Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read online

  “On my soul, ne’er would I hurt you,” she said, her voice dulled by anguish. “But we… I thought…” Her words drowning in a choking sob, she swiped the back of her hand beneath her eyes. “Can you e’er forgive me?”

  “Forgive you?” At her tearful nod, Iain cast a questioning glance at his brother, but Donall’s stony visage and tight-lipped disapproval offered nary a clue to Amicia’s distress.

  A quick scan of the other intruders on his privacy proved equally fruitless. The old seneschal, Gerbert, returned his stare with a defiant look of sheerest reproach, while Donall’s wife, the lady Isolde, hovered just inside the half-open door, her troubled gaze fastened firmly on her husband.

  Gavin MacFie, Donall’s most trusted friend, sat in one of the deep window embrasures, carefully wiping soot from one of Baldoon’s prized reliquary caskets. A strapping, auburn-haired man well loved for his sunny disposition, he held Iain’s stare for a long, uncomfortable moment before giving a sad shake of his head and returning his attention to the small bejeweled chest balanced on his knees.

  Iain frowned. He hadn’t missed the tinge of pity in Gavin’s hazel eyes… eyes that usually brimmed with good cheer.

  Thick silence stretched between the room’s occupants, its weight lending an oppressive pall to the crisp salt air pouring through the open windows. The unnatural stillness magnified his sister’s sniffling, and sent the first nigglings of ill ease slithering down Iain’s back.

  A second, closer glance at the narrow arch-topped windows sent a whole platoon of agitation to join the nigglings.

  Someone hadn’t just opened the shutters… they were no longer there.

  “God’s blood! Who dared—” Iain bit back the rest of a dark oath, his confusion dissipating with the sudden return of his senses. A myriad of images flashed through his mind, and the most telling one of all was his sister rushing at him, only to crash a wine jug full square on his head.

  Wincing at the memory, he touched cautious fingers to the egg-sized knot on his forehead. The lump pulsed hotly and sent tendrils of searing pain streaking clear to his toes.

  But its portent moved him, spilling light and warmth into a heart long consigned to darkness and cold.

  Despite his bleak moods and perilous tempers, Amicia cared enough to seize any means to keep him from harm.

  Even from his own wretched self.

  Especially from himself.

  Fighting the nausea even the slightest movement set loose, Iain pushed up on his elbows and drew a ragged breath. “Stop crying, lass,” he rasped, appalled by the effort it cost him to form those few simple words. “I am not vexed with you.”

  “For truth?” Amicia’s cheeks glistened with tears. “You are not wroth with me?”

  “Nay,” he assured her, making a brusque motion with one hand. “You have my oath on it. I ken why you did it, and I—… I thank you.” He gave her a tight smile… a wee one.

  The best he could manage.

  And only for her.

  Others present were about to taste the full measure of his wrath.

  With a burst of energy torn from the very depths of his hardihood, he flung back the covers, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and held fast to its edges until the wild spinning lessened.

  Then he raked every male in the room with a scorching glare.

  That accomplished, he heaved himself to his feet and fixed his most formidable stare on the cheeky soul he held responsible for transforming his quarters into a sea of eye-gouging brilliance.

  The grizzle-headed lout had even set a fire blazing in the hearth and lit every branch of candles in the room. The wall torches, heavy iron-bracketed nuisances long unlit and neglected, hadn’t been ignored either. Each one hissed and crackled with well-burning flames.

  Iain suppressed the urge to give a bark of cynical laughter. For all the stifling heat thrown off by the myriad sources of light, he might well have awakened in Satan’s den.

  With the most casual calm he could muster, he addressed the rheumy-eyed seneschal. “As I mind it, Gerbert, I’ve instructed you times without number not to lay a fire in here, to desist from lighting a single taper, and”—he paused for emphasis—“to leave the windows shuttered.”

  Not to be intimidated, the seneschal regarded him with a look of studied blandness, but gave away his discomfort by shifting his feet in the floor rushes… a sure sign of guilt.

  Iain drew a deep breath, released it slowly, and, holding the old man’s gaze, asked, “Where are the window shutters?”

  Stiff-lipped silence met his narrow-eyed perusal, but he caught a flash of pity in the graybeard’s hazy blue eyes… the same fleeting glimpse of commiseration he’d noted on Gavin’s open visage just moments before.

  And that great oaf avoided all further eye contact with him. The lumbering Islesman kept his shaggy, auburn head bent low over the jeweled reliquary casket, furiously polishing its silver casing… though not a single speck of soot remained.

  The precious container for holy relics gleamed brighter than a bairn’s newly scrubbed behind.

  A wholly un-formidable glance at his sister-in-law reaped no more than a noncommittal shrug.

  A shrug and a most eloquent glance at her husband.

  Iain looked at him, too. The MacLean laird’s rocklike stance bode ill, but too fine a ferment brewed in Iain’s gut for him to care. “’Twas you,” he said, squinting in the sun’s glare slanting in through the now-bare windows. “You ordered the removal of the shutters.”

  Donall the Bold didn’t deny it.

  Instead, he crossed his arms and set his mouth into a hard, uncompromising line.

  Cold-edged pricklings of ill ease attacked Iain anew, only this time, rather than merely slide down his spine, they laid vicious siege to his every nerve ending, crashing over him in a tidal wave of foreboding as ominous as the missing shutters and his brother’s grim-set countenance.

  Ignoring the others in the chamber, Iain fixed Donall with an equally stern eye, but his brother didn’t so much as blink. Nor did his features soften or reveal even a hint of the sympathy he’d seen on the faces of the others.

  Iain’s hands clenched at his sides, his nails cutting welts into his palms. Honor demanded he accept and abide by his brother’s edicts. Donall was laird, not he, and ne’er had Iain minded his lot as younger son.

  But ne’er before had Donall crossed the threshold to Iain’s private quarters as laird.

  Only as his good brother and friend.

  That he’d do so now, and in such a dark hour, left a bitter taste in Iain’s mouth.

  Squaring his shoulders, he willed himself to ignore his wobbly knees, the thick and clumsy state of his tongue. “Think you I haven’t bled enough this day?” he managed at last, his voice stronger now.

  He made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm, taking in the roaring hearth fire and the countless lit tapers. “Would you see my quarters reduced to a charred wilderness as penance for my sins? Or”—he strode to the denuded windows, purposely avoiding the recessed alcove claimed by Gavin MacFie, then whirled around—“perchance you seek to blind me?”

  Donall met his taunt with infuriating calm. “’Tis you who’ve blinded yourself.” He slanted a quick look at Gavin, still busy polishing the reliquary casket. “We only seek to un-blind you.”

  “That may be,” Iain acceded, fisted hands braced on his hips, “but I am none too keen on regaining my… sight.”

  Turning back to the window, he gripped its cold stonework, holding fast to the elaborate tracery swirls. His pulse racing ever faster, he stared out at the vastness of the Hebridean Sea, his gaze going unerringly to the nearsubmerged islet where Lileas, his sweet lady wife, had met her doom.

  The Lady Rock.

  A seaweed-festooned hump of rock barely breaking the surface, its black-glistening crest deceptively benign in the sweet, golden light of late afternoon.

  So near, yet impossibly distant.

  His own personal nemesis,
its ominous presence a grim reminder of another world, another life, and everything he’d lost.

  All he’d done wrong.

  A strangled groan rose in his throat, lodging there, as familiar talons of grief and guilt clamped cold round his heart, and a tight knot of pain formed in his gut.

  With great effort, he tore his gaze from the tidal rock’s jagged face and focused on the bright sunlight dancing silver across the endless expanse of blue-, green-, and amethyst-shaded water. Iced with white-crested rollers, the sea’s beauty lanced his very soul.

  At length, he turned back to the room. “Donall, you ken I would slay dragons for you,” he said, carefully measuring each word. “Even walk barefooted over hot coals if you required it of me, but ne’er have you entered this chamber as aught but my brother and friend… until now.”

  Donall lifted a silencing hand, but Iain rushed on. “You mistake if you seek to press such a privilege. Name any penance and I shall tender it, but I will not abide your intrusion here, nor the desecration of my private quarters.”

  His protestation voiced, he slid a last pointed look at old Gerbert, then started across the room. “I shall expect the shutters reaffixed by sunup on the morrow,” he declared, just as he meant to stride past Donall and into the blessed shadow of the corridor, but his brother’s arm shot out, staying him with a viselike grip to his elbow.

  “You will not be here on the morrow,” Donall informed him. “My sorrow that it is so, but this time you went too far. It grieves me to—”

  “To what?” Iain demanded, jerking free. “Cast me in the dungeon? Banish me to prowl the hills outwith Baldoon’s walls? Send me naked into the heather and scrub?”

  Donall pinched the bridge of his nose, drew a long, pained-looking breath. “Naught halfway so odious.”

  “What then? Shall I count the stones in every cairn dotting Doon’s high moors?” Iain rammed a hand through his hair, winced at the sound of his blood rushing through his ears. “Come, man, have out with it!”

  “Iain, please,” Amicia pleaded from the far side of the room. “And you, Donall, can we not just leave him be?” She took a few forward steps, raised beseeching hands. “He’s suffered enough as is.”

  “Aye, he has,” Donall agreed, his tone grim. “And as his brother, my heart sympathizes, but my duty as laird demands I see him expiate his transgressions.” He crossed his arms, his features growing visibly stern. “Mayhap in the execution of his penance, he will come to suffer less.”

  At a solemn nod from Donall, Gavin MacFie extracted himself from the window embrasure, and joined them, the bejeweled reliquary casket held reverently in his large hands.

  Late-afternoon light reflected off the glittering gemstones embedded in the small casket’s silver-and-enamel casing, each one shooting off rays of dazzling, multicolored light.

  Rays that streaked straight at Iain’s aching eyes.

  He blinked hard, frowning as countless teensy dots of blinding color danced across his vision, but when his sight cleared, a cloud must have passed o’er the sun, for the room lay in sweet shadow.

  His relief, though, proved fleeting. The pink stain on Gavin’s freckled cheeks and the abashed look in his downcast eyes could only bode ill.

  The redheaded lout knew something he didn’t. Something Iain instinctively knew he did not want to be privy to.

  Hot waves of wariness licking across his every nerve ending, he glanced at the reliquary casket. For centuries the MacLeans’ most prized possession, it contained a holy relic of inestimable value: a fragment of the True Cross.

  At once, a horrible thought popped into Iain’s mind. Steeling himself, he eyed his brother. “Don’t tell me you’d see me martyred?”

  Rather than answer him, Donall turned to a nearby table and poured himself a cup of wine, draining it in one long swallow. His face grim-set, he dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. “You would have to commit a more grievous sin than burning the chapel for me to pass such a harsh judgment on you.”

  He began pacing the chamber, his long strides taking him back and forth between the blazing hearth and the now-empty window embrasure. “Nay,” he said at last, sliding a quick glance at Iain, “’Tis a pilgrim I would make of you, not a martyr.”

  “A pilgrim?” Iain near choked on the word. Ne’er had he heard aught more ludicrous.

  All knew he was not a devout man.

  Truth be told, he believed in scarce little beyond that the sun rose each day to plague him.

  He stared at Donall, his brows arching ever higher. “I did not mishear you?” His already strained voice sounded two shades higher than it should. “You mean to make a penitent of me?”

  The sort that roams the land in a heavy cloak and wide-brimmed hat, a wooden staff clutched in one hand, a beggar’s bowl in the other?

  The very thought froze his blood.

  “A pilgrim and an emissary of goodwill,” his brother confirmed, and Iain’s stomach plummeted.

  Gerbert snorted. “That laddie out and about, a-spreading goodwill across the land?” he spluttered, his cheek earning him a sharp glance from his laird. Unimpressed, the aged seneschal shook his white-tufted head. “’Tis a fool plan if e’er I heard one.”

  Donall stopped his pacing to draw a long breath. “The undertaking will appease the saints for the destruction of Baldoon’s chapel and, with God’s good grace”—he wheeled around, his granitelike countenance leaving no room for rebuttal—“help Iain to master his temper. I, and every man, woman, and bairn beneath this roof have tolerated enough.”

  “I—” Iain began, then swallowed the heated words, his dread temper and all his bitterness contracting to a tiny, icy ball of tightness somewhere behind his rib cage.

  Some would say in the vicinity of his equally cold and tightly closed heart.

  His anger and guilt locked soundly away, tied and bound by the truth of his brother’s words.

  Words he couldn’t gainsay.

  He had become the bane of his clan, fouling the mood and robbing the smile of anyone foolhardy enough to come within ten paces of him.

  Consigned to a fate he could blame on no one but himself, he dragged a hand down over his face, carefully avoiding the still-aching lump pulsing hotly on his forehead. “Have done,” he gritted, meeting Donall’s eye. “I would hear more of my… penance.”

  Donall held his gaze. “I told you, ’tis more a journey of goodwill than aught else.”

  “Goodwill toward whom?”

  “The deserving brothers of Dunkeld Cathedral.” The words came calm and measured, but overlaid with a subtle warning.

  One Iain caught and understood.

  His refusal to embark on such an endeavor would not be tolerated.

  At his silence, Donall continued, “You’ll ken Dunkeld’s status as an important reliquary church. More Columban relics are sheltered within its walls than anywhere else in the land. A foster brother of our father once served as bishop there, and Da himself was a great benefactor—”

  “Could you not choose a more distant place?” Iain cut in, his stomach turning over. He stared at his brother, disbelieving. “Dunkeld lies in the very heart of the mainland. I would need two full cycles of the moon even to near its boundaries.”

  Donall gave him a hard look. “Time is not of essence. Nor the hardship of the journey,” he said. “Dunkeld is needy. The English, and the Disinherited, those landless Scottish lords who serve them, have repeatedly fallen upon the cathedral and its holdings in recent years. They’ve ransacked and stolen, burned orchards, and even cut down canons in their sleep.”

  “Holy men, slaughtered whilst washing the feet of the poor!” Gerbert shook his head, clucked his tongue.

  “So I am to lend them my sword arm?”

  “Only if they fall under attack when you are there.” Glancing aside, Donall signaled to someone outside the open door, and, to Iain’s surprise, one of his brother’s younger squires entered the chamber, two leather satchels clutched in his
hands.

  Two bulging satchels.

  The red-cheeked lad deposited them at Iain’s feet before near stumbling over his own in a hasty retreat.

  Iain cocked a brow. “You are so eager to see my back that you’ve packed for me?”

  “Those”—Donall gestured at the satchels with his thumb—“are gifts.” He resumed his pacing, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “Dunkeld has lost much to the marauders: silver cups and salvers, golden crosses, an illuminated manuscript with jewel-set bindings.”

  Halting beside his wife, he slung an arm about her waist and drew her near. “The thieving dastards even helped themselves to the revered Cathbhuaidh, the ‘yellow battler,’ St. Columba’s own crozier.”

  “And we are to replenish their empty coffers?”

  Donall nodded. “Our own panoply of relics and treasures is vast enough for us easily to restore a portion of their lost wealth. In doing so, we can attempt to”—he paused to rub his forehead—“atone for the sacrilege you committed by setting fire to the chapel.”

  Tight bands, cold as frozen steel, slid round Iain’s chest, clamping hard and stealing his breath. “You’d send them our greatest wealth? So I am granted remission of my sins?”

  So you can reclaim the life you should have had.

  The words, feminine and sweet, came close to Iain’s ear. Soft as a sigh, and in a voice hauntingly like Lady Isolde’s lilting voice, but his brother’s fair wife’s lips hadn’t moved.

  Nor had she left her husband’s side.

  And Amicia still fretted across the room, far too hampered by sniffles to form a coherent word. A chill lifting the hairs on his nape, Iain turned back to his brother, only to find Donall’s gaze resting on the precious reliquary in Gavin’s hands.

  Iain looked at it, too. And the longer he did, the more the tiny casket seemed to glow and pulsate, its glittering gemstones staring at him like so many multihued eyes, each one brimming with accusation.

  Brought back from the Holy Land by a distant forebear who’d gone on Crusade, the casket and the holy relic contained within had been in the MacLeans’ possession since time immemorial.

  By all reckoning, two hundred years, if a day.