Chapter 19
Gillian sat on the window seat with Tomas and Stephen.
The latter was much improved, though still weak from the poisoning.
According to Rose he’d not ingested enough to cause himself any permanent damage.
Today they all gathered in the west solar.
Isobel sat before the dollhouse, touching everything in it.
Rose was in her chambers, researching exorcisms. Sir Philip and his men loitered about, guarding Gillian and keeping the servants away.
Evan was there, too, but he respectfully kept a distance.
It was for this reason that Gillian and her sisters were forced to apply much subterfuge.
When Gillian conversed with Tomas, another person was always present so it appeared that Gillian spoke to that person rather than to nothing at all.
Stephen served well in this capacity. His garrulous nature made it easy for him to contribute to a conversation even when he was privy to only one side of it.
And since Isobel couldn’t go about touching things and having visions in front of Sir Evan, they had decided the dollhouse was the perfect place for her to start.
When sitting behind it, she was completely hidden from the knight’s sight.
“Have you had any luck contacting Catriona?” Gillian asked Tomas.
He shook his head. He looked the same as he had on the ledge, the same as he always did in his green-and-red plaid, his auburn hair a bit too long. “She’s here. I feel her, but that is all I ken.”
“Where can I find more spirits?” He’d already directed her to two ghosts, but neither of them had proved helpful.
Both were like Aileen, oblivious to aught but some endless task that engaged them.
Gillian suspected these were not true ghosts, not like Tomas and Catriona.
They were shades of their former selves, an imprint left behind.
To Gillian, Tomas was as real as she was, able to think and reason and feel.
She suspected his was a lost soul, somehow left behind.
It pained her that she could do no more for him than ease his loneliness.
Tomas leaned back against the wall thoughtfully, arms crossed over his chest. “There’s a man in the gatehouse, but he’s utterly mad.
He screams at me when I try to talk to him, and sometimes he runs, sometimes he tries to attack me.
And then that wee lad, there.” He nodded to the dollhouse. “I see him about sometimes.”
Gillian startled. A small boy stood behind Isobel, watching her.
He couldn’t be more than two or three years old.
His hair was thick and black, and he wore a white child’s gown.
Gillian stood, her heart trembling. Could it be .
. .? She took several hesitant steps forward, and the boy looked at her over his shoulder.
Enormous black eyes stared out from a dusky face. He looked just like his father.
“Malcolm?” Gillian said softly. Her heart swelled just looking at the boy, so small, so sweet.
He only stared at her solemnly.
“Good day, Malcolm.” Gillian approached the spectral boy slowly. She didn’t want to frighten him away. “Do you live here?”
He turned back to the dollhouse and darted to it, moving right through Isobel to climb onto the table. His dark feet were bare, small and rounded with baby fat. He snatched the blond doll from the tiny bed, leapt to the floor, and dashed away.
Sir Evan came forward, eyes narrowed. “Who are you talking to?”
“My sister,” Gillian lied smoothly.
“But you said Malcolm.”
Isobel stood from her stool and frowned at the knight. “No, she said malcontent. Whoever wants her dead is surely malcontented, and we must find him.”
Sir Evan’s brows drew together as he stared at the two of them. He opened his mouth as if to ask another question, then just shook his head and returned to his post across the room. No doubt he was in complete agreement with Nicholas on the state of Gillian’s mind. Dotty.
She knelt behind Isobel’s chair, careful of her broken arm, and whispered, “I saw Nicholas’s son just now. He’s the one who has been taking the doll.”
Isobel’s gaze went to the tiny bed, her eyes nearly popping when she saw that the blond doll had vanished.
“But why?”
“Catriona was his mother. I thought the doll was some kind of warning, a spirit trying to tell me Catriona’s ghost meant me ill.
But it’s not at all what I’d thought. He must be playing, putting his mother where he thinks she belongs.
Nicholas said he never played with the dollhouse because she and one of her lovers were always working on it.
Perhaps it draws him now because it reminds him of her. ”
Isobel let out a breath. “Well, I’ve seen a great deal of her in this house. Many vile things are associated with it, but I don’t see you, Gilly. Or Lord Kincreag, or anyone else alive now.”
Gillian peered up at her sister quizzically. “Why would you be looking for Nicholas?”
Isobel’s eyes slid to the side, and her lips parted hesitantly. “I . . . I . . .”
“You still think it was him, don’t you?” Gillian stood abruptly, clutching her bad arm with her good to protect it. Her hand tightened to a fist. “He did not push me. Why won’t you believe that?”
Isobel wouldn’t look at her. “I just think you’d be safer at Lochlaire. For now.”
“He loves me, Isobel.”
Her sister’s sage eyes finally turned to gaze up at her. “But he would lock you up for what you are. You are a witch. If he doesn’t love that, he doesn’t love you.”
Gillian sank back to the ground beside her sister, her anger deflated by Isobel’s honest words. She wanted to discount them, to argue that he didn’t believe in such things and so that wasn’t the same thing as not loving her. But then, if he didn’t believe in her, how could he love her?
The questioning of the servants and men-at-arms proved futile.
No one knew anything. Evan was in agreement with Nicholas now that the attempts on Gillian’s life were related, but currently their investigation was at a standstill.
All he could do was guard her diligently and wait for the next attack.
To that end he spent as much time with his wife as possible.
When it wasn’t possible, Evan was with her.
In addition to Nicholas’s precautions, Philip and his clansmen were a constant presence, hovering around the edges of Gillian and her sisters.
Nicholas knew they were up to something.
Gillian’s attitude had grown chill toward him since his threat to lock her up.
He didn’t regret the threat, only the necessity of it.
She could be angry with him as long as she wanted.
At least she was alive. Every time he looked at her, his heart relived the nightmare of losing her all over again.
He’d rather her stare icicles at him than not have her at all.
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His thoughts were often disquieting of late, distracting him from other matters. He set his documents aside and poured himself some whisky. Before he could take a drink, however, he was interrupted by a knock on his door.
“Aye?”
Evan stepped in. His gaze went to the cup in Nicholas’s hand, and he hesitated.
“What is it?” Nicholas set the cup aside.
“It’s Lady Kincreag, my lord. I think you’d better come with me.”
When the knight’s steps led to the cliff path, rage began to simmer in Nicholas’s veins.
His hands clenched into fists. He would throttle her for coming back here.
And then he would throttle her sisters and Sir Philip for allowing her to.
Dusk had fallen and a light fog swirled, obscuring the objects around them but not hiding them.
He saw them on the path ahead, rising out of the fog.
Three cloaked women holding hands, forming a circle.
Three slender candles intersected their joined hands.
They chanted, their voices low, thrumming through him.
Sir Philip and his men stood around them, allowing this dangerous absurdity to take place.
The wind picked up, shrieking around them like a lost soul. Nicholas pushed past the men and grabbed Gillian’s wrist, breaking the circle. The candle fell to the path and extinguished. She blinked up at him, dazed, as if she’d been in a trance.
He didn’t say a word to her. Fury throbbed behind his eyes, nearly blinding him. He was beyond words. He dragged her down the path. She stumbled along after him. In the garden she dug in her heels.
“Stop, Nicholas! You’ve ruined it. Now we have to start over.”
He picked her up around the waist and carried her.
“Nicholas!” She pushed at his arm with her good hand but quickly went limp. He smiled grimly, pleased she understood there was no use in fighting this. He took her back to his privy chambers and shut the door; then he locked it to keep her meddling family out.
He set her on her feet. Red blotched her skin from hairline to chest. “How could you?” she hissed.
Now that he had her alone and safe, some of his blind fury dissipated, and the furious beating of his heart slowed. “I told you what would happen.”
“So I’m your prisoner now?” She rushed for the door, but he caught her shoulders.
He gave her a small shake. “I’m trying to keep you safe, with absolutely no help from you or your family.”
“They are helping me.”
“By taking you back out to the cliff where you nearly died?” He released her abruptly and backed away, the need to shake sense into her so great that he feared he would further injure her arm.
“No! By helping me exorcise the spirit of Catriona.”
He rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair, wishing she wouldn’t say these things. “Are you insane?”
She threw her hand up into the air as if he was the unreasonable one. “I’m trying to stay alive. You can’t protect me because you refuse to see who truly threatens me.”
“My dead wife? Bloody Christ, Gillian, stop it!” She tried to speak again, and his temper flared hotter. “Stop it! I can’t listen to any more of this rot.” He needed a drink before his head exploded. Gillian glared at him, white-lipped, left arm ramrod straight and fisted at her side.
He crossed to his desk, where the cup of whisky he’d poured earlier rested. He lifted it to his lips, then paused, peering into the cup.
“What the hell is this?”
A tiny doll floated on the surface of the whisky. He fished it out and dangled it in front of his face, scowling at it. “What is this? One of your charms?”
Gillian’s expression of tight rage faltered, her eyes widening on the doll. “That’s why he took the doll.”
Nicholas crossed to the fireplace and tossed the whisky in it. The fire blazed up. “Who?”
When Gillian didn’t answer, he turned to look at her. She looked tormented, her brows drawn up, white teeth worrying her bottom lip.
“Who?” he repeated, inspecting the wet doll with new interest. It had flax for hair and wore fine velvet clothes, ruined now from the whisky. It must have been part of the dollhouse in the west wing.
Gillian lifted her shoulders and turned away from him. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
Nicholas closed his eyes, his head dropping forward as the irritation welled up inside. “Oh God. Let me guess. A ghost put it there? Kincreag’s ghosts have nothing better to do than drop dolls in my whisky?”
“Malcolm doesn’t.”
Her soft words hit him like an ax and buried in his chest. His son was condemned to wander endlessly though Kincreag, trying to get Nicholas’s attention by dropping dolls in his whisky?
It was absurd. And it was cruel. His hand fisted around the tiny doll.
He’d been as patient as he could be with all the other ghost nonsense she prattled on about, but this was too much.
He flung the horrid thing away from him.
It bounced off the wall and skittered beneath a cabinet.
Gillian turned, her gaze darting from the cabinet back to him.
“You’ve gone too far, Gillian. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, or if you really think these things are happening, but I won’t listen to another word. Do you understand?”
He expected an argument and prepared himself for it. But she didn’t argue. Her large gray eyes regarded him with sadness and resignation. Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath. Then she crossed to the door.
“I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not. I warned you. You’ll be confined to your chambers until you can promise me—”
“No, Nicholas. I’m leaving Kincreag. I’m going to Lochlaire.”
Her words brought him up short. “I won’t let you.”
“My father is dying. You would keep me from him?”
And that easily, she trapped him. A vise closed on his heart as he stared at her. “I’ll go with you.” The anger drained from his voice, making it sound hollow to his ears.
“I think it best I go alone—with my sisters, of course. Sir Philip and his men will escort and protect me.”
Nicholas rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Gillian, wait . . .”
The door closed behind her, shutting him out.