Scotland -- History -- 1689-1745 -- Fiction; Stair, John Dalrymple, Earl of, 1648-1707 -- Fiction
“Ye found me near to death, did ye not?” he demanded.
“You have been in great fever,” she answered softly. “Yes, very sick.”
“Ah!” He drew himself up in the window-seat and frowned reflectively.
“I think she was a Campbell.”
“Who?” asked Delia, a little breathlessly.
He did not heed her question. “She was like none I have ever seen,” he
went on. “I would have fought a clan for her—she wore a coat of the
Saxon red, but she was of our country—a Campbell—was she a cursed
Campbell?”
“Who was she?” said Delia again, still so faintly that he did not hear.
“Certainly she lied to me,” he continued moodily. “And ‘fair and false
as a Campbell,’ they say—she fooled me. I would I had killed her before
I let her fool me.”
It was the first time he had ever spoken of this mysterious woman.
Delia fumbled in vain for the meaning.
“What was she like?” she asked.
He flushed and turned his frank eyes toward her.
“She had hair of the Campbell red, and curly like little oak leaves
round her face; her eyes were like a wildcat’s, that the light runs in
and out of; her mouth was bright as blood, and her face white and
sharp; she coughed and shivered, her voice was very cold. I kissed her
and she would have killed me for it—yet could it have been only that?—I
think she was a Campbell.”
He sat up and gazed earnestly into the shadows where Delia sat; his
plaid had fallen back and showed the rough hide coat underneath and the
strong lines of his bare throat. Delia laughed.
“Whoever she was I think you love her, Macdonald,” she said.
“I want her,” he answered simply. “I want to look at her again, to
touch her, to hear her. If she is a Campbell I hate her—yet I want
her—and I cannot rest for this desire.”
Delia stood up; there was a gleam of satin as she moved, a quick
rustle; she had her hands on her bosom and they rose and fell very
quickly.
“Did she shoot you?” she asked.
“Yea,” he answered. “Against the mist I saw her harness shine, and like
the sun was her yellow hair,—she leaned from the saddle and fired—but I
had kissed her.” His breath came fast. He smiled. “I held her back
against the rowan-tree, the berries all mingled with her fallen curls—I
kissed her! She called out in your Southern tongue—then she said, “You
have put that between us that I shall not forget,” and her white lids
dropped till her red lashes touched her cheek—and I ... I cannot rest.”
Delia Featherstonehaugh laughed as relief to the effect of the romantic
wording of the soft tongue and the white coldness of the moonlight; she
steadied herself with the thought of her brother and Jerome Caryl
talking (very practically) below.
“You are free to go when you will, Macdonald,” she said. “Only—if you
will see my brother first and take his message to the clans.”
She saw his eyes open, with a quick delight, she thought. He turned his
face full toward her for the first time.
“I will do anything you wish,” he said. “If I may go at once—to-night.”
She stiffened and drew further away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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