Page 2

Six weeks later.

S he’d had the dream again tonight. The one where she was being chased.

Cat rested her palms on the rough stone edge of the window casement, sweat cooling on her skin, and stared blindly into the darkness surrounding her, searching for stars in the darkness over Loch Dunvegan.

How many times had she stood here as a child, gazing into the night sky?

More times than she could count.

Back then, she’d imagined the stars were winking a greeting for her alone, but there were no stars tonight, not even the faintest gleam of light in the sky to relieve the surrounding darkness.

If it wasn’t for the whoosh of the waves against the shore below, she might have imagined the world had somehow slipped away—as if the sea, the castle, and the floor under her feet had tumbled into an abyss while she’d slept, leaving her alone.

Alone atop an ancient castle clinging to a bit of rock suspended over Loch Dunvegan, nestled between Dunvegan and Kilmuir, on the Isle of Skye.

Just her, and the endless approach and retreat of the waves below.

There’d been a time when she’d found the rhythmic rush of water soothing, a lullaby that would send her off into a dreamless sleep, but these last few months, it had turned ominous, like a lie whispered in her ear.

But that wasn’t what had woken her.

Not tonight, or on any of the dozens of nights before this.

It was the dream. The same one, every time.

In the dream, she was running from something.

No, not something, but someone , their heavy footfalls close behind her and growing nearer with every step, the heat of their ragged breaths stirring the hairs on the back of her neck to panicked attention.

No matter how nimbly she darted through the trees, she couldn’t elude them.

She could do nothing but fly through the woods, the branches snatching at her skirts and tearing long, bloody scratches into her arms and face, and wait for the awful moment when a heavy hand would land on her shoulder and pull her down to the ground in a tumble of tangled limbs.

Thankfully, that moment had never come. Not yet.

Just as she’d give herself up to her fate, she’d wake, shaking and drenched in perspiration, her heart shuddering like a wild thing trapped against her ribs.

She’d lay awake for hours afterward, every limb taut and her frantic heartbeat echoing in her ears as she struggled to put a face or a name to her pursuer.

But they were nameless, faceless, and silent, a hulking presence that loomed over—

Stop . She squeezed her eyes closed, shaking her head to dislodge the images threatening to unfold behind her eyelids, and turned away from the window and back to the comforting familiarity of her workroom.

It wouldn’t change anything to dwell on it, and goodness knew she had plenty to keep her busy while she waited for the sun to crest the horizon. It would be best to get it done now before her sisters awoke.

There would be fewer questions, that way.

She turned up the wick on the lantern sitting in the middle of the scarred table until it threw a bright circle of light over the clutter of shallow bowls, mismatched mortars and pestles, and a battered set of brass scales.

Bits of torn leaves littered the floor underneath her, and the thick scent of black licorice hung in the air.

To one side of the table stood a row of four glass bottles, each with its own label, neatly printed in her handwriting.

And, in smaller print underneath, Relieves Cough and Inflammation.

The maidenhair fern was a useful little plant, and pretty, too, with its feathery, palm-shaped fronds.

Ancient legend had it that any lady who could hold a branch of maidenhair fern without making the leaves flutter was as yet untouched.

Over the years it had come to represent purity and innocence, and to symbolize the bond that tied two lovers together.

It was a sweet legend, but for all that maidenhair fern worked miracles on a trifling cough, there was nothing terribly intriguing about it. It was handy enough, but it was simple, humble.

Not like hemlock or foxglove. Aconite. Arsenic, Deadly Nightshade, or Cantarella.

Take foxglove, for instance. One ounce of fresh, ground foxglove leaves boiled in a pint of water, then strained, distilled, and sweetened with cinnamon oil made an admirable treatment for dropsy, but if one went a touch too heavy on the foxglove?

It could stop the heart.

They were fascinating things, toxic plants, requiring a light touch and an exquisite sense of balance. The delicacy of them appealed to her, the conundrum of a thing that was both useful and deadly at once.

That could preserve life or end it, depending on the slip of a hand.

Arsenic, for example, could be used as a preservative.

Hemlock was often used as a dye, and in the proper doses, it offered a cure to those who suffered from breathing problems. Aconite made an admirable numbing agent as well as a sedative, and Deadly Nightshade could be taken to cure a cough or to treat melancholy.

But any one of them taken in excess?

Fatal. As for Cantarella, one needn’t look any further than the French nobility in the mid-seventeenth century for proof of its effectiveness as a poison. Those French courtiers had been a murderous bunch.

Her skills wouldn’t have gone unappreciated at Versailles.

But while the toxic plants were a great deal more interesting than simple curatives, she didn’t have much of an opportunity to indulge her interest in them. There wasn’t a demand for the trickier remedies in Dunvegan, and even less so for poison.

Oh, the villagers had their secrets, much like everyone else did, but these tended more toward the usual minor squabbles than they did the murderous. Livestock theft, land disputes, drunken belligerence, and on one notable occasion . . .

A bewitching.

Or so the villagers claimed, but the less said about that, the better.

She took up the glass flask that held her maidenhair extract and gave it a little shake. She’d hoped to make up half a dozen bottles tonight, but there wasn’t enough left for even one more bottle, much less two.

No matter. There was time enough yet to make another batch of extract before her sisters rose for the day. It was a painstaking process, but with any luck, the good citizens of Dunvegan had been so troubled with the cough this fall, Glynnis would take all six bottles she’d prepared.

She’d pay a nice sum for each bottle, and goodness knew, they could use the extra—

“You said you wouldn’t do this anymore, Cat.”

Cat jumped, dropping the flask with her maidenhair extract. It hit the old wooden worktable and the delicate glass shattered with a pop, the thick extract oozing into the cracks in the worn surface. “For pity’s sake, Freya!”

Her sister emerged from the shadows near the door and approached the worktable, her night rail billowing around her. “You promised you wouldn’t spend your nights up here in this drafty old workroom anymore.” Freya wrapped her arms around herself with a shudder. “You’ll catch your death.”

She had promised, but in her defense, she hadn’t thought she’d get caught. “That doesn’t excuse you sneaking up on me like that. It took me the better part of an hour to prepare that syrup, and now it’s ruined.”

“This is ill done of you, Cat.” Freya’s forehead creased with the disappointed frown she always wore whenever she caught one of her sisters doing something they oughtn’t to be doing.

“I am sorry about your . . .” She waved a hand at the broken glass scattered over the worktop. “Your tubes and things.”

Cat glared at her sister, but she bit back the ill-tempered retort hanging on the edge of her tongue.

She’d sooner berate the birds for singing than snap at her sister.

Freya was a sweet, gentle soul who hardly ever had an unkind word for anyone, and when she did offer a reproach, it wasn’t ever out of anger, only concern.

“Are you having trouble sleeping again?” Freya slid one of the stools out from under the table and plopped herself down on it. “Did you have another nightmare?”

Not another one, no, but the same one, repeatedly, and each time it was more vivid, more frightening than the last. But it would only worry Freya if she said so, and there was nothing to be done about it, in any case. “No. I’m just restless, I suppose.”

“Restless,” Freya repeated, one eyebrow arched. “I see.”

Freya did see, and far too much, too. How was a lady meant to keep her secrets with such troublesome sisters about?

“Did we not agree, Cat, that you’d give up spending all hours of the night locked up in this dark room with your potions?”

Cat took up a cloth and tried to soak up the extract, then threw it aside in disgust when she only succeeded in smearing it across the table. “They’re not potions .”

At least, not this time.

If she did occasionally dabble with a toxin here and there, it was merely out of a thirst for knowledge, and it was no one’s business but her own.

“I seem to recall you promising you’d confine your experiments to the daylight hours,” Freya went on. “But perhaps that was a figment of my imagination?”

Had she promised? Yes, in a fit of misguided optimism, she’d made that foolish promise.

She should have known better.

By now, one would think she’d have learned that promises were ephemeral things and apt to dissolve the instant one’s circumstances shifted.

Well, they’d shifted, and not for the better.

Freya took up one of the glass bottles and lifted it to her nose.

“Cucumber, with a hint of black licorice. My goodness, Cat, why are you up here in the wee hours of the morning making maidenhair syrup? I daresay no one’s going to expire of a trifling cough anytime soon. Couldn’t this wait until morning?”