Chapter 7 #3
"'Tis bizarre." Finnian grabbed a cloth from his table and wiped the red substance from his hand and from the top of her hair. "Have the maids wash this out of her hair, but be careful of her wound."
"Very well. Has this injury caused her to become mute?" Brodie asked.
"I cannot say as of yet. Try to speak, lass," Finnian urged.
She opened her mouth and attempted to force out a word, but again she uttered no sound. Was she being genuine or acting?
I cannot, she mouthed.
Brodie was surprised he could read her lips. But doing so reminded him of something he did not wish to remember. Nay, he refused to think about her lips.
"Can you whisper?" Brodie asked.
She shook her head.
"What about writing?" Finnian asked her.
She nodded.
Finnian motioned her toward the desk, where she took a seat. He shuffled through his papers until he came up with a clean one and placed it on the blotter.
She took the quill and examined the point, then uncorked the ink and dipped the nib in.
What shall I write? She mouthed.
"Who caused your head injury?" Brodie asked.
She scribed: a man kicked me down on the galley.
"Who?" he demanded, wanting to kick the whoreson down himself.
Do not recall, she wrote.
Brodie blew out an exasperated breath. "Why were you on the galley?"
She pointed to the words do not recall.
"Damn it all." Brodie paced. "Has the head injury taken her memory as well, Finnian?"
"It appears to be so. Lass, write down the last thing you remember."
She thought for a long moment, then wrote: Da gave me a pendant on my eighteenth birthday.
"Eighteenth?" Brodie growled. Elsea was more than twenty-one summers now. They had not even met when she'd turned eighteen. And now, her da had been dead for two years. "Do you remember anything after that?" he asked.
She pressed her eyes closed as if straining to remember, then shook her head in frustration.
"In the cave, when I asked you if you remembered me, you nodded... right after you woke up... when I walked in from outside. Do you remember that?"
Looking him in the eye, she lowered her brows and shook her head slightly. She appeared to be telling the truth. Was she, or had she become a gifted liar?
"Saints!" He turned away to pace to the window. If her words were true, that meant she didn't remember taking off with the earl. No wonder she was acting like an innocent lass. She remembered naught after her eighteenth birthday.
The nib scratched across the paper, and he returned to the desk.
How old am I now?
"One-and-twenty," Brodie said.
Her face blanched, and her eyes widened. He had never seen her look more astounded and confused.
"When did we first meet?" he asked.
She paused, eyed him, then wrote: this morn.
He could detect no deception in her eyes, but knew she was capable of it.
She frowned, then wrote: When did we first meet?
Should he tell her the truth or let her believe him a stranger? He hated lies. "Over two years ago."
Her baffled gaze searched his as if she looked for the answer. Hell, she was so convincing.
"Do you think she will recover?" Brodie asked Finnian.
"'Haps with time, but she needs rest. She's exceedingly wan." He motioned to her ashen face. "While in the sea, she might have lost a lot of blood from that head wound."
"'Tis true." Brodie proceeded to the door. After pulling it open, he spoke to Drury, who waited outside the door. "Have the maids prepare a room for Lady Elsea, forthwith."
"Aye, m'laird." He hastened away.
Within a few minutes, one of the chambermaids escorted Elsea toward a room upstairs. He followed to see which room it was.
"Bring her food, drink, and clean clothing," Brodie said. "And wash the blood from her hair."
The maid curtsied. "Aye, m'laird."
They would take good care of her.
"Brodie!" his mother hurried along the corridor toward him but stopped short when Elsea went into the room. His mother's mouth dropped open.
The maid curtsied and closed the door.
"Was that Lady Elsea?" his mother whispered, her dark hair styled to perfection.
"You ken it was, Ma."
"What is heaven's name, Brodie?"
"I dragged her from the sea where she nearly drowned. She has a head injury and cannot speak. Plus, she's lost most of her memory. She has nay inkling who I am."
"How terrible! The poor lass. How did you find her in the sea?"
"I was in selkie form." He did not want to tell his mother anything about the female selkies being abducted. "To make a long story short, Lady Elsea fell off a birlinn."
His mother crossed herself, for she hated any mention of the curse or his selkie form. "Why was she on a birlinn?"
"We have nay notion as of yet. Because of the head injury, she has no memory of it, except that someone kicked her down. We asked her questions, and she wrote her answers. She claimed she could remember naught after her eighteenth birthday."
Ma gasped. "Do you believe her?"
Brodie shrugged. Did he? He knew not presently. She'd given the impression of sincerity but could be lying as she always had.
"Are you going to take her back?" Ma asked.
"Home to her brothers? Aye."
"I meant... as your betrothed."
"Nay, of course not," he growled. His mother had gone mad, surely. "Whether she remembers or not, she betrayed me. Hell will freeze over before I forgive her."
"Oh, my." Ma pressed a hand to her throat. "Indeed?"
"Aye. Do you take me for an idiot?"
"Nay, you're brilliant. 'Haps Gavin and Torr would come help you," Ma suggested.
"I need no help," he snapped.
"To find out who was trying to kill the lass."
"I'm certain she'll tell me as soon as she can remember." He strode away to his bedchamber.
Brodie loved his mother, but she was usually a thorn in his side. Last month, she had assisted a vile neighboring chief to almost overthrow Brodie in a coup. He and his friends had stopped them just in time and prevented his sister's forced marriage to the brute.
With Elsea here, his mother would no doubt return to her scheming ways, trying her best to matchmake and free Brodie from the curse.
Indecision tore at him—he yearned for freedom from Wilona MacRae's curse, but at the same time, he enjoyed being a selkie and swimming in the ocean. He craved it, even now. These stone walls imprisoned him within the human realm.
He wanted to leave here now and hasten back to the sea, back to being a selkie, but the woman in the other room prevented it. He had to know if someone had kidnapped her as they had the female selkies. Were the same miscreants responsible? She must ken the culprits.
After striding to the basin near the window, he dipped his finger into the tepid water. His manservant, Ruskin, must have brought it upon his arrival, knowing he would want to wash the saltwater from his hair and skin. Brodie disrobed, cleaned up, and put on fresh clothes.
While he had his carved oak chest open, he dug beneath the clothes into the bottom and withdrew a sheathed Highland dirk, the one Elsea had given him as a betrothal gift.
Dread lodging in his gut like a pike, he pulled the dirk from the leather sheath and ran his gaze over the extravagant etchings of a stag and Celtic knots on the blade.
Specks of rust marred the surface, for he hadn't cleaned it or even looked at it in a year and a half.
Remembering the night she'd given it to him, he muttered a curse.
'Twas as if she'd stabbed the dirk into his heart.
He hadn't planned on looking at this weapon ever again.
He should've given it away or sold it months ago.
After sheathing the blade, he shoved it back underneath his clothes, wishing he could just as easily shove away all the grim darkness cutting through him now.
Cursing, he strode from the room and into the solar, trying to forget the past, but he couldn't. Not as long as Elsea was here.
Her presence spawned a thousand questions. She would have to stay until he had all the answers, whether either of them liked it or not.
The old letter from Gavin lay on his massive desk. It had been sent months ago. Brodie picked it up and read it again, skipping the pleasantries and focusing on the important part.
I have good news. The curse that afflicts us can be broken, and in my case, it has been broken. I am now a man whole again with no remaining ill effects from Wilona MacRae's evil curse. The requirement is an exchange of deep love and unwavering trust. So, you must find your soulmate.
"Ha." Soulmates didn't exist. Brodie flung the missive back onto the desk. He was done with any trust or love whatsoever. Just imagining being that vulnerable again turned his stomach.
After Elsea had chosen another man over him, he was through with the sentimental tripe.
His feelings for her were dead. Weren't they?
Or was she still torturing him? He craved numbness, but he hadn't found it yet.
She was like a beautiful wild creature—a tiger or leopard—that had no qualms about ripping him to shreds while he admired its beauty.
'Twould be better for him if she never remembered who he was or what they'd been to each other.