Chapter Twenty-Five

"[The Destroying Angel mushroom] contains deadly amatoxin poisons. Effects are seen 8 to 24 hours after ingestion and include vomiting, diarrhoea, and severe stomach pains. There may be a deceiving period of improvement before the second effects of liver and kidney poisoning occur."

WoodlandTrust.org

Sara stared at the man reclined on at least four pillows in the bed, and it took her a moment to inhale. "You're…you're alive."

Jamie didn't move anything but his eyes, which were bloodshot and slightly yellow. "Ye've failed in yer murderous mission, woman. Let yer father know he'll never succeed in his evil plans."

Sara shook her head and looked at Brodrick. The large warrior's mouth had fallen open as if his jaw had unhinged from his skull. "You said he was dead."

Brodrick looked from Jamie to the surgeon to Rory. "He wasn't breathing. There was vomit and…was as if his bowels had emptied." He nodded to the maids who had bundles of bedding at their feet.

Hamish Gower stood and exhaled, holding up a mushroom from a stack he had on the table. "I added a chemical to the white to see if this specimen is Destroying Angel or Fool's Mushroom."

"Both are toxic," Rory said.

Hamish nodded sourly. "Unfortunately, the prognosis is the same."

"Death," Jamie said with a sneer, and Brodrick pulled up a chair to sit near him as if to give comfort.

"'Tis a Destroying Angel mushroom. I thought it was another equally fatal mushroom because the Destroying Angel doesn't grow until midsummer. But this has been dried, probably from last summer." He sniffed it and grimaced. "And it also has the smell of old meat."

"Did he die and come back to life?" John asked. The two elderly men had moved closer to Jamie, staring at him like he was some creature returned from Hell.

Simon passed the sign of the cross before him, his other hand sliding down from its spot on his head.

Jamie swore under his breath and closed his eyes. When he did so, he looked dead with his pale, yellowish skin.

Hamish set the mushroom down and walked to the water pitcher in the corner to wash his hands. "He likely fell into a false sleep as the poison began its attack on his organs." Hamish turned, drying his hands on a rag as he looked at Rory. "But from the state of the chief's eyes and skin, I'd say this is a temporary improvement." He shook his head. "There's no cure now that the poison has been taken up by the blood. It will ravish his liver and kidneys."

Jamie sputtered softly as if he laughed. "'Tis a cruel jest for a man to feel improved only to hear those around him verify he will die quite soon. Dying quickly would be more agreeable."

The maids hurried out, bundles of linens wadded up in their arms. The smell of excrement and vomit still fouled the room, and Rory went to the windows, swinging them open.

Reid moved slowly toward Sara. "Can I do anything for ye, milady? Ye look pale."

Reid looked pale himself, and his hands shook so much that Sara thought about leading him to a chair to sit down. "Thank you for your kindness," she said, "but please take care of yourself."

He gave a nod that could have been a shallow bow. "Thank ye, milady. I think I will…" His words trailed off, and he walked silently from the room, swaying slightly as if the weakest wind would knock him down.

"Master Hamish," she said, and he looked at her. At least he didn't glare. Sara nodded to the pile of mushrooms. Morag had taught her all about edibles to be found and poisonous plants and mushrooms to avoid. "Is it true the poison takes hours to make a person ill at first?"

The man nodded gravely. "Aye, 'tis why survival is rare. By the time the victim suffers ill effects, 'tis too late to have him purge."

"How many hours?" she asked, unwilling to let them know her knowledge.

"At least six hours and often longer before stomach cramps begin," Hamish said and looked to Jamie, who had opened his eyes. "When did you first feel sick, milord?"

"After my last meal before bed last eve."

Hamish began to scribble the information down on a bound stack of paper. How wonderful for him to get such important data from a talking corpse. "That would be about eight last evening," the doctor said.

"I was already down in the dungeon by noon that day," Sara said. "And before that, I was absent from Dunvegan, nowhere near Jamie."

The doctor looked up. "The poison could have moved slower through his system. Up to a full day between ingestion and first symptoms."

Rory nodded and rubbed a hand over his head. "The evening before," Rory said, his words quick, "Sara and I were stuck in the storm away from Dunvegan."

There was relief in his tone. Had Rory thought she'd poisoned his brother? That she'd lied about reading her father's directive and had acted upon it while he was away?

Her jaw felt numb, and her hand pressed against her heart with a breathless feeling.

"She could've poisoned his food before she left," Brodrick said. "Placed it in something he was going to eat."

"We eat the same stew he does," John said. "And we aren't nearly dead." He patted his chest with his one hand.

Simon pulled the lower lid of his one eye down. "Does it look yellow, John?"

John stared hard into Simon's eye. "Perhaps."

"Yer eyes, too," Simon said.

Hamish walked over, looking at the skin of their arms and into their wide eyes. He shook his head. "Ye don't look abnormally yellow."

Sara's relief allowed her to exhale. Thank God the two old men hadn't been affected.

The men looked at their arms, holding them next to each other as if in reference. "Are ye certain, doctor?" John asked.

"We could be poisoned," Simon said, aghast.

"Aye," the doctor said.

"Aye?" John said, his brows shooting up to his thin hairline. "We could be poisoned?"

Hamish shook his head. "I was saying aye to John. I'm certain neither of ye look poisoned."

Sara turned back to Rory. "I didn't see that letter from my father, and I didn't poison anyone. I haven't been alone anywhere I could gather mushrooms."

"Like I said, they were dry." The doctor tipped his head toward a pile on the table, but his voice was free of suspicion. "Someone scattered these around him."

"And put the open letter in my room, knowing I would get out of the pit by way of the lowered ladder," Sara said. She'd heard people in the great hall when she was using the privy. Margaret and Theodore and then another who padded away on light feet.

"Jok," Rory said, "gather a few men to question the kitchen staff and the maids. Find out where everyone was over the last thirty-six hours." The man nodded and left the room. "Brodrick."

"Aye," he said, standing straighter.

"Go to the village and let the people know Jamie is still alive, for now, and he was not bashed in the head. See if anyone knows anything about the mushrooms or saw someone unusual going in or out of Dunvegan. Set a second guard at the ferry."

Brodrick nodded, squeezed Jamie's shoulder, and traipsed off.

Simon and John stood straight. "We can help inspect the staff," Simon said.

Rory nodded but held up a hand, stopping them. "And get some lads to drag up the things from the dungeon pit and send for Father Lockerby." They hurried off, leaving the doctor and Sara with him in Jamie's room.

"What would you have me do?" Sara asked, more than ready to leave the foul-smelling room. And she wanted time to think.

"Find yer sisters and make certain they're safe."

"Are you…staying here with him?" She glanced toward Jamie who seemed once again to sleep, his breaths so shallow they were hard to discern.

"There's little time left, and I would have words with him." Rory glanced at Hamish. "Alone."

Sara walked to the door as the doctor gathered his bag of chemicals and notes. Rory sat in Brodrick's chair. He glanced her way, and her heart pounded. His bent brows and hard mouth made his face seem full of questions. And one of them was, did she want his brother dead enough to act on it?

…

"Fok the timing," Jamie said, his eyes partly closed. "Ye know she's killed me for her foking father." He was weak but not too weak to shoot venom with his words.

Rory exhaled through his nose. "She saved us from the fire."

"A trick to get her in Dunvegan to find the flag." Jamie rubbed a hand down his yellow-tinged face. "Ye watch. The Flame of Dunscaith will try to kill ye, too, and then her father will ride in and take Dunvegan, the Fairy Flag flying above his head."

Rory's gut twisted inside his already taut body. Dread nearly swallowed him, testing all his convictions about Sara. If she were just another lass, someone not related to the MacLeods' greatest enemy, would he question her truthfulness?

Rory leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, ducking his head to rub the ache at the back of his neck. Someone must be setting her up to look guilty. Otherwise, Rory was making the biggest mistake of his life. Madeline had taught him that he couldn't trust his instincts when it came to women.

I was only eighteen. She was the first woman I tupped.

Rory leaned back in the chair he'd been sitting in for the last few hours, trying to get as much information out of his brother as he could before he died. For there was no chance of him surviving, and soon, if the doctor was correct, Jamie would start vomiting and shiting himself again, falling into unconsciousness before dying. It would happen sometime within the next three days.

"I'll be careful," Rory said.

"Don't eat anything she hasn't tasted first."

This was ridiculous. If he was foolish enough to believe a second Macdonald woman, perhaps he deserved to be poisoned. "What? And wait six to twelve hours before I know 'tis safe after she eats it?" Rory asked.

Jamie grunted.

"I will have the foodstuffs searched and refreshed," Rory said. "No one should die this way." Not even his cruel brother who'd left him to die in an English dungeon. Although, he'd threatened Sara. Maybe Rory should bash Jamie's head in to end it quickly.

"I knew when I saw her that she was a traitor," Jamie said, licking his dry lips.

Rory held a cup of watered-down ale to his mouth, and he sipped. "She had nothing to do with the chapel fire." He'd decided he was certain of at least that. Scrutinizing his memory, Rory knew that she'd looked alarmed, surprised, and had tried to warn him. "Like ye've heard, Sara led Margaret out from underneath and then went back to help drag ye out."

Jamie stared at him for a long moment. "Ye like her."

Rory said nothing because he more than liked Sara. After their night together, he couldn't stop thinking about her. The way she'd let him see the pleasure on her beautiful face. The way her body had wrapped around him, pulling out fiery, carnal sensations he didn't know he could feel. She'd been so open with him, except for her back. Maybe the fact she was hiding a part of her body made him worry that she was hiding more. Or maybe he thought of her constantly because he was merely curious. And she was tantalizingly luscious.

"Aye," he said finally. "I like her."

"The same way ye liked Madeline," Jamie said and closed his eyes. "And that saw her dead."

"Sara isn't like her," Rory said, steel in his voice despite the evisceration going on in his gut.

Jamie's eyelids cracked open. "She is exactly like her."

"Madeline had wheat-colored hair and—"

"I'm not talking about how she looked," Jamie said. "But what she did. How she stole the Fairy Flag. How ye let her fool ye into thinking she loved ye." His head moved as if he were shaking it. "Ye've always been a fool, Rory. I thought Father taught ye a lesson about Macdonald lasses when he sliced her throat in front of ye."

Flashes of that horrid day coalesced in Rory's mind. Pale Madeline hauled out before the villagers, her long, thin neck exposed as Alasdair MacLeod yanked her head back. Rory had thought himself in love. But then she'd stolen the Fairy Flag for Walter Macdonald. She was a Macdonald spy.

Her eyes had sought Rory, eyes full of tears and remorse. I am sorry , she'd said, and the truth that she'd been using him had slammed into him. Rory had still tried to reach for her, but Jamie and Brodrick had held him back as his father spoke. Her blood is on yer hands, son, for allowing her to trick ye. Spittle flew from Alasdair's mouth, his eyes wild, and then…then he'd sliced a blade across her throat.

Jamie was still talking. "Ye vowed that day to protect Clan MacLeod above all else. And never ever to trust a woman, especially a Macdonald. Have ye forgotten that?"

How could he? It haunted him. He looked at Jamie, stared into his yellow-hued eyes. "I merely…" He couldn't say it.

The vow. He'd broken the vow, and the Fairy Flag was gone, and his brother had been poisoned. "I just foked her, Jamie. I've broken no vow." The words were bitter in his throat and made his stomach feel hollow, as if the twisting had reduced it to nothing. He hated himself for the lie. Because being with Sara Macdonald was so much more than a night of pleasure.

"Good," Jamie said, his eyes closing. He sighed long, and Rory almost thought it might be his last breath. But then he spoke. "Father will be foking irate I let a Macdonald kill me."

For a long moment, Rory sat there in his self-loathing, hating the words he'd said about his night with Sara. And hating himself because they weren't true.

Jamie opened his eyes again. "Father said nothing about bringing ye home from Carlisle. 'Twas as if he'd given ye up, and so did I." Jamie looked away. "Perhaps I will meet him in Hell for that."

Rory's chest clenched even harder. His father, the murderer. Rory shouldn't care about Alasdair's abandonment, but he did. If Rory hadn't let Madeline trick him, would his father have tried harder to get Rory released? Would he have at least sent coins for Rory to buy some food, comfort?

A deep groaning sound emanated from Jamie's bowels, and he grimaced but kept talking. "After his death, I'd plans to send a ransom…eventually, once my leadership had been fully accepted by the clan." He opened his eyes to look at Rory. "I know ye hate me for leaving ye there."

"Are ye asking for my forgiveness?" Rory asked. Or was he confessing because he was afraid for his soul?

Jamie closed his eyes. "Perhaps."

Anger tightened Rory's lips. His brother couldn't even apologize for leaving him to die in an English prison. "Then, perhaps I forgive ye." But there was no mercy in his rough voice. The tether that had bound Rory's loyalty to Jamie had been severed.

Rory thought of the three men who'd been left with him to rot at Carlisle, all of them from the Isle of Skye, their beloved home. Instead of feeling adrift, all four of them had formed a brotherhood themselves, apart from their clans that had forgotten them. They now held Rory's loyalty, not Clan MacLeod.

Bloody hell, the foul room stunk. "Rest well," Rory said and stood, but Jamie had drifted back to an uncomfortable sleep. If Jamie's pain got much worse, Rory knew which artery to slice to end it fast—his father had taught him when he was eighteen.