Alasdair was waiting for his heart to slow its racing. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness.
He saw Fiona, sitting up, the covers clutched to her breasts and her hair a mad nimbus all around her, looking, he thought dazedly, not unlike a seraph who had come from the heavens into the human realm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice still a little rough. “A nightmare, nothing more.”
“You called out,” she said softly. “For your parents. For Gavin, and for Mòrag. Was she someone whom you lost, too?”
A wave of anger, of pain and desolation, crashed over Alasdair and he had to fiercely fight back the urge to snarl at Fiona or to simply get up and go away somewhere, anywhere, to avoid having to answer questions he didn’t wish to hear, let alone answer. Instead, he brought himself closer to her, through sheer will made his voice just as soft.
“It was nothing, lass,” he said, “only a dream,” and before she could say anything else he coaxed her down with persuasive hands, to lie against him, and to let him kiss her and touch her, gently, slowly, until she was breathless, eager, carried off with desire. And then he, too, was subsumed, all thoughts of the past gone, as if they were only flotsam taken back by a remorseless sea.
After, Fiona slept again, and Alasdair did too, for a little while. But sentience came again, far too soon, and for a long while he reflected in the darkness on the irony of Fiona sleeping and himself wide awake. Somehow they seemed to have traded places. He’d have laughed out loud—although perhaps not entirely with amusement—except that he didn’t want to disturb her.
Finally, in that uncertain hour between waning night and early sunrise, very quietly he rose, dressed, slipped out of their bedchamber, leaving behind a sleeping Fiona. There in the hallway was Cuilean, tail wagging, and together they went downstairs and outside, where they walked to the river. Alasdair watched the sun begin its slow climb into a blue cloudless sky, and Cuilean enjoyed himself nosing along the riverbank and chasing squirrels up into the trees. Ordinarily Alasdair would have enjoyed just such an early-morning walk too, but today . . .
Today was different.
And not in a good way.
So he was glad—inappropriately glad—when he returned to the castle and was greeted in the Great Hall by his bailiff Shaw, his boots and trousers spattered with mud, his rough hat gripped in his hands, and anxious to let him know that during last night’s thunderstorm, lightning had struck a great oak tree. “It toppled, laird,” Shaw said, “and it’s completely flattened old Norval Smith’s threshing barn.”
In his dream, Alasdair recalled, he had heard the storm. It had been real. Not his heart cracking in two.
Well, that was a relief.
“Was anyone injured?” he quickly asked.
“Thank God, no, laird. But the Smiths were badly spooked, and their animals, too. Their horses broke away from their stables, and a whole flock of sheep is scattered. And you know how frail Norval is.”
“To be sure. Let’s go there at once.” To Lister, standing near, Alasdair said, “Tell the mistress where I’ve gone, would you?”
“Of course, laird. Will you be wishing for breakfast before you go?”
“No, I thank you.” With that, he was off and away to the stables, aware, with some shame, that his concern for the Smith family was tainted by his gratitude at having an excuse to go.
If he was running away, just a little, there was nobody who could possibly have suspected it.
To Fiona came the slow realization that she was being gently delivered from the depths of slumber into a new day. Goodness gracious, she was actually waking up, rather than stirring blearily from out of a restless doze. How novel, how incredibly, wonderfully, amazingly, miraculously novel.
She sighed happily and stretched, filled with an unusually powerful sense of well-being. She was rested. And naked. And her body felt . . . well-loved. Quickly, now, she opened her eyes, looking for Alasdair.
But he was gone.
A disappointment, especially after last night.
Don’t be impatient, you’ll be seeing him again soon enough.
However, when Fiona had bathed and dressed, and made her way downstairs, Lister informed her that the laird was already gone out. A further disappointment, but hardly a tragedy. She had, after all, slept uncharacteristically late. Cheerfully Fiona thanked him and went on to the breakfast-room.
The disposition of a widow’s bedstead, should she remarry and die, without new issue, before her current spouse does.
The age at which a young man might become a soldier.
The proper investigatory procedure for anyone suspected of being a witch.
The protocol for May Day celebrations (with specific additional instructions during a leap year).