay on the coverlet and almost sighed out loud as he sank into the full tick.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Elena pushed up on her elbow.

“Aye, thank ye. Two weeks of sleeping on the ground and this feels heavenly, nearly like my own bed at home.”

He could feel her looking at him, but he shut his eyes. “You miss your home, don’t you?”

“Aye.” He pushed his mind away from the lush woman next to him to focus on the glittering loch he visited often on the border between his land and the Macbains.

“Tell me about it,” she whispered. “If you aren’t too tired.”

He opened his eyes to the dark and turned his head. Elena’s face was a little pale oval in the dim light, the darkness of her unbound hair across the white of the pillow. “It’s green.”
She looks like an angel,
ran through his mind
.

He swallowed and continued. “Moss and ferns, thick foliage that smells clean and earthy. Fields dotted with purple and yellow wildflowers, thistles. But it’s the mountains that take yer breath, soaring up high to kiss the clouds.”

He turned away from her face and felt his chest tighten just thinking about the land he’d known his whole life. “The gray rocks stick out of the green here and there like the bones of the mountain breaking apart from its skin. Deer and sheep run free, grazing, especially along the clear, fresh water of the loch. ’Tis truly…beautiful.”

Elena remained silent for a while, and he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

“You miss it so much,” Her words floated to him on the slightest of whispers. “Why did you leave? What did you do?”

He didn’t say anything for several long moments. Would she try to use guilt again to get him to talk?

“Did you kill someone?”

Perhaps it was best for her to know that he wasn’t completely in control. She would stay away from him then, not invite him to share a bed. “Aye.”

She let a long breath feather out of her. “I’m sure it was an accident, Searc.” She placed a hand on his arm, but he kept his gaze aloft.

“Nay, I meant to kill the bastard. He was trying to kill my unarmed father.”

“Then why…”

“I used my dark magic, incinerated him before my clan. They didn’t know I had such evil in me. They fear me now, and I won’t live with people who fear me.”

“But they know you, don’t they? You were raised there. They know you have an honorable heart. You were just defending your father.”

“A father who now looks at me with suspicion and fear in his eyes.”

She let out another long sigh and he shut his eyes, shut out the taint of pity he’d heard on her breath. “I will be all right, better off on my own.”

“Searc.” Apparently she was
not
finished. “What if you’d never seen a sword before?” It was a ridiculous question, so he didn’t answer. “What if I suddenly had a long, shiny, lethal sword in a land where no one had ever seen a sword before,” she continued, not getting the hint that he was ready to force himself to sleep. “And a thief was trying to kill someone I loved. I would of course use my sword to stop him. If no one had ever seen my sword before, that would shock them.” He didn’t say anything. “You left right after it happened, didn’t you?”

“I gave them a full week to get over the shock, as ye say.”

“A week of shutting yourself away or avoiding them and not showing them your sword again,” she added. “How could they get used to seeing you with your great, life-saving weapon if you only showed it to them once and then acted ashamed of it?”

“Ye don’t understand, lass.”

She huffed. “You’re the one being thick, Searc. If I had a sword—”

“Ye’d cut off yer own foot, lass.”

“That no one had seen before, a weapon that could kill. And then I used it and tucked it away without explaining how much training I’d done to wield it, then you wouldn’t get near me, not when you didn’t know if I could accidentally use it on you.” She waited but he didn’t say anything. “You don’t talk much.”

“And ye talk too much.”

“I doubt you told them anything.” A silent moment passed and he hoped she was done. His face felt hot, tight. Should he have stayed longer, tried to explain what he knew of the curse, the red power in his hands? What if they’d still thought him evil? It was better to just find his distance.

“You need to go home, Searc.” She flopped over onto her other side, her back to him. “Home is home. I’d go if I had one.”

…

Elena woke to tapping—insistent tapping. She blinked at the gray cast of dawn in her room and rolled over to face the door, her head still on the pillow. She pushed up and scanned the empty space. Where was Searc? She felt the coverlet. It was cool. How long ago had he left?

Elena heard the click of the lock on the door. “
Mistress
?” A lady in servant’s dress pushed in while pocketing a duplicate key to the room. She balanced a small tray of food and wine and placed it on the table near the cold hearth. “I am Hannah,” she said in a Scottish accent. “The queen regent requests yer attendance at mass this morn. I am here to help ye dress.”

“Do you know where…” she was about to say “Master Searc” and changed her mind, “…Jacqueline is? She helped me yesterday.”

“I have not seen her. I was sent directly from the queen regent herself.”

Elena hurried out of bed. She would have to wear the blue dress she’d brought.

“Do you have your rosary?” Hannah tapped her little foot impatiently.

Elena’s stomach tightened. Mass? She was going to mass with a woman who was quite practiced in Catholic rites.

“No, I lost it on my travels,” Elena lied evenly. She’d been to mass a few times, and the church services at Henry VIII’s court had been in the Catholic fashion even if the king had pulled away from Catholicism to start the Church of England. But Marie de Guise was clever and practiced.

“Ye may borrow one of the regent’s rosary strands for ye may need it in confession with Father Renard.” She rolled her eyes at Elena. “He likes to give lengthy penances.”

God’s teeth!
What would she say to the priest in confession? He was supposed to keep the confession in secret to take to his grave, but would he tell Marie de Guise Elena’s true identity? She couldn’t risk it. She’d have to lie to a holy man of God?

Elena sucked in as Hannah tightened her stays in back and lowered the blue gown over her head. The woman brushed and wove Elena’s hair into some braids to wrap in a wide bun, finally securing the French hood over it. “Ye look lovely.” The maid gave her a quick smile.

I play my part perfectly. I know the mass. I am clever.
Elena repeated the affirmations in her head. Katherine Parr had taught her to fight nervousness back when she’d lived in the kind lady’s household at Sudeley Castle. The words somehow tricked the body into calming down, and Elena certainly needed to remain calm.

“The mass will begin shortly, mistress,” Hannah urged her to the door.

“My husband won’t know where I’ve gone.” Where was he?

“Quickly. The queen regent will be cross if ye’re late.” She thrust the rosary beads into Elena’s one hand and grabbed the other to tug her through the door.

Elena barely had time to scan the bailey as Hannah pulled her. Guards stood about at regular intervals. The early morning bite in the air made Elena shiver. No sign of Searc. Her stomach clenched for a moment before reason thankfully forced its way in. The Highlander wouldn’t leave her here alone. He’d made that clear when he’d called her his wife before royalty.
That was before you questioned his leaving home, you nidgit.

They entered the even cooler, stale air of the sanctuary and walked past a middle-aged monk whose brown hair was cropped to resemble a bowl atop his head. Hannah paused. Elena turned to follow her line of sight and blinked, holding her gasp, as water sprinkled into her face. The brother, garbed in brown sack cloth, looked slightly sheepish at having hit her in the face with the holy water. Elena still managed to pass her fingers from her forehead to her heart and then shoulder to shoulder in the sign of the cross at the man’s blessing.