Chapter 11 Crow’s Nest
Asplitting headache that made her wonder whether she had a little Athena inside her skull struggling to be set free welcomed Lizzie to the next morning, along with an awful taste in her mouth as if she had spent all night licking the wood of the balustrade. She was still in the dress she wore for the Fair, but seemed to have somehow pulled the blankets over herself.
Her physical discomforts, however, paled in face of her wounded female pride, because she had thrown herself at Brun, had pretty much begged him to make love to her, and he had rejected her, had ran out of her room as if the devil were chasing him.
Lizzie groaned aloud feeling that she would never be able to recover from that humiliation. Dang it, didn’t people usually suffered from temporary memory loss after getting drunk? Why did she have to remember every painful detail of the previous evening?
She halted her internal self-pity wallowing because that was not entirely true.
There was a gap in yesterday’s timeline. A few minutes of complete blackout.
Lizzie remembered every moment of the day quite clearly, until that red haired singer arrived. She remembered finding the song strangely familiar and then everything was blank until she saw Brun standing in front of her, very pale and with a horrified expression on his face. It was then when she felt lightheaded, realised that she was drunk, and started to freak out.
Brun had embraced her and told her that he was going to take her home, but she had only flashes of memory of how she got into his car and the drive home. Then she recalled perfectly well when they arrived back at the manor and every single embarrassing moment since in painstaking detail, culminating with ending the pathetic night by crying herself to sleep.
Burning with shame, she pulled the pillow over her face and screamed into it, deciding that she would never leave her bed again until the sun exploded and engulfed the Earth.
Give it or take a billion years.
There was a knock on her door and she groaned in dismay, knowing that she was not remotely prepared to speak to anyone.
God, what if it was her mother?
Maybe she could pretend to be sleeping…
“Lady Lizzie?” Mrs Clisham’s voice sounded from the other side of the door.
She considered ignoring it, but knowing Mrs Clisham, if she did not reply the housekeeper would have a whole rescue team at her door in a matter of moments.
Like, firefighters and all.
“Come in Mrs Clisham,” she brushed her dishevelled hair away from her face and vigorously rubbed her eyes hoping they did not look too puffy.
The door clicked open and the housekeeper walked in with a tray of food.
“Good morning, Lady Lizzie,” she greeted with her customary genial smile, “I brought you some breakfast.”
Lizzie checked the clock on her bedside. It was already ten in the morning.
“Thank you, Mrs Clisham, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. I should have been up earlier…”
She placed the tray on the bed and waved her hand dismissively, “Oh no trouble at all. Mr MacLugh has recommended that we let you sleep in today and ask me to bring you a wee breakfast later.”
Her cheeks went bright red, “He did?”
“Aye,” she confirmed, “He said you’re very tired from yesterday and needed to rest,” then she studied Lizzie’s face for a moment, “And indeed he’s right, you sure seem to be exhausted… You even slept fully dressed!” then she smiled in her motherly way, “Surely you enjoyed yourself then, right?”
Lizzie nodded gingerly, unsure on how to respond. At least Brun had not mentioned anything about her being drunk as a fiddler.
“By the way, Mr MacLugh asked me to let you know that he had to make a small trip. He left a message for you explaining better,” Mrs Clisham pointed to a small envelope tucked between the teapot and the milk jar on the tray, “I’ll let you eat then, and will be back later for the tray. Rest well, Lady Lizzie, you do look a little pale this morning… Call me if you need anything.”
Still unable to find her words, Lizzie only smiled at the housekeeper’s kindness. After Mrs Clisham closed the door, she took a deep breath and reached for the envelope with trembling hands, dreading its contents.
Lizzie,
I am terribly sorry about my behaviour last night. Please do not think I could ever take advantage of you like that.
I had to make a small trip and will be away for a couple of days.
Please wait for me. There is much we need to talk about.
Brun.
She put down the note, biting her lower lip, not knowing what to make of it.
As soonas Brun drove into Fayla’s old manor – aptly named Nead Feannag, which meant Crow’s Nest –his shoulders instantly tensed. That place brought only dark memories of a bleak childhood and a difficult transition into manhood.
He had very few memories of his early years. He could not have been much older than a toddler when he was brought to Nead Feannag, because he remembered nothing of his life before. His first memories were of being in the nursery with the other small children. It was a gloomy room with a handful of toys to be shared amongst many. Servants would bring meals and give them baths, but there was little interaction. Their nurses had been kind enough, but Fayla’s rules had been strict and their daily schedule of lessons kept them busy from sunrise to sundown on most days. There had been little play or laughter.
Fayla would come to personally supervise the children’s progress once a sennight or a fortnight but pleasing her had not been an easy task. Brun could not recall ever hearing a word of praise coming out of her mouth.
Nothing other than perfection could extract a compliment from her and when she was displeased, her punishments could be quite harsh.
Their education only became more difficult as they grew. Fayla honed them to be lethal warriors and to wield magic with equal efficiency. There had little time to just live.
After Fayla bonded him to the ring to grant him immortality, the decades passed fast while he fought and killed for the survival of the Fae. It was only when he reached his hundredth’s birthday that Fayla sent him to Glennloch, to serve as one of the protectors of the Endellys sisters.
To his surprise, after surrendering her own life to keep him alive longer, Brun discovered that Fayla had bequeathed him the house and a small fortune, naming him as her son.
For five hundred years he had used the name MacLugh, a name given to him by Fayla, and he did not even know whether it was his real family name or not.
Certainly a made up name, like Endell.
Nead Feannag was located at the south of the Isle of Mull near Carsaig, at the most isolated place in Scotland his former mentor could think of. The manor was a dark and gray Jacobean building facing the sea on the south but surrounded by a thick grove on the other sides. It was not an easy place to find, unless one knew it was there.
Fayla had not been fond of company.
After Triarell’s death, Brun had seldom returned to the manor. He kept it only because of Fayla’s vault, which was filled with books on Fae magic, notes and old potions. About fifty years before, he had permanently sealed the main entrance to the vault and donated the manor to the Scottish Heritage, keeping only the old hunting lodge for himself, for the very rare occasions when he had visited the place since Fayla’s death. Should the need arise, from the hunting lodge’s basement Brun could access a secret tunnel leading to an alternative way into the vault.
Well, the need has arisen.
He parked outside the hunting lodge, grabbed his suitcase from the passenger seat, and climbed out of the car, scanning the scenery. The day was overcast and windy. Down at the beach, the sea was lead gray and strong, the waves crashing relentlessly against the razor sharp rocks, morphing into moving giants made of white foam.
A gloomy day to match his gloomy thoughts.
Reaching for the keys inside his pocket, he unlocked the front door and entered the lodge, finding everything cleaned and aired. Early that morning he had messaged his housekeeper about his arrival, and as usual the man had been quite efficient in preparing the house for him, cleaning his old room and stocking food for a few days in the kitchen, although Brun doubted he would eat or sleep much while he remained there.
I might raid the cellar though.
Dropping the suitcase on the floor, he shrugged off his suit’s jacket, carefully folding it on the arm of the sofa. Rubbing his face to dispel the exhaustion after a sleepless night and the four hours driving without a break, Brun rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a gas lamp from the kitchen and climbed down the stairs towards the basement.
It took him about twenty minutes to cross the dim underground tunnel that went uphill towards the manor. When the light of his lamp finally met the old wooden door, his shirt felt damp against his skin.
A huge, rusty iron padlock secured the door. He had not opened it in two hundred and fifty years – the reason why he had never bothered to have electricity installed there – and it was only after drenching it with oil that he managed to get the key to work. After applying more oil to the hinges and grunting with the effort of pushing the solid wood, the door finally gave way.
A strong smell of mould and decay hit him squarely on the face and he fanned the air around his head, coughing and sneezing.
He set the lamp on one of the tables and surveyed the room. Fayla’s vault was basically a large, rounded chamber carved in stone, reminding him of an artificial cave, furnished with work tables and bookshelves. A layer of dust at least half an inch thick covered the abandoned flasks of potions and spiderwebs as dense as curtains dangled from the rafters. Shelves and worktables were meticulously organised, and although the labels on the flasks had long dissolved into dust, Brun could still recognise most of the substances there, just by their position on the shelf.
However, he was not interested in any of that.
Brun went straight to the bookshelves and began to wipe book spines with his fingers, squinting in the weak light to be able to read the faded titles. Luckily, he likewise knew those books well and had a good idea of what he was hunting for.
Something that could help Lizzie.
At the thought of Lizzie, a wrenching angst in his heart made him pause.
The image of her face wet with tears framing her eyes full of desire floated before his eyes and he groaned in frustration. Stepping away from her while she was on that bed, partially undressed and touchinghim with such passion had been one of the hardest things he had done in his life. He had run into his own bathroom and no amount of cold water had been enough to douse the fire inside him.
He spent the rest of the night awake, pacing in his room until he heard the others return from the Faire and disappear into their own rooms. Then he had cloaked himself and walked back to Lizzie’s room, finding her deep asleep, her face still humid with tears. He had covered her and then paced some more, unable to leave, trying to manage the turmoil of emotions inside him, anything and everything from anger, fear, desire, and confusion, until the sun began to rise and he returned to his own room.
He would have regretted making love to Lizzie when he looked at her and saw Triarell. He could not add that to the list of confused feelings in his head, and Lizzie definitely did not deserve it.
Had Fayla foresaw that Triarell’s doppelganger was going to be reborn two and a half centuries after her death?
He sighed. Fayla was long gone, thus he would never find the answer to that question, and in that moment, he had other fish to fry.
Seeking to focus on the task at hand, he pulled another book and set it on the dusty table. There was a lot to be done, and he did not want to leave Lizzie alone for longer than necessary.
Vivianwas sitting on her bed with a worried expression on her face when Lizzie walked out of her bathroom.
“Spit it out,” was her friend’s greeting, “What in the bloody hell happened to you last night?”
She pulled the towel out of her head and dropped it on a chair, letting her damp hair fall down her back. The headache had dulled down into levels compatible to life, but the queasiness in her stomach had not improved much. She sat on the bed’s edge and looked at the clock. It was past midday.
“Where are my parents and grandma?” was her reply. She wanted to delay that conversation for as long as she could.
Vivian huffed impatiently, narrowing her eyes at Lizzie, obviously very much aware of her pathetic evasive tactic, “Well, after Brun pretty much threatened anyone who even thought about daring to come and disturb your royal slumber this morning, Mrs Clisham diplomatically arranged for Mr Clisham to take them for a scenic drive around Loch Tay for a couple of hours,” she chuckled at that as if it was the most amusing joke.
“Oh God,” Lizzie groaned, covering her face with her hands and falling in foetal position on her bed. Her parents might not notice anything amiss, but she doubted her grandmother would be fooled. Then she peered at Vivian between her fingers, “How did you escape?”
Her friend shrugged, “I told them the truth: I’m too hungover to frolic about in the hills like Fraulein Maria…”
Lizzie wanted to laugh, but she could not, because Vivian grilled her again, “Now tell me what happened, because on one moment you and Brun were watching that singer and on the next you’re both gone!”
“Did you see what happened?” she whined not entirely sure she really wanted to know, “What did I do? Did I climb the tables and began to take off my clothes?”
Vivian stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues, “Climb the tables? What are you talking about?”
“Please Viv, don’t spare me, I need to know the extent of my humiliation… Should I never show my face in the village again? Should I leave the country? Change name?”
Her friend shook her head, “No, Lizzie, I am being very serious now! This is exactly what happened: you were standing there, all regal and proper lady-of-the-manor with Brun like a highlander warrior by your side… Actually, about that: that man surely can fill up a kilt! When I saw him dressed like that, I nearly swooned…”
“Vivian Lloyd!” Lizzie scolded, “Focus!”
“Yes, sorry, is just that it’s hard to forget that man in kilt.”
Lizzie groaned thinking that she would never forgeteverything that she found under that kilt either…
“Vivian…” she pleaded.
“Right, right, as I was saying, you were standing next to the highlander warrior, all proper and all, and then you seemed to be singing…”
Lizzie jackknifed on the bed and put her glasses on as if that could help her hear better, “Singing? Me?”
“I know! I thought it was weird too. At first I assumed you were talking to Brun, but your eyes were fixed into nothing, you know, like when you get lost in a thought?”
Lizzie bobbed her head and Vivian went on.
“Then Brun was talking to you, but you did not acknowledge him. Your lips kept moving as if you were singing. Next thing I saw him steering you away. Then the oddest thing happened–”
“I knew it! I danced on the tables, didn’t I?” Lizzie squealed, sounding desperate.
“No!” Vivian cried, “I told you: you were not drunk! At least not visibly drunk…”
“Then what happened that was so odd?”
“You vanished! Poof!” Vivian made a meaningful gesture with her hands, “I saw Brun steering you behind a group of people one second and on the next you vanished! Like… you know… a magic trick!”
Behind the lenses of her glasses, Lizzie’s eyes rolled, “Don’t be silly, surely you just lost us in the crowd.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Vivian accepted, but did not sound very convinced, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter…”
“What happened then?”
“Well, Mr Clisham let us know that you were not feeling well and that Brun brought you home, but he insisted it was nothing serious. This morning when you didn’t come for breakfast, we tried to interrogate Brun about it, but he completely stonewalled us… He said you probably ate something that did not agree with your stomach and just needed to rest. Then he announced he was going on small trip, bid his goodbyes saying, rather emphatically, that we probably would be gone by the time he returned and then that he strongly suggested we did not disturb you today.”
Lizzie remained in silence absorbing Vivian’s words, trying to extract some hidden meaning from them.
Why did Brun not want anyone to disturb her? Was he afraid she was going to tell her parents about what happened between them on the night before?
“Now it’s your turn,” Vivian’s voice snapped her out of her musings, “what happened between you two?”
There would be no way of escaping from Vivian scrutiny.
“Well, he brought me home as you know… I was upset, I thought… I thought I’ve made an arse of myself at the Fair, so I started crying…”
“Oh Lizzie…” Vivian interjected.
“He was sweet, he tried to reassure me and then… well, and then we kissed…”
Vivian screeched, “I knew it! I told you he had feelings for you…”
Lizzie sighed, “I don’t know… Maybe he cares for me, but as a friend…”
“Why? Did he not… was he not… interested?”
She recalled the way he had tried to take off her clothes and the feel of Brun’s rock hard erection in her hands.
He definitely was interested.
“Not exactly, but he… he regretted, I think… He… ran away.”
Vivian’s eyes widened so much that Lizzie thought they would fall on her lap like two marbles.
“Bloody hell!” she whispered.
“Then I… I cried myself to sleep and this morning he left this note,” she reached for the folded piece of paper from under her pillow and handed it to her friend.
Vivian quickly scanned the three puny lines.
“See? He regretted kissing me!” Lizzie gestured at the paper in Vivian’s hands, “And then he ran away not to speak to me today!”
Her friend sighed impatiently, “Honestly, Lizzie, you’re one of the smartest persons I know, but sometimes you can be as dumb as a box of rocks!”
“Ouch! Thanks!” Lizzie grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting like a little child.
“Of course he regretted what he did, but only because he’s a gentleman, with big capital letters! You were not feeling well last night, be it because you were drunk or sick: what kind of scoundrel takes advantage of a woman in that situation?”
Lizzie blinked. She definitely had not thought about it that way. She had been conscious enough on the previous night, had wanted him to kiss her, more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. The alcohol in her brain had merely lowered her inhibitions.
But Brun could not have known that, right? He could not possibly know what kind of fantasies about him she had been entertaining over the past weeks.
“Well, yeah, I suppose you could be right…”
Vivian stared at her as if she had an intellectual disability.
“I am right, Elizabeth Endell!” she scoffed and then read the note again, “What does he want to talk to you about?”
Lizzie shrugged, “Honestly, I have no idea… Some paperwork I still need to sign… Or some ceremony with the Queen he forgot to mention…”
“Well, you will know soon enough,” Vivian concluded and then studied her face for a while, “I can stay a few more days if you like…”
Lizzie pressed her lips tightly, feeling tempted to avail of her friend’s support a while longer, but Vivian had already come to Glennloch essentially out of the airport and she was due to start her doctorate in the coming days. She had worked very hard to secure that position and it would not be fair to ask more time from her friend to help her deal with her childish insecurities and her crush on Brun.
It was time to pull up her big girl pants and face the world on her own.
“No, I won’t ruin your job with Professor Oliveira,” Vivian opened her mouth to argue, but Lizzie lifted a hand cutting her friend’s words, “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Mum and Dad will leave soon too and that will bring down my stress levels dramatically.”
Vivian bobbed her head but did not look very convinced.
“Okay then, but if you need anything, anything at all, call me straight away!”