Chapter 7 #3
Deidra swallowed and started to turn, to look up at her uncle, but Strathwick grasped her arms, bringing her gaze back to him. “Don’t look at him, sweetheart, look at me.”
“Uncle Drake said you’d be upset.”
Strathwick’s jaw hardened, and he exhaled hard through his nose. Rose could see he fought for control, not wanting to frighten Deidra.
“You know there is naught you could do that would upset me. Just tell me, love. You don’t keep secrets from me.”
Deidra bit her bottom lip, looking torn and woeful. Rose gave Drake a look of disgust. She wanted to geld him—had ever since Deidra had first said the words to her. But now, seeing the child so miserable, holding so much trust in the man who mistreated her, made Rose livid with rage.
Deidra gazed at her father with wide, unhappy eyes. “Uncle Drake said you have enough worries, that we should not add to them.”
Strathwick shot his brother a look of barely suppressed fury. “I am your father. I gladly shoulder all your worries.”
Deidra nodded hesitantly, then said, “I can hear the animals. They talk to me.”
The tension abruptly released from the set of Strathwick’s shoulders as he frowned at his daughter. Rose gave Drake a wary glance, but his gaze was fixed on brother and niece.
“What do you mean?” Strathwick asked gently.
“I’m a witch—just like you, but I can talk to animals.
See—” She turned to the hole in the wall.
Moireach’s entire head hung through the hole now, but she promptly pulled back.
Her hoofbeats could be heard around the side of the cottage until she appeared in the ruined doorway and stepped delicately inside.
She came to Deidra and nuzzled her head.
“She wants an apple,” Deidra said, smiling. “Watch.” Deidra said nothing to the horse, but Moireach turned and walked over to Strathwick’s bag and pulled at it with her lips and teeth.
“She’ll tear it,” Deidra said. “She can’t untie things with hooves.”
Drake walked over to the bag and untied it. Moireach buried her nose in it and came out munching an apple. When she finished, she lowered her head back to the bag, then stopped and walked away, going to the horse’s end of the cottage, where she stood expectantly, tail swishing.
Everyone turned to stare at Deidra. She said, “I told her she could only have one.” She looked up at her father hopefully. “Are you very angry?”
Strathwick let out a nervous and clearly fake laugh.
“Of course not. I think that is a splendid trick.” He grew serious and intense.
He gripped Deidra’s shoulders again. “Uncle Drake has the right of it, though. We should keep it a secret—just not from me. We’ll talk more about this when I’ve had time to think on it, aye? ”
He stood, gazing about the cottage, thoroughly confounded.
Rose knelt in front of Deidra. “This was your secret?”
Deidra nodded.
“And it was nothing else?”
Deidra shook her head. Rose’s stomach dropped sickeningly. Drake’s shadow fell over her in the moonlight, threatening and furious.
“What did you think it was?” Drake asked, his tone scathing. “Because it sounded vile to me.”
Rose flushed, confused and embarrassed. “I made a mistake…I’m so sorry…forgive me.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear the revulsion she’d see in his face. She pivoted and stood, trying to move away, but he caught her arm roughly and turned her to face him.
“No—you’ve dishonored me to my family and it was just a ‘mistake’? I think not! I’ve done naught to deserve this. For God’s sake, why would you accuse me of such a thing?”
Rose could not tell them why, and it sickened her and humiliated her.
She wanted it to all go away. Her palms were damp with clammy sweat; it trickled between her breasts.
Why had she opened her mouth? Why had she not handled it better?
And why, oh why had she assumed such a thing?
An image of Fagan MacLean flashed through her head, leering at her in his beard, throwing back his plaid.
She gritted her teeth and forced the image away.
She knew why, and she would not share that.
She looked wildly at Strathwick, pleading silently for intervention, but he still frowned at his daughter, looking befuddled and a bit ill himself.
Drake shook Rose. “Answer me!”
Rose yanked her arm away from Drake’s punishing hold. “I made a mistake and I apologized! Leave me alone!”
Drake’s brow lowered and he stepped toward her again, but Strathwick put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him. “Leave her! Wallace must be tended.” He looked angry again. He leaned close to his brother. “You and I will talk later. Take Deidra.”
Drake gave Rose a final, baleful glare and left, pulling a wide-eyed Deidra along with him. Strathwick sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Rose waited for him to demand that she explain why she thought Drake had done something so horrible to his daughter, but he didn’t.
He knelt in front of Wallace and gestured to her. “Come here.”
On watery legs, Rose did as he bid. She wanted to curl into a ball and shut it all out, but she couldn’t. Work was the next best thing.
“How are you?” Rose asked Wallace, embarrassed that he’d witnessed her outburst, horrified she’d completely forgotten him in the midst of her stupidity.
He gave her a tight grin. “Fine.”
Strathwick touched her arm. “You told me before you only see the colors. That you cannot feel them.”
“That’s right.”
He placed a hand on Wallace’s shoulder. “A moment of indulgence, friend?”
“Of course,” Wallace said, though pain had etched lines beside his mouth and the scar on his cheek was dark.
Strathwick gestured to the wound on Wallace’s side. “Tell me what you see here.”
Rose took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes, summoning the magic.
It took a moment to focus, but she welcomed the distraction and the opportunity to forget, for at least a brief moment, what had just happened.
She opened her eyes and passed one hand over the wound.
“I see gold…that’s his color. But at the wound site there are black and burgundy streaks—I always see that on this type of wound.
There are also splotches of gray. Normally, I would clean the wound until those splotches faded, then sew it up. ”
“Good. That is also what I see. But I want you to try something new.” He placed his hand over hers. “The magic isn’t here, but here.” He tapped her breastbone.
“Your hands are just the instruments.”
Rose nodded. She took a deep breath, trying to assimilate Strathwick’s instructions into something that she could understand.
It was true that she felt the magic in her chest and gut, not her hands.
But she never saw the auras around others unless her hands hovered over them, so she’d assumed her hands did the magic.
“Close your eyes and see it,” Strathwick instructed.
She clenched her hands in fists and did as he bid, closing her eyes and trying to envision the magic inside her.
“It’s a dark blue,” Strathwick said softly. “And it pulses with life. See it as such, a throbbing cloud in your chest.”
Rose imagined it, a pulsing, shimmering ball of midnight blue.
“It’s all in your mind. It’s yours to command if you wish. Now shift it, send it up, to your shoulders, down your arms—”
Rose gasped. She’d done just as he said and felt something warm and tingling rush down her arms. Her eyes sprang open, and she gazed at Strathwick warily.
He stared back at her, his face grim. “You feel it, don’t you?”
She nodded, speechless with disbelief and wonder. He was teaching her, yet he didn’t seem pleased.
“Now don’t lose it.” He nodded to Wallace’s wound again. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Very well.” The magic inside her pulsed in her breast, stronger now than it had ever been before, twisting and turning on itself, eager for an outlet.
“Send it to your hands,” Strathwick said, as if he could see it in her mind.
Again, Rose imagined it moving down her arms, and she felt the corresponding tingle and warm rush down to her fingers.
“Now feel it.”
Rose placed her hands just over Wallace’s wound. She saw the sharp black and burgundy streaks again.
“Stop looking and start feeling,” Strathwick urged.
Rose bit her lip and willed her hands to feel something. She was startled by Strathwick’s hands over hers, his fingers sliding between hers and holding her lightly. His hands glowed sapphire blue all around hers. She felt a deep throb up her arms.
“Do you feel it?”
Rose nodded. Wallace’s pain radiated up through her palm like heat from a fire, washing over her in pricks and aches. Rose resisted the urge to flinch away from it. Strathwick released her hand, but when she would have drawn back, he said, “No. Place your hands over mine.”
She slid her hands over his, her fingers curling gently between his. Her hands were so pale and delicate next to his large ones.
He turned his head toward her, his face so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. She looked at him, waiting, her breath short with the mingled excitement of what they were doing.
“Are you ready?”
“Aye.”
He turned his head away and Rose focused on their hands.
He placed them over Wallace’s wound. She felt the slick blood on the backs of her fingers where she held onto Strathwick’s hands.
She gasped when she saw it, so different from what she’d been imagining.
The sapphire blue washed down his arms like a dam breaking, pouring over her hands.
Power flowed through her fingers and palms, sending energy and warmth up her arms. His magic surrounded the dark, angry colors of Wallace’s wound.
Then she felt a change in his magic, like a line being reeled in, and it washed back over her, taking the pain with it.
It was over quickly. Rose struggled to catch her breath, the strength of his power leaving her breathless and stunned.
A faint blue glow lingered around their hands when Strathwick pulled away.
Rose disentangled her fingers from his. Blood stained their hands and Wallace’s skin, but when Strathwick used the discarded shirt to wipe Wallace’s side, it was clear, the wound gone.
Only a slight redness remained as proof anything had once been there.
Wallace moved gingerly at first, then leaned forward, gaping down at his midsection. “A saint, you are. This is twice you’ve healed me. How can I ever repay you?”
Strathwick stood, grimacing as he did, his hand over his ribs. “You repay me tenfold with your loyalty and friendship.” He walked stiffly to the cottage wall and sank down against it. Wallace fussed around him, bringing a plaid and food, wanting to know what else he could do.
“A fire,” Strathwick said, and Wallace was gone, off to gather what kindling could be found on the moor.
Rose knelt beside Strathwick. “When the fire is built, I’ll make you a physik for the pain and to help you sleep.”
“That would be fine.”
Rose stayed with him, unable to make herself move.
He had shown her something wondrous on this night, something only she could see because of her magic.
She felt bound to him somehow and was confused by it, wondering if he felt this new connection or if it was just her.
The wind blew across them and she shivered, then noticed his hair.
He kept it short and neat, like a warrior’s.
She’d just been admiring it the night before, and so she noticed the change.
She touched a lock at his temple. He drew back slightly, but when her fingers followed, he let her touch him.
“This wasn’t all gray yesterday. And now it is.” She fingered it a moment more, perhaps longer than necessary. She dropped her hand and gazed at him. He returned her look, solemn and silent. She whispered, “You are a saint.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“How can you say that? You perform miracles.”
His mouth twisted bitterly. He gripped her wrist suddenly, tightly, and pulled it up between them. “Miracle, you say? What would you say if you knew the danger you were in right now? If you knew how I could hurt you with a single touch.”
She looked into his eyes, then put her other hand over his, where it gripped her wrist. “Your touch does not hurt me.”
His gaze moved over her face, to her mouth, and Rose’s heart sped, wondering if he would kiss her. Hoping he would.
But he only dropped his hand and turned his face away, shutting her out.