Chapter 27

DUN RINGILL CASTLE - SEPTEMBER 13, 1385

H aving gotten a proper night's sleep for the first time in months, Moira woke in her bed feeling renewed. Her lightness of heart and mind didn't match the gray gloom revealed by the partially opened shutter. She lifted her eyelid and focused her vision. She'd closed it the night before, a chill beginning to ride on the September air.

Shifting in Elspeth's massive and too-soft bed, she turned on her back and stretched her arm out. Her hand brushed a small bouquet of Michaelmas daisies resting within the Psalter on the pillow beside her.

Careful not to disturb the line of stitches on her calf, she turned over and touched the bright petals, their soft purple blooms reaching out to ward off the darkness. There was a note beside them.

J'ai trouvé celle que mon c?ur aime. Tonight, Dunvegan. Meet me at the tunnel after compline. - Léonid

Even his handwriting was beautiful. She touched the words written on the fragment of paper trying to imagine his voice saying them, then picked out things she understood. After reading it a dozen times she could only understand ‘j'ai' meaning I, and ‘mon', meaning my. Her heart leapt. They would see each other tonight after spending yesterday avoiding one another, Léo returning to the fields, she staying in her room continuing the illusion she was sick with the same illness Gordon had.

Something had shifted between them on Iain's bìrlinn, something powerful and deep that couldn't be broken. She touched the bottom of the page. He'd written his proper name, and she longed to write her own message to him and sign it Aileen.

The chains around her heart pulled taut and she knew she must tell him, because who she was mattered, and she wanted Léo alone to be the first to know who she was in the shelter of her heart.

Hopping across the room, she pulled a piece of sketching paper from her book and tore a square off. Using her charcoal, she wrote the words she couldn't say.

Léonid - I love you with all my heart. I trust that you'll never let me fall. I'm yours forever and ever. My name is not Moira.

Her charcoal hovered over the paper, longing to write her name. Guilt swamped her heart. Father. She colored over the last sentence.

—Birdy.

A knock sounded at the door and she picked up the bouquet and Psalter, tucking the note between its pages and sticking it under her pillow. Her calf pulled against the stitches and she stumbled against the burn, hobbling to the door and knocked once in response.

"It's Isobel, dearie."

The new door opened as she lifted the bar.

Isobel's face was tight with agitation. "They're back." The two words plummeted her toward the ground.

Moira pointed to her lips and enunciated with precise movement. Niall?

"Malvina. And Fingon."

Clammy sweat broke out at her low back. Fingon MacKinnon. The worst of the MacKinnon children. His presence inspired a sick feeling among the entire house because, as Isobel put it during her first weeks at Dun Ringill, something inside him was wrong.

"We need to get you proper. You've been summoned to break your fast with Malvina. Are you feeling hale?"

She nodded and pointed to her mouth. Léo?

Isobel's fading blue eyes softened. "He'll be out on Elgol all day with Gordon. Ate by himself early this morning. Said to let you sleep since you've been sick the past two days." Her stomach sank.

Catching her expression, Isobel patted her hand. "I know you love him. Who could blame you?"

Fear gripped her heart. If her feelings were plain to Isobel, who else could read them?

"He's the only MacKinnon I've ever cared for in my fifty-three years at Dun Ringill. Except for his dear mother, though I s'pose she wasn't really a MacKinnon. I won't be blamin' you for seein' what I've seen since he was toddlin' around the garden. I see the way you look at him, lass. You're devoted to him."

Moira drew her mouth in a flat line, not feeling entirely comforted, and praying that Malvina and Ardis were not as perceptive.

Isobel shook out an emerald green cotehardie and helped her put it on. Again reading her expression, Isobel tsked. "I know you don't like wearin' it but Malvina will give you a tongue that would clip cloots if you dress like a common villager."

Nothing about this deception fit anymore. Sixteen more days. Sixteen days and they would strike back. Just hold on.

Moving the heavy velvet of the cotehardie out of the way, Moira perched upon the wooden chair while Isobel's fingers combed through the knots in her hair and began twisting it into some semblance of order. A gnarled hand bent from a lifetime of hard labor gave her a fistful of pins.

"Hold these up for me. Remember, don' make eye contact with Fingon, no matter what. He'll pop you sideways for insolence. You may be the laird's leman but he'll no' care about that unless Niall is here. Or Léo is in the room. Always been frightened of him."

Moira turned and raised an eyebrow. Isobel pulled a pin from her fingertips. "Aye. He puts on good enough as Abbot of Iona to know some scripture. I believe he can tell Léo is…" she dropped her voice into a whisper, "…anointed."

Moira's eyebrow went higher. "Tis true. Dreaming things since he was in tailclouts, always observin' the world around him with those big brown eyes. Always had his father's ferocious spirit tempered by his mother's warm-blooded nature. He could give as good as he go' from his brothers, but chose his battles cos he has the good discernment they lack."

A picture of young Léonid Cormac MacKinnon took shape. Lionlike, even as a young boy.

"I see your grin."

Moira rolled her eyes but could not stifle her amusement.

"I know I'm partial owin' to my bein' his nursemaid, but Léo could always see through his father. Through Niall. Through Fingon. And Elspeth. He isn't fooled by their words, and he isn't frightened of them. He can see the motives in their heart. That scares them."

Léo could discern the voice of God. It was why he had gone back to Mull after the failed marriage negotiation between Hector and Elspeth, and why he had followed Hector into Lochindorb. Why, when he realized he was in the wrong, he was swift to apologize to her.

A chill raced over her scalp. Why was Fingon here when he had been so deliberate in staying away?

Hair done, the golden coronet was pressed over her forehead and she cringed. Sixteen more days.

Everyone in Malvina's solar was on edge. Two servants, Finlay and Hamish, stood backs-straight against the wall. Beads of sweat dripped down Hamish's plump face despite the coolness of the air.

Malvina slid fruit preserves over an oat bannock, muttering under her breath. Forcing a spoonful of porridge into her mouth, Moira tried not to gag, her stomach sickening, her calf burning. Fingon sat in the chair usually reserved for the laird, elbows propped on the arms, fingertips tapping together and a note of interrogation in his voice.

"The body washed up against the south side of the island yesterday morning. No word on the other three guards, but I suspect they may be dead as well."

Moira had known they would discover the theft, but the knowledge that the body of the young guard she had shoved into the water had been found assailed her conscience. How had she come to be entangled in all of this? Sudden longing for the quiet of her parents' sea cottage, for Maw's tarts, for the whispered sound of her father's voice as he recited the paternoster in the pre-dawn hours, for quiet and comfort, gripped her. In exchange for peace and safety she'd been thrust into a world of sinful men who took what they wanted. And she'd participated in it. God, forgive me. Please don't punish me.

Malvina ran her knife over the preserves again and again, lost in her own annoyance, forgetting to eat. "Thirty bags of coin. A lifetime of wealth we can never earn again. I told Niall he needed more guards on Staffa to protect it. He's done what he wants and doesn't listen to a thing I say anymore. Sixty years the MacKinnons have been using that cave to horde wealth and your brother is the first chief to leave it with only four guards instead of eight. Foolish, foolish boy."

It was a foolish place to store vast sums of wealth for the simple fact that every island chief knew that the MacKinnons used the cave to store their coin. Hector and his brother had made many trips to Staffa as lads, and despite Malvina's insistence that Niall had been the only negligent laird, his father had at least once left it totally unguarded. On that occasion, Lachlan and Hector had made it all the way to the sea cave at high tide before they were forced to leave. Lost in thought, Moira screwed up her brow unable to remember if they'd explained why.

Malvina continued to worry preserves over the bannock. "How did they even make it into the uppermost cave at that time of the day?"

Fingon tapped his fingertips together and Moira could feel his eyes on her. "They've been unable to account for it."

Malvina made an annoyed sound. "It's too slick for a ladder or to climb. How would you even get a ladder in? It's too treacherous to try. The thief must have accessed it during high tide."

Fingon smoothed two fingers over his mustache, eyes boring into Moira as she lifted small spoonfuls of porridge to her lips. "At high tide you have five minutes to get in and out before you drown. It's impossible to move that amount of coin in a small boat in ten minutes. And our patrols wait at the mouth of the cave during those times. Always have, always will. There was blood clinging to a high rock. Whoever did it was injured. Perhaps rope?"

Remembering that she was supposed to be eating the bannock, Malvina released her knife upon the trencher with a clatter. Across the room Finlay jumped.

Malvina leaned across the table. "Gordon says he had flux the last two days."

Moira bit her tongue to keep from smiling. Cod liver oil upended into his morning milk. A little inspiration from Gabriel.

Malvina continued. "The other guards saw Léo in the morning before dawn. Then saw him again, trying to ride that skittish horse around Kylerhea at midday."

Angus dressed in Léo's clothing, beard and hair groomed for the first time in his life, gold chain around his neck. From a distance they were twins. Skilled enough to stay out of sight, smart enough to be seen when he needed to be.

Fingon slapped his hand against the wooden arm of the chair and grunted. "That rules him out I suppose."

Malvina picked up the oat bannock and took a dainty bite. "Doesn't mean he wasn't involved."

Fingon made a noise of agreement.

"There you are, Moira." The sound of Ardis's voice snapped her out of her careful listening and she looked up, struggling to maintain a look of simple-minded ignorance.

Malvina put down her bannock and dusted her fingers, her face full of incredulity. "Ardis. What are you doing?"

Of all the unspoken rules within Dun Ringill, interrupting a family meal was one of the biggest acts of malfeasance. Without saying a word, Fingon's hand swung out and connected with Ardis's cheek, her head snapping back, but she stayed on her feet. Cheek pink, she turned back to Moira and…smiled.

"My apologies, Your Holiness. I've brought something for Moira. She was sick with stomach upset yesterday like Gordon." Her fingers held out a small bag. "Peppermint."

Moira looked at the brown leather bag and then at Ardis. Something swam in her eyes, something keen. Swallowing her porridge, she put her spoon down and took the bag. A smell of mint wafted from it, reminding her of Hector.

Ardis curtseyed, turned, and left .

Fingon picked up his glass of morning uisge-beatha and sipped. "Insolent."

Placing the small bag upon the table, Moira picked up her spoon. Malvina's eyes locked on her face. "You've been sick?"

Heart thudding, she glazed her eyes over a bit and gave a slight nod.

"Get gone then. We don't want to catch it."