Page 4 of Highland Jewel
“The visitors? Where are they?” she asked a Mackintosh fighter she’d seen shadowing the group.
“The laird’s study, miss.”
She hurried to the closed door. Voices drifted through. Niall’s deep voice was as familiar as the wind through the leaves, as the rolling thunder of an approaching summer storm. The last of her doubts disappeared. Nearly unfathomable joy bathed her with its warmth. She raised her fist, ready to knock.
“Maisie. What’s wrong?”
She jumped at the sound of her sister’s voice. Isabella stood a few steps away, silhouetted by the light coming from the courtyard. Maisie blinked, realizing she’d been standing in a cloak of fog. The air thinned. The mist lifted and a chill prickled down her back. A dark reality reemerged, choking her. Her sister, the physician. The woman who’d sacrificed so much on all of their behalves. Her family. Maisie’s eyes burned. Her throat closed. Isabella, who finally for the first time was livingas she chose to live, and not acting because of what she saw as her duty. Isabella, who was newly married to a man whom she deeply loved and was worthy of her.
“Maisie?” She approached.
“Visitors.”
“I heard the news too. Finally, they’re here. Everyone is relieved. Men we can trust.”
Men we can trust.
Hersister Isabella.Niall’ssister Fiona. What Maisie would do for Isabella, Niall would do for Fiona. The reality of their past tumbled and fell like an avalanche all around her. Isabella was free. Fiona was a prisoner.
Tears brimmed over. His words the last night they were together pushed through her elation and sank at last into her mind. Niall wasn’t here for her.
I’ve been given a task to accomplish in exchange for my sister’s life.
His life wasn’t his own. Maisie shook her head in disbelief. “No!”
With anguish squeezing every bit of air from her chest, Maisie shoved the door open and entered.
All conversation in the laird’s study halted, and every head swiveled toward her. But Maisie’s eyes were on only one person. Niall. He stood. The blood drained from his face.
His handsome face was a watery image as her tears fell relentlessly. She loved him, but shehadto let him go. He had been her hope, but she would instead have to suffer misery.
“You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
Invisible shackles dragged at her steps. Her heart threatened to spill out of the rend opening in her chest. It was too painful to do this, to do what she must. Maisie forced herself to cross the room and face Niall.
“I know why you’re here.”
Words caught in her throat, but she forced them out. She wouldn’t remain silent. She couldn’t.
“Cinaed Mackintosh is my sister Isabella’s husband. I can’t let you do it. I’ll not let you kill him.”
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley,The Masque of Anarchy
Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester
CHAPTER2
The Grassmarket
