The Enchantress Read online

  “You are not listening, Gilbert. Shall I send Father John to Blackfearn Castle?”

  The young provost stepped over Willie, who had stretched himself comfortably in front of the door, and walked into the work room. “You said the farmers saw them leave Fearnoch during the fighting?”

  “They did.”

  “And we’ve had no word from the Sinclairs?”

  “Nay, provost. Nothing yet.”

  Gilbert shrugged and turned to the older priest. “Well, Father Francis, ‘tis just possible that--out of consideration for the Englishwoman--William is taking his time. I say we give them another day.”

  *****

  Before Laura was even awake, she was conscious of the wind whistling into the hut, and she pulled the blanket higher on her face. Gradually, her eyes focused on the small opening of a smoke hole in the thatched roof, and she watched snowflakes dancing in the dim light of dawn and falling to the dirt floor of the hut.

  She shivered as a blast of wind shook the cold walls of the hovel.

  Though it had been long dark by the time they reached the deserted hut, the coldness inside and the storm raging outside should have made for a sleepless night. But the last thing she remembered was moving to the farthest corner of the hut from the Highlander, who had simply pulled his tartan around him and sat against his saddle, long sword in hand.

  Aside from his pigheadedness, William Ross had been a stunning vision of power and gallantry. And Laura had forced herself to close her eyes--and her mind--to the mixed images she had of him.

  Not admitting it openly, she would always remember him as the fearless warrior taking on at least ten Sinclair men while holding her squirming body on one shoulder. She would also never forget the calmness he’d instilled in her when she’d just pressed her body against his chest in Guff’s hut. At that moment she had no idea what fate lay ahead.

  She snuggled deeper into her blanket and smelled his scent. How strange that a day later, the memory lingered of the nearness they’d shared. She could still feel the strange warmth that spread through her whenever she looked at him--talked to him--even argued with him as if he were the veriest villain north of the Yorkshire.

  But in many ways he was a rogue, and she would simply never be a woman to hold her tongue.

  He was obstinate, and she could already tell that he scorned her for her sensible logic. Well, that was her nature. How could she ever change?

  This meandering stream of thought carried some of the laird’s less than admirable qualities to Laura's mind. Despite his pleasing looks and undeniable courage, the man was a scoundrel. A reckless, unmanageable rogue with no sense of planning at all. He hadn’t answered any of the questions she’d asked of him. Nothing about the length of their stay, or even about how he would get them to St. Duthac’s.

  Perhaps after all, Laura thought, she might have been better off fleeing with his horse when she’d knocked him on the head outside Fearnoch. If she had, she could right now be planning and proceeding without any interference from William Ross of Blackfearn.

  Nay, that would never have done. She hadn’t the slightest idea about where she could find safety in this wild country. Her two sisters were far away to the south and to the west. This had been the result of their mother’s planning to send her children to three separate corners of Scotland. If danger was to find one of them, the other two had at least a chance of escaping it.

  Still, Laura thought, if she set her mind to it, she could find her way to another convent. From what she’d learned from the sisters at the Convent of St. Agnes, there were a number of religious communities huddled along this coast.

  A gust of wind swirled through the hut, and Laura shifted her position a little, letting her eyes drift toward the ill-fitting flap of leather that served as the door. It was doing nothing to keep out the weather. With a frown she turned her gaze to where the Highlander had spent the night.

  He was gone.

  Jolted into full consciousness, she hurled herself to a sitting position and looked nervously about her in the semidarkness. The shelter was empty of both man and horse.

  He was gone.

  She shuddered as all the images of his chivalry crumbled before her eyes and a sickening feeling of loss swept over her. He was the one who had up and decided to leave her behind. Throwing off the blanket, Laura came quickly to her feet.

  A quick search told her that everything was gone. Horrified to think that he’d just waited until she was asleep and then left without a word, she clutched her cloak fiercely around her.

  “The knave!” Laura pressed the heel of her hand against the sudden knot in her belly, a painful sensation that seemed to be gripping her midsection more and more at moments like this. “Of all the churlish, ill-bred...”

  She glanced again in the direction of the partially open door. Snow was swirling in on the strengthening wind and coating the dirt floor of the hut. She had to do something. She was not about to sit here and freeze to death. But what?

  Last night she had been too blinded with weariness and the weather to judge how close they were to Sir Walter’s castle. Though she’d never been there herself--she had yet to meet the aging warlord--she knew Rumster Castle lay to the north, along this rugged stretch of coastline. It couldn’t be far.

  What other choice did she have? Laura quickly decided. She could stay here and freeze, or she could try to reach the Sinclair keep on foot. Not a difficult choice.

  Having decided, Laura shed her cloak and quickly pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Donning the cloak again and pulling her hood forward over her face, she stepped out into the storm.

  The blast of the wind nearly pushed her back into the wall of the hut as she turned toward the stony beach. The mix of icy snow and the whipped-up sea stung the exposed skin of her face with the sharpness of a fistful of needles. Drawing a sharp breath, she clutched the hood tightly to protect her face as well as she could, and squinted up the beach through the storm. She could hardly see fifty paces in front of her. No matter, she told herself, leaning into the wind. This was the time to travel--while she still had strength in her bones.

  *****

  This weather was far too foul for traveling, he decided, peering out of the protective grove of stunted pines by the creek. He’d wait out the storm and then take the woman to St. Duthac’s.

  “Come now, Dread, you’ve had your water, and there’s not enough grass there to fill your belly, anyhow.”

  William Ross tugged the horse’s head away from the tufts of yellowed grass and led the animal through the trees and away from the road. He mounted the steed and started along the edge of the creek again.

  With the stormy weather and the night working against them, it was possible that the monk and his men might not have gotten too far from the convent.

  William considered this for a moment. If he was foolish enough to head right now for St. Duthac’s, he would quite likely cross paths with the blackguards. Nay, it would be best to wait a few hours.

  One thing he was certain of, though. His enemies had separated. In a wind-sheltered spot not far from where William had watered his horse, the Highlander had found the tracks of a band of warriors heading north. There were no horses, and he knew the group was headed toward Rumster Castle. It had to be the Sinclairs.

  Suddenly, William found his thoughts lingering on the Englishwoman waiting for him, and he frowned. Though the storm was now roaring like an angry beast, it occurred to him that he might just prefer staying out in the weather to spending any more time than he needed to with Laura Percy.

  She was a sea of contradictions. In her waking hours, annoying and arrogant. But in her sleep, as he’d watched her last night, she’d rested less comfortably than anyone he’d ever met in his life. Fretting, moving around, and then sobbing quietly in her sleep with such heart-wrenching sadness that he’d not been able to hold back. Moving to her, he’d stretched out beside her, smoothing her hair, brushing away her tears, whispering comforting
nonsense in her ear. She’d slept through it all.

  But for him the night had grown more torturous with every passing minute.

  Though common sense told him he was a fool, the woman aroused him. When he looked at her, when he felt the softness of her skin, his loins stirred with desire. Even the memory of her hands about him as they rode, and last night, the scent of lavender in her hair as she lay sleeping, was enough to set his blood on fire.

  By God, he thought, even her sharp tongue, with those unceasing demands for a plan to do this and a plan to do that, served to stir life within him.

  The stinging wind hammered him as he rode down onto the beach. The sea and sky--what he could see of either--were a fierce gray-green color, and he shook his head, feeling himself growing angry at the direction his thoughts were going.

  William had left in the morning to avoid this. He’d left her sound asleep, a heap of cloak and blanket, because he knew he needed to get away. Distance--that’s what was called for--before she awakened and he fell further under her spell. She was a damned enchantress.

  Aye, distance was the answer. His own past--a past that still gnawed at him--had taught him that this was only one way to deal with the likes of her. True, she was not Mildred, but the woman came from the same privileged life and upbringing.

  Reaching up, he felt the lumps and the clotted blood beneath his tam. Then again, for a wee thing she could swing a rock as well as any Scottish lass.

  “By Duthac’s Shirt,” he swore out loud. He’d been away from women too long! That was it. That was the whole problem. “Dread, we’re going to pay a visit to Molly at the Three Cups once we’re free of this arrogant court chit.”

  Aye, he nodded, turning the steed toward the hut. That was all he needed to forget Laura Percy.

  Leaping from the horse, William quickly brushed the worst of the snow off Dread and shook himself. Looking up, he realized the snow was falling even heavier than before.

  The Highlander pushed open the door flap and began to lead the horse in. But Dread was only halfway inside the hut when William realized that Laura Percy was not there.

  He called out to her, but the sharp whistle of the wind was his only answer. Pushing the horse back out the door, he called again. Nothing.

  Searching the ground, the Highlander could see now the soft impressions in the snow. A single track of footprints showed that she had indeed left the hut on her own.

  Following the tracks back down onto the beach, the Ross laird looked about in frustration. The waves were crashing high on the beach, and the spray filled the air. He could see nothing. As soon as he was beyond the protection of the bluffs, the footprints disappeared, obliterated by the snow and wind. She had not passed him on the beach, and the bluffs would not have offered an easy climb in the best of conditions. Her only route led to the north.

  “Damn the woman!” William swore, running back to the hut and leaping onto his waiting steed.

  CHAPTER 7

  Laura stood in stunned disbelief beside the broad gray-green river and stared at the churning, wind-whipped froth of white on its surface.

  No longer even aware of the shudders that were wracking her body, she lifted her gaze gloomily to the towers of Rumster Castle rising in the distance beyond the impassable stretch of water.

  Seeing the river jolted her for only a moment out of the numbing weariness that had crept into her body. She vaguely recalled being cold, but now she could not even feel that. As her disappointment dissipated, she realized she simply wanted to lie down on the soft white ground and sleep.

  Nay, a nagging voice called out. Follow the river until you find a place to cross. There must be a place to cross. There must be a place.

  But Laura’s body was growing too numb to respond immediately to the commands from her brain. She stood, her body slumped and shaking, her eyes hardly even able to focus on the great stone edifice across the water.

  After leaving the hut, she had stubbornly pushed on through the storm, always keeping her destination in mind, always certain that the castle would suddenly appear. But as she trudged on with increasing fatigue, the wetness of the snow and ice had gradually seeped into her clothes, chilling her until her thoughts began to grow fuzzy, until the world around her began to take on a vague, distorted, dreamlike quality. Until it slowly registered in her brain that she no longer could feel the body encasing her soul.

  And then she had found the river, nearly stumbling into it before drawing herself back.

  Laura turned her back to the river and stared blankly at the stretch of beach she’d just covered. She did not recognize it. Everything appeared strangely tilted, unnatural. She tried to focus her eyes on the track of dark footprints snaking away from her in a long meandering trail, but she could not even do that.

  Then, suddenly, she was looking across a moor in Yorkshire. The snow that covered the ground would soon disappear in the lightly falling rain. Her sister’s tracks led just over that hill. Laura could hear the sounds of their voices calling her.

  Her mother had begged her to leave the house, to escape with her sisters. But as the three had run across the courtyard, Laura’s hand had pulled out of Catherine’s. She’d stopped. She couldn’t help herself. She could hear the screams of the serving folk as the king’s men cut them down. They were taking her parents away. They were killing any who raised a hand.

  They were killing them, but there was nothing she could do to fight the evil.

  Nay, Laura realized vaguely, that was past. She knew she was not in Yorkshire. There was no moor. The smell of salt from the sea penetrated the vision, and she turned her head slightly to look at the wind-whipped froth. She shivered and her gaze turned downward. Her feet were planted in the snow, but they seemed to belong to someone else. She could not move them.

  Her mind wandered again. She could see the crenelated towers of their home above the crest of the moor. Was it spring already? Laura could smell the lilacs on the soft breeze.

  She would stay here until her sisters came for her. Only vaguely could she feel the warmth of tears on her face.

  “Laura!” Her sister’s frantic call reached her ears, but she remained still.

  Oh, Virgin Mother, she prayed. Protect them. All of them.

  “Laura!”

  She slowly brought her hands to her ears to block out the distant sound of her name. They were dying in the household. The monsters were cutting them down!

  “Laura!”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t go. She couldn’t leave them behind. If it was her parents’ fate to die, then she would die, as well.

  “Laura!”

  She opened her eyes and saw him.

  Out of the mist he came. So huge on his charger. His long, dark hair streaming in the wind.

  “Nay!” she tried to scream. “Leave me to die.”

  But she knew the sound was only in her head. The cold had robbed her of her voice.

  *****

  William Ross leaned down on the side of his horse and hauled the soaked body of the woman onto his lap. Like a frozen branch floating on an endless sea, there was no fight in her when he tucked her closely against his chest. Her bare hands were colder than ice--her exposed face red with the weather. He saw her lips move, but the words never broke through.

  He didn’t pause more than an instant before yanking his horse around and charging down the beach. This was the last thing he needed right now--her dying of the cold.

  With the wind at his back, it was not long before they reached the hut. Laura Percy’s life, though, seemed to have slipped from her body as he carried her inside. He knew there was still a very real danger of them being found if he was to start a fire inside the hut. The wind would carry the smell of smoke a long way. But laying her unmoving form on the packed dirt, he suddenly didn’t care.

  After leading Dread in and closing the door against the invading wind, William quickly built a small fire from the driftwood. Once the blue flames were crackling in the cen
ter of the hut, he moved to Laura and went down on one knee beside her.

  “Och, only a madwoman would have done what you did this morn.”

  William continued talking to keep his mind off the chore he knew he must do. The cloak and blanket still half wrapped around her were stiff with ice. Carefully, he peeled both of them from her still body, hanging them over the rawhide cord he quickly strung up beneath the thatched roof. He placed her stockings and shoes beside the fire.

  Her eyes were shut. Her chest barely moved as she breathed. At least, she was alive.

  “As I said before, your kind think only of yourselves.”

  William used the inside of his tartan to squeeze some of the water out of her streaming black hair. It had come completely free of the braid. The long shining waves gleamed like the wing of a raven. Looking away, he remembered the old shirt he carried in his saddlebag and got up to fetch it. He then pulled her into his lap. Her body draped over his arm, as limp as the wet woolen dress that clothed her.

  “I’m telling you now, lass...I hate doing this.” He pulled her close to his chest and reached for the laces on the back of her dress. Her face rolled on his shoulder slightly as he swept the long ebony locks out of the way. The laces gave way slowly. As the soaked wool parted, his fingers came in contact with a linen shift. It, too, was soaked through. With a low curse, William started pulling the wool dress forward, off her shoulders.

  “I do not like you,” he lied through clenched teeth. “And I do not like any of your kind. In fact, I’ll take a fistful of needles in my eyes and a dirk in my back before ever conceding that this gave me one whit of pleasure.”

  He averted his eyes from the dark circles of her nipples showing through the transparent undergarment. Putting his old wool shirt quickly over her head, he relied on his sense of touch to push the wet shift down her arms. Holding her by one arm, he pulled the gray dress and the shift off her legs, and worked her arms into the sleeve of the dry shirt.