Warrior and the Wanderer (7 page)

The rabbit Bess had served him had been surprisingly tasty, but not filling enough for an all night hike. Her survival skills were impressive; almost as impressive as the way she swung that sword around. But none of it was as impressive as the fierce look in her eyes, the way a stray lock of flame colored hair fell down over her forehead when she was absorbed in preparing their meal, the way the tops of her breasts strained against her armor. In another time and place, he might have hooked up with her. But an air of weirdness surrounded her, and something drastically out of place he could not figure, and did not want to. He needed to get back to getting on with his life.

With one phone call he would do just that. “But my mobile is at the bottom of a lake.”

“Who are you going to call,
Herr MacLane
?”

He slammed to a stop, on the edge of a clearing, and turned around.

The voice with the same Swedish accent as the man at Last Chance Gas was gone, lost in Ian’s imagination. He was so knackered he was hearing things. There was no one behind him.

He walked quickly toward the grey stone structure.

As he got closer, Ian saw it was church, a Gothic abbey. In California? He slowed his step. The building rose from the mossy ground like a finger to God supported by shallow buttresses. Narrow stained-glass windows sat in between the buttresses catching glints of sunlight. To one side of the church was a tall stone wall and a low slate roof just beyond.

He slowed his step. Churches like this did not exist in California, did they? The compact, economical design, the mossy stones…the quiet. So very much like…

“…Scotland,” he breathed.

It was too absurd. As daft as hearing a Swedish voice in his head. Or, now suddenly, a Scottish one.

“Enemy mine!” Then the thunder of pounding hooves.

Ian wrenched around just in time to see Bess burst from the trees, riding as if the Devil was on her back. Her sword raised in one outstretched arm.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Ian said. “What is wrong with this woman?”

The glint of morning sun shone on her blade, the fire of pure anger shone in her eyes, all told him to get the hell out of the way—NOW!

“Ye are my prisoner!” she shouted.

Her hair was a frenzied mass, a braid no more, and it flew out behind her as she rode directly toward him. Any time other than this very second, and Ian would have found her to be the sexiest woman alive. The fact that she was on her way to killing him quickly vanquished that thought.

Ian leapt from the horse’s path. But he could not leap far enough to the side to escape the tip of her blade when she slashed it down into him. He stumbled backward holding his side, feeling the warm pulse of his blood seep between his fingers. He fell to his knees and looked up into Bess’s fierce eyes.

He asked her the first thing on his mind, “What the fu—?”

But he didn’t have the satisfaction of finishing the only word appropriate for the situation, before Bess sent him into darkness with the handle of her sword against the side of his head.

* * * *

He snapped awake. His right side was on fire. He tried to sit up and entered a new world of agony for his trouble, falling back to the small bed, which was the size and depth of a coffin. A wool blanket that lay over his naked body was saturated with his sweat. He had to clench his teeth just trying to breathe.

“What I wouldn’t give for a big shot of whisky,” he mumbled. “And my clothes. Why do I always wake up naked in this nightmare?”

He scanned the small, sparse room illuminated by a tiny, rectangular window. A tiny bird perched on a branch, in silhouette to the orange sunlight. It sang a mocking melody: “Twee-dee! Twee-dee! Twee-dee!”

“Shut up!” he hollered.

The pain in his side flared.

A door on the far wall from his bed of pain opened.

“Jesus….” Ian gasped. “What now?”

“I am not the son of our Lord,” the portly gentleman, dressed in a dull brown tent, said. “I have been summoned by one of the brotherhood as your shouts frightened him.”

“Is that so, Friar Tuck?” Ian asked. He sat up, propped himself on his elbows despite the agony shooting through every inch of his body and forced indifference on his face. “Can you tell me where I am?”

“Lady Campbell did tell us you’d be quite confused.”

“Lady Campbell is it?” Ian asked. “She’s the one who is confused. Have you seen what she did to me?”

“I came to see to your wound.”

“That’s a bloody load off my mind,” Ian sighed. “How about a real doctor instead of someone who’s playing doctor.”

The priest put his fingertips together and waddled across the stone floor to the bed. He reached down and took a corner of the wool blanket and folded it down to Ian’s waist.

He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “I do not pretend to understand the temperament of these Highlanders.”

“Och, Christ,” Ian moaned catching a glimpse of the jagged, blood-encrusted line of sutures angled from the base of his ribs to his navel.

“There’s to be no blasphemy within these walls, my son.”

“Why? Is this a bloody kirk?”
Kirk?
Where had that Scottish word come from?

“’Tis, my son. I’m granting you sanctuary here.” He dropped the blanket back over the nasty wound. “’Tis as Lady Campbell requested. She wants very much for you to live.”

“That’s really amusing considering she tried to kill me.”

The priest shook his head. “I have never seen a lassie so stricken with concern as Lady Campbell. She sat by your bed all day, praying for your life. The brotherhood stitched your wound, but it was God’s will that your life was spared. So, I’d appreciate you conducting yourself with piety and humility while in His house.”

“Bess sat by my side all day?” he asked glancing toward the tiny window. The fiery cast of sunset charged through the smudged glass.

“All day,” the priest repeated. “She has told me you are witness to the reason she wants an annulment from her husband.”

“That’s why she wants me alive, is it?” he asked. “To get an annulment? I thought priests only granted those if the husband and wife never had…” Ian looked at the priest’s expectant stare. “…Relations. Do you have a phone?”

“A what?”

“Phone. A mobile?”

The priest shook his head. “You speak most oddly, my son.”

“That seems to be the general consensus around here. So, where’s Bess?”

Ian sighed. Of course this friary would not have a phone or electricity either from the glow of candlelight beside his bed. northern California was a big place. A whole crop of loonies could live in isolation there and no one would know.

“The lass is resting, as should be you.”

Ian glared up at the rotund priest. Bess seemed to be in charge of this insane Scottish menagerie. He needed to talk with her, strike a bargain of some sort to get him the hell out of this made-up world of hers. “I need to see her.”

“T’wouldn’t be proper. Lady Campbell is not yours to pursue.”

“What?” Ian’s side flared again. “I have no—”

“She is wed to another.”

“Do you think I’m her lover?”

“Aren’t you?” the priest asked, one hoary brow rose.

“No!”

“That’s what she told me as well.” He looked off into the shadows. “And I do not think dear Bess would lie in the house of God.” He pushed out a heavy sigh.

Ian eyed the old priest. “Taking it a wee bit personally aren’t ye?”

“Dear Bess is entering a dark door with no redemption beyond, I’m afraid.”

“What are ye talking about?” Ian asked.

The priest was far spookier than anyone he had encountered on his unwanted journey so far.

“I joined Bess and Lord MacLean together in this abbey just days ago, and now, she wishes to break that sacred vow, by requesting an annulment.”

“Did you know her husband tried to kill her?” Ian asked. He might as well go along with this charade.

The priest’s eyes widened even more. “This she did not tell me.”

“Well, why the hell—” Ian cleared his throat, washing the blasphemy down. “Why not?”

“She was so weary. I told her to sleep,” the priest said. “We will have to discuss this over the evening repast.” He slowly turned and waddled back to the door. “Perchance over the finest bottle in the cellar.”

“Wait!” Ian called, grabbing his side.

The priest turned back around, a stumpy finger pressed against his lips.

Ian lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “Where are my clothes?”

The priest smiled.

Uh, oh, Ian thought.

“In the poor box. The brothers who tended you were perplexed by the silver you wore so brazenly on your coat and your trews. Such a man must have enough means to spare for those not as fortunate as himself.”

“What am I supposed to wear now?”

“Surely, a man with such fine clothes has more. The Lord will provide.”

Ian just stared at the priest who turned around and walked out of the room closing the door softly behind him.

“Son of a bitch,” he snarled silently over clenched teeth. “Poor box, give me a bloody break.”

He sat up and eased his legs over the side of the bed. No one was around. Time to go raid the poor box. He gritted his teeth and muttered, “Shite and damn….”

* * * *

Bess stared out at the garden awash in orange sunset. Father d’Auguste had generously lent her his chamber. He had insisted on the finest accommodation, his courtyard chamber apart from the monks’ quarters. The scent of the flower garden and the freshly turned soil of the vegetable garden entered as soft as a cat’s footfalls through the open window. Beyond a low stone wall surrounded the garden, the sun reflected off of the winding arm of the River Forth.

“Truly a heavenly place,” she whispered, over her restless mind.

This morn she was certain she had killed Ian MacLean. His pallor and the vast amount of blood soaking through his clothes had been evidence enough for her, but Father d’Auguste had quieted her fears as the silent brethren of Cambuskenneth Abbey bore Ian’s near lifeless body into the far reaches of sanctuary.

“By God’s holy intervention, his life was spared,” she whispered, her head slightly bowed. But God’s law had nowt to do with the anger that had blinded her when she drew her claymore down across Ian’s side. Such anger was born by his betrayal of her trust in escaping.

She turned away from the window and walked to a humble chair beside an equally humble desk. Several sheets of paper and a quill rested on the desk. Father d’Auguste had begun to compose a sermon when Bess had interrupted him that morning.

She read the first few lines, written in a beautiful script, translating the Latin into Scots in her mind.

The honour of the Mother is the honour of the Holy Virgin. She is the heart of the Trinity, not part of the Trinity, but the heart of it. And every woman is the heart of the family she keeps. God’s Holy Law decrees to honour thy father and thy mother, and it is through this law that God holds man and woman as equal.

Bess fell into the chair. Her mother had spoken similar words, words she had taken to her heart and kept sacred.
God holds man and woman as equal.

She brushed her fingers over the paper, feeling the tiny, soft hills on the cottony surface, tracing her finger over the word
equal
.

“No man would believe this to be true.” Her mother had said that as well. “Unless a woman proves it true by her words and actions.”

Bess didn’t seek love with Lachlan when she had stood at the altar of this very abbey thinking that joining her clan with his was what her brother, the chief, wanted. Lachlan had looked grand in his fresh plaid and crisp tunic, a jeweled
sgian dhu
tucked in top of his boot, his dark wavy hair swept back from his forehead, but there was distance in his eyes. His kiss upon her lips, sealing their marriage bond, had been swift and dry, not really a kiss at all, more like a cool breath upon her lips. Then he had left her to travel to Duart Castle with his guards while he joined her brother on a hunting party. A murdering party she knew now.

A noise outside the window summoned her out of the chair. Bess walked quickly across the floor and peered outside.

Ian, wrapped in wool bedclothes, stumbled through the garden. Each footfall looked as though it caused him great pain.

“Ye should be healing in your chamber,” she said through the window. “So we may soon continue our journey.”

“They stole my clothes,” he said.

“Is that your only concern?” Bess asked.

“It runs a close second to finding a bottle of whisky,” he replied looking at the wall between them. “So, how do I get into m’Lady’s chamber?” His grin sent a warm shiver down her spine.

She pointed out of the window to the left. “Come within, down yon passage, to the first door.”

With a lingering gaze then a wink, Ian disappeared from her sight. She barely had time to turn away from the window before a hard knock sounded on the door.