Chapter 15 #3
“Aye, well, there’s nothing left to tell who he might have been! Burned to bone, and not much more. I’m amazed anyone managed to dress this mess of humanity.”
“Again, I tell you, we thought that it was you.”
He sniffed.
“I awoke next to that abomination after the fire!” Shawna told him with soft, furious vehemence.
She was startled when he suddenly came back around to her, his fingers curling around her wrists.
He swore softly. “It makes no sense! What happened between the time we both blacked out—and the fire raged? It seems someone wanted me dead, while someone else just wanted it believed that I was dead. You were rescued, and I was sold into bondage.” He shook his head, confused and irritated that he couldn’t seem to figure out where the missing piece to the puzzle lay.
She wrenched free from him, unnerved by his manner, backing against the gate to the vault.
“David, I swear, there is nothing more I can say that will help. After the fire, Gawain found me. He—”
“Gawain. And Gawain instantly knew it was my corpse at your side?”
“Well, I did start shrieking and screaming and crying your name. That probably added to his belief that the corpse was you.”
He almost smiled. “What then?”
“What then? For God’s sake, what do you think, what then? I was in shock. I was sedated, but I knew that you were dead, that I—”
“That you—what?”
Her lashes fell, sweeping her cheeks. “That I had caused your death.”
“What else, what then?”
She shook her head, not understanding. “We wrote to your father and brother. They started work on the memorial. We called the undertaker and the constable.”
“Aye, and there was an investigation.”
“Of course, there was an investigation. Your father was grief-stricken. Your brother demanded no less. He spoke with everyone. He spoke with me. You were buried. Here. In that coffin. And I wasn’t afraid to come here tonight because after the fire I came almost every day until—”
She broke off, wincing.
“Until what?”
“I ran away.”
“You ran away?” he inquired. “From Castle Rock?”
She nodded. “I—I felt I had to leave.”
“Why didn’t you stay away?”
She hesitated, knowing she couldn’t bear to tell him the whole truth.
“Alistair found me.”
“Alistair again.”
“All I did was go to Glasgow. I didn’t think that anyone would mind much that I had gone away. But Alistair…”
“Alistair what?”
“He eventually convinced me that I had to live on despite the past, that I needed to come home because Craig Rock needed someone to really see to the everyday lives of the people here. He said that aye, he and my uncles and other cousins could easily manage the properties, but that none of them had the heart to keep the character of a Highland village in proper shape and warmth. And I was…I was ill at the time. So, I came home again.”
“You were ill? With what?”
She shrugged, staring at the ground again. “Shock, despair, melancholy—I suppose.”
“Despair?” he queried, a harsh note to his voice.
“I don’t intend to continue insisting that I never meant you any ill. If you don’t believe me by now, you have become an embittered madman.”
“My lady, it’s quite a miracle that I’m not a madman—seeing as how I’ve lived life for another while I lie here charred beyond recognition.”
“I don’t know how you came to be where you were!”
He stared at her a moment, then turned away. He lifted the lid back on top of the coffin, fitting it into place, managing to set each nail more or less back into its slot.
“You are always questioning me,” Shawna said very softly. “And always refusing to answer me when I ask you questions. David, please, I realize now that someone managed to switch your body with that of a convict, but you owe me more. Please, what happened to you?”
He set down the steel bar he had been working with. Hands upon his hips, he stared at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“You woke up that night, next to a corpse. I woke up days later, on board a convict ship with men sentenced to hard labor for murder and other such crimes. I insisted over and over again to the good captain that I was not the murdering bastard he thought me, but by then, news of the ‘death’ of David Douglas had traveled far and wide, and the fool didn’t believe a word I said.
I worked his ship in chains for two years, and then I broke rocks in a quarry in Australia for nearly another two before I managed to escape and, with the help of a friend, began to make my way back here.
No matter what I said to anyone in all that time, no one believed I was David Douglas, especially not that good captain.
But I don’t blame him. I supposedly slit the throat of a poor young girl in Glasgow, and apparently, I was spared the hangman’s noose because I appeared to be good for heavy labor.
I imagine the captain of that ship would have killed me if it hadn’t been for a friend with whom I escaped. ”
“A friend?”
“Aye,” he said dryly, “a fellow who managed to keep me alive by convincing me I might find my revenge against you if I did manage to live long enough to escape.”
“You’ve had your revenge these last five years and beyond. I will pay for that night until the day I die,” she assured him.
“Will you? Then I can’t possibly let you die as quickly as it seems you are trying to do, running about on your own when you know that there is foul play afoot!”
“I cannot just sit still—”
“You will sit still in the future. I promise you.”
“Are you quite finished with your corpse?” she demanded as she spun around and hurried to the gate.
Suddenly David was beside her, and his whisper sounded against her ear. “Nay, lady, shush, listen!”
Shawna held very still. She heard footsteps in the corridor beyond the vaults. Footsteps.
At least two sets of them.
And the metallic sounds of swords clanging slightly in their scabbards.
Then whispers.
Whispers…
So hushed she couldn’t tell if they were voiced by a male or female. She couldn’t hear if they were deeply burred or more anglicized. She couldn’t tell anything about the people who were approaching…
Except that their intentions were not good.
David quickly blew out the flame in the lantern he carried, setting it down in silence. He barely mouthed words against Shawna’s ear. “Don’t move.”
The whisperers began to argue with one another. The sound increased, amplifying and echoing as they entered into the vaults Shawna and David had so recently vacated.
“Corpses, all.”
“You said—”
“I said that I heard movement.”
“You fool! You heard nothing.”
“Make sure that they are all corpses!”
Shawna winced as she heard a chilling ripping sound. She could visualize swords slashing into the shelves of shrouded bodies…
“I should have slit her throat before!”
“Y’can’t! Y’don’t ken what must happen!”
Shawna felt David begin to move forward and heard the sound of his knife being drawn from a sheath at his calf. She grabbed the back of his shirt and started to follow him. He stopped her, his fingers biting into the flesh of her arms.
“Don’t move!” he mouthed against her ear once again.
“Don’t go!” she mouthed back.
“I must!”
“They’ve swords, perhaps guns.”
“I have my knife and the element of surprise, my lady.”
“David, no!”
“Shawna, I beg of you, hush!”
He left her.
The intruders had ceased to talk.
There was no sound at all while the seconds ticked by.
Ticked into minutes.
Endless minutes…
Then there was the sound of gunfire.
A single shot followed by the sounds of a scuffle in the corridor.
Despite David’s words to her, Shawna could not remain still.
She moved through the darkened vault carefully, but as quickly as she could.
There was more light in the corridor—the light from the lantern the whisperers had brought.
Shawna made her way to the vault’s gate just in time to see David racing after a cloaked figure hurrying toward the stairway that led to the cemetery and the night beyond.
Shawna screamed as a hand suddenly descended upon her shoulder. She turned in time to see a knife rising high in the glow of the lamp. She shrieked again, struggling to wrench free from her attacker.
She twisted and writhed. She was able to fight her attacker, she realized, because he was bleeding. Blood dripped from the hand that threatened her with the knife. Her attacker had already battled with David, she thought.
Thank God, for though the knife fell, it passed just inches from her shoulder, striking the stone wall.
She shrieked in terror as the knife rose once again, and she continued to fight the iron-hard fingers winding around her arm.
She couldn’t see the face of her attacker. He wore a cowled cloak, and she didn’t dare attempt to dislodge that cowl, lest she allow the knife to fall to her neck.
Once again, the knife plunged toward her.
Bearing down…straight for her heart.
It didn’t fall. The hand holding the knife was wrenched cleanly away from her.
Just when she thought that death had found her at last in the crypts, David came catapulting against her would-be killer, pulling his knife arm aside, taking him off-balance and bringing him down to the floor.
Yet as Shawna gasped for breath, the figure he had been chasing from the tomb returned, tearing back down the corridor. She shrieked out a warning.
But the figure had chosen on flight rather than fight—racing past them along the corridor, it swept up the lantern, swiftly dousing the flame.
The corridor was plunged into sudden blackness.
Then shots began to ricochet in the darkness once again, and Shawna sank low to the ground, desperately seeking the entrance to one of the vaults.
She heard footsteps moving wildly down the corridor, yet she kept her silence, trying not to let out her cries of fear and terror as she crawled along the floor, seeking David.
A match flared. She gasped despite herself.
“It’s all right. I’ve got you.”
David!