The priest grabbed her chin, twisted her head, turned her scarred cheek into the light. “Are these the mark of the devil?”
She pulled free, glared at him. “They are the marks of injury. Everyone has scars. Even you.” She nodded toward the half-healed whip marks visible above the neck of his cassock.
“Mine are holy marks, the marks of piety and penance.”
“They are madness!”
His pale face darkened to scarlet. “I am God’s holy instrument. I have proven my devotion to the Lord, and He speaks to me, makes me strong. He has given me the power to defeat your evil. I know you for what you are.” He stepped back. “It is done. I can see your wickedness. Your evil soul will be purified by fire, the demon inside you consumed by the burning of your body.”
“Burning?” Terror left her breathless, gasping.
He smiled, pleased to see her afraid at last. “Oh yes. We cannot suffer a witch to live. You must burn.”
She was trembling, but she gritted her teeth and met his eyes. “Then you must prove that I am indeed a witch. Can you do that? There must be a trial, witnesses. I am innocent. If you kill me without proof, then you will be the one to burn in hell. Are you so certain, father? What of the chief of the Sinclairs? He must give his permission—that is the law.” Dair would not allow this. He was a gentle man, a good man. He did not believe in witches or demons or curses.Yet he said he saw Jeannie Sinclair’s ghost.Uncertainty fluttered in her breast like a trapped bird.
Triumph gleamed in the priest’s eyes. His yellow grin was feral in the candlelight. “Oh, I have the chief’s permission, Mistress MacLeod.”
Her heart sank. “Dair will allow this?”
“Alasdair Og is not the chief of the Sinclairs. He is mad, and the people know he is Satan’s instrument, that he was bewitched by you.LoganSinclair is the chief.”
“Logan? Where’s Dair?” she cried, her fear for him far greater than her fear for herself.
“Gone. He cannot save you. He is a broken man. He will be confined, chained, kept from doing further harm. Chief Logan has commanded it. You should worry about your own fate now. You will burn, mistress. You will burn.” He made a small moue of disappointment. “Alas, there is a storm coming, and the rain would douse the flames, so we must wait. But when the clouds clear, you will be taken to the stake, and you will die.”
She opened her lips to scream, but he was too quick. He shoved the gag back into her mouth and bound it in place behind her head, unmercifully tight. The injuries on her face protested, and she moaned, but he had no pity.
He blew out the candles, one by one. “Rest, if you can—or pray if you dare. Not that it will matter. I will hear your confession, if you wish it, but your penance will be the same.”
Tears soaked the cloth across her mouth. Not for herself, but for Dair. Surely Meggie would find her, or Angus, or John. They’d come for her, put a stop to this. But the stormy dawn crept through the shutters that covered the window, and no one came at all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
He was caught in the grip of another nightmare. Dair waited to relive Jeannie’s scream, to see the English soldiers boarding his ship, swords drawn, set on murdering his crew, but this time the dream was different. He was sailing, and the ship was in peril. His hands were cold and numb on the wheel as he sought a safe course through dangerous seas. The ship pitched, and his body slid across the deck, stopped suddenly. The pain in his arms roused him, and he forced his eyes open.
It wasn’t a dream. He was aboard theMaiden,and she was no longer at anchor. She drifted and spun out of control on the open sea and he was bound to the mast with the wind driving rain into his flesh like needles.
“Logan!” he bellowed, but the storm tore the word from his throat, tossed it away, and there was no answer.
He was alone. How long had he been here? It was day now, though the sky was dark and forbidding as the storm raged at full force around him. The sails were loose, and the wheel spun wildly. He knew the coast, the dangers of cliffs and shoals and headlands. Without a guiding hand to sail her, theMaidenwould founder on the rocky shore, doomed, with him aboard, tied, unable to save himself—but that was his cousin’s intention.
Dair pulled on the ropes that bound him, but they held tight, like the shackles that had chained him at Coldburn Keep.
But there was a greater danger still, not to him, but to Fia, the woman he loved.
He tugged on the wet ropes again with all his might, felt the rough hemp bite into his wrists and hold fast.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“Surely Fia wouldn’t venture out in a storm like this,” John said, his cloak and Meggie’s soaked as they returned from the village and the storm reached its height. The villagers hadn’t welcomed them as they usually did. They were in mourning again, this time for Effie’s child and for Muriel Sinclair. Folk peered at them suspiciously through half-opened doors, made signs like Moire did, against witchcraft and evil. There was no sign of Fia or Dair.
He took Meggie’s arm, angled his body to protect her as much as possible as they walked along the cliff path, heading back to the castle. The wind was strong, the rain coming down sideways. Meggie stopped suddenly and peered out over the bay, her blue eyes filled with tears. “What if she’s fallen, hurt herself, or worse?”
John scanned the empty beach below, watched savage waves scourge the shore, and hoped her fears were groundless. He looked at the ships lying at anchor, and beyond them—he stopped, looked again. There was only one ship. Yesterday there had been two.
John shut his eyes, his heart sinking. He drew a deep breath. “There were two ships in the bay yesterday. One’s gone. I think perhaps that Fia and Dair might have—”
“Eloped?” Meggie said. She shook her head. “She hasn’t. For one thing, she knows my father would take his claymore to any man who dared to act so dishonorably with one of his daughters. She’d be a widow before she was a bride!”
