Everyone turned to stare at Deidra. She said, “I told her she could only have one.” She looked up at her father hopefully. “Are you very angry?”
Strathwick let out a nervous and clearly fake laugh. “Of course not. I think that is a splendid trick.” He grew serious and intense. He gripped Deidra’s shoulders again. “Uncle Drake has the right of it, though. We should keep it a secret—just not from me. We’ll talk more about this when I’ve had time to think on it, aye?”
He stood, gazing about the cottage, thoroughly confounded.
Rose knelt in front of Deidra. “Thiswas your secret?”
Deidra nodded.
“And it was nothing else?”
Deidra shook her head. Rose’s stomach dropped sickeningly. Drake’s shadow fell over her in the moonlight, threatening and furious.
“What did you think it was?” Drake asked, his tone scathing. “Because it sounded vile to me.”
Rose flushed, confused and embarrassed. “I made a mistake…I’m so sorry…forgive me.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear the revulsion she’d see in his face. She pivoted and stood, trying to move away, but he caught her arm roughly and turned her to face him.
“No—you’ve dishonored me to my family and it was just a ‘mistake’? I think not! I’ve done naught to deserve this. For God’s sake, why would you accuse me of such a thing?”
Rose could not tell them why, and it sickened her and humiliated her. She wanted it to all go away. Her palms were damp with clammy sweat; it trickled between her breasts. Why had she opened her mouth? Why had she not handled it better? And why, oh why had she assumed such a thing? An image of Fagan MacLean flashed through her head, leering at her in his beard, throwing back his plaid. She gritted her teeth and forced the image away. She knew why, and shewould notshare that. She looked wildly at Strathwick, pleading silently for intervention, but he still frowned at his daughter, looking befuddled and a bit ill himself.
Drake shook Rose. “Answer me!”
Rose yanked her arm away from Drake’s punishinghold. “I made a mistake and I apologized! Leave me alone!”
Drake’s brow lowered and he stepped toward her again, but Strathwick put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him. “Leave her! Wallace must be tended.” He looked angry again. He leaned close to his brother. “You and I will talk later. Take Deidra.”
Drake gave Rose a final, baleful glare and left, pulling a wide-eyed Deidra along with him. Strathwick sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Rose waited for him to demand that she explain why she thought Drake had done something so horrible to his daughter, but he didn’t.
He knelt in front of Wallace and gestured to her. “Come here.”
On watery legs, Rose did as he bid. She wanted to curl into a ball and shut it all out, but she couldn’t. Work was the next best thing.
“How are you?” Rose asked Wallace, embarrassed that he’d witnessed her outburst, horrified she’d completely forgotten him in the midst of her stupidity.
He gave her a tight grin. “Fine.”
Strathwick touched her arm. “You told me before you only see the colors. That you cannot feel them.”
“That’s right.”
He placed a hand on Wallace’s shoulder. “A moment of indulgence, friend?”
“Of course,” Wallace said, though pain had etched lines beside his mouth and the scar on his cheek was dark.
Strathwick gestured to the wound on Wallace’s side. “Tell me what you see here.”
Rose took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes, summoning the magic. It took a moment to focus, but she welcomed the distraction and the opportunity to forget, for at least a brief moment, what had just happened. She opened her eyes and passed one hand over the wound. “I see gold…that’s his color. But at the wound site there are black and burgundy streaks—I always see that on this type of wound. There are also splotches of gray. Normally, I would clean the wound until those splotches faded, then sew it up.”
“Good. That is also what I see. But I want you to try something new.” He placed his hand over hers. “The magic isn’t here, but here.” He tapped her breastbone.
“Your hands are just the instruments.”
Rose nodded. She took a deep breath, trying to assimilate Strathwick’s instructions into something that she could understand. It was true that she felt the magic in her chest and gut, not her hands. But she never saw the auras around others unless her hands hovered over them, so she’d assumed her hands did the magic.
“Close your eyes and see it,” Strathwick instructed.
She clenched her hands in fists and did as he bid, closing her eyes and trying to envision the magic inside her.
