Chapter 18 #2
Gillian shook her head slowly, fearful gaze fixed on Nicholas. “I don’t know. Someone pushed me.”
Fire sparked in Nicholas’s blood. “Who?”
She shook her head again. “I know not.”
Nicholas held out his hand to her. “Come here.”
She took his hand readily, and Philip dropped his arm so she could pass.
Nicholas wanted to crush her against him, bury his face in her wild tangle of sable hair, but she was obviously in pain.
With as much gentleness as he could muster, he slipped an arm behind her back and another under knees, and carried her into Kincreag, cradled in his arms.
Though everyone assured Gillian she was lucky to be alive, it didn’t feel so.
With the danger of death or attack from large birds of prey removed, she had time to ponder other matters.
And ponder them she did. Nicholas sat with her, holding her hand while Rose set her arm and cleaned all her cuts and scrapes, wrapping her left hand tightly to stop the fresh bleeding from the eagle talons. Gillian was one pulsing throb of pain.
In addition to Nicholas and Rose, Isobel and Sir Philip remained in her chambers.
They watched Nicholas with suspicion, as if they expected him to leap on her at any moment and do her injury.
There was one other occupant in Gillian’s chambers, one who caused her much consternation.
Tomas. He stood in a corner, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He never said a word.
Nicholas seemed disinclined to speak in front of Gillian’s family, and they were equally uncommunicative. As Gillian was too busy contemplating all that had happened, the uncomfortable silence drew out interminably until finally Nicholas stood.
He leaned over Gillian and whispered, “I’ll be back. Evan is interrogating the servants and men-at-arms. I want to check on his progress.” From the hard gleam in his black eyes, she surmised he intended to participate in the interrogations.
Gillian gave him a tight smile. He kissed her bandaged hand, promised to be quick, and left.
When he was gone, Rose and Isobel descended on her.
“Come home with us,” Rose urged, fiddling with Gillian’s arm sling. “The air of Glen Laire will help you mend.”
“I like the air here.”
“But you’re not safe,” Isobel said. “This is the fourth attempt on your life since you’ve married Lord Kincreag.”
“I know, and Nicholas is trying to protect me.”
Rose made a rude noise. “He’s not doing a very good job of it.”
“Is that why everyone is acting so strange toward him? He’s doing the best he can, truly. Getting pushed from the cliff is entirely my fault. I snuck out to the cliff path without his knowledge.”
Isobel and Rose exchanged a sober look. Isobel took Gillian’s hand. “Lord Kincreag was on the cliff path with you.”
Gillian shook her head. “No. That’s impossible.”
“It’s true,” Rose said. “He claims a servant told him where you were.”
“Then that’s what happened.”
Isobel’s lips compressed with worry. “The servant doesn’t exist, Gilly.”
Gillian looked at her sisters in disbelief. “You think Nicholas pushed me?”
They said nothing, but their eyes said it all.
“That’s absurd!” Gillian laughed, then grimaced when pain stabbed her side and arm.
“You’re both mad. He’s the one who found me!
It was his idea to use Broc. He kept searching when everyone else had given me up for dead.
” Indignant anger rose in her chest as she spoke.
“So stop these accusations now. I won’t have you treating him like a murderer. ”
Her sisters were stunned at her outburst. Rose averted her gaze but had that stubborn look about her. Gillian knew she’d not give up her suspicions so easily. Isobel stared down at her folded hands, abashed.
Gillian made herself sit up, clutching her arm to contain the pain. “You can discover the truth, Isobel. Touch his things. Go help him question the servants.” Isobel was a seer. When she touched objects, she often experienced visions about the owner.
Isobel licked her lips nervously. “I tried. I see nothing when I touch his things . . . some people are like that, they leave few impressions. And he refused to let me help with the interrogations.”
Gillian leaned back and let out a noisy breath. “Well, that doesn’t mean anything. He has forbidden me to use witchcraft.” When they said nothing to this, Gillian rushed on defensively, “He’s right, you know. People are dying for less than what we do. He’s only trying to protect all of us.”
They remained stubbornly silent.
Gillian’s shoulders sagged. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t think he can protect me from what wants me dead.” At her sisters’ alarmed expressions, she added, “It’s nothing flesh and blood. I think it’s the late countess.”
A tiny line appeared between Isobel’s pale brows. “Can a ghost do that?”
Gillian gestured to Tomas in the corner. “I don’t know how, but they can. Remember the doll? Something is moving it. And Tomas has protected me twice now.”
Isobel and Rose glanced at the corner uneasily. Rose leaned forward. “Is Tomas here now?”
“Who’s Tomas?” Isobel asked.
Gillian told them about meeting Tomas on the ledge.
“We must somehow exorcise Catriona’s ghost from Kincreag. Rose, you brought your spell books?”
“I brought a few. They might have something.” She frowned at Gillian. “Are you certain about this? Two of the attacks were done by flesh-and-blood men, not a ghost woman.”
Gillian’s mouth compressed. “I’ve thought of that, and I don’t have an answer yet. Maybe she’s aided by a malevolent male spirit.”
“Or maybe she can possess others,” Isobel suggested.
“Oh, that reminds me! Rose, go to my writing desk.” Gillian pointed with her bandaged hand. “Beneath the stone there is a piece of paper with strange writings on it. Do you recognize them?”
Rose returned to the bed, slanting blue eyes narrowed at the charred parchment. She shook her head slowly. “I’ve never seen this before. Very strange. This is what you wrote when you took the poppy juice?”
“Aye . . . though I don’t recall writing it at all. Something inhabited my body and forced me to write it. Tomas said it was a young lad. Probably the one who dropped the ballast on me. So aye, I suppose possession is possible.”
Her sisters’ expressions had gone from merely disturbed to frightened.
“What are we going to do?” Isobel asked, hands twisting in her lap. “How can we fight something we can’t even see?”
“I can see them now,” Gillian reminded them, “and with no pain. With a little magic, I’m sure the three of us can discover the truth and set things right.”
Rose raised her auburn brows. “What about Kincreag? What if he finds out we’re practicing witchcraft?”
“Don’t worry about Nicholas. He need never know . . . and if he finds out . . .” Gillian’s mouth flattened, her heart weighted with regret. “Well, I’ll deal with that if it happens.”
It was night when Nicholas returned to her.
She awakened to his low voice, sending Isobel away.
Gillian watched him in the dying firelight, muttering darkly as he undressed.
She admired the hard planes of his back, the way muscle molded over ribs and shoulders, sleek and honey-dark.
He slid into bed beside her. She slept on her back, a pillow beneath her broken arm.
Nicholas’s bare chest warmed the left side of her body.
His hand slid over her stomach to hold her, and his head tilted on the pillow beside her, his mouth resting against her shoulder.
He lay like that a long while, tension quivering from his body into hers.
“You’re vexed,” she whispered.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he admonished softly.
“That’s all I’ve been doing. I’m tired of resting. Why are you vexed?”
“Your brother-in-law has posted a Colquhoun clansman outside your bedchamber. Methinks he has little faith in my ability to take care of you.”
Gillian smiled at the petulance in his voice. “I have great faith in you.”
“Do you, Gillian? I seem to be doing a very poor job of it.”
“You brought me up from that ledge. You alone didn’t accept my death. I’m here now because of you.”
His arm tightened on her waist, and his head tilted up. He pressed his mouth against her ear and whispered, “I love you.”
Gillian’s heart stopped. Then thundered forward in her throat and ears. Sweeter words she’d never heard. “Nicholas . . .” Then she recalled the love philter and sighed, feverish pulse slowing. “That’s the love philter talking.”
He laughed softly. “It’s not.”
“It is.”
He took her earlobe between his teeth. Gillian instantly went limp, pleasure pricking deep.
“How can it be,” he whispered, “when I never drank it?”
Gillian didn’t move at all for several seconds; then she turned her head so fast they cracked noses. He jerked back with a grunt.
She rubbed her nose with a bandaged finger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it amused me that you believed in it with such a whole heart.” He chuckled softly. “There might be something to it yet. Broc is the true recipient of the love philter.”
Gillian let out a breath of disbelief, and then she laughed, too. “No wonder! But I didn’t burn his fur.”
“What?” He raised his head to gaze down at her in the shadowy light.
“In order to complete the spell I had to kiss you and burn your hair.”
He rubbed his head absently. “That’s why you ripped my hair out.” As he regarded her, his demeanor changed, grew serious. He propped himself up on an elbow.
Uneasy tension gathered in her middle. She recognized that look. She averted her eyes, staring into the dark above her.
“Why did you go on the cliff path, Gillian?”
She didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to talk about it, not now when everything was sweet between them.
“You were hunting ghosts, weren’t you?”
Gillian hesitated, then nodded, bracing herself for his displeasure.
“Bloody Christ, Gillian. I almost lost you, and for what? For rustic superstitions. You’re a countess now. Act like one and stop playing the village hag.”
Gillian stiffened. Village hag? “I know you don’t believe, but—”
He pushed up on his arm, leaning over her. Black hair slid over muscular shoulders, framing his unshaven face. He looked dark and devilish. “Damned right I don’t, and I’m weary of having this same discussion.”
“It’s never been a discussion, Nicholas. You just lecture and forbid.”
“That’s because talking to you is like talking to a cow. You just nod placidly, then do whatever the hell you please.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I never promised I wouldn’t do it.”
“Promise me now.”
“I can’t do that.”
His lips drew back in a growl, and his black eyes burned murderously. “So help me, Gillian, if you don’t promise me, I’ll—”
Though she quailed inside, she knew in her heart he’d never harm her, so she returned his stare, brows raised expectantly. “You’ll do what?”
“I’ll lock you up like I did my first wife—only this time to protect you from yourself.”
Her jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t.”
He lowered himself so their noses nearly touched, and his eyes narrowed maliciously. “Try me.”
He meant it. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. She glared back at him, angry now, too. “Sir Philip would never lock Isobel up.”
“Sir Philip hasn’t the bullocks of a sparrow when it comes to your sister. He’ll be a widower afore the year is out if he doesn’t grow a spine.”
If Gillian’s arm and hand hadn’t been in agony, she would have hit him. “You are a foul man.”
His lips curved into a dark smile. “I warned you, love, you should have married the Frenchman.” Then he kissed her forehead and settled himself beside her. “You’ve had your warning, wife. Next time there won’t be any lectures.”