Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Unable to sleep again, Dorchad rose and silently dressed, watching Rebecca as he did.
She lay sprawled on the ticking, one hand pressed against the faint hollow his body had made next to hers.
After he pulled on his boots he went over to drape the coverlet over her bare, pink buttocks, and then stared down at her.
I love you, Chieftain MacRune.
He tried to fathom the words she’d uttered before falling asleep as drowsy nonsense or some manner of teasing.
He’d also made it plain to her from the beginning that he could not give her what a mortal man could.
As much as he made to dismiss her confession as a jest, deep in the cold vault of his heart he knew that she’d meant it.
Ever honest and forthright, Rebecca McIan had offered him her affection without hesitation since coming to the island.
He’d used it to take her to bed, but females did not fall in love with men simply because they facked.
I cannae permit her to waste the rest of her short life on me.
Dorchad wanted to shake her awake and demand to know how she’d become so addled as to fall in love with him, but she would likely accept that along with everything else he’d done to her. That meant resorting to more drastic measures; a tactic that would assuredly end her sentiments permanently.
She shall never forgive me.
He left his bed chamber and wandered through the passages until he found himself standing at the staircase leading up to his twin's tower chamber. Sgathan would likely be sleeping now, and for a moment he reconsidered asking his brother for his aid. As seneschal he spent his days surrounded by female vassals, and could swive as many as he liked. Yet Sgathan never dallied with any of the maids. He also ignored the sculleries and stable lads, so it wasn’t a matter of desire for another male.
He never left the island if he could help it, so he didn’t seek relief with the females in the village or the crofts.
Although he’d never thought about it until now, Dorchad wondered if his twin had ever facked anyone.
“Do you seek your mirror?” a tired voice asked from behind him.
He turned to see Sgathan standing covered with dirt and bits of straw, the muscles in his arms standing out more so than usual. “You’ve been sparring?”
“Stave practice with targets.” His twin swiped at the front of his tunic. “What do you want?”
The hard edge in his brother’s voice made Dorchad frown. “Your counsel, if you’ve time to talk.”
“Of course.” He gestured toward the stairs. “Come up and I’ll open the whiskey.”
Once inside Sgathan’s chamber Dorchad paced restlessly, looking out the window slits to note the progress of the watchers on the wall and the slowly lightening horizon.
It would soon be dawn, and if he went back to his bed chamber he would have to deal with Rebecca awakening and looking upon him with her pretty eyes filled with adoration.
I love you, Chieftain MacRune.
Sgathan dragged him out of his thoughts by shoving a goblet of whiskey at him. “You act as if your bed wench kicked you in the baws.”
In one sense, she had, for what she had admitted had shaken him. Never once had he dealt with such a female. Even now his desire for her could not overcome the dread she’d invoked with her innocent declaration.
She cannae love me. She doesnae ken me.
“I dinnae need the distraction of a lover just now,” Dorchad said, and took a long swallow of the fragrant, burning spirit.
“We face annihilation at the hands of the dark Fae queen if we dinnae find the cluet. Enemies old and new abound, and they shallnae cease their efforts to harm the clan. Rebecca, she’s young and sweet, and ’tisnae my desire to crush her when I end our arrangement. ”
His twin shrugged. “Send her away, then.”
“Tair’s made her the new healer.” He met Sgathan’s weary gaze. “To end her affection for me, we’ll play the old game.”
“Aye, right, for that ever ends so well.” The seneschal knocked back his whiskey and refilled his goblet. “Cannae you simply command her stay away from you?”
Dorchad eyed him. “What ken you of how I speak to her?”
“’Tis your manner with every wench who doesnae flee your presence,” Sgathan said. “Remember Barabal from the village bakery?”
Dorchad suppressed a wince. For some bizarre reason the baker’s only daughter had taken a fancy to him from the first time she’d spied him in the village market.
Just on the threshold of her maidenhood, the young lass had followed him about for an hour, darting here and there in a pathetic attempt to hide from his notice.
Finally he’d tried to take her back to her sire, but she’d flung her arms around his neck and tried with clumsy eagerness to kiss him.
I shall love you forever, my lord, for you’re more handsome than any swain in the highlands.
He’d carried her clinging to him to the bakery, where her sire had pried her off and handed her weeping to an older woman who took her away.
He’d then explained wearily that the girl had been slightly addled since a bad fall as a bairn, and while a capable worker she formed unseemly and unwanted attachments, often to people far above her station.
Dorchad didn’t need the baker to tell him how unsuitable he was for her, and yet for many months after that he’d replayed her fervent declaration of love in his mind. He’d never had a woman love him before Barabal, and now Rebecca.
“Ah, you do recall her,” his brother said. “I wondered if her eyes didnae work proper.”
“’Twasnae the lass’s fault.” He glared at his brother, and swatted the air between them. “Her sire arranged a good marriage for her in the south last summer. Her husband’s family have a daughter with the same malady, and they ken how to treat her kindly.”
“Rebecca’s no’ addled, and you cannae arrange a match for her, so now you’d play the old game.” His twin made a disgusted sound. “What shall you do if she favors the outcome?”
He’d never considered his only blood-kin as his rival. Yet as he looked at him and imagined Rebecca in his arms, he wondered if she might prove as healing to him. “I shallnae stand in your way.”
“Gods, but you’re a heartless bastart.” He toasted him and then drained the goblet a second time, and then set it aside. “Tomorrow night.”
He hadn’t considered releasing her that quickly. “’Tis too soon.”
“If you wish done with her, act. If you mean chatter on about such like a wench, dinnae involve me.” Sgathan went over and stretched out on his bed. “Now go. I need an hour of rest before the household wakes.”
Dorchad went over to argue the point, and saw his brother had already fallen asleep.
He then glanced back at the jug on the table.
How much had he been drinking, and why? Sgathan never did anything which threatened his self-control, claiming that he had more dark Fae blood than mortal, which made him more dangerous.
He’d always accepted that, but since Rebecca had come to him he’d begun to see many things with new eyes.
’Tis no excuse to bind her to me. She needs a man, no’ a shell of one.
He walked down from his brother’s tower room to the gardens, where he saw a nightjar alight on a wooden trellis with a flurry of gray-brown feathers.
Once perched, the bird let out a long, churring trill to announce his presence to any females in the area.
Dorchad had observed birds since his boyhood, when those that flew too close to him were pulled out of the air to collide with his face or body.
He learned to catch them gently, and place them on the ground before retreating as quickly as he could.
Sometimes, however, the shock still proved too much for the delicate creatures, and they toppled over and went still.
No’ her. Never her.
Dorchad turned and went back inside the stronghold, first trotting and then running through the passages until he reached his bed chamber.
As the thin dawn light filtered in from the window slit he shed his boots and tunic, and climbed into bed beside his sleeping lover.
She immediately stirred and reached for him, and he pulled her against his side.
This was the last time he would hold her like this.
I shallnae be her end.
Rebecca, like the nightjar, could not escape a grim and loveless life with him. Tomorrow night he would set her free.
After a long, restless night of little sleep, Cath rose, dressed and left the stronghold, taking one of the laird’s boats into the water, but not bothering to row across to the other shore.
Instead he lay back as the vessel drifted, and watched the night sky turn from dark blue to gold, violet and fiery rose.
The colors of the mortal realm never ceased to fascinate him, for he’d never before remembered seeing such hues before coming here from Elphyne.
His memories of his mortal life remained only a handful of vague, sensory blurs.
The faint scent of moss and flowers. The warmth of gentle hands stroking his back.
The sound of singing, sweet and soft. At the very end, he flinched as screams of horror tore through his thoughts from when he’d been stolen by Rune, although those he likely imagined, for he had no other memory of that terrible night.
Had his lady màthair tried to fight for him? Was he the reason she vanished, or had his sire slain her?
Cath realized how fortunate he was to have survived his brutal boyhood apprenticeship.
Rune had been unrelenting in his harshness during training; more often than not he’d beaten Cath for even the smallest mistakes.
He suspected his sire had wished to brutalize every last bit of his mortal weakness out of him, but he hadn’t realized the most powerful weakness was one that wouldn’t manifest until he took his son to live in Elphyne.
There Cath had encountered another mortal; one who had changed him forever.
The only boon that bastart ever gave me undid all those years of ill-treatment with a single touch.