Trapped with the Devil of the Highlands (Falling for Highland Villains #3)

Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

“Do ye think they believe me?” Paisley whispered in the damp, dreary cold of her old cell.

Her spine protested against the hard floor beneath her, the chill of the convent seeping through the meager blankets she had tucked up to her chin, the anemic glow of a solitary candle barely illuminating Cecilia’s face.

Castle Cairn had spoiled Paisley, there was no denying it.

“Who cares if they do?” Cecilia replied, turning onto her side, her eager grin shining in the low light. “I’m just glad I finally have ye to meself! Waitin’ for Mother Inferior to finish interrogatin’ ye has been torture , Pais! I burned the potatoes and got me knuckles rapped—I couldnae concentrate on anythin’ else once I heard that ye were back.”

Paisley had to laugh, turning over so she was practically face-to-face with her dearest friend. “Did they make ye take yer vows while I was gone?”

“Aye, but I’ve had eight headaches, ten faintin’ fits, a couple of stomachaches, and a terrible rash to fend off the wretched day,” Cecilia replied with a delighted cackle. “I was in here on me own for a week after the rash. Wasnae allowed out on account of the nuns bein’ terrified it was somethin’ catchin’.”

Paisley shuffled closer. “Ye realize ye’re damnin’ yerself with all yer trickery, do ye nae?”

“Aye, maybe so, but at least I’ll have some good stories for whomever I meet when I reach the end of me days.” Cecilia grasped for Paisley’s hands beneath the blankets and brought them to her lips, blowing into them for warmth. “I just dinnae think I was born to be a nun, Pais. I wouldnae even be here if me grandma hadnae dumped me on the doorstep when I was nine years old. So, they can keep askin’, and I’ll keep findin’ ways to avoid it.”

“And if Mother Superior kicks ye out?”

Cecilia shrugged. “She cannae. She’s me aunt. It wouldnae be Christian.” She squeezed Paisley’s hands. “But that’s enough about me and me adventures—tell me everythin’. How did ye end up at Castle Cairn? Did ye see yer parents? Were they overjoyed? I was half-expectin’ ye to just stay there, truth be told, but I’m nae sorry to see ye again. Ye’re the only one who appreciates me wickedness.”

“Slow down.” Paisley laughed stiffly. “One question at a time.”

“Aye, aye, I’m sorry—I’ve just missed ye!” Cecilia grinned. “So, how did ye end up at Castle Cairn?”

Paisley pulled a face. “I got lost and ye had the map.”

“I didnae,” Cecilia replied, raising an eyebrow. “ Ye had the map. Ye had it tucked into yer prayer card—danglin’ right at the end of yer scapular, ye dolt!”

If it had not been so dark, Paisley would have scrabbled around for her scapular right then and there, to either prove her friend wrong or, worse, prove her friend right.

“Well, I got lost, and… Laird Cairn found me in the woods,” she said, her voice cracking with the force of her heart clenching. “I was injured, so he took me back to his castle, and I… uh… agreed to stay until I was healed.”

Wiggling her eyebrows, Cecilia shimmied closer, throwing her blankets over them both. “Is it the same Laird Cairn that all the village lasses gossip about?”

“I wouldnae ken about that,” Paisley mumbled, visions of what had taken place in the bedchamber flooding her mind.

If there was more than one candle in the room, her cheeks would have done exactly what Camden had warned her of—spilling her secrets. As it was, they just burned in the darkness.

“Och, I’m so jealous I could scream!” Cecilia wriggled excitedly. “Was he handsome?”

“I suppose he’d be deemed handsome, aye.”

The most handsome man I’ve ever seen, though I havenae exactly seen many.

“And are ye healed?” Cecilia tugged the blankets up, covering them from neck to feet.

Paisley nodded. “Mostly.”

“Did Laird Cairn tell ye that I lobbed a conker at one of his men’s heads?”

“He did. Apparently, ye have a formidable aim. He was thinkin’ of askin’ ye to join his archers.” Paisley laughed at the memory, the merry sound petering out into a soft, stilted cough.

She had not been back at the convent for more than six hours and already she was missing him as she had feared she would. If Mother Superior had burst in and demanded another few hours of interrogation, Paisley would have been grateful—anything to take her mind off that infuriating, incredible, life-altering man.

Is he thinkin’ of me too? Is he back at the castle yet? Does he miss me?

She scolded herself inwardly, telling herself that he probably had another woman in his bed already and had forgotten that he ever knew a lass by the name of Paisley Callum or Miss Nunford.

It took her a second to realize that Cecilia was quiet too, staring at her with a suspicious glint in her eyes.

“Well, I can tell ye without a doubt that I’d rather join his archers than be a nun,” Cecilia said in a milder tone than before. “Did he make sure ye found yer parents, though? I hope ye did. I hope ye didnae just come back without seein’ them, or else I’ll start questionin’ why I told such audacious lies on yer behalf.”

Paisley closed her eyes for a moment, bombarded with pinching regret that pecked her from her stomach to her throat. None of what had happened had gone as planned. True, some things had gone better than she could have ever imagined, but seeing her parents again was not among them.

“I saw them,” she said flatly.

Cecilia prodded her on the shoulder. “And? Was it everythin’ ye dreamed of all these years?”

“Nay, it was… more of a nightmare, to be honest.” Paisley’s voice hitched. “I didnae find any of the answers that I wanted, but… I’m nae as sad about it as I probably should be. I dinnae think I have the capacity to be sad about it when there are things out there that are far more confusin’ and… painful.”

Cecilia propped herself up on her elbow, shadows dancing across her face. “Like what?”

“I wouldnae ken how to name the feelin’,” Paisley replied.

She had tried, before her last night with Camden and after, but nothing felt grand enough or perplexing enough. The ember that still smoldered within her, unaffected by her return to the convent or the discipline she had received, was not something she had ever experienced before. Without prior knowledge of it, without guidance, she had no description of it.

“Does the cause of the feelin’ have a name?” Cecilia asked slyly, her eyes gleaming with excitement in the candlelight.

For years, she had been alone in her pursuit of earthly pleasures, the solitary storyteller of carnal adventures and blissful mischief. She had waited a long time for Paisley to have a tale to share. Of course, Paisley wanted to tell her dearest friend about Camden, but as she attempted to form the words, they got stuck behind a lump in her throat.

She was not ready to talk about him yet. Maybe she never would be.

“Is his name Laird Cairn?” Cecilia prompted.

Paisley said nothing.

“Does yer heart feel like it’s skippin’ a beat when ye think of him?” Cecilia continued, undeterred—a master of interrogation herself.

Tentatively, Paisley nodded, her hand moving to her chest to feel her steady heartbeat.

Cecilia sat up, giddiness radiating from her smile. “Do ye feel flushed when ye think of him?”

“Aye,” Paisley murmured.

“Do ye—” Cecilia halted, sucking in a sharp breath through her nose. “Do ye smell that, or is it the singed potatoes lingerin’ in me nostrils?”

Paisley pushed herself up and sniffed the air. Her friend was not imagining it—the faint tang of acrid smoke wafting in on the perpetual draft that snuck under the door.

“It must be someone stokin’ the fire,” she said.

Cecilia sniffed again. “Aye, but it’s strong, is it nae?”

“Should we go out and?—”

Fists hammered on the door, startling the sentence right out of her.

“Everyone out!” a panicked voice shouted. “There’s a fire! Everyone out!”

The thud of fists carried on down the long corridor where the novitiates had their small, cell-like rooms. Paisley and Cecilia’s room was the first, at the beginning of the corridor, so it made sense that they would be the first to receive the warning.

“I’d wager it’s just Mother Superior’s temper flarin’,” Cecilia joked, wrapping her blankets around herself as she opened the door.

Paisley followed suit, quietly irritated that she had to step out into the icy air of the hallway after she had just begun to get warm. She winced at the touch of the stone floor, as cold as a frozen pond, against the soles of her bare feet.

Delaying her escape and hoping the fire was nothing too serious, Paisley snatched up her shoes, which were neatly arranged beside the door. She clung to Cecilia as she hopped and tried to put on her shoes at the same time while footfalls echoed behind her—the stampede of other young women and girls hastening to the exit, too frightened to care about the cold floor.

“This way!” Mother Superior’s resonant voice ricocheted between the curving stone walls and vaulted ceilings, capturing everyone’s attention immediately.

The robust leader of the convent stood at the crossroads of several hallways in her nightdress and shawl, her gray hair cascading down to her hips in beautiful waves, the locks shaking as she beckoned to the women pouring out every which way and in various states of undress.

“This way!” she instructed with stern calm. “Out to the sundial! Out to the inner courtyard! Hurry now, but do not rush. Do not panic!”

At the same time, a group of older nuns were running in the opposite direction, wielding buckets. Mother Superior’s diligent soldiers hastening to put out the fire.

Cecilia grabbed Paisley’s hand, the two of them following the stream of souls along a labyrinth of hallways and out of the cloisters, into the square of lawn that served as an inner courtyard. A sundial, of no use in the darkness, sat in the center of the patch of green, providing a marker for the nuns to gather around.

“Wait!” Paisley gasped, reeling with a sudden realization. “I forgot somethin’. I have to go back.”

She let go of Cecilia’s hand before Cecilia had the chance to protest.

From their first days in the convent, the importance of leaving everything behind in the event of a fire or other such trouble had been drilled into them. If this had happened before her three weeks in the outside world, she would have obeyed without question.

But she could not leave the knife behind—it was the only thing she had to remind her that her weeks with Camden had been real.

And I’d be disobeyin’ him if I left it there.

Darting in through a different entrance, using the hallways farthest from Mother Superior even though it meant taking the longer way back to her room, Paisley burst back into the dingy cell. The knife was where she had left it, tucked underneath her thin pillow.

She clutched the sheathed weapon to her chest and heaved a sigh of relief.

Relief that was woefully short-lived.

“If ye dinnae come out here where I can see every one of ye, I’ll kill every last nun in there until I find me bride among ye,” a voice suddenly bellowed, sending a chill up Paisley’s spine.

She peered around the door of her cell, confused as to where that voice came from. It sounded like it was all around her, the gruff, cruel tone of it somehow familiar.

Where have I heard that voice before?

Seeing nothing, for all the nuns were already where they were supposed to be, Paisley crept up to where the hallway joined another. She glanced this way and that, shivering at the eerie silence left in the wake of that booming voice.

“Paisley!” A shrieking voice scared the life out of her, a figure rushing toward her. “What are ye still doin’ in here? Ye cannae be here. Come on, outside—now!”

The kind-faced nun was the same one who had taught Paisley to talk to her plants if she wanted them to grow well. The nun had a bucket in her hand and soot across her face, urgency widening her eyes as she all but shoved Paisley back to the inner courtyard.

There, the women had lined up in a snaking, single-file formation that swirled around the lawn. It took Paisley a moment to realize why.

On the other side of the ‘courtyard’, Mother Superior was heaving open a set of double doors that, in eleven years, had never been opened. As far as Paisley was aware, they were practically ornamental, reserved for visits from various ecclesiastical dignitaries who never bothered to come.

“Out!” Mother Superior howled, the gap between the doors growing wider and wider with every grunting tug. “Everyone out! Run! Run as fast and as far as ye can! Dinnae stop for anythin’! Run to the village! Run to the forest! Run until ye cannae run anymore!”

Dread rippled across the gathered nuns, what with Mother Superior no longer telling them that there was no need to fret. Terror laced her ordinarily steady voice as she yelled again for them to run, and if their leader was afraid, what else could the rest of them do but panic?

“Run!” Mother Superior screamed.

No one hesitated. In a thrashing, surging crowd, the nuns and novitiates hurtled toward the outside world, some crossing a threshold they had not stepped over in years.

Paisley spotted Cecilia in the throng and waved to her, but her friend was carried off by the wave of terror, dragged along through the open doors to a very strange kind of freedom.

Joining the back of the crowd, Paisley glanced around the inner courtyard as she waited for her turn to flee, still perturbed by that booming voice. Like the dark shape in her memory, she knew it but could not remember how or why.

Does it belong to the same person?

Her mind leaped toward that clearing. She had seen Camden run his blade through the man there and knew the soldier had served someone terrible.

What if the man had not died? What if he had gone to his leader and informed him about a nun and Laird Cairn? What if that beast of the Highlands now wanted vengeance?

With her heart in her mouth, it was finally Paisley’s turn to make a bid for freedom. She crossed the threshold at a lope, bracing to break into a sprint, when she skidded to a halt. A man stood on the sloping, overgrown path down to the road, snatching nuns at random.

He yanked them to him, searched their faces, then shoved them away. A huge, grizzled bear of a man with a barrel chest, short gray hair, and a bushy beard. The nuns could only bleat in terror as they were caught and released, no doubt grateful that whatever he was looking for, they were not it.

His pale blue eyes snapped up, landing on Paisley. A cold smile appeared through his coarse beard, and as it did, the hazy, dark shape in Paisley’s mind suddenly sharpened into a clear image.

The memory she had buried so deep had finally been unearthed, emerging from the deepest, darkest part of her mind and striding toward her.

Laird MacNally. A name she had known to despise without remembering why. But she remembered now.

“There ye are, me wee blossom,” he crooned. “Did ye miss me?”

Paisley staggered backward, before turning on her heel with a stifled scream and running back into the convent as if her life depended on it. Her future certainly did.