Chapter 33
Afull week later, Iain MacLean paced Baldoon’s great hall and wondered at the wisdom of having accepted the ailing MacKinnon laird’s offer of help.
So far, the only assistance given had been a great willingness in emptying Baldoon’s well-stocked kitchens.
MacLean stores of food, ale, and wine tapped into almost hourly to fill the bottomless bellies of the MacKinnon warriors who’d agreed to accompany Iain and his men on the return journey from MacKinnons’ Isle.
A place not only littered with the remains of the MacKinnons’ shattered fleet, but, did Iain care to believe the clan’s tales of woe, an island plagued by all manner of ill fortune ever since a savage gale had blown its black breath over the MacKinnon stronghold a full year before.
And considering the wreckage along the isle’s dune-lined shore and the shambles of the once formidable castle, Iain didn’t doubt them.
Their misery was earned.
He’d even admit a grudging respect for the aging chief’s generosity in sending along his best men-at-arms to aid Iain in catching his wife’s true murderers.
Fiends Iain would find if he needed all his days.
“Bastard whoresons,” he cursed the faceless cowards as he quickened his pace, seeing nothing but the haze of wood-and-peat smoke hanging in the crowded hall. He didn’t even hear the voices of the men lining the long tables.
He was only aware of the fury inside him.
“Iain.” A gentle but firm hand grabbed his arm. “Two more paces, brother, and you will set the hall a-fire,” Amicia said, and snapped her fingers in front of his face.
She nodded to the tall iron candelabrum he’d almost walked into. “The floor rushes would’ve caught flame before our guests can devour another joint of roasted boar.”
Iain heaved a sigh. “They do nothing but eat and guzzle our spirits.”
“Who just had to sail to their poor, maligned isle?” Amicia folded her arms. “Had you listened to reason, they would not be sitting in our hall annoying you with their voracious appetites.”
“They wanted to help.” Iain glanced at the MacKinnon men.
They filled two long tables. In truth, they were eating heartily.
And they appeared at ease in the companionship of their old foes.
They conversed easily with Iain’s warriors, the lot of them jesting, exchanging boasts, and telling tall tales.
As if not a one carried a care on his shoulders.
Iain supposed he had enough worries for them all. “I should have refused their laird’s offer.”
Amicia’s eyes softened. “It is good they are here, regardless of the reason,” she said, an odd catch in her voice. “Father would have been proud of you. He and the old MacKinnon laird were once friends, as you know.”
She touched his arm when he said nothing. “Donall will be pleased when he returns.”
“Humph.” Iain rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’d like to know where that laddie’s keeping himself,” Gerbert mumbled as he shuffled past with a platter of discarded seabird bones and other assorted table scraps. “’Tis mighty strange…” His words drifted back to them as he neared the wooden screens passage and the kitchens beyond.
Iain sprinted after him. “What is strange?” He nipped around in front of the white-haired steward. “Have you heard something of Donall and Gavin?”
“Only what you should have heard with your own ears.” Gerbert peered at him from watery blue eyes and then, to Iain’s annoyance, he clucked his tongue.
Just like he’d done when Iain and Donall were wee laddies and had been caught stirring mischief.
“Perhaps I have bog cotton in my ears?” Iain set his hands on his hips. “What about my brother?”
Gerbert drew back his shoulders. “Your whole head must be filled with bog cotton if you haven’t paid heed to what the MacKinnons have been puzzling about ever since we sailed away from that blighted isle of theirs.”
“I’m listening now,” Iain said as the tiny hairs on the back of his neck lifted. He slapped his nape against the feeling that someone hovered behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder but saw no one. All the men were occupied with eating dinner. He saw nothing else except the roaring fires in the hall’s three hearths, and the flames of the torches set in iron brackets along the walls. A few hounds scrounging for scraps beneath the tables.
Everything appeared as it should.
“Aye, ’tis mighty strange.” Gerbert poked a finger at Iain’s arm. “I be worried about the laddie, and the MacFie.”
Iain turned back to him. “Why? They will be in Glasgow.”
Gerbert shook his head. “No’ if they ne’er set foot there.”
Iain blinked. “What do you mean? Donall set sail for Glasgow weeks ago, with the Maclnnesses. You know when…” He didn’t finish, not wanting to voice the reason Donall and Gavin had gone to Dunmuir Castle.
Too painful was the memory of watching his brother and Gavin ride through Baldoon’s gates, Lileas with them. Her shroud-wrapped body on a black-draped cart.
“Glasgow, eh?” Gerbert scratched his bristled cheek. “With your dead wife’s kinfolk?”
Iain waited.
Gerbert glanced at the MacKinnons. “If those men speak true, no MacInnes galley has sailed past their isle in a long while.”
“How long?”
“Many moons, they say.”
Iain’s nape prickled again and this time the chills slid down his spine. “There’s more. What is it?”
“You’d better speak with them.” Gerbert nodded toward their guests. “I only think it’s odd if, as they claim, they keep lookouts on their cliffs yet no one saw a MacInnes galley sailing to Glasgow.”
Iain frowned. Something bothered him. But nothing came, so he pulled on his beard, struggling to clear his mind.
Then he knew.
“The MacInnesses have to sail past MacKinnons’ Isle to reach the mainland.”
“So they do.” Gerbert nodded. “That’s what I dinnae like,” he said, then shuffled off about his business, leaving Iain to stare after him.
About the same time, but far from Baldoon’s great hall, Isolde stood in the cozy warmth of Devorgilla’s thick-walled cottage, and blinked at the small, black-garbed crone.
“A love potion?” Isolde dropped onto a chair. “That’s madness.”
“Pah!” Looking unconcerned, Devorgilla climbed onto a block of wood and reached to snap off a few sprigs of dried rosemary from one of the clusters of dried herbs hanging from the rafters.
“Dinnae fash yourself, lassie.” She glanced at Isolde as she stepped down. “I never said the potion was a love charm.”
“You did.”
“You need to listen better.” Devorgilla returned to her cauldron and dropped the rosemary into what smelled like fish stew. “I said I may have used a few of the wrong spelling goods.”
“Things to ignite passion and stir the heart is what you said,” Isolde reminded her.
“Is it now?” Devorgilla stirred her cook pot. “Your mind is sharper than mine. I forget things, I do.”
“No one in all Scotland would believe that.”
Not surprisingly, the crone chuckled.
Isolde frowned. She knew exactly what Devorgilla was doing…
Meddling as always.
Sure of it, Isolde leaned against the chair’s rough-hewn back. The cottage had an air of homey welcome she usually cherished. This visit was no different until Devorgilla confirmed her suspicions about the bitter-tasting tincture. Not an anti-attraction blend at all, but a love potion.
And with the crone’s admission, the cottage’s appeal had slipped right out the chimney hole along with the smoke rising from the cook fire.
And neither the earthy-sweet smell of burning peat, the tang of dried herbs, nor the tempting aroma of the simmering stew could fetch back the charm.
She’d had enough of charms.
“Oh, Devorgilla.” She sat up straighter, her head beginning to ache. “What have you done?”
“Eh?” Devoriglla cupped a hand behind her ear, pretending not to have heard her.
“I love him,” Isolde blurted, seeing no reason for denial. The crone knew anyway, she was sure.
“Is that so bad?” Devorgilla sounded gleeful.
“There is worse.” Isolde clasped her hands on her lap. “I’ve wantoned myself, do you hear me?”
The crone’s eyes twinkled. “Did you now?”
“I was wicked, overcome by passion.” Isolde frowned, annoyed by the old woman’s delight. “There is nothing amusing about it.”
“Did he hurt you? I wouldnae have thought it.”
“He didn’t hurt me at all.” Isolde felt her face coloring. “I enjoyed it. Craved his touch, and it is all your doing.”
“Mine?” Devorgilla lifted a straggly brow. “That man will no’ be needing amorous help from anyone. For sure, no’ from an old woman like me.”
“I meant the potion.”
Rather than answer, Devorgilla went to one of the windows, the long-handled ladle still in her hand.
“Did you see Lugh or Mab on your way here?” She stared out into the darkening night.
“The lad wanders ever farther of late, and Mab is too old to be about on wild and stormy nights,” she fretted. “It will rain soon.”
“I saw neither.” Isolde peered suspiciously at her. “I also saw no sign of rain.”
As if to mock her, thunder rumbled in the distance.
“I always have your best interests at heart.” Devorgilla returned to the cook fire and dipped the ladle into the cauldron. But when she glanced at Isolde, the look in her eye could only be called mischievous. “I took great care concocting just the potion you’d need.”
“Aye, one with ingredients to make me fall in love.” Isolde couldn’t believe it. “How could you?”
Devorgilla wagged a finger at her. “Nae potion in the world can do that, lassie. The heart has its own magic.”
“The MacLean is the last man I’d choose for myself.”
“You or your heart?” Devorgilla’s eyes twinkled mischief.
“Does it matter? I am doomed either way.”
“Pah!” Devorgilla went back to stirring her stew. “You should know I’d never do anything to hurt you. I’ll admit it is possible I mistook a spelling herb or two, but not with harmful intent.”
Isolde wanted to argue, but couldn’t. She did know the crone wouldn’t deliberately hurt her.
“’Tis my eyes.” Devorgilla set aside the ladle to rub her eyes. “I be old, lassie. Some might even call me ancient. My vision worsens by day.”
“You could see well enough to spot teensy bog violets when I went to you about getting a message to Balloch,” Isolde reminded her, grateful when Bodo hopped onto her lap.
“That wasnae my eyes. I’ve been gathering spelling goods out on the moor for ages.” Devorgilla chuckled. “I ken where to find them, could pluck them in my sleep.”
Isolde wrapped an arm around her dog, pulling him close, needing his soft weight against her. “I still think you tricked me,” she said, watching Devorgilla closely.
“He’s charmed you,” she said.
“Bodo?”
“The MacLean.” As if you didn’t know.
“Ah, well…” Devorgilla shook her head, and Isolde thought she saw her fight back a smile.
“You are fond of him.” Isolde dug her fingers into Bodo’s fur, seeking a hold on her world before it whirled from her grasp. “His bonnie looks have taken you in, and you’ve plotted to bring us together.”
“Now, lassie, it seems your memory is failing you. It wasnae my idea to rid yourself of Balloch MacArthur by getting a bairn off the MacLean,” Devorgilla said, filling two wooden cups with her special heather ale.
“I wasnae the one wanting charmed yarrow sprigs to put beneath my pillow on Beltane, hoping to catch a glimpse of my true love’s face. ”
Isolde’s fingers stilled on Bodo’s shoulders. “Are you saying Donall MacLean is the man you saw in your cauldron’s steam that same night?”
“Do you want him to be?”
Isolde waved aside the froth-capped cup of ale the crone offered her. “I wanted an alliance, an end to strife and woe,” she insisted. “Peace for this isle.”
Devorgilla set the cup in front of her. Resting her hands on the table, she leaned forward. “The gods often give us no’ what we want, but what we need.”
“I do not need the MacLean. He is an enemy laird.”
“As you are to him, aye.”
“Must you twist my words?” Isolde frowned at her.
Devorgilla smiled back. “I but speak the truth.”
“I find your truths disturbing.” More perturbed than she cared to admit, Isolde glanced out the cottage’s two square-cut windows at the gathering storm clouds.
They were racing in fast, just as Devorgilla had predicted.
Right as always.
A chill slid down Isolde’s spine.
“And lo,” Devorgilla went on, “most times we surprise ourselves by discovering that what we need is also what we most wanted but were too blind to see.”
That did it.
Isolde stood, causing Bodo to jump off her lap. “I should leave” she said, going to the door. “If I hurry, I’ll make it back before the storm breaks.”
Devorgilla followed her, and peered up at the darkening sky. “Och, the worst willnae start before you’re home.”
“Then all is well.” Isolde didn’t doubt her.
Not about the storm, anyway. She’d long suspected the crone could sway the weather – among too many other things.
“So it is,” Devorgilla agreed, closing her door as Isolde and Bodo set off for Dunmuir.
Her beloved home, and the night of passion awaiting her there.
“What we most want,” she mumbled when she stumbled over a stone.
Clutching her cloak against the wind, she hurried on. What she wanted was peace, nothing else. What she didn’t want, and a plague on Devorgilla, Evelina, and even the MacLean himself, was to go peeking into her heart.
She already knew what she’d find there.