Chapter 14
Fergus had not yet returned, not that Philip had expected him, but still, it was inconvenient. He left instructions for Fergus to follow when he arrived at Sgor Dubh, then Philip sought out Isobel and Stephen.
He found them in the great hall breaking their fast. He carefully avoided meeting Isobel’s gaze. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Isobel looked up at him with a wide smile. “I told Stephen where we’re going.”
Philip looked quickly around the hall, relieved no one was nearby. “Have you told anyone else?”
“Of course not.”
“Could anyone have overheard you?”
She looked around, confused. “No.”
“Good. Speak of it no more. Do you understand?”
She frowned at him, but said, “Aye, but why?”
Philip shook his head in disbelief. Would she never understand? “So the Kilpatricks dinna decide to use you for kindling in their May Day bonfire, that’s why. Christ, woman—think!”
Isobel looked at Stephen helplessly. “But it’s good tidings for your family.”
Stephen nodded, speaking around a mouthful of bread. “She has the right of it, Philip. A white witch, she is. White witches are not burned.”
Philip cuffed the back of the lad’s head.
“Of course they are—as soon as someone perceives something they’ve done as evil—or as soon as someone dies, folks suddenly recall how that white witch once happened to touch or look at the deceased.
It doesna matter what good deeds they’ve done in the past when a scapegoat is needed.
Now leave off with all this talk of witches.
I dinna want to hear either of you say that word again. ”
They both nodded, though Isobel clearly thought him unreasonable. It would drive him mad, leaving her with Kincreag. She would be strapped to a stake and lit like a candle in a sennight.
He mustn’t think of it. Not his place.
They set out, heading northwest. The pink heugh daisies and lus an rois of the coast gave way to violets and heather blanketing the ground in a soft carpet that muffled the horses’ progress.
But the terrain would grow difficult soon, as Lochlaire was nestled in a glen surrounded on all sides by mountains.
He wondered how long it would take Isobel to notice they were heading deeper into the Highlands, rather than southeast, where the town of her vision lay.
It seemed luck was with him and her sense of direction was poor—that or Stephen’s incessant chatter kept her from noticing.
To give her a reprieve, Philip and Stephen took turns riding ahead to scout out their route.
There were a lot of broken men wandering the western Highlands.
The gray he’d fetched from Sgor Dubh as a wedding gift was high-strung and still nervous around Isobel, so they had to be kept apart—the gray had a nasty habit of biting anything that annoyed him. Philip hoped the horse found the earl highly irritating.
When they stopped to rest the horses and eat, Stephen took him aside.
“We’re not going to Wyndyburgh are we?”
“Aye, we are. Right after we deliver Isobel to her father.”
Stephen glanced over to where Isobel knelt beside a burn, washing her face. “She will be vexed. She thinks she’s going with us.”
Philip shrugged. “Not my problem.”
Stephen looked back at Philip speculatively. “You seem…discontented of late.”
“Do I? Well, I’m not,” Philip answered sourly.
Stephen made a few thoughtful noises, but wisely said no more.
Philip tried not think of his cowardly behavior.
Isobel would be upset when she found out he was not taking her to Wyndyburgh with him, but it couldn’t be helped.
He was not strong enough to withstand her entreaties to join him.
He knew that if she kept at him, he’d eventually give in and he’d be forced to spend even more time in her company, which would be disastrous for both of them. No, it was better this way.
When they were traveling again, and Stephen was scouting ahead, gray in tow, Isobel made an effort to engage Philip in conversation.
He’d been quiet most of the day, thinking it better to have as little contact with her as possible.
The situation had somehow gotten away from him, and he didn’t like that.
He liked being in control of things, but she set him off-balance.
“Tell me about some of the people you’ve located,” she said. “You must have some very interesting stories.”
“I canna speak of most.”
She raised her brows. “Really? Were you sworn to silence?”
“Something like that.”
She seemed to be thinking on that, so he said, “I would do the same for you—take a vow of silence that is, about all I’ve seen you do.”
She smiled, turning the full force of her pleasure on him. “Would you?”
“Aye, if you would do the same. Vow to never speak of it. Never to exercise it in the presence of others. To rarely take your gloves off.”
Her smile faded, and she looked away from him. She did not make any vows.
“Mistress MacDonell? I pray you to consider it.”
“It’s Mistress MacDonell now?” she hissed at him, pinning him with a green stare. “After last night I’d think we were more familiar.”
“We should not be so familiar, and you know it. Last night is something else we must both take a vow of silence about.”
She looked at him steadily, proudly. “I can vow never to speak of it—but I’ll never vow not to think of it.”
Heat washed through him at her words and her look. Bloody hell, but life was cruel. Now he could imagine her in her marriage bed with Kincreag, but thinking of him. He shut his eyes to force away the image that provoked.
He sighed deeply. “You’ll never learn to stop playing with fire, will you?”
A slow smile spread over her face. “Maybe I like getting burned.”
Philip shook his head. “That is not amusing.” He was thinking of bonfires, of course, but she just continued to smile impishly at him.
“Tell me,” he said, to change the subject. “When did you realize you were a seer? Were you born this way?”
“No, I remember many years where I could touch things and feel nothing at all. But once it started, the whole household was in an uproar.” She gave him an abashed smile.
“I was something of a teller of tales—discovering things about my sisters or the servants and tattling on them. There was a period when Gillian and Rose didn’t speak to me for months without it dissolving into a spitting and hair-pulling brawl. ”
Philip smiled, remembering his own vicious fights with his brothers—though they’d been out to cause each other serious harm more often than not. “Did it frighten you, the first time you saw something?”
Isobel exhaled thoughtfully, her brow furrowed. “No—it seemed…right—just like any other sense I possess—seeing, touching. I was seven when I first had a vision.”
“So you’ve been like this since you were seven?”
“Aye, my mother was also a seer, just like me. Well, not just like me, she was far better. She only used it for good. She taught me ways to control it. She had planned to teach me much more, but…” She trailed off.
They both knew the remainder of her sentence—her apprenticeship had been cut short by Lillian MacDonell’s death.
“You said your mother only used her magic for good. When do you use it for evil?”
Isobel shrugged, obviously reluctant to talk about this, but he pressed her. He had seen no evidence that she used her magic for anything but good and so was curious as to her definition of evil.
“Tell me—what evil have you wrought in the world?”
She caught the teasing in his tone and gave him a sheepish look.
“I’ve seen things I should not have—and I’ve oft gone looking for them—so it’s not always a mistake.
And when I was younger I would sometimes use what I learned to get my way or get revenge on those who’d wronged me… even if others got hurt.”
“You’re too hard on yourself. Surely when your mother was young she did such things. No one is born a saint.”
“I don’t know,” Isobel said, not convinced. “She was quite adamant in her teachings.”
“Perhaps that’s why—she didn’t want you to learn the hard way. She meant well, but it’s an impossible task. Bairns will be bairns—naught we can do about it.”
She looked at him slyly from beneath her lashes. “Just as lads will be lads—flirting with lassies and becoming annoyed at their little sisters?”
He reined in hard, staring at her in shocked surprise.
Not just that she knew, but what her words made him feel.
When she said such things, he wanted her so desperately nothing else seemed to matter—not her father or her betrothed—he just knew he didn’t want to be without her.
She filled an emptiness in him that he hadn’t known existed.
But how did she know? It was certain any number of people could tell her of how he lost his sister—but was that how she’d obtained her information?
“Have you been touching my things—digging around in my mind?”
She looked away quickly, guiltily, and his chest tightened. He didn’t want her to know what he felt. It served no purpose.
When she looked back her chin was set. “What if I did?”
“Is that how you know about Effie?”
“No—I’ve seen little of her, only what I told you. I vow it.”
He rode his horse closer to her, so they faced each other, their horses muzzle to tail. “Well then, what did you see?”
She bit her bottom lip as he held her gaze, unwavering.
What had she seen? That not a moment passed without her haunting his thoughts?
That he lay awake at night, cursing fate for betrothing her to an earl—for making him some fool without a future to offer her.
That right then he’d give up everything just to touch her again.
His hand tightened on the reins and he leaned forward to drag her off her horse, into his arms.
The sound of hoofbeats halted him. “It’s clear ahead,” Stephen called. “Nothing but heather for miles—though I did see Ben Nevis in the distance.”
Philip turned his horse to face Stephen, faintly shaken by what he’d been about to do—after all the vows he’d made to himself not to touch her. He could not honor them. And if he didn’t take her to her father posthaste, he doubted he could honor his promise to Alan MacDonell.
“Ben Nevis?” Isobel said. “But Ben Nevis is north…”
Philip glared at Stephen.
“I could be mistaken,” Stephen said hastily. When Philip continued to stare at Stephen furiously, the lad said, “Let me look again—I’m probably wrong.” He swung his horse around, yanking on the gray’s tether, and galloped ahead.
Philip spurred his horse to follow.
“You’re taking me to Lochlaire,” Isobel said in disbelief, catching up to ride beside him.
“Aye.”
“But I thought I was going with you to find Effie. I thought we were in this together.”
He took one look at the betrayal in her beautiful eyes and looked away, hardening himself to it. “We’re in nothing together. You have an earl waiting for you at home, and it’s past time I delivered you to him.”
She didn’t say another word, and when he glanced over, her face was sad and lost. The fist wrapped itself around his heart again, and he resolved they would not stop for the night. They would not stop until they were at Lochlaire, and she was safe with her father.