The Intended (48 page)

However, men approaching drew Gavin’s
attention earthward again. The tall one scolding the running grooms
had to be Allan, steward to the last four MacInnes lairds. The
man’s graying hair and beard bespoke his advanced years, while his
powerful frame--slightly bent though it was--told of a strength
necessary for the position he had held for so long.

Dismounting from his horse, Gavin nodded to a
groom and handed off his reins as he exchanged greetings with the
bowing steward.

“You did indeed arrive just as we had
expected, m’lord. Not a day too soon nor a day too late.” The old
man’s hands spread in invitation toward the entrance of the castle.
“I took the liberty a day or so ago to have Gibby, the cook, begin
preparing a feast for your arrival.”

He paused as a dozen household servants,
along with a dwarfish, sickly looking priest, came out to welcome
the new laird.

“Your neighbor, the Earl of Athol,” Allan
continued, “has been quite anxious for you to arrive, m’lord. If
you wish, I can send a man over now and invite...”

“Nay, Allan. That can wait for a day or two.”
Gavin’s gaze took in once again the towers at either end of the
courtyard. “While my men settle themselves in, I want you to take
me through this keep.”

The older man nodded his compliance as he
fell in step with the new laird, who was striding toward the south
tower. “You might, m’lord, wish to start in the main part of the
house--what we call the Old Keep--and work toward the kitchens and
the stables in the north wing. There is very little to see in the
south wing.”

Gavin halted abruptly, glanced up at the
south tower, and then looked directly at the steward.

“Much of this wing was ruined by the fire,
m’lord,” Allan explained quickly. “From the courtyard, it looks
sound, but inside, especially where the wing joins the Old Keep,
the damage was extensive. The roof is gone in some places, and I’ve
had the outside entrances to the building barred to keep...”

“Barred?” Gavin interrupted, staring at the
tower.

“Aye. The worst of the damage is on the far
side, though, where the tower looks over the loch. That’s where
they were all sleeping when the fire started, God rest their souls.
By the time the rest of us in the Old Keep and the north wing
smelled the smoke, the whole south wing was ablaze.”

Gavin strode to the stone wall and peered
through the slits of the lower windows. He could see shafts of
light coming through the rafters of the floors above.

“Why do you allow servants into this wing?”
Gavin asked shortly, making the old man’s face suddenly flush red.
“Those upper floors look dangerous, even from here.”

“No living person, m’lord, has stepped foot
in this wing since the fire,” the steward responded with
conviction. “As I said, I myself had all the doors barred and the
inside corridors walled up. With the exception of some badger...or
a fox, perhaps...” His voice trailed off.

Gavin stepped back from the building and
looked upward at the windows in the tower, his eyes finally coming
to rest on the last one in the top floor. “I saw the shutter in
that chamber move.”

The steward stared briefly at the tower
windows, then looked at his new master.

“Aye, m’lord. We see the same thing from time
to time, but ‘tis just the wind.” As the new laird moved along the
front of the edifice, Allan followed along. “The smoke was
everywhere, and the stairwells leading up to it are ruined. Of that
I’m certain. The roof there may be sound, though, and a bird or two
may have taken up lodging there. And wings are what you’d be
needing to make your way into the tower.”

Gavin peered up again at the looming tower. A
number of shutters were banging against stone in the rising breeze.
Nature, it appeared, had the upper hand in every window...but one.
The window that he had seen open before, now stood closed against
the north wind.

So the birds of the Highlands can latch a
shutter, Gavin thought to himself. Turning without another word, he
started for the main entrance of the Old Keep, his steward in
tow.

*

No one ever dared step into her domain.

The crumbling, fire-damaged roofs, the gaping
holes in the walls overlooking the sheer cliffs of Loch Moray, and
the scorched, unsteady floors all combined to make the south wing
of Ironcross Castle a forbidding place to enter. But as Joanna made
her way quietly through a blasted room toward the wooden panel and
the secret passageway that would take her down to the subterranean
tunnels and caverns, she suddenly sensed that someone had been
through there, and quite recently.

She paused and looked about her in the
encroaching dusk. There was little to be seen. Dropping softly to
her hands and knees on a plank by the doorway, she peered closely
at the ash-covered floor of the passage beyond the door. She
herself always avoided those corridors for fear of being discovered
by some intrepid soul snooping in this wing.

Squinting in the growing gloom, she saw them
clearly--the faint imprints left behind by someone coming from the
Old Keep. Whoever it was had gone in the direction of her father’s
study...or what was left of it. Quietly, Joanna rose and, hugging
the wall, followed the passage toward the study.

Standing rigidly beside the door, she peeked
inside the charred room. The chamber was empty. She peered into the
murky light of the corridor again. Since she had just come from the
top floor, whoever had come in here must have continued on and
descended the nearly impassable stairwell to the main floor.

Relieved, she wrapped her cloak tightly about
her and glanced inside the study again. Her chest tightened with
that familiar sorrow as she stepped inside the fire-ravaged
chamber. Nothing had changed here since that terrible night. All
lay in ruin. Hanging from one wall were the scraps of burned rag
that had once been a tapestry. Elsewhere a scorched table and the
broken sticks of a chair. Everything ruined.

Everything but the foolish portrait hanging
over the mantel of the fireplace. She stared loathingly at the face
that smiled faintly back at her. Her throat knotted at the sight of
herself, of the picture of perfection she had once been. What
vanity, she thought angrily.

She wanted to cross the room and take hold of
the fire-blackened frame. She wanted to pull it down, smash it,
destroy it as it should have been destroyed long ago. But the
unsteady floor stopped her approach. From experience, she knew
every loose board, every dangerous plank. Nay, she hadn’t survived
this ordeal so long just to break her neck falling through the
floor. But those eyes dared her. Challenged her to come ahead. She
hated that painting. Why should this blasted thing survive when no
one else had? No one, including herself.

As a tear welled up, Joanna dashed at the
glistening bead. Turning away from that vain and beautiful face,
she pulled her hood forward and headed for the darkness of the
passages that would take her deep into the earth, where no one
would see what she had become...a ghostly shadow of the past, a
creature of the night, burned and ugly, miserable. Dead.

Disappearing into the dark, Joanna MacInnes
thought once again of her poor mother and father, of all the
innocent ones who had perished in the blaze with them.

Well, it was her destiny, now, to hide and
await her chance for justice.

*

As the fire’s embers burned out beneath, a
huge log crashed down, sending crackling flames and sparks flying
in the Great Hall’s huge fireplace.

The new laird’s face was in shadow as he
looked around at the young features of the three men sitting with
him. Scattered about the Great Hall, servants and warriors slept on
benches and tables, and a number of dogs lay curled up amid the
rushes covering the stone floor. Most of the household was already
asleep, either here or in the stables and outbuildings, but Gavin
had kept these three trusted warriors with him. In the short time
since they had all arrived, these men had been tasked with
determining what needed to be done to secure the castle. Each man
had gone about his business, and now the Lowlander leaned forward
to hear them.

Edmund began. “I heard with my own ears the
steward passing on your wish to have the south wing opened for you
to view in the morning...”

“Aye,” Peter broke in, gruff and impatient.
“And a couple of the grooms and the old smith hopped to the task of
pulling down one of the blocking walls.”

“The steward has fine control of the castle
folk,” Edmund added admiringly.

“That he does,” Peter agreed. “Though a body
would think barring a door might have been plenty good enough.
Building a wall to stop trespassing!” The thickset warrior spat
critically into the rushes on the floor. “Why, most of the servants
are too old even to lift a latch unaided!”

Gavin interrupted the two men. “I can see
Allan’s concern. He told me that after the fire, he wanted to be
sure that no one would go in that wing, not until such time as Lady
MacInnes or the next laird came along to go through what was left.”
The Lowlander sat back and lifted a cup as he looked about the
silent hall. “With so many accidents plaguing the lairds over the
years, I am certain it shows good judgment to leave everything
untouched. What did you find, Andrew?”

Andrew cleared his throat and spoke. “In my
ride over to the abbey, m’lord, I ran into some of the Earl of
Athol’s men heading north. They all spoke of how strange it was
here after the fire. None of the last laird’s warriors stayed
behind, they said. It seems that they all fled into the mountains
as if they had the devil himself on their tails.”

Gavin drained his cup and put it back on the
table as he turned to Andrew. “What can you tell us of the
abbey?”

“‘Tis an odd place, that abbey. Nary a league
from here, following the shore of the loch, but ‘tis nothing but a
heap of stones and ruined wall in the shelter of the high hills.
The place is surrounded by pasture and farmland and some crofters’
cottages, though there is an odd lack of farm folk about the
place.”

“But there are religious there, we were
told.”

“That I don’t know, m’lord,” Andrew replied.
“Those who remain live in the center of the ruined cloister, in
stone cottages they’ve patched together from the old
buildings.”

“Is there an abbot, or someone in charge?”
Gavin pressed.

“Aye, a woman they call Mater.”

“A woman?” Peter blurted out.

“Aye,” Andrew responded slowly. “They’re all
women there. All that I saw before they disappeared, at any rate.”
He paused. “And that abbey, m’lord, seems quite unprotected,
sitting there in open as ‘tis!”

“And isn’t that like these Highlanders,”
Peter huffed, “leaving a pack of women...”

Gavin felt the hackles on his neck rise as
his attention was drawn to the far end of the Great Hall. In a dark
corner by the passage into the kitchens and the north wing,
something had moved. A shadow...something...he was certain of it.
Peering into the darkness, the firelight at his back, Gavin studied
the sleeping figures on the benches as he continued to listen to
his men. The servants had been dismissed hours ago. Other than the
three men sitting with him, it was unlikely that anyone else in the
keep would be roaming about.

“I took it upon myself, m’lord, to tell Mater
that you would be stopping by yourself in a day or two. To pay them
a visit.”

“That’s fine,” Gavin answered. He shook his
head slightly at his fanciful imaginings and filled his cup with
more ale. He was tired, he decided, dismissing the notion with a
last glance at the far end of the Hall. His first night in
Ironcross Castle, and already he was falling prey to the
strangeness of the place. Suddenly, he realized one of the dogs had
come slowly to his feet. The gray cur trotted toward the kitchens.
Pushing the mug away, the laird came to his feet as well.

“Also, the Earl of Athol’s men mentioned that
he’d be giving you a visit before the week’s end.” Andrew’s eyes
followed his leader as Gavin rounded the table where they sat.
“‘Tis only a day’s ride, they said, and if that’s
unsuitable...”

“That’s fine,” Gavin answered absently
without turning around. “All three of you, get your rest. There is
a great deal to be done tomorrow.”

The three men watched in silence as their
master walked quietly toward the darkened kitchens.

*

These newcomers were going to be more than a
nuisance, she thought. They were going to be downright dangerous.
And there were so many of them.

Coming out of the passages after the sounds
of feasting had died away, Joanna had been surprised by the number
of people remaining in the Great Hall. From past experience she
knew that she would have more chance of finding food there than in
the kitchens, but clearly that plan would no longer work. She only
hoped the usually tightfisted Gibby had not locked everything away,
as was her custom.

Entering the kitchens, Joanna peered into the
corners for stray sleepers, but with the warmer weather, not a body
was in evidence. The embers in the huge fireplace flickered, and
she could see the rows of bread dough rising into loaves on a long
table.

Moving to a sideboard, she found a large bowl
with broken scraps of hard bread. Scooping out a handful, Joanna
placed the bread carefully in the deep pocket of her cloak, then
cocked her head to listen. With more people around, she would have
to be far more careful than she had been in the past. Being
discovered would mean the end of her plans. It would be the death
of her only wish--the one that had been driving her to hang on to
her threadbare existence. If she were discovered, there would
surely be no dispensing of justice to those who had murdered her
parents. Of that she was certain.