“Oooh, nay,” said the woman. “My...my husband willna take kindly to me takin’ the veil, I assure ye.” A couple of brave nuns took her by the arms while another peered closely at the discarded wimple, then at the woman’s mouth. Surely, they didn’t expect to shove all that cloth between her teeth.
Gaspar considered that mouth for a moment. Pink, plump. The lower lip a bit fuller than the other, as if the woman pouted too often. There was nothing more to observe, and yet he could not stop staring. It was so rare that he considered a woman’s mouth. He rarely looked at women at all, and rarer still did he look them in the eye, let alone study their faces.
The chaos had settled. The dread had ebbed away while he’d watched and listened. This woman would not be his downfall, nor had she managed to unearth his demons enough to be a threat to him.
He turned his head aside again to break the spell, for a spell it must be if she was able to distract him as she had. It would be best if he slipped away and left the woman in the abbess’s capable hands. It was no business of his how the large woman ran her abbey—unless an order from the patriarch instructed him otherwise.
A scuffle, a yelp and a grunt, brought his attention back around. The two women who had been holding the Scotswoman lay on the floor. The third, the one who’d been holding thewimple, pulled one corner of that large white cloth from her own mouth while the final three sisters advanced to finish what the first three had started.
The devil’s temptress grabbed the fumbling nun before her, spun her around, and pulled her back against her like a shield. Then she turned her head and looked through the screen as if it weren’t there. Bright green eyes stared into Gaspar’s own as she mouthed the words,“Help me.”
Gaspar was suddenly affixed to the stone floor upon which he stood. The fear that had ebbed away returned and washed over him like a baptistery poured over his head.
CHAPTER THREE
Agreat roar erupted outside the church. If Gaspar wasn’t mistaken, and if his memory served, they’d just heard a Scottish war cry. Though his Gaelic was only passable, he was familiar enough to know that an entire clan of Scotsmen might well be surrounding the church and preparing to attack it.
The nuns needed warning and possibly protecting. So for the second time, he raised his hands to the gate, intent on taking charge of the situation. But the outer doors crashed open yet again, and he paused to assess the danger, to determine if his position might give him the advantage of surprise after an enemy entered.
Would a hoard of Scots dare defile a church?
Then again, hadn’t their countrywoman already done so?
One of the church guards flew, prone, through the opening and slid to a stop at the baptismal font. His fellow fell just inside the narthex. A single man entered afterward, stepped over the second man, then put his hands on his hips and glared towardthe front of the church. But it wasn’t the abbess at whom he glared. It was the Scotswoman.
“Isobelle Ross,” he snarled. “It would serve ye rightly to leave ye here. I dare ye to tell me I am wrong.”
“Ye are wrong,husband,” she said, stressing the last word.
Gaspar could not say for certain, but she might have been warning the man of the role she needed him to play for the nuns. Was she not married in truth?
He ignored the small thrill that followed the thought.
The Scotsman started up the aisle nearest Gaspar, in no rush, as if his own thoughts were impeding his progress. “I’m nay so sure, Izzy,” he said, halfway to the transept. “Ye’re nothing but trouble. It makes no mind where we go. Perhaps yer antics and meddlin’ have finally brought ye to a safe place, aye?”
He spoke to her as if they were the only two in the room and Gaspar felt as if he were eavesdropping where he had no right to do so. But he determined to wait and see if these two were man and wife. The abbess might have a new initiate after all. And it was only right that he should observe in case his opinion were requested in the matter.
It had nothing at all to do with the woman’s devil hair or her interesting mouth, or the way she seemed to soften when the man called her Izzy.
Gaspar was tempted to test the name on his own tongue, but pushed the notion aside. It was simply a strange affair inviting strange thoughts, not his youthful weaknesses rising again in his blood. After all, he was standing on holy ground; the devil could not truly touch them there. Could he? If he were a priest, he’d know.
“Ossian,” she called the Scotsman. “I couldna just stand aside and watch another tragedy. Surely, ye ken that. I’d be haunted, I would, if I let another lass be torn from the arms of the ladshe loves. Or would ye have me try to unite Sophia and Trucchio with some witch’s spell? Must I be buried alive again?”
Another one!
The nuns gasped and crossed themselves. Gaspar could not resist doing the same.
Could the woman be a witch? A true witch? Even after all the women he’d had arrested, he’d never reported one. Guilt was not a judgment he relished making. And on those rare occasions when he’d been ordered to judge a woman, he’d never believed one to be guilty of witchcraft. Guilty of other sins, yes. But never witchcraft.
Scotland was an odd place, filled with more than its share of odd people, clever people. A place where the wordwitchmight not cause others to cross themselves. A word that was used for a good many characteristics. And the way the woman used the term in God’s house made him suspect she had no notion of the danger the wordprovoked.
No. He would not report it. But neither would he be surprised to be called back to the abbey in a day or two to investigate a report of a witch, even if the Scotsman managed to remove her. It was still uncertain whether or not the pair of them were truly wed.
The man stopped ten feet from where the redhead still held the nun as a shield.
“I do understand, Izzy. You couldna stand by. I must admit young Sophia is shrewd for her age. She kenned just how to win ye to her side. Whether or not she exaggerated her feelings for the boy, I canna say. He was the only young laddie available to her?—”
“Ossian!” The woman shook her head, horrified by the man’s words for some reason. “Just because no man can truly love me, that doesna mean I doona ken real love when I see it, aye?”
