“We musna tell anyone,” Dougan said, still reeling a bit from the kiss. “Not—not until we’re grown.”
She nodded her assent. “I’d better get back,” she said reluctantly.
He agreed, lowering his head to kiss her on the mouth once more, softer this time. It was his husbandly right, after all. “I love ye, Fairy mine,” he whispered as she silently padded back down the aisle, clutching her plaid and crowned with the vibrant flowers.
“I love you, too.”
* * *
The following night, a small body roused Dougan by lifting the covers and wriggling into his narrow dormitory cot. He opened his eyes to see a wealth of silver ringlets tucked against his chest in the dim light of the lone candle.
“What are ye doing, Fairy?” he whispered drowsily.
She didn’t answer him, just clung to his shirt with uncharacteristic desperation, her body racked with shivers and wordless little whimpers escaping from her throat.
Instinctively, Dougan’s arms went around her and pulled her in tight as panic pierced him to the bone. “What’s happened? Are ye hurt?”
“N-no,” she stammered against him.
He relaxed a little, but was distressed to find her tears soaking the front of his threadbare nightshirt. He lifted his head to see if any of the other twenty or so boys lined in the bunks next to and across from him noted her presence, but all was silent as far as he could tell. She’d never done this before, so whatever her cause, it must have been grave.
Curling back a little to look down at her, Dougan saw something in the silver moonlight that made the blood turn to ice in his veins.
She wore her brilliant white nightgown, the very same one he’d married her in the night before, except now the row of tiny buttons from her navel to the lace at her neck were missing. She held the gap together with one hand while the other one clutched at him. A desolate calm settled over him as he cradled his ten-year-old wife in his arms.
“Tell me,” was all he could manage through a throat closing off with dread.
“He pulled me into his study and said such h-horrible things,” she whispered to his chest, red with shame, still yet to bring herself to look up into his face. “Father MacLean, he told me all the things I tempted him to do to me. It was awful and vulgar and terrifying. Then he pulled me onto his lap and tried to kiss me.”
“Tried?” Dougan’s fists were buried in the back of her nightgown, shaking with the force of his rage.
“I—sort of—stabbed him in the shoulder with a letter opener and ran,” she confessed. “I ran here. To you. The only safe place I could think of. Oh, Dougan he’s after me!” She dissolved into sobs, her whole body shaking with the effort to keep them silent.
In spite of everything, Dougan’s lips twitched with wry satisfaction in his wee wife. “That was well done, Fairy,” he murmured, stroking her hair, silently wishing it had been Father MacLean’s eye, rather than his shoulder, that she’d stabbed.
Applecross was a large, old stone fortress with many places to hide, but it wouldn’t take the old priest long to come searching through the boys’ dormitory.
“I don’t know what to do,” came the small voice from beneath his blanket.
A light appeared beneath the dormitory door and Dougan froze, placing a hand over her mouth and not breathing until it passed.
Dougan got out of bed and silently opened his trunk, extricating his two pair of trousers. He tossed one to her, along with one of his shirts. “Put these on,” he commanded in a whisper. She nodded silently and began to struggle into them beneath her night shift. Swiftly, Dougan helped her to roll up the hem and the sleeves of the shirt and tied a bit of twine that he’d been using as a belt to lash the trousers to her nonexistent hips.
He donned his boots with rifts in the soles and decided they would swipe a pair of the cook’s boots for her from the kitchen when they gathered food for their journey. They couldn’t risk going back to her dormitory to collect her things.
Her tiny hand felt fragile yet weighty in his as they made their way to the kitchens in the dark, pausing to peek around corners and creeping through the shadows. It was nigh on ten miles to Russel on Loch Kishorn. There they could rest and sleep and feast on the oyster beds before moving on to Fort William. Dougan only hoped his wee Fairy had the strength to make it.
Didn’t matter, he’d carry her the full way if he had to.
Once in the kitchens, they gathered bread and dried pork, along with a bit of cheese, and wasted precious seconds stuffing cheesecloth into the toes of the cook’s boots. The small woman had little feet for a grown woman, but Farah’s were smaller still.
Dougan was glad to see that his Fairy had stopped crying, her face set with purpose and determination, if not a little anxiety.
Dougan tucked her in his thin jacket, hating that he didn’t have anything warmer for her.
“Won’t you be cold?” she protested.
“I’ve more meat on me bones,” he boasted, opening the kitchen door and wincing when the hinges creaked loud enough to wake half of the souls in the graveyard. The loamy scent of dew reminded him that dawn would soon be upon them, but it also showed that the nights had stopped freezing, which was a good sign.
Searching the darkness, he noted which way was due east. They’d just have to walk as straight a line as possible and they’d be dumped onto the shores of Loch Kishorn. He was certain of it.
Her strangled whimper gave little warning before her hand was ripped out of his grip.