Chapter 6 #3
Deidra scrambled up, taking Rose’s hand eagerly.
Rose settled Deidra between her legs, then set her wooden box between Deidra’s.
William watched, puzzled, as Rose painstakingly showed Deidra everything in the box—herbs, needles, probes, and many other interesting little things.
He didn’t know what to make of Rose’s sudden interest in his daughter.
On the one hand, he was pleased—Deidra clearly enjoyed it.
She examined the items in the box as if it were a treasure chest, asking questions, eyes widening with awe over some unfamiliar instrument.
But eventually her lids grew too heavy, and she fell asleep against her new friend’s chest.
Rose then lay down, pulling Deidra down beside her and covering them both with a plaid.
William watched all this with a sort of painful uneasiness.
Rose was a woman, after all, and it made sense she wanted to take care of Deidra.
Besides, she seemed so very comfortable with it, and Deidra obviously liked Rose.
Yet it bothered William inexplicably. He felt he should not allow it.
What if Deidra became attached? Grew accustomed to Rose?
But he hadn’t a clue what to do about it, or even if he should do anything.
William doused the fire and took the first watch.
As the moon rose, he sat back against a stone and, for the first time that day, let himself think about Ailis and her mother.
Somehow he’d known such a day would come.
He’d done too many terrible things, and no amount of good could take it all back.
Was it God’s voice screaming at him in the dirt?
Throwing pitch on the stoned bodies of the child he’d touched and the woman who’d allowed it?
Was it God’s judgement on him? For it couldn’t be judgement on Ailis.
She was but a child. He lowered his head to his hands but quickly straightened.
He could not indulge in melancholy when he had a watch to keep.
He gazed at his companions sleeping around him, at his daughter nestled safely against Rose.
A shadow seemed to pass over him, a responsibility unwanted, and yet darkly alluring.
What was Rose? She could not heal as he could, but she saw the colors.
He’d seen the colors for years before he’d healed anyone, and he’d discovered that accidentally when he was thirteen.
Could it be she hadn’t discovered her true magic yet?
He rubbed his eyes wearily with a self-deprecating groan. And would he be the one to show her? Open a whole world of misery to her? Of course he would not. This was his hell, to suffer alone. He would condemn no one else to it.
A soft moan made him straighten. Rose thrashed about beneath the plaid. William quickly crossed the short distance between them, shaking her gently awake before she disturbed Deidra.
Her eyes opened, wide and terrified.
“Quiet—you’ll wake the others,” William whispered.
She swallowed several times, then nodded, fear fading to confusion then to embarrassment.
William sat on his heels, staring down at her charmingly mussed state.
Wisps of hair had come loose from her braid to float about her head on the breeze.
The right side of her face was flushed and lined from sleeping on her hand.
His gaze seemed to disconcert her. She patted at her hair, then sat up, adjusting her bodice and kirtle, and glancing at him warily.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she said.
“I wasn’t asleep. I was keeping watch.”
“Oh. Well, I’m awake now, I’ll keep watch so you can sleep.”
He waved the offer away. Considering the hour, it seemed inappropriate for him to remain beside her, but he was reluctant to return to his stone. “You had a nightmare?”
She grew still, gazing back at him, then gave a curt nod.
“Do you want to tell me?”
Her brows shot upward. “Surely you can’t be interested.”
“I am interested. I have very strange dreams. I even write them down sometimes, so I don’t forget.”
She blinked at him, her mouth softening slightly in surprise. “Really? I don’t want to remember mine.”
He lifted a shoulder and sighed. “Then don’t tell me.”
He moved back to the stone and she followed, rather than lying back down.
This pleased him absurdly. She settled down opposite him, crossing her legs and smoothing her kirtle over them, tucking the edges beneath her knees and feet.
She glanced around at the others, then leaned toward him and whispered, “Tell me about one of your dreams.”
He settled back against the stone and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why should I tell you one of mine when you will not tell me one of yours?”
“Because mine are nightmares. You said yours were dreams, and those are not so terrible to recollect.”
A smile pulled at his mouth from her logic. “Have you only nightmares, Rose? No dreams?”
Her dark lashes lowered thoughtfully, and when she raised them again, he could see a memory there. “Aye, there is a dream I have sometimes. It’s silly, or though it will seem to someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Aye, a great healer.”
He snorted softly at her praise. Great healer. If she only knew. But she would never know. “Tell me anyway. I vow I will not laugh.”
She took a deep breath, her gaze unfocused in recollection.
“Very well. It never starts the same. I will be dreaming of what I did that day. Some healing—setting a bone, stitching a wound—then someone yells at me to stop, that I’m doing it wrong.
When I turn to look at the person, it’s me.
” She frowned, her gaze far away. “The dreams change then. The patient is gone and I am swimming. This is where they are all the same. It’s raining, and I am in a great, dark body of water.
” Her voice grew hush, her brow furrowed.
“There is something beneath the water, something I’m afraid of.
I cannot see land, so I just swim and swim.
” She swallowed convulsively and licked her lips before continuing.
“Sometimes I go under, and I’m drowning, but there’s no pain.
I float downward, my arms out.” Her arms opened as if to embrace someone.
Then her gaze cleared and fixed on him. She lowered her arms. “And that’s it. ”
“That sounds like a nightmare to me. The second part at least.”
She gave him a small, humorless smile. “Not really. At least, not compared to my other dreams.” Her mouth curved a bit more, into something genuine. “You have to tell me one of yours now.”
“Very well. But remember, I never said they made sense.”
He couldn’t believe he sat in the moonlight talking to this woman about dreams. He’d only spoken to his daughter of dreams, and only then some of the more fantastic ones that he thought she might find entertaining.
It was an unusual experience, whispering in the dark with Rose, at once utterly right and terribly wrong.
“I recently dreamed I was a boy again. I was at Strathwick, but it was different. It was filthy and run-down. The well was fouled. Everyone was gone, even the animals. I saw feathers and dung but no living thing. I searched all over the castle but couldn’t find a soul.
” He paused, trying to translate the elusive images of the dream into words.
“I was standing in the courtyard when it suddenly occurred to me to look up.” He tilted his head back, blind to the starlit sky, still looking within.
“There, coiled all along the battlements, was an enormous serpent. It drew back its head and hissed at me.”
He returned his gaze to Rose, who leaned forward, eyes wide and lips parted.
“I couldn’t move at first,” he continued.
“It swayed toward me—its head did, that is—as if it wanted to eat me, but I just stood there, staring at it. Then Deidra ran by—I know not where she came from, as I vow the castle was deserted when I searched it before. I tried to yell, to warn her, but I couldn’t speak.
The serpent saw her and moved as if to strike.
I was finally able to move, so I reached for my sword, but when I drew it, it was not a sword but a goose. ”
He leaned back against the stone, signaling the dream’s end, and looked at her expectantly.
She’d been watching him with wide, rapt eyes, and when he fell silent, she blinked. “That’s all? You don’t know what happened to Deidra?”
He shook his head. “I woke up.”
“That is very strange.” Then she covered her mouth and laughed softly. “Your sword was a goose? How did it fit in the scabbard?”
He laughed, too, and shrugged. “I know not. And it was a large goose.”
“Cooked or alive?”
“Alive and honking.”
Rose felt as if she were dreaming now, sitting in the dark, laughing with the wizard of Strathwick.
He was an exceedingly handsome man when he laughed—when he made her laugh.
She had not felt so lighthearted in months.
When was the last time she’d forgotten, for just a moment, her father and his illness?
But Strathwick made her forget all that and made her recall, all too vividly, how he’d kissed her.
She bent her knees beneath her kirtle, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. She bit her lip thoughtfully. “May I ask you a question?”
“Aye.”
“Why did you pretend to be a groom?”
He leaned his head back and gazed up at the sky, his lips still curved in a slight smile that made her heart flutter and race.
“You’re not going to let me forget about that, are you?
” He sighed. “Very well. More than once someone has attempted to kill me. I have guards, but if I’m severely wounded, there is little I can do.
Drake and the others will fight, of course, but if they’re also hurt, I cannot help anyone until I am better.
So it only makes sense. An assassin will strike their intended target—me, or the person they think is me.
If Drake is hurt, I subdue the assassin and am still able to heal Drake. ”
“What if someone were to kill Drake? Surely you cannot raise the dead.”
His expression sobered, his jaw tightening. “No, I cannot. There is always that possibility. This is our best chance.” When she didn’t respond, Strathwick gazed steadily at her. “Does that answer your question?”
“No. Not at all.”
He raised a brow with mild, mocking surprise. “Then I suppose I don’t understand the question.”
Rose gripped her legs harder. “I was not even in the castle. A threat to no one, sitting wet outside your walls. And no one but you was present, alone and unguarded. Why did you come out in the rain alone, pretending to be a groom?”
He’d looked away from her halfway through her speech, staring off to his right with unusual intensity.
“My lord?”
“I know not.” He paused, then said, his words somewhat more hesitant than before, “I had to see the author of the letters, I suppose.”
And now that he’d seen her, what did he think, beyond that she was “bonny”?
She wanted to ask him that but could not.
She lowered her chin so her mouth pressed against her knees, and she stared at the ground, acutely aware of the sudden silence between them.
She supposed she knew what he thought. The kiss said it all.
A man with honorable intentions did not kiss a woman like that without stating those intentions.
Strathwick had stated nothing but that he found her bonny.
He wanted to bed her, and God help her, but her body wanted to let him.
Even now she trembled, sitting this close to him in the dark, being the recipient of his smiles and laughter.
Stop it! She was being foolishly hopeful again, seeing castles in the air where there were only dunghills.
After a time she chanced looking at him again. He still contemplated the darkness, his mouth flat, jaw hard. The soft wind stirred his hair, so black it melted into the night, except for the silver, dull and indistinct in the darkness. He seemed so alone that her heart ached.
“You should sleep, my lord,” she whispered. “You’ve kept watch long enough. I will finish out the night.”
He shook his head. “Nay, I could not sleep now.”
She hesitated, knowing sleep would elude her as well.
But he did not look at her; he’d forgotten she was there.
She returned to the bed she’d made for herself and Deidra, and curled beneath the plaid.
Sleep did not come, but she did not return to his side, though he sat through the night, unmoving in the moonlight.
She wanted to go to him, to talk to him and see him laugh again, but he made her uneasy.
She made herself uneasy. Who was this man who dreamed of empty castles surrounded by serpents?
She wanted to know him, far more than was wise for a woman betrothed.