“Aye. Aye, so I hope. She always has before.”
“Can ye no’ bring her round?”
Rhian shot him a hateful look. “How?”
“A draught or somewhat.” Rarely had Rory felt so helpless. Aye, when his ma had died. And his da. Still, he had no hand in either of those occurrences. Even though he’d dealt Saerla MacBeith no actual harm, he felt he’d played a part in this terrible outcome.
Leith stepped forward. “Leave us, Rory. Let Rhian do her work.”
Rory did not want to leave. He needed to stand here, make sure Saerla came back to herself. Witness that her glorious eyes opened once more.
Yet he had no legitimate reason to stay. She was a prisoner to him, naught more. A valuable prisoner, aye, but that was all.
“Mistress Rhian, if ye need aught, just send word. Send it by Leith. I will be in my study.”
He turned on his heel and left.
*
Madness, he concludedduring the time that followed, consisted of not knowing. He’d never been good at waiting. Impatient, so Ma used to claim. From the moment of his birth, the urge to do, to accomplish, had driven him. Patience made a poor servant to such impulses.
Now he paced beside the cold hearth in his study. Too warm for a fire, but the chamber felt clammy and a chill struck at his bones. He should go back out and return to mustering the men.He told himself over and over again that he would do that. After a few more moments waiting. To see if word came.
He tried to fathom what had happened out there in the glen while he held the knife to Saerla’s throat. Aye, Leith had told him she was a Seer. And by God, he’d tasted the magic in her when he kissed her. When he was inside her.
He hadn’t begun to comprehend what that meant.
If a Vision could come upon her that way without warning and steal her life—how could anyone protect her? How, in the name of God, couldhe?
She was not his to protect. No more, he acknowledged grudgingly, than she was his to threaten or slaughter.
He’d been a fool. A fool.A fool.
All women, as he saw it, deserved protection. A woman such as she—
He paced and pondered it. He wondered, and he cursed himself.
Why had he thought—imagined—he might lie with such a woman even once and then walk away from it? Such a woman might require a man to devote his entire life to her. To guarding. To cherishing.
He had other matters to which he must attend. Conquest. The glen.
Those things had been everything to him for so long that he could scarcely remember a time when they had not driven him. Even as a lad running half wild with Leith and Farlan in the glen, he would raise his eyes amid some game, gaze at the water, the rock, and the sky, and think,All this shall be mine. I will be the one—the one to make it mine.
He was so close to achieving that dream. To holding it in his hands. He could not let one small woman stand in the way.
No matter how extraordinary she might be.
He wondered suddenly what his da might have said. Though Rory had often denigrated Camraith for what he privately considered his lack of ambition, he’d adored his father. Always good-tempered and patient, even as Rory was not, and apt to choose kindness, Camraith had been one of the wisest men Rory ever knew.
What would he make of Saerla MacBeith? A creature touched by the gods, naught less. One who lived in constant risk of losing all or part of herself. Would Da condemn him, Rory, in turn for holding such a woman hostage? For trying to use her in order to further his own goals?
He knew without question that Camraith would have refused to keep her. He would have sent Saerla home to her sister. He would have looked for a way to sue for peace without surrendering any strength.
Rory did not think he could do that, if he even wanted to. He did not know if he could bear to send Saerla away.
But how did a man keep light trapped in his hands?
Late in the afternoon, when he was already half mad, a knock came at the door of the study. Leith stuck his head inside.
