“What were you doing when the headache struck?”
Gillian thought about it for several minutes. “I don’t think it has anything to do with that. I’ve been doing all sorts of things.”
Rose scowled thoughtfully. “Most vexing. I can’t do much if I can’t touch you when the pain is present. Next time you get a headache, you must find me posthaste, aye?” Rose stood suddenly. “I must go—Uncle Roderick says Aunt Tira is having cramps.” She shook her head,looking heavenward. “She’s probably just full of wind. The baby hasn’t even dropped yet.”
She left, muttering, leaving Gillian alone to think about her future husband.She hoped he was her future husband.She thought of the kiss and how it had sent her heart racing. She’d never been kissed like that before. But, according to Rose, it hadn’t meant a thing to him.
5
After a night spent thrashing against the bedclothes, worrying for her father and the fate of her betrothal, Gillian formulated a plan to secure Kincreag for good. Early the next morning Sir Evan accompanied her to the little hamlet across the loch. Her attempts to make polite conversation with the knight were met with monosyllabic replies or silence, so she quit trying, thinking instead of her task. To visit Old Hazel.
She vaguely remembered Hazel from when she was a child. Hazel had been a great friend of her mother’s, and some relation to them as well. Some of the MacDonells of Glen Laire were relations to the chieftain’s family. Others had just adopted the MacDonell name to live under Glen Laire’s protection.
More importantly, Old Hazel was a witch, and gifted with potions. It was not spoken of now, and when Gillian had tried to ask around about it, folks had made the sign of the horns and shaken their heads fearfully. Gillian knew it was the state of the country that caused such fear. No one wanted it known they’d associated with a witch—mere association was cause enough for burning these days. But they’d also wanted to protect one of their own. For now at least. And so no one mentioned Hazel and her doings aloud. Glen Laire had been blessed with good luck these past years—no failed crops, no plagues, no rash of dying animals—and so no scapegoat was yet needed. But a time could yet come when Hazel and other fey members of the MacDonells would be forced to serve as sacrifices to ease folks’ fears.
Gillian hoped that day would never come. The witch hunt had spread throughout Scotland, even to the remotest parts of the Highlands, and it showed no signs yet of dying down. And so her excuse for visiting Old Hazel this morning was to ask about an herb Rose had no time to fetch herself.
Gillian waved greetings to the cottars they passed as she and Sir Evan strolled down the single hard-packed dirt lane that constituted the hamlet of Glen Laire. All the while she thought furiously of some means to rid herself of her escort.
She paused in front of the alehouse and gestured to it. “Perhaps you’d like to wait within. I’ll be visiting with an old friend and may be a while.”
Sir Evan shook his head firmly, staring at some point above and beyond her right shoulder, his pale eyes remote. “Nay, I’ll come with you.”
Gillian smiled weakly and continued on her way. Having her own personal knight was not nearly asamusing as she’d thought it would be. She’d tried to leave the castle without him, but he’d been keeping track of her and had insisted on accompanying her for her protection. Nothing she’d said had dissuaded him. Though her visit to the village was a sensitive one, she didn’t want to rouse his suspicion by making an issue of it, so she’d relented, hoping she could somehow lose him in Glen Laire. Unfortunately, he was sticking like a barnacle.
Hazel’s cottage was at the end of the lane. Mud and heather protruded from the cracks in the black stone house, and peat smoke blackened the thatched roof. The door opened before Gillian could knock.
Hazel had been uncommonly old when Gillian was a child; now she was positively ancient. Paper-thin skin stretched over her narrow skull, sagging in soft folds beneath her eyes and chin. A red and green plaid shrouded her from forehead to toes.
“Mistress MacDonell, I’ve been expecting ye.”
Gillian stepped forward uncertainly. “You have?”
She smiled, displaying a row of stained and missing teeth, rickety as an old fence. “Aye, I have.” Old Hazel disappeared inside, crooning, “Come in, come in.”
Gillian turned to Sir Evan. “I would like to visit with Hazel alone. Prithee wait outside.”
He stepped to the doorway and quickly scanned the interior of the cottage before giving her a curt nod and taking up his position beside the door.
Gillian hesitated, wondering if he would be able to overhear their conversation from his post, but she finally decided it would be suspicious to ask him to move.She entered the cottage and shut the door behind her. The interior was dim and dusty, motes swirling around before her eyes. The small windows let in little light. It smelled of must and mildew, wrenching a sneeze from her. Once her eyes stopped watering and adjusted to the gloom, she surveyed the little cottage with interest. It was spartan—only a table, a bench, a single chair, and a cabinet against the wall. A profusion of glass bottles and clay bowls of various sizes and shapes cluttered the cabinet and tabletop. Gillian peered at a dingy jar that appeared to be filled with scores of dried frogs.
“Come, come,” Hazel urged. “A spot of trouble wi’ the lad?” She nodded to the door.
Gillian frowned absently. “Oh . . . him. Aye, I don’t know how to make him go away.” She was to be a countess, and she supposed countesses needed guards and attendants. She hadn’t thought such a thing would be so inconvenient.
“Ye’ll be wantin’ to curse him?”
Gillian laughed ruefully. “I’d better not.”
Hazel gestured to a bench. “Gude, because I dinna do that. White magic only.”
Gillian sat and looked up at the old woman. “You’re free with your speech. Have you no fear of the witch hunters?”
“Nay, the MacDonells will protect me.”
“For now . . . but what if things go poorly? They’ll blame you.”
Hazel just smiled her rickety smile. “I’m auld, lass, and past caring. I mun go sometime, aye?”
