The Beast of Aros Castle (Highland Isles)

by McCollum, Heather

  The glow of the candle lit her face, her hair falling freely down her back. She wore a robe over her smock, the lace edge showing just over her slippers.

  “Was your evening meal lacking?” he asked, his voice sounding loud in the silence.

  Ava’s head snapped up as she turned, her unburdened hand at her throat. “God’s teeth,” she hissed and squinted toward him. “Tor?”

  He walked closer. “Aye. In search of a nighttime morsel?”

  Ava set her light onto the wooden counter. “A tart for Grace to make up for her spill into the river this afternoon.”

  His eyes widened as he tried to keep from smiling. “Did ye push her in?”

  “To hear her tell it, most certainly yes.”

  “And to hear ye tell it?”

  “I tried to reach a sunny spot by crossing some rocks. She followed, but her slipper lost its footing on a damp, mossy boulder.”

  “And she fell in,” he finished.

  Ava nodded, a frown in place. “I have a knack for getting others into trouble.”

  He leaned against the counter. “But not yourself?”

  “Oh, I’ve had my fair share of falls and mishaps, but poor Grace seems to suffer far greater than I.”

  “I believe there are some strawberry tarts left in the cold box.” Tor pointed to it in the corner. “Cook likes to make sure vermin can’t reach her pastries overnight.”

  With a silent grace, Ava floated over to the box and pulled the small wooden door open, holding her taper close for inspection. She pulled out a tart and set it on a handkerchief she’d laid out on the counter. “Thank you,” she said, tipping her face to watch him.

  “One for ye?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t deserve one.”

  “Because she followed ye across the river?”

  “Because I lead people into trouble.”

  Tor brushed past her on the way to the cold box and grabbed another tart. He flipped open the handkerchief and added it. “Grace has her own mind. She’s lucky to have such a caring mistress.”

  Ava’s lips pinched, but she took the bundle. He watched her teeth rest on her lower lip, looking like she could say more. He waited. What words sat on the tip of her tongue? What thoughts swirled under her long tawny hair?

  She finally opened her mouth. “Hamish helped me fish her out. He deserves a tart more than I.”

  Hamish? “He was just doing his duty,” Tor said, his voice gruff.

  “I’ll find him and give him one,” she said.

  “He doesn’t like tarts,” Tor answered before she could move toward the door. “The sweet is for ye.”

  She shrugged.

  “Ye seem to like to wander at night, without a light.”

  “Habit,” she said. “I considered it almost a game back at Somerset, finding sweets for Grace and me. I like the quiet of the night. It’s peaceful.”

  He crossed his arms. “I find the night crowded with thoughts. It can be bothersome.”

  She leaned against the high counter. “Thoughts of cruel nicknames and atrophied hearts?”

  “Ye are a very direct lass.”

  “So I’ve been told,” she said without looking away. Instead she focused directly on his eyes.

  “As if every interaction is a battle for ye.”

  She raised her fingertips to her forehead, rubbing. “Life is a battle. Those who don’t see that lose the war.” She tucked a curl behind her ear where it turned about the delicate edge to lay across her skin.

  “So, life is a war for ye? That’s rather cynical for a lass.” He’d known many warriors with the same view on life, but not so many women. What would come from her lips next? “I would not have thought a lady growing up in the safety of an estate in York to view life so. I thought ye were rather coddled, protected by your parents.”

  She scooped up the bundle and her taper. “Life is difficult whether in York or on Mull. Being direct spurs a person to show their true intentions and character. I suppose I’ve learned it’s best to know those things as early as possible.” She blew out the taper and left it just inside the arched doorway. “I will leave you to your crowded thoughts, then.”

  He should follow her, to make certain she found her way to her room without tripping in the thick blackness. Except for a dim flash of white smock hovering above the floor, Ava had disappeared into the corridor. Tor rounded the corner into the great hall without stopping, only briefly noticing that his sister and mother had gone to bed.

  A small pebble plinked down the steps, and he propelled himself up the turning stairs. A deep voice made him pause, and he strained to hear.

  “Lady Ava? What are ye about?” Hamish. Had he been waiting for Ava? The thought tightened Tor’s fists. His watchman’s shift had ended some time ago.

  Ava’s voice was too soft for Tor to pick up her words. He climbed higher.

  “Nay,” Hamish answered her with a whisper. “I shouldn’t.”

  Shouldn’t what?

  “Come now,” Ava answered. “I wish to thank you for your help today at the river.”

  Now that Tor thought about it, he’d asked Hamish to ride along the southern shore, not follow Ava about.

  Silence. A soft moan whispered from the top of the stairs, and Tor took the remaining steps at a ground-eating pace, pushing up onto the landing where Ava stood in the glow of the corridor torch. She pivoted toward him, as did Hamish, a tart sticking out of his mouth, hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Hamish inhaled around the pastry and yanked it from his mouth. “Bloody hell, Tor, ye scared the piss—” He glanced sideways at Ava. “Why are ye charging up here? Is something amiss?”

  Tor’s stare volleyed between the two. Ava held his gaze even though her wide eyes gave her a definite guilty look. Hamish had strawberry jam smeared in his beard.

  “The tart was for Lady Ava,” Tor said, his voice coming much fiercer than he intended.

  After a prolonged pause, Hamish slowly pulled the half-eaten tart from his mouth and extended it toward Ava. “Sorry, milady.”

  “Good Lord,” Ava swore softly, waving it off. “I told you,” she said, looking at Tor. “I don’t want it.” She turned on her slippered heel.

  Tor moved past Hamish after her. “Nay, ye said ye didn’t deserve it.”

  “Same thing,” she said without looking back.

  “Nay, ’tis vastly different.”

  The door down the hall opened, and Ava’s companion stuck her face out. She seemed to be holding a poker before her. Ava pivoted back toward him, frowning, and her companion shut the door softly. No doubt her ear was pressed against the wood.

  “Why are you following me?” Ava asked him, her tone hushed. She’d surmised the same thing about her friend’s ear.

  “To make sure ye and your tarts found your room.” Which was the only explanation he’d admit to her or himself.

  “Pish,” she replied, glancing around him at the now-empty corridor. “You’ve scared off poor Hamish, half done with his reward.”

  “’Twas your reward. What I want to know is why ye won’t take it.”

  Ava’s face screwed up in a charming look of exasperation. “I’m going to bed.” She shooed him with a flip of her hand. “Go off and dwell on your crowded thoughts.”

  She jerked the door open, her friend jumping back as she entered the room and shut the door quickly.

  Tor rubbed the back of his neck. Standing alone in a dark corridor, his gut tight, Tor swore softly. What the bloody hell did he care if she fed tarts to Hamish or refused to answer his questions? Ava was a complicated, vexing Englishwoman for whom he hadn’t the time. He didn’t even want her there. He strode to his door and paused as he heard a noise from Ava’s room. He turned, watching. Would she come back out? The anticipation captured his breath, but all settled to quiet again. After long seconds, he turned back toward his cold, lonely room, disappointed.

  “Damnation,” he cursed at himself and his bloody disappointment
.

  Chapter Seven

  The woman was slippery. Ava looked back and forth between the garden and the kitchen. “Did she just disappear?” she whispered and poked her head into the oven-like room.

  Alyce, the cook smiled. “Looking for someone?”

  Ava had followed Mairi from the great hall, wishing to catch her alone. The more Ava thought of the shadow she saw, the angrier she became. Who had grabbed Tor’s sister? Could she have married a monster? Tor said his father had arranged the union to secure an alliance with their northern neighbors.

  Ava produced a smile and a small lie to stop Alyce from alerting Mairi. “I’m looking for my companion, Grace. She used to help in the kitchens at Somerset. I thought she might have come down to inspect your spices.” God’s teeth. The lies were coming easier with each one.

  “Just me here now,” the cook said. “But send her along. I’d like the company.”

  Ava walked down the curving path that wound between the bushy rosemary shrubs, running her fingertips over the feathery greens of tansy and tall, bulbous stalks of figwort. Round river rock lined the wandering lane, and ivy climbed the stone wall, giving the space between the kitchen and keep the look of a secret garden.

  “Hmm,” she said, frowning as she turned in a tight circle near the wall. She’d been trying for days to catch Mairi alone. Ava had taken the opportunity to hunt this morning when Joan asked Grace to help her tend the kittens in the barn.

  Ava listened to the river gurgling on the other side of the thick, moss-covered wall. A trellis sat against it with reddened autumn leaves on vines winding over the arch. Looking closer at the wall, Ava followed the edge of a crack that ran up into the vegetation. Reaching on tiptoe, she slid her finger along it and felt the stone give beneath the pressure. She jerked back her hand from the widened crack. “It’s a door,” she whispered and pushed it outward. Gurgling river sounds grew as she stepped through the thickness of the hollow stone wall and rounded the heavy door that was covered on the other side by a thick bramble tunnel. Ducking she maneuvered through the dense brush until she could see the Aros River, near where Grace had fallen in.

  Mairi squatted down, examining a crop of mushrooms at the base of an oak tree near the water’s edge. Ava crept closer until she could see the hem of Mairi’s sleeve, revealing the bruise that ran even higher. It had turned purple and brown.

  “Ava? Are you out here? I want to show you a kitten I’ve named.” Grace’s voice rose up behind the wall, and Mairi turned, her eyes wide.

  “Who did that to you?” Ava whispered.

  Mairi’s gaze shifted to the overgrown wall of bramble.

  The sound of Grace’s footfalls crunched over the gravel at the step outside the wall. “Goodness, I nearly fell through this door,” she called. “Ava?”

  Ava kept her gaze on Mairi. “Did someone hurt you?”

  “There you are,” Grace said, her footfalls crackling through the twiggy undergrowth. “Didn’t you hear me? Oh,” she said, coming up short when she saw Mairi.

  “I’m collecting mushrooms for Alyce,” Mairi said.

  “Alyce?” Grace asked.

  “Our cook,” Mairi said with an impatient frown. She turned and walked farther into the woods.

  “We can help,” Ava said even though Grace gave her a what-are-you-thinking look.

  Grace exhaled in a small huff as she clutched a small gray ball of fluff to her. “Don’t follow Ava across any rocks or limbs,” she called up ahead.

  Mairi turned, her gaze meeting Ava’s. “I don’t want your help.”

  …

  Supper was uncomfortable. Tor and his men hadn’t returned from patrolling the north end of Mull, and Joan had asked Ava and Grace to take their meal in the hall with her and Mairi. The kitten, whom Grace had named Marjorie, after her mother, curled around Ava’s foot. Periodically it would get its tiny claws stuck in the lace of her smock and tug.

  Mairi ate in silence, barely answering her mother’s questions. Was Joan used to her daughter looking like she’d swallowed a ball of stinging nettles, her lips pursed together in anger?

  Grace apparently noticed, casting a wide-eyed glance at Ava. The silence piqued Ava’s nerves, making her poke at the carrots on her plate, laying them across one another. She sighed and looked across the table to Mairi. “Is this your first visit back to Aros after your wedding?”

  Mairi set her wine goblet down. “Aye.”

  “So, you were wed not too long ago?” Ava asked and nibbled on the end of a seasoned, cooked carrot.

  “The wedding was last winter,” Joan answered with a tight smile at her daughter. “Mairi was lovely. We made a wreath of holly for her hair.”

  “How pretty,” Grace added. She leaned down to fuss with the kitten around Ava’s skirts, but the little beastie ran underneath to the other side.

  “Does your husband travel much, then?” Ava asked, watching Mairi’s cheeks pinken.

  “Fergus is concerned about the English encroaching farther into Scotland, just like Tor. So, he rides away from Kilchoan often,” Mairi said.

  Joan set her eating knife down on the edge of the plate and looked at Ava. “That’s why Gus tried to arrange your marriage to Tor.”

  “But I am English,” Ava said. “How was Mairi’s marriage an advantage against English encroachment?”

  Mairi cleared her throat. “My father sought an alliance with the MacInneses since they control the land directly across the sound to the north of Mull.”

  “So, they could alert the Macleans to English soldiers amassing there?” Grace asked.

  “Aye,” Joan answered her. “There was also a worry that the MacInnes chief might side with the English against us. Gus heard that from a drunken cousin of Fergus MacInnes. So, the union also strengthened the MacInnes commitment to keep Scotland free from English interference.”

  The poor woman had basically been traded away from her family, sent to live in a possibly inhospitable place that required her to spy on her new husband. It was hardly a love match.

  “I can’t imagine that was easy,” Ava said softly, lowering her eyes to the table.

  Joan patted Mairi’s hand. “Mairi is Fergus MacInnes’s third wife. The other two died in childbirth. The MacInneses aren’t a hardy stock,” she said, shaking her head. “’Twas why Fergus was anxious to marry outside the clan.” She smiled reassuringly at Mairi.

  Ava peeked at Mairi’s wrist, but she wore long, lacy cuffs that covered the tops of her hands. “How is it living at Kilchoan?” Ava asked. “Do you like it there?”

  Mairi set her knife down. “I will not be interrogated at my family’s table, especially by an Englishwoman who’s been told to leave.”

  “Mairi,” Joan admonished. “I don’t think Lady Ava is interrogating ye.”

  “No more questions,” Mairi said with force, splotches forming on her exposed neck. She rose from her seat, and Joan followed. Ava stood, which propelled Grace to stand. Ava ignored the little pin prickles of the kitten’s claws in the hose around her ankles. “Ye and your questions are not welcome here,” Mairi said. Several long seconds ticked by as Ava met the woman’s pinched glare.

  “Joan Maclean has welcomed us,” Ava said evenly. “And until she orders us to leave, we will stay as her guests.” The door banged open in the entryway, and boots clipped against the stone floor into the room.

  “Ye are all standing. Why?” Tor’s voice broke the thread holding Mairi’s stare.

  Ava drew her skirts around her as she moved back from the table and looked to Tor. “Mairi and I were about to stroll the grounds to work off the mountain of food Alyce provides.” She took two steps toward the entryway and paused at the tug. Marjorie, the kitten, held tightly to the lace of her smock, pulling backward in an obvious refusal to go along.

  Tor’s gaze dropped to the hissing monster. Ava swooped down, plucking the kitten from her skirts. “In fact, Mairi and I were going to return this little one to its mother.” Ava tipped her head t
o his sister. “Come along.” Grace took several steps to follow, her focus on the squirming Marjorie. “We can handle this, Grace. I will find you afterwards.”

  “Uh,” Grace stumbled over her words. “Of course.”

  When Mairi remained rooted to the floor by the table, Ava strode to her, handed her the kitten, and threaded her arm through hers. She tugged the frowning woman past Tor, who watched them go with vexed brows.

  They reached the bottom of the steps into the bailey when Mairi thawed enough to snatch her arm back. “Why under Heaven would I stroll around with ye?” she asked in a whisper, striding toward the barn with the kitten tucked over one shoulder. The cat batted at her curls.

  Ava shrugged. “I thought it best to get out from under your brother’s questions.”

  Mairi huffed as she entered the barn. “He certainly has a lot of them.” The barn smelled of sweet hay. A low sound of munching animals carried over the soft gurgle of the river beyond the wall.

  “Probably because you aren’t giving him any answers.”

  Mairi perched on a bale of hay and let the kitten sit in her lap. It licked its paws while Mairi used one finger to gently scratch its head. “I used to come in here,” she said, glancing around. “To just sit. Here or in the garden because I could hear the river through the wall. There’s no river at Kilchoan.”

  Ava walked along the row of horses. She recognized the dark steed that Tor rode. It ate heartily from a trough of oats and fresh hay, its coat glossy. She returned to Mairi and sat on another fragrant bale. “I’ve had bruises like the one you have,” she said softly. Not wanting to lose this opportunity, she continued on in a rush. “It came from a man named Vincent, and even though it didn’t hurt all that much, it meant that worse things could happen, things I had little control over. Every time I saw it, it reminded me of his power, a type of manacle to keep me docile.”

  “I can’t imagine ye docile,” Mairi murmured. “Ye’re more like this wee beastie.”

  Should she give the woman more truth? Risk her running to her brother with information? Ava released a long, silent sigh. “’Tis part of why I came to Aros,” she said. “To escape.”