Chapter 29
When Robert had referred to his home as MacQuarrie Keep, Isa had expected something much smaller than this imposing structure with the waters of the loch lapping at its back.
She lifted her hand to shade her eyes against the early morning sun, growing more frustrated by the minute as William argued with the guardsman on the wall denying them entrance.
“We’ve no need for tinklers here. Be on yer way!” the man yelled down for the third time.
Bollocks on this.
Isa pushed past William, her temper taking the lead.
“I’ve come to see Leah MacQuarrie,” she yelled up at him. “I’ve her father in this wagon and he’s hurt. If yer no going to open these gates, then get yer lazy arse down the backside of that wall and get her up there.”
The guardsman stood for a moment as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
“Do it now, you witless worm!” she screamed, stomping her foot to emphasize her point.
Not very ladylike to be sure, but she had a dying man and a sick child to consider, so whoever wanted to could criticize her later—she simply didn’t have time for them right now.
“Well done, my lady,” William whispered, arriving at her side as the chains holding the portcullis began to scrape against the stone.
“Enter,” the guard yelled down, and from his tone, Isa was quite sure the man was none too pleased.
Isa ran along ahead of the wagons, surprised to find two women hurrying across the bailey toward her, one young and one considerably older.
“My apologies, my tinkler friends,” the older woman said, taking Isa’s hand in hers. “I am Margery MacQuarrie and I bid you welcome. The young man on the wall hasn’t been with us long enough to have learned we never turn tinklers away. He said you have my son with you?”
Robbie’s mother.
She was supposed to tell this woman she was Robbie’s wife. She’d agreed to his request to do so. The words were on the tip of her tongue. But they weren’t the words that came out.
“Aye, he’s badly hurt and in need of special care.”
The women asked no more questions, neither of them. They simply ran to the wagon where William and Ralph were helping Robbie to the ground.
“What have you done to yerself this time, lad?” Margery exclaimed, running to her son. “Hugh! Get those men over here to help. Leah! Come with me. We’ll take them to Robbie’s chambers.”
Isa stepped back, feeling suddenly out of place. She considered climbing back into one of the wagons until a small, hot hand slipped into hers and she remembered her promise to Robbie.
“Come on, Jamie,” she urged, pulling the boy forward. “Wait. Leah?”
The girl slowed, turning back to look at her with obvious suspicion in her eyes. “Yes?”
“Yer father made me give an oath to ask you to have a look a Jamie’s injuries before you treated his own.” She pushed the boy in front of her and toward Leah.
“Before I . . .” Leah’s words trailed off. “Oh no. He did not think I was going to . . . well, of course he did. It is Robert, after all. I should have known.” She came to a full stop and her head dropped as if she studied the ground at her feet.
What was wrong with the girl? Did she not want to help her own father?
“Esther, the tinkler, said Robbie’s injuries were beyond her abilities. She said his only hope was a born healer. Robbie . . . yer father, that is . . . said you were one such.”
Jamie backed up against her as if he sought to hide in her skirts and she put her arms around the trembling boy, rubbing her hands on his shoulders to comfort him. To comfort herself.
Leah’s eyes darted toward the hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and for a moment Isa thought she wasn’t going to reply.
“You’re Isabella, aren’t you? You’re the one he came back for.”
Of all the things Isa expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them.
“Leah!” Margery called from the top of the stairs.
“Coming!” Leah yelled back. “Come on, you and the kid, both. We’ll sort this all out upstairs.”
One thing was certain. Though Leah MacQuarrie might not favor her father’s looks in the least, her speech was every bit as confusing as his.
Isa and Jamie followed the girl through the castle and up the stairs. By the time they reached the bedchamber, the men who’d helped get Robbie into bed were coming out of the room.
“She says Robert wanted the boy taken care of first,” Leah said to Margery as they entered.
“That sounds like something I might expect from my son,” Margery murmured, flattening out the covers over Robbie. “And who are you that he’d give you this message to deliver?”
The look Margery turned on her was entirely no-nonsense.
This was it, the opportunity for her to say the words Robbie had instructed.
But how could she claim to be wife to Robbie when she had already wed another man?
The words stuck to the roof of her mouth.
She couldn’t bring herself to lie to the woman.
“That’s Isabella,” Leah answered, placing a basin of water next to the bed. “His Isabella.”
“Ah, I see. So yer saying Robbie wants us to have a look at yer young man there before we treat my son?” Margery asked, peeling the wrapping away from her son’s chest.
“Exactly what I want. Leah’s to see to Jamie first.” Robbie’s hand covered his mother’s, stopping her movement.
“Yer awake!”
Isa all but ran to the other side of his bed, reaching out to touch him, but stopping as she remembered his mother and daughter looked on.
Robbie grasped the hand she’d withdrawn, pulling it to lie over his heart as he gazed into her eyes.
“It’s no likely I could sleep through that joustling I took on the stairs, is it?” He tried for a grin but didn’t quite make it. “Did she also tell you she’s my wife?”
“She dinna share that with us,” his mother answered.
“I thought as much,” he said, tightening his grip on Isa’s hand. “But now you ken the truth of it and you’ll look after her, aye?”
“You can look after her yerself, lad, as soon as you’ve healed.” His mother busied her hands, stopping at his Guardian Mark, tracing her forefinger over it.
“I’m no up to an argument, Ma. And you’ll see to the boy’s welfare, too. His injury looks to be infected.” Robbie weakly tried to push himself up to one elbow, but his mother held him down.
“We’ll see to him. Dinna fash yerself so, Robbie. Now let me finish with removing this bandage.” Margery lifted the last of the wrapping from his chest, her fingers faltering as she exposed the wound. “Holy Mother,” she whispered, her composure rattled for the first time.
The jagged wound centered between his ribs, a wide dark stripe, moist and puckered, as if the skin could barely hold itself together over the mark.
Isa struggled to find some sign of improvement. “Esther’s poultice has taken the swelling down.”
Robbie made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a cough, and shook his head. “It’s no her poultice. It’s regressing to where it was when it first happened.”
“Oh crap.” Leah pushed in front of Margery. “Let me see that. This is the big one? The one Cate took you back for? This is exactly what she and Mairi were afraid of, isn’t it?”
“Leah!” The warning in Robbie’s tone was clear, though what he warned his daughter of Isa had no idea.
“Fine,” she answered, her irritation clear. “Well? Is it?”
“It is. I ken you’ve renounced what you are, lass. Still, I’ve no choice but to ask for yer help, though I’ll understand if you refuse.”
Leah crossed her arms under her breasts and paced away from the bed, a stain of red mottling her neck and face.
“Dammit, Robert. After what you did for me? How on earth could I refuse? You wouldn’t be like this if it weren’t for me. Okay. Everybody out. If I’m doing this, I need some peace and quiet to work in.”
Isa sat on the cold floor in the hallway outside Robbie’s bedchamber, her head leaned back against the stone. Jamie curled in her lap, his skin hot and fevered to her touch.
There was so much she didn’t understand, not the least of which had to do with Robbie’s relationship with his daughter. The girl even called him by his given name rather than Father.
Margery approached, pacing up and down the hallway as she’d done since Leah had shuffled them all from the room what felt like hours ago.
“I canna imagine what in the name of all that’s holy can be taking the lass so long to—”
The chamber door opened, interrupting Margery’s rant.
Leah leaned against the doorframe, her face damp with perspiration. “It’s no good. Whatever magic has hold of him, it’s stronger than anything I can do. Isa, he wants you with him.”
Isa lifted the groggy child in her lap to his feet, and Margery took hold of the boy’s shoulders as Isa stood and hurried to Robbie’s side.
One touch of his forehead told her the fever burned in him, and she wrung out a cloth from the basin next to the bed, gently placing it over his skin. His eyes opened and he gave her a weak smile.
“It’s as I feared. The Fae Magic will have its way with me, but as soon as Leah has rested, she’s promised, she’ll see to Jamie.”
Fae Magic?
“What do you speak of?”
His eyes had closed and his breathing slowed. He slept again, so she wouldn’t wake him now, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t insist on an answer when he did awaken.
What reason could the Fae possibly have for doing something like this to him? It was much more likely that in his fevered state he had mixed the stories of her involvement with the Fae into what he suffered.
The very idea wracked her with guilt.
A muffled scream from behind her drew her to her feet in an instant.
Jamie lay prone on the floor with Leah’s body draped over him. His body shook with spasms as if he were possessed of some horrible demon trying to shake his limbs from his trunk.
Leah’s body shook as well, but her hands were held tightly affixed to either side of the boy’s face.
“Let him go!” Isa yelled, throwing herself at Leah, trying to pull the girl’s hands from Jamie, to no avail.
When she tried to shove Leah away, the girl’s head lolled to one side and her eyes rolled up. Clearly she no longer had any control over her actions.
In the next moment, right before Isa’s eyes, the side of Leah’s face began to redden and pucker, the skin bubbling and crawling, forming itself into a hideous parody of Jamie’s scars.
“We have to stop this,” Margery cried breathlessly, falling to her knees next to them, digging at Leah’s fingers as she tried to break the horrible writhing connection between the two.
A high-pitched hum whined around Isa’s head, and a pressure pounded at her as if the room were too full of air.
The hum grew in both volume and power, and Isa could feel the sound rumbling and vibrating in her chest. She could swear a shaft of green light pierced Leah’s hands where they joined Jamie’s head, and then the light shattered into a million shards.
As the light shattered, both she and Margery were thrown across the room like rag dolls, landing several feet away.
Isa lay on her back, gasping for air.
Jamie! She had to get to the child to protect him.
She fought down a wave of nausea before rolling to her hands and knees. Another moment to gain her balance, and she slowly crawled back toward the crumpled pair in front of the fireplace.
The silence surrounding them now was almost more painful than the noise had been earlier, and she fought the urge to cover her ears against the roar of the silence.
Isa pulled Leah’s limp body off the child’s, pausing only long enough to see that though the girl’s face and neck were as scarred and disfigured as Jamie’s, she still breathed.
Too frightened to cry, she grabbed Jamie’s arms and dragged him into her lap, clutching him to her before leaning away to check his breathing.
His small face was so peaceful, his lips barely open, and just as she had when holding little Sean the day before, she turned her cheek to him.
The soft, sweet breaths pulsed over her face and then, knowing he’d survived whatever had just happened in that room, she felt the tears prickling at her eyes.
“He’s alive,” she said aloud, to no one in particular, her fingers trembling as she pushed the tangled hair from his perspiration-slicked face to see if he’d suffered further damage to his injuries. Only then did she fully realize what Leah had done.
Jamie’s face was perfect. All of it. The skin as smooth and soft and pink as little Sean’s. Not a scrape, not a mark, not a single trace of the scars from the fire that had ravaged the boy’s body.
Like a madwoman, she dug at his clothing, freeing his little chest and his legs. Annie had told her long ago that the entire side of Jamie’s body bore the same scars as his face. It was the cause of his limp.
But now, the whole of him was smooth and perfect, as if he’d never suffered a single injury in his life.
Disbelief held her captive. Amazement kept her stroking his beautiful unmarred cheeks.
How long she stared at Jamie’s face she had no idea, but gradually she accepted that he was unhurt in any way and merely slept, albeit a deep sleep.
As carefully as possible, she laid him back on the rug and moved to kneel beside Leah.
The marks on Leah’s face looked like fresh, puckered blisters, the outline of the damage still vibrantly visible.
It was as if she had taken on the damage that had been Jamie’s only moments before.
As Isa watched, the scars morphed and twisted, then amazingly began to fade, as if Leah healed right before her eyes.
The girl groaned as Isa touched her skin, but she didn’t open her eyes.
“The lad?” Margery pulled herself up to stand.
“Sleeping.” Isa answered. “Completely healed and sleeping. Leah, too.”
Margery nodded, touching her fingers to a large bump on her forehead. “Well, that was an experience, was it no? If you’ll wait here with our charges, I’ll have someone come take them both to their rooms so they can rest in comfort.”
Isa nodded, not moving from her spot on the floor as Margery bustled out of the room.
Though she had no idea exactly what it was they’d just experienced, she had not a single doubt it entirely involved the magic of the Fae.
Even now she could smell its familiar scent in the air.
One thing had become absolutely clear to her in the past few minutes. She wasn’t the only one in this keep with Faerie ties.