Compromised Hearts (37 page)

Her father’s insistence that everyone knew how to run and hide, speedily and silently, now made sense to her. All those well supplied hiding places, all the intricate plans for scattering his small clan so far and wide it would take months to find any of them now revealed a foresight she had never seen or understood. Sir Cormac Armstrong had always known that the stain his parents had smeared the clan’s name with and the many less than honest cousins he had could come back to haunt him no matter what he did.

“Oh, I shall make Walter pay dearly for this, Goliath. Verra dearly indeed.”

Elspeth turned from staring out into the dark when Cormac stepped up beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “She is out there all alone,” she whispered. “Alone and weighted with guilt for something that isnae her fault.”

“She will be fine, love. Two is strong and stubborn,” he said and kissed her cheek. “She is also good with a knife and clever.”

“She hates that name, ye ken.”

“What? Two?”

“Aye. If ye werenae her beloved papa she would punch ye whene’er ye say it just as
she does the others.” Elspeth smiled faintly when he chuckled. “Tell me she will be safe, Cormac.”

“Aye, loving, she will be.”

“I want to believe that but she is my child, my Ilsabeth.”

“Ye have two Ilsabeths.”

“Nay, I have a Sister Beatrice and an Ilsabeth. Oh, my first-born still loves us all and she will hide and protect those now in her care, but she is God’s child now. Her heart and mind and soul belong to Him. Ye could see it happen whilst she was still a child; the calling was so strong in her. But this Ilsabeth is all ours and carries a lot of both of us within her. Good and bad. She was still but a toddling bairn when I kenned I had given the name to the wrong lass. Ilsabeth was a name for a fighter, for a lass who grabbed life with both hands and lived it to the fullest.”

“And all that is why our Ilsabeth who used to be Clara will succeed.”

“Ye truly believe that, dinnae ye.”

“Aye, and so do many others. Did ye nay see that none scoffed when told of how we have sent her for aid? They ken the strength in the lass and the stubbornness that will keep her fighting for all of us until she wins.”

“And this mon Innes will listen to her and help her?”

“Aye, I have no doubt of it. I have met the
mon and he is one who cannae abide nay kenning the truth, cannae e’en think of letting a person suffer for a crime he, or she, didnae commit. Once she tells her tale, he will see at least the hint that there is something amiss and be on the trail like the best of hunting dogs. Believe me, from all I have heard, no guilty mon wants Simon Innes on his trail. And, aside from the fact that Innes is a mon who will be compelled to find the truth, how could he turn our lass away? Those big blue eyes of hers and all. I almost feel sorry for the mon.” “Why?”

“Because our Ilsabeth will turn his life inside out.”

“And that is a good thing?”

“It was my salvation when ye did it to me, love. Mayhap it will be his.”