Devil in a Kilt

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

Her heart pounded hard within her breast as she watched her husband fend off his assailant’s vicious attack. ’Twere he hearty and whole, uninjured, he would have skewered his enemy and sent his corpse sailing over the wall afore the man had even lifted his ax.

  But he wasn’t whole and hearty.

  And he was getting weaker by the moment, she could tell. If naught happened, he’d soon be felled.

  He must not die.

  She’d sworn he wouldn’t, vowed it to herself, and if the saints so deemed it, she’d perish keeping her vow.

  God willing, neither of them would die.

  A fire arrow whistled past, coming to a sputtering halt near the edge of her cloak, and Sir Marmaduke loosened his hold on her to stomp on its smoking shaft. Linnet seized the moment to tear away from him and dash to the wall.

  Before any of the men could stop her, she snatched up Duncan’s forgotten crossbow and heaved the cumbersome weapon into place, aiming it downward through the open space of a crenel.

  “Kenneth MacKenzie,” she called to the men below, “I challenge you to show yourself!”

  “Lady, cease or you will be killed.” Sir Marmaduke slid his arms around her from behind and began pulling her away from the wall.

  Linnet dropped the crossbow and grabbed hold of a merlon, clinging to it while arrows whistled through the crenels and over their heads, sailing into the castle wall behind them with loud thwacks.

  “Leave her be,” a deep voice rose up from the rocky shoreline beneath the battlements. And with the words, all fighting stopped.

  A lone fire arrow clattered to the stone floor near Linnet, then an eerie hush fell over the men assembled on the ground below as well as those manning the turret walls. For a long moment, the only sound was the gusty sea wind blowing over the ramparts and the rhythmic whoosh of waves smacking into the jagged rocks lining the base of the tower.

  “Let the lady come forth and speak her piece,” the voice called again.

  “Do not heed him, ’tis madness,” Marmaduke whispered above her ear. “He would think naught of seeing you killed.”

  “God’s teeth!” her husband bellowed, his bloodied fingers curling around her arm in a viselike grip. “Go inside at once!” he commanded, yanking her arm with such force, she tumbled away from the merlon and out the Sassunach’s firm hold.

  “Leave me be,” she shrieked, unconsciously mimicking Kenneth’s words. The blood on Duncan’s hands made them slippery, and she took advantage, squirming nimbly from his grasp. “I ken what I am about,” she breathed, pouncing on the crossbow where it rested against the crenellated wall.

  “Seize her!” her husband shouted at the men closest to her.

  “Stay back!” Linnet warned as they closed in on her. Then, feigning acquiescence, she bent down, making as if to adjust the folds of her cloak. She whipped out her dirk instead. Raising it calmly to her throat, she said, “Dinna think I will not use it. I would speak with my husband’s half brother, and none shall hinder my doing so.”

  Muttered curses and grumbles answered her, but the men, Duncan and Marmaduke included, remained where they stood.

  Keeping her gaze steady on the circle of fiercely scowling MacKenzie warriors, she placed the dirk on top of the nearest merlon. Then she swept them with a dark look of her own. “Those of you who’ve seen me teaching Robbie to throw a blade know how fast I am with this dagger. Do not force me to show you again.”

  When they said naught, she nodded and lifted the crossbow. “I have come,” she called to the tall man standing below, his broad shoulders and arrogantly cocked head raging high above his men, who still hunkered beneath the shelter of their upturned boats.

  She peered down at him, wishing fervently she could set him aflame with the heat of her stare.

  Even at this distance, he looked so much like her husband, ’twas only the strength of her will that kept her from glancing over her shoulder to make certain Duncan stood yet behind her and hadn’t somehow found his way belowstairs and outside.

  But she knew beyond a doubt her husband hadn’t left the wall walk. She could feel his fury burning holes into her back.

  As she could feel the bemused smile his loathsome half brother bestowed upon her. Linnet shuddered, steeling herself against his unsettling resemblance to Duncan. Briefly, the greenish black glow she’d seen around him that long-ago day in the yew grove, flared, reminding her of the kind of man he truly was.

  She shuddered again and willed her hands steady on the bow.

  “I am come, Kenneth MacKenzie,” she repeated, “to bid you and your men begone from this place.” She paused to cock the crossbow with her foot. “If you willna, I shall fire a bolt from this bow into your bonnie knee, and your men can carry you away.”

  Kenneth inclined his head and deepened his smile. A gust of briny air carried his men’s snickers up to Linnet and those standing upon the battlements.

  “Tell your men to cease their laughing—or have you brought different brigands with you than those present when we first met?” she challenged.

  Kenneth raised a hand and his men fell silent. “’Tis not you they find amusing, fair lady,” he called up to her, his rich, deep voice so like Duncan’s her blood nigh curdled. “They—we—find it humorous that my brother would hide behind your skirts.”

  Behind her, Duncan fairly roared his outrage. Linnet heard his struggles and knew his men were holding him fast. The Sassunach admonished him in a low voice, “Be still, you fool. ’Tis to rile you he speaks thusly. He would that you storm forward so one of his assailant’s can take you down before you could draw your bow.”

  “My husband is not here,” Linnet returned, her voice firm and steady though her heart beat wildly at the lie. She heard Duncan swear, then the black oath was cut off sharply as if someone had clapped a silencing hand over his mouth.

  “He is gravely wounded, and his men have taken him below,” she barged on, afraid she’d expose herself as a liar if she didn’t speak the untruth swiftly.

  “What a shame,” Kenneth crooned, the timbre of his voice smooth as thick cream. Once more, he inclined his head.

  “Kenneth MacKenzie,” she rushed on, “you claim to be a chivalrous man. Will you prove your words by granting that, as lady of this castle and with my lord husband fallen, ’tis my duty to oversee these walls?”

  His displeasure floated upward like a dark cloud, coming at her in great, undulating waves. He stared up at her, hands braced on his hips, then finally made her a low bow. “I concede, lady. Under one condition.”

  “I will not bargain with you,” Linnet countered, fixing and drawing an arrow as she spoke. “Go forth from here and dinna return.”

  Without taking his gaze off her, Kenneth placed his right foot upon a nearby boulder. “And if I do not, you think to shatter my knee?”

  “So I have said.”

  “Your courage impresses me, milady, but I do not believe a mere lass, any lass, can wield a crossbow.” He patted his knee and smiled again. “Most assuredly not with the accuracy you profess to master.”

  Linnet said naught and took aim.

  “Throwing a dagger is a gypsy’s trick,” he taunted. “As a healer and seeress, ’tis not surprising you are possessed of such talent. Handling a man’s weapon…” his voice trailed off and he chuckled. “Nay, I dinna believe it.”

  Linnet kept her silence, her fingers inching toward the lever under the bow’s crosspiece.

  “Send down my son, and I will leave you in peace.” All mirth now gone from his voice. “My claim to this castle can wait for another day.”

  Angry rumblings issued from the men crowded around Linnet, jeers from those below.

  “You have claim to neither,” Linnet shouted, her fingers finding the lever. “Not the boy nor these walls. I bid you once more to be gone.”

  “I think not,” came Kenneth’s reply.

  “Then I shall send you,” Linnet said under her breath and released the quarrel.

  A sharp cry
of pain rent the night. As her husband’s men cheered, Linnet propped the bow against the wall, satisfied even though the bolt had missed its mark.

  Instead of striking Kenneth’s knee, the quarrel had lodged deeply into the bastard’s thigh.

  “I vow, woman, if you e’er dare disobey me again, I shall hie you over my knees and whip your bare arse afore all my men who care to look!” Duncan snarled at his lady wife as she, irritatingly unperturbed, continued to torture him with her poking and prodding at his wounds.

  Ignoring him, she went about her task. Even his men seemed to have forgotten to whom they owed their loyalty, turning deaf ears to his objections and ruthlessly holding him prisoner upon one of his own trestle tables.

  “By the Rood, have a care!” he railed when Linnet jabbed her infernal blade deep into his injured thigh. “Saints, would you finish what Kenneth and his band of outlaws started?”

  “Your lady seeks to help you, my friend,” Sir Marmaduke chastised. The English lout leaned against a nearby table, his arms smugly crossed.

  Duncan shot him a glower, but he merely lifted a pewter tankard in mocking salute, then calmly took a deep draught of ale.

  “Had you heeded our plea to get yourself off the battlements, you would’ve had fewer wounds needing attention.”

  “Think you?” Duncan’s ire swelled. His ugly knave of a brother-in-law bore nary a scratch.

  “I have no cause to think it,” the Sassunach drawled. “I know ’tis so.”

  “Is there aught you dinna kno—” Duncan snapped, his words ending in a sudden intake of breath as Linnet dug deeper into his torn flesh.

  Sir Marmaduke shrugged and took another sip of ale.

  “Hush now,” Elspeth soothed, using a cool, damp piece of linen to dab at a gash on Duncan’s temple.

  “If you’d drink the wine we’ve been trying to pour down yer uncooperative throat,” Fergus scolded from the far end of the table, “’tis far less pain you’d be in about now, laddie.”

  “I am not in pain,” Duncan barked, shooting an angry glare down the length of the trestle table.

  “Be that so?” the old seneschal quipped, meeting Duncan’s stare undaunted.

  Then he tightened his hold on Duncan’s ankles. “’Twere that the truth, why do you need six o’ your most braw kinsmen to hold you down?”

  Duncan opened his mouth to reply in kind but snapped it shut, wincing as the tip of Linnet’s probing dirk unexpectedly scraped along his thighbone.

  “Saints alive!” he bellowed, bucking wildly against six pairs of restraining hands. “Lachlan,” he called out, “fetch me that jug of wine!”

  The squire hurried to his side, a large earthen ewer in his hands. “Give the wine to Elspeth,” his wife told Lachlan, not looking up from her task. “Then lift his head so she can help him drink.”

  Lachlan glanced at him then, a worried frown creasing his brow.

  “Do as she says,” Duncan hissed through gritted teeth.

  At once, the squire relinquished the jug.

  A moment later, the blissfully soul-and-pain-easing wine flowed down his throat. After he’d guzzled the entire contents of the jug, Elspeth gently lowered his aching head back to the table.

  “I would have more,” Duncan said, then expelled a great sigh.

  But not before he’d glared at Fergus, daring the old goat to utter another of his barbed comments.

  He was laird, after all, and he’d have all the wine he wanted.

  Anything to dull the pain.

  Putting on a show of bravura be damned, Fergus and his offensive banter or nay.

  Some hours, ’twould seem, and the blessed Apostles only knew how many jugs of wine later, Duncan came awake. Through a shadowy haze of pain, he peered up at his lady wife.

  She leaned over him, staring down at him, and he did not care for the troubled expression clouding her amber-colored eyes. Nor did he like the taut lines of tension and fatigue etched onto her sweet face.

  But mostly, he didn’t care for the way she looked at him.

  It bode ill.

  For him.

  “Are you not yet through sticking your damnable blade in my flesh, woman? How much longer do you think to keep me here, naked and trussed up in linen bandages like a rotting corpse?” he asked crankily, secretly shocked by the rasping, broken sound of his voice.

  Rather than answer him, Linnet slid a worried look at his English brother-in-law. The great all-knowing lackwit stood beside her, also gawking down at him.

  “Well?” Duncan snapped. “Dinna try my patience, for I’ve not much left.”

  “Your lady and Elspeth have worked well, my friend,” Sir Marmaduke answered for her. “They’ve cleaned and bandaged most of your wounds. God be praised, they were able to remove all the little bits of mail, cloth, and leather embedded in your flesh. That should spare you any festering.”

  Duncan focused on one word of the Sassunach’s pretty speech. “What do you mean most o’ my wounds?”

  “We couldn’t pull the arrow from your arm,” his wife said, her soft and gentle tone in sharp contrast to the disquiet in her eyes. “To do so would cause more harm than is already done.”

  With effort, Duncan lifted his head and peered at his left arm. True enough, the arrow shaft still raged out of his arm and the skin around its entry point was puffy, the swollen flesh an angry shade of red.

  “You’ll have to push it through,” he said, his gut clenching at the thought.

  Linnet nodded solemnly. “’Twill hurt.”

  Duncan let his head fall back onto the hard surface of the trestle table. “Think you I am daft?” he wheezed, weak from the effort of holding up his head. “I know it will hurt. Just have done with it.”

  “Aye, we must,” she agreed, “the skin around the shaft doesn’t look good. The wound may not heal as cleanly as we’d like.”

  Duncan drew in a breath through clenched teeth. The mere act of talking about what must be done made the hot, throbbing ache in his arm increase tenfold. “Have-done-with-it,” he said.

  Linnet took her lower lip between her teeth and nodded grimly. Once more, her gaze slid to the Sassunach. He inclined his head in answer and ordered the men still gathered around the trestle table to tighten their hold on their laird.

  Then Linnet took one of Duncan’s hands, lacing her fingers through his. When Sir Marmaduke closed his large hand around Duncan’s upper arm and grasped the arrow shaft with the fingers of his other, Duncan shut his eyes.

  “I am sorry, my friend,” he heard the Sassunach say… then Duncan’s very innards caught fire, and all went black.

  “Praise God, he’s passed out,” Linnet said on a rush of breath as she clung to her husband’s suddenly limp hand. She turned her face away from the bloody arrow Sir Marmaduke had just pushed through Duncan’s arm, her breath coming in quick, little gasps as she fought the nausea churning inside her.

  At the head of the table, Elspeth clucked like a mother hen and pressed yet another cool cloth to Duncan’s forehead. Glancing up at Linnet, she said, “We will have to cleanse the torn flesh and apply one of your warmed yarrow poultices, then bandage his arm.”

  She paused a moment to turn over the damp linen she held against Duncan’s head. “Fare you well enough to help, lass, or should I tend him myself?”

  Linnet squared her shoulders and willed her lower lip not to tremble. She’d kept herself from crying all through the long night whilst caring for her husband and his injured men.

  She’d cleaned wounds, stitched and poulticed jagged, torn flesh, spoon-fed soothing broth and her pain-killing tinctures to countless wearied MacKenzies, all whilst not once giving in to her own desire simply to curl up next to her husband’s broken body and offer him the comfort of her arms.

  Once or twice she’d slipped up to her chamber to look in on Robbie. Blessedly, the lad slept soundly behind the drawn curtains of the massive bed she shared with Duncan. And, to her, relief, though she knew ’twas a might foolish,
the mute giant, Thomas, still stood watch at the door.

  Aye, somehow she’d kept on. She’d even managed to bestow wan smiles on the uninjured warriors as they’d sat about quaffing ale and recounting with glee how Kenneth and his brigands had made a hasty retreat, disappearing into the heavy fog in their little boats just moments after the quarrel from her crossbow had slammed into their bastard leader’s thigh.

  She’d shared their glee, too. ’Twas with great satisfaction, she’d watched Kenneth limp toward a boat one of his men held ready for him. But she couldn’t laugh and share in their boasts whilst so much remained to be done—while so many men lay about the great hall, writhing in agony or moaning until their voices became so hoarse they could do naught but lie still, their pain-glazed eyes staring up at all who passed.

  And through everything, she hadn’t shed a tear.

  Nor would she now.

  Not so long as her husband needed her.

  But the saints knew she wanted to.

  ’Twas unthinkable what would have happened had Duncan’s wounds been more serious. Had he been taken from her. Gooseflesh broke out on her arms and a hefty shudder skittered down her back at the thought.

  She couldn’t lose him… not now.

  Not after she’d come to care so very much for him.

  Rough edges and all.

  Not after she’d fallen so very deeply in love with him.

  So much so she’d rather die, too, than live without him at her side.

  “Lady?”

  Linnet started, Elspeth’s voice bringing her back to herself. “Aye?” she asked, blinking at the old woman.

  “’Tis a-dreaming you were,” Elspeth said, “I’ve done washed your husband’s arm and his squire’s fetched the last of your poultices—can you apply it and wrap the wound or shall I? Mayhap ’tis best you go abovestairs and sleep.”

  “Nay.” Linnet shook her head. “I’ll see to him myself.” Reluctantly letting go of Duncan’s hand, she took the warmed linen packet Lachlan offered her. As gently as she could, she eased it around Duncan’s upper left arm, then secured it in place with a band of clean linen.

  “Thank you, Lachlan,” she said, carefully lowering Duncan’s newly-bandaged arm to the table. “We’ll re-dress all his wounds afore he awakens.”