Page 52 of Sins of the Highlander

“He lived,” Rob assured her. “And after his father hauled him out, clinging to the bucket and screaming at the top of his lungs, his sire tanned the boy’s backside for wandering away from his mother.”

“Ye’re sure?”

“He had to carry a pillow about with him for a week in order to sit.”

Her lips turned up in a slight smile, then a whimper escaped them. Her eyes squeezed shut, and Rob’s gut roiled in sympathy for her pain.

Fingal inched his way into the cabin, refusing to go when Rob ordered him away this time. The deerhound crept around Elspeth, careful to avoid the bolt sticking out of her leg, and lay down next to her, resting his head on her shoulder, his wet nose near her ear.

“Well, then, lad, if ye’re set on it, ye can help me keep her warm.” Rob reached across to pat the dog’s head then looked down at Elspeth. She seemed to rest easier with the combined warmth of the man and the dog on either side. “Do ye want some wine for the pain?”

She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “Angus’s wine? No thank ye.” Then her eyes closed again. “The headache is fading. My leg doesna hurt so much now. I can…hardly feel it…at all.”

This time, no matter what he said or did, Elspeth didn’t twitch an eyelash.

Rob hadn’t had much to say to God since Fiona died. Now he laid his hand between Elspeth’s breasts, so he could feel her heart beating, and spoke a few words to the Almighty.

He doubted God answered the prayers of madmen, especially one bound for perdition as he undoubtedly was. But if he was willing to seek out a witch to see Elspeth well, he was willing to ask God to keep her alive long enough to get her to the wisewoman’s croft.

***

“Rob!” Angus’s voice dragged him from sleep. “We’re almost there.”

Exhausted, he’d fallen into slumber with his hand between Elspeth’s breasts. Her heart still beat beneath his palm, but it was faint. Dawn was breaking around them, and her skin was so pale, if he hadn’t felt her heartbeat and seen the curl of her breath in the frosty air, he’d have thought her dead.

Fingal lifted his head.

“Keep her warm. There’s a good lad,” Rob told the deerhound before he crawled out of the cabin. He wrapped his plaid about his shoulders against the cold.

“There bides the witch of Loch Eireann.” Angus pointed to the small croft coming into view round a rocky point. A few pines rose behind the thatch-roofed cottage, and then the steep Highlands shot up in a wall of rough grass and granite. The place was accessible only by water. If there was a passable way to the wise woman’s home through the mountains, he doubted any who didn’t have goat’s feet could manage it.

Cloven hooves. Well, that’s what folk said of the devil’s feet, wasn’t it?

Angus steered his craft toward the shallows, while Rob stood watch in the prow, eyeing the clear water for any submerged rocks that might splinter the hull of an unwary sailor’s vessel. A disreputable-looking skiff was pulled half out of the loch and tied to a large boulder.

Angus made for that spot and eased the prow of his boat alongside the skiff. Rob leaped to dry land and pulled the craft’s nose up on the winter-brown grass.

“Wait here,” Rob said. “I’ll see if she’ll help us.”

“And if she willna?”

“Then the world will have one less witch.”

Though it belonged to one who was reputedly in league with the devil, the farmstead looked remarkably ordinary. Rob strode toward the cottage, a wattle-and-daub construction that listed only slightly. The thatch on the roof was a few years old, but he expected it still turned the rain. There was a cow staring out the open door of a byre. A flock of hens scattered before him. It might have been the home of any of his crofters.

A woman appeared at the door before he reached it. Her iron gray hair was long and flowed over her shoulders like a young girl’s. But her face was wrinkled and sunken-cheeked as a winter apple. She wrapped her red shawl more tightly around herself and cast him a wry smile.

“Come to see me, are ye, Mad Rob?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Ye know who I am.”

“I have eyes,” she said. “Ye wear the MacLaren plaid, d’ye no’?”

“Aye, but—” Plenty of men sported the same weave.

“And ears too,” she went on. “I listen when folk talk, ye ken. Even though ye’re a madman, all the lasses I doctor say as ye’re the finest, brawest lad in the Highlands. Well favored, strong of limb. Reckon they didna stretch matters by much.” She waved him forward. “Come in then.”

He stood his ground. “I have a woman in the boat with a crossbow wound. Can ye help her?”