Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] Read Online Free PDF

dark hour, left a bitter taste in Iain’s mouth.
Squaring his shoulders, he willed himself to ignore his wobbly knees, the thick and clumsy state of his tongue. “Think you I haven’t bled enough this day?” he managed at last, his voice stronger now.
He made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arm, taking in the roaring hearth fire and the countless lit tapers.
“Would you see my quarters reduced to a charred wilderness as penance for my sins? Or”—he strode to the denuded windows, purposely avoiding the recessed alcove claimed by Gavin MacFie, then whirled around—“perchance you seek to blind me?”
Donall met his taunt with infuriating calm. “’Tis you who’ve blinded yourself.” He slanted a quick look at Gavin, still busy polishing the reliquary casket. “We only seek to un -blind you.”
“That may be,” Iain acceded, fisted hands braced on his hips, “but I am none too keen on regaining my . . . sight. ”
Turning back to the window, he gripped its cold stonework, holding fast to the elaborate tracery swirls. His pulse racing ever faster, he stared out at the vastness of the Hebridean Sea, his gaze going unerringly to the nearsubmerged islet where Lileas, his sweet lady wife, had met her doom.
The Lady Rock.
A seaweed-festooned hump of rock barely breaking the surface, its black-glistening crest deceptively benign in the sweet, golden light of late afternoon.
So near, yet impossibly distant.
His own personal nemesis, its ominous presence a grim reminder of another world, another life, and everything he’d lost.
All he’d done wrong.
A strangled groan rose in his throat, lodging there, as familiar talons of grief and guilt clamped cold round his heart, and a tight knot of pain formed in his gut.
With great effort, he tore his gaze from the tidal rock’s jagged face and focused on the bright sunlight dancing silver across the endless expanse of blue-, green-, and amethyst-shaded water. Iced with white-crested rollers, the sea’s beauty lanced his very soul.
At length, he turned back to the room. “Donall, you ken I would slay dragons for you,” he said, carefully measuring each word. “Even walk barefooted over hot coals if you required it of me, but ne’er have you entered this chamber as aught but my brother and friend . . . until now.”
Donall lifted a silencing hand, but Iain rushed on. “You mistake if you seek to press such a privilege. Name any penance and I shall tender it, but I will not abide your intrusion here, nor the desecration of my private quarters.”
His protestation voiced, he slid a last pointed look at old Gerbert, then started across the room. “I shall expect the shutters reaffixed by sunup on the morrow,” he declared, just as he meant to stride past Donall and into the blessed shadow of the corridor, but his brother’s arm shot out, staying him with a viselike grip to his elbow.
“You will not be here on the morrow,” Donall informed him. “My sorrow that it is so, but this time you went too far. It grieves me to—”
“To what?” Iain demanded, jerking free. “Cast me in the dungeon? Banish me to prowl the hills outwith Baldoon’s walls? Send me naked into the heather and scrub?”
Donall pinched the bridge of his nose, drew a long, pained-looking breath. “Naught halfway so odious.”
“What then? Shall I count the stones in every cairn dotting Doon’s high moors?” Iain rammed a hand through his hair, winced at the sound of his blood rushing through his ears. “Come, man, have out with it!”
“Iain, please,” Amicia pleaded from the far side of the room. “And you, Donall, can we not just leave him be?” She took a few forward steps, raised beseeching hands. “He’s suffered enough as is.”
“Aye, he has,” Donall agreed, his tone grim. “And as his brother, my heart sympathizes, but my duty as laird demands I see him expiate his transgressions.” He crossed his arms, his features growing visibly stern. “Mayhap in the execution of his penance, he will come to suffer less.”
At a solemn nod from