Chapter 18 #2
Two minutes, Skylar decided. She’d give Brother Damian exactly two minutes, then she’d find some excuse to go after Shawna.
Taking the kettle from the fire, Anne-Marie deftly brewed and strained tea, saying, “We’ve all manner of contests as well, a caber throw, traditional dance, archery—ah!
And imagine! Laird Douglas is part Sioux, can ye imagine such a thing here, Brother Damian?
But think on it—archery, with an Indian in the family!
” She laughed delightedly. “Our Laird Douglas will surely take the prize this year!”
“I imagine he will,” Brother Damian said, smiling at Skylar as he lifted his cup of tea.
She smiled uneasily, lifting her cup of tea in return. Something about Brother Damian was vaguely unnerving, but she couldn’t tell quite what. He was clean and neat enough, but his whiskers were so rich and his hair so long and bushy that they all but consumed his face. Still…
“So, there’s great feasting—and a great deal of sinning as well, I’ve heard!” Brother Damian said.
He didn’t say the words much like a friar. He seemed amused by the rumors of what went on.
“Now, such a complaint did not come from these parts!” Anne-Marie said in protest. She set a hand on Skylar’s.
“Lady Douglas, you must not fear for your sister. We’ll find her, I know it in my heart.
The Night of the Moon Maiden is a night of joy, and we celebrate the harvest, and all that is rich and wonderful and plentiful—”
“And fertile?” Brother Damian suggested lightly.
“Well, then,” Anne-Marie admitted, “we need a fertile harvest to keep us all in food!”
“And a night of abandon here and there to maintain a population in the Highlands as well,” he said with a smile.
“Well, the night, it brings about a share of marriages, Brother Damian, but for the most part, the births that result from the Night of the Moon Maiden are legitimate by the time they occur!”
“What do you think of these festivities, Lady Douglas?” Brother Damian asked.
“I’ve yet to experience the night. I’m sure it will be interesting,” Skylar said. Brother Damian, she noted, though ostensibly paying attention to her and Anne-Marie, was now watching the lads turn meat at the hearth.
“They’re young,” he commented.
“Aye,” Skylar agreed. “But Anne-Marie takes great care with her kitchen help. The lads have been taken from the mines, where their own parents sent them. Lady MacGinnis, who tends all of our interests as my husband is most often in America, no longer allows the young children to work in our mines. Our dear Anne-Marie runs the kitchen as if it were a school,” Skylar said and smiled at the plump woman who was, as always, bustling about, working upon her dough once again.
“The lads work with her an hour or so—and then rot their poor little teeth on the pastries she makes for them.”
“It’s good that they’re out of the mines,” he agreed. “That’s the lad who was lost in the mines just a bit ago, isn’t it?”
“Danny? Aye, that’s him.”
“May I talk with him for a moment? I can give the boys a hand with their work, if I may…” he inquired.
He stood, striding to the fire where little Danny and another boy, perhaps three or four years older, turned a spit. “If you twist so,” Damian explained, hunkering down by the lads to show them how to roll the spit rather than lifting it, “it will be much easier work.”
“Thank you, Brother,” said the older lad.
“Aye,” Brother Damian said, nodding to him.
He tousled Danny’s hair, looking at the boy, his expression oddly intent. “You’ve been fine since the day you were stuck in the mine shaft, eh, lad?”
Danny nodded. “Aye.” His eyes were wide, solemn. “The beastie saved me.”
Brother Damian smiled. “Well, you were saved. That’s what matters.”
Danny looked at Brother Damian and said something very softly. He smiled, obviously happy and comfortable in Damian’s presence.
She thought that she heard the boy say something more about a beastie.
Damian replied, but Skylar couldn’t hear as he lowered his voice, talking to the boy. Damian studied the lad’s face, laughed, and curiously, turned the lad about, studying him. Then lifted the boy’s hair from his neck once again, studying the hairline at his nape with great intensity.
Unnerved, Skylar stood, afraid that, despite his easy way and gentleness, the friar had some evil designs upon the poor lad.
“Brother Damian, what is it? If something is wrong—” she began.
The old man said something gently to the boy, then stood, turning back to Skylar.
His expression, beneath his thick whiskers, was livid. She noted that his hands were tensed, rolled into tight fists at his sides. Once again, looking at him, she found something quite unnerving about the man, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
Maybe it was his hands. They were very strong, very powerful hands. Long-fingered, his nails clipped and cleaned.
She should know something about this man, she was certain she saw something in him, in his face. There was something about him that was familiar.
“Brother Damian?”
Where in God’s name was Hawk when she needed him?
Damian didn’t seem to see Skylar. He didn’t seem to see anyone or anything at all, other than whatever vision it was that played in his mind.
“I shall kill her!” he said furiously. “I shall very nearly do the damned deed myself!”
Then, before Skylar could reply, he grabbed both of her hands, his eyes focused on her now. “Skylar,” he snapped, dispensing with all formality, “keep the lad here, keep an eye on him, don’t let him go off anywhere with anyone, none of the Andersons or the MacGinnises or anyone, do you understand?”
“Brother Damian, I would hardly let a child this age go off alone—”
“Nay, you’re not listening! Don’t let the boy go anywhere until arrangements have been made for him, do you understand? Don’t let his—his father come for him, or any of his sisters, any of the Andersons. Or—or the MacGinnises. It will all make sense, just watch him closely! Swear it!”
The man was a madman, and still—
“Swear it to me, for the love of God!”
“I—I swear!” Skylar said, frightened by the friar’s passion yet somehow compelled to give him her promise.
“I will watch the lad, I swear it to you,” she said.
He squeezed her hands, then released them.
With a speed and agility most amazing for a man of his age, he turned and left the castle.
She was going to have to find Hawk, that was all there was to it. She would take the boy with her and find her husband down in the crypts.