“Nay, I am not going back into that water!”
“You were the one most eager to reach it.”
“And I did reach it.”
“And went running out, refusing to listen.”
“One can only leave the water by walking out of it.”
“Not true, my lady. Come with me, now. Quickly, because I am indeed freezing myself!”
He drew her to her feet. “Into the water!” he commanded, lifting her chin.
“No.”
“We must.”
“Why?”
“’Tis the only way to reach a selkie’s lair.”
She protested when he drew her back from the embankment to the lapping shore. “I can’t. It’s freezing.”
“Ah, my lady, you should have thought of that in your madness. This is the only entry when the tide is high.”
“The only entrance…I cannot go!”
“You’ve a better suggestion?”
“Aye, surely?—”
“Lady, we cannot stand here longer! We might be seen.”
She gasped as he swept her up off her feet, carrying her into the loch despite her protests. She gasped when he let her fall into the depths, but she then found herself swimming after him, and swimming strenuously to stave off the cold that gripped her so viciously, heading into what appeared to be solid rock on a cliff wall.
“Catch your breath!” David commanded her then. “At this time, there’s about a twenty-foot stretch beneath the rock. You’re all right with it?”
A fine time to ask her, she thought.
“Aye!” she snapped out, treading water.
She dove beneath the surface with him. They swam below the rock and stone, and the distance did not seem unbearably great. They emerged into a cavern within the cliff. As she stumbled to the rocky shoreline there, Shawna realized that this was where David had come when he had first returned. Where he kept his clothing, where he came for refuge when he was not with her or haunting the secret passageways within the castle.
He rose from the water first, casting his soaked clothing down upon the earth and sweeping up a blanket from the ground to throw around her shoulders as she emerged from the water. From the top of a traveling trunk, he picked up a length of folded tartan, expertly kilting it around himself.
Cloaked in her blanket, Shawna just stood shivering and staring at the water’s edge.
David ignored her and went about the task of building a fire within a pit he had obviously used for a similar purpose many times before. Smooth, level rock surrounded it. David warmed his hands at his freshly made fire, then looked to Shawna with impatience. “Come. Sit. Get warm.”
She managed to move, coming to take a seat before the fire with the blanket wrapped around her. She set her hands before it, letting the warmth radiate throughout her body.
“That was horrible,” she told him.
“What shall be horror is just beginning,” he told her curtly. “They came for you, Shawna, and they will not give up. You must learn to be more careful.”
“I don’t understand any of this. Why try to kill me in the crypts? Someone could just as easily come to my room?—”
“You bolted the door to your room. In the castle, where others sleep nearby. Many others—including my brother.”