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“I’m sorry for the dark. We dare not use any candles. Even a little light coming under the door might seem suspicious.” My companion, rescuer, and self-appointed protector— Earnan, I had since learned— stood stoically near the door for the long night ahead.
“I don’t mind.” After the gloom I’d endured belowstairs, the room did not seem very dark at all, with moonlight seeping through the louvered window.
“I should have brought you elsewhere. Being right under Brann’s nose was perhaps not the wisest.” Earnan studied the ground, as he tended to when he was embarrassed.
It was endearing, and had I been well enough, I would have given him a kiss on the cheek, as I had to Finlay before his departure. Though perhaps that would not have been the best idea, given that Earnan appeared much closer to my own age and possibly wont to mistake my gratitude for something else entirely.
“Why did you do bring me here?” My voice was returning in increments, my ability to speak short sentences coinciding with being able to swallow something other than broth or Bridget’s tea. “Why take such a risk?”
“If we’d left the castle, someone might have seen you. That, and I didn’t know if you could make it beyond these walls. When you fainted I thought—”
I was dead. I hadn’t been far off.
“I owe you my life,” I said gratefully.
Earnan shrugged and stared at the floor again. “It was fortunate Brann sent us to collect you in the middle of the night. Alistair and many others were already upset that he was holding you prisoner, so he did not want it widely known that you were dead.”
“Which made it convenient for you to bring me here.”
“Aye.” Earnan stepped away from the door and nearer to the empty fireplace.
I wondered if he was cold. With the quilts piled on top of me I didn’t miss the fire but felt guilty that those attending me might not be so warm, particularly in the chill of night.
“It was a good choice for other reasons too,” he said. “Everyone knows Brann won’t come into this room.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t suppose you would,” Earnan said. “Not having lived here long. Many have heard the noises and seen the light coming from this room— when it had been both locked and unoccupied for months and then years.”
“Did no one ever bother to see who or what was in here?” Not everyone in the Highlands believed in ghosts, did they?
“Liam claimed it was his daughter— your mother,” Earnan added. “Said she was prowling the room, searching for you.”
“And when my grandfather died, did this continue?”
“Aye. Right up until the time you came home.”
I recalled the maids’ reluctance to enter this room that first night Collin and I had stayed here. “If Brann believes it haunted, maybe we should have a lamp or two lit in here.” Why would my mother not resume her search, if once more I was absent from this chamber?
Earnan shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to chance it, m’lady.”
He had already chanced so much. I felt contrite instantly. “I am sorry to suggest it, to worry you. I promise not to light a single candle.” Not that I could, with my movement so severely limited. “I’ll not scream anymore either.”
Earnan’s face split in a grin. “A good thing. And as well that Gwen’s bairn was so large. When the midwife brought him down, no one questioned all the wailing they’d heard up here.”
I might have laughed, had the effort of breathing and normal speech not already been pushing my tolerance for pain.
“Does it hurt much still?” Earnan nodded to my arm, encased in a wood splint and bandaged tightly.
“Not as much as it did.” I didn’t know anything about bone setting, but Mary Campbell seemed to have been very thorough in her work. My arm was gradually returning to its normal size and lay straight. It still throbbed, but the piercing pain of bone misplaced was gone. I’d even been able to wiggle my fingers a time or two.
My ribs were another matter, and breathing continued to be toe-curling labor. The less I moved, the better. Earnan was wise to be so cautious with light, noise, and anything else that might give us away. It would likely be many more weeks of hiding under Brann’s nose before I would be well enough to leave this bed.
Weeks. I blinked back tears as I stared at the ceiling. Weeks before I might be well enough to make my escape from this place and begin the search for Collin. By then he might already be on a ship bound for the Colonies— or worse.
I tried not to think of that, of him and what he might be suffering right now. Be grateful, I reminded myself. Patient. It was nothing short of a miracle that I was alive. And if I had been granted such, why should Collin not be as well?
* * *
“I don’t want any this morning.” I turned my head from Bridget and her ever-present tea.
“It rests the body, and that will get you well sooner.”
“Trying to be rid of me, are you?” I kept my face averted, not willing to give in this morning. Alistair was supposed to attempt a visit today, and if he chanced to be successful in finding a way up here without notice, I did not wish to be asleep.
“It’s not that.” Bridget clucked her tongue but at last removed the spoon and cup from my vision. “There’s matters downstairs is all, and no sense in causing you worry.”
“What matters?” My chest tightened, anxiety that we had been discovered adding to my already great discomfort.
“Brann’s found himself in a spot of trouble is all.” Bridget patted my good arm. “I’ve brought a book for you to read, if you’d like.” She withdrew a slender volume from her apron pocket.
“Tell me.” I turned my head to look at her. “What sort of trouble?”
“The sort he deserves,” she muttered crossly.
I waited a minute, watching her inner dilemma as she worried her lip and wrung her hands. Bridget was not the sort to keep secrets from me. I had already learned from her, in the days following my nighttime conversation with Earnan, that it was she who had been responsible for the haunting of my room. It had been my grandfather’s idea, and she had readily complied, trading off with him a time or two when he was still alive, so that no one would suspect either of them.
“It’s not only Brann’s trouble,” she said suddenly, searching my face with a strange sort of plea. “Others may be harmed because of him. But you could—” She broke off suddenly and took up the cup again. “You need rest. Drink this.”
At great expense to my pain level, I lifted my uninjured hand and pushed hers away. “I could what?”
“Nothing. It would only bring you harm.” She moved away from the bed and went to stand at the window.
“How much worse can it be than what I’ve been through?”
“You tell me.” Bridget’s face was stony as she stared out the window. “The MacDonalds have surrounded the keep. Ian MacDonald says he’ll attack tonight unless Brann sends you to meet him.”