“Why?” she asked, drawing away from him with a delicious shiver of dramatic anticipation going through her.
“You will not question my actions, Marsali. Just give me your gun.”
“Oh, all right.” She knelt, bracing one small hand against his arm for support while reaching under her skirts for the gun tucked inside her scuffed riding boot.
Duncan swallowed and stared up at the castle, pretending the trusting pressure of her fingers on his wrist did not arouse a certain pleasurable stirring inside him. “It’s dangerous to carry a gun in your boot like that,” he said, his throat suddenly dry and tasting of dust. “You might have fallen off your horse and shot yourself in the foot.”
She lifted her face to his. “Actually, I couldn’t have, my lord, because you took my horse and forced me to walk. But it’s nice to know you’re considering my welfare.”
Duncan made a face but could not bring himself to correct the ragamuffin’s absurd statement. “Hurry up,” he said gruffly, wanting to have the ordeal over and done with.
It was dark in the barbican, secluded, warm, and intimately shadowed. He felt the pressure of her disturbingly soft breasts against his hip as she straightened, the transient sting of regret mingled with relief when she moved away. For a moment he fought an impulse to draw her back against him, enjoying the warmth of her. Fortunately he had more self-control than that.
“Here.” She slapped the gun into his hand with an utter disregard for safety that made him cringe. “Do you intend to discipline Archie because he refused to raise the portcullis?”
Duncan stared down at his hand. There had been something profoundly unsettling about the sight of such delicate fingers wrapped around the cold barrel of a gun, fingers that should be plying a needle or stroking a bairn’s hair. He wondered if she would really have shot him coldbloodedly on the moor a little while before. Had she shot men before? He glanced up into her face, searching the composed gray-green eyes for a clue to her character and coming up against a wall. Of all the responsibilities he’d anticipated, keeping a wild girl like this under control had not been one of them. “Why are you not married?” he asked bluntly.
Her gaze remained level with his. “I would have been wed two years ago, but my betrothed followed your father into his rebellion and was killed.”
He shook his head, sensing a grief beneath the calm explanation that she refused to show. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling the words inadequate. “What an unfortunate waste of a life.”
“There have been too many senseless deaths, my lord, although I realize that making wars is your world.”
“Winning wars is my world, Marsali. Under the ideal circumstances, killing is completely unnecessary.”
She smiled at him, a glint of what he imagined could be approval in her haunting eyes. The disconcerting thought came to him that if he had never left the castle he might have known this girl intimately. He might even have courted her, or her older sister. There was something achingly familiar about her face. Yet he could swear he had never met her.
“Do you intend to shoot Archie?” she repeated, her innocent voice breaking into his thoughts.
He sighed loudly. “No. Not unless he provokes me into it. Now stand back. Take the horse with you, please. And do not question me further.”
“But—”
“Not another word.”
He raised the gun to the portcullis. Marsali watched him intently for several moments before obeying his order to remove herself and the horse to the barbican entryway. She supposed he knew what he was doing, being the renowned general that he was.
“By the way, the gun is not loaded, my lord,” she called back over her shoulder.
“What?” He swiveled around, annoyance tightening his austerely handsome face. “Why the blazes didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I thought you might have another purpose in mind for it which I am too slow-witted to perceive.” Her face looked guileless in the shadows. “And you did warn me not to question you again.”
He lowered his arm and strode up before her, swallowing the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But a show of humor at this point would deflect from the discipline so desperately needed here. He raised his hand to give her back the gun, then stopped abruptly, glancing up at the shadow of the hawk settling on the barbican wall.
“It’s all right, Eun,” Marsali said in a soothing voice. “This man does not mean me harm, do you, my lord?”
“I suppose that depends on your point of view.” Disgruntled, Duncan brought his arm back to his side. “But whether I decide to punish you or not—and I admit the probability exists—that bird cannot follow you into the castle. I forbid it.”
“Then you shall have to find a way to make him go, my lord. Eun is under my uncle’s spell and does only his bidding.”
Duncan’s heavy black eyebrows drew together. “Apparently, I’m going to have to put this uncle of yours in his place.”
Marsali pursed her lips. In her opinion it was more likely to be the other way around. “As you say, my lord.”
Duncan nodded, wondering vaguely why every victory he scored with her ended with a hollow ring. “I know my father had the secret gates sealed off before I left. How does one get into the castle now when the portcullis is not raised?”
“Well.” She folded her arms across her chest, appearing to give the matter great thought. “In the olden days, I believe a battering ram would have been used. Some soldiers apparently tried to scale the walls with ladders, but I understand this method frequently met with failure. Pots of boiling oil and such. All that mess and bother.”
“A battering ram. A ladder.”
“When invaders were really desperate to get in, they would dig tunnels under the castle walls. This, however, took time and determination, not to mention strength. Oh!” She brightened in a flash of inspiration. “The really, really desperate ones attempted to climb up the latrines.” She wrinkled her retrousse nose. “But can you imagine the smell?”
She was playing a game with him, he saw that now. Oddly enough, he was actually starting to enjoy it. “If you wanted to get into the castle, Marsali, how would you go about it?”
“Ah.” She smiled smugly. “Well, if I were chieftain, I’d have the portcullis raised.”
“A brilliant concept. And how would you go about doing this?”
“I’d ask Effie, of course.”
“Effie?”
Marsali waved enthusiastically to the scullery maid who was grinning down at them from the watchtower. The scullery maid waved back.
A reluctant smile relaxed Duncan’s face. “Ask Effie to raise the portcullis, Marsali. I am not accustomed to standing around in a piece of wool with my private parts exposed.”
“Very well.” She brushed around him, cupping her hands, pistol and all, to her face to shout, “Raise the portcullis, Effie!”
“It’s laundry day, Marsali!” the thin-faced woman yelled down with an apologetic shrug.
“Aye, I realize that, but this man is not accustomed to standing around in a piece of wool with his privy parts exposed, and he’s demanding to be let in!”
Effie dropped her hunting horn to fish a pair of cracked spectacles from her apron pocket. Leaning precariously over the watch turret, she looked Duncan up and down for several critical moments. “I canna see anything exposed, Marsali, but the man is built like a war horse! My God, he has a chest on him. Where did ye find him then?”
“On the moor,” Marsali shouted back. “He’s claiming to be our new chieftain, but we tossed his clothes into the tarn, and he had to borrow a plaid.”
“Ye dinna say. Well then, I’ll fetch my sister from the barrelhouse and have her give me a hand. ’Twill take a few minutes, ye ken, to raise the damned thing up. Ooh, look at his hindquarters, Marsali. All that lovely muscular haunch.”
“You should have seen him running about for his life on the moor, Effie, bare as a boiled egg right down to his—”<
br />
“Excuse me.” Duncan clamped his hand down, hard, on Marsali’s shoulder. “There is a crowd gathering on the battlements, and I would appreciate it if you did not discuss my various body parts as you would a stallion’s for sale at a fair.”
Marsali stood unmoving, immobilized not so much by his painful grasp as by her reaction to it. Wonderful flurries of sensation washed through her, warm and thoroughly wicked; her reeling senses still hadn’t recovered from the pleasant shock of lying beneath him in the dirt. She turned woodenly to face him. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said with a sheepish grin. “I didn’t hear a word you said.”
“I’m not surprised, with all the shouting about my anatomy going on.”
He lifted his hand from her shoulder, frowning at the imprint on his fingers underlaid with the talon marks of the hawk. The pretty young pagan spoke in a cultured voice at odds with her station in life. The embroidered girdle around her waist where she had casually stuck the pistol had cost a pretty penny. Obviously someone had taken the trouble to educate and arm her. But why, and who? The mystery of her deepened.
The portcullis began its creaking ascent, the muffled sound of women swearing from behind the double doors breaking Duncan’s concentration. He backed away from Marsali, mounting the mare with a satisfied nod. He’d gotten his way; that was what counted.
Marsali stood in silence, watching as he passed beneath the portcullis, laundry dropping onto his elegant head. He looked proud of himself, as if he had scored a major coup by having the portcullis raised. Actually, considering the fact that today was laundry day, he had done quite well for himself.
But Marsali knew that the self-satisfied look he wore would shortly erode into horror. She knew that the worst was yet to come. For her own part she usually avoided the castle and its environs except in an extreme emergency. Clansmen had been known to enter and never be seen again.
She hefted the chieftain’s clothes back against her chest and hurried after him. He was probably going to need her protection. There was no telling what he might encounter. After all, he had countermanded Cook’s orders, and nobody in Marsali’s memory had dared such an offense and lived to tell of it.
Chapter
4
Cook slowly lowered the spyglass, her oblong face going ash-gray with the shock of what she had just witnessed. “Dear God in Heaven, it’s that wee bastard Duncan MacElgin, and his horse is trampling all over my clean laundry.” The three people standing beside her on the battlements—her spinster daughter, Suisan, the ancient head groom, Angus, and Johnnie, Kenneth MacElgin’s former lieutenant-at-arms—all reached to wrest the spyglass from her plump, age-speckled hands at the same time.
Johnnie snared it first. He was a middle-aged man with a leonine mane of grizzled brown hair that came to his shoulders. Narrowing his eye, he peered down at the horseman entering the middle bailey. “By damn,” he said, a whistle escaping his cracked front teeth. “The prodigal son’s come home.”
“But I thought he was dead,” Suisan exclaimed, wrenching the spyglass from Johnnie’s hands to see for herself. “Why do ye suppose—Oooh, he’s wearin’ naught but a plaid like one of the old Highlanders. The laddie is all grown up, Ma. He’s no a wee bastard anymore.”
She scowled in disappointment as Angus confiscated the glass, giving a deep throaty chuckle at the sight of the laird draped in the castle’s laundry. “Duncan MacElgin. Aye, there’ll be trouble in spades now. About time too.”
“What do you suppose it means?” Cook asked worriedly, wringing her hands.
“No tellin’.” Johnnie’s pleasant face puckered into a frown. “Someone should have warned us to expect him, though.”
Suisan giggled softly. “He doesna look dead, does he?”
“He’ll find out about Abercrombie now,” Angus said, with another ominous chuckle at the prospect.
“Abercrombie,” the three others whispered in horrified unison.
Cook heaved an enormous sigh. “And here I was set to enjoy a long peaceful summer. Look at the man, the size of him, letting his horse stomp my clean laundry into the ground. Laird or no, I willna have it.”
Johnnie snatched the spyglass back from the old groom’s hand and leveled it on the middle bailey. “Aye, and ye can give up yer hope of a peaceful summer, old woman. The MacElgin’s brought Marsali Hay along wi’ him.”
“Our Marsali?” Cook said, her features lighting up in relief. “Aye, weel. That’s a good sign then.”
“She’s carryin’ the MacElgin’s clothes and his sword, by the look of it,” Johnnie murmured. “She’s no exactly laughing with pleasure either.”
Cook’s face fell like one of her egg souffles. “That’s a bad sign then.”
“He’s ridin’ her horse too,” Johnnie added, clucking his tongue.
“That’s the worst sign,” Cook said grimly. “It can only mean the wee bastard is every bit as wicked as the day his puir papa sent him off to the wars. A lion canna change his stripes, I always say.”
“He doesna look at all like a good-natured man,” Johnnie was forced to agree, handing the spyglass back to Suisan, who was fairly dancing with impatience for another look at the MacElgin. “To think he hasn’t seen the worst of it yet. He’ll no be pleased.”
A knife-throwing contest was well under way by the time Duncan penetrated the middle bailey. In the confusion—the drinking, the cheering, the furious betting—no one paid much attention to the lone horseman who approached, his face a dark mask of displeasure at the evidence of total disorder.
A buxom blonde serving wench, blindfolded and with an apple on her head, stood flattened against the dog-kennel door, knives whizzing toward her with a careless accuracy that chilled Duncan’s blood. Before he could interrupt the sport, a band of scruffy-looking boys and girls came charging at him from the direction of the dovecote.
He grinned unwillingly at the innocence of their play, the toy crossbows and arrows they aimed straight at his heart. Then from the corner of his eye, he saw Marsali streak past him as if running for her life, his clothes and sword clutched like a shield to her chest. An arrow sailed over his head. That was when he realized that the little buggers charging at him with Indian war whoops were armed to the teeth with real weapons. He spurred the horse into a canter toward the safety of the stables, reaching Marsali’s side and swooping her up across his lap. She landed rump first on his massive thighs. He caught her in a crushing grip and rode with his arm clamped around her ribcage as if their lives depended on it. Which they possibly did.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, wriggling to wedge a position for herself between his legs. Duncan’s body stiffened at the not unpleasant intrusion of her bottom squashed against his groin. “Children will play their games, won’t they?”
“Those aren’t children, Marsali,” he said tersely. “They’re undersized monsters with murder in their ugly wee hearts.”
She dared to lean back against his chest, feeling protected by his strength as another arrow whizzed over their heads. “Everything is going to change now that you’re here, isn’t it?” she called up in a hopeful voice.
“Yes,” he said, and he frowned at the flicker of doubt that entered his mind.
He slowed the mare to enter the stables, surprised that it at least appeared to receive regular attention. A startled undergroom tumbled out of his bed loft to take the horse.
Duncan nudged Marsali off his lap, watching her drop to the ground as agile as a cat.
“How did the ambush go, Marsali?” the young boy asked excitedly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Did ye humiliate the bastard?”
Marsali cleared her throat, trying to avoid Duncan’s sharp gaze as he dismounted. “Well, we tried our best, Martin. But sometimes the best of plans go awry. The worst ones apparently do too.”
His red hair sticking up in tufts at various angles from his head, Martin looked over shrewdly at Duncan. “So I see,” he said, his voice low and curious. “Is this the bas—is he
the captain, Marsali?”
“This is Duncan MacElgin, Martin,” she explained solemnly, lowering her awkward bundle to the floor. “He is our new laird and chieftain. I humiliated him on the moor, and now he’s going to make an example of me.”
The raw-boned boy, a few years younger than Marsali, stared at Duncan in suspicious silence as if she had just introduced him to the Devil. It was clear he’d made the association in his mind, probably long ago. Apparently Duncan had become a legend in his own time, and not a nice one either.
He frowned, curbing his irritation. “See to the horse, would you, lad, while I walk ahead to the castle. I can only hope it’s as well kept as your barns.”
The boy said nothing, refusing to acknowledge the compliment. Duncan shrugged and finally turned away, his face more reflective than angry as he walked back outside. For all he knew the lad had reason to fear him. For all he knew he had roughed up the boy’s siblings in his own hell-raising youth.
“Do they still hate me that much?” he asked quietly, sensing Marsali walking up behind him.
She hesitated. She could not see his face, but she could hear the pain and confusion in the deep timbre of his voice. He would probably be furious with her if he realized he’d revealed such emotional weakness, being the famous warrior to the rest of the world that he was. But Marsali took this as a good sign. There was some feeling in him after all. Part of him could be hurt by a lowly stableboy’s opinion.
“Why do you care what they think, my lord?” she replied. “You are their chieftain. They need only obey you. What they feel for you in their hearts is insignificant.”
He turned to stare down into her piquant face, expecting mockery, finding instead an understanding beyond her years. Perhaps he had grown too accustomed to sophisticated females. Perhaps he had grown disenchanted with the painted, perfumed noblewomen who had enticed him into their anonymous beds, who had satisfied his body and left his soul aching for something more.
Fairy Tale Page 4