Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (8 page)

“Then I shall bid you a good night, fair lady.” He took her hand and brushed a light kiss across her knuckles before he strode for the tower door.

It took all his strength not to run.

But once he’d stepped into the enveloping shadows of the stairwell, and knew himself shielded from her dark, all-seeing eyes, he gave in to his frustration and descended the downward winding stairs at a most
un
knightly pace.

Chapter Four

H
E’D STEPPED INTO THE WRONG GREAT HALL.

Or he hadn’t, and the transformation leaping out at him from every nook and cranny was the reason his da had dragged his feet and muttered imprecations beneath his breath every step of their way down the winding turnpike stair.

Frozen by disbelief and no little irritation, Magnus stood in the shadows near the stair-foot and surveyed the early morning scene. As in every hall at such an hour, men sat huddled in plaids around the crackling log fire, its reddish glow illuminating their sleep-bleary faces.

Others yet sprawled upon their pallets while not a few still lolled at the trestle tables, their heads resting on folded arms. Or, in some cases, in pools of spilled and soured ale. Someone somewhere plucked at the strings of a lute.

His brother Hugh, no doubt, though he could not be sure as too much darkness yet filled the smoky hall for him to pick out his youngest sibling amongst the gathered kinsmen.

Nevertheless, enough pitch-pine torches sputtered and hissed in their iron-bracketed holders along the walls for him to well assess the damage.

Even if some would call the differences . . .
improvements.

Sensing movement, Magnus shot out a hand and curled firm fingers around his father’s elbow, deftly staying the old laird’s feet before he could slink back up the stairs.

“What folly is this?” Magnus cut the air with his free hand, indicated the vastness of a hall he scarce recognized as being theirs. “Saints of glory, but I have now seen it all. This is too much . . . !”

Donald MacKinnon gave an uncomfortable shrug. “The years have not been kind to us, son. Can you not see the changes as long-needed enhancements?”

Magnus said nothing. God helping him, the only
enhancement
he could endorse was the layer of pleasantly scented meadowsweet someone had sprinkled atop the newly spread floor rushes.

Everything else he could do without.

Even the pleasing aroma of wood smoke.

His temples beginning to throb again, he drew a deep breath and released it slowly. He
liked
the choking sting of smoldering peat. Relished it, in fact. He’d cut his teeth on its smoky-sweet bite and ne’er resented that, save on rare celebratory occasions, log fires proved too dear for Clan Fingon’s thin-sided purses.

But the log fire wasn’t all that vexed him.

New tapestries hung everywhere, jewel-toned colors screaming their worth, while scattered groupings of heavy silver candelabrums, each one topped with real wax tapers, crowded the long tables.

Of such luxurious fripperies, he wanted naught.

Not when the plentitude had been paid for with
merks
taken from the Lady Amicia’s overflowing coffers.

And without doubt they had been.

The guilty flush stealing across his father’s face confirmed it.

“I cannot condone this.” Magnus frowned, each colorful thread in the new tapestries, each eye-catching gleam of silver glinting off the candlesticks, a dirk thrust in his pride. “We can ne’er repay such splendor.”

“You needn’t glare holes in me,” Donald MacKinnon defended the opulence. With a show of strength that would have delighted Magnus at any other time, he shook himself free of his son’s grasp.

Belligerence sparking in his eyes, the aged laird thrust out his chin. “Nary a coin from your lady wife’s dowry went toward any of this,” he declared. “’Tis wedding gifts you’re a-looking at—all of it. From the MacLeans, and from their sundry friends and allies throughout the Isles. Even the high table—”

“The high table?”
Magnus started at once for the raised dais at the upper end of the hall.

“Aye, so I said—the MacLeans gifted us with a new one, complete with a finely carved laird’s chair.” His father hurried to catch up with him. “They even sent along a matching chair for your lady.”

Magnus could only grunt in response. The neck opening of his tunic suddenly proved too tight for him to press a more coherent reply past his throat.

Mmmmmph
would have to suffice.

That, and a good dark scowl.

Furtive glances slid his way from those men already awake and breaking their fast, but each time he glanced in anyone’s direction, the offender made a great show of buttering a bannock or leaning down to offer a tidbit to one of the many hounds begging about the hall.

Other eyes observed him, too.

Eyes well-hidden in shadow so none would notice the simmering malice a certain someone couldn’t quite tamp down since the MacKinnon heir and his dastard father had emerged from the stair tower—for their appearance gave irrefutable confirmation that the morning’s attempt to have done with the ever-greedy lairdie had met failure.

“I kept my own chair,” Donald MacKinnon prattled, giving his son a sidelong look. “It is no so fine as the new, but will serve for the now.”

“The
whole
of the old table would have served,” Magnus snapped, stepping around a sleeping clansman. “A mercy, Da, that table has stood on the dais since before your grandsire’s day. Christ’s wounds—what happened to your sense of family tradition?”

“The only tradition this clan has hanging ’bout its neck is that damnable curse,” the old laird muttered as they made their way past row upon row of bench-lined trestle tables.

New trestles and benches,
Magnus noted, the discovery causing the throbbing at his temples to increase to a most disagreeable hammering across the whole of his forehead.

“The old table had to go, and none too soon,” his father insisted, puffing out his cheeks. “Its wood had grown wormier than a lochan’s bank in spring.”

“I dinna care . . .” Magnus froze, his heart slamming hard against his chest. “Saints alive—they are grown men!”

His jaw dropping, he stared toward the magnificent new high table but saw only the two strapping young men slouched fast asleep across its black-gleaming surface.

His younger brother, Hugh, snored, his head resting mere inches from a platter of untouched oatcakes. Hugh’s burnished auburn hair, so like Magnus’s own if a wee shade lighter, glinted gold in the candlelight.

Dugan, his middle brother, and dark as Colin Grant or any MacLean, slept too soundly to snore. He’d cushioned his strikingly handsome face on arms that looked every bit as well-muscled as Magnus’s own.

The transformation clutched hard around Magnus’s rib cage and made breathing difficult. Saints, where had the time gone?

“God have mercy,” he got out at last, his deep voice thick with emotion. “They are grown men,” he said again, and ran a none-too-steady hand through his hair.

A few short years on the tourney circuit and his spindly-legged little brothers now looked to match him in size and brawn. Dugan even sported a lush and curly beard!

Magnus scrunched his eyes, blinked a few times, half-expecting these two strangers to be miraculously restored to the smooth-faced, skinny-shouldered youths he remembered. When next he looked, though, no such change manifested.

“Hech, laddie,” his father snorted, lowering himself into his chair. “Did you think to come home and find your brothers yet beardless?”

“I thought . . .” Magnus shook his head, blew out a quick breath. “I canna say. I do not know what I thou—”

“You ought think of the depredations this household has suffered and be glad-hearted to have a bride able and willing to help you out of these ill-plagued times.” Dagda plunked two wine flagons on the high table, then poured a brimming cup for Donald MacKinnon.

Leveling a stern look at Magnus, she clucked her tongue. “Consider the good it will do your brothers to have a new fleet of galleys to command. They are men full seasoned now, both too old to waste their days lolling about this broken-down pile o’ stanes with naught to do but sing verses to moonbeams and swing their swords at dust motes.”

Magnus smiled at her—one of the rare times he’d smiled at all in recent weeks, and of a certainty, his first since setting foot on MacKinnons’ Isle.

He also noted the increased number of silver strands in the dark braids wound tightly around her head. And there was a new, ne’er-before-there puffiness beneath her eyes.

Looking at her, something hot and jabbing caught at his throat. Far from young before he’d left, Coldstone’s e’er-capable seneschal had aged much in his absence.

“Ah, but you speak from my heart, dear Dagda,” he vowed, purposely laying on a light tone. “I, too, would see my brothers well-occupied and know this holding in finest order . . . including its once-great fleet.” He accepted the wine cup she offered him, took a sip. “I would but see to these ambitions with my own good coin. There alone we differ.”

“I warned he would see this proxy marriage as an ill-advised adventure.” Janet stepped from the shadows, a large platter of green cheese and hot, crusty bread balanced against her hip.

She slid a heated glance to the window embrasure across the hall where Lady Amicia sat listening to Colin Grant strum tunes on Hugh’s borrowed lute.

Following her gaze, Magnus’s brows snapped together. His wife—wanted or nay—had removed her cloak, and torchlight spilling into the deep-set alcove caressed each one of her lush curves and cast a high shine onto her glossy, black-gleaming braids.

Most annoying of all, she was beaming at Colin Grant!

His jaw clamping, Magnus turned back to the high table. He’d have a word with his womanizing friend later.

Battle-injured or nay.

“. . . Magnus will soon be sending her away,” Janet was saying, her voice ringing with pettiness. “Their marriage is not legitimate without a proper bedding, and he does not want her. Not her riches or her . . . her body!”

Magnus near spewed his wine.

His wife’s delectable body had occupied him far longer than any present would guess.

Truth was, were he made differently, he’d march across the hall this minute, flip up her skirts, and show the world just how much he wanted her! How very able he was to enjoy the bounteous charms his lute-strumming friend ogled so freely, damn his serenading hide.

Janet set her platter of cheese and bread on the table. “Without a bedding—”

“Bedding?”
Dugan’s eyes snapped open. “What fair maid is in need of a tumble?” Sitting upright, he glanced round. “I shall tender my services to any lass in need thereof!” he announced, a roguish grin spreading across his face . . . until his gaze fell upon Magnus.

“By the Rood—Magnus!” Leaping to his feet, he bounded around the table to throw his arms around Magnus in a bone-crushing hug.

After a moment, he stepped back to give his older brother a thorough and sweeping scrutiny. “Sakes, but it is good to see you . . . even if I can scarce keep my eyes open to look upon you at this scourge of an ungodly hour.”

“I’ll second that about the hour,” Hugh broke in, pushing to his own feet. But he flashed Magnus a broad smile as he came forward, his arms opened wide in welcome.

Grown just as tall and broad-shouldered as Dugan, he clasped Magnus to him in a fierce embrace. “Aye,” he declared, releasing him, “much as it pleases me to know you home, I could have done without Dagda awakening us in the middle of the night, claiming you would have important words with us, and then you taking forever and a day to hie yourself down here.”

Magnus cuffed his youngest brother on the shoulder. “If I mind aright, we e’er broke our fast before sunrise. Mayhap you ought retire a bit earlier of a night and not be out and about until the small hours?”

Hugh blinked, couldn’t quite stifle another yawn. “We have not been idle. There has been good reason to—”

“I ken what you’ve been about. But for now, I am thinking a bit of fresh air will help chase the sleep from your eyes.” Crossing the dais, Magnus threw open the shutters of the nearest window.

At once, damp, gusty wind swept in to whip the edges of the newly hung tapestries and gutter not a few of the finely tapered beeswax candles lining the high table.

Enjoying the little disturbance more than a grown man should, Magnus cleared his throat and hardened his jaw—cautionary measures to hide the satisfaction he took in the blustery weather squelching even such ineffectual evidence of his trampled pride.

Flemish wall rugs and candles so delicate they could not withstand a wee breath of fine Highland air!

“Guidsakes, where were you, man?” Dugan caught his ear. Scratching his beard, he gave a great stretch. “We sat here like dolts for well over an hour.”

“Ho, Dugan! You have not touched a single oatcake,” their father cut in, sliding the platter of bannocks toward his middle son. “Eat some afore you stop growing.”

Dugan hooted. “Not so! I ate six of ’em, each one smeared with butter and honey—and I would have wolfed down more had I not fallen asleep waiting on you and Magnus to show your faces.”

“Men have things to do of a morning, never you mind.” The old laird snatched up his wine cup, tossed down a hearty gulp.

“What things?” Hugh wanted to know. His gaze on their father, his russet brows drew together. “I ken that look on you. Something is amiss here and I would know what it is.”

Hugh’s clear blue eyes narrowed. “Aye, I would hear the whole of it, and so would Dugan. We are no longer wee bairns to be spared ill tidings.”

Donald MacKinnon’s face turned mottled red. “It was nothing and I forbid anyone to speak of it.” Slamming down his wine cup, he glared round the table.

Even Dagda and Janet received a glower fierce enough to scorch blood.

“Now I know something is underfoot.” Bracing his hands on the polished surface of the new high table, Hugh leaned forward to within inches of his father’s tight-lipped face. “I will not leave be until—” Hugh broke off at once, sniffing the air as he straightened. “Lucifer’s knees, when was the last time you had a bath?” he demanded, clenched fists on his hips. “You smell as if you’ve been sleeping in the cesspit.”