The Outcast Read online

  She suddenly stumbled over her dark green skirts and fell face-down in the snow. She heard a shout behind her and felt an instant of panic as the ground blurred in her vision. Patting feverishly about with her hand, she finally located her fallen spectacles and perched them again on her nose. They were wet and covered with snowflakes, but at least she could see.

  Scrambling to her feet, she surged forward. She hadn’t expected the crowd to follow her so far. And by their growing rage, it seemed they intended to do something more dire than merely run her out of town.

  Now that her parents had gone to France and left the business to Alisoune, she had no one to placate the townsfolk and assuage their anger. She’d already tried to explain herself in a reasonable fashion and even resorted to offering the priest money to withdraw his claim. But that had only gotten her into more trouble.

  “Burn the witch!” she heard in the distance.

  Her breath caught, and she tried to slog faster through the snow, despite the cold, throbbing ache in her chest. They couldn’t be serious. Burn her?

  What could she do? Where could she go? She quickly cataloged her options.

  She had no horse, no cart. There was no church nearby for sanctuary. There wasn’t even a troupe of players or a group of pilgrims to vanish into, which was her usual mode of safe transportation from town to town.

  If only she owned a pair of those wooden planks the Danish soldiers attached to their feet, she thought, she might be able to glide across the snow and lose her pursuers.

  Or even better…one of those man-carrying kites invented by the ancient Chinese that could allow a person to fly over the treetops.

  But she had neither. And no matter how diligently she tried to employ that big brain of hers, she could think of no plausible escape.

  She certainly didn’t want to be burned at the stake as a witch. ’Twas an unpleasant way to die, especially if the wood didn’t create enough smoke to asphyxiate her first and she was forced to endure the flesh-scorching heat of the flames.

  She let out an involuntary squeak of remorse. Why did she always have to think in such exquisite detail? Sometimes she wished her brain wasn’t quite so big and that she could wool-gather her way through life like more simpleminded lasses, without a care.

  The shouting grew louder, and she increased her pace, wincing at the stitch in her side. But she’d already done the calculations. Despite her long legs, the weight of her skirts gave the men following her at least a fifty percent advantage when it came to speed. They’d catch up to her in a matter of moments.

  Then she saw something she hadn’t figured into the equation—a seemingly abandoned cottage nestled at the edge of the forest.

  Maybe she could hide there.

  Her instincts for survival renewed, she bolted toward the place.

  Before she’d gone two yards, the door of the cottage opened wide, and out charged a great gray beast. As if propelled by rockets, it began running straight toward her.

  She gasped. When it leaped at her, all she saw was a scruffy face full of gray fur and a huge gaping maw full of sharp teeth. The animal knocked her down with its paws. Once she’d fallen softly onto the snow, it began to mercilessly lick her face.

  It never hurt her. In fact, when the hound—which was the biggest dog she’d ever seen—heard the men yelling in the distance, it growled deep in its throat and nudged her as if telling her to get up and move before they arrived.

  She grabbed her spectacles and satchel and staggered forward. The hound enthusiastically bounded around her, guiding her toward the cottage.

  At the threshold, she glanced back once to see that the mob of a dozen or so men had spotted her. They bolted forward, their snapping cloaks and foul mood a dark contrast to the bright snow.

  Then she swept into the cottage with the dog, slamming the door behind her.

  Lachlan, still half-asleep, winced and groaned as the cottage shook from the impact of the door slamming. He opened one eye. The other felt like it was sealed shut. His mouth was as dry as plaster. And his head throbbed from the aftereffects of too much whisky.

  “Campbell,” he moaned. Over the past few weeks, the hound had somehow learned how to open the latch on the cottage door and tended to come and go as he pleased.

  But the scuffling didn’t quite sound like his hound. And when Lachlan managed to pry open his other eye, both eyes went suddenly wide at the sight before him.

  Instinctively, he rose up on his elbows. “Who are ye?”

  The tall young woman in the green gown blinked in surprise, as if she didn’t expect to see anyone actually inhabiting the cottage. At least he thought she blinked. ’Twas hard to tell, because her eyes were shielded by two round pieces of glass perched atop her nose.

  Before she could answer him, there was a loud pounding at the door. She dove for the bed, sailing over him to wriggle beneath the bed linens and pull the sheepskin coverlet over her head.

  He was still reeling in shock at her boldness when the pounding came again, accompanied by irate shouts.

  She started at the sound, and he felt her cold, naked leg brush against his as her small icy fist burrowed beneath his hip.

  He glanced down at the shivering mound of sheepskin beside him. The woman was clearly hiding from whoever was outside. And whoever was outside clearly knew she was here. The last thing Lachlan needed was to get caught in the crossfire.

  The pounding resumed, louder this time, and the woman peeked out long enough to plead with him in an urgent whisper. “I beg ye, sir, hide me. I fear they mean to burn me at the stake.” She was pale from the cold, but her cheeks were rosy from exertion, and she was quivering like a cornered mouse. Indeed, with her longish nose and those big spectacles, she looked a bit like a mouse. “Please, sir, please. Keep me safe.”

  Then he frowned. Keep her safe. He was the last person to be trusted to keep someone safe. His brothers had depended on him to keep them safe. Four gravestones were proof of how that had ended.

  But Campbell was staring expectantly at the door. And Lachlan knew he had to answer it. If whoever was outside intended to burn the woman at the stake, they might be carrying torches even now. And they might decide to make quick work of it by setting his whole cottage on fire.

  With as little fuss as possible, Lachlan eased his right leg over the edge of the bed, tucked his crutch under his left arm, and pushed up. As usual, he staggered, and his head started throbbing, but he managed to regain his balance and limp over to the doorway.

  He snatched open the door. “What do ye want?” he demanded harshly.

  At least a dozen townsmen crowded together, trying to peer past him into the one-room cottage. He knew the men, though in the last three months since he’d moved back to Keirfield, he’d kept mostly to himself. Now—whether ’twas due to his rough and ragged appearance, his stern scowl, or his growling hound—nobody answered his question.

  “Ye hauled me out o’ bed with your infernal racket,” he bit out. “So what do ye want?”

  Finally, Father Ninian, the red-haired parish priest, gathered up enough courage to raise his quivering double-chin, demanding, “Hand over the lass, and we’ll leave ye to your affairs.”

  Lachlan wondered what on earth a wee lass could have done to incur the wrath of this mob. Two of the villagers had their daggers drawn, four more wielded spades, and all of them had feverish fire in their eyes. He didn’t care if the woman had butchered their livestock and set their fields on fire. ’Twas an unfair fight, and he didn’t like unfair fights.

  “Lass?” he dared them. “What lass?”

  The father narrowed his pale blue eyes and began shuddering with rage. “Ye know very well,” he growled. “We saw her run in here.”

  Lachlan looked down from a considerable height on all of the men. “Did ye?”

  The townsfolk muttered in agreement.

  He cast a quick backward glance at his bed to assure the lass was well-hidden. Then he opened the door far enough for t
hem to see the interior of his cottage. “Well, I don’t see her now. Do ye?”

  Father Ninian charged forward, elbowing aside his fellows. “Out o’ my way. I’ll find that Satan’s spawn.”

  The deerhound growled.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were ye,” Lachlan warned. “I’ve seen Campbell here tear a man limb from limb.”

  ’Twasn’t at all true. Campbell was keen for rabbit and could take down a small deer. But he mostly just growled at strangers.

  Still, Father Ninian didn’t know that. So for the sake of caution, the priest backed away. Then he stabbed a threatening finger at Lachlan and snarled, “Ye mark my words, Mar, ’tisn’t the end of it. Ye’re harborin’ a daughter o’ the devil, and I mean to see her punished for her blasphemy.”

  With that, the father spun on his heel, and the mob marched off with him, grumbling empty threats to the air as they made their way across the rutted snow.

  Lachlan closed the door and turned back to the bed. Blasphemy? Daughter of the devil? God’s eyes, what had the woman done? Maybe he’d made a mistake, not turning her over to them.

  “They’re gone,” he said cautiously. “Ye’re safe.”

  Tentative fingers crept out from under the sheepskin. Almost without knowing he did so, Lachlan braced himself for her gasp. Women always gasped when they first saw him, even those who tried to be polite.

  When she threw back the sheepskin all at once, her spectacles went flying. But her face beamed as she sat up with a broad, grateful grin.

  Lachlan arched a brow in surprise. Now that he could see all of her clearly, he decided that while she might be a trifle mouse-like, she wasn’t an unattractive lass. Her hair was the color of dark, wet wood. Her smile was soft and sweet. And her eyes reminded him of the first tender grass of spring.

  Indeed, he thought with mild irritation, she glowed like a beam of sunshine—a ray of blinding white light to awaken him from his comfortable, numb slumber.

  He exhaled. She seemed like she might be the cheery sort who’d try to drag him, kicking and screaming, into her bright world, a world in which he no longer belonged.

  “Oh, sir, ye were magnificent!” she crowed, patting the feather-filled mattress for her lost spectacles. “Threatenin’ them with your hound. But that big, droolin’ beast wouldn’t harm a flea, would he?”

  “Campbell? Nae,” he grunted, eyeing her spectacles on the floor.

  “I can’t thank ye enough, kind sir.” She hadn’t gasped yet, but maybe without her spectacles she was blind. “I owe ye my life.”

  He stiffened, reminded of the dead men who’d trusted him with their lives.

  She continued to rummage through the blankets for her spectacles. Lachlan was in no great hurry to return them to her. “If it hadn’t been for your lovely hound and your quick—”

  He snorted.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Lovely?”

  “He is lovely,” she said with a coy smile. “And so are ye…for keepin’ me safe.”

  There ’twas again, that phrase—keeping her safe. Those were the same words the old crone had used for the strange crystal. Keep it safe. He glanced over at the mantel. The stone was still there, safe for the moment.

  As for the lass, she hadn’t gasped yet. In fact, she’d just called him lovely. Now he knew she was blind.

  He couldn’t continue to let her search in vain. Besides, though he’d held off the angry mob for the moment, he didn’t want to harbor a fugitive, no matter how bonnie she was. ’Twas probably best she get her gasping over with and go on her way.

  Leaning on his crutch, he bent down to retrieve her spectacles and put them into her hands, and then hobbled toward the hearth.

  “Oh, thank ye,” she said, fumbling them back onto her nose. “Honestly, ye’d think I’d told the priest that the world was flat or some such…”

  By her hesitation, he knew she’d spotted his deformity. But she didn’t gasp. Instead, to his amazement, she cooed in wonder.

  “Ahh, ye’ve got a missin’ limb!” She scrambled to perch on the edge of the bed and began chattering with rapt enthusiasm. “A most fascinatin’ circumstance! Ye can sometimes feel it as though ’tis still there, can’t ye? ’Tis called phantom pain. Benedetti believes that nerves are like the roots of a tree. Yet no one has been able to discover why, when the root is cut, the sensation o’ the limb remains long after…” She trailed off at the sight of his furrowed brow. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m bein’ impolite, aren’t I?”

  She was being terribly blunt. But for some reason it didn’t trouble him. She seemed genuinely interested in his condition and, to his consternation, not at all appalled by it.

  She fidgeted with the satchel that was still draped diagonally over one shoulder. “My mother always said I was cursed with too much curiosity and candor. She said I had no stopper on the keg o’ my thoughts. Anyway, I didn’t mean to offend ye, especially after all ye’ve—”

  “Are ye hungry?” he asked suddenly, and then just as suddenly regretted his invitation. What the devil was he thinking? He barely had two sticks to rub together, let alone the wherewithal to entertain company. Besides, hadn’t he just decided against harboring a fugitive?

  A quick lick of her lips gave her away, but she said, “I don’t wish to impose.”

  “’Tis no imposition,” he lied. Even as he spoke the words, he thought he must be a fool for letting her linger. After all, no good could possibly come of it.

  He limped over to the hearth and coaxed the smoldering coals to waken. Then he rummaged in his cupboard for his store of oats and raided the bowl of apples sitting on the shelf beneath it.

  She patted her knees, summoning Campbell to her. Scratching the spoiled beast’s shaggy head, she murmured to him. “That’s a good canine. If ye vow not to tear me limb from limb, I’ll share my breakfast with ye.”

  The hound licked her face, knocking her spectacles askew, and she giggled.

  Somewhere deep inside, Lachlan felt his frozen heart thaw a little at her laughter. ’Twas a lovely sound, one he hadn’t heard in a long while. It felt like the comforting heat of a winter’s bath on a frosty day…which reminded him…it had been a week or more since he’d had a bath.

  He had little reason to bathe. Margaret had left him. He saw no one else. He seldom went out. Besides, on one leg, ’twas an ordeal to fetch enough water for a bath.

  He probably stank. His clothes were filthy. His overlong hair hung like tangled straw. He hadn’t bothered to trim his beard in weeks.

  Suddenly self-conscious, he pulled together his doublet and buttoned it over his rumpled linen shirt. He tucked his unruly hair behind his ears and dipped into the bucket of water to one side of the hearth, giving his face a quick scrub and rinsing out his mouth. Then, silently cursing himself for even caring, he set to work at the wooden table, preparing the oats and peeling and cutting the apple, occasionally casting sidelong glances at the lass, who seemed to be making herself at home in his shabby hovel.

  She was almost as tall as he was, a bonnie, scrawny, gangly bit of a thing with narrow shoulders and a neck no bigger than the trunk of a sapling. Much of the long, dark hair she’d pulled back into a braid had come loose, and wild tendrils curled down her cheeks and across her small bosom. Her eyes were large and of a most unusual green that almost seemed to glow. But that might be due to the magnifying lenses of the spectacles.

  What made his heart catch was her smile. ’Twas a smile of gratitude as she wordlessly thanked him for making her breakfast, a smile of acceptance as she perused his rundown cottage, a smile of pure joy as she fawned over his hound.

  How anyone could think the bonnie angel before him was the daughter of the devil, Lachlan couldn’t imagine. But he supposed he should find investigate further.

  Chapter 3

  Alisoune had never seen a cottage, or a man, so woefully neglected. He must live on his own, she decided, for no woman she knew would let a place, or a husband, become so untidy.<
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  Cobwebs hung from every corner. Dust covered every surface. The ash was thick in the fireplace. And there were enough crumbs on the kitchen shelves and on the flagstone floor to sustain a healthy colony of mice.

  Of course, it must be challenging to keep a house clean when one was forced to move about on one leg, no matter how otherwise robust one was.

  The man was definitely robust. Though his linen shirt and trews were crumpled and his doublet stained, and though he was in sorry need of a bath and a shave, he was in splendid physical condition. Few men could match Alisoune’s height, but this one was over six feet tall by her estimates, broad of chest and brawny of build. No doubt he’d developed those wide, muscular shoulders using a crutch to compensate for his missing leg.

  As far as how he’d lost it… By the sword, shield, and armor tossed into one of the corners, she deduced he’d been a soldier. Wounds like that happened all the time when men insisted on battling with barbaric weapons like sharpened claymores.

  But she had no scientific explanation for the way her heart was pulsing unnaturally as she watched him prepare the porridge. Something about the way his disheveled hair framed his bearded jaw…his muscled forearms hung the heavy iron pot over the fire with ease…his silver eyes narrowed at the flickering flames…made her blood feel suddenly warm and her heart beat a wee bit fast.

  ’Twasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling, and she was content to have it continue.

  When the porridge began to simmer, he stirred the apples into the pot and asked casually, “So how did ye manage to incur the wrath o’ the good people o’ Keirfield?” He popped a stray bit of apple into his mouth and chewed.

  She eyed him uncertainly. There had been a sardonic edge to his voice as he said “good people,” but she didn’t want to risk incurring his wrath as she had theirs. Sometimes the things Alisoune found interesting, others found deeply disturbing.