A scorching tear slipped down her cheek.
It was done. She was going to wed.
Time to put Sawny from her mind completely.
Chapter Nineteen
Sawny
The air in his dungeon cell warmed only slightly with the brightening day outside the window slit. Sawny tried to guess how many days he had been in this room. He did not think to start marking the days until after he had recovered from his fever, and he had twenty marks on the wall. He guessed that he had been sick for more than a week or more, and he had been in the cell for maybe five or six days before that. He estimated he had been imprisoned for at least a month, but ‘twas a good chance his numbers were off and he had been in the cell for more than that.
A lot more.
It certainly felt like a lot more.
He dropped his head into his hands.
He could only presume what was going on above him with the MacIntoshes that would make Kelso’s interest in him wax and wane like the tides and the moon.
Wouldn't Kelso want to get the information out of Sawny as quickly as possible? So they might act on it against the MacDonalds? If he was putting long times between his visits or his potential attempts to torture information out of him, that might mean Kelso was battling demons of his own up in his tower. Ones that distracted him from a lowly, easily forgettable prisoner in the gaol below.
Despite his weary, broken body, Sawny’s lip curled slightly into his gaunt cheek. Perhaps one of those demons was Slippery John Campbell himself.
And if that were the case, then Sawny hoped Slippery John arrived with full horns and a fiery blaze to put Kelso in his place.
The lad, Addison, had been trying to bring him a wee bit more food, the good lad that he was. Porridge and weak ale were not enough to still sustain a bairn, let alone a full-grown man. Especially after his illness, the poor cuts of fatty meat, half a bannock, or dried fruit that Addison managed to throw on his tray with his past few meals had been more than welcome. Sawny had actually started to feel some of his strength return.
Looking down at his arm, Sawny pinched his skin between his finger and thumb. Despite Addison's efforts, he was wasting away. He had not eaten enough while he was sick, and the little amount of food he was getting now was not enough to sustain him fully, let alone help him rebuild and recover.
He was fading fast.
If Kelso was not going to torture him to death, it seemed that bastard was going to let him waste away and fade out of existence.
As he sunk more deeply into these self-pity thoughts, the image of Adaira rose before him. It had become harder and harder to keep her image and his vow to return to her in his mind and have her look at him. He had been robust and wild and strong the last time she had seen him. Now he was like a sickly old man. In his mind, her beaming smile dimmed, faltering, and her head turned away from him. And in his mind’s eye, her blonde hair whipped up behind her as she held her skirts lightly with her fingertips and strode away from him.
He shook his head, trying to banish the thoughts and that image from his mind.
Nay.
Nay. I will not let this bastard get the best of me. I promised I would return to her and return to her I will.
Something inside him surged, a renewed vigor, and his eyes skipped around the edges of the room. In one corner, a wily spider had crafted its web. The spider was not overly large, but its body was fat enough.
His lips pressed together in a grim line as he considered the pointe he had reached.
If a spider could inspire King Robert the Bruce to no’ give up, perchance the wee beastie can do something of the same for me.
Moving slowly so as not to disturb the weak creature, Sawny crept along the stones until he was nearly within arm’s reach. Then moving as quickly as his sore body could, he leaped forward and smacked the spider against the stones. It ended up a lumpy, bloody smear on the stones inside Sawny’s hand.
Without stopping to think, because if he thought he would never be able to do it, he slid his hand along the stones to scoop up as much of the spider carcass as possible and threw his hand against his mouth, swallowing as quickly as his body could. The fare was sour and with a tinge of iron, its legs tiny strings as he swallowed it down.
Then Sawny skittered like the spider himself back to his place on his peat.
This is what I've become. This is what he's reduced me to. Scavenging for bugs in the corners of a cell.
But if it meant he could keep his strength to kill Kelso and get his arse back to Adaira, then by God he would eat every bug, every rodent, every snake that had the misfortune to scuttle across his path.
He was not going to let Kelso and his Campbell cohorts win. He was not going to permit this MacIntosh bastard to keep him from Adaira.
