Page 59 of The Splendor of Fire
The pre-dawn darkness of the tiny room assailed him, and he felt sudden fear that the room was closing in on him. Staggering to the window, he ripped it open and almost cried out in relief. The deep purple sky was beginning to streak with pink along the horizon. Hundreds of birds chirped and trilled in the bushes along the loch and a persistent cricket continued to sing. Breeze moved over the still loch and he breathed it in, a comforting reminder that he was not in prison. He looked around the room—yet he was still a distinct outsider.
A little more than two years ago he’d traveled here in order to assist with Elspeth’s marriage negotiations. Tales of his success and wealth had reached Niall’s ears, and for the first time in his life he was afforded a chamber on the family’s floor. He had been greeted warmly, as a brother, thanked for his assistance with the marriage negotiations, and accepted into Niall’s confidence.
Instead of making him feel at ease, the gestures of acceptance had given him a growing feeling of disquiet. Malvina, who’d never missed an opportunity to hit or insult him, had been over polite, tending to his every need and calling him ‘son’. It confirmed his suspicions. They wanted something.
They knew he had gold. Quite a lot of it. And he knew they had a dwindling treasury kept in a crude cave on Staffa that would run out in only a few years if their harvests did not improve. They’d desired the negotiations with the MacLeans because of Hector’s promise of fertile land on Morvern to supplement their harvests and income.
Yet three months later, no one seemed upset that a marriage alliance that was supposed to restore their wealth had failed. Nor did they seem concerned that Elspeth had been passed over for a common Irishwoman of no noble blood or standing. Not even Elspeth had continued to act upset after they left Mull’s shores.
But never had he expected his family to offer Elspeth to Tavish MacFadyen, and for them to participate in a complex overthrow of the MacLean brothers. Now he knew the Wolf’s gold, and a desire to claim Léo’s treasury was the impetus. The disembodied sound of Elspeth’s scream as she plummeted over the parapet wall, a mere pawn in their scheme, haunted his memory. What a waste.
Léo had never been one of them, and as he grew older, he preferred it that way. He raked frustrated hands through his hair. Except now Moira was one of them. Perhaps it made it easier for her, but her father would be devastated by the brazen way she acted with Niall, her body angling toward his, her touches, and her return of Niall’s open-mouthed, slobbering kiss. Not even his mother had allowed his father to treat her thus in public.
It devastated him to see the change in her. The tamed spirals of sunlight-colored curls plaited and pinned just so. The cursed coronet upon her head. Her peach lips painted a lurid shade of rouge. The tan of her skin now faded and as pale as his own. Her tall, strong body clothed in the icy blue of the cotehardie. She was tamed, one of the most beautiful women he’d ever laid eyes on, an object of elegance and desire, just like Maman. And none of it suited her.
The submissive look of the leman in her eyes had hurt him most.None of the glittering brilliance that lived in her frost-colored eyes remained. For only a bare second had it appeared as she recognized him, before it was blinked away as swift as it had come.
She was resigned to her fate, and Niall’s mouth upon hers had confirmed it. Niall had found a leman whopleased him in every way. A wave of nausea had hit him so powerfully at that remark he’d almost gagged. That was the way of it then. He’d envisioned himself saving her, but she didn’t want to be saved.
Heart hardening, he wandered to the table forcing himself not to think of her. If she wouldn’t help him, he would continue the plan without her. He called the faces of Gillie and Eoghan to mind. There were others to save, and he needed to get to work.
Having enjoyed his first bath in over a year and a half the night before, he picked up the hand mirror and looked at his appearance hoping that it had improved. He frowned. He looked even older.
Cracking the lid on the musty trunk from his youth, he located a few items that smelled clean and doffed the homespun tunic and trews which had clothed him every day for more than a year. The leather trews were a bit tight in the thigh, and the shirt and doublet a bit tight in the arm and chest.
Léo smirked. It wasn’t just the tunic Moira had sewn. He was the first Cràdh prisoner to ever gain muscle and weight during their stay. No wonder Niall had been so annoyed by it.
Looking in the hand mirror again, he felt a bit more like himself. He located an old shaving kit and combed his unruly beard, trimming it close to the sides of his face and a little longer around the apex of his chin in the French style. Satisfied, he created a bit of lather in the wash basin and used the razor to create a clean line at his cheeks and neck, then trimmed his mustache away from his lip. He patted his face dry, savoring the smell of lavender and oak.
He checked the hand mirror. Much better.
Using his wide-toothed comb, he combed through the waves of his hair and trimmed the scraggliest bits away until it fell in an even line at his collarbone. Resolving that it was the best it would be, he secured it at his neck with a leather tie.
He murmured endearments in French as he relished the weight ofhis old estoc, touching the familiar brassy places along the hilt, then strapped on his baldric. He pulled on an old pair of his boots and picked up the soiled clothing.
Stoking the fire, he wadded up the tunic and was ready to throw it on, but a few embroidered stitches on the inside neck caught his attention. He’d never noticed them before. He angled them toward the firelight. In blue thread one shade lighter than the linen of the tunic Moira had stitched words around the lining of the collar.Because he hoped in me I will deliver him.He knew the psalm by heart.
Grief cramped his chest, and he folded the tunic, placing it upon the bed. The heart of one who had sewn a verse of promise into his clothing. What had happened to her?
As the sun came up he wandered toward the kitchen and found Isobel setting up the servant’s hall. She looked up and dropped the table linen she was holding, rushing to him and squeezing her arms tight around his middle. Even smaller than Cara MacLean, she barely reached past his navel.
Her wrinkled face creased into a smile and her blue eyes filled with tears. “Oh my Léonid, how wonderful to see you. I’ve prayed for you every day, dear boy.”
More dear to him than a grandparent, his chest swelled at the thought of her prayers covering him. Leaning down, he wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her off her feet while she hooted and swatted his arm.
“I smell food.”
Isobel’s eyes lit up and she pulled him through the doors into the kitchen. She gestured to the table he always sat at as a boy to break his fast. “I’ve got some good pork and eggs for you, laddie. Here, come sit with Moira.”
At the sound of her name, Moira looked up—cheek balanced sleepily in her palm, curls riotous from a fitful night’s sleep, the imprint of a pillow still on her face. Instead of yesterday’s court clothing, she wore the same simple leine of light pink he’d last seen her in at Cràdh, and a gray shawl over her neck and shoulders.
Crystalline eyes raked over him, and then herself, a pattern of thought passing over her, but he could not guess the mystery. Anexpressive eyebrow lifted in distress as she touched her unruly hair. He would not smile. He would…not…smile.
She swallowed and held her left arm level with the ground, her right arm swooping up beneath.
Isobel stuck an elbow in his ribs. “She’s telling you good morning.”
Oh. “Good morning.”
