The Shadow 0f Her Smile (Highlander Heroes Book 3)

by Rebecca Ruger

  Ada suddenly wished they were still on the road, with Sir William and Roger, just the four of them. Jamie squeezed her hand and settled a reassuring grin onto her which might also have hinted at an appreciation for her freshened appearance. He led her to the long table before the fireplace. People stood, gathered around the other half dozen tables in the room, and sat all at once only after Jamie had seated Ada and assumed the chief’s chair next to her.

  “Aunt Agnes take good care of you, lass?” he wondered, rather whispered at her ear.

  Ada pivoted toward him, trying to smile. She nodded, but tightly, feeling so much as if she were on display for these people.

  Malcolm and Callum came, Malcom taking the chair next to Jamie while Callum sat next to Ada. She was disheartened to see Agnes take a seat upon the bench at one of the common tables.

  The tables had already been set with jugs of ale and either pewter or wooden cups. Jamie filled Ada’s cup and then his own, and then stood and waited while all around the hall, people likewise poured out the ale.

  After a moment, Jamie raised his cup. “I ken you’ve heard it by now, as word travels fast within the curtain wall, but this here is Ada—Lady Ada, my wife.”

  Admittedly, the cheer that rose was tepid, while more furtive and frowning peeks were cast her way. Shamed now, Ada settled her eyes on Agnes at the closest table, hoping to maintain only a serene expression. Agnes’s face contorted with a fair amount of shock and a bit of dismay at the unenthusiastic reception, her distressed look assisting Ada not at all.

  And no one drank, even as Jamie lifted his cup to his lips.

  The tips of her husband’s fingers of his free hand just grazed the table as he stood next to her and were visible themselves in Ada’s periphery. With the silence that followed their lackluster cheer, his fingers began to drum, not softly, upon the table.

  Ada bit her lip and she cursed, damn them all. And with that, she lifted her chin and began to meet their eyes. Say it to my face, she almost dared them.

  And then Jamie spoke again. What seeming joy had accompanied his first pronouncement was gone. His tone was unflinching now. Ada could swear she heard his teeth clenching. Even Callum, next to her, turned to look at Jamie.

  “Do you ken where I met my bride, your lady?” No one answered. “Aye, I met her at Dornoch Castle in the south of Scotland.”

  Ada froze, her own teeth clamped now. Oh, please don’t, Jamie. Her nostrils flared.

  “Callum was with me,” Jamie said, turning, throwing a hand out vaguely in his captain’s direction. He pointed forward then, to a lad. “You were there, Henry.” The boy’s mouth gaped, his youthful gaze swung to Ada. “You ken the tale, all of you. Callum surely laid out the entire gruesome story. But here it is, the rest of it. Ada Moncriefe did not ken me or mine from the Lord’s Adam, but she’d no let the fiend John Craig take another life. She walked down into the dungeon, with no care for her own safety or any consequences, and she set us free.” He let this be absorbed. Ada remained tight-lipped at his side. “She asked one boon in return, that we take her with us when we go.” He hesitated. Then, “Like as no, you’ve the next part from Callum as well. He and Henry and I get out. But Ned did not. And Malys did not. And Will did not. And neither did the lass. They killed Ned and Malys quick. When I returned—” he stopped, and turned to Ada, “On my honor, I tried....”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on Agnes, even as she dared not register that woman’s expression. She just wanted it done now.

  “I could not—did not—return for five days. Will was dead. They’d cut him up as well, but he was fortunate and died sometime that first night. This was done to the lass over the next four days and four nights.”

  Complete silence gripped the entire hall. Not even candle flames dared to flicker.

  “She talked to Will throughout the night.”

  Ada began to shake her head. Please stop. Her hands shook in her lap.

  “Hers was the last face he saw, the last kind voice he heard,” Jamie said, his hardened tone having softened, as if moved by his own words. “Callum and I and Henry stand here today, because of her.”

  After a long pause, he lifted his cup again. “To my bride, your lady, Ada MacKenna.”

  The noise then was deafening. It literally shook the rafters, moving the candelabras hung from metal rods. People cheered and screamed and cried, men pounded on tables and lifted their cups and called her name. Next to her, Callum rose to his feet, and the entire hall followed suit, the clamor rising with their bodies from the benches.

  Ada never moved, her chin stayed elevated, her eyes remained fixed on Agnes. She could manage no response to their persuaded fervor. Tears fell from Agnes’s eyes as she pressed her chafed fingers to her lips and stared back at Ada.

  She wasn’t quite sure how she succeeded in getting through the meal. The food had no taste, the noise became just a din, the entire room and the faces blurred. As soon as was tolerably polite, she excused herself, claiming a lingering fatigue and found their chambers. She knew when Jamie came to their room that night, felt him slide into the big bed next to her, felt his hand settle on her hip, but kept her back to him and held any further tears, and pretended she slept.

  TRUE, SHE WAS ANGRY at Jamie, but she chose to begin the next day fresh, with her husband, and with the people of Aviemore. This was to be her life now, she meant to make it right. She did not want to be known or befriended or have her company sought out solely because of Dornoch. She was more than that. She would show them.

  When she considered how Jamie had—however well-intentioned—made her once again feel as if she were a specimen, to be ogled and pitied, his words to her the morning after their wedding came to mind. No every hill is to be your grave. She owed him at least this courtesy, this once, to repay his generosity to her.

  Aiming for a cheerfulness she had not yet grasped, but determined nonetheless, Ada bounced down the steps and into the hall.

  Breakfast was obviously done, so that only a handful of soldiers remained, sitting around one of the trestle tables. To a man, they stood, so quickly in fact the bench on one side was bumped out from the table.

  “Good morrow, sirs,” she greeted them, though several of them were surely younger than Ada, still lads.

  They remained standing, some feet shuffling, some eyes averted, and greeted Ada in return. One man elbowed another, frowning up at his head. He looked up, and quickly doffed his felt hat, scrunching it between his hands at his waist.

  She rather hoped they might ask her to join them, as sitting at the family’s table, so far removed and by herself, seemed rather silly.

  They appeared more tongue-tied than rude, but no one offered her a space at the table. Not quite the auspicious start she’d hoped for, she was about to ask if she might join them when she heard Agnes, bustling in from the kitchen. “And here you are, lass. Come on to the kitchen, then, and we’ll get you fed. You canna be spending time with these humdrums.”

  Ada shrugged and smiled at the men and gave a small wave as Agnes led her away. One man, perhaps about Jamie’s age, lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers in his own returning wave.

  “The lad says you’re wanting to learn how to manage Aviemore,” said Agnes as they walked through the corridor at the rear of the keep.

  “I do. Will that be all right, Agnes? I don’t want to step on your toes.”

  The dim passage opened up into a high, stone-ceilinged room easily half the length of the hall. The kitchen was neither dreary nor bright, but showed daylight streaming into the room from an open rear door. But this fresh air and brightness were quickly attacked by the smoke and steam and grease hovering just overhead.

  Agnes tittered, her rosy cheeks rising with her smile. “You’ll no be able to step on my toes, lass. I’ll be putting my feet up, is what I’ll be doing.” She pointed to a stool near a long and narrow counter. “Sit there, lass. I’ll fetch you bannocks and honey.”

  Ada sat upon the smooth and glo
ssy seat of the stool and looked around. A slim and young girl stood at the end of this counter, chopping leeks and onions, casting shy glances at Ada from under hooded eyes. When Ada smiled at her, she looked at Ada no more. A lad, too young to be training with the army, scooped ash from the cool and presently unused sections of the hearth. He, too, sent cautious and curious glances her way, but soon he’d filled his tin bucket and scampered out of the kitchen.

  Above this table, suspended from the ceiling with thick curved hooks, hung dozens of different sized pots and kettles. The hearths and ovens encompassed one entire wall of this room, and another wall housed shelves of crocks and cups and woven baskets. On the third wall, a man stood, his back to the room, while he worked over a table piled high with dead pheasants. His knife hacked and skinned and chopped, with seeming quiet efficiency. Next to that, two troughs were nestled side by side, at least one filled with water, as attested by the rising steam.

  Agnes returned, setting before Ada a wooden plate showing a thick slice of a heavy bannock, which the dear woman had generously covered in honey.

  Ada thanked her just before Agnes called to the man readying the pheasants, “Baldwin, come meet your new lady.” And then she whispered to Ada, “He’s Flemish, lass. Canna understand a word he says.”

  The man turned and Ada saw a short and robust man of middling years, with piercing brown eyes and ruddy cheeks. He wiped his hands on the linen wrapped ‘round his waist and approached, showing a mild frustration at being taken from his work. His eyebrows were only slices over his eyes, and Ada supposed the hair under his unusual head covering might be the same reddish-brown. His headwear was similar to a wimple, enveloping his head in many turns and folds, but his sported three different colors, one a band of shiny blue, which covered his forehead and was tied at his nape, and seemed to hold all the other folds in place.

  “’Tis Lady Ada now, Baldwin.”

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. And when he opened his eyes and looked at Ada, he seemed only to be waiting for something.

  “I am very pleased to know you, Baldwin. You are the cook?”

  He nodded. It was curt, abbreviated, yet somehow very formal. Ada felt his mannerisms might be more at home in a royal kitchen, or indeed, the court itself.

  “And how long have you been here at Aviemore?”

  He tipped his head to Agnes, so that she answered, “Years and years, I think.” And with a grimaced smile, she excused him with a wave of her hand.

  “Does he not speak?” Ada wondered, after that odd encounter.

  “Aye, he does, lass. But I’ve asked him not to. No purpose to all his noise when I canna understand him.”

  Ada gasped, but this went unnoticed by Agnes as she had bent and was fetching something from under the counter.

  Having rather began her day with the mantra, I am Lady MacKenna, to hearten herself, Ada determined to set her own course.

  “Agnes, I am very happy to assume the role of managing the keep, but I will ask that you allow me a few days to find my own way around Aviemore. I’d like to meet some of its people.”

  Agnes stood straight again, holding a plain brown crock. This was plunked down onto the counter as a pained look passed over her face. “Oh, lass, is that a good idea?”

  Surely, Agnes was thinking of the initial cool reception at dinner last night.

  And now, so was Ada. Bravely, she nodded. “I don’t want to hide away in the kitchen all my days.”

  “Aye, then, lass. You traipse around for a wee bit. Let them see how sweet you are; the kitchen and the stewardship will keep.”

  Half an hour later, Ada returned to the hall to find it empty now, the soldiers all gone.

  She imagined that, like Stonehaven, much of the day’s business took place outside the walls of the keep. Reflexively brushing away any crumbs that might have attached to her plain brown kirtle, she set her shoulders back and stepped outside and went down the steps into the yard of Aviemore.

  She spotted Callum straightaway, with some thankfulness, and strode toward him as he had his head bent to a lad, their backs to Ada.

  “Good day to you, Callum,” she called out, which turned around the man, and the boy to whom he was speaking. Ada was pleased to see it was Henry, whom she’d been hoping to meet.

  “Lady MacKenna,” Callum said, looking truly happy to see her.

  Ada stopped just before the pair, noticing that Callum held a strange small hook in his hand, while Henry held a length of thin rope in his.

  “Henry, say good day to your lady.” Callum instructed the youth, who stared open-mouthed at Ada. He recovered, or gathered himself, and made a gratuitous bow, which raised Ada’s brow.

  She laughed, to put him at ease, though her own awkwardness was heightened by his show of misplaced worship. “Aye, we haven’t any need of that, Henry,” she said lightly. “How do you do?”

  “Yes,” was all he said, which had Callum smiling sympathetically at the lad.

  “Will you be fishing?” Ada asked, pointing to the line in his hands. “Is that what this is?”

  Henry nodded.

  Callum expounded. “Yesterday, my lady, we gathered the nettles and stripped them of their leaves. Aye, Henry? And the lad learned how to soak and pulp the nettle, and earlier we wove the strands into this line. And here I was, just fetched these barbed hooks from the smithy, about to show the lad how to string his line and stone.” Callum held both hands, palms up, for Ada’s inspection. In one hand sat two iron hooks, one end with an eye closure; in the other hand were several stones, no bigger than Callum’s thumb, with holes bored straight through their middles.

  “And you catch the fish—or hope to—in the loch?”

  “Aye,” said Callum, “Called angling, my lady.”

  Henry hadn’t said another word but continued to stare at Ada. Purposefully, she kept up conversation with Callum, allowing the boy to become accustomed to her scars, to look his fill as needed. “What might I do to have you stop calling me my lady?” Ada wondered.

  “No much you can do...my lady.” But Callum smirked with this delivery.

  “Will you be fishing—angling,” she corrected, “just now?”

  “Aye,” answered Callum. “Out the back gate to the loch. There’s a nice spot on the east bank.”

  Ada addressed Henry then, “Would you mind if I joined you?”

  Still silent, the lad shook his head left to right.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the loch side of the castle, which was actually the rear of the keep, there was a fortification of a much shorter wall, being only twice as tall as Callum. Henry dashed ahead of the captain and Ada, showing the way to the man-sized door built into that stone wall. Outside this door, Callum pointed east, to where Henry was already running. They followed a trail of matted grass, and traversed a wide but short wooden bridge, which spanned a gap of a small stream that angled away from the loch. Once across the bridge, it was only a short distance to a neat little area, as Callum had promised, in a wide open spot upon a shallow part of the bank.

  From a thick-trunked but squat tree, Callum retrieved two smooth brown poles made from the branches of a nearby yew. He and Henry hovered over these, Callum showing the lad how to tie the line onto the pole, and how to affix the hook, and the stone, which he called a sinker.

  Ada happily sat at the shore, presuming this was indeed a well-loved spot, as there were several chopped thick trunk pieces, upon which a person might sit. But the sun was shining, and the grass was dry, so Ada opted to feel the earth beneath her and plopped herself down onto the ground.

  When Callum had demonstrated to Henry how to toss the hemp line into the water, the captain took a seat on one of those furnished stumps while Henry stood nearby.

  By way of conversation, Ada admitted, “I rather cajoled Agnes Nairn into allowing me to shirk my duties, or the learning of them, for a few days while I familiarized myself with Aviemore.”

  “A sound plan, my lady,” Callum
said. “The kitchens and the keep can wait.”

  “I will not abuse it,” Ada vowed. “Although, I don’t think even I supposed I’d be lazing about the banks of the lake so soon into my reprieve.”

  Callum assured her, “You can do no wrong here, I assure you.”

  Ada pulled her hands from the ground behind her and sat forward, tipping her face to the captain. “Do you say that because of the tale that Jamie told last night?”

  Callum frowned lightly. “Lass, ‘twas no tale, but truth. What you did at Dornoch—”

  Ada interrupted him, slightly frustrated. “Is done, Callum.” And then, softer, “It’s done. I do not want to be treated differently just because of...that. You’d have done the same. Or Jamie would have.” When he scowled still, unwilling, it seemed, to give up the veneration, she decided to set him straight. “Did Jamie tell you how I attacked him? Nae, I thought not. The truth is, I believed he—and you—had abandoned us at Dornoch. ‘Tis truth. I berated him fiercely and accosted him physically, called him the worst sort of names, and blamed him for Will’s death and... for this,” she finished, waving her hand in front of her face, while Callum’s eyes widened in his. “Callum, I’m not special and I do not deserve to be treated so. Won’t you please just consider me a friend? One who errs and cries and rages at times, mayhap one who is just like anyone else?”

  Callum stared at her, broodingly, and for several long seconds. Finally, he shook his head, his gaze in some way saddened. “You’re no like anyone else, Ada MacKenna. No at all. But I owe you my life, and if you beg no singular care, I’ll do my best to appease you. Aye, my lady, it would truly be the greatest honor to have you as my own true friend.”

  Ada smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  Henry made some exclamation then, drawing their attention. Callum jumped to his feet and attended the lad, who appeared to have snagged some prey on the end of his line. The fishing instruction continued then, with Callum showing Henry how to incrementally draw in the line. In only a few short minutes, Henry had slapped a fair sized fish upon the bank, his smile bright with his success.