He dressed himself in a black shirt and breeches, then helped her don a cotton shirt and his tartan. The water was shallow then in the cavern, and David, wearing his boots, carried her through the foot or so of water that still pooled within the cavern until they came out to the embankment of the loch beyond. He caught her hand, quickly leading her around the loch and into the depths of the forest, where they entered the passageway together, taking it back to the castle, and therein, through the secret stairways and corridors of Castle Rock until they came to her tower room.
Once there, he paused long enough to hold her and kiss her very deeply once again.
“You go nowhere without my brother, Shawna, do you hear?”
“Does your brother know of this?”
“Aye, he will. But on this, you must obey me, Shawna, do you understand?”
“Aye. But I don’t understand what?—”
“Shawna, for the love of God, have faith, I beg of you!”
“I do have faith,” she said softly.
She did have faith. She loved David. She had loved him all her life, she thought. And he had whispered those same words to her. Tall, dark, towering, fierce, so striking with his bronzed muscle, flashing green eyes, dark auburn hair. That he did not just want her, that he had told her he loved her, was a dream that she’d not dared wish might come true.
But she was afraid. Uneasy. She didn’t know why.
“David—”
“I must go.”
He smiled, brushed her lips with his own once again, and disappeared through the shifting break in the stone that led back to the secret passageway.
Shawna watched him go.
Then she felt a strange sensation of dread sweeping through her.
He would not be betrayed again.
She had not betrayed him!
And still…
She was afraid.
Something was going to happen.
And there would be nothing she could do to stop it.
CHAPTER 17
Brother Damian stood at the bar in the tavern, slowly sipping ale, listening to the farmers and sheep and cattle herders gossip and speculate in whispers as they sat at the various planked tables about the tavern. Some ate the mutton stew offered by the tavern’s kitchens for lunch, others drank ale, seeking not nourishment, but companionship.
“If y’be askin’ me, ’tis simply more of the same,” one old-timer said quietly, his head bowed low so that his voice might be heard just by the comrades at his table. The old man was leathered, his hair and thick beard more white than gray. He had bright blue eyes, and despite his seventy-odd years, he remained straight and sturdy as an oak. He was a Menzies, Ioin Menzies, father of Mark Menzies, the foreman of the miners. “There’s strange things brewing in the castle on the hill, and that’s a fact.”
“Since before the old Laird Douglas died,” protested a handsome younger man in his twenties, Hamell, one of the Anderson lads. He looked carefully around the room.
Brother Damian, standing with his ale, thought that the lad might be looking about to see if his father was in the tavern.
Hamell Anderson leaned forward, barely mouthing the words to old Ioin. “It began the night of the Fire.”
“D’ye think it’s the witches?” Ioin demanded.
“Are y’ serious, man?” Hamell demanded.
“The American lass is gone, isn’t she?”