by Alisa Adams
Tristan let him go. He was deep in thought. He knew that Gordon had intentionally left out that Fionnaghall needed a leader, and that he—Tristan—would be that leader. This would not sit well with Cenna.
He also knew that Red Munroe would try again, one way or another, to take Fionnaghall. Or take one of the sisters to get Fionnaghall.
* * *
Tristan headed back to the castle. He needed to gather the men he would need, weapons, food stuffs. He was eager to be off. Fionnaghall was a beautiful old castle. Yes, she was an ancient pile of stone that was falling down in some parts. But she sat there, majestically and regally looking out over the sea from the verdant green rolling hilltop she sat on. Her white stones shone brightly in the sun that reflected off of the sea. The lulling sound of the waves rolling onto the shore created a harmonious heartbeat like rhythm with the earth, the sun, the air. The breezes coming off the water smelled of salt and fresh air and...adventure. There was something about her that made your heart swell.
As he walked along, noticing the thick yellow gorse, the rolling green hills sweeping up higher into barren craggy peaks, the purple heather, and the beautiful lochs he had called home his whole life—he knew that all this was his brother’s. As Laird of Clan MacDonell, it would always be Gordon’s to lead. Gordon had offered him other holdings to be chief of but they hadn’t spoken to him as Fionnaghall had. Fionnaghall was his to lead, to be the caretaker of. At least for now. He grinned in anticipation and walked on faster.
When he entered the great hall of Castle Conall there came a cacophony of noise that crashed into his ears. He looked around the big space. The hearth was unlit as it was a warm day, but still the space was brightly lit as Godet and her sisters had made many small changes. The tapestries that covered the walls in this oldest and original part of the old castle were cleaned of their years of dust and soot from the hearth. They now hung brightly with all their silken threads able to shine now, catching every bit of light. The scenes of battles past were colorful and ones the MacDonells were proud of. They showed the history of the clan; hard won battles, the MacDonald lairds and their highland warriors fighting bravely throughout the ages. The men were glad that the ladies hadn’t tried to put up something newer, but instead marveled at the old battle scenes depicted on the tapestries. The sisters especially cooed over the excellent depiction of the horses in the battles; each muscle, each graceful arch of the horses’ necks were glowing with silken threads and made the horses seem to come alive.
The furniture was clean and polished, its wood glowing richly, and the floor was clean and no longer smelled of dust, dirt, and manure tracked in. Overall, the musty old smell of the castle was gone. In fact, Tristan smelled flowers. Looking around, he saw pots placed down the length of the huge, long table that took up most of the hall. In each pot were giant bouquets of wildflowers, no doubt picked by Ina.
Tristan looked up the giant sweeping stairs to where all the noise was coming from. He frowned at the velvet curtains that hung upon the massive floor-to-ceiling windows on the first landing. The stately curtains had hung on the big landing since he was a small boy and had hid behind them in games with Gordon. The big landing was at the top of the grand staircase, just before the stairs turned left and right on either side of the landing. He had always thought those curtains were a deep, dark blue. The girls had taken them down and cleaned them as well. They were now a rich cerulean blue reflecting the bright blue of the sky outside the very windows they hung upon. Tristan smiled. He never would have guessed that those velvet curtains had been that dirty!
The noise got louder and he realized the sisters were coming down the stairs. He backed up a few steps so that he would not get trampled, for they were so engrossed in their discussion they had not seen him at the bottom of the steps. Tristan was fascinated by their vehemence, but it was Cenna that his eyes could not look away from. Her tall, lithe, athletic form was grace and strength in all her curves. The leather corset belt she wore over her white shift and the waist of her dark green skirts showed off her impossibly tiny waist. He could see rectangles of silver embedded all around it and knew that it was the sleeves that carried her dirks. Cenna was never without her dirks. She was a powerful force in her passion that surrounded the argument the sisters were having. Her sisters did not agree with her in whatever it was they were arguing over.
As the sisters came down the steps, they saw him and each grew quiet.
Tristan nodded respectfully to his new sister-in-law.
“Lady Godet, how are you feeling today?” he asked her solemnly. He knew that Gordon had never been happier and was strutting around like a peacock. So proud was he that his new wife was already increasing with their babe.
“Tristan, dinnae be calling me lady now. Ye didnae before. I’m your sister now, no formalities if ye please,” she said to him with a happy smile. “And yes, I am feeling fine. The morning sickness is gone, thank goodness!”
“I am pleased to hear this,” Tristan said as he took her hand and guided her down the last few steps. If Gordon had his way, Godet would not leave her room, nay their bed. He treated her as if she was fragile glass now that she was carrying their babe.
Tristan showed her the same concern he knew his brother would in helping her down the stairs.
Cenna passed him, giving him a fierce frown. “I suppose ye were listening to our arguing?” she challenged him.
“Who’s been arguing?” Gordon called out as he entered the hall. He spotted his wife and was at her side in a few strides. He immediately pulled her to him and the two exchanged a few soft words to one another, each smiling in deep contentment.
“We are going with Cenna,” Ina said firmly. “And there willnae be any collie-shangles aboot it!”
Tristan turned from Cenna to look at Cenna’s youngest sister. She was petite, with hair of the palest blonde that trailed down her back in soft ringlets to just above her buttocks. Her eyes were a clear, pale blue and her voice had a lilting quality to it. She also had the odd habit of trying to speak in the old Scots language.
Tristan smiled wryly at the tiny, angelic girl who he knew to actually be a brave warrior, and a dramatic story teller. “No one is arguing with you. Yet. Though it was apparent that all of you were having a collie-shangle…is that what you call an argument? Exactly who is going with Cenna?” Tristan asked, looking from sister to sister.
“All of us,” Ina stated firmly.
Gordon, who had been nuzzling his wife’s hair, looked at Ina sharply then. “Absolutely not!” he said curtly. “Godet is not going.” He missed the stubborn frown his wife gave him, her silvery grey eyes narrowing at him.
“I feel fine, Gordon! You cannae order me around like this!” Godet said with a stomp of her foot.
“Oh dear,” Flori, who was the second eldest, said quietly.
“Now you feel fine! But a few days ago you couldnae keep any food down. You have lost too much weight. You cannae make the trip.” He added softly, “And I cannae risk you. It feels like I have only just found you. I cannae have you away from me for a day, or imagine if it was any longer than that. I cannae risk losing you. Not again.”
Godet placed her hand on his cheek; cupping it lovingly, she looked up into her huge warrior-of-a-husband’s face. “Oh, my love...”
Gordon grasped her hand, holding it to his face, “Godet, mo graidh, never again. Not after watching Mungan Munroe almost pull you over that cliff with him. I about died that day worrying I couldnae get to you in time,” he murmured softly to her.
Cenna scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Och, we had it all under control.”
Tristan turned to her. “Oh did ye now? Seems to me you were all clinging to yer sister in hysterics trying to hold her onto her horse, so she and her horse wouldnae be dragged over the cliff.”
“Bluebell is a strong stallion,” Cenna said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring up into Tristan’s face. “He wouldnae have gone over the cliff, that is all blether!�
� Cenna said accusingly as she stabbed her finger into Tristan’s chest.
“Och it was a terrible day,” Flori said as she nervously patted her dark hair, then lightly touched Godet’s back in a soothing gesture.
“I was about to run my lochaber through Mungan, that vile scunner, when ye and Gordon came upon us,” Cenna said to Tristan, sticking her chin in the air, daring him to deny she had it under control. “I was going to run him through so that he would let go of her, for it was that hold that held him dangling over the cliff. I meant to make him let go and fall.”
“Aye!” added Ina enthusiastically. “She was going to run him clear through, or perhaps chop Mungan’s hand where he clung so desperately for his very life to Godet’s ankle,” Ina began, relishing her embellished dramatic re-telling of the event, as she so loved to do. “Aye, she was about to stab him and force him to let go of our dear, beloved eldest sister, and then he would have plunged down, down the cliffs of Fionnaghall, very likely bouncing off all those horrific sharp rocks—until he landed in a bloody, pulpy mess there in the sea, where all the sea creatures who have sharp teeth and snapping claws could feast on his battered and lifeless body until there was naught left of him but—”
“Oh dear,” Flori exclaimed softly, as Godet covered her mouth and held her stomach.
“Aye Ina, och!” Cenna said, cutting off her little sister’s dramatic illustration of events. Cenna knew that Ina loved to wax on theatrically in a ghoulish telling of events. “Aye, all of that—” she waved her hand in the air, “—those...gruesome...things she said,” Cenna said, waving her arm about. “He was sure to plunge to his death. I couldnae let go of Godet but I was about to get a better handhold on her so that I had me other hand free to stab the vile mon.”
Tristan stepped up to her, almost nose to nose, and looked down into her eyes. “You failed warrior. If we hadnae gotten there, your sister would be dead—”
“Tristan!” Gordon’s voice was curt, commanding. “Enough!” He tightened his arm around his wife.
Tristan stepped back, but not before registering Cenna’s eyes. He could see that she knew he spoke the truth. Her eyes were furious, but hurt. She knew she had failed. She stood up straighter, her eyes holding his.
“Niver again!” she said strongly.
Tristan nodded his head to her, acknowledging her statement. “I believe ye Cenna,” he said quietly. “I would trust you with my back in battle.”
Tristan knew what she was feeling. It was never a good feeling to know you had let down a fellow warrior, and she was a warrior, through and through. He would indeed trust her with his back. Though he saw now that she was struggling with her pride.
“Perhaps ye shouldnae,” she said with an effort at remaining calm, her eyes narrowed to green slits, needing to get in the last word. “Niver again will you accuse me of failing,” she said in a low voice to him.
Tristan stopped what he was about to say to Gordon and looked back at her.
“Dinnae give me a reason to doubt ye, I know ye would as soon stick a dirk under me chin as throw it at an attacker.”
Cenna gave a short laugh and grabbed a dirk from her belt and twirled it, looking at him with one eyebrow raised and a serene grin on her face.
Tristan laughed and turned from her to speak to Gordon.
“Do ye expect me to take all these women?” he asked in a low voice to Gordon. “What about the mares?”
Gordon turned to them. “Your mares’ foals are only just weaned,” he said, for the sisters had arrived with their mares in foal to Godet’s stallion. Surely that may change their mind.
The sisters immediately started up again, their voices loud and chaotic as each fought to speak.
“We are coming!” Ina said loudly.
“You will need us,” Flori said firmly, in what was for her a loud voice.
“I want to go!” Godet added her voice to the others.
“The mares are fit and ready,” Cenna said, dismissing Gordon’s attempt to dissuade them. “What about Brigda? She would be useful,” Cenna asked, speaking of the woman who Gordon was supposed to marry—until he met Godet, that is. Brigda had not wanted Gordon any more than he wanted her. In fact, she was in love with someone else and had done her best to push Gordon away from her by acting as rude and vile as possible to everyone. But the girls had discovered her game, and found that she was a brave woman forced into a situation she had not wanted. Much like the sisters.
Godet said to Cenna, “She is off trying to find her Warwick. She will track him down to the end of the earth I think.”
Ina sighed dramatically. “Her long lost love, come back from a bitter and cruel deadly beating by her evil father upon finding the two lovers together, aye, back from the darkness of death just in time to rescue his lady love from sure peril, and at the very same hands that had laid him so low and sent him away…away from the woman who could not be his.” Ina sighed and clasped her hands together, and looked innocently at all the staring eyes focused on her. “What?” she asked them.
Tristan choked back a laugh. “I dinnae think it happened quite like that…”
“Well, twas her da that beat War, after all,” Ina said matter of factly in her lilting voice.
“Did he find them together? Truly?” Flori asked with surprise.
“Wrapped in each other’s arms, I imagine,” Ina said, looking up to the ceiling and closing her eyes in imagined bliss. “Her mockit, manky, mingin father dragged the lovers out of their romantic nest of bliss—”
“Ina!” Godet said sternly. “You know no such thing!”
“She shouldnae know of such things, you mean,” Cenna said under her breath.
Tristan was trying not to laugh.
“Oh dear me, Ina!” Flori admonished her quietly. “That is all so improper for such a young girl.”
“All that aside,” Tristan started, quickly interrupting the sisters before they could start in again on who knows what. “Flori,” he said, choking back his laughter at Ina, “ye know ye cannae go. Loughlin willnae let you anyway.”
Flori looked at Tristan with steel in her eyes, something Tristan had never seen in the gentlest of the sisters. “The mon doesnae own me, Tristan. He says I am his, but I dinnae think it means he owns me. Sards!” she exclaimed, then quickly covered her mouth, aghast at the foul word she had said.
“He said he is keeping you,” Cenna said, “of all the archaic things. I think that is different in some obscure way than that you are his. Either way, you are right and he doesnae own you, Flori,” Cenna said with a roll of her eyes.
“It is all so romantic,” Ina cooed. “You are his mo graidh, his beloved, just as Godet was Gordon’s. Oh, it is so sweet,” she sighed. “He is keeping you, you are his...” she whispered airily with her hands over her heart. “I hope someday a man keeps me…”
Tristan grinned down at the blonde angel. “I do believe there are many men that want to keep you, little one. You will need a guard just to keep them all away, perhaps Liam MacDonell or Robbie Ross to guard ye?”
“Tristan!” Cenna all but shouted at him. “She is far too young and besides, no man should say he is keeping a woman,” she said with disgust.
Tristan turned to her with a big, crooked grin. “You may keep me, my fierce warrior.”
Cenna rolled her eyes and shoved at his chest. “Oh please, such blether that comes out of your mouth you skiver! I would never, ever say I was ‘keeping’ a man, nor would I want to keep any man enough to say such a thing. It is just wrong for one person to keep another tis all.”
When Tristan gave her a mock pout at that, she growled, “Pog mo thoin!”
“Cenna!” Ina shrieked. “What would Aunt Hexy think? That is a terrible thing to say if it means what I think it means! Very unladylike!” Ina said with glee, staring in mock rebuke at her older sister, but she was clearly relishing what Cenna had said. It was another expression in the old Scots she could use and all her sisters knew it, for Flori and Godet
groaned out loud at Ina’s eager expression.
“I would be glad to kiss that delectable part of your body,” Tristan said in a voice so quiet it was for Cenna’s ears alone, his deep voice dropping another octave as his eyes traveled to Cenna’s taught, round buttocks. Her fierce warrior’s body was gracefully muscled from all her riding and weapons practice. Her legs were a mile long, her waist was so tiny he knew he could span it with his hands, her breasts were perky, and those bright crystal eyes of hers made him stupid.
“I swear I will drop you to the floor, Tristan!” Cenna growled, showing him her fist.
“Yes, please do,” he said huskily as he leaned closer to place his mouth by her ear. “And come with me…” he whispered into her ear, then pulled away and looked at her with an eyebrow raised and that teasing, challenging, crooked grin still on his mouth.
“Ugh!” Cenna groaned. “You see, Gordon? You see what I have to put up with?”
“Tristan, leave her be,” Gordon commanded, watching with keen eyes the interplay between the two. He stood there with his arm around Godet. They had shared glances at the interchange between his brother and Godet’s sister.
“Cenna! Lady Cenna!” came a voice from the top of the stairs.
Everyone looked up to see a tiny, grey-haired lady coming down the stairs. She wore an old fashioned tartan making up her dress, and her thinning grey hair was shooting in all directions out of the loose bun that threatened to fall sideways off her head.
“Yes, Aunt Hextilda?” Cenna said sweetly.
“Did I just hear ye tell someone to kiss yer arse?” she asked in a thick brogue.
Cenna groaned quietly under her breath.
Ina stepped eagerly forward as her aunt came down the last step to stand with the group.
“Aye she did, Aunt Hexy!” Ina said with a happy smile. “Pog ma thoin, she said. That’s a new one, I like it! I must remember that one, Aunt,” she said with a smile.
Aunt Hexy patted Ina on her shoulder. “Aye, it is a guid one. Comes in handy when facing a bowfin, boggin, slecher, sleekit, skiver I say!”