Sins of the Highlander Read Free Page B

slanted a gaze of grudging respect toward her.
    “Will ye no’ beg for your life, Elspeth Stewart? Aye, lass,” he said with a nod when her eyes went wider, “I ken who ye are.”
    “No, I’ll never beg.” She stood straighter and met his gaze squarely. “Why should I give ye what ye want?”
    The lass has spirit. Rob liked that.
    Fiona’d had spirit too.
    But Fiona wouldn’t be pleased with what he was doing now, he was certain. A half-heard sibilance curled round the cave. He released Elspeth and cocked his head, straining to listen, willing the small voice to come again. Was that Fiona trying to speak to him?
    So often, while lying on his lonely bed, he thought he heard his wife singing to him just on the edge of sound. If only he could listen hard enough, if only he could follow the song to wherever she was, heaven or hell or that slice of a moment between sleep and wakefulness, it mattered not—
    “Let me tend your wound,” the flesh-and-blood woman before him whispered. “You’re bleeding badly.”
    Elspeth Stewart’s voice brought him back.
    Now that she mentioned it, his arm did sting a bit. He’d thought the steady drip on the cave floor was water pattering from the stone vault overhead. It turned out to be blood trickling from the fingers of his left hand.
    “Let’s get you into the sunlight where I can see what’s needed,” she said, taking his good arm.
    “Clever, lass, but no,” he said. “We’ll no’ need to leave the cave just yet. Yer bridegroom might turn back this way. Come with me.”
    ***
    Elspeth drew a deep breath and followed her captor back along the cave’s main corridor. At least he no longer seemed disposed to harm her.
    Madmen were changeable as weathercocks. One moment he was making love to her mouth and the next he threatened to squeeze the life out of her. She’d have to tread warily to avoid setting him off again.
    He turned sharply down a narrow passage she’d missed when she was backing away from him.
    “The outside entrance is hidden by rock, and inside, the cave hides its secret room the same way,” he explained. After a tight turn, the cave expanded into a high-ceilinged second chamber.
    A shaft of golden sunlight poured from an opening high overhead, illuminating a small pool of water bubbling in the center of the vaulted space. Moss clung to the rock walls, creating a natural underground hothouse. The air was several notches warmer here than in the other chamber of the cave.
    Elspeth halted midstep. She’d never dreamed once about her wedding with Lachlan Drummond, but she’d been in this very room shrouded in the mists of the Sight more times than she could count. She’d never Seen why she was in this cavern, but the fact that she recognized her surroundings gave her confidence it was Meant. The realization steadied her.
    “I know this—” She stopped herself.
    How would a madman respond to claims of foreknowledge? He might demand she look into the future for him, and that was not how her gift worked. She could not summon it at will. The Sight came when it would, in hazy impressions or blinding flashes, and showed her what it pleased, not what she asked. Elspeth rarely shared that part of herself with anyone since doing so marked her as different, maybe even fearsome. She decided not to chance telling him of it.
    “How did you know this was here?”
    “I’ve reived a herd or two in these parts,” he admitted, speaking in a normal tone of voice now. The moss climbing the walls seemed to absorb the sound and freshened the air with the green breath of growing things. “It’s good to know where the hidey-holes are. I spent most of a week here once when Drummond’s men would have stretched my neck if they’d caught me. The water is good.”
    He knelt at the edge of the spring and splashed water on his face. The blue clay he’d painted himself with ran off his skin in indigo runnels. Then he dunked his whole head and came up, shaking like a