Chapter Six

"Ye're courting her?" Callum asked Eagan. "But ye've just met her."

"Better to marry her quickly," their father's old friend, Rabbie, called from the table, where he chewed one of Anna's flaky pear tarts. He pointed the tart at Eagan, who stood near the lit hearth. "Before ye get her with child."

"I hear she loves children," Lark said.

"Elizabeth is in love with her," Anna said. "Since the dock, she keeps spinning around saying she's Princess Elizabeth." She grinned. "I think the real Princess Elizabeth would like to be represented by such an angelic child."

"Too bad she had to hurry back to Grissell's," Lia said, embroidering by the hearth.

"Perhaps she's shy," Eliza said from her spot sitting on Beck's lap. "We are a lot to take in."

Eagan's brothers and their wives relaxed in the great hall in Gylin Castle. Even though Beck and Callum had cottages in the village and Drostan had built a cabin on the north side of Wolf Isle, the family gathered often, and always on Sundays after attending the chapel in Ormaig.

"We have only recently started courting," Eagan said, the guilt of lying to his family lumping in his gut like bad cheese. "And it may not last." He still planned to leave the isle and hadn't unpacked his satchel.

With his head clear of her voice and floral scent, Eagan saw how they were on paths that led away from each other—she back to France with her father, and he on a journey to faraway, lonely places. Even if they weren't playing a part to give him some peace, they'd never end up together for long.

"Ye might scare her off if ye ask her to wed too soon," Drostan said.

"Lark didn't scare off," Adam said, pulling his wife into his arms even though she held their one-year-old daughter, Hannah. The bairn laughed as they pressed her between them.

"Lark had other circumstances," Eagan said. "Tessa is a…" He hesitated. It was hard to describe the bright lass that was a serious midwife and also a jester with children. "She's…"

"A convict?" Eliza asked.

"A pirate?" Beck added.

Drostan lifted his nephew, John, in his arms. "Will-o'-the-wisp?"

"A cat lover?" Lia asked, with a longing look.

Rabbie swallowed the tart he'd been chewing. "A witch?"

"She's none of those things," Eagan said. "Well maybe a cat lover, but I'll tell her how ye can't breathe around them, Lia."

Lia nodded. "Maybe she'll help take care of Sia." That was the kitten she'd had to give up to Grissell.

"How do ye know she's not any of those other things?" Adam asked.

Eagan huffed. His family was annoying. "She's a personable lass whose mother has died and whose father is a French Navy captain who left her with Grissell to save her from dying in the streets of Paris. Her mother was English, but she moved to France before she had Tessa. Tessa learned to be a midwife from her mother."

"And she sings beautifully," Lia said, nodding. "Meg told me how she calmed Cecilia through the birth with her songs."

"That's quite a feat," Eliza said, "calming that banshee."

"Cecilia wasn't calm afterward," Eagan said, taking one of Anna's tarts. "The bairn has two birthmarks, and Cecilia's blaming Tessa for it."

Lark and Adam glanced at one another before Lark looked at Eagan. "There's a witch hunter on Mull."

"I've met Walter Gleeb," Eagan said, frowning. "He's a bloody fanatic sent from Edinburgh, and he wants to come search for witches on our isle."

Adam crossed his arms. "We'll let him inspect the village but not beyond. Grissell doesn't need that type of scrutiny."

"Nor does Tessa," Anna said.

"Invite her for dinner tomorrow," Lark said. "She can bring Grissell if the woman will leave her orphanage for a few hours."

The old woman cared for only three children now, one nearly a woman. Muriel and her daughter, Little Lark as they called her, had moved to the Isle of Skye when she'd met a Mackinnon and married him. Grissell had no offspring of her own. Who would take over the orphanage once she passed? Perhaps she was teaching Tessa everything she knew so she could carry on her mission to help women and children. But Tessa was hoping to leave with her father.

Eagan threw a few tarts into the basket Anna had prepared with bread, cheese, and rabbit pie for him to take to Grissell's. He'd take more blankets to her on the morrow. He had to assess what they might need for the upcoming winter.

"Ask them both for dinner anyway," Lark called out as he headed toward the door. "And the children."

He raised his hand in answer and kept walking. Eagan nodded to several of the villagers who were coming up to the castle to visit Eliza, having been her friends from her pirating youth. Scarred and permanently painted with fantastical sea creatures, the men could look as frightening as any witch. He'd like to see Gleeb try to interrogate them.

The sun was starting its descent as Eagan jogged easily along the path in the forest that led to Grissell's shoreline cottages. The run was easy, and Eagan enjoyed the quiet. Patches of sky crisscrossed by nearly bare, reaching limbs stretched overhead. The leaves crunched and fluttered as his boots disturbed them, and woodland creatures chittered and scurried from his intrusion. He'd heard there weren't trees on Orkney Isle. Would he miss the crunching, color-drenched leaves in the fall if he chose to stop there?

He smelled the smoke before he saw the four squat cottages around a clearing where a well had been dug a century ago, and which still produced fresh water from an inland stream that emptied into the sea beyond. Except for the smoke rising from two cottages, the place seemed deserted.

"Friend, not foe," he called out, stopping near the well. Grissell's home sat closest to the sea behind solid oaks that protected it from the storms that blew in. It was the other cottage with a lit chimney that drew him. It looked different from the last time he'd visited. The thatching on the slanted roof had been enhanced with soil from which grasses and a few remaining wildflowers grew. Golden leaves from a neighboring oak covered it. A porch had been added along the front so that one could sit next to the door. A colorful garland of triangles, cut from yellow, red, and green broadcloth, hung in a swoop over the door, which had been painted green. Boxes of purple ling flowers sat on the porch.

"Tessa?" he called. There was no answer.

Crack . Pain erupted on the back of Eagan's head, and he spun around, one hand on the sore spot and the other reaching for his sword.

Grissell stood with a young boy, two white cats rubbing against her legs.

"Ye hit me with a rock?" Eagan said, rubbing his head.

"An acorn," Grissell said. She nodded to his sword. "And you pull a blade on an old woman and a child." The lad held her hand and stared out with wide eyes. A little girl came around to take her other hand, blinking blankly at him.

He re-sheathed his sword. "Bloody feisty for an old woman," he murmured. Gleeb would certainly think she was a witch, and the cats and children her minions. "Ye could have just said something."

"Such as ‘she's not here'?" Grissell asked, the corner of her lips tipped slightly higher.

"Aye."

"What's the fun in that?"

Both children smiled.

"Do ye know where Tessa is?"

Grissell's smile flattened. "Looking for her father."

The little boy pointed north along the shoreline.

"She always looks for him," the girl said.

"Let's hope he doesn't come," Grissell said

"Why?" Eagan asked.

Grissell tipped her head, examining him. "She will hurt you, youngest Macquarie." Her words sent a shiver down Eagan that he ignored. "'Twould be better if you left Wolf Isle now."

He was well over six feet tall and made of thirteen stones of muscle. Lethal with a sword and sgian dubh, Eagan wasn't afraid of being hurt physically. But Grissell's warning seemed to be something other than concern over his bloodletting.

"I do not hurt easily." And how did she know he was planning to leave?

She walked over to him. In years past, she'd seemed to float. But now she walked with care, the two children flanking her. Her weathered finger poked his chest, but he stood his ground. "Inside. Your heart will bleed." She dropped her hand, and her ear dipped toward one shoulder and the other as if she were weighing the odds on some wager. "'Tis a truth about love that it can slice a person through if 'tis lost. Perhaps it will be enough to break the curse." She shrugged. "I'll watch and see." Her hazy blue eyes pinned him. "But you will hurt."

She turned, and the two children followed her back across the clearing to her cottage. The white cats, known as Saint Joan and Saint Margaret, pranced after them.

A chill slid along Eagan's bones, and his heart beat faster as if it felt the tip of a dagger against it. Maybe they should let Gleeb meet Grissell. She'd probably stop his heart with a poke of her finger.

Eagan turned west along the shoreline, which would gradually curve around to the north. He couldn't see Tessa, but then a ribbon of song reached him, ebbing and growing louder with the direction of the breeze. Climbing back to walk silently along the tree line, Eagan headed to an outcropping of rocks where waves crashed during storms. Today, the water was choppy.

Tessa stood at the end of the sloping rocks, her dark hair rising and falling with the wind. As he neared, he could hear her clear notes that rose and fell like an instrument. It reminded him of a long-ago, wordless chant produced by nuns in prayer. The notes held him captive, the song wrapping around him like tentacles from the sea. She could be a mermaiden upon the rocks, her tail hidden beneath the green gown that billowed out around her.

When she took a breath, Eagan could move again, and walked toward her on the rocks. She glanced over her shoulder, and he saw a glistening in her eyes as if they were wet with tears. He'd already seen her joyful and mischievous with the children, seductive with him, and resigned with Cecilia and her theatrics. But now she was sad, and his heart, like Grissell had predicted, hurt.

He said nothing as he stepped up beside her, the wind rushing past his ears. They stood looking out at the choppy sea, an occasional wave smashing against the jutting rock, sending up spray. But Tessa didn't back away.

"He might never come back," she said. "He promised, but the sea doesn't honor promises."

"Yer father?"

She nodded. "He's the only person I have left in this world. No siblings. No family."

"The Ainsworths in England?"

She shook her head. "My father said my mother made up the name and didn't want to take his, that she was too independent. I don't know who her family was."

Perhaps Rebecca had been running from them. Lark and Anna, along with their three sisters, had grown up in a house full of mental and physical abuse. Lark escaped by marrying Adam, and luckily, the others survived until their father died.

Tessa's eyes looked even greener bathed in unshed tears. "Grissell says she knew my mother."

The words swelled in Eagan's head, and his hands rested on Tessa's shoulders. "What?" Grissell had never left Wolf Isle as far as he knew. "Your mother lived on Wolf Isle?"

Tessa nodded. "Yes."