“The villagers are coming for me now. I see their torches on the brae above my glen. The priest has found me out and will have his vengeance. I know the fiery death that awaits me. The good lass I have chosen awaits this chronicle. I must stop here and make good her escape. I pray she finds a place of safety among Clan Munro. She is a young woman of quality. God protect her . . .”
From the Chronicle of Lugh
This was the best way. He needed to know all of it.
She wouldn’t trick him. She couldn’t lie to him. He needed to know the burden Innes brought with her, and how much of it would fall on the shoulders of her husband, if she ever were to marry. He needed to understand that he wasn’t only joining his hand with hers in marriage; he was opening his soul to her for as long as she lived.
It was time. With chess, there were rules. He’d promised to finish the game. Now she could set the pace.
The first piece he captured was a pawn.
“That shock of bonnie white hair.” His blue eyes caressed it. “Did you always have it?”
“This?” It had fallen across her face. She pushed it behind an ear. “It went white the day of my mother’s burial.”
“But you were just seven, you said.”
“You’ll not find a great deal of logic to my life.”
“What do you think caused it?”
“That’s another question. You’ll have to earn the answer.”
His smile made her heart swell. She stared at the board, not allowing herself to hope. She captured a pawn and his bishop in two turns. He was forced to take out her king’s knight.
Innes had started the game recklessly, daring him to capture her pieces. Conall, on the other hand, was playing cautiously, allowing her to make mistakes. There were no mistakes on her part. Every loss was intentional.
“The black dress. Do you ever wear another color?”
“Never. Except what I wear to bed. I meant to say, my shifts are all white.”
His gaze flickered to the bed and back, then moved down the front of her dress. Her cheeks warmed as she remembered what went through his mind back at Wick and again by the loch. She prayed there would come a day when she could fulfill every one of his desires.
“Do you have to sacrifice another of your pieces before I ask when you started wearing it, and why?”
“That’s two extra questions, but I’m feeling generous, so I’ll answer.”
He laughed. “I like this way of playing chess. And I appreciate your generosity.”
She patted Thunder’s head. He lay at her feet, his head resting against her knee. Innes wondered if the wolf sensed the inner chaos she was trying to keep hidden. “I was seventeen. I wore black when my father’s wife introduced me to one of her cousins. I knew the man had come to Folais Castle to ask for my hand in marriage.”
“And he was discouraged by the color of your dress?”
“That and my cool treatment of him. Also, I gave him some odd responses to his questions.”
“What do you mean?”
“He asked what I was mourning. I told him I was mourning the loss of innocence in the world. He asked how long my mourning would last. I asked how long he thought the world would last.”
Conall laughed. The loud heartfelt sound made Innes smile.
“You were too much for him,” he said.
“I suppose he came looking for a bride, rather than a philosopher in black. In any event, he didn’t stay very long.”
“It all worked so well that you decided to adopt the habit.”
“Aye. I felt a change in myself from that point on,” she said, making her move. “I began to speak my mind. Stand up for myself. Protect my sister. My father knew I was different, but he’s a good man. He has always stood by me, allowed me to be who I needed to be. With each passing year, my armor became stronger, my tongue a wee bit sharper.”
“You don’t frighten me, you know.”
“And yet many men find me terrifying.”
“I’m glad of that.” He reached across the board, cupping her face with his hand. “Dear Innes, I respect and admire the woman that you’ve become. If you were less strong, or less direct, I believe I wouldn’t feel this way.”
His thumb caressed her bottom lip, and Innes’s breath caught in her chest. She wanted to lose herself in his touch, in his affection and passion. But they were far from finished with this game.
As he captured the next piece, his gaze wandered to the items on the table. “The gloves. Are they part of your shield, too? Did you start wearing them the same time you began wearing black?”
Her heart beat so hard in her chest that Innes thought he might hear it. “The glove is my greatest shield. The one I use to protect those I meet.”
“I don’t understand.”
She stared at the chessboard, at the gloves, at the leather pouch with the relic on the table. She couldn’t look him in the eye. It was time to tell him the rest of it. It was time to show him.
“I need you to make a vow to me,” she said.
“Of course. That is exactly what we’re playing for.”
She took a deep breath. “With the exception of my father and sister—and Wynda, as of last week—no one else knows what I’m about to reveal to you about myself.”
Her hands were shaking. She tucked them between her knees. Now that the moment was here, doubt ripped at her will.
“Speak to me, Innes,” Conall said. “I promise you that I will never repeat anything you tell me now.”
She recalled some of the accounts she’d read in the chronicle her mother left. “You understand that if you do, it will mean my death.”
He paused and then took her hand. “Whatever it is, I shall safeguard your secret.”
She looked into Conall’s eyes, reading the thoughts rushing through his mind, understanding that he would protect her regardless.
“Do not fear. I am no witch. There is no sorcery. What I am about to show you has come down to me across generations. I had no choice about accepting it, until it was too late.”
Innes freed her hand. She couldn’t stand seeing his thoughts, hearing the questions before he said them. And he was worried about her. She was giving him pain.
She picked up the pouch. “Open your hand.”
There was no hesitation. He opened his palm. She dropped the relic into his hand.
“What is this?” he asked.
“This was given to me by my mother on her deathbed.”
He studied the carved stone in his palm.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“A stone tablet. The edges are rough, as if it was broken off of a larger tablet.” He lifted it to the light of the candle and stared at the unusual markings that had smoothed with age. “It looks to be very old.”
“Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?” he asked.
“Is it warm to your touch?”
“Nay.”
“Do you feel the power that runs through it?”
He met her gaze. “I feel nothing. It’s just a piece of stone.”
“Hold it out in your palm.”
Innes placed her own hand over his, with the stone between their palms. Her fingers warmed. The heat radiated wherever their skin met. The stone channeled the power from Innes and extended it to Conall. She’d tried this only once with Ailein. Her sister had been terrified of the power.
Innes saw Conall’s mind flood with questions and concentrated on reaching him.
I’m telling you the truth, she thought. Believe me when I tell you that I have no choice in this gift. Her words repeated in his mind. She then thought back to the two of them at the loch, and she knew he was seeing it too . . . except he was seeing the moment through her eyes, through her memory. He understood how she felt.
The relic dropped onto the chessboard as he pulled away his hand. He looked into her eyes. “You spoke to me, and yet you said not a word.”
She nodded.
“I heard it. I felt it. By ’sblood, I saw it. I saw us!”
“You were in my thoughts. You were seeing my past, my memory.”
“How?” A look of suspicion had edged into his face.
“It’s the tablet.”
He picked up the piece again. “Anyone holding this can read someone’s mind? See their past?”
“Right now, it only empowers me and no one else,” she explained. “Except when I extend that power through the stone. As we just did. But that’s only momentary.”
He stared at it in silence. She knew how much this was to sort through.
“Is this what you were talking about when you said your life changed when your mother died?” he asked.
She met his gaze. “Aye. You asked about the patch of white hair. It was the stone. It was the realization that there could be no more secrets in the world. Souls were exposed to me. Lies were revealed. My childhood was shattered, finished. I wasn’t joking with my first suitor when I said I mourned the loss of innocence.”
The game was forgotten. His interest gave her hope that perhaps he’d understand.
“How did your mother come to have it?” he asked.
“She received it from a line of women who had it before her. At Folais Castle, we have a chronicle that is kept under lock and key. It’s a narrative written by those who possessed this stone from the time it arrived on our northern shores, fifty years ago. It also explains the greater power behind other stones that are out there,” she explained. “My mother’s is the last entry in the chronicle. Someday, when I know the person I will pass the relic on to, I will add my account to it as well.”
He stood up, looked around the room. He was lost, and her heart was breaking. He took a step toward the door but came back and sat down again.
“What are your memories of this before your mother died?” he asked.
“I was so young.” She thought back. “She always wore gloves when she was in public. And I remember she wore this pouch around her neck or at her belt. She never parted with it. I had no idea what it was until the days before she died. She held me at her side and kept talking to me. But none of it made sense. I didn’t believe. Not until she was gone. It is only with death that the power shifts to another. Not before.”
Innes couldn’t tell him that the first thoughts she read had been of her father’s disappointment in not having sons, and of his plans to remarry. Hector Munro was a good man; he was an excellent father. And to this very day, he’d kept his promise to protect Innes and the stone.
“No one knew what your mother could do?” Conall asked.
“No one, except her husband.”
“And who knows about you?”
“As I said before, only my father, Ailein, and on our outing this week, I told Wynda.”
“Why Wynda?”
There was no denying him. Innes told him everything that transpired that day and how she used her gift to scare away those young men.
“So now there are others who know it, too. Young reivers wandering through the countryside looking for helpless women to rob.”
“They didn’t know who I was.” She had to put his mind at ease. Her intention was for Conall to learn about the stone, not to rattle him about her safety. “They were not bad people. Only young lads who’d lost their way. Ask Wynda about it.”
It took a few moments before he focused on the items around the chessboard again. “Do you need to touch the stone while you’re reading someone’s mind? As we did now?”
She shook her head. “After my mother’s death, the stone attached its power to me. It became a part of me. I carry it with me because I was told that’s what I should do. It’s for the purpose of safekeeping. But I don’t need to touch it.”
He looked at her hand. “The market square. The toddler. You knew his name.”
“Kade. I knew his name from his memory of his mother calling for him. I knew where to take him for the same reason.”
“And at the warehouse when I took your hand.”
She blushed. “I knew you wanted to kiss me.”
“And at the loch.”
Her gaze fell to her lap. “I . . . I knew you wanted to make love to me.”
Conall lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. There was tenderness, a passion banking in the depths of his blue eyes. Innes realized that he still didn’t understand the extent of her gift. She had to tell him the rest of it.
“There is something more that I need to show you.”
She picked up her drawings and opened them for him to see. The two drawings she wanted were at the top. The battlefield with the dead, and with his severed hand. The second depicted a dungeon. Her fingers shook as she extended those to him.
“Twice we touched when I had no time to prepare, no time for a glove,” she said. “Both times you didn’t know me, and you were fighting the memories of your past.”
He stared at the drawings.
“The first one I drew after the day of the wedding, when you caught me falling down the stairwell. The second time was when you were returning to Castle Girnigoe and Thunder knocked me down. You pulled me to my feet.”
He continued to stare at them.
“I wasn’t prying into your past. I’m no thief, stealing one’s secrets. The images that came to me were the ones that were in the forefront of your mind when my hand touched you.”
She spoke softly and quickly, trying to hide her raw emotions. She knew he resented any hint of pity.
“When I touch a hand, I am swept into a person’s mind. I have no choice in what I see. Sometimes, it is the smell of death. And I feel that, I smell that, I taste that. Sometimes, there is violence. I feel the pain. Many are consumed by their nightmares. And I feel those nightmares, live those nightmares.
“The past that lives in our thoughts is heightened, sharpened, exaggerated. And it becomes mine. I share it, feel it, try to endure it along with them. When I am swept into the pasts of so many of us, I know that Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
She stared at her hands. He hadn’t moved at all.
His silence was killing her. Her throat burned with mourning the grief of what she knew was to come. Her vision swam with unshed tears. “It’s not by choice that I do this. But here I am. No secrets. The real Innes Munro.”
“Enough,” he said, rising to his feet. He strode to the door and opened it. He paused and then looked over his shoulder at her.
“Thank you for your honesty and your trust,” he said, his voice thick. “Your secret is safe with me for as long as I live. Thunder, come.”
The wolf licked her hand and ran after his master.
As the door closed behind them, a knot in her chest threatened to choke the breath out of her, and the tears began to fall.
Innes knew this would be the way. This was the end for them.