Mistress of the Storm (15 page)
“Come now,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “Gunna is overwrought with worry about you.”
“How?” she got out before she began to shake and tremble.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her back along the path to the house.
“Duncan?” she asked as they passed by the barn where . . . it had happened.
“He wanted you protected, Isabel. That is why he ordered you to remain within. He knew someone was following you.”
Duncan had known about Godrod? “Is he dead?” she asked, wondering whether dead or alive was the better thing once Sigurd heard of it.
“I did not kill him. The others will move him to the edge of the village where he will awaken with a terrible pain in his head.” Harald stopped and gazed down at her. “If he returns, I will kill him.”
She shivered, understanding the man would do anything necessary to protect Duncan—anything. She dug in her heels and made him stop.
“I want to see Duncan,” she demanded now that her thoughts began to clear. “He needs help.”
“There is nothing that can help him this night,” Harald said softly, tugging her along. His strength was too much for her and she found herself walking in spite of wanting to stop. “Do you not think I would have done it if there was something to be done?”
She allowed him to take her to the house, knowing the truth of his words. “How does he survive such a thing. He was on fire.” Her mind rebelled at what she’d seen happening to Duncan. “And the pain of it. It could drive a man mad.”
’Twas Harald who stopped then, turning to face her. “Do not speak of this to Gunna. She has never seen what it costs him.”
“Why . . . ?” Her words faded as she realized the tie that bound Gunna and Harald to Duncan. “He healed her?” Harald turned away before answering her, but she did not need to hear it to know it was true. “What happened to her?”
“I will not tell you his secrets or hers, whore.” Harald gasped as he spoke the word, then looked away for a moment.
“Isabel,” he went on, “Duncan knows you spy for Sigurd and will take anything you learn back to him. You’ve already told him”—he nodded toward where Godrod lay—“too much. I will not see you put Duncan in more danger.”
They arrived at the house to find Gunna waiting within, pacing and wringing her hands.
“Oh thank the Almighty, Harald found you,” she cried out as Harald closed the door behind them. “When I heard them talking about an intruder on Duncan’s lands, I feared for you, Isabel.”
Harald let go of her and turned back to the door to leave. “Stay inside now, Isabel,” he warned. “Until Duncan orders otherwise.” The expression in his eyes told her that would not happen soon.
How long would it take for him to recover from what had happened to him? If his ability to heal was tied to the full moon, had it happened before . . . and would it again?
“You too, Gunna,” he added in case either of them thought to leave.
Isabel said nothing more as Harald exchanged a wordless message with Gunna before leaving. Looking around the room, Isabel realized she’d never lost control of herself as she had in the last hours. Priding herself on being the one to direct things, she began to shake as it all came back to her. Gunna pulled her to sit at the table, then handed her a cup of wine.
“Aye,” Gunna whispered to her. “It happens every month or so when the moon grows full.” She answered Isabel’s questions without even hearing them.
Isabel lost hold of the cup and dropped it. Gunna knew much more than Harald thought and, for some reason, she hid it from her brother. But did she know Isabel’s true purpose there, which seemed no secret to Duncan or Harald? She reached out and righted the cup before placing her hand on Gunna’s. The woman had been nothing but kind to her and she would not see her repaid by more deception.
“Speak not of it, Gunna,” she warned.
“You should know the truth about him.” Gunna poured more wine into Isabel’s cup, then met her gaze. So much pain lay behind those kind eyes.
Isabel would not add to it. “You should not trust me,” she admitted boldly. “I cannot be trusted.”
“Duncan would not have brought you here if he did not,” Gunna challenged.
Isabel stood then and shook her head. There seemed no other way to make the woman understand other than to speak plainly about it. “Duncan brought me here to ease his need for pleasure during the weeks before the full moon. He needs sex. He needs sex from many women and decided a whore might be able to accommodate him with fewer questions or expectations than other women would. He told me that much.”
Every word was true, but the admission did not have the effect she’d hoped for. Gunna pressed her lips together and shook her head, as though refusing to believe would make it all false.
“He also knows, as does Ornolf and Harald, that I am supposed to report back everything I learn about him and the power he has and how it works.”
“It uses him up and is killing him, Isabel. That is how it works.”
Isabel gasped at the words, motioning to Gunna to say no more, but she continued heedless of the warning.
“He thought it such a gift at first, you know. He was able to save people from death and illness. Each month he could lay his hands on someone and heal them—how could that not be a good thing?” Gunna drank some from her own cup, pausing but not done yet.
“But each year has seen the power grow and its cost grows, too. His needs, as you said, have become excessive and uncontrolled. What you saw after his healings, the burning, is worse each month and the emptiness deepens and lasts longer.”
Isabel could not help herself. “Emptiness?”
“Aye. After he heals, he is afflicted with whatever he drew out of the people he’s cured. Then the power burns it out of him, leaving him unable to feel for days and days.”
That explained the burns appearing on his arms and legs and the other injuries he’d suffered while she watched. Isabel thought back to the first time they’d met, in Lord Davin’s hall, and she remembered that he’d seemed shocked when he’d looked at her. He’d asked her to touch him, to caress his skin, and he was surprised in some way. Had that been when his ability to feel had returned?
“More than just being able to feel, his emotions are wiped clean and he becomes like an empty shell.”
Too far into the explanation, Isabel had to hear more. “Where did this power come from? Can he not control it?” she asked, damning her soul forever, for she knew Sigurd would be told what she learned. She had no choice.
“No one knows, for he was a foundling and raised by those who discovered him abandoned some miles from Uig.” Gunna shivered and drank more wine. “I have sought for knowledge about him or this terrible curse, just as he has, but can find nothing more than a few strange tales. Nothing that can explain it.”
A commotion began outside the house and they ran to the door to see what was happening. It opened just as Gunna reached it, revealing a disheveled and exhausted Duncan. Gunna shook her head and cried out his name, just as he sank to his knees. Harald was there in a moment and helped him inside.
“Duncan! How did you get this far so soon?” she asked, revealing to her brother she knew more than she’d ever let on to him. “Harald, bring him. Isabel, turn down the bedcovers. Ornolf, help him!”
They moved wordlessly, carrying out their tasks, and Isabel could see each of the others was shocked by Duncan’s presence there so soon after the ritual had been concluded. Within minutes, Duncan lay on his bed and managed to drink some watered wine before fading off to sleep.
When it looked as though she would be ordered elsewhere, Isabel sat in the chair next to his bed and ignored the others. Gunna, bless her, won the argument and they left Isabel at his side with instructions about his care and warnings about disturbing him. They remained in the other chamber for a short while, whispering amongst themselves so she could not discern their exact words, but she did not miss the tone of their conversation.
Harald wanted her gone.
Ornolf remained neutral.
Gunna argued in her favor.
When they all left without dragging her with them, Isabel knew Gunna had gotten her way. She smiled at the young woman’s spine of steel. When it came to doing something she thought was the right thing to do, she would even defy her brother.
An hour passed and Isabel dozed, exhausted by all that had happened. Duncan lay without moving or making a sound. As she sat watching him, she finally felt the dirt in her hair and on her skin from Godrod’s attack. She poured water from a jug kept near the hearth into a bowl and tried to clean herself. With a brush, she eased the tangled knots from her hair and removed as much of the dirt and leaves as she could. A full bath would have to wait. As she returned to her chair, she found Duncan watching her.
“You wear the mark of a man’s hand on your throat once more, Isabel,” he said softly.
The tears welled and spilled over, making tracks down her cheeks. She did not want to lie to him any longer, nor did she want to be the instrument of his downfall. Too much was between them to pretend otherwise.
“You disobeyed me,” he accused.
Her body shuddered at the words and what usually followed. She could not believe he would seek retribution against her for leaving the house or going to the barn. But mayhap he would?
“Did you find what you sought?”
She slid to her knees and clasped his hand to her chest. “Send me back now, Duncan. I do not wish to play this out any longer. I cannot.”
He did not move his hand and she wondered if the numbness had set in. She stroked the skin of his hand and arm and saw no response at all. Knowing more than she had a moment ago and realizing the danger in discovering more, she begged him again. “Send me back. Tell him you are not pleased. I will take the risk of his anger over—”
“Over betraying me to him?” he finished. “ ’Tis true, Isabel. I cannot feel your touch on my skin. I will not be able to for some days, though I suspect fewer than last month.”
“Why? Why is it different this time?” she asked before she thought about it. Damn her curiosity!
“Because of you.”
He stared at her as though seeking the answer to a riddle, a dispassionate gaze that watched her every move, looking for information. No warmth or wanting dwelled there, only emptiness. It seemed a stranger looked back at her. His claim that she was the reason for the change in him felt false.
“Why me?” she asked.
“I brought you here hoping to find out the answer to that simple question.”
“And have you discovered it?” Isabel held her breath, waiting, hoping, praying for something that would help her not betray him to Sigurd.
“Not yet, though I am seeing threads of a bigger web each day.”
The man lying before her was not the same one who’d shown her kindness and consideration or the one who’d made her melt with overwhelming, breathless desire and pleasure. This man was a stranger and it frightened her.
“Let me go,” she pleaded again, touching his hand.
He moved his lifeless gaze to the place where their bodies touched and shrugged. “I’d hoped it would be different, more different, but I fear even you may be too late.”
Isabel leaned her head down on the bed and let out everything that was inside her. The guilt, the shame, the loss and grief, the fear, the helplessness, even the hatred. All of it poured out in a torrent not unlike the storm that had followed them from Duntulm. Through it all, he did not speak or reach out to her, but he did not shun her or order her away. Much as the power burning within him had purged him of all emotion and sensation, the tears washed her clean.
She fell asleep where she lay, never knowing he reached out to her in her grief.
He touched but could not feel.
Chapter Fifteen
H
e wanted it to hurt, but it did not.
e wanted it to hurt, but it did not.
Watching her collapse and cry out sobs reaching down to her soul should make him sad or angry. Instead, he watched and felt nothing. She finally fell into a fitful sleep and he reached out to touch her, resting his hand on her hair, then her head.
Nothing. He could feel nothing under his hand.
At least the pain had relented. The burning agony had eased within him only a short time after the ritual finished, unlike the hours and hours he’d suffered the last two months.
Isabel sighed, drawing his attention. She mumbled something in her sleep, not as she did when the nightmares took over, but words of pleading and supplication that would have caused pity in anyone else hearing them.
But not in him that night.
Duncan suspected but did not understand what linked their fates together. Though he was not sure of the reason, he was certain of the connection. Finding that the lake on his lands was the same one she’d fallen into as a child was too significant to be coincidence. Watching whatever inhabited that lake accept her into its depths convinced him she was more than simply a woman, just as he was somehow more than just a man.
Unfortunately, one other thing he knew for certain—he would die with the next ritual.
His heart had slowed and stopped for longer than last time, for he’d counted the seconds and waited for it to beat again before he lost consciousness. Next time, the power would burn him out completely, leaving nothing but his empty body behind when it was done. That knowledge did not bother him. He thought on things he needed to do before it happened.
He must deal with Sigurd and find a way to free Isabel from him. He must learn her reasons for staying with the man and letting him use her as he did. Duncan was missing something critical there, for a woman filled with the vitality and passion for life he’d found in her would not easily fall into being the pawn of one such as Sigurd.
Duncan lay there, with his hand on her head, planning out his last weeks, knowing much of what he could do for her was dependent on her trusting him. Since she did not, for she trusted no one he could think of save Gunna, he could not take her into his confidence and share his plans with her.
Gunna had spoken with him about Isabel several times since she had arrived and he knew Gunna would help however she could. In spite of never having known a day in her life when she was not valued and loved, Gunna understood Isabel’s pain better than he did and urged him to see to her future regardless of how things ended between them.
And he would, once he discovered her truths.
Without emotions to shade his view or protect him from the grim realities of his situation, Duncan found it easier to make decisions and plans involving all those who depended on him. He spent the rest of the night until sleep finally claimed him setting out the tasks he must attend to before the next full moon.
When he woke again, it was night once more, but he had the strength to get out of his bed. Looking around the chamber, he noticed Isabel was not there. Stumbling a bit as he gained his balance, Duncan made his way to the main room and found her there. Wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a large chair by the hearth, she slept. She’d clearly positioned the chair so she could see into the bedchamber, but no doubt the cozy warmth of the fire burning low had made her drowsy.
He crouched down before her and watched her. When no frown marred her brow and no sadness filled her gaze, she was a beautiful woman. Even without the artificial coloring she’d worn those first few times to make her lips look fuller and her eyes darker and wider, her beauty shone through. Noticing, too, the smudges beneath her eyes, he knew she had not slept well.
Sigurd’s methods had trained her not to sleep when with a man, so she found it difficult to relax, he knew. She startled easily and slept lightly, when at all, and it had taken many nights before she would seek her rest before he did. Duncan reached out to touch her cheek, but hesitated to wake her. As he looked more closely, he also saw tiny red speckles that were evidence of the violence of her sobbing.
He paused, realizing how much he wanted to feel her skin and be aroused by the sight of her. He wanted to feel pity and sadness that she’d cried so hard. He wanted to be angry at the man who’d left marks on her neck and fear in her gaze.
Something was quite different from before without her. He was emptied, aye, but not as completely burned out as last month. Though he could not yet feel anything, he wanted to and that was more than he’d expected. He stood, trying to decide if he should move her to his bed. She opened her eyes, and he read confusion in her gaze. He stepped back to give her room to stand.
“Why did you not sleep in the bed, Isabel?” he asked.
“I did not wish to disturb your rest.” She pushed her hair out of her face, quickly gathering and tying it behind her head. Smoothing her gown and tunic down, she stood and moved away from him. He watched as she put distance between them, stepping to the other side of the table.
“You should know by now that when I am tired, I sleep and nothing keeps me from it.”
She took a step away as he walked around the table toward her.
“You are afraid of me.” Duncan stopped and moved back, surprised.
“I-I,” she stuttered. “So many things have happened, I was not certain . . .” She shook her head and shrugged, still not moving nearer to him.
“You need not fear me.” He reached out his hands to her. “I am just a man now, Isabel. My hands are just hands.” He held them out closer to her. “Touch them.”
Her hands trembled as she did as he bade her to do. Though he saw her touch him, his skin did not feel it at all. “Are they hot?”
“Nay, no longer,” she said. “Do they hurt?”
“Nothing hurts. Nothing aches. Nothing feels at all,” he said. “But it will.”
Isabel watched his every step, every turn, much as she did when she expected some kind of retaliation for a misdeed or error. As she had in the first days with him.
He changed the topic of their discussion. “How late is it? Is Ornolf still about?”
“Forgive me, Duncan. I was supposed to tell you that he would speak to you as soon as you are able. I forgot—”
“Come here, Isabel.”
Silence filled the room and he recognized the dread in her eyes at his command. Yet, as always, it was his will and not hers that would prevail between them. She walked around the table and came to him.
“You saw much that disturbed you in the barn. Many things happened and we should discuss them,” he explained, all the time noticing the frown lines across her forehead and the way she twisted her hands together.
She opened her mouth to say something, but a knock on the door interrupted her. Ornolf pushed it open and nodded to him. “Ah, so you are awake, Duncan.” The older man stepped inside and closed the door, glancing from Duncan to Isabel and back again, realizing he interrupted something. “I will wait for you outside,” he said quietly. With a nod to Isabel, he left more quickly than he’d entered.
“What must you tell me?” Duncan saw guilt flash in her eyes and sadness and resignation there, too. She did not step back, but he could see the tension in her stance that spoke of someone prepared to run.
“Harald will tell you,” she began, looking away and not meeting his gaze. “When I left the barn, Sigurd’s man caught up with me . . .” She trembled and tried to explain, but soon the shaking became too great.
“I did not want you to see the ritual. I told you not to leave here because I could not be with you and I knew someone was following you.” He sat down on one of the stools, trying not to intimidate her so much. “So, you told him about what you’d seen?”
She let out her breath and nodded. “I am sorry, Duncan. I was terrified and he hit me and . . .” Tears fell once more from her beautiful green eyes and he opened his arms to her. She ran to him, kneeling in his embrace, and begged for his forgiveness. “I did not want to know your secrets, because I knew I must tell Sigurd. I could not refuse him. I wanted to, but I could not.”
“Isabel,” he said softly to gain her attention. When she looked up at him, he explained. “I knew why he let you come with me. It was never about the outrageous amount of gold I paid him. I knew he wanted you to spy for him and take back information he could use to gain my cooperation.”
Her face lost all its color, becoming a ghastly, ghostly whiter shade of pale. “You knew?”
“I have watched men like Sigurd as they use their way to power and wealth. They target those weaker and climb on top of them as they claw their way to their goals. He is not the first to use a woman nor the last.”
“What will you do with me now that you know?” she asked.
She expected the worst from him. It was clear in her voice and in her body. After what she’d endured, her response was no surprise to him.
“I’ve always known, Isabel, and it hasn’t changed anything between us. We will keep to our arrangement for the time being and Sigurd will think all is well.” While he set his own plans in place for a completely different result.
He read the suspicion in her gaze as he stood, bringing her to stand at his side. Seeing the mistrust in her eyes would hurt him when he could feel such things again, but he ignored it and led her to the bedchamber. “I will join you after I have spoken to Ornolf.”
“You will?” She searched his face for the truth, so he gave it to her.
“I am not yet recovered from the ritual, so, aye, I will seek my rest soon.”
It was easy to speak the truth when no emotion clouded his mind. Even easier was to see where his path would lead.
Isabel would be safe.
He would be dead.
Sigurd would pay first.
Once she’d settled under the bedcovers, he left to meet Ornolf and give him the first task to complete. The one upon which all else would depend. Duncan would trust no one but Ornolf to see it done. The man had been his loyal servant, nay friend, since before his powers began to manifest themselves seven years ago and he’d sworn to be at Duncan’s side when all was finished.
It would take Ornolf several days to find the information he needed before Duncan could return to Duntulm for the next step. He needed to speak with Harald as well but that could wait until morning. He bid Ornolf a good night and returned to his bedchamber, all the while being drawn there by something he could not explain.
Empty as his soul was, he knew it was not desire or longing that drew him to Isabel that night. His body felt nothing, neither cold nor heat, and he had no appetite for pleasures of the flesh. What could it be that urged him to be with her.
Unable and unwilling to examine his motives more closely, he undressed and climbed into bed with her. She turned immediately to him and he wrapped his arms around her as she lay against him. Soon, only the soft sounds of her even breaths could be heard in the chamber. Just as he began to drift to sleep, the tinkling sound of eerie laughter echoed around him, making him question all he thought he knew about Isabel and her place in his life . . . and his death.
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