by Mariah Stone
Rogene cleared her throat. Good grief. It was one thing to like babies. It was another to know how to be a mom and how to take care of them. It seemed Angus would be a better parent than she.
“Um,” she said again. Then she remembered babies liked singing. What could she sing? “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping,” she howled, and smiled as Ualan’s eyes widened. He stilled, mesmerized by her bad singing. Angus didn’t waste any time and put Ualan’s fingers back in his mouth, continuing his medieval manicure. “Brother John, Brother John…”
Angus grasped the other hand and worked quickly.
“Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing…” Rogene kept singing and gave a small giggle as Ualan’s pink lips spread in a broad smile.
“Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong,” she finished.
“Ba-ba-ba!” echoed Ualan, sporting four teeth as he grinned.
Seeing that Angus was still working on the boy’s fingers, Rogene started from the top. “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping…”
By the time Angus let go of his nephew’s hand, the boy grasped the rattle and was shaking it, staring at Rogene with a broad smile.
Angus spat the small nails on the floor and grinned. She finished singing and smiled back to him.
“Your sister-in-law is right,” she said. “You’re going to be a wonderful father.”
To Paul Mackenzie—the son he would have with another woman.
He inhaled sharply. “I surely want to be a better father than my da was for me. Though, it takes the right woman, too.”
Their eyes locked and heat ran between them.
She swallowed hard.
Quick steps approached.
“My lord! They’re here. The Ross clan. They’re in Dornie.”
Angus looked at the servant, and Rogene felt a stab of disappointment as the heat between them vanished.
“Thanks,” Angus said, and the servant left.
Rogene stood up, and he followed her. They were so close, she had to tilt her head up to look at him. She felt drawn to him as through some magnetic force.
He chuckled. “My bride arrived, but thanks to ye, the betrothal ring I was supposed to give her is lost.”
He eyed Rogene up and down, and she had a sense that he was undressing her with his gaze. Suddenly, she was acutely aware of the warmth of his body that she could feel standing one step away from him.
She swallowed. “It’s not like I made you lose it on purpose.”
Though, in truth, if the lost ring would make them postpone the wedding, it wouldn’t be the worst thing of all.
He shook his head once. “Aye. True enough.” Suddenly, he reached out and tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “But something makes me wish it would never be found.”
Her lips parted, and she suppressed an urge to lean into his hand. His palm, so close to her face, emanated slow, warm electrical charges that went through her skin.
But before she melted into a puddle like a snowman under the sun, he withdrew his hand. He went to Ualan and picked him up, making her heart melt all over again.
“Enough. Now, come, I need to greet the Earl of Ross and his sister, and announce to everyone that a woman shall be writing our marriage contract.”
Chapter 6
Angus stood with his legs wide apart and his arms folded over his chest, watching the boat with Euphemia and William, as well as their servants, approach the shore. On either side of him stood Laomann and Catrìona. Somewhere behind was Lady Rogene, whose presence he felt because of the slow, warm burning of his cock.
God’s bones, how could he be aroused even now, still thinking of her milky skin and that small, feminine frame under the proper lady’s dress that Catrìona had given her.
His brother had accepted Lady Rogene yesterday and was glad to give a Douglas woman in peril shelter and protection. But he still didn’t know that she’d be the one writing the contract.
Earlier this morning, Angus had sent a lad to check on Father Nicholas’s health, and he’d returned with the news that the old man was worse. It was some sort of flu, and Father Nicholas was coughing much. The healer was with him, so he’d been taken care of. But there was no chance he’d be well enough to write the marriage contract.
It was a beautiful morning to greet their guests. Birds chirped, the sun shone, and there was almost no wind, so the loch stood still and waiting. Water splashed softly as the oars rose and fell, drawing the boat closer to shore.
Her hair reflected gold in the sun. Euphemia was still pretty, and was probably able to bear a child. But with every inch that the boat approached, dread grew heavier in his gut. He glanced at Rogene over his shoulder and found that she was staring right at him. She quickly lowered her eyes.
So it was not just him thinking of her. She was affected, too. Her lips reddened ever so slightly, her cheeks blushed. And if he wasn’t mistaken, her nipples hardened and protruded through the material of her dress.
God Almighty, help him. He didn’t remember ever desiring a woman as he desired her. Why would God send him a temptation like this right before he was bound to marry another?
He sighed and turned his attention to the boat again. This was just infatuation, nothing but a craving of his flesh. He had a duty before him—the duty to his clan—and he’d be damned if he didn’t meet it.
The first boat with the honorable guests arrived and bumped softly into the wooden jetty. The rest of the boats followed. The servants helped their masters to climb out of the boats and step onto the jetty. Euphemia was dressed in a beautiful red woolen cloak with white fox-fur trimmings. With her golden hair, bright-blue eyes, and pleasant features, she was a sight.
For any other man.
Not for Angus. As she climbed out and straightened, looking at him, the heavy stone of dread sank deeper into his gut.
Behind her, her mousy daughter came onto the shore, also, and Angus felt for the lass. It couldn’t be easy to have a mother like Euphemia.
It wouldn’t be easy to have a wife like her.
“Welcome,” Laomann said, and clasped the Earl of Ross’s arm in a handshake till the elbow. William greeted Angus in the same way and passed farther into the castle. Euphemia stopped in front of Angus and smiled, slowly looking him up and down. She licked her lower lip, and Angus had the unsettling sensation that she’d been undressing him in her head.
By God, this must be flattering for any man, that a noblewoman would behave like a harlot for him. Angus wanted to shake her off and never see her again. He wanted another to look at him like that. And, by God’s blood, if she did, he wouldn’t be able to resist her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rogene walk the path leading towards the castle, and stop, watching him. The thought made his shoulders clench. Then she kept walking.
“Welcome, my lady,” he said.
“Good day to ye, Angus,” Euphemia said. “And thank ye. I was looking forward to this.”
He cocked his head and held her gaze. She offered a small, sly smile, and walked up the path and into the castle.
When everyone was settled to feast in the great hall, Euphemia was placed next to him. Servants brought plates of bread, cheese, smoked and dried fish, bowls with butter, platters with dried apples and plums, as well as savory and sweet pastries baked yesterday. The great hall was filled with scents of food and ale. There were about a hundred men, both Ross and Mackenzie, sitting around the long tables of the great hall, filling the room with a murmur of voices and occasional bursts of laughter.
Angus asked Euphemia politely how the journey went. He didn’t need to ask many more questions, as she was happy to keep talking about the journey, and how they’d been stopped by a storm on the way, and that they’d have arrived five days before, and that she was quite tired… He only offered her “hmm”s and “aye”s, and his eyes kept going back to Rogene.
She sat with his sister, watching everyone and every detail of the great hall as though she’d entered a land of elves
and faeries. She ate a bit, but Angus had a sense that she wasn’t used to or wasn’t comfortable eating with her hands, and her left hand kept reaching out to a space next to her tray. She also kept wiping her hands against a cloth, and he found that odd, as one cleansed the fingers sometimes after the meal but not during. He always kept clean and hygienic and washed in the loch at least every other day. But he was not the rule.
She must like keeping clean, too.
Suddenly, he realized Euphemia had stopped talking. She narrowed her eyes at Rogene, too.
“Who is that that ye keep ogling, my dear betrothed?” she asked.
Angus cleared his throat. Ah, to hell and back. “Lady Rogene of clan Douglas, my lady. She is a guest of our clan and will be writing down our contract.”
Euphemia sat silent, and he turned to see her face. She looked stunned, speechless, then burst out in a small laugh.
“She? Our scribe?”
“Aye. Father Nicholas is ill.”
“Canna ye send for another priest?”
“Aye. But this will be faster. We already have someone.”
“I can read and write, too.”
“But ye will be negotiating alongside yer brother, I believe?”
She folded her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. “Just ken this, Lord Angus.” Her lips flattened. “My brother didna tell ye, but besides my unfaithful husband, I also had the whore he’d slept with beheaded.”
Angus cursed under his breath. “I gave ye my word, Lady Euphemia. And I will hold to it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I ken. I’m just mentioning it.” Then she leaned forward and looked at Laomann, who was sitting in his lord’s chair. “Lord Laomann! How could ye allow a woman to be writing down our contract?”
His face fell, and he frowned. “A woman?”
God’s arse! He hadn’t yet talked with Laomann about this, precisely because he was sure his brother would hate the idea. “Lady Rogene can read and write,” Angus said. “Father Nicholas being sick, we have no one else who can fulfill the role.”
“I can write,” Laomann said.
“But ye canna both write and negotiate,” Angus argued. “And until we find a priest who can spare the time…”
Laomann shook his head. “Nae. A woman… ’Tis wrong. ’Tis nae a woman’s job to do that. Surely a woman dinna have the brains to write down a marriage contract.”
Lady Euphemia’s lips tightened even further. Her stare was so cold, it could freeze a man to death. “A woman dinna have the brains to write?” she said.
Laomann’s nostrils flared. Then—as he often did when a higher authority contradicted him—he swallowed his anger, just as he had with their father. Every time.
“I didna mean ye, Lady Euphemia,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows in an annoyed expression. “Oh, ye didna.” She scoffed. “Ye men think women are so beneath ye, dinna ye? That women should stay home, and do embroidery, and weave, and bear ye children, and wipe everyone’s arses.” She looked at her brother, who was scowling at her. This looked like a conversation they may have had many times. “And yet, some of ye are too good at licking arses when ye need to be strong and fight for what is right for ye. Had I had a cock, trust me, the situation in Scotland would have been very different.”
“Ye still wouldna be the earl,” William mumbled. “I’m older.”
She rolled her eyes and put the cup with wine to her mouth. “Ye wouldna be here.” Angus thought she said into her cup.
Laomann cleared his throat and glanced at William. But judging by his sad demeanor as he chewed on a piece of meat, the man was not going to put his sister in her place. She’d just undermined his authority, showed the disagreement in their clan, and scolded a man who was responsible for her.
Angus looked at Rogene, who stared at Euphemia with surprise and respect. He had no doubt Rogene had enjoyed that, remembering how she’d protected a woman yesterday in the market, risking her own life.
Laomann, seeing that William wasn’t going to do anything, sighed and gestured with his fingers. “Lady Rogene, please, do come closer.”
She sat stunned for a mere moment, then rose to her feet and walked to the table of honor. As if not sure how to behave, she bent her knees for a moment and gave a curt bow. What did she mean by that, Angus wondered? A common sign of respect was a bowed head. The lower the bow, the lower the position of the person. Why did she need to do that knee-bending movement?
Her dress hugged her slender figure, her arms delicate under the broad sleeves that almost reached the ground. She blushed, and was so pretty in that moment. Her eyes shone as she looked at him briefly.
Like an adolescent, he had a sudden image of her blushing as he’d traced his finger down her elegant neck.
“My brother told me ye will be our scribe for the contract?” Laomann said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what he asked me. I’m happy to help.”
Everyone at the table stared at her briefly, probably at the oddness of her speech. Though everyone understood her words, no one talked like that. “Happy to help…” That was an odd expression.
“I thank ye.” Laomann nodded. “I believe we start tomorrow, if the Earl of Ross and Lady Euphemia dinna object.”
They both shook their heads no.
“And, Lady Rogene,” Euphemia said, and Angus saw that cold glare again. “I will carefully check if yer writing is satisfactory. Though I think ’tis nae surprising that a woman can read and write, as I am able to do so myself, nae everyone’s quality of writing is the same.”
Rogene cocked her head. “Of course. Check as much as you want.” She looked at Angus. “Perhaps, in preparation, I could look over the marriage contract of your father and mother? Just to be sure what I write is similar in style. I’ve never worked on a marriage contract before.”
“Aye, Lady Rogene,” Angus said. “I can show ye.”
He should have checked with Laomann, but he didn’t. Although the meal was not yet finished, he stood up and, not even waiting for anyone’s approval, gestured for her to follow him. He thought he heard Euphemia’s teeth cracking, but he didn’t care.
Chapter 7
She didn’t dare to touch the vellum. Even though it was already thirty-eight years old, it was so fresh and so new, and there were barely any signs of aging—well, not compared to seven-hundred-year-old documents that were in the museums and archives, preserved in pristine conditions, guarded from direct sunlight and kept under the right temperature.
And here it was, the contract written in Medieval Latin between Kenneth Og Mackenzie and Alexander MacDougall, who was the father of Morna MacDougall.
“This indentur made at Eilean Donan, the fifth day of the moneth of Marche, the yheir of our Lord a thousand twohundreth and LXXV, betuyx Kenneth Og Mackenzie and Alexander MacDougall.”
The letters were written in black ink in medieval calligraphy. Carefully, feeling like she was touching history itself, she brushed against them with her thumb, noting the tiniest indents and bumps formed by ink under her finger.
She would need to write like this. She’d be the one who’d seal the fate of Angus and Euphemia through that contract.
She both loved and hated that knowledge.
Angus’s gaze burned her skin. She looked up. He was so handsome in the semidarkness of Laomann’s lord’s hall. It was one story up from the great hall in the castle keep. The room was like an office with a table, probably to discuss clan matters, she guessed. There was a fireplace and small slit windows with a foot-thick windowsill. The table was situated by the window so that the daylight fell on it. In the chest by its side were documents. That was where Angus had taken the contract from. Unable to read, he’d shown her the documents one by one, and she’d read aloud their titles until they’d found this one. There weren’t many things at all in the chest—mostly letters to Laomann and the previous chief, Kenneth Og, registrations of land deeds, rent collections, and such. She itch
ed for her phone, in the purse that was right there with her. She’d need to sneak in here alone somehow and photograph all the documents.
And yet, that didn’t mean she’d be any closer to proving that Bruce did come here to give up and not to gather forces.
And time was ticking. She had to get back to finish and defend her thesis soon.
“What does it say?” Angus said.
She pursed her lips. Thankfully, she’d had to study Medieval Latin for her PhD. However, her modern mind recognized that what she was reading was strange, foreign. It was the weirdest thing. Like speaking a foreign language, she supposed. Her mind understood everything, and was able to reproduce it, but at the same time recognized it as foreign.
She smiled. Angus was dashing in his rough, masculine handsomeness, leaning on the table, his hand pressed against the edge right next to hers. If she’d only moved her pinkie an inch, it would touch his thumb. She swallowed. The room was full of crackling electricity again, and the air seemed to have disappeared from it. Heat radiated from him, and perspiration covered her forehead.
“It says, your mother’s tocher, or dowry, includes a few islands south of Skye, and fifty marks. Your father paid two hundred marks to conclude the deal.”
Angus nodded and frowned. He let go of the table and straightened up, turned away, and stared out the window. “Aye. Those islands belong to me. I am to move there with my future wife.”
With his future wife… The thought stung, and to distract herself, she consulted the contract. The land, indeed, was to be given to one of the male heirs. Studying marriage contracts wasn’t one of her fields, so she didn’t know if that was typical. But she had read somewhere that a marriage contract could, in essence, have any conditions that the clans wanted to put there.
“How did ye learn to read and write?” Angus turned around, his tone suddenly different—light, curious, and…did she hear a tad of envy?
“Um. My father considered it important and insisted that I learn.”
He looked out the window again, nodded, and chuckled. “Yer father must have been a good man. Since ye fled north to yer mother’s family, I assume he’s passed away.”