The Promise of a Highlander by Emma Prince

Author:Emma Prince
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2017-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

As Logan rounded the corner of the chapel, his gaze immediately sought Helena. The simple act of laying eyes on her after only a moment apart felt as good as drawing air after being submerged underwater.

His lips began to lift in a smile, but then they froze.

Something was wrong.

Helena’s gaze was fixed on Mairin, who stood a few paces away beside the chapel. But her wide eyes were vacant and unseeing.

Just like they’d been when he’d woken her from a nightmare.

“Helena,” he called. Her gaze flickered to his for a moment, but then she turned her dark head back to Mairin.

He glanced at his sister, but she was smiling, saying something to Helena as she glanced at the work being done on the chapel’s roof.

Helena suddenly tore the blanket from her lap and flung herself from the wagon’s bench toward Mairin.

Just then, a scraping sound filled the air over Mairin’s head. Logan looked up to find a stack of large stone tiles wavering on the edge of the partially finished chapel roof—right above Mairin.

Logan flung the sacks of grain from his shoulders and dove toward his sister, but he knew even before his feet moved that he wouldn’t make it in time. The slate tiles tumbled from the roof toward Mairin.

Mairin screamed. Distantly, Logan heard his own bellow of fear and agony as he watched helplessly, the distance between them closing, but not fast enough.

But Helena was suddenly there. She plowed into Mairin a heartbeat before the tiles hit her, sending them both flying.

Helena and Mairin hit the ground at the same instant the tiles did. More than twenty slabs of slate larger than Logan’s hand span shattered as they connected with the earth only a foot away from Helena and Mairin.

Uncaring of the tile fragments littering the ground, Logan staggered to their side and fell to his knees.

“Mairin! Helena! Oh God, are ye all right?”

Mairin sat up slowly, blinking at Logan. “A-aye,” she breathed.

Helena pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then sat down hard on her bottom. “I…I am all right.”

She brought a hand to her face to push away her disheveled hair, and Logan didn’t miss the trembling of her fingers.

He suddenly realized they were surrounded by a circle of concerned villagers.

“Lord, forgive me!” A portly man in simple brown robes pushed through the onlookers. “Was anyone hurt?”

“What…what happened?” Mairin said, gazing around at all the faces staring at her.

“I was working atop the roof,” the portly man said. “I stepped backward, and my foot knocked into that stack of tiles.” He shook his tonsured head and looked heavenward. “I could have killed ye, lassie. Thank the Lord for his mercy and grace this day.”

The man, who must have been the village priest, fell to his knees and began to pray.

“Mairin!” Lillian’s high, fearful voice cut through the murmurs of the crowd. She wedged her way into the small circle that had formed around Helena, Mairin, Logan, and the kneeling priest.

“Move along,” Logan barked to the onlookers.

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