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Authors: Welfonder Sue-Ellen

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BOOK: Only For A Knight
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And praying the saints wouldn’t strike him dead at the lie, for were the truth known, he ne’er meant to let her go.

 

Feeling a near irrepressible urge to enforce that desire, he slid his arm round her waist, pulling her firmly against his chest. “Once we’ve reached Eilean Creag and you’ve received proper rest and care, you will see the rightness of my taking you there.”

 

“Nay, no rightness,” she shot back, her voice tight with conviction. “It has naught to do with you—I simply have no wish to go there.”

 

Robbie lifted a brow . . . not that she could see his face as he swung the garron away from the little lochan. Clicking his tongue, he nudged the beast’s sides and urged him forward.

 

With good fortune and no further mishaps, they’d reach Eilean Creag sometime well after compline.

 

Eilean Creag, his waiting betrothed, and a homecoming he now both relished and dreaded.

 

 

Much later and still a goodly distance from Glenelg’s narrow, green-wooded fastnesses, darkness began enveloping the walls of Eilean Creag Castle. Each passing hour sent more veils of shadowy-blue mist to curl round the stout stone towers and slide gently across the quiet, night-bound ramparts.

 

Indeed, all seemed at peace and only the most observant passerby would have caught movement atop the battlements, noting perhaps the pacing figure of a lone, broad-shouldered man. An imposing-looking figure of great height and impressive build who repeatedly lifted a hand to his brow to better scan the distant horizon.

 

But not even the most sharp-eyed onlooker would know that high above the dark and rippling surface of Loch Duich another, much slighter figure paced as well.

 

A decidedly female figure.

 

Soundly ensconced within a stuffy little tower room, this figure paid no heed to the horizon. Truth be told, the unusually tiny woman had taken measures to hide the loathsome loch and its foul night vapors from her view.

 

Resenting those oh-so-necessary efforts, she slid a sidelong glance at the chamber’s one rude table and eyed with increasing weakness the beckoning ewer of fine, strong ale. But such fortification could wait.

 

She needed her wits.

 

And, for the nonce, naught threatened her.

 

Loch Duich in all its silent bleakness lay harmlessly beyond the deliberately secured window shutters.

 

But even that precaution could not keep the chill night wind from blowing through the cracks in the shutter slats. Again and again, cold draughts whistled round her ears—finding and taunting her no matter where in the mean little room she tried to flee.

 

Still pacing, the quick-striding figure pressed her lips together in a tight line of perturbed irritation. Each wretched blast of the icy air proved a damning reminder that Sir Robert MacKenzie was taking his merry good time to make his way home to do his duty.

 

His duty to his father and his clan . . . and to her, Lady Euphemia MacLeod.

 

Not that his delay surprised her.

 

He’d already kept her whiling ten long years.

 

Ire consuming her, she paused to glare down at her betrothal ring. Its winking ruby, so large and heavy on her tiny finger, made cruel mockery of her diminutive stature.

 

Its size and worth, an obscene and contemptuous reflection of the rude little chamber, of how low in esteem the MacKenzies held her.

 

Her agitation mounting, Lady Euphemia touched a hand to her dark hair, patted the braids so tightly wound on either side of her face. Perfectly fine dark hair, even graced with a few strands of burnished red.

 

But only a few such strands and in tresses unfashionably thin and . . .
lank.

 

Hair as lackluster as her quite ordinary brown eyes.

 

As unimpressive as her embarrassingly flat bosom.

 

Anger, venomous and hot as bile twisting through her, Euphemia snatched up the ewer of ale and treated herself to a generous swig of strength—straight and fast-flowing from the ewer’s rounded lip.

 

Slamming down the jug with a loud
crack,
she could not control a quaver as her gaze darted about the pathetic chamber. A blasphemous excuse for a room, and—supposedly—given to her because it’d been Sir Robert’s boyhood quarters.

 

And because of her . . . ailments.

 

Or so her betrothed’s saintly-seeming stepmother had suggested the first time she and her two clack-tongued daughters had escorted Euphemia to the room, leading her up more stone steps and through more dark and chill passages than a single stronghold aught contain!

 

Only here, in Eilean Creag’s most remote and desolate corner, the lady Linnet had explained, would the delicate Lady Euphemia be secure from the various ‘air disturbances’ supposedly permeating every other inch of Clan MacKenzie’s formidable ancestral seat.

 

The Flemish tapestries and heavy brocade bed curtains adorning all other chambers.

 

The continual annoyance of the wafting smoke penetrating every nook and cranny of the stronghold—thick, choking ropes of eye-stinging unpleasantness e’er pouring out from the permanently overcrowded great hall with its ever-burning log fires and unfortunate proximity to the kitchens.

 

And then there were the dogs.

 

Duncan MacKenzie’s many dogs.

 

Euphemia scowled and pressed a hand to her breast, half expecting just the
thought
of the mangy beasts to unleash a bout of painful, hacking coughs.

 

Aye, she’d while better here, the lady Linnet had insisted, not batting an eye as she’d whisked Euphemia into the disgraceful little room and immediately set about stripping away the chamber’s every embellishment until only the barest furnishings remained.

 

Her chest tightening in vexation, Euphemia glared at the piteously naked floor, rubbed her small, fine-slippered foot back and forth across the well-swept and scrubbed wood planks. Nary a single bit of straw or dried herbs remained to lay siege to her sensitive nose.

 

Just as every other dust-collecting adornment and frippery had been gathered up and spirited away.

 

Misery washing over her, she flung herself down on the bare-stripped window bench, its cold, cushionless stone seat underscoring the bitterness roiling in her heart. A seething anger that had grown and festered ever since Sir Robert MacKenzie had sallied off to make his mark in the world so many long years ago—leaving
her
to brave the shambles of her fate.

 

A cruel destiny that had now landed her amongst her enemies and in this mean and shabby excuse for a chamber.

 

Fisting her hands in her lap, she bit back the urge to hurl a string of blackest oaths at the room’s damning bleakness.

 

Truth tell, she doubted hermits and anchorites lived as frugally.

 

But whether she secretly yearned for the beauty and rich trappings so evident throughout the rest of the MacKenzie stronghold or nay, fate had visited her with a condition that made this dismal little chamber her best refuge.

 

Even if she suspected the lady Linnet harbored other, more surreptitious reasons for sequestering her here, so distant from the teeming life and bustling activity pulsing through less remote corners of the loch-girt castle.

 

Euphemia sniffed, smoothed her tiny hands down the flat of her stomach. She, too, could be . . . devious. Knew ways to strike revenge into the most unsuspecting hearts.

 

Cold and cruel hearts.

 

Hearts that had cost her the very life-beat of her own.

 

At the thought, disembodied voices rose up to swirl in her head—accusatory snatches of converse, vile things whispered by the castle servants when they’d thought she couldn’t hear.

 

Cold-eyed malcontent.

 

A mealy-mouthed slip of beggarly bitterness too wee and thin-hipped to even think about meeting her soon-to-be husband’s conjugal demands—much less attract him into desiring their consummation.

 

Haughty and long-lipped.

 

“A shrew, they called me,” she swore, her voice a curdled whisper. “And mayhap I am . . . but with good reason,” she added with a tight little smile.

 

A contemptuous smile that remained in place as she stared into the gloom, her hands clenching and unclenching on her lap until, at last, the chill dampness from the window seat began creeping through her skirts, making her cough and shiver.

 

“Shrews can be clever,” she wheezed as she pushed to her feet, her breath labored with the effort.

 

Crossing the room, she sank onto her bed without even attempting to remove her clothes or even her finely-tooled kid leather shoes. She laced her fingers across her stomach and glared holes into the dark wood of the unadorned bed ceiling, hating her weakness and damning the need that sent her into sleep garbed so uncomfortably.

 

But undressing would expend too much energy, and along with her wits she needed her strength.

 

Only so could she wreak the worst revenge on Sir Robert MacKenzie.

 

“Bleed him white, I will,” she vowed through her teeth.

 

And to the last inch of his odious self-pleasing soul.

 

 

“I knew the maid would not prove pleasing.”

 

Sir Marmaduke Strongbow folded his hands on the high table and slid a pointed glance at the lady Linnet, one of the few other souls yet awake at this late hour. Most of the castle folk already slumbered where they could, their plaids and pallets providing their bed-places, their snores and various shuffling noises rising up to herald yet another tedious night’s passing in the smoke-hazed cavern of Eilean Creag’s once so joyous great hall.

 

Joyous until the arrival some days past of Euphemia MacLeod and all her aggrieved sighs and posturings.

 

Wishing fervently that she felt otherwise about a lass who aught stir one’s pity at the very least, Linnet refrained from commenting on her long-time friend’s remark and continued to sip her wine in carefully controlled silence.

 

“I know you knew it, too, my lady.”

 

Linnet’s brow knitted. She took a deeper sip of the blood-red Gascon wine.

 

“You do not fool me, lady, and never could.” Sir Marmaduke gently took the wine cup from Linnet’s hand and returned it to the table. “Will you not tell an old friend why you seem so . . . untroubled by her?”

 

Linnet sighed, began tracing circular designs on the high table’s pristine white linen covering. She also did her best to resist being captured by her friend’s penetrating, all-seeing gaze.

 

“She would banish the very birdsong simply by walking through a wood, wouldn’t she?” she finally said, making the words a statement.

 

“I am loath to speak ill of any woman, as you well know,” he said, clearly picking his words with care. “But the devil burn my bones if I do not at least voice my . . . concern.”

 

He looked at her, the expression on his face almost loosing her tongue. “I love Robbie as my own son, see you. I would know him pleased with his given bride.”

 

“Then do not suffer yourself to worry, for I promise you he shall be more than content with his chosen mate,” Linnet said, fixing her own gaze on the fat, red-glowing fire log still burning in the hearth. “The fullness of time will resolve any missteps the fates may visit upon the lad.”

 

“Think you?” Sir Marmaduke sounded skeptical. “Some would say the fullness of time seems to have run its course,” he groused, his brow lowering in a rare expression of ill humor. “I would not mention it did I not desire the lad’s best—and I warrant he has exhausted whatever largesse of time the good saints would allow him. He ought to have been here days ago and his betrothed frets and paces in her quarters nightly, eager and impatient for his return.”

 

“She is impatient, aye,” Linnet conceded, not adding that she suspected the maid’s irritability had little to do with a fierce yearning to welcome Robbie into her conjugal embrace.

 

“And none of this . . . disturbs you?”

 

“I have told you it does not.” Linnet placed a reassuring hand on her friend’s well-muscled arm. “Let that be enough for you.”

 

“Let it be?” Sir Marmaduke snorted. “As
he
is letting it be?” He aimed a deliberate gaze at the smoke-blackened ceiling. “I vow your lord husband is wearing the soles from his boots pacing the parapet-walk day after day, night for night, scanning the horizon. To be sure, that one has not wasted a second glance at the MacLeod lass since her arrival, is scarce aware of her
influence

 

“My lord Duncan has other matters on his heart,” Linnet agreed, pouring a measure of wine for Sir Marmaduke and setting the pewter cup in front of him. “The return of his son and, too, the undoubted success of sealing his alliance with Hugh Out-with-the-Sword MacLeod.”

 

She tapped Sir Marmaduke’s shoulder, slid the wine cup closer to his hands when he continued to ignore its offering.

 

“Observant as you are, even you cannot deny that nary a galley has been turned back from the narrows of the Kyle of Lochalsh since the lady Euphemia’s arrival. Nor has a single fury-spitting complainant darkened our door, seeking redress against the MacLeods,” she said, pleased when her friend lifted and drank the wine.

 

“As clan chief, such welcome peace will be clouding my husband’s eyes and ears to any misgivings others may hold against Out-with-the-Sword’s daughter.”

 

Sir Marmaduke slammed down the wine cup, swiped his sleeve over his mouth. “In days of old, your liege husband would have dealt with Hugh MacLeod using naught but cold steel and a torch flame.”

 

Reaching for the wine jug, he replenished his cup and tossed down its contents in one agitated gulp. “Often enough were the times Duncan kept that lout of a MacLeod from stretching his fool chain across the narrows, imperiling every hapless galley attempting to sail through these waters lest they surrendered an outrageous toll into Out-with-the-Sword’s greedy hand,” he said, his deep-seeing stare daring her to deny it.
BOOK: Only For A Knight
11.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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