Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) (21 page)

Mrs. Forsythe had that English upper-middle-class
reserve that Bella knew well from her own family. Good manners and politeness were everything and real feelings were scrupulously hidden. It was Mr. Forsythe who was the collector, not her, and she reminded them of it so many times after they arrived, Bella was certain Mr. Forsythe’s wife was not entirely pleased with his line of business.

Mrs. Forsythe was bored, alone here at home, and Bella’s plan to see the Tamsin Macleod document before dinner was thwarted when she insisted they take drinks first and chat.

“Of course I’ve heard of
Martin’s Journey
,” Mrs. Forsythe said, her eyes watchful behind their fashionable glasses. Her hair looked as if it had been recently cut and set, and she had the smooth, well-turned-out look that Bella was familiar seeing with Georgiana, although Mrs. Forsythe was older by at least twenty years.

“I’ve been pleased with the publicity,” Bella said politely.

“I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve ordered a copy. The bookstore was sold out, but I am told they are reprinting.”

Bella made a sound that could have been approval at the reprint or commiseration at the wait.

“And you have another book on the way, Ms. Ryan? I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I’ve never found the time.” Behind her glasses, Mrs. Forsythe’s eyes were rather sharp and beady, and suddenly Bella didn’t like her very much.

“I’m working on a new book, yes,” Bella said, ignoring the rest.

“And you, Mr. Maclean.” Mrs. Forsythe turned to him with her curious smile. “What do you do?”

“Em…I am Bella’s…em—”

“Mr. Maclean helps me in my research,” Bella said smoothly. “To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to write the book without him.”

“Oh, I see, another historian.” Mrs. Forsythe’s smile grew forced, and she was obviously bored by the subject. “I rang my husband, by the way. He’s in Moscow bidding for some scrap of paper which was found in a tomb.” She shuddered delicately. “He says you are welcome to look at the Tamsin Macleod document, but he would be very grateful if you mentioned him in the book.”

“Of course.”

Mrs. Forsythe gave a satisfied nod, and Bella wondered if the mention had been her husband’s idea or hers.

Despite her sudden dislike of Mrs. Forsythe, the meal was pleasant enough and Bella found she was enjoying it. She had worried at first that Maclean might give himself away, not because he was a fool but because he was a man who had never had to watch what he did or said, and was not used to it. But when he didn’t seem to be about to declare himself the Chief of the Macleans of Fasail over the soup, she relaxed and let herself trust him.

Mrs. Forsythe was an experienced hostess, and Maclean was not averse to having his ego stroked. He fit into the surroundings—the meal being served by a discreet servant and the best wine poured into the best glasses—better than Bella, who had grown up in such situations but always found them stilted and uncomfortable. Maclean constantly surprised her. As he answered Mrs. Forsythe’s questions on the eighteenth century—he had told her he specialized in that period of Scottish history—Bella realized again that this was no primitive Highland cattle thief. If he had been, then she might have felt as if she were his caretaker, but she didn’t. Maclean was educated and clever, a leader of others, and he was certainly her equal in this century and any other.

“Well, I suppose you want to see the document now?” Mrs. Forsythe said at last, and rose from the table. She smiled at Maclean; she seemed to have taken quite a shine to him. “This way.”

Maclean followed, his hand resting naturally on the small of Bella’s back. His palm was warm and strong, and Bella felt desire curl in her stomach.

“We have security, of course,” Mrs. Forsythe called
over her shoulder as she led the way to the room where the collection was kept. “My husband insists on it. Sometimes I think he cares more about these pieces of paper than he does about me.” She laughed, to show she was joking, but Bella thought that perhaps the subject had been a matter of dissension between them. “Of course, his collection is very valuable, so he’s right to take precautions. Some collectors are not as scrupulous as he is. They will pay just about anything to get their hands on what they want, and they don’t seem to mind how it is obtained.”

Mrs. Forsythe punched in a code at the door, and the lock clicked open. Inside, the room was enclosed, with no windows, rather like a museum. The various pieces of the collection were on display in glass cases, and the only light in the room was artificial because, as Mrs. Forsythe explained, natural light faded the delicate paper and ink.

Maclean gave Bella a look of skeptical amazement and she could tell what he was thinking: A few scraps of old paper with bad spelling and they are treated like precious jewels? The people who wrote these diaries and letters would be surprised to see the reverence with which they were kept. For Maclean their importance was negligible compared to the truly important matters, like food and warmth for his people, things which would mean the difference between life and death.

Perhaps Maclean was right, and the modern idea of what was and was not important was skewed, but still Bella could not help the rush of excitement she felt as she looked upon the stained and wrinkled sheets of paper that told the story of Tamsin Macleod née Maclean.

Mrs. Forsythe unlocked the case and handed Bella a pair of gloves to wear while she handled the document, to protect it from the oils from her fingers. “If you like, you can sit over there at the table to examine it,” she suggested.

“Thank you. It may take me a little time to decipher the writing and make notes. It is rather faded. At least it’s not written in Gaelic,” she added.

“I know Gaelic,” Maclean reminded her. “I was verra well educated. Private tutors, you know.”

He was mimicking the way Mrs. Forsythe spoke, and Bella hoped she didn’t notice.

Mrs. Forsythe carried the document to the table and, after hovering a moment while Bella and Maclean made themselves comfortable in the leather chairs, gave some excuse and left them to it.

Bella peered at the faded and stained script, a little crease between her brows as she puzzled out the archaic spelling. Then, with a tight little smile in Maclean’s direction, she began to read it aloud.

“She talks about her husband, who is dead, and her loneliness without him. She says that her children and their children welcome her, but they have their own lives and times have changed so much that she misses the old ways like an ache in her very bones.”

“I know how she feels,” Maclean muttered.

“Ah, here’s something….”

“
The man who saved my life
…what do you think that means?” Bella looked up when he didn’t answer.

Maclean was seated opposite her, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, his jaw rigid. She reached out to cover his fingers with hers, but he made no sign that he felt her, or even knew she was there.

Shocked, she realized then that he was in the past. Tamsin’s words were a key that had unlocked the door in his mind. He didn’t need to hear them all, he didn’t need to be told what she had suffered.

Maclean was seeing it for himself.

Maclean shivered. The temperature had dropped, and when he looked across at Bella she was gone. The room was gone. He wasn’t at the Forsythes’ house anymore.

He was at Loch Fasail, two hundred and fifty years in the past.

It was the noise that struck him first.

The screaming and shouting, the roaring blast of fire as everything around him was set alight. Consumed. People staggered past him through the smoke. A pig bolted, almost knocking him over. Maclean fell against the wall of a cottage, coughing and trying to get his bearings, and that was when he saw the child.

Tangled red hair and a white face, bloodied across one cheek. The little girl was standing in the midst of it, shocked. Screams erupted from inside the cottage and she flinched. And then a man came riding out of the swirling smoke. Maclean recognized him. It was the same man who had tried to ride down Bella, the man he had fought and who had subsequently vanished. The rider’s sword was swinging, and he was just as intent on murder as Maclean remembered. The child turned and ran, and disappeared into the smoke.

“That is Tamsin,” a voice said behind him.

Shocked, he turned. The
Fiosaiche
stood there, her silver cloak flapping in the wind, her red hair brighter than the fires about them.

“Why have you brought me here?” he cried in his pain and fury.

Her eyes fixed on his, as terrible as he remembered. “Because it is time for you to know, and to properly know you must see.”

A couple more men rode by in the dragoons’ uniform of red coats and buff breeches.

“Is it true, then?” he asked her, his voice husky with pain. “Did the English follow me home to Loch Fasail?”

She didn’t answer him. Around them women scattered, unprotected without their menfolk, although some stood and fought their foes. He saw faces he
knew, one of them swinging her husband’s broadsword at her attacker, using a strength of which he would not have believed her capable. The man grinned as if he found her desperate fury amusing.

“Och, ma bonny lass,” he mocked, “ye are making me shake in ma boots. Dinna ye know your great chief is dead? He died like a dog on Macleod land and we sliced him to pieces. He canna protect you now.”

Tears ran down the woman’s sooty cheeks, but she held her ground. “Murdering Macleods,” she hissed. “Ye have killed the Black Maclean and ye will pay for it!”

But the man just laughed. He wouldn’t pay for it, not ever, and he knew it.

Maclean’s people hadn’t been massacred by the hated English alone, but by the Macleods as well. Maybe Bella was right, and Auchry Macleod had seen a chance to take what was not his. Maybe his greed had overcome his cowardice.

“I canna abide it,” he whispered. “Take me back.”

“You
must
abide it,” the
Fiosaiche
replied fiercely. “You played your part in this terrible thing, Maclean. Feel their pain, feel your guilt.
Never
forget it.”

Farm animals scattered wildly, adding to the chaos, while the men he hadn’t taken with him to Mhairi, the old and infirm, fought and died. And the children…Maclean cried out, looking about him, seeing the faces confused and dazed. His heart felt as if it were being torn from his chest.

“I should have been here,” he said. “I should have been here!”

He was caught up in the nightmare, but they couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, couldn’t feel him. He was
useless. A ghost. Some of them were even calling out his name, as if hoping he would be able to protect them from beyond the grave, and it brought him to the brink of absolute despair.

An old man lay dying upon the ground with a terrible wound to his chest, and he gazed up at Maclean as he ran past. Something flickered in his eyes, a recognition, and he smiled. “M’lord,” he whispered, “God bless ye.” The next moment those eyes had dulled in death.

Cursing, his face hot with tears, Maclean struggled on. He no longer looked back at the sorceress or expected her to help him. She was here simply for her pound’s worth of flesh, and he understood that. He deserved to suffer, just as his people had suffered.

Maclean turned, coughing as the thick smoke rolled toward him from the burning buildings.

There was something moving in it.

At that moment the smoke parted, and he saw the horse standing upon the rise. Maclean backed up a step and looked to its rider. Her booted feet were in the stirrups, her trews molding to her shapely legs. Her hair was like pale spun gold and her green eyes were burning with a fierce hatred.

“Ishbel?”

But just like the others, she couldn’t see him. This was Ishbel as she had been in 1746, not the creature she had become.

“Maclean,” she shouted toward the carnage, and her voice shook with her grief and her fury. “Tell me, do ye feel their pain? Do ye feel their suffering? Good! I want you to. I want you to suffer even in death.
This
is your punishment for what ye did to me.”

Ishbel did this?

He should have known it; in a way, he
had
known it.

Ishbel raised her dagger and shook it to the sky, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I have soaked my hands in Maclean blood this day!”

Maclean staggered. Ishbel had been part of the massacre, and then Auchry had lied for her sake. Begun the legend that was still believed today, so that his beloved sweet Ishbel could escape censure, and no one would argue when he brought his sheep to graze upon Loch Fasail land. Finally Maclean understood.

And it gave him no satisfaction.

Maclean started toward her, wanting to drag her from her horse and break her to pieces. But even as he came forward, the smoke thickened and she was gone, and when he spun about, so was the vision of the massacre of his people.

“It is not over yet,” the
Fiosaiche
said, and for once there was a trace of compassion in her voice. “There is more, Maclean. You must remember the day you died.”