Chapter 30
Isa lifted the compress from Robbie’s head and doused it back in the water, her spirits spiking up. His forehead had cooled and the fever seemed to be gone, though she had a concern that his face seemed paler than before.
Perhaps it was only the candles that made it seem so. Margery had been in earlier to light them, one on either side of the bed. Fine creamy beeswax candles, not those made of tallow, so there was no bitter smell in the room.
Leaning back over him, she fussed with his covers, checking the bandage to see if the spot on it had grown any larger. A few hours earlier, blood had begun to ooze from the wound—not much to be sure, but blood nonetheless.
She touched her lips to his forehead, breathing in the scent of him as she did so.
“Sweet dreams, dearling,” she whispered, surprised to find him watching her when she drew back. “Yer awake.”
“I’d never sleep through my own wife’s gentle kiss.”
A pain lanced through her heart with his words. Now was the time for her to tell him. To confess to having wed Malcolm MacDowylt. But coward that she was, she couldn’t make herself say the words. Instead she touched her lips to his.
His eyes fluttered shut and he dozed again, so she settled herself back on the stool next to his bed, his hand cradled between her own two.
A light touch on her shoulder and she nearly jumped from her seat.
“Sorry.” Leah dropped to the floor next to her. “Is the little guy okay?”
Little guy?
“Oh, Jamie? Yes, he’s magnificent. I dinna ken a way to thank you for what you’ve done for him.”
“I’m really glad he’s okay. I only wanted to help with the infection in his cheek, but I was so tired after trying to heal Robert, I lost control and the Magic took over.”
“And you’ve recovered as well?”
Leah’s face seemed to glow tonight, shining with radiant health as if this morning’s events had never happened.
“I’m fine now. What about him?” She pointed to Robbie. “How’s he doing?”
How is Robbie doing? He’s dying.
She might allow the traitorous thought to ramble around in her mind, but she’d never give voice to the words. Especially not to his daughter. She needed to be strong for Leah. In spite of the years that had passed, she remembered all too vividly how it felt to lose a father.
“Yer father’s fever seems to be gone, but now it seems the wound is beginning to bleed.” In spite of her resolve, her voice cracked as she spoke, and she covered her mouth with one hand as if she could hold the hurt inside.
“You love him, don’t you?” Leah put her hand up on Isa’s lap, patting her leg. “I’m so very sorry I couldn’t help him. I honestly tried, but I’m just not strong enough to turn back the Faerie Magic that has him in its grip.”
“What Faerie Magic?” This was the second time she’d heard that term, and this time it was no fever-sick man who voiced the words.
Instead of an answer, Leah posed a question in return. “You know about the Faerie, don’t you?” She ran her finger over the back of Isa’s hand as she spoke, tracing the mark that had formed there.
Isa found no point in denying it. “I’m told my mother was Fae. She left us before I was old enough to remember her.”
“Yeah,” Leah agreed, her voice sad. “Whatever else those Faeries might be, they’re especially good at deserting their families, that’s for sure.”
“What does this have to do with the magic you say has stricken Robbie . . . yer father?”
“Okay. I’m going to be totally honest with you here, but you have to promise me you won’t freak out or anything. Promise?”
“Freak out,” Isa repeated slowly, having no earthly idea what the girl meant. “I will try not to do this thing.”
“First off, Robert isn’t my father. He brought me here to protect me from some really bad guys.
” Here she stopped and shook her head, tears shining in her dark eyes.
“Really bad Faeries, as a matter of fact. The father/daughter thing is just the cover story he came up with. But his parents have been so great to me. They’ve accepted me as their granddaughter, and for that I love them to pieces. ”
Isa stared at the girl, concentrating to follow Leah’s strange pattern of words, trying her best to follow the girl’s story.
“Here’s the thing. About nine years ago in actual time, and don’t even ask about that yet because it will all make sense in a minute or two, Robert got in this god-awful battle to save a friend, and he ended up getting a sword between his ribs for his effort.
That friend used Faerie Magic to take Robert into the future, to a time where doctors had the tools to patch him up and save his life, because if he’d stayed here, he’d have been a goner.
So—flash forward there he is in the future, doing fine until he agrees to bring me back here, back to his time, to save my butt.
Only problem is, he isn’t supposed to be alive in this time, and it looks like the Faerie Magic is determined to set things straight.
” The girl finally paused her nonstop rant to take a breath. “Make sense?”
Isa shook her head. Sense? Not at all. “Yer from this future Robbie was taken to?” she asked at last, her voice sounding hesitant to her own ears.
“Yes. And even though he knew this might happen, he decided to act as my Guardian to bring me back here because, way back when, he’d promised a dying friend he’d look after this guy’s little girl, but first those guys almost killed him, and then the whole time thing got totally messed up, and now you’re not a little girl anymore.
In fact”—she smiled sadly—“you’re his wife now.
And he’s . . .” Her words trailed off and she squeezed Isa’s hand.
Leah’s story boggled her mind. If not for the things she knew to be true, the things she’d experienced in her own life, she wouldn’t have believed a word of it. Not even the words she could understand.
But she did believe, and knowing the truth of his story made so many things he’d said and done so much easier to understand. Still, honesty deserved honesty.
“I have something I must tell you as well. As yer no his daughter, I am no his wife.” Isa kept her voice low, hoping to control the emotion buffeting her in waves.
“No that I wouldna give all that I am to be such. Thinking to secure our release from the man who’d captured us, I spoke my vows to him in front of my clan.
I’m no free to be Robbie’s wife. No ever. ”
Leah rose up on her knees and put her arms around Isa, hugging her. “Don’t cry, Isabella. You are his wife as far as he’s concerned. That’s all that matters right now.”
All that matters? Hardly. If she understood Leah’s story correctly, the man she loved lay dying before her very eyes and it was as much her fault as anyone’s!
“He came back because of a promise to look after me.” She drew on Leah’s earlier words to help it all make sense.
“Uh-huh,” Leah confirmed, sitting back down on the floor.
“Came back though he knew it might cost his life.”
The girl nodded her agreement to that statement.
“Came back from a future time where he was perfectly healthy.”
“Yes.”
Isa felt as if there was something important just waiting to be plucked from the line of logic she’d followed, but it eluded her. Her tired mind struggled to find the missing piece, and then the pieces snapped together like the foreign puzzle box in her grandfather’s solar.
She tried it one more time.
“If he can travel through time, and he’s no in any danger in the future . . .” she began, pausing as she considered the implausibility of what she was getting ready to say.
“We should send him back to that future where the Faerie Magic wants him to be.” Margery finished her line of reasoning from the shadows by the door.
“How long have you been standing there?” Isa stood and turned to face Robbie’s mother.
“Long enough to recognize what you say as truth. An excellent plan, my dear. Leah? How do we make it happen?”
Leah had risen to her feet as well, one hand supporting her against the chair. “I’m not one hundred percent sure. I only know that the women who sent us told us we had to think about the place we wanted to be. So I guess you have to think about where you’re going.”
“It takes those of the Faerie blood to invoke the magic.”
Isa jumped at the sound of Robbie’s voice and hurried to his side. One look at the growing red splotch on his bandage and she knew they had little time left.
“I am of Faerie blood. Only tell me what to do, Robbie.” Anything. She’d do anything to save his life.
He held out his hand to her. “Come sit beside me. I’ll tell you about my home and we’ll imagine ourselves there.”
Isa carefully climbed up onto the bed, cursing her clumsiness when she noted the flinch of pain on his face. “Tell me. Help me to see it with you.”
“My home sits in a lovely valley in the mountains. It’s a big ranch, with plenty of room for . . .” He paused, panting for breath, obviously in pain. “Room for little Jamie and all the children you’ll give me.”
Isa tried to envision his words, but his dream was too much fantasy even for her, despite how much she wanted what he described to come to pass.
“It’s no working. There’s nothing,” she muttered, her frustration and fear growing by the second.
His eyes were closed, as if it took too much effort to hold them open, his face wrinkled as he gritted through the pain. “Cate warned as much. It took three of them to send us.”
“And we’ve only two.” Leah stood at the side of the bed, twisting her fingers together. “Try again, Isa. Keep trying.”
Try what? Isa had no idea what it was she should be doing. Think on someplace she’d never even seen? How was she supposed to do that?
Only Robbie could see where they were to go, and he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness now.
“Stay with me, love. I need you to concentrate on yer home for us.” Isa grabbed his shoulders, giving him a little shake.
When her hand covered the mark on his arm, a shaft of green light burst from between her fingers, shooting out into the room.
“Whoa,” Leah breathed, leaning forward. “Tell me you saw that, Grandma Mac.”
“I did,” Margery replied. “Though I’ve no idea what it was I saw.”
“It’s those tattoo things!” Leah cried. “Robert’s Guardian Mark. It’s on the back of Isa’s hand, too. When they touched, it sparked the magic.”
“But no enough.” Isa swept her hand over Robbie’s forehead once again, desperate to come up with an idea. Any idea.
“Love you,” Robbie groaned, “Need to say that before I lose . . .”
“Oh, Robbie.” Isa put her face close to his, kissing his cheek. “Dinna you die on me, do you hear? I dinna want to live without you.”
“Soulmates,” he whispered. “I’ll find you again.”
“No!” Isa sat up on the bed, grabbing his shoulders, sparking the shaft of light once more. “I dinna want you to find me. I want you to stay with me!”
As the light died down the door burst open and Jamie ran inside.
“I saw a strange light coming from yer door.”
“Not enough,” Leah murmured. “Not enough! Of course! It’s only two.”
She reached into the neckline of her shift and jerked, pulling a broken ribbon from around her neck. A shiny black stone dangled at the ribbon’s end she held out to Isa.
“Take this. Hold it in your hand against the mark on his arm. You’ve two marks. This will make three. It’s worth a try.”
Isa took the stone, sparing only a second to look at it. Carved into its polished surface was the same mark that Robbie wore on his arm. The same mark as on her hand.
“Wake up, Robbie. Stay with me. You must see where you want to be in yer mind.”
His eyes fluttered open. “Be with you,” he muttered.
“Aye, with me, love. But in the future. In yer home where yer safe. See it in yer mind for me. Please.”
She slapped the stone against his arm, holding on to it as tightly as she could. If this worked, it would be up to him where they might go, for her thoughts were centered on him.
An odd green glow began to pulse through the room, with strange little bursts of color sparking in and out.
“Isa!” Jamie yelled, as he nimbly slipped past Margery’s outstretched arm, straight up onto the bed beside Isa, his little arms locking around her waist.
With her free hand, she grasped onto Jamie’s wrist, filling her mind with a new vision. A vision of the three of them. Together.
The tingling along the back of Isa’s hand intensified and she fought the urge to slap at the invisible creatures she felt crawling on her skin as thunder rumbled nearby.
The green light grew more brilliant, shrinking into a wavering sphere that enclosed the bed, and the sparkles of color multiplied until it looked as though there were thousands upon thousands of them shooting around inside the sphere.
They dashed soundlessly against the wavering emerald walls and through Isa’s body, picking up speed until she could no longer discern individual shapes but only streaks of color swirling around her head.
The myriad colors gyrated around them, faster and faster, and at last, as if hitting the peak of their frenzy, they merged, and the world around Isa turned to black as she felt herself being thrown through the air.