He considered her quietly, then asked, “Without causing yourself any undue pain, do you recall what you thought of—perhaps not the exact thought, but what it was about? Who is Cinnie?”
Gillian’s head ached sharply, but she pursued the thought, fingers rubbing her temples. “The girls I saw . . . they’d not changed at all, not since I was a child . . . Cinnie . . . and Rowena . . . even the flowers . . . but how could that be?”
She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers against her lids, unable to go on. Pain clawed at her, leaving her weak. She slid down the bed so she was lying again, waiting for the knives stabbing her brain to abate. When it had receded enough for her to open her eyes, she looked at the earl, hopeful.
He stared back at her with a disturbed expression. “There were no little girls in the hall. Sir Philip asked if anyone had seen what happened. One of my men was there. He said you were alone.”
“Maybe they ran away when I fainted,” she said desperately. But she knew that was not so. She wanted to think of it but couldn’t, or she would be ill.
“Why would they do that? Would they not go for help?”
Gillian pushed herself up with a burst of strength. “I’m not mad!”
He said nothing.
“They were there.”
“And they caused you to collapse in pain, these children?”
Gillian’s anger dissolved into despair.She was not insane.She wasn’t. “Leave me alone.” She curled into herself on the bed. When he didn’t obey, she said, a note of hysteria in her voice that surely made her sound like a madwoman, “Leave me!”
He straightened, his handsome face grim. “Very well. But my physician will be in to examine you later.”
“Why? To be sure you’re not getting a tainted mare?”
He looked as if he might say more, then sighed heavily and left.
Gillian covered her face, wanting to weep, but afraid to pain her head anymore. Maybe she was insane. She must be delusional, for what she thought she’d seen was impossible. And she was the only one who’d seen it. She must be mad.
“Gillian,” Rose said, excited, gripping Gillian’s wrists and pulling them away from her face. Slanting midnight eyes peered at her mischievously. “You’re not mad.”
“I’m not?”
Rose shook her head, smiling as though she might burst. “And youarea witch, Gilly. Just like Isobel and me.”
Gillian frowned, unable to see the connection. “What do you mean?”
“No one else can see the wee lassies in the hall but you . . . because they’re dead. They’ve been dead some twoscore years.”
Gillian just blinked at her, horrified wonder filling her.
Rose gripped Gillian’s hands tightly. “You’re a necromancer, Gillian. You can speak with the dead.”
8
Gillian reclined in shocked silence as her sister paced the floor, thinking aloud. The concoction Rose had given her had taken full effect, and she fought to keep her eyes open and follow her sister’s mutterings.
“It’s all beginning to make sense. Whoever cursed you did so because they didn’t want you to speak with the dead. Theyknew.Who else but Mum and Da would have known you had this gift? I didn’t know, neither did Isobel. Da doesn’t know, or he’d have said something. Whoever cursed you knew that no one else knew—or at least no onealiveknew—and that they could curse you without suspicion. And you say you’ve had the headaches afore?”
Gillian nodded groggily. “Occasionally, but never like this.”
Rose’s mouth flattened in thought. “Hm. There are ghosts everywhere. I’m sure even the Hepburns have some somewhere. That was likely the source of yourheadaches, but you never forced yourself to think on it until recently. Which is why they’ve now grown worse.”
Gillian thought back and did seem to recall that her notice of something or someone unusual had preceded her headaches, but the vague aching always distracted her and made her forget.
“In order for the spell to work,” Rose went on, “you must know on some level that what you’re seeing is dead.”
Joy swelled inside Gillian. She was a witch. All these years, she’d felt she was some kind of mistake, the only MacDonell to possess no magic. She’d tried for years to discover how the MacDonell legacy had manifested in her, before finally giving up in despair, unhappily resigned to the fact that she was not special. And all along it had been inside her, lying dormant and suppressed.
