Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 01]

by Knight in My Bed

  Rory shook his head. Mumbling to himself about stagnant wells, and frogs being more useful in one’s belly than in a witch-wife’s cauldron, he tightened his hold on Donall’s chain and began slogging forward through the muck, Donall and the giant following hard in his wake.

  The moment they rounded the curve, Donall’s breath caught in his throat, for the vaulted tunnel vanished as if it’d never been and they stood upon a narrow skirt of rock jutting precariously above a choppy sea, its tossing surface gilt silver by a near full moon.

  A wild wet wind blew, bracing and untamed, its ceaseless howl giving stiff competition to the thundering crash of the waves breaking against a mass of black, barnacle-encrusted boulders and a jumble of fallen masonry that could only be the tumbled walls of Dunmuir’s ancient sea tower.

  Stinging salt spray bit into Donall’s wrists and ankles, cruelly searing skin rubbed raw from days of wearing manacles, but he scarce noticed.

  Nor did he puzzle overlong about where young Lugh had taken himself off to. Though he’d come this way, the lad was nowhere to be seen.

  Another matter plagued Donall far more.

  An issue fraught with ramifications for his entire clan and weighing much heavier on his heart than the odd disappearance of one strange boy.

  A chilling notion ghastlier than the bother of abraded flesh.

  The bastards meant to drown him.

  The laird’s solar at the MacLean stronghold, Baldoon Castle, gave itself as dark and gloomy as the drizzle-plagued night pressing hard against the chamber’s arch-topped windows. Other than the muted glimmer cast by the last feeble flickers of a near extinguished hearth fire, nary a ray of light graced what had oft been called one of Baldoon’s most opulent rooms.

  Not a one of the resinous wall torches burned. And though several elaborately wrought candle stands stood about the chamber, the beeswax tapers they held remained unlit. As did the candles adorning two multibranched candelabra of finest silver.

  For days now, the sumptuous solar, the pride of every MacLean laird since time immemorial, had been purposely plunged into darkness and desolation.

  By order of Iain MacLean.

  To suit his glum mood.

  “Drowned,” he muttered under his breath, and whirled to stomp across the solar’s rush-strewn floor for what had to be the hundredth time. “Drowned, drowned, drowned,” he chanted the word like a litany-singing monk gone mad and kicked the sturdy leg of an oaken trestle table.

  A slight shuffling noise sounded somewhere behind him and he swung around to catch Gerbert, Baldoon’s e’er meddlesome seneschal, attempting to light a brace of candles just inside the door.

  His dark eyes widening in disbelief, Iain stared at the white-haired steward a long moment before he marched across the room and blew out the old man’s handiwork with one furious huff of air.

  Straightening, he glared at the graybeard. “Think yourself above heeding orders, Gerbert?”

  “Nay, sir, begging your pardon, milord.” Gerbert excused his blatant disregard for Iain’s orders with a falsified tone of obeisance.

  Almost as perturbing, he possessed the impertinence to return Iain’s glare with an unblinking stare of his own.

  Scowling, Iain waved his hand through the dissipating smoke of the extinguished tapers. “Is this affront because you doubt the bounds of my authority in my brother’s absence?”

  Gerbert’s face remained a careful mask of mildness. “Of a certainty, nay, my good lord.”

  The bland expression grated sorely on Iain’s nerves. “Of a certainty, nay, my good lord,” he mimicked.

  Unruffled, Gerbert fixed his watery blue eyes on his laird’s brother.

  And said not a word.

  “Explain yourself!” Iain bellowed, his face turning scarlet. “By whose leave did you begin lighting tapers?”

  “By no one’s, sir.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because none are lit and ’tis dark in here.”

  “By the bloody lance of St. Peter!” Iain kicked over the candle stand. “None are lit because I want it dark in here, you fool!”

  “Candles should be burning in your lady wife’s honor.” A film of perspiration on the seneschal’s forehead bespoke the heavy toll it cost him to remain calm in the face of Iain MacLean’s outburst. “Her soul—”

  Turning his back on Gerbert, Iain strode to the table and swiped up an ewer of wine. He filled his chalice and downed the contents in one swallow.

  “There are enough candles ablaze in the chapel to light her way to heaven and beyond,” he vowed and slammed down the empty wineglass. “And nary a one of them does a whit of good.” Whirling around, he stared hard at the other man. “Do you not see?”

  As if he saw indeed and dreaded what was to come, the aging seneschal’s shoulders sagged and he lowered his gaze. For the first time since entering the solar, he evaded Iain MacLean’s glass-eyed glare. Instead of meeting the younger man’s wrath, he stared at the floor and began shaking his white-tufted head.

  “My wife does not need blazing candles a-lighting her way to the blessed beyond,” Iain snapped. “She doesn’t belong with saints and martyrs. She belongs with me!”

  “She is dead, Iain.” A dark-haired woman stepped into the room, a bulging sack clutched in her hands. “You cannot bri—”

  “Nay, I cannot bring her back.” Iain turned on his sister, Amicia. “On our sainted mother’s soul, I vow I would kiss the devil’s buttocks if I could!”

  “Iain!” Amicia gasped.

  “Iain!” he echoed, throwing his hands in the air. “If it pleases you more, I can fall to my knees and shout a hundred thousand holy hosannas.” He peered sharply at her, a fiery challenge sparking in his dark eyes. “Think you it would do me aught good?”

  “Iain, please.” His sister came forward, her free hand extended. “You are making yourself miserable.”

  “The MacKinnons have made me miserable!” Iain roared and snatched the wine ewer off the table. With a loud, unintelligible cry, he hurled it into the hearth. “Scourges of the earth, they are, God rot their pestiferous souls!”

  Gerbert cleared his throat. “Come, my lady,” he said, placing a gnarled hand on her arm. “Let us speak to him by the light of day. We can do naught when such misery is upon him.”

  As if his two unwelcome visitors had already quit his presence, Iain resumed his pacing, his scowl more thunderous than before, his handsome face a closed mask.

  “But the dog hair . . .” Her pretty forehead creasing with doubt, Amicia cast a troubled glance at the overstuffed linen pouch she carried.

  “Dog hair?” Iain lifted a scornful brow as he stomped past her on his unceasing round of the chamber.

  “Aye.” His sister plunked the sack on a chair. Sidling closer to the old seneschal, she hooked her arm through his and lifted her chin. “Gerbert informed me you have been pushing the men to use great haste while working on the galley a-and . . .”

  She let her words trail off when Iain stopped in his tracks and planted his hands against his hips. “What would you intimate, sister?”

  “Simply that, in your rush to finish, you’ve been using an inferior hotchpotch of moss and pitch to caulk the strakes,” she blurted. “Donall always ordered animal hair added to the caulk mixture when he oversaw repairs to hull planking, so my ladies and I have gathered dog hair for—”

  “By Lucifer’s tarse!” Iain exploded. “Think you I have time to comb dogs when my wife’s murderers are free to loll about and make merry in their hall?”

  “Donall will be—”

  “—well on his way to Glasgow. As the two of you shall be on your way out of here.” He raked his sister and old Gerbert with a look intimidating enough to curdle vinegar. “Now!”

  Anger blazed in Amicia’s eyes as well, but she gathered up her skirts and sailed through the opened doorway, Baldoon’s long-nosed goat of a seneschal tagging along behind her.

  “Your temper will see you to your grave,�
� her voice drifted back to him from the gloom of the corridor.

  “And if going there would reunite me with my Lileas, ’tis a fate I’d embrace!” Iain countered and slammed the heavy, oaken door.

  Still grumbling, he dropped the bar in place, thus assuring his undisturbed solitude.

  Peace again at last.

  A grim smile stole across his features.

  With Baldoon’s two most persistent needlers out of his hair, Iain MacLean leaned his back against the locked door and cast a self-satisfied gaze about the darkened solar.

  Not a candle flickered.

  Even the smoldering hearth fire had spent its last dubious tendrils of warmth.

  Nary a spark dared defy him with a single cheery pop.

  The jug of wine he’d flung onto the firelog had sufficiently squelched that particular danger.

  Heaving a great sigh, he pushed away from the door and resumed his circuitous march around the room. “ ’Tis right you are, Amicia,” he carped to himself as he stomped past the chair with her fool bag of dog hair.

  “Temper might well hasten my journey into infinitude, but I am not going there or anywhere until I’ve sent on a multitude of MacKinnons before me!”

  Chapter Six

  IAM ATTRACTED to him.

  Like a persistent gnat or, worse, a swarming cloud of midges buzzing ’round her head, the same five words rang ever louder in Isolde’s ears, dogging her hurried progress along the gray-shingled beach.

  Bedeviling her with relentless tenacity.

  I am attracted to him.

  Simple words. Yet possessed of such power. Her face flamed despite the soft mizzle dampening her cheeks and seeping into the very fabric of her clothes.

  Without breaking stride, she glanced over her shoulder and drew a deep sigh of relief. No one followed. Not a living soul pursued her along the stony cove’s crescent-shaped shoreline.

  Thanks be to all her patron saints. Unthinkable, should the scandalous purpose of her trek to one of Doon’s most isolated corners become known. Her knowing was degradation enough.

  And while the breaking morn brought a welcome cessation to the night’s howling winds and the sea’s wild tossings, the quiet calm of the new day only sufficed to remind her of the turmoil spinning inside her.

  Sheer panic, a goodly dose of desperation, and a smidgen of courage had borne her from the lofty refuge of Dunmuir’s deserted battlements, right back to the emptiness of her bedchamber. But once there, the tangled bedcoverings had taunted her, recalling with shameful clarity the nightmarish images that had beset her all through the awkwardness of a sleepless night spent with the MacLean slumbering against her bedpost.

  A blessedly short night fraught with seemingly endless bouts of tossing and turning.

  Unable to return to sleep, she’d left Bodo slumbering peacefully on his bed, and fled to the great hall where she’d summoned the most dignified bearing she could muster, then whisked past those clansmen just beginning to stir upon their pallets.

  She’d bestowed a quick nod in passing on the few elders already gathered near the hearth fire, cups of ale cradled in their hands, before pure nerves alone had lent her the strength to wrest open the hall’s cumbersome iron-shod door without a single wince.

  I am attracted to him.

  The humbling admission had propelled her out the door and through the arched tunnel of Dunmuir’s outer gate with nary a backward glance.

  Damning her to the core, the five words hastened her flight across a scrubby stretch of moorland until she reached the dark belt of trees everyone knew hid the secluded cove where Evelina, Doon’s joy woman, lived in a stone cottage set near to the sea’s edge.

  Knew, but cared not to acknowledge.

  Sheltered by towering cliffs and the deep shadows they cast, the little cottage with its sturdy whitewashed walls and gray-slated roof blended almost seamlessly into the folds of the rugged bluff rising up behind it.

  The perfect hideaway for hermits and holy men. An ideal sanctuary for those wishing to live in utter solitude. Or shield their doings from disapproving eyes.

  Isolde stopped in her tracks. Evelina’s cottage stood not far ahead, wispy gray smoke curling lazily from its squat, rounded chimney-stack. Within minutes, she’d be there.

  Naught but a few more paces.

  Her pulse began to race and her mouth grew dry. Thanks to her own badgering, she now knew exactly what kind of goings-on took place behind the thick walls of Evelina’s cozy little home. Or rather what had taken place if she was wont to believe the joy woman’s claims about no longer peddling her . . . wares.

  Either way, Isolde could scarce condemn her. Unless the saints saw fit to grant divine favor to the isle of Doon, miraculously restoring peace to its troubled shores, she fully purposed to perform at least some of the sordid practices Evelina had revealed to her.

  Lewd acts she meant to carry out with him.

  At the thought, another fearsome blush stole up her neck and the wee smidgen of courage that had carried her this far evaporated with the speed of two nimble fingers pinching a burning candlewick.

  Regrettably, her panic and desperation remained.

  Isolde glanced at the pewter-colored sea. The water’s surface, sullen and still, stretched clear to the distant shores of MacKinnons’ Isle with hardly a ripple to mar its glassy calm. She hurried on, a slight frown knitting her brow. The day’s calmness robbed her of her last opportunity to make a stealthy return to the comfort of Dunmuir’s protective walls.

  On less tranquil days, a thin white mist often drifted in from the sea to enfold everything in its path in concealing sheets of slow-drifting fog.

  Had this been such a day, a discreet withdrawal would have been possible. But it wasn’t. Not this morn. Despite the new day’s gray persistent drizzle, nary a thin tendril of mist was to be seen.

  But she had been.

  At her approach, the cottage’s door swung open and Evelina stepped outside, a wooden bowl in her hands, her glossy black tresses unbound and flowing free to her hips. Her full lips curved in a serene smile. “My lady,” she greeted Isolde. “I bid you a good morn.”

  Isolde swallowed nervously. “And to you, lady.”

  “Evelina will do,” the joy woman said in her soft, throaty voice, then set the bowl of milk on the hard-packed earth before her doorstep. Straightening, she wiped her palms on the skirt of her near transparent camise and gave Isolde another of her gentle, oddly knowing smiles. “What brings you here so early in the day?”

  Isolde opened her mouth to reply, but her tongue seemed affixed to the roof of her mouth. And it seemed to swell larger the longer she stood gaping at Evelina’s near naked state. Though simply robed, the older woman, with her silk gauze attire and easy charm of manner, oozed sensuality.

  Blatant, uninhibited carnality.

  Yet she appeared somehow . . . dignified, as well.

  She would have Donall the Bold eating comfits from her hand with one worldly-wise glance from her dark, sultry eyes.

  Isolde swallowed again, but the response she meant to tender the other woman still lodged firmly in her throat. Much to her discomfiture, for she knew she was gawking, she couldn’t tear her gaze away. The neckline of Evelina’s camise dipped so low it scarce covered the dusky tips of her full bosom, while a long slit up the front of its skirt revealed her shapely legs almost to . . .

  Embarrassment tore through Isolde.

  Merciful saints, if she wasn’t mistaken, the gown’s sheerness revealed a thin gold chain slung low around Evelina’s hips.

  A chain with a large, sparking bauble dangling from it.

  A precious gemstone of a brilliant green, nestled against the abundant-looking triangle of dark curls at the apex of the joy woman’s thighs!

  Lifting her chin, Isolde met Evelina’s unruffled gaze. Keenly aware that her cheeks glowed, she blurted, “Were you expecting a . . . er . . . a friend?”

  “Aye, indeed I am,” Evelina affirmed. “But my lor
d is a well-occupied man. He will not come for some hours yet.” She peered down at the wooden bowl of milk. “Other than him, I await none save Mab.”

  “Mab?” Isolde asked before she realized the other woman could only mean the crone’s multicolored feline.

  “Old Devorgilla’s cat,” Evelina confirmed Isolde’s guess. “Mab often visits me. She welcomes a bowl of fresh, sweet milk and cares not from whose hand it is poured.”

  Isolde winced at the flicker of regret in the older woman’s eyes. “I did not mean—”

  “I know you did not, my lady. ’Tis most high in esteem I hold you for your trust in me.” Evelina made a dismissive motion with her hand when Isolde tried to interrupt her. “You did not come here to exchange niceties. Will you not come inside and tell me what troubles you?”

  She stepped aside so Isolde could duck beneath the door’s low-set lintel. Though yet early, a small stone hearth glowed with a freshly laid and kindled turf fire. Its scent, smoky sweet and earthy, lent the spotlessly clean cottage a welcoming air of warmth, peace, and contentment.

  Isolde followed her across the stone-flagged floor to a smallish wooden table and two exceptionally fine highbacked chairs. Gratefully, for her legs suddenly felt quite wobbly, she took a seat on the chair Evelina pulled out for her.

  Her back a mite too straight and her hands clasped tightly in her lap, she watched the joy woman slide a tall screen of woven willow branches in front of a low, open archway cut into the opposite wall.

  Evelina’s bedchamber.

  Despite her fervent desire not to offend the older woman by showing any form of judgmental behavior, Isolde couldn’t hinder the dampness beading her forehead and palms, nor relax the wooden manner with which she perched on the edge of her chair.

  And her nerves didn’t fail her because the tiny bedchamber held a bed and naught else, but because she’d had the audacity to peer into it on her last visit. Quite boldly, she glanced behind the screen when Evelina had busied herself fetching them both a cup of her self-brewed redcurrant wine.