Amanda Scott (6 page)

The installation ceremony had been impressive, but Sorcha was glad that it was over and that the crowd was
moving with alacrity to the great tent for the feast. Hoping to keep out of her father’s way, she let them sweep her along with them, taking care to avoid Sir Hugo Robison, too.

She trusted Isobel’s judgment and wanted no further quarrel with the man.

Engrossed in her thoughts and hoping no one would try to engage her in conversation, she paid little heed to those around her except to be certain that neither Macleod nor anyone else who might think he had the authority to scold her was nearby. She paid no attention at all to what people were saying until she heard her father’s name mentioned.

“One of Macleod’s daughters, she is,” declared a female voice.

“Shameless,” said another. “Her father ought to put her across his knee, just as that handsome young man suggested.”

“Aye, well, they’re a wild lot, all seven of them,” said a third voice.

“Surely, not all!” exclaimed the first.

“Well, until now, I’d have said Lady Adela was the exception, but you heard the scandal about her wedding. Sakes, I heard about that yesterday. But then to have her own sister—if that was she—shouting the details to all and sundry, well!”

“You know,” said the first thoughtfully, “I wonder if those men meaning to camp near Kinlocheil yesterday might have been the lady Adela’s abductors. A cousin we met on our way here told us about them and said a beautiful woman rode pillion with them. But I’m sure he said they numbered a dozen or more—accoutered as noblemen, too. Moreover, they were making for Edinburgh.”

“If they were noblemen, mayhap it
was
she,” her confidante said. “The Macleod sisters ken their worth as well as anyone, so if someone carried off Adela from her wedding, I’ll wager she kens him fine.”

Much as Sorcha would have liked to defend Adela or at least tell the three harridans what she thought of them for gossiping when they did not know anything about the matter, she held her tongue. Having recognized the one who’d mentioned the riders, she was tempted to go to her and demand more details but decided she might talk more freely to Macleod. Considering their opinion of her, she would be lucky if the woman would speak to her at all. So, much as she had hoped to delay the interview she had coming with her father, she could put it off no longer.

They had to find Adela.

Sir Hugo Robison had long since acquired the ability to set aside personal matters to devote his attention to duty. While engaged with Donald’s installation ceremony, he had easily shut his mind to the scene that had preceded it.

However, as soon as Ranald and the new MacDonald of the Isles had retired to the great tent Ranald’s men had erected and secured for the feast, Hugo looked around for the lass who had slapped him. When he did not see her, he indulged in a whimsical image of her father taking her off by an ear to give her a good skelping.

She certainly deserved one, he told himself, then realized he was smiling in thought of her fiery temper and the wee dimple that revealed itself below the left corner of
her mouth as she berated him. Few girls would have the nerve to slap him, knowing who he was and the vast power his masters, the Sinclairs, wielded.

But if she had thought about that at all before striking him, she had believed the power they wielded would protect her as well as one of his closer kinsmen. She knew, after all, that her sister had married the younger brother of the Prince of Orkney—or Earl of Orkney, if one went by Henry’s Scottish title and not his Norse one, which was next highest to that of the Norse King. She ought to have realized, though, that a family connection would hardly protect her if she deserved skelping.

In truth, he doubted that she cared a rap about who his connections were, or had spared a thought for her own, before she struck.

She was a beauty, too, more arresting in her own way than her sisters—the three he had met, anyway. And unlike most young women, who behaved coyly and affected shyness when meeting him, she had looked at him directly, albeit angrily.

Famished now, he strode toward the great tent, smiling again as he recalled how her dimple had peeped at him, the way her chin had come up, and how the curling amber-gold tendrils escaping her coif had gleamed in the sunlight. He even admired the way her wide-set, dark-lashed eyes had sparked flames at him and the whiteness of her teeth when she bared them at him. And, too, there was the tempting fullness of her rosy lips, lips clearly intended for kissing.

Knowing she was to stay at Lochbuie while he and Michael did, he thought it might be amusing to try to alter her opinion of him. He decided, though, that if she tried
slapping him again, he would not leave it to Macleod to teach her manners.

“Hugo, I want a word with you.”

Hearing in his cousin’s voice the stern note rarely directed at himself, he stopped instantly and turned to wait for him.

Frowning, Sir Michael Sinclair glanced about at the crowd swarming to get its midday meal. He waited until a group of men passed them to enter the tent, then said quietly, “We’ll delay our dinner a few minutes more. I would know more about that incident before the ceremony.”

“You saw it,” Hugo said. “You know as much as I do.”

“You had nothing to do with that young woman’s abduction.”

Although Michael made it a statement and not a question, Hugo knew he would not have mentioned it had he not harbored at least small doubts. The knowledge stirred new irritation, but he kept his tone mild as he said, “You know I did not.”

Michael held his gaze for a long moment before he said, “I hope so. Are you certain you gave Lady Adela no cause to think you wanted to marry her?”

“Don’t be daft,” Hugo said, but he felt heat in his cheeks as he said it.

Michael’s gaze sharpened. “None at all?”

“Of course not.” Hugo met that sharp gaze and gave his answer firmly, with no intention of sharing the niggling doubt that had just flitted through his mind—certainly not until he’d had time to give it more thought.

Accordingly, he was silent until Michael nodded and said, “That is all I wanted to know. If Macleod requests our help, we’ll give it.”

“Aye, sure,” Hugo said as they continued toward the tent together.

When they had taken their places at the men’s end of the high table, he saw that neither Lady Sorcha nor Isobel was present. He found then that his appetite was no longer as keen as it had been.

He bore his part in nearby conversation as needed, but his mind was no longer on the festivities. When Isobel entered the tent at last, with her sister Cristina and Hector Reaganach—the latter looking grim enough to remind Hugo that men had good reason to call him Hector the Ferocious—he hoped Hector’s mood was due to annoyance with Lady Sorcha rather than with the man she had slapped.

Even more than he wanted to avoid Michael’s displeasure did he want to avoid that of the powerful warrior who carried his family’s legendary battle-axe with him everywhere he went. Unfortunately, though, he could think of only one way Lady Sorcha Macleod could have come to believe he had wanted to marry her sister. That was if Adela herself had led her to believe it.

Conversation ebbed and flowed around him as he tried to recall what he knew about Lady Adela. Besides her golden beauty, his strongest memory was the haughty way she had dismissed his casual flirting at Orkney. He recalled, too, that when he had responded to that dismissal as he always did to such setbacks, she had cast a basinful of holy water in his face.

Michael had witnessed that incident, too, but evidently did not recall what Hugo had said to her or what she spat at him as she doused him. In truth, the topic of marriage had raised its head, but only in that she’d said she would
never
marry him.

Clearly, she had told her sisters about the holy water, but he could recall nothing about her to suggest that she might lie to them. How else, though, could they have come to believe he would want to rescue her from an unwanted marriage?

He had continued to flirt with her when they made two of the party that had departed Orkney with Henry for Castle Sinclair in Caithness. But that had not altered her thinking, because she had stubbornly continued to spurn his advances. The thought that she might make him a suitable bride when and if he had time to marry had certainly entered his head. But until now he had not imagined for an instant that it had entered hers. Such thoughts were not supposed to enter gently bred young women’s heads, although in truth, he supposed they occasionally did.

To his chagrin, he realized the only reason he had continued to assume she would accept him was that he had heard nothing to suggest she had developed an interest in anyone else. Nor, until Lady Sorcha’s messenger found him, did he suspect that any other man had taken interest in Adela. He had simply assumed that when he wanted her, she would be available. He had assumed, as well, that her father would leap at the chance to welcome such a splendid bridegroom for her.

Hugo winced at such plain evidence of his own arrogance, deciding that the lass had been right to call him conceited. Still, he was sure that nothing he had said or done ought to have led her sisters to believe he intended anything beyond flirting. If Adela had declared anything else to them, she ought not to have done so. And even if she did think he meant marriage, her most unladylike
sister Sorcha ought never to have sent messages to him as she had, let alone dared to slap him.

His thoughts were spinning in circles. If he was guiltless, then why, he asked himself, did he find it so hard to stop thinking about what the young vixen had said?

He saw her come into the tent at last, but to his surprise, she walked straight to her father. When she bent close to speak into his ear, Macleod looked no happier to see her than one might expect. Indeed, he began scolding her roundly, without regard for the interested men around him. Hugo told himself she deserved to hear whatever Macleod said, and ruthlessly suppressed an inexplicable urge to defend her.

“Please, sir, just talk to her,” Sorcha said quietly. “It was Lady Clendenen’s friend, Lady Gowrie. I’m sure those men her cousin saw must be the abductors. Heaven knows what they may be doing to Adela whilst we linger here!”

“Ye ken naught o’ the matter,” Macleod said, getting to his feet. “What’s more, I ha’ heard enough o’ your prattle for one day. Ye’ll come wi’ me now or I’ll make ye rue what ye did to Sir Hugo right here, afore everyone.”

Taking her by an arm, he gave her no choice, for she dared not resist him. Her cheeks flamed when more than one chuckle accompanied their departure, but she told herself she did not care. She had to make him understand.

Outside, she tried again. “Please, sir, you cannot mean to abandon Adela. You cannot simply ignore what they did.”

“Why not?” he demanded. “Ye made a fine fool o’
yourself, sending out the Lord kens how many messages to Sir Hugo, and ye’ve seen what came o’ that. Every man for miles about learned o’ them, and everyone believed ’twas Sir Hugo that scooped her up to his saddlebow. Now they’ll ken that we all stood by and watched villains abduct me daughter. But Sir Hugo were right about one thing.”

She wasn’t going to ask him what that was, but he grabbed her by both arms and put his face close to hers. “He were right to say the fault be yours alone, Sorcha Macleod. Whatever Adela’s fate be now, she can thank ye for it and no other.”

“Then
I’ll
find her,” Sorcha said, stifling dismay. “If it is my fault, as you all say, then I’ll put it right. You’ll see, I will!”

“Ye’ll do nae such daft thing,” he said, giving her a shake. “I forbid it. Nor will ye be making mischief at Lochbuie, for I’m sending ye home. I’d meant to send one boat in any event, because I’ve a duty to get word to Ardelve o’ what we learned today. I’ll send both wi’ ye, though, and go to Lochbuie wi’ Hector Reaganach. Since I promised two boats for his grace’s flotilla when he goes to swear fealty to the King, me lads can return to Lochbuie and collect me after they’ve seen ye home safe.”

“You can’t! Oh, Father, you mustn’t. What will people think? Not just of me, for I don’t care about that, but about poor Adela! You cannot abandon her when she did nothing to deserve what happened except have a sister who is a fool.”