Kelpie looked blank, and Alex laughed. “Do not be trying to explain integrity to her, Ian!” he pleaded. “Begin first on a creature with more capacity—like Cecily’s kitten, for example—and then Dubh, perhaps, and after that you might be working up to a kelpie.”
At the mention of Cecily, Ian saw in his mind a heart-shaped, mischievous face in a halo of tawny hair. And then he put it away from him, for Alex had said fifty times that he was going to marry his cousin one day; and if his foster brother wanted Cecily, then she was not for Ian to think of. So he thought instead of Kelpie, who was tossing her black head scornfully.
“Well, whatever integrity is,” she announced, “this is daft. For,” she predicted with gloomy relish, “all the towns around will be thinking they may do as they please, with no fear of punishment. Just wait you now, they’ll be shouting more loudly and burning more witches than ever before.”
Surprisingly, Alex nodded. It was Ian who was about to argue. But at this moment Lachlan and Maeve arrived, shouting that at last they had found Mac ’ic Ian, and would he be coming away this minute to have his sore wound tended.
Ian laughed, faintly embarrassed, and began to protest. And Kelpie, with a pang of concern, noticed for the first time that his plaidie was wrapped oddly about his left arm and that a stain of red was creeping along the sleeve beneath it.
“Dhé!” she cried. “It may be only a wee bit cut as you say, Ian, but yon orange-top”—she glared at Maeve—“has not the sense to be tending it for you, and it will surely mortify if you let her. I,” she announced firmly, “will bind it myself, with bread mold and cobwebs on the cut, and a wee charm or two over it, and ’twill heal overnight, for I know about such matters.”
Maeve promptly screamed that the wicked little witch would poison Mac ’ic Ian only over her dead body. Kelpie retorted that it was a fine idea, that last. Ranald said that he had known mold and cobwebs to work very well. Archie’s black eyes sparkled with amusement, and it fell upon Alex to arbitrate.
Firmly, with the masterful air that Kelpie usually resented hotly, he declared in favor of her bread mold but against her charms. He pacified Maeve by allowing her to supervise and to put the sign of the cross upon Ian’s arm. And because both Maeve and Kelpie were genuinely concerned over Ian’s welfare a truce of sorts was declared—for the moment.