Page 3 of The Highlander's Twisted Deal
Clearing her throat, Ava settled back down on her seat, and her mother sank down beside her.
“I’ve been meaning to ask ye, lassie, but how are ye earning yer living in yer new place? I always try to ask, but we always seem to change the subject.”
Ava gave a brittle smile. This was true. She worked hard to change the subject from her employment whenever it came up.
“Oh, I wouldnae worry so, Niamh,” Elsie said, setting down three cups of strong-smelling mint tea and a plate of biscuits. “I’m sure Ava is working as a healer. She’s such a fine one, after all.”
Niamh raised her eyebrows. “Is that true, lassie?”
Ava swallowed hard, opening her mouth. Would it be too hard to tell them the truth—the full truth?
I cannae. Ma would… she’d be upset. She’d insist on sending me money, and there’s clearly none to spare. Heaven kens what Elsie would do in her desperation to bring in money.
“I…” Ava began, but before she could come up with a suitably palatable lie, a commotion broke out outside.
The three of them flinched, rising to their feet and eyeing each other warily.
Shouts and running feet sounded outside, and there was thepat-patterof boots thundering on the cobbles right outside the front door.
Then, the bells started up.
War bells, the ones that hung in the steeple of the chapel and gathered dust and cobwebs, were clanging, ringing out. The shouts intensified, and Ava heard the clash of iron on iron.
Swords.
“Stay here, both of ye,” Niamh ordered in her motherly voice that indicated she was not to be trifled with.
Darting back to the front door, she peered through the peephole. Ava held her breath.
Niamh cursed quietly. “I cannae see a thing. Doesnae look like they’re going into houses, but I see soldiers with a different tartan than Clan MacCarthy’s.”
Moving to a window, she drew back the curtain.
Her curiosity getting the better of her, Ava moved to her mother’s side, ignoring Elsie’s hissed warnings.
Niamh narrowed her gaze at Ava but moved aside and let her peer out, too.
“It’s a raid,” Niamh said with certainty. “Although it’s probably the most well-mannered raid I’ve ever seen.”
Ava’s heart clenched. She’d heard of raids, of course, where enemy clan lairds and their soldiers passed through towns, killing and maiming and stealing whatever they liked. Laird MacCarthy was no more well-liked among the other clan chiefs than his father had been, and the raids had only increased during the past five years.
She’d healed victims of such raids. They were mostly civilians, innocent, ordinary folk who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From what she could glimpse out the window, the enemy soldiers—she didn’t recognize the tartan pattern—were targeting only the MacCarthy soldiers.
She caught a glimpse of a familiar face—Patrick, his face grown round and pasty over the years and currently covered with a sheen of sweat. Ava pulled back from the window with a hiss, praying he hadn’t seen her.
“I’d tell ye to leave,” Niamh said softly, “but it would be more dangerous than just staying here. Ye shouldnae have come, Ava.”
Ava swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Aye, people keep telling me that. Not a fine welcome, I must say.”
“Oh, me sweet lass,” Niamh murmured, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of Ava’s hair behind her ear. “This isnae yer fault. If there were any other way…”
A soldier was thrown bodily back against their front door, making athumpthat shook the house and made Niamh and Ava both jump. Elsie gave a muffled squeal.
The soldier, as far as Ava could tell, was a young man, not even out of his teens, a MacCarthy soldier. He groaned in pain, sliding down the door and crumpling on the ground. Ava pressed her forehead to the glass of the window to keep watching him and saw the poor boy press a hand to his side. When it came away bloody, he broke out into terrified tears.
Not a fatal wound, she thought, but one that needed attention. She’d been at his birth, although she was just a young girl assisting her mother at the time.
