CHAPTER 7 #3
The spicy sweet scent of roasting meat and simmering vegetables wafted through the air, reminding Gwendolyn of how hungry she was.
Anxious to return to David and the tray of food Robena had thoughtfully brought to her, she moved swiftly along the dim corridors.
The torch at the top of the stairs leading to the lowest level of the castle had died, leaving the narrow steps to disappear into a vast, black cavern.
Gathering her skirts into her hands, she hurried down the steps, vaguely wondering what nonsense Morag was going to tell her.
Suddenly she was hurtling into the blackness, her startled cry silenced as her head slammed against the frigid stone floor.
There was darkness, and there was light.
Throbbing strands of wakefulness slowly roused her from a slumber that had been absolute, yet not restful.
Pain began to seep across her, slowly at first, then faster, wrapping its tentacles around her head, her neck, her shoulders, moving down, until finally she was cocooned in it.
She shifted onto her side. A fresh stab of pain streaked through her, clean and sharp.
There was no question of sleep now. Using what seemed an extraordinary amount of effort, she opened her eyes, then blinked vacantly at the surrounding gloom.
MacDunn was sitting in a chair beside the bed, his long, muscular legs stretched out before him, sound asleep.
The lines of his face were deeply etched in the soft candlelight, making him look far older than his years.
His hair fell in tangled gold locks over his wrinkled shirt, which was smudged with scarlet.
Gwendolyn stared at the stains in confusion, wondering if his wound had torn open and bled onto his shirt.
Perhaps she should have stitched his injury again with proper thread once they reached the castle.
Her gaze moved to the windows. How had night fallen so quickly?
she wondered. David had no doubt wakened long ago and was wondering where she was.
She sat upright and then closed her eyes, disoriented by the extreme effort the action cost her. When she opened them again, MacDunn was staring at her, his harsh expression tempered only marginally with what might have been relief.
“David,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. “Is he all right?”
“David is fine, Gwendolyn.”
She stared at him dubiously, wondering if he was lying to her. The fierce set of his face did little to alleviate her concern.
“I must see him.” She pushed away the covers. “Now.” A sickening dizziness hobbled her movements, forcing her to stop and raise her fingers to her temples.
MacDunn’s strong hands fastened on her shoulders and gently eased her back. “He is sleeping. You may see him in the morning.”
“I want to make him a special broth.”
“You can make it later. When you are feeling better.” He held a cup of cool water to her lips. When she had taken her fill, he reached into a basin of water, wrung out a cloth, and laid it over her forehead.
“I’m not ill,” Gwendolyn told him, wondering why he was treating her with such uncharacteristic gentleness. “I never get ill.”
“No, you’re not ill,” he agreed.
She nodded. A terrible splitting sensation streaked across her skull. She raised her hand to her head, trying to press the pain away. Her hair was matted and sticky, and a crust of blood had formed on her scalp.
“I found you lying at the bottom of the stairs in the lower level,” Alex explained, seeing her confusion. “You had struck your head on the way down. Made quite a mess of the floor.”
That explained the pain. She ran her fingers tentatively over her hair, feeling the extent of the stickiness. “Head wounds do tend to bleed,” she murmured, remembering the night she had stitched Cameron’s scalp.
“Aye. It makes it difficult to tell how serious the injury is. Especially when the victim refuses to wake up.”
“You can hardly blame me for resting a bit, MacDunn,” Gwendolyn grumbled defensively.
“Perhaps not,” Alex acknowledged. “But when a person who has struck her head cannot be stirred, one does start to become somewhat…”
He paused, searching for the right word.
Frantic? Distraught? Terrified? All these things he had been, and more, though he had tried his damnedest not to let his clan see—for they would only think it was the madness rising up to claim him once again.
And yet he had refused to let anyone else sit with her, not even Brodick, or Cameron, or Ned, each of whom he trusted with his life.
The witch held the secret to his son’s recovery, he had told them.
This was why he wanted to watch over her himself.
But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.
“Concerned,” he finished. It seemed an innocuous enough word.
When he first learned she was gone, he had been overwhelmed with fury.
He believed she had escaped, and her betrayal had been unforgivable, not just because she had broken her pledge to him, but because she had callously abandoned his son.
Alex had ordered the castle and grounds searched and participated in the hunt himself, determined to find her and drag her back.
When he had discovered her lying unconscious in that dark passage, her pale cheek resting in a pool of blood, he had been so frozen with fear he could barely force himself to touch her neck for a pulse.
“You have been in a deep sleep since late yesterday afternoon. It will soon be dawn,” he told her, tilting his head toward the window.
A soft veil of amber light spilled across his gold-stubbled cheek. Gwendolyn gazed at him, perplexed. MacDunn was a busy laird, who barely made time to spend a moment with his own ill son. Why was he sitting here watching over her like some nursemaid?
“What were you doing down there, Gwendolyn?”
Her mind was cloudy with pain, making it difficult to concentrate. “I believe I was going to see Morag.” She closed her eyes, struggling to remember. “She had left a note in my chamber saying she wanted to warn me of something.”
Alex arched a brow.
“Perhaps she wanted to alert me about those stairs,” Gwendolyn reflected dryly.
“Where did you put the note?”
She thought for a moment, then raised her shoulders in a weak shrug. “I suppose I left it on the table.”
Alex rose to look for it. He inspected the table, the chest, and thoroughly searched the floor. “It isn’t here.”
“Maybe I took it with me and dropped it in the passage,” Gwendolyn suggested, not terribly interested.
“Were you alone when you went downstairs?”
Gwendolyn closed her eyes. “I suppose I must have been. I remember it was very dark—I think the torch above the stairs had gone out.” She yawned. “That must be why I tripped.”
Alex considered this a moment in silence. “You will rest now,” he said, rising from his chair.
“I have to see David,” Gwendolyn protested, her voice thickened with sleep.
“You will see him later. When you have rested.”
Too exhausted to argue, Gwendolyn sighed and pressed her face farther into the pillow.
Alex watched as sleep quickly claimed her once again.
She was tired and bloody and aching, but he assured himself he could wake her if he chose.
He lifted a matted clump of black hair off her bruised cheek, then lightly traced his finger along the delicate contour of her jaw.
He had seen more than his share of head wounds in battle and knew that hers was not serious.
But the sight of her lying there, so small and weak and helpless, brought back memories of Flora.
This was not illness, he reminded himself sharply.
This was an injury, and he meant to find out who or what was bloody well responsible for it.
The torch above the staircase leading to the bowels of the castle was lit, flickering oily patterns of light over the damp stone steps.
Alex stood at the top of the stairs, trying to decide if the illumination was adequate.
He was accustomed to the dark, having spent much of the past four years lying awake in the night, or sometimes wandering through the empty corridors, talking to Flora.
Many of the steps had a dark scum growing on them, rendering them somewhat treacherous.
If the torch had been out and someone who did not know the stairs well was hurrying down them, it was easy to understand how she might have slipped.
If not for the fact that Gwendolyn was feared by the clan, coupled with her memory of a note from Morag, he might have simply ordered the stairs scrubbed and another torch bracketed to the opposite wall.
Instead he slowly descended them, then ascended once more, carefully examining each step for something beyond the greenish black residue coating the surface.
On the fifth step from the top he found it.
A length of slender black twine lay hidden in slime.
Alex fished it from the filthy muck and discovered it was attached to a small nail embedded in the mortar between the stones in the wall.
The twine was made of perhaps a dozen or more threads braided together, rendering it fine but surprisingly strong.
The length was not sufficient to span the width of the stairs, but the frayed ends suggested it had broken from a longer piece.
He bent down and examined the opposite wall.
There was the second nail, with its fragment of twine still dangling from it.
The nails had been positioned at approximately ankle level, right at the edge of the step.
The unsuspecting victim would not tread directly on the dark twine strung between the nails, but could not avoid catching her foot on it.
Whoever had done this had not bothered to retrieve the nails after Gwendolyn was found.
Either they were extremely careless or they wanted someone to find out that Gwendolyn’s fall had not been an accident.