She needed to get away. Isla grabbed her cloak off a hook near her own bed, which was only a straw pallet on the floor at the opposite end of the cottage from his. Wrapping it around her, up over her head as well, she glowered again at her father, and whipped open the door.
Her father hollered and hacked something at her. Isla ignored him and slammed the door behind her, leaning against it on the outside, closing her eyes. Guilt, as it so often did, jammed up in her throat. She breathed deeply of the winter air, felt her lungs fill with it, felt the crispness of it sting her cheeks.
Opening her eyes showed little activity within the village. It was late in the afternoon and cold, most were inside about their supper, the winter months being so much more about indoor activity. Stepping away from her own hut, which had been built by her mother’s father probably five or more decades ago, she pulled the folds of the cloak more tightly against her cheeks.
As green and brown as the spring and summer were in this tiny village, so then the winter was only gray: gray mud dusted with snow along the lane; gray sky blanketed by nearly unmoving cloud cover; gray stone walls of the finer cottages and gray caked muck and twigs of those, like her, less well-off; gray plumed smoke wafting from the center of each thatched roof. Even her cloak was drab gray, no emotion in that color, she’d always thought.
Isla walked along the lane, having no destination but away. She might come upon her brother, Gavin, returning from whatever mischief had taken him from the house earlier. The sound of sudden wailing reached her ears. Isla spun around, looking about the twenty or so cottages. Niall Elder scrambled out of a cottage in the distance, at the far end, near the church. He wore no coat, his tunic flapping as he ran across the lane and into a different gray house. Another wail, and Niall emerged, followed by Meg, and they disappeared back into Niall’s house.
Niall’s wife was expecting. She’d lost three babies in three years. Isla hoped this wasn’t the fourth. Meg’s husband, Alan, stood in the doorway, clearly debating if he should follow his wife. He scratched his fingers through his scraggly beard while three little blonde haired children peeked out around his legs. After a minute, he ushered them back and closed the door.
Maybe she would investigate, offer some assistance, but Isla hadn’t a friendly relationship with many in the village. Her sire’s foul demeanor had served more as a repellant than an invitation over the years. Isla turned around again, toward the imposing stone keep off in the distance. She continued walking, away from the cottages and further up the lane that led to the gate, left opened normally during the day. The large wooden doors, as tall as the two story walls, would be closed and locked when the sun set. She hadn’t much cause to step foot inside the walls, certainly not inside the castle itself so that her required attendance today marked the first time in more than a year she’d done so. That occasion had seen her begging pardon of the Lady Cameron when her father had broken his leg, as he’d then been unable to plow or plant the fields. The lady wife had sent a pitying glance at Isla but all that could be done was to let the fields to another so that Isla and her father and brother subsisted only on what income she earned from selling milk and eggs from the few goats and chickens she kept. Occasionally, she took on odd labors. Recently, she’d helped old Ned Berm thatch his roof this past summer for which she’d been paid two pence. With this, she’d purchased two chickens to replace one that wouldn’t lay eggs and one she’d been forced to kill, which had fed her family for four days at the end of last winter. Sometimes, Gavin might come home with more fish than they could eat in a week and they’d sold each piece for two farthings, but those days were rare and usually only in the summer months.
A rider appeared in the open gate of the castle. Isla was not close enough to know for sure, but something familiar about the shape of the large man atop the horse suggested it might be the son of Cameron, the boor who’d given her such grief today. Pulling her hood tightly about her, she turned again and walked down the lane, away from the castle, away from her own home. She kept her head lowered, the cowl showing nothing. The slow clopping of the horse’s hooves drew near. Isla gritted her teeth and turned right after Henry and Sara’s cottage onto a thin path that stretched out until the pasture.
The clopping carried on, and Isla knew when she was halfway up the path that she was being followed. With some annoyance, hoping her day did not further fall to pieces, she stopped and turned to face whoever came.
It was indeed James Cameron. He reined in and dismounted, standing still taller than the back of the horse. When he stepped forward, Isla reflexively stepped back, to which he raised a brow. This stiffened her back as he came still closer, to within only a few feet of her.
He stared at her, much as he had this afternoon, his gaze probing and brutal. If she were a lass unaccustomed to being subjected to such impolite gawking, she might have blushed. But she was not. “Have you come to reconsider the fine you cursed me with?”
A short chuckle escaped, as if six pence were only a trifling amount. Isla clamped her lips and tried to step around him. His hand, warm upon her arm, detained her. She jerked at his touch, stared at the hand as if it had done her some grievous harm.
“Lass, I beg only a moment of your time.”
Isla lifted her gaze to his, then lowered it to his hand again. “Seems not begging at all.”
He tipped his head, acknowledging this, and removed his hand and the warmth from her arm. “What is your circumstance here?”
Isla frowned at him. Her circumstance? She wanted to be away from him, that was her present circumstance. His eyes, in the gray outdoors, showed a darker blue but still reflected a seriousness, an inflexibility, which Isla assumed came with his birth and station and occupation.
“Have you kin?” He asked, and thought to add, “Aside from a sire who charges you with crimes of which you claim you have no knowledge?”
While the words were mocking, his tone was not.
She wasn’t sure she could—or should—lie to the chief’s son. “I have a brother. Younger by many years. And a father who should, God willing, be put into the ground very soon.” Ah, she’d shocked him with her cold-heartedness. His good opinion was of no concern to her.
“Aye, but you’ve a hardness, lass.”
Isla said nothing, betrayed nothing, just stared back at him, her teeth clenched against him and the cold, waiting for him to reveal his purpose.
“There is a position within the household, should you like.” He stared now at her lips.
And here it came. Lifting her chin, she almost smirked.
His beautiful lips quirked ever so slightly at the corners. She imagined he rarely smiled; he appeared wholly too mean, too hard, to smile. “And why do you stare so, lass? As if you only wait to bite my head off?”
“I can no be held responsible for what my face does when you talk, sir.”
He shocked her with his laughter. A wild and wonderful laugh, she thought, watching his head tip back as his deep chuckle filled the air around them.
“I am no interested.”
And the laughter stopped. “Isla Gordon, you haven’t heard nor asked what the position might be,” he said.
She didn’t want him saying her name, not like that. Not as if he liked the sound of it, or the feel of it as it rolled off his tongue. She refrained from saying she had a pretty good idea what role he might have in mind for her. It would do her no good to unnecessarily anger the man. “I have my sire and my brother to care for, sir, and no time to be away from my own home, regardless of how tempting the post might be.”
“And when your beloved father dies?”
“I had hoped to keep on with the arrangement your mother did allow,” she answered, not having thought this would be an issue, but fearful now, with this man, that it might be. “To lease our plow shares to Robert until my brother is old enough to take on the task himself.”
“Your brother will be conscripted into the army, lass.”
She shook her
head, hating that he’d given voice to an oft-worried fear. “No, he cannot. He is too young. I need him with me. I promised—”
“It is no optional, lass,” this, in a gentler tone, to calm her rising voice. “When he’s of age to serve, ‘tis no your decision.”
Isla sighed and stared at the ground, her eyes watering. After a moment, she raised her eyes again to the chief’s son. “You’ve offered some dubious occupation in the castle, which I’ve refused. And you’ve said you’ll take my brother away to die on some far off battlefield, when Wolvesley is all he’s ever known.” Isla lifted a brow. “Is that all, sir?”
He was not used to people talking to him as such. He was the cherished son of the Camerons, heir to Wolvesley and all its demesne and a formidable soldier in the army of King Robert; likely he was accustomed to more scraping and groveling.
He considered her for a long moment before answering. “Aye, lass, that is all. But you come up to the castle every morning, see Frances in the kitchen, and take three loaves for you and yours.”
There was not any part of her that wished to be indebted to him. But three loaves a day! “You are too kind, sir.” She refrained from tinting her words with derision. ‘Twas only his guilt, she imagined, that induced him to offer such.
“Isla Gordon, you are a stubborn lass.”
So maybe she’d hadn’t quite kept the contempt from her tone.
With a quick dip of her head, Isla ducked around him and walked briskly back to her house.
Chapter 3
Isla stared across the kettle at her brother. Gavin sipped at the old pottage, which served as breakfast today. He pulled a face with each swallow.
“But why do I have to go with you?” He wanted to know, his voice not yet having found the depth of age, though he was already fourteen. He was tall and lanky, his knees close to his chin on the low stool. He looked much like his sister, green eyes and dark hair, though his face was longer, his hair chopped uneven. Isla determined she would do better with clipping next time.
“So you can meet this woman, Frances, as well, and either one of us could collect the bread each morning.” She hadn’t any desire to step inside the castle again. She would do so today, but hoped in future, Gavin might see to the chore, as he had so much more free time than Isla did. Isla would be happy never again to lay eyes on the Cameron’s son.
Isla turned toward her father, murmuring something in the cot. Isla had already fed him and had changed and washed him up as best she could. Gavin had helped with that, though had recently shown much less patience with their increasingly nasty father than even Isla did.
She stood and grabbed her cloak, wrapping it around her as she neared the cot.
“We’re going out, da,” she said. “We won’t be long.” His grumbled but unintelligible response allowed Isla to feel less guilt.
Isla and Gavin walked up to the castle, holding their hoods close about them as the wind was mean today. Gavin yanked Isla out of the way when a horse drawn cart came barreling out of the gate, saving the skirt o her gown from the spray of mud it spewed as it passed.
“I don’t like this,” Gavin grumbled as they stepped inside the hall. “Seems too much like begging.”
She wondered if she herself or her father was the root of this lad’s stubbornness. Sighing, glancing around the near empty hall, she flipped her cowl away from her head. “And I suppose you’ll be complaining if the bread comes along with weevils, too.”
“Aye, I will,” Gavin said gruffly and then wondered, “Do we just walk straight to the kitchens?”
“I’m no sure.” Isla spied the steward Alastair at the laird’s table, a stack of ledgers and books in front of him while he squinted down at one, running his fingers across columns. “Excuse me,” said Isla, standing just about where she had yesterday. When the bald man looked up, holding his finger upon the last position so as not to lose his place, he only raised a brow. Though Isla was quite sure she saw surprise, likely for seeing her again so soon after her appearance in court. “The chief’s son has invited us, my brother and I, to collect loaves from the kitchen.”
“Has he now?”
Isla frowned at him, at his suspicion that she misspoke.
“Fine.” He lifted his free hand and pointed to a corridor at the opposite end of the hall. “Through there.”
“I’ll wait here,” Gavin said.
“You will no. C’mon.”
The kitchens of Wolvesley Castle made Isla stare, gape-jawed with wonder. In their little thatched roof home, she had only a kettle and maybe five or six other implements for all her cooking.
Her eyes scanned the entirety of the busy room, from the stone walls lined with shelf after shelf, all stacked with wooden trenches and pots in every size imaginable. A tall cupboard with more shelves housed only ceramic vessels. One entire wall was fitted with several different sized ovens, built right into the stone, the length of the lower wall set with different fires, all flickering around many different kettles. The top half of the outer wall showed numerous windows, allowing so much sunshine to highlight the room and the smokiness that hung in the air.
“And a timber floor,” Gavin commented tapping his foot, equally impressed.
“Oh, but I would cook all day long if this were to be my workhouse,” Isla said dreamily.
“You had the chance,” said a familiar voice behind her.
Isla spun around, prepared to see the chief’s son. Gavin turned as well.
He introduced himself to Gavin as James Cameron and her brother announced his own name, visibly in awe of the huge warrior before him. But Isla paid little attention to this, stuck as she was on two things: one, he truly was too handsome for her peace of mind—bloody hell, but he’d shaved and now showed a decidedly square chin, sporting a dimple smack in the center of it; and two, had he just suggested that the position he’d offered to her had innocently been one here in this glorious kitchen?
Rousing herself from her reverie, she found him staring at her. And confound it, he was looking at her hair. She’d been so distracted this morning, so nervous about coming up to the castle, she’d forgotten to hide her hair. A brightness, an annoyingly familiar light entered his eyes. Not a leer, those she knew. Contemplative, she’d have called it, as his gaze settled on her own when he’d looked his fill of her wild hair.
“You said to come for three loaves,” she reminded him. To her ears, her voice sounded angry. She felt Gavin, beside her, turn his head sharply.
“Aye I did. Frances,” he called, and a plump woman of indeterminate years waddled over, wiping her hands on her rather pristine apron. The woman was much shorter than Isla, with a middle twice as wide, and little button eyes under a mop of frizzy orange hair.
“Frances, this is Isla and Gavin and I would like for you to share with them—every day—three loaves of bread.”
Isla breathed a bit easier when the woman gave no indication of any resentment toward this request. She only perused both Gavin and Isla and said in a cheerful tone, “Aye, sir, we’ll fatten ‘em up before the spring comes.”
Isla sent another glance to James Cameron. He was watching her again. Honesty insisted that she recognize that her usual annoyance at finding someone staring so blatantly at her was just now fading as his remarkable eyes were actually now causing her to flutter and flounder. She was relieved then, when Gavin drew the man’s attention.
“’Tis verra kind of you, sir, to be so charitable toward us.”
James Cameron removed his gaze from Isla to accept the appreciation with a nod, while Frances drew Isla away with her. The plump little woman brought Isla through a door and into the larder, showing a basket of breads, dozens of loaves spilling out over the tall rim. Frances picked up two from the floor and pressed them into the basket.
Isla gaped again, this time at all the meats stored in this cool room. Shelves of marble were wedged into the stone walls and filled to the brim with slabs of bacon and baskets filled with salt and fish, and pi
les of some other carcass of meat.
“Aye, we only keep the loaves here daily, those what’s left from the morning meal. They come in the morning, sometimes again in the afternoon if we’ve more to supper than expected. You just help yourself, three, five, ten, dinna matter.”
A small gasp escaped Isla. “There are only three of us at home, and three was what Sir James offered.” The name coming so easily from her lips startled her. “I wouldn’t presume to take more.”
Frances shrugged and led Isla out of the room, having stuffed three loaves into Isla’s hands. She returned to her brother and found his face more animated than she had seen it in many years. Wondering what discussion had wrought so lively a countenance, Isla rejoined them as the son of Cameron was saying, “You’d have to commit to it, train daily. There’d be a wage, and you’d be responsible, after a while, to purchase your own steed and arms, but there’s plenty to lend in the interim.”
These words alarmed Isla. “What are you talking about?”
Gavin answered, his excitement palpable, “I’m to start training with the Cameron army. Sir James says after six months, I can become a squire to his captain, who lost his last fall when....”
The shaking of Isla’s head quieted her brother. His shoulders fell. “No. You cannot.”
Gavin grumbled something but the Cameron interjected, “Lass, ‘tis only training. He’s of an age, passed the age really, to have started with arms.”
Neither her icy glare nor the hand she held up had silenced him. “He’s too—”
“He just said I’m older than other lads who start,” Gavin cut her off, his irritation clear. “You need to stop treating me like a child, and you need to find something else to fix your attention on.”
Isla shot her brother a look of betrayal, her shoulders falling, her brows lifting.
Rather gently, James Cameron said, “Go on, lad, to the armorer. Tell Davidh I’d sent you, and then find Callum in the training field. I’ll be down shortly.”
And Then He Loved Me: Novella (Highlander Heroes Book 0) Page 2