Teresa Medeiros (34 page)

All semblance of sanity fled him. Before he realized it, he had her down on the floor, his hands fixed around her throat. But Eve was not willing to die a graceful death. She bucked against him, eyes blazing, lips moving in a choked stream of curses. Beneath the thick layer of powder, her face went scarlet, then dark.

Morgan stumbled to his feet, pressing his palms against his temples as if he could somehow silence the murderous fever roaring through his skull. A shaky laugh escaped him. “You’re the third person I’ve almost strangled in the past few weeks. I really must guard my temper with more care.”

She clambered to her feet, eyeing him cautiously, one hand massaging her mottled throat. “Ye’ve been drinkin’, ain’t ye? I can smell it on ye like a whore’s perfume. The stuff is poison, lad. Ye saw what it did to yer da.”

Morgan took a menacing step toward her. “No, Eve. I saw what
you
did to my da. And I always thought your worst crime was teachin’ Ranald to play the bagpipes.”

Eve held her ground. She crossed her arms over the puffed bodice of Sabrina’s gown. “ ’Twas an accident.”

He continued to advance, biting off each word. “Like your ambush of Dougal Cameron? Like Pookah’s death and Sabrina’s plunge over the cliff?” He stared down at her, contempt mingling with every breath.

Unexpected tenderness softened her eyes to smoky green. She lifted her hand to correct a tousled strand of his hair. He caught her wrist before she could touch him.

“Ye must understand,” she begged. “I did it all for ye, lad. For yer future and the future o’ Clan MacDonnell. If ye only knew how much I’d sacrificed for yer precious clan. Now that the wee Cameron bitch is gone, I can tell ye. I’ve waited all me life to—”

“More lies!” he roared, thrusting her toward the door. “More of your twisted truths! Well, I’ve no desire to hear them!” A chilling calm came over him. His finger was steady as he leveled it at her.
“Outcast
!”

“No!” she screamed. Her hands flew up to cover her ears.

Morgan drew himself up, shaking off the protective mantle of drunkenness and allowing himself to feel the full agony of his mother’s unwitting abandonment, Eve’s betrayal, Sabrina’s desertion. He spoke in Gaelic, the ancient words of kings and chieftains flowing like song from his lips. “Outcast. From this moment on, you are banished from this clan. If you set foot on MacDonnell lands again, I’ll have you stoned.” Switching to English, he caught Eve’s wrists, wrenching her hands from her ears. “Do you understand, woman? I never want to lay eyes on your face again.”

With a piteous cry, Eve tore herself away from him and stumbled out the door. The sound of her weeping lingered long after she had fled.

Morgan stood in the middle of the floor, breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists. Eve had lit every taper in the chamber. His desperate gaze searched the room, finding nothing but mocking reminders of what he sought. Sabrina’s genteel touch was everywhere. Candlelight sparkled off the crystal stoppers of her perfume bottles, burnished the chess board to a mahogany gleam, caressed the leather spines of the books. The light’s brutal clarity opened his eyes, forcing him to see the elegant trappings for what they were without their mistress to bring them to vibrant life.

Toys. Trinkets. Baubles. Empty illusion. Books with blank pages. Games that were eternally lost. Instruments with no songs.

Roaring like a wounded beast, Morgan snatched up the clarsach and smashed it on the edge of the table. He tore at the books, severing their spines, scattering their pages. He swept the dressing table clean with his fist, oblivious of the shards of glass that stung his flesh, then smashed the upended trunk against the wall. He snapped the chess board in two over his knee, hurling the chessmen into the fire, where their impassive faces melted in smoking wisps of flame. He tore the creamy linens off the bed, rending them with his bare hands.

Unbearable weariness overtook him. Stumbling
over the splintered stool, he fell heavily and lay surrounded by the carnage of his dying dreams.

A shy tongue lapped his cheek. Morgan pried open one eye. Bright button eyes surveyed him. A pug nose nudged his arm.

Shaking his head in exhausted bewilderment, Morgan curled his arm around the grizzled little dog and drew him close. Pugsley nestled gratefully into his warmth.

Gazing bleakly up into the shadowed rafters, Morgan whispered, “Aye and a fine pair we are. It seems the wee bitch abandoned us both, didn’t she, lad?”

Pugsley’s only reply was an enigmatic whimper.

The shiny black carriage lurched over narrow roads rutted by the melting snows. Dougal and Elizabeth rode in tense silence, deaf to the musical splash of a waterfall cascading through a deep gorge, blind to the profusion of wildflowers rioting over the stony hillsides and all the other dazzling charms of a balmy spring day in the Highlands.

Elizabeth’s hands were clenched in her lap, so stiff they might have been gloved in steel instead of satin.

Dougal gave his beard a fretful rub. “What if he refuses to see us?”

“He has to see us,” came his wife’s unswerving reply. “He owes her that much. If not for him, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

If not for me
, Dougal echoed silently, the weary refrain making his head ache. He forced back a shudder as the carriage lumbered around the treacherous curve that had cost his daughter everything but her life.

It had been agonizing for all of them to witness
the initial aftermath of Sabrina’s accident—the constant tremor of her hands, her tears at the smallest frustrations and disappointments, her difficulty in performing simple tasks in which she had once excelled such as embroidery and playing the harpsichord. Christmas had been a strained affair at Cameron, replete with forced smiles and festive meals that had been picked at with little enthusiasm.

Dougal couldn’t put his finger on the moment, but after Christmas everything had changed. The bewildered pain in Sabrina’s eyes had sharpened to something dangerous like dry tinder just waiting for a spark.

He had carried her down to the drawing room one evening and settled her in a chair before the fire so they could all suffer through the ritual of pretending everything was normal.

“Thank you, Papa,” she said dutifully as he tucked a quilt around her legs.

“My pleasure, princess.”

“Would you like to sing a duet tonight, dear?” Elizabeth asked, looking up from her embroidery.

“I don’t believe so. My throat was a bit raw when I woke from my nap.” Sabrina cleared it as if to illustrate.

Brian straddled a stool and swept a chessboard between them. “The only singing the lass’ll be doing tonight is singing for mercy when I best her at chess.” He reached over and tweaked one of her curls.

“Take care, brother. She’s been known to sneak your pawns off the board and hide them in her skirts.” Alex’s hearty laughter struck a false note, making Elizabeth wince.

Sabrina summoned up the ghost of a mischievous smile that tore at Dougal’s heart. “Don’t be silly, Alex. I never cheat unless I’m losing.”

Dougal was unable to resist the urge to peer over his ledger as his two youngest children inclined their heads toward the game. Sabrina’s profile, etched by firelight, was pensive. Her delicate brow furrowed as she reached up several times during the game to absently massage her temples.

“Aaaargh!” Brian’s groan bespoke a mortal wound as he staggered back on the stool. “What foul villainy is this? The wench captured my king! Ah, defeat, thy taste is bitter!”

Alex rolled his eyes at his brother’s theatrics. Sabrina was still staring intently at the board, the most peculiar expression on her face. Suddenly her arm shot out. The heavy chessboard crashed to the floor, scattering the pieces in all directions. Brian’s mouth dropped open.

Sabrina’s eyes blazed with fury as she snapped, “You let me win! I know you did. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I landed on my head when I fell?”

They all stared at her, astonished by the sight of their even-tempered angel turning into a virago before their eyes. Even as a child Sabrina had never been given to tantrums. Then Elizabeth might have rebuked her; now she could only wad her embroidery into a knot, her hands shaking.

Sabrina’s gaze swept them all, granting none of them a reprieve from her bitter passion. “I feel like one of Mother’s finches living in a cage. I feel your eyes on me all the time. I can’t stand it! You tiptoe around me and make bad jokes and expect me to laugh! You let me win all the games as if it had never occurred to me that I could lose!” Her voice rose on a shrill note. “What are you all staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a cripple before?”

Dougal could bear it no longer. He rose from his chair and knelt before her. For an instant her expression was so savage, he thought she might strike him and almost wished she would.

Then her head dropped and the lush silk of her lashes veiled the rage simmering in her eyes, leaving them all to wonder if they’d only imagined it. “Take me back to my chamber, Papa,” she said plaintively. “My head is pounding so that I can hardly think.”

Dougal was jolted back to the present when their carriage rolled to a halt in the courtyard of Castle MacDonnell. An air of bleak desertion hung over its ramparts. The looming walls blocked the sunlight,
holding spring at bay. As Elizabeth descended from the carriage, she drew her shawl tight against the chill.

Skeletal fingers of ivy twined up the weathered blocks. The darkened windows peered down at them like gaping eyes. Gazing around nervously, the footmen and outriders drew their weapons.

“Put those away,” Dougal snapped, startled by the harshness of his voice in the eerie silence. “What are you trying to do? Start a war?”

Exchanging sheepish glances, they obeyed, but the elderly coachman muttered something about the “dastardly MacDonnells” and kept his own musket propped defiantly across his knees.

Beneath the pressure of Dougal’s hand, the door to the castle swung open with a rusty creak. Before he could protest, Elizabeth swept in ahead of him.

Dougal almost ran into her back when she froze in her steps, her gaze raking the hall with undisguised horror. “You allowed our daughter to live in this filth?”

Dismay and bewilderment mingled in Dougal as he surveyed the carnage of Castle MacDonnell. Splintered ruins were all that remained of the furniture—tables toppled and smashed, benches split in two as if by the mighty blow of a giant’s fist. Cobwebs frosted the chandeliers, rippling like ghostly veils in a draft neither of them could feel. Sprouts of ivy had slithered through the arrow slits, choking out the meager light and forcing their greedy tendrils into the crumbling mortar as if to proclaim it was only a matter of time before their dominion over the hall was complete.

Dougal shivered. It was as if the entire castle had fallen under some dark enchantment, some eternal winter of the soul.

He shook his head. “No,” he whispered, hesitant to profane the unholy silence. “Our daughter never lived in this place.”

Grimacing in distaste, Elizabeth lifted the hem of her skirts high above a floor littered with sparrow droppings and the bleached bones of small, hapless creatures. From a darkened corridor came the scrabbling of
a larger animal. Thrusting Elizabeth behind him, Dougal drew his pistol.

A quavering voice emerged from the shadows, followed by a white-faced man with arms raised. “Don’t fire, me lord. I ain’t armed.”

Biting back an impotent surge of anger, Dougal slipped the pistol back into his jacket, knowing it was best out of sight should his wife inadvertently stumble upon Ranald’s identity. “We’ve come to have words with your chieftain.”

Morgan’s cousin shuffled his feet and scratched at his dark thatch of hair. His swarthy complexion had paled as if it had been weeks since he had seen the sun. His other arm still hung at an awkward angle as if it had never quite healed.

“I canna say that would be wise, sir. He ain’t been down in many a day. He’ll see me only when I bring him food.” His eyes avoided Dougal’s. “Or drink.”

Dougal summoned all the arrogance and authority of his rank. “We’ve risked ambush from your clansmen and ridden all the way from Cameron on those goat paths you call roads. We’re not leaving until we see Morgan MacDonnell.”

Once Ranald might have defied him. Now he only shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I’d suggest the lady stay below. Don’t glower so. I’ll come back and look after her.”

Dougal cast his wife a dubious glance, but she dredged up a heartening smile. “Go, love. Do what you must. I’ll be fine.”

As Ranald led him up the crumbling stairs and left him standing alone before the chamber that had once belonged to his daughter, Dougal hoped he would fare as well as his wife.