Kelpie frowned. “It was the crowd of witch-hunters, although the first time I did not know who or where, or that it was me they were going to burn. But I saw Ian coming through them, and you after him with a black anger on your face. And when you reached him, you raised your sword and brought it down on him, and he dropped like a stone and out of sight.” She glared at him defiantly.
A whole series of expressions chased one another across Alex’s face, but they were not quite the ones Kelpie had expected. Wonder and relief and joy surely had no place there!
“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.