Chapter Eleven
Elspeth opened her eyes and squinted up at the sky. One moment passed before a wave of fear washed over her. She had foolishly gone too far in her search for more herbs that would help heal Mr. Cameron. Had she fainted? Was his malady contagious?
She sat up slowly and rubbed her head, and then her eyes. Her heart paused in dread as she looked around.
She was surrounded by trees. She wasn’t familiar with all the landscape around the Cameron houses, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing this area.
Standing proved to be a challenge to keep from tipping over. But she managed and slapped the dirt from her skirts.
“Och, lady!” cried a lass. She took off in a hurry to arrive at Elspeth’s side. “Ye are alive! I doubted it a time or two, but here we are!”
“Who are ye?” Elspeth asked while the gel closed her arms around Elspeth’s shoulders.
“Och, fergive me. I am Helen.” Helen graced her with a dimpled smile. “I am a servant who made the terrible error of falling in love with her master.”
Elspeth shook her head in pity for Helen. Was the same thing happening to her? Was it too late to shatter her new expectations?
“How did we end up together?” Elspeth asked her. “I dinna remember.”
Helen chuckled. “Be grateful fer fergetting.” Her feigned mirth faded and she set her distant gaze on the wall. “I never intended to hurt him.”
“Who?
Helen flicked her hooded gaze to her, looking as if she had been yanked from the murky waters, the same color as her eyes. “My master.”
Elspeth’s eyes opened wider. “What did ye do to him? How again did we end up together?” She felt panic rising, threatening to take over. She saw flashes of a shadowy figure in her memory.
“I killed him…I think. I had to do it. I had foolishly run away. He caught up to me. We were on our way home to Inverlochy when we came upon ye.”
Elspeth did not recall anything after picking pockets full of herbs and leaves. Why did she not remember? Had she been drugged?
“The sight of ye piqued his curiosity and he decided to make ye his servant.”
“Why did ye attack him?” Elspeth asked her.
“He said now that he had ye, he didna need me anymore.”
Elspeth’s belly wove into a knot. “He doesna have me.”
“He believed ye were his. He would never have stopped looking fer ye. Last eve, after we left the tavern, ye spoke to him with contempt. He slapped ye.”
“Did he drug me?” Elspeth asked, still feeling a bit dreamy.
Helen sniffed and wiped her tear-soaked face on her sleeve. “I couldna stand by while he struck ye, so I picked up a rock and…hit him in the back of the head. I just wanted him to stop, lady!”
“There now,” Elspeth comforted the girl. “Ye saved my life. Tell me, was I asleep when all this happened?”
Helen chuckled again. “’Tis understandable that ye made yerself ferget.”
Had she made herself forget? She was confused, unclear about the last few hours. “Thank ye, Helen fer risking yer life fer me. I owe ye mine. Now please, if ye will tell me where we are?”
“Hmm, I think we are west of Inverlochy somewhere. I didna ask.”
“That is far from where I started,” Elspeth pondered out loud.
“Were ye running away when we came upon ye?”
“Nae, I…I dinna remember.”
Helen smiled at her as if Elspeth’s memories did not matter.
“Are ye hungry?”
“I need to get back,” Elspeth said, turning in a half circle. She stopped when she saw Ben Nevis in the distance, half hidden in dark clouds rolling in from the east.
“Of course,” Helen said. “But let us eat first. We have time before the rain.”
Elspeth agreed since most of the food was fruit Helen had recently picked and didn’t need to be cooked.
After a breakfast of various berries, seeds and nuts, they set off for the Cameron holding.
“I know this is much to ask fer,” Helen started hesitantly.
“What is it, Helen?
“Can I stay with ye when we reach yer home?”
“’Tis not my—” Elspeth stopped and then smiled. “Of course.”
They talked while they walked. Helen thought Elspeth was very brave.
“Nae, I’m verra fearful, but I want to live,” she told Helen. “I have a reason to live.”
“What is the reason?”
Elspeth thought about it. Was her purpose to kill Logan Cameron?
Did she truly have to? Of course, she did, she admonished herself right away.
Why was she even entertaining such traitorous thoughts?
It was because she’d slept beside him. He’d been freezing out in the cold and no matter how many blankets she put on him, he shivered in his deep slumber.
She’d had no choice but to slip in beside him on the cold ground.
Warming him was a serious task, but his long, lean body against her, carved like the statues in her mother’s garden, trembling like her own heart, made her feel giddy and light-headed.
She had lain there with him under the stars for hours, helping her enemy live.
I’m here to kill the Lochiel’s son.
I’m here because I want to see him again.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say either thing. “We should get out of here.”
Elspeth scowled up at the clouds as they released torrents of water.
They were going to have to walk in the rain and somehow find their way to…to Mr. Cameron’s house.
“Let us hold hands so we dinna lose each other,” Elspeth suggested and closed her hand around Helen’s.
Right away, they heard a man laughing in the fog. Elspeth fumbled for her knife secured to her thigh. Helen stepped behind her.
“What do we have here?” a man drawled, stepping into the dim light of the lantern. “Two comely maidens alone in the rain.”
“Is he yer master?” Elspeth asked Helen.
“He is not,” the gel answered.
“Get out of our way,” Elspeth ordered while the rain pelted them and she reached for the kitchen knife tied in a fold at her waist.
“Aye, move aside!” Helen echoed and clutched Elspeth’s shoulders behind her. “Ye better move out of the way.”
He moved forward for them, ignoring their warning.
Elspeth stepped in his way. “I am usually against taking the life of another, save one. I would much rather heal, but…” She shrugged her shoulders. “If ye dinna move, ye will force me to kill ye.”
Underestimating her, he attacked. Elspeth tightened her fingers around the handle of her kitchen knife. Her heart pumped wildly, heightening her senses. But it was so foggy.
Helen pushed her out of her way and attacked the man, but he caught her around the throat and brought his dirk up to her neck.
Elspeth held up her hands to plead with him not to hurt Helen. She opened her mouth but at the same moment, a looming shadow appeared out of the mist. It reached out for the man grasping Helen by the throat and twisted his neck until it snapped.
Helen didn’t try to fight the new culprit but hurried to Elspeth’s side.
The shadowy figure reached Elspeth before she did.
“Are ye hurt, Miss Woodburn?” He pulled her closer to examine her. “Tell me, are ye hurt?”
Mr. Cameron’s voice was so welcome, she almost began to cry. “I am not hurt.”
But he checked her arms, her head and face. When he looked in her eyes, she thought she hadn’t seen such concern for her since she had a fever when she was sixteen and her parents sat by her bed every day for four days.
She smiled at him, though nothing had changed between them. They were still enemies. Weren’t they?
“Why did ye leave, lass?”
“Ye know him?” Helen ventured to ask.
“Aye,” Elspeth replied softly as he let her go. “The king granted him me and my home fer ridding Scotland of another Covenanter, my father.”
“Och!” Helen stepped back, tugging Elspeth with her.
“Miss Woodburn doesna belong to me,” Mr. Cameron said, looking around. “What are ye doin’ here?
“I dinna really know,” she told him honestly. “I canna remember much. I woke up a short while ago lying in the dirt with little or no memory of the last few days. Helen’s master was after her—and obviously found her. He…he drugged me or…I dinna know. Helen hit him with a rock.”
“Tis alright, lass. Are ye ready to return home?”
“Who is he?” Helen whispered as he started off and the lasses fell behind. “He is verra pleasing to the eyes.”
Elspeth blushed for some mad reason that left her feeling flushed.
“He is Logan Cameron of Lochaber, son, I am told, of the Lochiel of Lochaber.”
“Och, I have heard of the Lochiel. He is a fierce enemy to have.”
“So is his son,” Elspeth remarked, stepping over the dead man who had come upon him.
Elspeth watched him with seemingly casual interest. When he agreed that Helen could remain with them, she smiled with her new friend and then turned her dreamy gaze on him. Compassion stirred him.
She had searched for it in others for six years and never found an ounce of it in anyone—until Logan Cameron. For her.
It was mad, but madness didn’t change the truth of it. She liked Logan Cameron, the ghost of her past.
The Cameron holding wasn’t far and all downhill, so Elspeth’s feet did not hurt too much. Mr. Cameron walked on her right side and Helen, on her left.
They learned that Helen had been taken from Inverlochy. “’Twas a good thing,” Helen argued. “Else I woudna have been here to save Elspeth.”
Elspeth agreed.
“Thank ye fer savin’ Miss Woodburn,” he said, offering Helen a slight bow.
“He doesna seem so terrible,” Helen told her in a hushed voice close to Elspeth’s ear while they walked home.
“Hmm,” Elspeth answered, neither denying nor confirming it.
When they reached his house, he let them in and fed them at his table. When his cousins arrived, Elspeth could hardly make eye contact with them. They believed she had poisoned him.
“’Twas the mushrooms that poisoned ye,” she told Mr. Cameron, in front of them.
“Aye, I know, Miss Woodburn. ’Tis no’ as if ye were poisonin’ me slowly, or tryin’ to ambush me along the mountainside.” He smiled at her and winked his eye.
She had the urge to break out with laughter, as if he had just set free a thousand butterflies in her belly.