The Adventurer (27 page)

“And what do you think you’re doing by bedding the Sassenach lass?”

“I intend to wed her.”

“Wed her?” Fergus drew up, taking a deep breath and letting it go slowly. He stared at Calum for several moments. Finally, he shook his head.

“Answer me this, Calum. Do you wed her because you truly love her? Or do you wed her because you want that bluidy relic of a stone she’s got hanging ’round her neck?”

Calum never got the chance to respond.

A moment later, he heard Isabella. She was calling his name, calling it loudly, over and over again.

Fergus and Calum both dashed for the castle door.

They found her in the study, sitting at the desk with Belcourt’s books strewn in a sloppy half circle around her. Her hair was piled up loosely atop her head, as if she’d pinned it there simply to get it out of the way. When she looked up and saw them, her face lit up like the sun just breaking through the window behind her.

“I found him!”

“Who, lass?”

“I found your father, Fergus. Right here. ’Twas in the third book. Nearly the last page. ‘Uilliam Bain of the Mackay regiment in Sutherland.’ She read further. “It says here he was taken at Culloden, and was held at an infirmary while his injuries healed. That is why you couldn’t find him listed with the others taken on the battlefield, Calum. He was tried and found guilty of being a rebel. He was to be contained aboard the HMS
Signal
until such time as he is to be transported to the American Colonies.”

“Does it say when he is to be transported, lass?” Calum asked.

“I’m looking ...” She read through the columns. “It doesn’t. But they are to anchor off Carlisle until such time as they do. When they do set off, it will be with stops in both the ports of Belfast and Londonderry, which means they will be traveling by way of the Irish Sea.”

“Only a few days’ sail from here.” Calum turned to Fergus. “If we set a course along the Hebrides, we can intercept them.”

“But what if he’s sailed for America already?”

“I don’t believe he has,” Isabella answered. “The notes indicate that the ship that departed before this one was anchored for over four months waiting for their transport clearance and all the documentation to be completed. Your father’s entry is dated just two months ago. And without this ledger, Lord Belcourt and the Privy Council will have to re-create most of the documentation. Even if by some chance he has sailed, his destination port is listed as Boston in the Massachusetts colony. You could look for him there. There certainly would be some record of his whereabouts.”

“We’ll just hope he hasn’t gotten that far yet,” Calum said. He looked at Fergus. Their differences of that morning were forgotten in the face of this long-awaited news. “We’ve a ship to prepare.”

“Aye.”

Calum slipped easily into his role as captain. “Send for Mungo, Hugh, Lachlann, our best lads. We’ll meet at the bay and start kitting out the ship straightaway. If we hurry, we can be ready to sail in three days’ time.”

Fergus turned to see to his task. He stopped at the door, turned back. “Miss?”

Isabella looked up from the ledger.

“I wanted ...” He faltered, glanced at Calum, then he said simply, “Thank you. Thank you for finding my father.”

She smiled. “I’m happy I was able to help, Fergus.”

He was gone a second later.

Isabella and Calum were suddenly alone.

And they both had something they wanted to say.

“Calum, about last night ...”

He held up a hand to silence her, shaking his head. “Come here to me, lass.”

Isabella circled the desk to join him. He took her hand, clasped his fingers with hers between them, and looked deeply into her eyes. She felt her heartbeat skip just looking at him.

“When you left me in the study earlier, I dinna know what to do. I dinna know what to think.”

“But I just—”

“Shh.” He touched two fingers to her lips. “I needed to sort things out, lass. For myself. So I saddled up the stallion and I rode, rode like the very devil was chasing after me. I rode until the thoughts in my head were clear and when I finally stopped, I was at the bay where you found the Spanish coin.”

She smiled at the memory while he went on.

“I sat on that rock looking out o’er the water and I remembered how you’d looked that day.” He brushed a loose tendril of hair from her eyes. “You were dancing about the water with the sun in your hair. You were my mermaid somehow magically come to life.”

Calum reached inside his coat, removing something. It was a small scrap of paper. Isabella looked and saw that it was the same small scrap of paper she had baked into his birthday cake.

He held it out to her and she took it, reading the words upon it.

“Your wish,” she whispered. “It was for your heart’s desire.”

“Aye. Did you know when I was a lad I would go to that same bay and sit on that rock for hours watching the water, wishing and praying my mermaid would come to me?”

She shook her head.

“Aye, I did. I would go because somehow, from the very moment I could, I knew that if I wished it hard enough, she would eventually come to me. So I wished ... and I waited.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “I am not waiting anymore, Isabella. Because my wish has come true. You are here.”

Isabella felt her eyes begin to sting with tears. She bit her lower lip as he took up her hand, still clasped in his, and kissed it softly. “I know that the letter your mother wrote says you’ve a life elsewhere, waiting for you to return to it. I know that it says you had feelings for this man, this St. Clive.”

“But that is—”

He placed his fingers to her lips once again. “I also know that if I never ask you what I’m about to ask you, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering. Wondering if perhaps, somehow, you might have said yes. So I’m asking you now ...” He dropped to one knee. “I’m asking if you’ll stay. Not only here, at this castle, lass.” He opened the hand he held, splayed her fingers wide, and flattened it against the warmth of his chest. “I’m asking if you’ll stay here, too. In my heart.”

My heart’s desire.

Tears fell freely down Isabella’s face as she stared at him, kneeling there before her, offering her more than she could have ever hoped for.

She didn’t even need a moment to consider it.

With her hand still pressed against his pulse, she lifted her other hand, placed it on the side of his face, and whispered, “I’ll stay.”

They were the only two words she could manage to say.

They were the only two words she
needed
to say.

Calum rose to his feet. Isabella blinked, struggled simply to breathe. He cupped her face in his hands, tipped her mouth to his, and kissed her until her tears fell no more.

Then he drew her into his arms and held her.

“We’ve things to talk about, lass,” he whispered against her ear. “There are things I must tell you.”

She nodded into his chest.

“But not now,” he said. “Tonight, when we can have the night to spend together. Will you come to me tonight?”

“Yes,” she answered back.

And she knew when she did, he would make her his.

The hours of the day had never passed more slowly. Every hour, it seemed, Isabella was peering at the clock, glancing at the sky, wishing for the approach of night. In the morning, she took Druhan down to the shore and searched for winkles and partans in the tidal pools. She helped M’Cuick to roll out bannocks and took up the hem on two of her gowns for Kettie to wear. She took a nap, wrote a little in her journal. Still the minutes dragged. By afternoon, she was in the kitchen once again with M’Cuick and Kettie, “treading” the blankets in a washtub.

And she had never had so much fun in her life.

She had her skirts hitched up above her knees, and her legs and feet were bare, just like whenever Caroline went fishing for frogs in the duke’s ornamental lily pond.

M’Cuick had filled the tub with warm soapy water and Isabella’s task was to step about with the blankets underfoot, to “tread” the dirt from them. The trailing hem of her skirt was soaked and her petticoat clung to the back of her knees. Her hair was damp and sticking to the back of her neck. While she worked, Kettie softly sang a song in Gaelic. Although Isabella didn’t understand a word of what she said, it had a gentle rhythm that harmonized perfectly in time with the work.

The improvement in Kettie’s appearance in just the space of four-and-twenty hours was as near a miracle as one could hope for. Gone was the pallid cast of her skin. This morning her cheeks were even faintly sun-kissed from the short walk she had taken along the sea cliffs with M’Cuick, her hair pale blond, fluttering on the wind like a silken feather. Though still too weak to be on her feet for very long, she had refused to stay abed, and had insisted on sitting with them in the kitchen while they saw to the day’s tasks.

And it wasn’t just Kettie who had been transformed overnight either.

M’Cuick had been hovering about her like a mother hen from the moment they had brought her and Druhan to the castle. He had never looked so happy. It was as if, by Isabella giving him the gift of that sketch, M’Cuick had allowed himself to accept the fact that he’d survived the terrible ordeal that had taken the lives of his family. He’d no reason to feel guilty for having been spared. And the sketch had somehow provided him with a sense of acceptance, freeing him to move on with his life, to look to the future, even, Isabella hoped, dare to wonder that he might once again fall in love.

Love.

It was a word that immediately brought to mind an image of Calum. As she stood knee-deep in that washtub, Isabella wondered what her mother would be more upset about. The fact that her daughter was doing the laundry, or that she had fallen in love with a pirate. A noble pirate, yes, but a pirate all the same.

Her father would likely suffer an apoplexy. Another of his daughters, lost to a handsome Scotsman.

Elizabeth, however, would think it right grand.

Isabella looked up when she realized that Kettie had stopped singing and was looking at the doorway where someone had just come in. Isabella turned, and her heart jumped at just the sight of him.

“Calum?”

He looked so very different, she almost hadn’t recognized him. He had shaved the scruffy beard from his chin, and had pulled his hair back neatly from his face, exposing the clean, stark lines of his jaw. The effect was stunning, making him look like a completely new man, unbelievably even more handsome than before.

Isabella stepped out of the tub and went to him on wet bare feet. She stopped right in front of him, hooked her arms around his neck, and planted him with a kiss that sent them both reeling back against the wall.

It wasn’t until she pulled away a moment later that she noticed something not quite right in the way he was looking at her.

As if he had no idea who she was.

“Calum?”

“Lass, I—”

His words were cut off by the cocking of a pistol.

Bella jerked around.

“Calum!”

But how could he be standing there ...

... when he was standing right in front of her as well?

She backed away, backed away from them both while her gaze shifted from one to the other—one, the Calum she had always known, the other, a near-perfect imitation.

“I ... I do not understand.”

And then suddenly, she did understand. She understood very clearly.

“You are twins.”

“Aye, lass,” said Calum, coming into the room. He wore his typical loose shirt and plaid with his sword and his flintlocks belted across his chest. His hair was tied, but loose, his face rough. He uncocked his pistol, tossed it on the table, pulled out a chair, and sat.

His brother did the same, taking the seat across from him.

“Take a seat, lass. And I’ll explain it all.”

And he did. He told of how his father’s heir was to have been the next Mackay chief. But the night of their birth, in the confusion of their mother’s fleeting life, the midwife had never taken note of who had been born first. Thus the two, and the need for the stone to decide the “real” Mackay.

Sitting between them at the end of the table, Isabella couldn’t seem to stop staring. The differences between them were almost as astonishing as the similarities. They had the same nose, the same chin, the same dark and heavy brow. But where Calum let his hair fall unkempt about his forehead, his brother dressed it neatly, pulling it back from his face with an almost severe orderliness.

And their eyes. Calum’s were a touch greener, and his face was darker, tanned from the sun.

Isabella didn’t wait for any explanations.

“What is your name?” she said to Calum’s brother.

“Alec,” he answered. “Alec Mackay.” He looked at her then and his face registered a genuine surprise. “That stone ... is it?”

Isabella reached for the stone, covering it with her hand. As soon as she did, it started to glow once again with the pale red light it had the first time she’d seen Calum. In that moment, St. Germain’s words echoed through her thoughts.

There are two of the Sons of Fire, very much alike, yet very different, too. It is your task to choose between them.

“Sons of Fire,” she repeated.

She looked at Calum. “You knew?” She didn’t even wait for him to answer. “You knew all along that there were two of you, even when I asked you, yet you didn’t say a word. Why?”

Calum simply looked at her.

Isabella blinked. Was that why he had kept her there, kissed her, held her? Was it only for the stone?

“Calum!”

Fergus’s urgent call summoned from above.

Calum ran for the stairs. Isabella, Alec, and the others followed.

When they reached the hall, Isabella found yet another surprise.

“Douglas?” she said upon seeing her sister’s husband standing there with Fergus’s pistol pointed ominously at his side. And then immediately she added, “F-father?”

“Isabella!” The duke started for her, until Fergus trained his pistol on him.

“Do not move, Sassenach.”

The duke froze. “She’s my daughter.”