Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-one

On the third day after she regained consciousness, Sabrina deigned to grant her husband an audience.

Keeping his hope in ruthless rein, Morgan slipped silently into the chamber. Pugsley napped by the fire. Enid sat in a chair by the bed, reading aloud to Sabrina. Her pale face was drawn and her fat ringlets hung lank around her cheeks. She gave a guilty start at the sight of him and hastily excused herself, refusing to meet his eyes. Morgan knew that she, like himself, was shouldering part of the blame for Ranald’s duplicity.

He remained by the door, clutching a wilted bouquet of gorse in one fist and drinking in the sight of Sabrina with a raw thirst that surprised even him.

She had never looked more like a princess—so regal, so unapproachable.

She sat propped among the pillows, a lavender ribbon binding her curls from her face. Her hands were folded in her lap. Hectic color brightened her cheeks. Morgan moved forward, feeling like a barefoot peasant approaching her throne. Anger surged through him, unexpected and unwelcome, an anger he had no right to feel.

He paused at the edge of the bed, unsure where to sit, where to look. The quilts humped over Sabrina’s splinted legs filled his vision. She stared into her lap without acknowledging him. The haughty cast of her expression warned him he had not been invited to sit on her bed. He was no longer welcome there. He felt another flush of anger, dangerous and electric.

He thrust out his hand, offering her the flowers. He had scrabbled beneath a crust of ice for them, rooting them out with the desperation of a beggar. As Sabrina eyed them from beneath her lashes, they seemed to wither to what they were—a pathetic clump of weeds. A woman like Sabrina wasn’t deserving of weeds, but of fat armfuls of fragrant roses.

Morgan wanted to jerk them back, to cast them in the fire, where they belonged. But it was too late. Her delicate fist closed around the crushed stems, taking care that their hands never touched.

“Thank you. They’re lovely,” she lied, laying them on the quilt.

Morgan jerked a chair around and straddled it. The awkward silence stretched.

Sabrina’s soft voice broke it. “I’m sorry about Pookah.”

Morgan sensed her words were sincere. A fresh flare of grief stabbed him. “He never suffered.”

A small, bitter laugh escaped her. “That’s what Eve said about your father. It must be a MacDonnell creed for a death well met.”

She fixed her gaze on him; Morgan almost wished she hadn’t. Her blue eyes held an arctic glitter that chilled him. Why the bloody hell didn’t she cry? A troubled Dougal had confided that she had accepted the news that she would never walk again with imperturbable calm. It was as if all her tears had frozen on that icy ledge. A memory came unbidden to him in an agony of desire and regret—the salty warmth of her tears on his tongue mingled with the intoxicating taste of their passion.

His voice came out harsher than he intended. “Ranald told me all about Eve. About both plots to kill your da, one of which my own fa—” Morgan hesitated, unable to bring himself to say the word. The old man’s crafty machinations had been the undoing of them all—“one of which Angus himself condoned. He also told me about Eve’s poor aim in the hall at Cameron. After your father disarmed us all, Ranald went in search of her to try and stop her. But it was too late. She’d already found the dirk and hidden behind the tapestry. It seems I owe your clan and your father an apology.”

“So it does, doesn’t it,” she said mildly.

Morgan stared. It was like conversing with a stranger who was vaguely bored but willing to tolerate one’s company for the sake of politeness. His desperation flourished.

“There was one thing Ranald could not explain, lass. Your presence on the road that day. On Pookah.”

She was calm now, almost heartlessly matter-of-fact. “Eve informed me that you were part of the plot to kill my papa. That you had failed the first time and had gone to finish the job. That when you were done massacring my unsuspecting family, you were coming back to the castle to strangle the life out of me.”

Morgan was stunned. Her cool words confirmed his worst fears. “And you believed her?”

Sabrina lowered her lashes in a gesture that might have been coquettish in a less desperate moment. Morgan leaned forward, pretending that both his heart and his future didn’t teeter on the brink of her reply. She was silent for a long time. Her hands were no longer still, but twisting, one against the other, in her lap.

“Answer me,” he said, the quietness of the command belying its importance.

She threw back her head, dark passion erupting in her eyes. “Of course I believed her, you fool! Why shouldn’t I? You’ve spent half your life teaching me of your contempt for my clan, your greed and jealousy because we have the common decency to live like human beings instead of animals. Have you ever given me cause to believe you’d choose honor when murder was at your disposal?”

Morgan gazed at her in stunned disbelief, unwilling to accept that his touch, his tenderness, his erotic possession, had taught her nothing about the kind of man he was. It was beyond him to conceive that the hatred between their clans was too strong to be mastered by what they had shared. He reached for her.

She recoiled violently, her repulsion too visible to be anything but genuine. A shrill, pathetic note caught in her voice. “Don’t touch me! I can’t abide it! It makes me ill! You’re nothing but a crude barbarian and I never want your filthy hands on me again!”

Morgan’s world went scarlet. His fingers splayed to cup her delicate jaw, bearing her back against the pillows. Her pulse fluttered madly beneath his thumbs. He exerted no pressure, but simply held her there while he searched her face for a truth he could tolerate. As he stared dead into the face of her callous betrayal, his hands flexed in a moment of near madness. Genuine fear flared in Sabrina’s eyes.

Morgan loosened his fingers and backed away from the bed, paralyzed with self-contempt. The harsh rasp of his breathing echoed through the chamber.

Still she continued, as if sticking the knife in wasn’t enough. She just had to give it a wicked twist. “Don’t you understand?” she spat out between clenched teeth. With a cruelty he could never forgive, she struck her final blow, jerking the quilts away to expose the shapely calves that had once clung to his waist with such fervent passion, now pale and limp, strung together with nothing but wood and rope. “You did this to me! Your intentions toward my father are irrelevant now. I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me! Never!”

Morgan straightened his plaid and threw back his shoulders. He strode to the hearth and drew the Cameron claymore down from its pegs. Sabrina paled but did not flinch.

He dropped the heavy blade across the foot of the bed. “There’s one lesson you failed to learn from Eve, lass. If you must cut out a man’s heart, use a blade. ’Tis both cleaner and kinder.” He gave her a stiff bow. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve no wish to do you continued harm by inflictin’ my unwelcome presence upon your exalted person.” He spun on his heel and marched out, leaving her alone.

After Morgan was gone, Sabrina reached blindly for the humble bouquet she had tossed so heartlessly on the bed. Crushing the brittle stems in her fist, she curled into a ball on her side and shoved the blooms against her mouth to muffle her rending sobs.

A week later Sabrina sat propped up in the bed, awaiting the carriage that would carry her home to Cameron.

Dougal had dressed her with the same tenderness and patience he had shown her as a child. She had been as passive as a broken doll as he eased her arms into her sleeves and arranged the skirts of her velvet pelisse in careful folds to hide the splints. Unable to bear her stillness, Dougal had retreated to keep watch at the window.

He sighed heavily as he turned from the window to study his daughter’s profile. It was as pale as pearl and so brittle it looked as if it might shatter beneath a harsh breeze. Her full lips were pressed together in an embittered line. Her eyes were cool and distant, as if she had gone somewhere that none of them could follow.

His heart spasmed with helpless fury. He wanted to blame Morgan or God or callous fate for breaking his beautiful daughter, but each time he passed a mirror, he saw only his own guilty eyes. He might pity Morgan, forgive God, and someday make his peace with fate, but he could find no mercy in his heart for himself.

His worst fear was that he was making yet another terrible mistake by taking Sabrina away from this place. She had been the one to insist upon being removed from MacDonnell as soon as the road thawed and the doctor pronounced her fit for travel. At first Dougal had even thought to make her stay, to make her fight for the fierce man who had avoided her presence ever since the night Dougal had entered the chamber to find her asleep, damp petals of gorse clinging to her tear-streaked cheeks.

But her plaintive cry of “You must take me home! I want my mama!” had stirred his awesome love for her and overwhelmed his good intentions. He hadn’t the heart to deny her anything. His own capricious whims had already cost her far too much. If only Beth were here! Beth would know what to do. She had always been the one with the moral fortitude to deny Sabrina the extra cross bun that might make her stomach ache, the one to insist Sabrina remount her pony after she’d taken a tumble and was clinging to her papa’s legs, begging for a reprieve.

The patience of Sabrina’s stance chilled him. She looked as if she would sit forever, even if the carriage never came.

No longer able to bear it, Dougal forced a jovial smile, “Come now, lass, you haven’t been out of that bed for days. The sun’s trying to peep out from behind a cloud. Let me carry you to the window and give you a look outside.”

“No, Papa, I don’t want to—”

This time Dougal ignored her querulous protest. With painstaking care he lifted her and carried her to the window. He sank down on the broad ledge, bundling her against his chest just as he had when she’d been a little girl and awakened screaming from a nightmare. But this was one nightmare neither of them could awaken from.

Secure in her father’s embrace, Sabrina felt the lump in her throat melting. His was a compassion she could not bear. Choking back all the tears she’d swallowed since driving Morgan from this chamber, she buried her cheek against Dougal’s chest, relishing the safety it represented even though they both knew it was only an illusion. There were some monsters against whom even her papa was helpless.

Dougal rubbed his beard against her curls. “I cannot help but blame myself. If I could only have foreseen it would come to this…”

Sabrina tried to speak, but couldn’t.

His lilting voice pressed on. “I love my sons more than my life, but you, princess, were always my heart. I would have done anything for you. Perhaps I spoiled you, but I couldn’t bear the thought of you going without anything you wanted.” He chuckled softly. “You were so easy to spoil. Never greedy. Never grasping. Always saying, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Please, sir,’ rewarding your besotted papa with kisses and smiles.” His grip tightened. “But when Morgan MacDonnell came to Cameron, I discovered there was something you wanted that it was not within my power to give you.”

The Cameron carriage appeared in the distance, lumbering slowly around the dangerous curves.

“I saw the hunger in your eyes when you looked at him,” Dougal whispered. “I heard you weeping in your chamber when he rebuffed you. God forgive me, but when he returned to Cameron as a man, I finally saw a way to give you your heart’s desire.”

Sabrina was crying silently now, the warm tears rolling down her cheeks, trickling off her chin to wet the fur of her muff. The carriage rumbled into the courtyard, rocking to a halt on the cobblestones below.

Dougal’s words quickened. “I don’t expect you to believe my motives were completely unselfish. I saw in your union the future of the Highlands, our clans united to live in peace, grandchildren to brighten my waning years…a mad scheme perhaps, but from the beginning I sensed something in the lad. It was almost as if the blood of the ancient MacDonnell kings still flowed through his veins. I truly believed God had given me a sacred charge to prove him worthy.” He kissed the crown of her head. “But I never would have done so at your expense. I’m sorry I was so terribly wrong.”

Swallowing a denial, Sabrina lifted her brimming eyes. She did not dare give him absolution. If she did, he might force her to stay. But even in the condemnation of her silence, her father saw some glimmer of hope, of dangerous possibility.

He searched her face. “You don’t have to go. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

Sabrina remembered Morgan’s closed face, the crumpled gorse blooms now dried and pressed between the worn pages of her Bible. “Aye, but it is, Papa. Later than you know.” She buried her face in his cravat, sighing wearily. “Take me home, Papa. Just take me home.”

The courtyard was deserted as Dougal carried Sabrina into the chill winter air. Enid walked at his elbow, her round face blotchy but set in stern lines. Brian, Alex, and Dr. Montjoy trailed after them, their hands empty of all but the Cameron claymore wrapped in its sheath of wool. Sabrina had asked that everything except what she wore and her Bible be left behind for the good of Morgan’s clan, including the Christmas gifts of salted meat, bolts of tartan, and carved wooden toys that had accompanied her papa’s journey. Not even Dougal’s halfhearted protests had stopped her from leaving her own gift for Morgan—something special to warm his cold winter nights until he found a new wife.

As Sabrina’s desolate gaze swept the empty courtyard, a wave of fresh pain broke over her. She knew she deserved no better from him, but it still hurt that Morgan hadn’t even troubled to give his wife a casual farewell. She turned her face into her papa’s shoulder. He gently eased up her hood.

A Cameron footman flung open the carriage door. Assisted by Brian and Alex, Dougal settled Sabrina on the cushions and climbed in beside her. Enid and Dr. Montjoy took the opposite seat. The luxury of the carriage now seemed obscene to Sabrina. With its plush velvet cushions and fringed window hangings, it was more opulent than any single chamber in Castle MacDonnell. It had probably cost more gold to outfit than the MacDonnells would see in a lifetime.

She stared straight ahead, her fists clenched around the handkerchief hidden in her muff. Her papa reached to draw shut the window hangings, but Sabrina stayed his hand before he could bury them in the lavish gloom. He gave her a puzzled look but said nothing.

The carriage lurched into motion. Brian and Alex rode alongside the outriders as the graceful vehicle rumbled out of the courtyard.

“Why, I’ll be damned,” Dougal breathed.

Sabrina jerked her head up, knowing her papa rarely swore. She felt the coachhorses slow to a hesitant trot. Leaning forward, she peered out the window only to discover why the courtyard had been so deserted.

The MacDonnells had come to bid farewell to their mistress in the only way they knew how. They flanked the narrow road in two lines, standing at silent attention as the coach passed between them, all wearing the finery Sabrina had made for them.

Their familiar faces blurred before her eyes. Alwyn, forcing a brave smile even as she dabbed a tear from her cheek with the tail of her braid. The children, their faces scrubbed clean, their hair combed. Fergus staring straight ahead, his face ruddy, his expression fierce. The old woman from the kitchen, still sporting the incongruous pink ribbon in her lank tresses.

Saddest of all, Ranald, standing apart from his clansmen, his arm still bound in a grubby sling. His sheepish gaze searched the carriage window for Enid. She turned her unforgiving face away from him. The carriage found empty road again and gathered momentum, carrying Sabrina away from Castle MacDonnell for the last time.

Her hands slipped from her muff. She could not simply ignore a tribute she had fought so hard to win.

Surprising them all with her strength, she shoved open the window and leaned out. Her hood fell away from her hair. Drawing the crumpled handkerchief from her muff, she waved it in her own salute. A broken cheer went up from the road behind them.

It was then, looking back, that she saw him. Standing on the battlements, silhouetted against the pewter sky like a statue of one of those MacDonnell kings of old, utterly motionless except for his long hair blowing in the wind. Her eyes devoured him until they rounded a curve and he was lost from her sight.

She collapsed against the cushions, numb to the fierce squeeze of Enid’s hand over hers, the whisper of her papa’s palm across her disheveled hair. Numb to everything but the primal beauty of the pipes that came wailing over the mountains, excoriating her raw heart with their plaintive and mocking farewell.

Morgan thought he might stay on the battlements forever.

The cold did not trouble him. Whenever its irksome fingers began to pinch and prod him, he would simply draw another bottle of brandy from the fancy wooden crate and take a deep swill. What a thoughtful man his father-in-law was! Perhaps Dougal had intended the brandy to douse the Christmas pudding, but Morgan much preferred to douse himself. ’Twas fitting, he thought, chuckling. He had made quite a pudding of himself over Dougal’s heartless daughter.

He hefted the bottle and roared, “To Sabrina Cameron, the fairest bitch of them all!”

The liquor’s heat pulsed through him, warming him all the way to his numb toes. He gazed fondly at the bottle, admiring the swirl of the golden liquid. No wonder his own da had loved the stuff. ’Twas far more pleasant to drown in than self-pity. Toasting the newfound philosophical bent of his thoughts, he drained the bottle and tossed it over the ramparts before opening another.

In his time with Sabrina, he had allowed himself to forget the one inescapable reality of life. Nothing lasted forever. He had learned that lesson early and well by witnessing too many quick, violent deaths at the hands of others and at his own hands. Life, like hope, could be snuffed out in the blink of a ruthless eye. He flexed one hand in front of him, mildly amused to discover it now had ten fingers.

He should never have let himself forget. Should never have let Sabrina’s beautiful, treacherous eyes trick him into daring to hope the future was possible. A future of Christmases shared before the fire and laughing, blue-eyed daughters and watching his wife’s dark hair frost with white as the seasons passed.

The empty bottle rolled from his stiffening fingers. Aye, he would stay on the battlements forever. There was no longer any real reason to descend.

Yet when the shadows of winter twilight crept around him and the stars winked to life like brittle shards of ice, Morgan rose and angled toward the stairs, blindly seeking the place that had become his own private heaven in the hours between dawn and dusk. The narrow passageway twined into darkness. Morgan stumbled over a missing step and slammed into the wall.

Too bad God had such a vicious sense of humor, he thought. If not, he’d be lying dead at the foot of the stairs, his neck broken. He reeled through the empty corridors, tripping over piles of rubble that were no longer there, smacking his brow on a low-hanging portal when he forgot to duck, all the while humming under his breath a ballad Sabrina had taught him about a scornful lass and her constant suitor.

His hand was on the knob of her chamber door before he realized where his drunken foray had led him. The ballad’s chorus faded to a mumble. His hand shook as he thrust open the door.

A woman sat at the dressing table, her cascade of hair gleaming in the candlelight.

For an instant, hope beat within Morgan, wild and unfettered. He dared once more to dream. He blinked. His fuzzy brain scrambled for clarity. Perhaps Sabrina had never left him at all. Perhaps it had been only a trick, petty revenge for the many pranks he had played upon her as a lad.

The woman pivoted on the stool, crushing his hopes with the single clumsy lurch. Not his ethereal bride, but a mocking apparition wearing one of Sabrina’s gowns.

All semblance of sanity fled him. Before he realized it, he had her down on the floor, his hands fixed around her throat. But Eve was not willing to die a graceful death. She bucked against him, eyes blazing, lips moving in a choked stream of curses. Beneath the thick layer of powder, her face went scarlet, then dark.

Morgan stumbled to his feet, pressing his palms against his temples as if he could somehow silence the murderous fever roaring through his skull. A shaky laugh escaped him. “You’re the third person I’ve almost strangled in the past few weeks. I really must guard my temper with more care.”

She clambered to her feet, eyeing him cautiously, one hand massaging her mottled throat. “Ye’ve been drinkin’, ain’t ye? I can smell it on ye like a whore’s perfume. The stuff is poison, lad. Ye saw what it did to yer da.”

Morgan took a menacing step toward her. “No, Eve. I saw what you did to my da. And I always thought your worst crime was teachin’ Ranald to play the bagpipes.”

Eve held her ground. She crossed her arms over the puffed bodice of Sabrina’s gown. “’Twas an accident.”

He continued to advance, biting off each word. “Like your ambush of Dougal Cameron? Like Pookah’s death and Sabrina’s plunge over the cliff?” He stared down at her, contempt mingling with every breath.

Unexpected tenderness softened her eyes to smoky green. She lifted her hand to correct a tousled strand of his hair. He caught her wrist before she could touch him.

“Ye must understand,” she begged. “I did it all for ye, lad. For yer future and the future o’ Clan MacDonnell. If ye only knew how much I’d sacrificed for yer precious clan. Now that the wee Cameron bitch is gone, I can tell ye. I’ve waited all me life to—”

“More lies!” he roared, thrusting her toward the door. “More of your twisted truths! Well, I’ve no desire to hear them!” A chilling calm came over him. His finger was steady as he leveled it at her. “Outcast !”

“No!” she screamed. Her hands flew up to cover her ears.

Morgan drew himself up, shaking off the protective mantle of drunkenness and allowing himself to feel the full agony of his mother’s unwitting abandonment, Eve’s betrayal, Sabrina’s desertion. He spoke in Gaelic, the ancient words of kings and chieftains flowing like song from his lips. “Outcast. From this moment on, you are banished from this clan. If you set foot on MacDonnell lands again, I’ll have you stoned.” Switching to English, he caught Eve’s wrists, wrenching her hands from her ears. “Do you understand, woman? I never want to lay eyes on your face again.”

With a piteous cry, Eve tore herself away from him and stumbled out the door. The sound of her weeping lingered long after she had fled.

Morgan stood in the middle of the floor, breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists. Eve had lit every taper in the chamber. His desperate gaze searched the room, finding nothing but mocking reminders of what he sought. Sabrina’s genteel touch was everywhere. Candlelight sparkled off the crystal stoppers of her perfume bottles, burnished the chess board to a mahogany gleam, caressed the leather spines of the books. The light’s brutal clarity opened his eyes, forcing him to see the elegant trappings for what they were without their mistress to bring them to vibrant life.

Toys. Trinkets. Baubles. Empty illusion. Books with blank pages. Games that were eternally lost. Instruments with no songs.

Roaring like a wounded beast, Morgan snatched up the clarsach and smashed it on the edge of the table. He tore at the books, severing their spines, scattering their pages. He swept the dressing table clean with his fist, oblivious of the shards of glass that stung his flesh, then smashed the upended trunk against the wall. He snapped the chess board in two over his knee, hurling the chessmen into the fire, where their impassive faces melted in smoking wisps of flame. He tore the creamy linens off the bed, rending them with his bare hands.

Unbearable weariness overtook him. Stumbling over the splintered stool, he fell heavily and lay surrounded by the carnage of his dying dreams.

A shy tongue lapped his cheek. Morgan pried open one eye. Bright button eyes surveyed him. A pug nose nudged his arm.

Shaking his head in exhausted bewilderment, Morgan curled his arm around the grizzled little dog and drew him close. Pugsley nestled gratefully into his warmth.

Gazing bleakly up into the shadowed rafters, Morgan whispered, “Aye and a fine pair we are. It seems the wee bitch abandoned us both, didn’t she, lad?”

Pugsley’s only reply was an enigmatic whimper.