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“Jane!”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought the very same thing, Sabrina Douglas. I see the way you look at him when you think no one’s watching.”
Sabrina sniffed. “He’s a former patient. That’s all.”
“Mm-hmm. So was One-Eyed Toby from the village who got that fishhook in his lip, but I never saw you gawk at him like that.”
“Oh my, look at the time. I have to get back. Sister Moira’s taken a turn. I need to be there in case she wakes.” Sabrina motioned toward the sink. “Best get to it. That pot won’t scrub itself.”
At which point wet suds caught her square in the face.
Laughing, she grabbed up her tray. “See you back at our chamber later?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. If I know you, Sister Ainnir will have to force you to get some sleep.” Jane scoured the pot with vigor enough to put a hole right through the bottom.
Tray in hand, Sabrina crossed the refectory. Up the stairs. Opened the door on a downpour, wind whipping the rain across the courtyard in sheets. Well, that was just perfect. She’d be soaked to the bone if she risked that mess. Nothing left of her dinner but mush.
Turning back, she retraced her steps. If she took the upper corridor that ran past the offices she could come down the east stairwell. That would leave only a quick dash across to the main ward. She’d still get wet, but not sopping. And her dinner might even survive.
The passage up here lay deep in shadow, broken periodically by tall rain-smeared windows casting wavery pools of gray over the floor. As usual, an eternal draft swept along, fluttering her kerchief, gooseflesh rising on her arms. Up ahead a door creaked back and forth in perfect spooky gothic fashion. Where were the ghostly moans? Rattling chains? A spectral lady in white?
As she passed Ard-siúr’s office, a horrible, low, rumbly growl lifted the hairs at the back of her neck. The wind chose that moment to kick up, throwing rain like pebbles against the windows even as the growl rose in pitch to a whining, snarling hiss.
She’d had to ask.
The growl culminated in a frenzy of hissing and yowling, the sound of glass breaking, and a definite non-ghoulish, “What the hell—you bit me.”
Ard-siúr’s cat zipped past her, tearing up the corridor followed by an enormous, looming body, black against the gray and silver shadows behind him.
“Daigh?”
He drew to a startled halt. “Sabrina? Is that you?”
“What are you doing here?” Unease slithered up her spine. Could he be stealing? There was little in Ard-siúr’s office to tempt a thief. The treasures kept there personal, not profitable. Still, there might be enough to tempt a determined thief. And Daigh MacLir was nothing if not determined.
“It’s naught to worry you.” He sucked the skin between his thumb and forefinger. “In your Ard-siúr’s office earlier, I had a flash of memory. A feeling I’d been there before. Something I knew. It sounds like madness, but I had to come back . . .”
“That’s wonderful. What was it that triggered the memory?” She stood on tiptoe, peering over his shoulder into the dark room.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. When I try to force it, I just come up against a damned hole. No recall. No memories.” Pain bit into the angles of his face, straining the muscles in his neck. “It’s driving me mad.”
“Come. Let’s go in together.” Before she could think of the wisdom of her actions, she grabbed him by the hand, leading him into the dark office. Lit the nearest taper, the wick sputtering to life with a few whispered words.
Nothing seemed out of place in the cluttered chamber. No obvious signs of disruption or theft. They stood together in the middle of the room, Daigh rigid with tension beside her.
Hopelessness. Misery. Desolation. Confusion.
His feelings hammered Sabrina in a relentless mental assault, a blinding headache shooting down her spine all the way to her toes. She fought to clear a space in her mind amid the cacophony of foreign emotion. Room enough to think of something beyond the slosh of her brain and the spots dancing before her eyes.
“Are you all right?” His black gaze swung to her, the meager light flickering over his stubbled chin, aquiline nose, broad warrior’s brow.
Her reply caught in her throat. She sought to tear herself free from his riveting stare, but found herself trapped. Unable to move. Barely able to breathe. For a fraction of a second, she felt a sense of falling. Wind rushing past her ears. Darkness closing in on her, and Daigh’s face filling her vision, though not Daigh’s face. He was different. But how? She’d no time to decide before he lurched away from her, breaking the dangerous connection between them.
“Sabrina?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Answer me.”
She recovered, suddenly as tired as if she’d been working in the infirmary for a week on no sleep. Eyes scratchy and stinging, muscles aching, the headache of before dulled to a continuous pounding throb at her temples. She still gripped her dinner tray, the everyday smells of ham and potatoes oddly comforting against the backdrop of darkness and mystery and magic that surrounded this man like an aura. “I don’t know. For a moment, I felt as if I might faint. And you were . . . but”—he frowned, his eyes like chips of obsidian in a grim face—“. . . never mind. I’m tired and I haven’t eaten. That must be it.”
Without a word, he took the tray from her. Offered his elbow for support. “Come. It’s no use. I remember nothing.”
