Chapter 20 #2
“Will we be feuding with Clan Colquhoun if your little scheme fails?”
Isobel started to shake her head when Rose said, “Aye.”
Isobel glanced up at her sister uncertainly, then nodded agreeably. Why not?
Roderick stood. “Well. Sir Philip isna much of threat, unless he can get his clan behind him. Doubtful, that. Ye dinna desert your people for more than a decade, then expect them to rally to you when you need them.”
Isobel winced at her uncle’s honesty.
He turned to Rose. “Is there any way you can make her look ill.”
Gillian gasped and clutched their uncle’s arm. “So you’ll help us?”
“Aye, I’ll help you devious wee witches. Though I’m not certain this is the way to do it.”
Gillian clapped her hands together.
He raised a brow at her. “Ye’re awful keen on the earl. Is there something else ye should be telling me?”
Gillian blushed a deep rose. “No! I’m just happy for Isobel, is all. She and Sir Philip are in love—isn’t it beautiful? And now I don’t have to go to France!”
Roderick shook his head. “Married to Kincreag, you may wish ye had gone. Blasted witches—made me forget why I’d come. Your father sent for you, Isobel, but I suppose I must tell him you’re too ill.” He did not seem pleased about that at all.
Isobel’s heart sank. She’d only seen her father once since she’d returned.
She’d missed him so much and now she had to continue to stay away.
It made her feel selfish again. If Rose was wrong and their father wasn’t recovering, then the little time she had left with him was slipping away while she spent their precious time trying to deceive him.
Roderick gave each of them a censorious look. “You dinna think Isobel being so ill she canna leave her bed will distress Alan? This might do him a worse turn than your fickle tastes in men will.”
Isobel looked at Rose, alarmed.
Rose licked her lips uncertainly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Roderick raised his brows at her—as if perhaps she ought to think on it.
Isobel kicked the covers off her legs. “Forget it. It was a stupid idea anyway.”
“Wait, wait,” Roderick said, placating. “Just let me talk to Alan, aye? Your father wants to see ye happy, above all. As do I.” He put a hand on Isobel’s shoulder. “If it’s Sir Philip ye want, then I’ll help ye get him. Let’s just not frighten yer father to an early grave.”
Isobel nodded. She was glad they’d told their uncle. He would help them do this right. He knew their father far better than they did. He’d been at Lochlaire the past twelve years while they were all far away. He would make everything right.
Roderick looked at them all. He nodded, satisfied that he’d changed their minds, and they wouldn’t do anything foolish.
“I’ll talk to him now.” He jerked his head at Rose, who stood, arms crossed over her chest and mouth set stubbornly, apparently not pleased her plan had been so thoroughly ruined. “Ye’d best come with me.”
Rose sighed and followed Roderick out of the chamber. When the door shut behind them, Gillian sat on the bed beside Isobel. She reached out and touched the ring that dangled from Isobel’s neck.
“Where’s Mother’s charm?”
Isobel pulled another ribbon from around her neck, letting the peridot fall beside Philip’s ring with a soft tink of metal.
“Have you touched it yet?” Gillian asked. “To find him?”
Isobel shook her head. “I’m afraid of what I’ll see.”
“What do you mean?”
Isobel swallowed. “He never said he loved me. He only wants to marry me because…because of what we did last night. He wants to protect me. He’s like that—he wants to take care of people, thinks it’s his responsibility.
Besides, he doesn’t like the earl. He thinks if Kincreag discovers I’m a witch, it would go bad for me. ”
Gillian smiled gently, knowingly. “It sounds as if he is very protective of you.”
“I don’t know. What if I look and see he doesn’t love me? Or worse, what if I see his future, and I’m not in it? That we failed and Father makes me marry Kincreag? And he is…he is wed to someone else?”
“Aye, that could be frightening. But don’t you want to know? I don’t think I could help myself. Besides—is the future set in stone? Maybe you ought to look. If you do see that you’re not together, perhaps there is still time to fix things, aye?”
Gillian was simply too sensible. Isobel wished she’d had her around the past twelve years.
Isobel was not wearing her gloves. She looked down at the ring. “Maybe I’ll just have a peek.”
Gillian scooted closer. “Oh, do.”
Isobel took a deep breath and rubbed her palms together. She tried to prepare herself for whatever she might see, but knew it was impossible. Her heart was too fragile when it came to him. Finally, she just wrapped her hand around it and closed her eyes.
She did not have to probe the ring for visions as she often did, this one unfolded before her so vividly she fancied she could smell the burning pitch and something else—overcooked meat and another unpleasant odor that was familiar, though she couldn’t place it.
The smoke burned her eyes and she squinted, peering through the thick smoke rolling around her.
The air was hot. She willed herself to move and realized in this vision she had a body.
Oddly, she didn’t know whose it was, though she assumed it was Philip’s, as she was holding his ring.
A crowd surround the fire. They talked amongst themselves, and she heard the word witch spat out several times.
She was at a witch burning, and the elusive scent was burning hair.
Isobel’s stomach hitched involuntarily, but she forced herself to move closer, to identify the victim.
She was so close to the stake now that it felt like a furnace on her face. The figure tied to the stake was unidentifiable, black and twisted, its head hung at an odd angle. The Scots strangled witches before they burned them. Live burning was reserved for the most evil witches.
Perhaps this wasn’t the future she was seeing—or maybe it was some random snatch from Philip’s future that had nothing to do with anything.
That happened sometimes, but usually she was able to locate a context within the vision, something to help her understand what she was seeing.
The context to this one continued to elude her.
The hum of conversation around her changed tone, rose in anger and scorn. Isobel turned. A public building was nearby and something pricked her. Recognition. She knew this place, had been here before.
She peered around the crowd, looking at the faces.
Some were vaguely familiar, though she could not place them, until her gaze lit on a man and woman standing together.
Her blood froze and the air left her. Heather and Ewan Kennedy.
Ewan was unrestrained, his face triumphant as he gazed at whatever spectacle everyone else currently jeered at.
Heather, however, stared with a face carved of stone, dark circles beneath her eyes.
Ewan slid his arm around his wife and leaned close, whispering something in her ear.
She did not react, but for an odd moment her gaze seemed to lock on Isobel.
She frowned, shaking her head slowly. She crossed herself and mouthed, Forgive me.
The crowd was becoming ugly. Isobel turned away from Heather. She was in Hawkirk, the village they’d passed through, where Isobel had found the body of Heather Kennedy’s daughter, Laurie. Why was Philip there? And who had burned?
Isobel swung around to stare at the charred corpse again. That’s when she noticed a second stake, near the first. Several men were crowded around it, securing someone to it. Isobel moved forward quickly. The men backed away and began piling bundles of pitch-drenched faggots around the stake.
When she saw the lifeless body bound to the stake Isobel’s heart stumbled as a silent scream started in her head until it filled like a storm.
The vision dissipated, and Isobel found herself staring into Gillian’s gray eyes.
“My God, Isobel—you’re white as a sheet.” Gillian dabbed at Isobel’s face with her sleeve. “And in a cold sweat, at that. I had to pry the ring from yer hand. Whatever did you see?”
Isobel couldn’t speak. She couldn’t cry or scream as she did in her head—wailing over and over, no, no, no, no!
Gillian shook her, hard. “Breathe! What is wrong? What did you see?”
Fragments of coherent thought began to return to Isobel’s mind.
“They…they left this morning…so they cannot possibly be there—they weren’t even going to Hawkirk.
It was the future. It hasn’t happened…yet.
There is still time.” She closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. “He’s not dead. Not dead.”
“Who’s not dead?” Gillian cried, her voice taking on a note of hysteria.
“Philip…I…I saw him—strangled…dead—they were going to burn him.”
Isobel clenched her hands in fists until her nails cut into her palms, forcing herself to not to see it anymore.
She had to find him and warn him that he must never go near Hawkirk again.
I will stop this. I will. It will not be like Benji Attmore.
But how? Philip had nearly a day’s head start.
But they were probably traveling at a normal pace, stopping to sleep.
If Isobel rode hard, not stopping, she might be able to catch them.
But she didn’t know which way they had traveled, didn’t even know how to get to Wyndyburgh, where his sister lived.
Isobel grabbed her sister’s hand. “Gillian—you’ve lived in the lowlands for twelve years. Did you know your way around? Particularly in the east—the Lothians?”
Gillian nodded vigorously. “Aye, aye, that’s where I lived—with the Hepburns.”
Isobel stood, dragging Gillian off the bed with her. “Change into something for riding. We must leave now.”
“Where are we going?” But Gillian didn’t hesitate, throwing her chest open and rummaging through it for suitable clothing.
“We’re going to change fate.”