Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Isobelle held her smile until the angry tyrant was gone.
She’d seen too much of his softer insides to be frightened.
The dragon had a man’s emotions. He had blood in his veins.
And he had a weakness for her beauty, a fascination with her hair, though he fought to hide it.
One day soon, he would let her leave. He would soften, and he would let her go.
And though it was not in her nature to do so, she would be patient.
Considering her imprisonment, Isobelle was relieved to find that her bed was comfortable.
Not nearly as comfortable as the one in her new cottage, but much preferred over sleeping in a hammock and rocking all night to the progress of a ship.
Her emotions were spent, and with her new confidence that she would indeed leave this prison, her worries faded away with the sounds of the waves patting against the shore below her window.
And she slept without dreams, unknowing, unseeing, unhearing.
Until someone began shouting at her.
She lifted her head, but her eyes refused to give up the darkness.
A man’s voice. Not Ossian’s. Then she remembered where she’d laid her head to sleep and her eyes flew wide.
She leapt from the bed and braced herself for some sort of attack.
She pulled up her right leg, to free her small blade, but her foot was bare. No sock. No knife. Had he taken it?
The gate was closed. He had not yet come inside. Where, then, was her knife?
She eyed the mattress to her left, remembered slipping it beneath. She reached for it, but stilled her hands when his words finally reached past her panic.
“Isobella! Rouse yourself, I say.”
Candles lit up the other side of the wall where the bench was placed. She could see the man’s shadow pacing the length of it, stopping short of the gate. She relaxed, knowing he was not watching her through the latticework. He hadn’t seen her reach for the blade.
“What do you want from me?” Her body begged her to crawl back onto the bed, but she could not bear to do so until the man left the room. So she rested her back against the round, outer wall, and waited for him to answer.
“You shall celebrate the hours, Isobella, much as you would have done had you been forced to remain at the abbey. Matins begins at midnight. Lauds at sunrise, then the six hours of the day, ending with Compline, at nightfall.”
“I doona ken what ye mean,” she said, though she did indeed know. He might suppose she came from a barbaric Highland clan that had little dealings with the church, and if that would make his task harder for him, all the better.
She heard a faint sigh of exasperation and grinned.
“Come to the gate,” he barked.
She tucked away her smile and slowly swayed to the other end of her cell, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child, peering at him from half-closed lids.
“Take this,” he said, over-loud, no doubt trying to clear her head with his volume alone. He opened a small silver box with a dark lining and pulled a string of beads from inside.
“What is it?” she asked. She raised her brows as if they might lift her eyelids a wee bit more.
“A rosary. Take it.” He pushed the loop of the beads through a large triangular gap in the gate’s decoration and waited.
She blinked her eyes wide and recoiled. “No! I’ll nay touch it!”
“Isobella. Do not be foolish. I know you are not, in fact, a witch. Touching the beads will cause you no discomfort. We both know it.”
She was so tired, she wished only to fall onto her bed and escape back into slumber, but she could not resist toying with the man further.
“I was allowed to take nothing inside the tomb with me,” she whispered, “save a bewitched torque and a rosary. I vowed I would never touch one again.”
He stared at her for a moment, as if waiting for her to say more. When she did not, he rolled his eyes. “Cease your nonsense, Isobella. Take the rosary. If you want to be left in peace, to sleep until sunrise, you will pray the rosary.”
She frowned, stepped up and drew the things through the hole, not at all happy he’d taken no pity on her.
“It is true,” she mumbled.
“I do not doubt it,” he said, his handsome smile showing his pleasure and chasing away her sleepiness, damn him.
“I am relieved a mere necklace does not truly frighten you. However, if you had given that little performance before any other audience, you might have been tried on the spot. Surely you realize that.”
It was her turn to roll her eyes.
“Proceed, Isobella. And if you lose count, you will begin again.”
She marched back to the far wall and ungraciously lowered herself to the floor. “Our Father,” she began. And while she recited the prayer, she watched his shadow move back toward the bench. She was three quarters of the way finished, when she paused, to see if he was still listening.
“Yes, Isobella. I still listen. And I count.”
She smiled and resumed praying. Toying with Gaspar, the dragon, would not be dull work.