Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-two

The sound was both beautiful and terrible. It was a sound never meant to be confined to manor walls, and Sabrina’s first instinct was to clamp her hands over her ears.

She could not bear it. Her fingertips flew to her temples, but still it swirled around her, penetrating every pore, flowing with unerring instinct into the gaping wound in her heart. It wailed of love and loss and a lifetime of missed opportunities. It wept bitterly of betrayal and regret, dropping shimmering notes like tears into a bottomless well of grief.

It was the voice of every woman, Cameron or MacDonnell, who had lost a father, brother, husband, or son to the senseless hatred that festered between their clans. It was the broken lament of all women throughout time who were forced to sacrifice love for pride.

It was Penelope weeping by the sea for Odysseus’s return. Dinah crying over the broken body of Shechem, the man who had both raped and adored her. Eve cast out of the garden, bewailing the serpent’s treachery.

Eve .

Sabrina sat straight up, fighting to shake off the spell of the dark lament. Its melodious tendrils wove a web of destruction, a web her family was already caught in, a web Morgan was walking straight into. She struggled against it, knowing she had to find something strong and enduring enough to cut through its cloying fibers.

Her frantic gaze searched the shadowy solar, finding nothing but her mother’s treasures, fragile luxuries costing an embarrassment of riches, but utterly worthless at that moment.

The back of the kirk coughed out smoke in thickening billows. If the fire spread to the front, where her family was held captive, they would no longer be silent, but screaming. Each wailing note of the pipes pounded at Sabrina’s brain, drowning out their imagined cries. At least she was to be spared that much, she thought despairingly, her head falling against the back of the settee.

Moonlight rippled along the massive blade of the claymore hanging above the hearth. Sabrina’s breath caught at the sight. The ancient weapon, scarred and nicked from countless battles, had no place in this elegant solar, yet there it hung, sparkling in the ethereal light like fresh hope.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The blade would have been no more unattainable had it dangled from the moon by a gossamer thread. But winning Morgan’s affections had once seemed equally impossible, she reminded herself. And if her papa’s tenacity had taught her anything, it was that nothing was impossible if you wanted it badly enough.

She hadn’t the time or the patience to wrestle with her feeble legs. Supporting her weight with her palms, she dragged herself to the edge of the settee and heaved herself over. She thumped hard to the floor, biting her tongue.

Using her arms and hips to maneuver, she crawled toward the hearth. The skirts of her nightdress hindered her, twining around the dead weight of her calves. The ceaseless wail of the bagpipes muffled her struggle.

She arrived at her destination grunting with exertion. Before she could see the Cameron claymore, she had to tilt her head so far back that her hair brushed the floor. The sword wavered before her bleary eyes, swaying like a grim pendulum between doom and hope.

She dug her fingers into the hearth and inched herself up, stone by stone, until her polished fingernails were cracked and bleeding. After minutes that seemed like an eternity, she dragged herself to a standing position. Her legs quivered at the unaccustomed strain. She teetered on the uneven stones.

The solar started to shrink, and she knew she was falling. There was no time to neatly disengage the claymore’s hilt from its pegs. With a last desperate lunge she grabbed the blade itself, feeling it slice deeply into her fingers as she crashed backward to the floor.

For an agonized moment Sabrina’s only concern was where her next breath would come from. She finally managed to suck a tortured gasp into her lungs. The stench of smoke drifted through the open window. She could feel blood from her wounded fingers seeping into her nightdress. She lifted one hand and wiggled them, more pleased than she could say to find them all intact.

Dragging the sword behind her, she scrambled for the door on hands and knees. The blade gouged an ugly trail in the polished oak of her mother’s floor. Sabrina thought with a grim flare of humor that she’d have to sneak back in and throw a rug over it if any of them survived the night.

She crawled out the open door onto the gallery. The steep edge beckoned her.

The wail of the pipes ceased. In a silence more shrill than the music, Sabrina flattened herself against the floor much as she had done the night Morgan had wandered into her mother’s solar to steal her heart. She would have to choose her moment with care, or she stood to lose both Morgan and her family.

From the hall below came slow, mocking applause and the ring of Morgan’s voice. Sabrina had never heard anything so welcome. Its deep, familiar cadences made Eve’s song seem shallow by comparison.

“Bravo, Eve,” he said. “A command performance for a captive audience. How very impressive.”

Sabrina peeped over the edge of the gallery. Eve and Morgan faced each other in the hall below, their profiles to Sabrina. Eve set aside the pipes.

“What the hell are you doin’ here anyway?” Morgan asked, folding his arms over his chest.

“Watchin’ ye make a bloody fool out o’ yerself just as ye did in London,” Eve replied, crossing her own arms over her chest in like manner.

Morgan’s composure slipped a notch. “You were in London?”

“Aye.” She pulled something out of her plaid and tossed it at him. As it thumped against his chest, Sabrina saw it was a fat purse similar to the one she had seen her father give Morgan. “But I canna be bought by Cameron gold as easily as ye.”

Morgan stared at the purse, his expression stunned. “The beggar?”

“I’d rather beg than sell me soul to Dougal Cameron.”

The purse slipped from his hands to clank on the stone floor. “Why did you come back here, Eve? I forgave you for teachin’ Ranald to play the pipes. I might have eventually forgiven you for mistakenly killin’ my da. But I’ll never forgive you for cripplin’ my wife.”

My wife . Sabrina pressed her eyes shut against a rush of moisture. Those words again. Precious. Beloved. Not even a magistrate’s seal had the power to wipe them away. But Eve’s next words made her eyes fly open with shock.

“’Twas no mistake, lad. Me aim was true when I struck down yer da.”

If there had been a chair behind him, Sabrina sensed Morgan would have sat. His brow clouded with confusion. “But why?”

Sabrina ducked as Eve swung around to pace the drawing room in lurching strides, her braid swishing over her shoulder at each turn. Passion trembled in her voice. “Because I couldna bear it anymore! When he lifted his goblet to his precious Beth, I just wanted to shut him up. Beth !” she spat out. “It was always Beth! He wanted her to be yer mother, ye know. He used to tell me her bloodline was fit for a king, worthy of a mighty chieftain o’ the MacDonnells such as his son would become.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you loved him.”

Eve swung around to face him, almost beautiful in her fury. Sabrina was so compelled by her transformation that she forgot to duck. But Eve had eyes only for Morgan.

“I loathed the wee miserable rooster! The only reason I didna kill him sooner was that I wanted to watch him die slowly, chokin’ on his own pickled blood!”

“But he kept them from stonin’ you,” Morgan whispered. “He saved your life.”

Eve’s words rang out, harsh and irrevocable. “He saved your life!”

Morgan looked wary now, fearful of another trick, another twist of her canny logic.

She rested her hands on her hips. “Why do ye think he saved me, lad? Out o’ Christian charity? Pity for a homely clubfoot lass? Out o’ the goodness of his wee black heart? Ha!” Eve grabbed him by the front of his plaid. “He saved me because I was carryin’ in me belly the future chieftain o’ Clan MacDonnell.”

Sabrina bit back a gasp. Her heart ached for Morgan. She had never seen him so vulnerable, his face a raw palate of doubts and contradictions. “But you were only…”

“Twelve years old,” she finished for him, her words steely with remembered pain.

Sabrina swallowed a knot of sickened pity. A pity she knew Eve would disdain. Morgan’s head dropped. “If you hated him so, why did you stay all those years?”

“Don’t ye know, lad?” Eve whispered. “I stayed to be near ye. I knew he’d never let ye go. He’d hunt me to the ends of the earth if I dared take ye. He hid me away till ye were born. He dinna want anyone to know I was yer mother. A pathetic, twisted creature such as I?” Sabrina flinched to hear her own fears echoed so bluntly. “He feared the clan would say yer blood was tainted. That they’d demand one of Angus’s cousins or brothers for chieftain. He wouldna let me tell ye, and by the time he was gone, ’twas too late. Ye were already wed to the Cameron wench.”

Sabrina could not help but feel Eve’s pain, realizing that the woman’s own scheming had thwarted her at every turn. By murdering Angus, she had unwittingly forced Morgan into a Cameron’s bed. By causing Sabrina’s accident, she had earned her son’s undying hatred.

Morgan still stood with head bowed as if trying to absorb a flurry of blows. Sabrina held her breath as in a gesture of foreign tenderness, Eve reached up to brush the hair from his eyes. But her patience was her undoing. The faint sounds of panicked shouts and the hungry crackling of flames finally reached the hall.

Sabrina began to fight her way to her feet, clawing her way up the balusters of the gallery railing with the raw fingers of one hand. Splinters tore at her flesh.

Morgan lifted his head, his dazed eyes slowly clearing. “Dear God, woman. What have you done now?”

He started for the door. In a motion that reminded Sabrina eerily of Morgan, Eve stepped into his path and drew a pistol from her plaid. She leveled it at his chest.

The note of steel was back in her voice. “Don’t. I’ll see ye dead before I’ll see ye owned by them. Everythin’ I did, all the years I held me silence, were all for Clan MacDonnell. The Camerons’ll die screamin’ and beggin’ for mercy like the cowards they are. I’ll let no one interfere. Not even ye.”

Morgan warily raised his hands, inching the right one toward the gap in his plaid. Sabrina knew what he kept there over his heart. She also knew that heart well enough to be certain he would waver before shooting the mother he’d never known he had. And to know that that instant of hesitation would cost him his life.

She caught the railing and dragged herself the rest of the way to her feet. From somewhere outside came the sound of glass shattering and she drew strength from fresh hope. “How did you get back to Cameron so quickly?” Morgan asked, obviously trying to distract Eve.

Sabrina released the railing and stepped away from it, knees locked to keep her from swaying.

“I left London hours before ye. I saw the lass come to yer street. When she saw her father had purchased yer favors, I knew she’d run here to hide behind her mother’s skirts.”

With agonizing effort Sabrina lifted the massive blade of the claymore off the floor an inch at a time, her muscles strained to the snapping point.

Eve’s laugh was ugly. “A spineless chit like her ain’t got the guts to fight for a man like ye.”

Sabrina threw back her head, tossing her tangled hair out of her eyes. “You’ve made many a mistake, Eve MacDonnell,” she called out from the top of the stairs. “But that may have been your costliest one yet.”