The Highlander’s Widow (Blood 0f Duncliffe Series Book 8) Read online

  As her friend chattered about the coming season and her own small daughter, Alexandra, Amalie found her vision blurring. She was so tired! It was dark and cold outside, during that endless coach-trip, and she desperately needed sleep.

  “And then we...Oh! My dearest. You're almost falling.”

  “Uh...” Amalie grunted, realizing belatedly that she'd slumped forward, almost pitching out of the comfortable upholstered chair. She sat up briskly, feeling embarrassed.

  “How selfish of me!” Marguerite shook her head. “I'm sitting here prattling on when you must be dropping on your feet. Brenna?”

  “Yes, milady?”

  “Kindly show Lady Amalie to her suite?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “Thank you, Marguerite,” Amalie whispered as she made herself stand. She was only five-and-thirty, but she felt ancient as she followed the maid out the door.

  “Milady, this way, please,” she said.

  “I want to see my son.”

  The maid nodded. Oddly, she didn't sound surprised. “This way, milady.”

  Amalie followed her down a long hallway and then up two flights of stairs. Duncliffe had been a fortress once, perhaps five hundred years ago. The legacy of that still asserted itself. The place was structured like a castle, with turrets and a vast great hall and courtyard, the passing ages having rendered little change. Amalie swallowed, impressed by the ancient solemnity of the place, and followed the maid up the narrow stone stairwell.

  “Here you are, milady.”

  Amalie waited while she opened the door, then thanked her and followed her inside.

  She stood in the doorway, watching. Two women were bent over a counter. One was tall and bony, with dark hair, gray-streaked, drawn back. The other wore a cap over her hair and seemed younger.

  Amalie didn't dare disturb them – she could see from here that her son laid on the counter, and that they were working, stitching up his wounds. She felt sick suddenly. “Excuse me,” she whispered hesitantly.

  Blundering, she found the door-handle and quickly left the room. Her heart thumping, breath shaky, she leaned against the wall, drawing long sighs. Then she headed down the stairs, not knowing she walked, not having any particular goal in mind. Just wanting to put as much distance between her and that room, where her son lay unconscious, as was possible, she moved absently.

  “My poor son,” she whispered. “Our poor son, Keith.”

  She wondered if his father could see him. He could be up there, somewhere in the realm of stars, as remote as their cold light, looking down on them.

  She felt an odd mix of resentment and anger. She had thought those feeling long past, but her rage against him welled again. Not rage against him, not exactly: rage at him for leaving her.

  “What was I supposed to do, with you gone?” she whispered, imagining him into the silent darkness. “Why was that fight so important? How could you leave me and your son alone?”

  She interrogated the darkness as if Keith's shade stood there, hearing her rebuke. She spoke until she ran out of words.

  You left me. You didn't care. Were we nothing to you..?

  The curtain moved. She stared at it. Only the wind, she told herself, noticing that here, unlike in the rest of the ex-fortress, the window was a bare slit without a pane of glass. The curtain – a thick velvet drape – stirred in the wind.

  “Oh, Keith,” she whispered. She was foolish. He was not here to hear her rebukes. She went to the window and drew in a steadying breath.

  The lawns beyond the arrow-slit were dark, a torch glowing fitfully in the bracket on the wall of the stables. That was when she saw it.

  There's someone down there.

  She narrowed her eyes and stared again. Her blood ran cold.

  Whoever it was, they were not dressed in the livery of Marguerite and Douglas' home. This person wore a white shirt, though the night was bitterly cold. He moved slowly, creeping across the black lawn. He seemed to hesitate, and slouched forward. She could see he was holding his arm against his chest.

  “He's injured, too,” she whispered, transfixed.

  She watched him a little longer. She thought he had red hair, but couldn't be sure – the light of the torch was flickering and uncertain. His shirt billowed loosely, dark marks on the flawless white. He stumbled as she watched.

  “He's injured,” she confirmed softly. Oddly, her heart had no fear in it, only a sudden urgency. And compassion.

  I need to go down there, to help him.

  Without a second thought, feeling as if she was being led, she ran down the stairs and out into the courtyard.

  UNEXPECTED HELP

  The night was dark, the scent of smoke on the air curdling in Bronan's nostrils. He breathed in and shivered, the smell calling up images of battlefields, of the night before the world descended into madness. If he dwelt too long on that thought, the wild, panicked half of him would curl up here in the treeline, refusing to go on. The sound of shots, and cannon-fire, haunted his waking dreams.

  “Come on, Bronan,” he said softly. “Not...there...anymore.”

  He drew in a shaky breath and tried to ignore the tearing ache behind his left shoulder-blade, the nagging pain in his left knee. If he stopped to think about it, his whole body was a lacework of hurts and aches, and the weight of that would drive him slowly mad.

  “Not...much...longer.”

  He drew in another breath and put one foot ahead of the other. He had spotted the building.

  The night was dark, but the glow of firelight lit it, wavering with the snap and motion of flames. It shone through a squarish window. The size of it made him think the building was not too large.

  A cottage, maybe. A laborer's workshop. Whatever it was, there was a fire there, and likely someone to help.

  “Come on. Not much further.”

  He stumbled out of the woods and toward the light.

  The gateway loomed up out of the darkness. A great arched thing that stretched across the pathway, it looked formidable, ready to shut him out.

  “Whist, Bronan,” he whispered to himself in frustration. War or no war, a man could still be shot for trespassing – especially in such a place as he had now strayed. The window, he saw, looked small because it was set in walls of thick stone. The building he faced, across the courtyard, was almost like a castle, cold and unwelcoming.

  Of all the places I had to find, it would have to be this one, wouldn't it?

  Bronan could have laughed at the irony of it. Trust him to find not a shepherd's bothy or a woodland cottage, but a cursed manor-house in the middle of the woods!

  They'd like as not set the dogs on me.

  As he stood there hesitating, he heard something move in the woodlands behind him. The sound of a shot rang out. That decided him. With what little strength he could muster, he ran round the side of the building and through a secondary gate that was, mercifully, open. He ran headlong ahead of him, toward the light.

  His footsteps rang out, loud and hollow, on flagstones. Bronan swore. Might as well announce myself.

  He stopped dead and, setting his teeth in his lip to try and stifle the cry of pain inside him, looked around the yard.

  Large, shadowed and menacing, the place was orderly, but crowded. A wagon stood nearby the main gate, more light shone from a window opposite – a guardhouse – set in the wall. Another thatched building rose from the gloom. The stables?

  Sucking in an aching breath, Bronan hobbled that way.

  He reached the door, hearing the neigh of a horse and another, huffing out in greeting, just as his leg collapsed. Leaning against the wall, sheltered from the autumnal wind, Bronan reached round to feel his gunshot wound.

  Damn it.

  His hand came away sticky with blood. Unlike the first hot wetness that had sheeted down his back, soaking into his belt and kilt too, this blood was dark and cloying, almost black in the indistinct light. It was cold, and clotting.

  At least it's not still fr
esh.

  That was a mercy, for it meant he wasn't losing anymore blood. It was also terrifying, since it meant the wound was stiffening round the bullet. He'd seen enough of gunshot wounds to know it. Any chance of getting it out – even were there a physician to do it – was limited now. Moreover, that meant that the lead would slowly poison his blood.

  I don't want that.

  Bronan closed his eyes. Of all the things to happen, he'd made it to a castle, only to perish due to blood poisoning in an unmanned stable. Even if someone found him at this point, his chances of recovery were minimal.

  Son of a carter and a traveling seamstress, a runaway at thirteen, Bronan thought of his parents, and wondered what they would say if they knew he had finally seen a castle. He closed his eyes and tried valiantly not to cry. He liked life – he was five and twenty and only just now truly starting to live it. Now, it seemed, life was to leave him.

  It's not bloody fair.

  He swore and closed his eyes, then made himself stop thinking that way – he remembered Lucas, Ben, Alex...so many friends who were dead now, their own futures shattered by the cannon-fire. He was alive.

  And where there's life, there's hope.

  He laughed, feeling his strength escaping him as the wound bled, slowly, and his knee – twisted and swollen – ached dully.

  He had little enough of hope.

  He heard the horses shift around him and nearby, one snorted softly. He closed his eyes and thought of his father's cottage and the stable. He had hated his father sometimes, for how he had treated his Mam, but he missed his home. It was hard to die alone.

  “Damn it, Bronan. Stop wi' this nonsense.”

  He would have thought about it, tried to convince himself he was not dying, save that his thoughts were swimming and incoherent and the cold and pain reached out to wrap him in a cloak of pressing dark. He felt his mind slip below its surface and he was gone.

  Light. It wavered in front of his eyelids, shifting and flickering. Like the lamp his mother used to leave by his bedside when he was a wee bairn, the flame was warm and golden. Bronan felt warm, as he had when she'd tucked him into bed.

  “Mam,” he whispered.

  She was here, he thought. Something about the air made him almost smell her scent, soft and fragrant like clean white daisies. He drew in another breath. He could feel, across the gap of time, her fingers on his chest, feeling for a heartbeat.

  “Mam...” he said again. “It hurts.”

  He was dreaming; he knew it. His mother had disappeared years ago, run off to join her sister, or Heaven alone knew where. He was dying, he must be. His mind wandered in the past. It must be so, for his mother was lost to him for more than fifteen years. He sighed and tried to open his eyes.

  She was there. Or, if not her, the angel into whose eyes he looked had her softness and her grace. He stared into the dark depths of her eyes and felt his heart thump.

  His mother had been skinny, her face lined with tension, her eyes tight with fear. The face he looked at now was soft, the skin as delicate as petals, the eyes gentle, but tensed a little with worry. The mouth was tender and generous, lips curved in a half-smile of peculiar sweetness. The hair against her brow was auburn curls.

  Not his mother then, who had been slight and dark-haired. This must be an angel.

  He stared at her in awe. His mind tried to frame the thousand questions that occurred to him. Where was he? How did she come to be here? The chief among them found its way onto his lips.

  “Am I dead?”

  The angel smiled, a little sadly. “No, you're alive,” she said. “Though barely. I...Mercy?” she called over her shoulder. “Can you bring the lantern?”

  “Mercy,” Bronan whispered, latching onto a word he knew. “Yes. Mercy.”

  At that point, someone reached out and touched his shoulder, and the pressure on the wound made his vision swim and blacken. He bit his lip again and his vision wavered, and then, as they repeated the movement, blurred again into nothing.

  Warmth flooded through him again, and the flare of flame-light bit into his eyelids, waking him. In that instant he was on the battlefield, and the sound of shots rang out, the terror knifing through him. He was running, but there was no escape and so he carried on, feet aching, leg burning, lungs bleeding, running...

  “Whist, it's alright, lad,” a voice said, some distance over his head. “No need to flail about. Lie still.”

  “No,” Bronan whispered, fighting his way up through the fog in his mind. He was still on the battlefield, still running, still fighting...

  “He's agitated, Mistress Prudence,” a level voice said. He thought he recognized it. He tried to open his eyes.

  “No,” he whispered again, as the pain knifed into him – more slowly this time, more controlled. Then his eyes came into focus again and he saw her clearly.

  It was the angel again, and she frowned at him.

  “There, now,” she whispered. Something pressed to his brow, something warm. He closed his eyes for a moment, the relief of it – and the sight of her – making him stop fighting. “You're safe, lad,” she continued gently in a voice whose tone and cadence was richly cultured, utterly unlike his mother.

  “Safe,” he echoed. Somehow he had never thought he'd be safe – not really. Not ever. He opened his eyes again and studied her face.

  “Where am I?” he whispered. She was so beautiful he thought his heart would break. He was certain he was dead then, and beyond all suffering.

  This time, the angel's face crinkled into a smile so lovely it ached. “You're at Duncliffe Manor, young man,” she said gently. He thought she was likely not much older than himself – if age was a property angels had. “We found you in the stables, badly hurt,” she added, making him nod.

  “Hurt,” he agreed, closing his eyes and trying to make sense of what she'd told him. He recalled, briefly, a castle. A gate. A big courtyard. The sound of horses.

  “Duncliffe?” he whispered.

  “Aye,” she said gently. “Mistress Prudence, how much Lethe’s he had?”

  “A teaspoon only. He will drift like that, half awake, for quite a while.”

  “I see,” she said, and he could hear a rich amusement in her voice, mixed with gentleness. “I think he's confused.”

  “Aye,” someone chuckled. This voice, too, had a soft tone, though the accent reminded him a little more of home, more familiar and less remote. “He's likely wandering a little in his mind.”

  “Most likely,” the angel agreed. “Though I trust it'll wear off as he wakes up?”

  “Indeed it shall.”

  “Good.”

  Bronan frowned, wondering why they were discussing him so dispassionately. One word stood out for him: “wakes”. If he was to awaken, that surely meant he wasn't dead. In which case, why was there an angel sitting beside him, and – more imperative – would she disappear when he woke?

  “Don't leave me.”

  The cry was one he'd often said as a youth, when he was suffering one of his father's beer-fueled beatings. He'd curl up in the stables, behind the horses, and cry out to the essence of his mother. Don't go. Don't leave me. Why did you leave?

  The angel smiled. Her hand tightened, fractionally, on his arm. “I'll not leave,” she assured him gently. “Or not for long. I'll be back directly.”

  Bronan was about to protest, but then he heard the other woman, Prudence, speak to him and then shift as the angel stood to leave.

  “Whist, lad...take a breath. This'll no' be easy.”

  Bronan took a breath and then could breathe no more as the woman rolled him onto his side and the pain knifed into his back and his vision blurred and he closed his eyes.

  The third time Bronan awoke, he was aware of two things first. Foremost, the pain that spread out, like ripples from a cast stone, through his back. Second, he was lying on his back, and on something softer than before.

  “Where..?”

  “You're at Duncliffe,” an old
er woman said, her voice rich and worn with years and wisdom. “And you'll likely live to see tomorrow, if you'll give yourself a chance to recover and stop flailing about. Easy, lad. I'm not fighting ye.”

  This last she said as something reached behind him and gently adjusted the pillows. He found himself tilted forward, able to look at something other than the ceiling. He blinked, examining his surroundings. He was in bed, soft linen covers pulled up to his chin. His hand lay on the coverlet beside him, uncurled and oddly insensate. He was looking into a fireplace, the fire dancing in the grate, orange and vivid. He turned sideways.

  “Hello?”

  “Aye, hello.” Her voice was wry with rich humor. “It's about time your addled brain cleared. Welcome to Duncliffe.”

  He looked at the woman who had spoken. Gaunt, perhaps fifteen or twenty years his senior, she had a strong, strangely-ageless face, and black inquiring eyes. Her cheeks were lined with wrinkles, her brow bisected with a frown. All the same, strength radiated from her. Her hair was half-hidden by a cap, but he guessed from the stray lock on her brow that it was black, woven with gray.

  “Who brought me here?” he asked.

  “Well, I did,” the woman said. “I'm Merrick. Welcome to my turret-room, where I usually do my work. Actually, I might have brought you here, but Prudence, my successor, brought you up. She didn't find you though.”

  “Who found me?” Brogan asked eagerly. He recalled the name Prudence, and the pain. She must be the healer, he guessed – the ache in his back suggested to him that someone had used a knife to remove the bullet. Tension drained out of him abruptly, leaving him weak.

  If the bullet is out, I might not die.

  The woman grinned. “Aye, now you're asking,” she said. “Meself, I don't rightly ken her. Prudence seemed to, though I don't ken why. She'll come up now with your tea, if you want to ask her yourself.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. His head cleared and he tried to sit up taller, suddenly eager to be alive. “I want to ask.”

  “Easy, lad,” the woman grinned. “No good it'll do ye if the stitches rip out. Rest easy. Here she is. I'll just open the door.”