Page 64 of Highland Sword
But she wouldn’t allow herself to be fooled. Aidan Grant was special. A man who cared about others. A barrister. Many hopes were pinned on his success in becoming a member of Parliament. The Highlanders needed him. And what did she have to offer? A father with radical views, shot dead by an English officer. A stepmother with a bounty on her head, married to the man who posed the greatest threat to the Crown in a hundred years. Her close connection to the rebels of the Highlands and her family presented a life fraught with scandal. And when the shame of her own past came out, Aidan would be ruined.
She needed to face the truth, she had no place in his future.
She stabbed at the futile tears on her cheeks, and her gaze drifted up to the castle. A light shone in a window of the ancient tower rising above Dalmigavie’s keep. The room where Wemys lay dying. As she stared, anger filled her, building on her unhappiness. That lighted window was just one more reminder that she could never have a future where happiness existed.
Samhain. The night when time lost all meaning. Past, present, and future came together as one. Life and death too. A thin veil separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. At Samhain, the veil dropped away. The worlds merged.
Wemys was dead to her, but she had still a promise to fulfill. A door she had to close.
Morrigan had put it off for nine days. Nine days of fretting, of nightmares, of trying to decide if she should renege on her promise. Isabella wouldn’t blame her. She’d already told her that much. Still, she knew she had to go through with it. She’d go to Wemys and allow him tospeak. He’d agreed to her terms. Done his part. Now it was her turn. She had to do it, if for no other reason, for Aidan. He might still need the blackguard’s testimony for his trial.
Only a few people remained in the castle tonight. A watchman above the gate nodded as she raced through the entrance. Most of the Mackintoshes were celebrating in the village. Morrigan headed directly toward the old tower.
Since they moved him here, she’d walked this way every day going up to the parapets. She’d been testing herself. Morrigan wanted to make sure she could do it and not fall apart. She’d done fairly well. Grown stronger and harder with each passing day. But tonight, each step was a stab to her heart. Morrigan felt her head pound. Cold sweat formed along her spine.
Damn him.
She was back in that small bedroom in Perth, trapped beneath his body. His hand was covering her mouth. She couldn’t breathe.
Damn him.
Damn him.
Morrigan’s knees wobbled as she reached the floor where his room was located. She lunged into the dark corridor and stopped. She pressed her forehead against the cold stone wall and tried to focus on her breathing, waiting for the weakness to pass.
“He can’t hurt me.”
She reached into her boot and retrieved her sgian dubh. The feel of the weapon in her hand was reassuring.
“He can’t hurt me.”
A lamp hanging from the wall cast flickering shadows. Tonight, the door between the living and dead was open. Let the spirits pass back and forth. Isabella knew the truth,but this was her battle. Her future depended on it. This was her chance to shove her own demons back into the darkness. She would not let them haunt her anymore.
She steeled herself for what she must do. Going to Wemys’s door, she knocked.
Aidan’s clerk, Kane Branson, was down in the village too. One of the serving women answered the door. Morrigan asked her if she could wait in the corridor.
The older woman quickly fetched her basket of mending and stepped out. Morrigan closed the door behind her. A candle flickered on a table next to the chair where she’d been sitting.
As the daughter of a doctor, she’d grown up knowing what death looked like. What it smelled like. The air in this room reeked of it. The form of the man lying in the bed, his face pointed at the ceiling, his skin waxy and transparent, could easily have been a corpse already. Only the irregular rise and fall of his sunken chest showed that Wemys still lived. And the sound of each wheezing breath.
Morrigan moved closer, until she could stare at his face. As she watched him, his cheek twisted and trembled as if he were being tortured in his sleep. She hoped he was being lashed or racked, tormented by devils in a horrible place where people like him burned and suffered for all eternity.
His face was blotchy and wrinkled. One would think he was ancient, though she knew his age could not be much past forty. Forty years of villainy. What a waste of life.
A cough erupted in his chest, thick and painful. He gasped for air and moaned, and suddenly his eyes opened. They filled with fear as he realized it was Morrigan standing over him. She stared back at him. A look of resignation settled over his features.
She felt no fear. He couldn’t hurt her. No longer. She was not a defenseless, twelve-year-old child anymore.
“You’re here. That’s a blessing.”
“One you don’t deserve.”
Wemys tried to push himself up in his bed, but he was too weak. He sank back on his pillow.
“You have no audience now. It’s only you and me and your maker. Say what you have to say and be quick about it.”
“Maker,” he scoffed. He looked around the room as if to make certain she was telling the truth, that they were alone. His gaze lit on the weapon she held in her hand.
