Part 15

“My sorrow,” he whispered, closing his eyes for an instant. “And is it for that you’ve hated me so darkly this long while? No wonder!” He looked at her suddenly with new delight. “And for Ian too, though you tried so hard to admit no loyalty or friendship, and I believed you! Think carefully,” he commanded as Kelpie was about to burst out at him in frustration and fury. “Were you actually _seeing_ my sword _strike_ Ian?”

“Aye so—” began Kelpie hotly, and then paused. “Well, and there was a head in the way for a wee moment,” she conceded, conjuring up the vivid picture and looking at it carefully. “Your sword is striking him just behind the head—the other head, I mean—but now Ian is falling straight away, and so—”

“Look again!” interrupted Alex. “Look closely, Kelpie, and do not judge too quickly. For my sword was falling on the man who was in the act of dirking Ian, and they went down at the same moment. Little _amadain_, how could you be thinking I would turn on my foster brother, dearer than kin, for whom I would give my heart’s blood?”

Kelpie scowled in sudden, unreasoning resentment, but he leaned forward to place his hand on her arm where it lay outside the covers. “Look in your heart for the truth,” he commanded urgently. “Ask it of your reason as well. You _must_ know that I did not do it.”

It was true. She did know it. She felt slightly dizzy, as if the sun had spun round suddenly and begun rising in the west. And was it a mistake that she had hated Alex this long time? Och, no! Had he not always infuriated her with his mockery and scorn and his uncanny knowledge of what she would think and do next? But whatever had possessed the both of them that dawn in the shelter, each offering his own life to save the other? She could hardly believe that it had really happened.

The eyes she raised to Alex were night-blue with wonder. “You knew I was hiding behind the wall! Why didn’t you save yourself by telling Mac Cailein Mor it was I sent the message? And especially when you thought that I had betrayed you to the Campbells? _Why?_”

There was sudden gladness on Alex’s lean face. “Kelpie!” he fairly shouted. “You didn’t betray me, then?”

She shook her head irritably and immediately wished she hadn’t. “I _told_ you I did not dare! And now you know why, with Mac Cailein Mor already wanting me for a witch, and I with his wife’s clothing on my back. ’Twas the smoke from your fire betrayed you, fool that you were!” She glared at him. “But you were _believing_ it was I, and you needing only a word to save yourself and settle all accounts. Why did you not tell?” she demanded angrily.

Alex grinned flippantly at her, but the angles of his face seemed softened, and his voice as well. He seemed to be laughing at her and at himself too. “Perhaps, _mo chridhe_, it was for the same reason that you spoke out when you needed only to stay still. Can you answer me your own question, Kelpie? Why did you come forth?”

“I was daft, just!” she retorted promptly. “And,” she added, remembering, “there was a thing in me pushing where I was not wanting to go.” She frowned.

“There has been a thing in me too, this long while,” said Alex softly, and for an instant he saw her as she had appeared from the shadows to face Argyll—intense then too, but heartbreakingly brave, nearly tearing him apart with joy for her gallantry and with despair for its result. And he had not known, then, the full horror of what she was facing, that she was giving herself up to be burned as a witch.

She was regarding him with annoyance. “I think it was a spell, whatever,” she announced accusingly.

Alex looked at her oddly. “Aye so, a spell,” he muttered with a wry twist to his mouth. “And I with a fondness for merry, fair-haired lassies, like my sweet Cecily in Oxford. And now she will have to marry Ian, just, though perhaps neither of them will mind much. I have _never_ cared for witches!” he told her plaintively. “And especially not black-haired ones, with dark, pointy faces, all uncanny eyes. It’s never a moment’s peace I shall have again; but ’tis a terrible, strong spell you have put on me, and I cannot break it. Och, there’s no way at all out of it, but I shall have to marry you, just!”

“Marry me!” Kelpie’s shock reached to the very soles of her feet.

“Ou, aye,” answered the outrageous lad, wagging his head sadly. “And a dreadful life it will be, never a doubt of it, wed to a wild wee water witch. But marry you I must, for I cannot help myself.”

“_I_ can, then!” Kelpie sizzled with outrage. “Did you never think of consulting _me_? Were you thinking I would—_Dhé!_ I’d sooner be wedding the sea horse in Loch Ness, or Argyll himself! And the very conceit of you to be thinking it! ’Tis a spell indeed I’ll be putting on you! Wait until I learn the Evil Eye, and then see will you not be begging my mercy, and with the horrid spots all over you, and—”

Alex silenced her by the simple expedient of putting his lips firmly over hers. When at last he lifted them, it was to laugh into her startled and indignant eyes with the old mockery.

“I’m thinking,” he said, just as if she had never uttered a word of her last speech, “that I shall have to be taking you out of Scotland altogether, or sooner or later it would be to the stake with the both of us. And in any case, what else could I be doing with the gypsy wanderlust in your feet?”

“The gypsies _stole_ me, I tell you!” retorted Kelpie automatically.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “And did they so, truly? Well, and what does it matter? You could never be finding your parents now, nor fit into their life if you did. And in any case, you’re going to marry me, and we’ll away to the New World. A grand wilderness it is, they say, with all the space needed for wandering in and out of trouble.”

He bent toward her again, and reached for her hand, as Kelpie opened a mutinous mouth. Dubh, who had patiently endured the last disturbance of his nap, opened one yellow eye, saw Alex’s hand approaching, and slashed it. Then he rearranged himself across Kelpie’s neck and went back to sleep.

Kelpie laughed at Alex, who was also laughing and sucking at his torn finger. “You see?” he said. “The Red Indians and wild animals will never have a chance against you with your dark power over man and beast, witch that you are. I wonder, would next week be too soon for the wedding?”

“Sssss!” said Kelpie contentedly.