The Highlander's Promise by Lynsay Sands
"If the mast drifted up by the lodge, surely the ship would ha'e had to limp into a nearby port," Greer said quietly. "It could no' travel far without the main mast."
"Aye," Aulay agreed, but then pointed out, "howbeit the storm could ha'e pushed them a good distance along the coast ere dying out."
"Oh aye," Greer said with a frown.
"Then 'tis a waiting game," Dougall said solemnly. "There is little we can do until the lads return with an answer."
"Unless there is another attack," Aulay said grimly.
"That'll no' happen," Dougall assured him. "Ye ha'e men on Jetta now. And at the door to Katie's room as well. Only a fool would try to go after either woman with guards in the way."
"Mayhap," Aulay agreed solemnly. He'd decided on stationing guards on Katie's door the morning after the wedding when it occurred to him that it was unfair to use the lass as bait, even if he had someone in the passage watching over her. He had been in the stables with Jetta, and still she'd nearly died. They both had in that fire. He'd never forgive himself if something similar happened to the lass Geordie cared for.
A sigh from Niels drew his gaze, and Aulay frowned. His brother was being unusually quiet. As a rule the man had an opinion on everything, yet hadn't offered a single comment since his round of apologies. It was enough to worry him. That worry only deepened when he noted the way he was holding his head in his hands. Edith, he noticed, was watching her husband with deep concern too, which he understood completely. Aulay had never known Niels to suffer such a bad hangover. Even Alick hadn't been this bad when he came from his room. But then if Niels had won, it meant that after Alick had acknowledged himself the loser, or passed out--as was usually the case since none of them had been raised quitters--Niels had then had to gulp back whatever remained in the pitcher or pitchers they'd been drinking from. Still . . .
"Why do ye no' retire to yer room and rest awhile?" Aulay suggested.
"Aye. I think I will," Niels said with relief and stood up, only to sway a bit. When Edith rose as well, he waved her back down. "Nay. Ye do no' need to come, wife. I'm just going to sleep, and I'd feel bad fer ye missing out on visiting with Saidh and the others on me account. Besides, 'tis me own fault. I drank too much. Something I vow I'll no' do again."
"Why do we not move over by the fire and continue working on those gowns we were making for Jetta," Jo suggested suddenly, and Aulay turned from watching Niels walk away to see that Edith was staring after her husband with deep concern on her face.
Jo had apparently noticed that and hoped to distract the woman. Fortunately, Murine and Saidh seemed to realize that too and stood quickly.
"Oh aye, we should do that," Murine said with a good cheer Aulay suspected was feigned. "Come along, Edith. Niels'll be fine. A little rest and he'll be his old self."
"Aye," Edith whispered with little conviction as she stood to follow the women to the chairs by the fire.
"The women are making me wife dresses?" Aulay asked with surprise as he watched them move over to the chairs set up by the fire.
"Aye. They ha'e no' been able to find the gowns missing from the chest we think the attacker hid in. Since they were the only ones they thought would fit or look good on Jetta, they decided to use some of the fabric Jo supplied and make her a couple o' new ones," Greer answered.
Nodding, Aulay switched his gaze back to Niels, frowning at the way he was dragging his feet as he made his way above stairs. He wasn't the only one to notice.
"Mayhap Rory should take a look at Niels," Dougall suggested, watching their brother as well. "Drink does no' usually hit him this hard and I'm thinkin' . . ."
Turning a sharp eye on him when he paused, Aulay asked, "What are ye thinkin'?"
Dougall hesitated, and then shook his head. "I do no' ken what to think. 'Tis just that I ha'e never seen Niels like this, and with everything that has been going on here . . ."
"Did ye notice his eyes?" Greer asked suddenly.
"What about his eyes?" Aulay asked at once. Rory was always looking at his patients' eyes as if they could tell him something.
"The blacks in the center were almost pin-sized, they were so small," Greer said with a frown. "I do no' ken what that means, but they did no' look normal."
Aulay didn't know what that might mean either, but a glance at Cam, Greer and Dougall showed that the blacks of their eyes were bigger in the dim lighting of the Great Hall. Nowhere near pin-sized. Mouth tightening, he stood up. "I'll go ask Rory to take a look at him now."
Leaving them at the table, he moved quickly upstairs. He was stepping onto the landing when movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Turning his head quickly, he caught a glimpse of Jetta slipping into Niels and Edith's room and paused abruptly. He watched with surprise as the door closed and then glanced the other way up the hall, wondering where the hell her guards had gone, but the hall was empty in both directions now.
Thinking he'd give the men who were supposed to be guarding her a good ballocking when he found them, Aulay headed toward Niels and Edith's room, thinking to see Jetta safely back to their chamber before he went to talk to Rory about Niels. He'd reached the door and had raised his hand to knock when he heard Niels's raised voice.
"God, woman, leave me alone. I do no' feel well."
Aulay's hackles rose along with his eyebrows at Niels's tone of disgust and the fact that he'd called Jetta woman as if 'twas an insult.
Jetta's answer when it came was too soft for him to hear more than a murmur of sound, but he heard Niels's response quite clearly again.
"Ha'e ye lost yer mind, Jetta?" Niels said, sounding more confused than angry. "He's me brother, and ye're his wife."
Aulay eased the door open a crack and this time heard Jetta's bitter words in response. "Open your eyes and look at me! I am beautiful! Do I not deserve a beautiful man? You are beautiful. All of you Buchanan brothers are . . . except for Aulay."
"But he loves ye, and you love him," Niels protested, sounding befuddled.
"Love?" she said with disgust. "He is a monster with that scar. It turns my stomach just to look at him. I could not bear his touching me. No woman would. Every time I see his face I think someone should kill him while he sleeps."
Aulay stiffened, his heart shriveling in his chest.
"But you would be different," she went on. "And I know you must want me too."
"All I want is to sleep until I stop wantin' to puke up me guts," Niels moaned.
Aulay heard some rustling sounds and opened the door further to see that Niels was reclined on the bed with his arm over his face. What little Aulay could see of his skin looked green. That didn't seem to bother Jetta, however. She was climbing onto the bed and as he watched, she kissed his brother. Mouth tightening, and teeth grinding, he watched Niels turn his head with a start and tangle his hands in her hair to drag her face back away from him.
"The devil take ye!" Niels growled. "Go away and leave me alone."
"Nay. I want you to pleasure me."
Aulay started into the room, and then stopped and backed up instead, his hands clenching. He didn't dare intervene. In the state he was in, he feared he very well might beat his lying, faithless, whore of a wife to death for her perfidy.
Rustling drew his attention away toward the stairs, and much to his horror he saw Edith hurrying up the last few steps to the upper landing. He couldn't let her see this. Niels was doing nothing wrong, but Edith would still be hurt if she walked in on this and it was bad enough that he was suffering. Pulling the bedchamber door silently closed, he turned to rush back toward her.
"Aulay," Edith said with surprise when she reached the top of the stairs and he hurried forward to block her way. "I was just going to check on Niels. Is he--"
"Rory is with him," Aulay lied and took her arm to turn her back to the stairs. "Why do we no' let him examine him and see what he has to say?"
"Oh but . . ." Dragging her feet, Edith glanced back over her shoulder. "I want to
"Aye. Rory will come below and let us ken once he's examined him," Aulay said, urging her along. "'Tis better if we no' distract him while he works, else he might miss something."
"Oh aye, I suppose," Edith said on a sigh and stopped fighting him.
"Good," Aulay muttered and walked her the rest of the way down the stairs and to the trestle tables. "Sit here with Dougall, Cam and Greer and I will just . . ."
He didn't bother finishing his sentence. He just had to get away from everyone for a minute. The scene he'd just witnessed upstairs was replaying itself in his head over and over. "He is a monster with that scar. It turns my stomach just to look at him. I could not bear his touching me. No woman would. Every time I see his face I think someone should kill him while he sleeps."
The words were like razor-sharp blades shredding his soul. To think Jetta, his Jetta, the woman he loved and whom he'd thought loved him felt that way . . . It was Adaira all over again. Only worse this time. Because he hadn't loved Adaira. He'd thought he had, but the pain he'd experienced when she rejected him was nothing compared to the agony ripping him apart now.
Aulay just didn't understand it. Jetta had never once visibly flinched from his scar. Not that he'd seen anyway, he thought, and then recalled that he had been asleep when she first woke up, and he had no idea how long she'd been awake before he'd opened his eyes. Perhaps she'd shown her revulsion then when he couldn't see it, and had managed to hide it afterward.
If so, what else had she hidden? Did she really not remember anything? Or had that been a lie too? Even her fear could be a lie, he supposed. Perhaps it all was. Perhaps it had all been lies and pretending to love him to hide at Buchanan from whatever truth she wasn't telling them.
And dear God, she was a good liar. He could still hear her sweet declarations of love in his head. Those and her fake moans of pleasure tortured him as he thought on how she'd pretended to pant for him, and feigned such an eager response to his kisses and touch. All lies. The woman was--
"M'laird?"
Aulay turned sharply and stared when he saw Cullen hurrying toward him. This was the man who should have been guarding his wife. If he had been, Aulay never would have witnessed that scene in the room, and would still happily believe his wife really loved him. His life would not now be turning to ashes around him.
"Where the hell were ye? Ye were to be guarding me wife!" he roared, furiously, taking out his pain and anger on the man. If he'd done his job, he would still be blissfully ignorant of Jetta's true nature, and if she'd killed him in his sleep as she'd threatened, at least he'd have died happy, thinking himself loved and cared for. Not destroyed by the knowledge that she had never wanted or loved him, and no one ever could or would. Thanks to this man, he'd die a lonely and bitter old man with no one at his side.
"I am. I mean I was," Cullen said with confusion. "And the men are with her still. Well, they're back out in the hall now and no' in the bedchamber with her as we ha'e been fer the past hour since we escorted her back to yer bedchamber. But they're there, guardin' her as we were ordered, and I would be too, only she sent me to fetch ye back."
Aulay stared at him blankly, trying to absorb his words. "What?"
"Shortly after she retired to yer chamber, she opened the door, poked her head out and asked would we help her move the bed," Cullen explained. "Well, o' course we said aye. But it was no' just the bed. She wanted rearranging o' the whole room, m'laird, and the room next to it too. We've done now and she sent me to fetch ye to see if ye like it." Grimacing, he added, "And I'm sure enough hopin' ye do. I do no' relish movin' everything back again if ye don't."
Aulay stared at him blankly for a moment, and then strode past him toward the keep. His mind was spinning. Nothing made sense. He'd seen Jetta in Niels and Edith's room with his own eyes. He'd heard her say those things. Yet Cullen was claiming he and the others had been up in the bedchamber with her since she'd gone above stairs? Maybe she'd slipped out while the men were busy, he thought. But that didn't seem likely. If there had only been two men, she might have managed to slip away, but four?
Ignoring the people at the table, Aulay strode straight upstairs and to his room. The other three guards were there now, positioned one on either side of the door and one against the opposite wall, facing the door. Aulay ignored them as well and stepped into his bedchamber and then paused abruptly when he saw Jetta standing on a wobbly chair next to the bed, fiddling with the drapes hanging from the canopy overhead. The bed, however, was now closer to the window. In fact, everything in the room had been moved as Cullen had said.
For a moment, all Aulay could do was stare as his mind tried to make sense of this morning's events . . . and then it occurred to him that Jetta was wearing a different gown. It was the same gown he'd helped her don in this room and at the loch this morning, but not the gown she'd been wearing in Niels's room, he realized. That one had been silver.
Jetta also didn't quite fill out her dress as well as the other Jetta had filled out the silver dress. That Jetta's clothes had fit snugly, this one's did not. The gown was a size or so too large at present, because she was underweight from her illness.
Cursing, Jetta tilted her head at a different angle as she tried to see whatever it was she was doing, and Aulay's gaze was drawn to the caul Mavis had fixed in her hair after they'd returned from the loch. He'd watched the woman put it on for Jetta, and suspected it wouldn't normally be that complicated a piece to put the average woman's hair up in, but it was more so on Jetta. Mavis had had to draw hair from the top and sides, and then braid and curl the strands to cover the large spot where her hair was missing before pinning the caul in place. It was something he was quite sure Jetta couldn't manage on her own. Yet she'd had the caul on when she left the table, hadn't been wearing it in Niels and Edith's room, but was wearing it again now.
Not only had she not been wearing it in Niels and Edith's room, he realized suddenly as a picture of Niels tangling his hands in her hair to pull her away from him rose up in his mind. That Jetta had had long black hair . . . everywhere. There had been no bald spot from where they'd shaved her head. In fact, it was her long hair at the back that Niels had caught at to pull her away from him.
It hadn't been Jetta, Aulay realized with relief, and then frowned. If the woman hadn't been Jetta, then who was she?
Chapter 18
"Oh, husband! Cullen found you. Good. What do you think of the room?"
Aulay jerked out of his thoughts and focused on the woman who had spoken. His wife. Who apparently had a twin running about, trying to seduce his brothers and rip his heart out with both her words and act--
Aulay stopped abruptly as that thought ran through his mind. A twin. Jetta had remembered having a sister. Could she be a twin and the woman he'd seen in Niels and Edith's room? Other than having all of her hair, and a healthy weight, they had been identical.
No, he argued with himself. Even if Jetta did have a twin, the woman couldn't possibly know she was here. No one knew. He'd seen to that.
Still, what other explanation was there?
Frowning, Aulay opened his mouth, intending to ask her to try to remember if her sister was a twin, and then abruptly closed it again. Jetta never remembered anything when asked outright, and trying merely caused her pain. The only memories she'd regained to date had come to her "from the side," as Rory put it. He had to think of a way of getting the information without actually asking for it.
"Husband? Do you not like it?"
Aulay glanced toward her, a little distracted until he noted her expression. Jetta looked uncertain and even disappointed that he might not like what she had done, and he forced a smile and nod.
"Aye, 'tis nice," he assured her quickly.
"Oh good," she said with relief, and beamed at him before turning her attention back to what she was doing.
The moment she did, he turned his own attention back to trying to work out how to trick some memories out of her, or perhaps
"Oh, I am just trying to sort out how these drapes affix to the canopy around the bed. I thought with all the fabric Jo gave us, it might be nice to use some to make new drapes. These ones are old and a bit frayed."
"Hmm," he murmured, and not thinking of anything better to try, said, "Ye did no' mention yer sister was yer twin. She seems much different than you."
"Oh aye," she muttered, distractedly. "We are twins in countenance, not character, as Mother used to say."
"So she is no' like ye?" he asked carefully.
"Oh nay," she said on a laugh, tipping her head farther back to look at the cloth. "We are like night and day. Cat was always chatty and charming while I was quiet and more reserved. Mother used to say Cat was a peacock, and I more a--oh," she said softly.
Jetta stilled suddenly, her hands upraised, but no longer moving. Unfortunately, Aulay couldn't see her expression anymore since she'd tilted her head back a moment earlier. It wasn't until she drew a hand down to rub at her forehead that he realized the natural memories had stopped and she was now trying to force them.
Aulay started to reach for her, intending to distract her, but stopped before touching her, the other Jetta's words echoing in his head. "He is a monster with that scar. It turns my stomach just to look at him. I could not bear his touching me. No woman would. Every time I see his face I think someone should kill him while he sleeps."
Retrieving his hands, he said, "Jetta?"
"Aye," she murmured, lowering her head and continuing to rub it. Her expression was a combination of concentration and pain.
"Jetta," Aulay repeated with a frown, clenching his hands into fists to keep from touching her. "Ye have to stop, lass."
"I just . . . There is something important on the tip of my . . . I just need to remember . . ."
"Nay, lass. Ye need to stop," Aulay growled, his concerned gaze sliding from her to the door. He'd left the fake Jetta with Niels, who hadn't been in great shape. He shouldn't have left him, and now he couldn't leave Jetta until she stopped trying to remember. Turning his head back to his wife, he said, "Please, Jetta, ye ha'e to stop--Jetta!"