Standing proved to be a challenge to keep from tipping over. But she managed and slapped the dirt from her skirts.
“Och, lady!” cried a lass. She took off in a hurry to arrive at Elspeth’s side. “Ye are alive! I doubted it a time or two, but here we are!”
“Who are ye?” Elspeth asked while the gel closed her arms around Elspeth’s shoulders.
“Och, fergive me. I am Helen.” Helen graced her with a dimpled smile. “I am a servant who made the terrible error of falling in love with her master.”
Elspeth shook her head in pity for Helen. Was the same thing happening to her? Was it too late to shatter her new expectations?
“How did we end up together?” Elspeth asked her. “I dinna remember.”
Helen chuckled. “Be grateful fer fergetting.” Her feigned mirth faded and she set her distant gaze on the wall. “I never intended to hurt him.”
“Who?
Helen flicked her hooded gaze to her, looking as if she had been yanked from the murky waters, the same color as her eyes. “My master.”
Elspeth’s eyes opened wider. “What did ye do to him? How again did we end up together?” She felt panic rising, threatening to take over. She saw flashes of a shadowy figure in her memory.
“I killed him…I think. I had to do it. I had foolishly run away. He caught up to me. We were on our way home to Inverlochy when we came upon ye.”
Elspeth did not recall anything after picking pockets full of herbs and leaves. Why did she not remember? Had she been drugged?
“The sight of ye piqued his curiosity and he decided to make ye his servant.”
“Why did ye attack him?” Elspeth asked her.
“He said now that he had ye, he didna need me anymore.”
Elspeth’s belly wove into a knot. “He doesna have me.”
“He believed ye were his. He would never have stopped looking fer ye. Last eve, after we left the tavern, ye spoke to him with contempt. He slapped ye.”
“Did he drug me?” Elspeth asked, still feeling a bit dreamy.
Helen sniffed and wiped her tear-soaked face on her sleeve. “I couldna stand by while he struck ye, so I picked up a rock and…hit him in the back of the head. I just wanted him to stop, lady!”
“There now,” Elspeth comforted the girl. “Ye saved my life. Tell me, was I asleep when all this happened?”
Helen chuckled again. “’Tis understandable that ye made yerself ferget.”
Had she made herself forget? She was confused, unclear about the last few hours. “Thank ye, Helen fer risking yer life fer me. I owe ye mine. Now please, if ye will tell me where we are?”
“Hmm, I think we are west of Inverlochy somewhere. I didna ask.”
“That is far from where I started,” Elspeth pondered out loud.
“Were ye running away when we came upon ye?”
“Nae, I…I dinna remember.”
Helen smiled at her as if Elspeth’s memories did not matter.
“Are ye hungry?”
“I need to get back,” Elspeth said, turning in a half circle. She stopped when she saw Ben Nevis in the distance, half hidden in dark clouds rolling in from the east.
“Of course,” Helen said. “But let us eat first. We have time before the rain.”
