The Scot's Oath

by Heather Grothaus

  The crowd broke out in exclamations again, and in their midst a thin man with an odd, potbelly stood, his black hair combed back from a high widow’s peak that pointed to his thin beard.

  The man’s servant announced him. “Lord Adolphus Paget, Viscount Elsmire.”

  Iris tried to stifle her gasp, and her fingers itched for her quill and paper, even as her heart trilled in her chest, so close to danger herself now.

  “Lord Hargrave, are you saying that this man from some godforsaken, primitive Scots island”—Lord Paget extended his arm toward Padraig—“claims openly not only to be that monster’s son, but is demanding that he now somehow has a right to Darlyrede House, which you have built with your own hands?”

  This is a farce, Iris realized. He’s memorized it as a verse from a manuscript. Lord Paget couldn’t know where Padraig Boyd was from unless Hargrave had told him beforehand.

  “I’ve given Lord Hargrave leave to say what he would, sir,” Padraig said in a cautionary voice, drawing the scrawny man’s attention. “But as we’ve nae yet met, I’ll thank you to keep your opinion a bit closer to the vest, if you ken my meaning.”

  A thrill of pride raced up Iris’s spine. Perhaps it wasn’t the way the nobility in the hall spoke, but she had to admit, Padraig Boyd’s warning was very effective.

  Hargrave made placating motions with his hands. “Lord Paget, if you please.”

  But Lord Paget apparently did not please. “If I ken your meaning?” He winced at Padraig. “Good lord. You can’t possibly expect decent folk to accept that you have any right at all to even a crumb of bread from Lord Hargrave’s table.”

  “Darlyrede House was stolen from my father. As his heir, it is my duty to reclaim it.”

  “Is that just so?” Paget challenged. “And you can prove your legitimacy? Present at your own conception, were you?” He twittered at his own joke.

  “Aye,” Padraig answered solemnly. “Shortly thereafter, I reckon.”

  There were a handful of sniffling snickers.

  “Friends, Master Boyd, please,” Hargrave intervened, the look of pleading on his face infuriating, considering it could only be he who had set this event in motion. “Allow me to finish.”

  Adolphus Paget gave a bow toward the lord’s table. “Forgive me for the interruption, Lord Hargrave. I could not help but come to your defense.” He sat.

  Hargrave laid his hand upon his breast and gave him an understanding nod before addressing the crowd once more, his posture totally at ease after such a scene. “As I said, I have welcomed Master Boyd into my home until such a time that our king shall give his judgment as to whose right it is to claim the title of Baron Annesley. And so I vow before you all—friends, family, valued servants, and Master Boyd, himself: my household and I shall fully cooperate with any inquiry set forth by Henry or by his servant, Sir Lucan Montague. I am prepared to accept his ruling without question and without gall. If I am decided against… well, so be it. I shall assist with Darlyrede House’s transition in any way I can.”

  He looked directly at Padraig now and raised his cup. “May the best man win.” There was a bold glint in his eyes, cold, cunning. He swept his chalice toward the crowd. “To Darlyrede.”

  The answering huzzahs did much to mask the excited twittering of the guests, but Iris was so rattled that she was late picking up her cup and practically missed the toast to the estate’s success. Lucan caught her eye for a fleeting moment, and she could see the solemn concern reflected in her brother’s face.

  At her side, Padraig sat and returned his chalice to the tabletop, where it was promptly attended to by the cupbearer. Music filled the hall then, as the string of servants began to snake through the maze of tables depositing the platters and chargers laden with food.

  “Nae awkward at all,” he muttered grimly.

  “Perhaps, yes. But you handled yourself very well.”

  He turned his head to look into her eyes and, as usual, his gaze held more words than were released from his lips. “I had a good teacher.”

  “No,” Iris argued quietly, fussing with her napkin while her stomach flipped at his direct, honest attention. If there was a single word that could be used to describe the man at her side, perhaps it was honest. And perhaps it prompted Iris’s own transparency of thought. “As your tutor, I would have strongly advised against what you did. That was entirely Padraig Boyd a moment ago. And I think it was perfect.”

  His dark brows flinched toward each other in surprised curiosity. He leaned closer—perhaps only a fraction of an inch toward her—but Iris could sense him once more through the sensitive silk of her sleeve.

  “Beryl—”

  A platter clanged on the table between their places just then, startling them both from their concentration on each other and prompting them to sit upright as aproned servers swarmed about their table. The moment was gone, and it was likely just as well.

  Iris blew a silent breath through her lips. She was forgetting herself. Which wasn’t unreasonable, as she was a lady who was playing a maid, who was playing a governess, who was playing a lady. It had nothing at all to do with Padraig Boyd, she told herself.

  “Hargrave’s up to something,” Iris whispered after a woman set an empty platter each before her and Padraig. “That was all just a performance.”

  Padraig huffed. “You suppose?” He picked up his eating knife, but Iris laid her hand on his wrist at once, staying him.

  “What have I done now?”

  “Naught,” she said distractedly. “But Cletus is—”

  “Aye,” Padraig said, no little irritation in his voice. “I doona fancy having the slug slither across my dinner.”

  “Sir Lucan insists,” Iris reminded him.

  Padraig looked into her eyes and there was a sudden, hostile challenge there that Iris had never before glimpsed. “Do you always do what Sir Lucan demands?”

  Three heartbeats passed. “No.”

  “You had me fooled, then. Would that you regarded my wishes as dearly.”

  Iris bristled, and she let her surprise blossom into perceived insult to cover the stew of feelings she could not immediately recognize. “Am I remiss in my duties to you, Master Boyd?”

  “Nay,” he said abruptly and looked to her again, his eyes keen as ever even as his voice softened once more. “But it’s nae your duty I want more of.”

  Padraig turned his head away and motioned the sullen, toady man toward the table while Iris cut away a portion of meat, then spooned a bit of the pretty barley and mushroom onto a small plate. She tried to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking, rattling the silver against the plate.

  Cletus reached between them and took the dish, giving a sigh and an eye roll before picking up the food sloppily between his fingers and scooping it into his mouth. He tossed the soiled plate back onto the table with a clatter and then returned to his position against the wall, still chewing.

  “Is that Lady Paget?” Padraig asked, changing the subject abruptly. His eyes flicked toward a stick-thin woman with steel-gray hair who sat at Lord Paget’s side.

  “It must be,” Iris mused, and then cringed inwardly. He had her so flustered, she was forgetting herself.

  “You doona know your old mistress?”

  “I didn’t notice her before,” Iris stammered, feeling her cheeks heat.

  Lie.

  “Hmm. Perhaps sitting near me wasna the best of plans. She has been noticing you. I think she recognizes you.”

  Iris’s gaze raised instinctively to the woman, and she found that, indeed, the older lady seemed to be watching Iris intently. She turned her attention to her own trencher, pushing the food about as if deciding what first to sample, but, in truth, between Hargrave’s performance and Padraig Boyd’s attention, her appetite had completely disappeared.

  “After her husband’s dreadful scene, s
he’s likely only curious,” Iris said. “Everyone is now.”

  “Maybe she thinks you’re my wife,” Padraig said smoothly and cut a perfect portion of venison with his knife. He admired it on the point, turning it this way and that. “You might encourage it.”

  Iris turned her head, feeling as though Padraig Boyd set out to shock her with every word from his mouth tonight.

  He was still contemplating the venison. “That would remove suspicion from you, would it nae?” He turned his head to regard her casually. “Perhaps if I kissed you again before everyone here it would remove all doubt. I’ve thought of nothing else, since.”

  Iris tried to command her slack mouth to respond, but she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from Padraig Boyd’s shapely lips long enough to order her thoughts.

  “There is no kissing at dinner,” she stammered stupidly.

  “I see,” he said, nodding gravely. “Later, then.”

  A strangled wheeze beyond Padraig’s wide back drew Iris’s attention, and she saw a writhing dark shape in the wedge of shadow between the wall and the floor.

  “Padraig,” Iris gasped.

  He dropped his knife with a clatter and bolted from his seat, Peter doing the same in the next instant. Both men went to where Cletus choked and thrashed on the stones, and a moment later, Lucan stood over them.

  “We need help here,” Padraig shouted toward the hall. “A man is ill.” He met Iris’s eyes.

  Iris looked to the forgotten piece of meat still speared on Padraig’s knife, the dripping coagulating from the cut like blood.

  “What is it?” Lord Hargrave’s voice rang out curiously over the din. “What’s happened?” His tone conveyed a feigned interest in the scene, much as one might in a simplistic riddle being put to them by a child.

  The servants helped Padraig and Lucan lift the twitching Cletus between them and began shuffling toward the exit of the hall. Iris gained her feet but then paused, fixing the rest of their dinner companions with a stern look.

  “Don’t eat or drink anything on this table,” she warned in a low whisper, and then Iris hurried after Padraig.

  * * * *

  They went as far as the doorway that led to the courtyard before they were forced to place Cletus on the floor of the corridor beneath a torch. He had retched and fouled himself so that the close space smelled like a slaughterhouse, and now only the man’s left arm twitched slightly. His gaze was fixed, unblinking, and only the faintest of wheezes came from him, the silence between his gasps growing longer, longer…

  Swift footfalls approached from the blackness, and in a moment the fat priest, Kettering, appeared, still masticating a portion of his meal. Beryl arrived on his heels, and she brought a delicate hand to her face covering her nose and mouth at the stench.

  Kettering approached. “Step aside, if you please, gentlemen.” He lowered to one knee with a grunt and then leaned toward Cletus’s face, peering into the man’s unseeing eyes. He waved a hand before his face, snapped his fingers, then lowered his ear above the man’s mouth.

  Father Kettering crossed himself, muttering a string of Latin. He made the same sign in the air over Cletus and then rose to his feet with a groan. He turned to Padraig.

  “He’s dead.”

  Padraig felt as though he’d been butted in the stomach by a ram. He’d held no love for Cletus when he was alive, but the idea that the man had died within arm’s reach of him was hardly comprehensible.

  “What am I to do for him?” Padraig asked.

  “Not much at this point, I’m afraid, besides bury him,” Kettering allowed, his eyes repeatedly flicking to Padraig’s chest. “The hunt will be breakfasting afield in the morn.”

  Lucan chimed in. “I do doubt Lord Hargrave would miss out on the festivities to attend the funeral of such a base servant.”

  Kettering frowned. “In any case, Cletus was Master Boyd’s servant at the time of his death. Lord Hargrave shall not be pressed into attendance by propriety.”

  “Therefore it is my responsibility to see to his burial,” Padraig acknowledged. The priest’s expression of upset had deepened. “Surely you doona think the man’s death is my fault?”

  “What? No, I—” Kettering broke off, his eyes once more going to Padraig’s chest. “I only—Master Boyd, where did you get that?” He pointed to the pin fashioned to the fan of plaid on Padraig’s chest.

  Padraig dropped his chin to look down, and he absently touched the wooden peg with a finger. “It was given to me by my da. He—”

  Before Padraig could finish, the priest reached out and ripped the pin from his tunic, the fabric between the slits giving way with a tear.

  “How dare you,” Kettering gritted between his teeth, and then he shook his fist in Padraig’s face, his fingers gripping the pin until the skin was white about his knuckles. “How dare you? Have you Blake’s prayer book as well?”

  Chapter 12

  Padraig drew back his head. “I doona ken what you’re talking about, Father. What prayer book?”

  But Kettering only scowled at him with watering eyes before turning his attention to the male servants. “Bring the body to the chapel.”

  Padraig reached out for the wooden brooch. “I’ll be having that back—”

  Father Kettering flung his arm in a wide, surprisingly powerful arc, knocking Padraig’s grasping hand away. “You’ll not touch it again,” he growled. Then he turned and strode through the doorway, disappearing into the darkness of the courtyard.

  The stench was horrible, but the oppressive atmosphere left by the priest was worse. Padraig looked at Lucan and Beryl in turn as Peter and another pair of servants struggled to lift Cletus’s limp, soiled corpse and then shuffled with it through the doorway. Beryl’s face glowed as white as the moon beneath her veil and rich hair, her eyes big and full of shock and fear. If it hadn’t been for Beryl laying her slender, cool hand on his arm at the table…

  He reached out and took her elbow. “We canna speak freely here. My chamber is closest.”

  “The pair of you go on,” Lucan said. “As much as it pains me, I have a duty to report back to Hargrave that Cletus has died. I’ll away as soon as I am able and meet you there.” Lucan looked to Beryl. “Stay with him.”

  “I need to go to my own chamber,” Beryl argued, and although she did not address Padraig, he could see her agitated frown. “Lady Hargrave will call for me after the meal, and I must be there.”

  But the knight was already shaking his head. “No.”

  “Sir Lucan—” Beryl pressed.

  “I’ll keep her safe,” Padraig interrupted, pulling her to his side. Although the sentiment behind his words was genuine, it pained Padraig to make the pledge to the knight under false pretenses. It was true that he had no intention of letting Beryl out of his sight after they had both come so close to death at an unknown hand. “I suspect everyone will be gathered in the hall for some time after such an event.”

  Beryl pulled free. “Neither of you understands,” she insisted. “Lady Hargrave is fragile. She will be greatly disturbed by a death at the feast. She’ll want me. And if she can’t find me—”

  “There will be disquiet, no doubt,” Lucan acknowledged. “But I suspect that’s what Hargrave wishes. I’ve the feeling he intends to somehow use the opportunity of Cletus’s death against you, Padraig.”

  “He ate from my plate,” Padraig said. “Whatever killed him was meant for me.”

  Lucan nodded, his noble face a grim mask. “And so I really must go.” He again looked to the beautiful woman who had distanced herself equally between the two men in the corridor. “Please, stay with him.”

  She watched the knight return in the direction of the hall until the shadows had swallowed him, and then she turned and walked past Padraig. He caught up with her in two strides.

  “I’ll wait with you,” sh
e allowed. “But only after I go to my chamber. There is aught I must do.”

  “I’ll accompany you.”

  “No.”

  “Aye.”

  She was silent until they stood before his door, and then Beryl stopped and spun to face him.

  “I must see to Satin. If Lady Caris is in a state, I could be gone all night.”

  Padraig opened his mouth, but Beryl forged ahead.

  “You can’t come with me. I don’t wish it.”

  “Sir Lucan said—”

  “Do you always do what Sir Lucan says?” she tossed at him. “It shall take some time to change my costume, and it would do your reputation no favors to stand about in the corridor outside my door.”

  “I doona care for my reputation. You shouldna be alone.”

  “I’m not the one in danger, Padraig,” she said sternly, but her cheeks flushed, and that was the second time she’d called him by his given name that evening.

  “You would have eaten from the same platter.”

  Beryl’s gaze did not waver. “It wasn’t meant for me. I’ll—”

  The door at his back opened suddenly, and both he and Beryl turned wide eyes to it.

  “You’ve returned sooner than I expected.” Searrach was just visible through the slender opening, but what could be seen of her was shocking in the dim light of the corridor; she was very clearly nude.

  “Couldna wait to get back to me, I see. Och, Beryl,” she said in a dramatic gasp, and then moved herself behind the door. “I didna know you were there.”

  Padraig knew his mouth was agape and he looked between the two women.

  Beryl’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. “I wish you a good evening, Master Boyd.” She turned and strode down the corridor on swift feet, escaping Padraig painlessly with the unlikely aid of the naked woman currently residing in his chamber.

  “Dammit, Searrach, what are you doing here?”

  But Searrach only opened the door wide with a matching smile, revealing the whole of her body.