“Dinna fret, lass. The clan has the matter under control. Ye’re not to worry about a thing tonight.”
“You’re not going to kill the chieftain, are you?” she asked in horror.
“We considered it, Marsali. We even got so far as to discuss what to do with his body, but then Owen and Lachlan came up with a better idea.” Johnnie gave her a reassuring grin. “ ’Tis all taken care of. The lads won’t let ye down.”
She’d been too afraid to ask what “better idea” he was blathering about. If her fate depended on the clan’s half-baked strategy, she was doomed.
“Uncle Colum!” She ran up behind him, splashing water all over his immaculate blue robe. “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”
“Summer is always a hectic time for a wizard, Marsali. Nature’s bounty is at her ripest, and I have to prepare for the dark months ahead.”
“Your spell didn’t work, Uncle Colum,” she said bluntly. “Time is running out. If I don’t get out of this mess the chieftain is cooking up, then I’ll be forced to defy him openly, and no one will ever respect him again.”
Colum tapped the cowrieshell against his ear. “Appearances can be deceiving. What has happened to your hair?”
“Lady Edwina tried to tighten the curls and tie them up with ribbons, and don’t change the subject. The chieftain didn’t go away, and his heart is still as hard as a cairn. Whatever spell you cast on him didn’t work.”
Colum slid his shell into the leather pouch at his waist, then began to stroll toward his shipwrecked home. “He’s treated you well enough from what I hear.”
“Oh, aye,” she said indignantly, hurrying after him. “He orders me around morning, noon, and night. He tells me what to wear, what I may or may not drink, who I’m to marry. He’s even confined me to the castle.”
“I can see that, Marsali,” the wizard said dryly, climbing over a huge rock that obstructed his way.
Marsali clambered after him, glancing up to see Eun gliding down from the clifftops toward them. “Why are you being so obtuse about this, Uncle Colum? Why didn’t your magic work?”
The wizard balanced his feet between two upthrust rocks and reached down to help Marsali make the climb. “Sometimes a spell needs time to work. It would appear the chieftain is not the total blackguard you believe him to be. Is he not throwing a ball in your honor?”
“It’s more like he’s throwing me out of the clan.” Marsali froze in apprehension as Eun floated down toward her bare head. “He’s trying to get rid of me, Uncle Colum. Can you believe he thinks I’m a troublemaker?”
“I wonder what could have given him that idea.” He hopped down spryly onto the sand, leaving his niece stranded on the high rocks with the hawk perched on her head.
“Your magic never works, Uncle Colum!” she burst out in frustration. “I’m beginning to think you’re an old fraud.”
He glanced back at her with an enigmatic smile breaking across his face. “You’re going to be late for your party, Marsali.”
“Help me, Uncle Colum,” she whispered. “I need your power to battle him.”
He hesitated. Before he could answer, Fiona’s frantic voice rose from the porthole of the wrecked ship behind him. Black smoke billowed out around her frightened young face.
“Help me, Dad! I was practicing conjuring flames from my magic stones and something went wrong! My crucible exploded when I added the consecrated wine!”
The wizard raised his eyes skyward. “Why me? Did Merlin have his magic constantly interrupted by these petty concerns? Did Solomon? How am I ever to work on immortality when so many mortal problems disturb my concentration? How am I to contemplate the wonders of the universe when I have to squander my energies putting out a FIRE?”
He turned in a swirl of blue robes and sand toward the burning cabin, where Fiona was running up and down the deck, frantically pitching buckets of saltwater into the clouds of dense black smoke.
A wave broke against the rocks where Marsali stood. “Please, Uncle Colum. Please.”
He stopped. He gave her a pitiless look over his shoulder. “The power is within you, Marsali. All the magic you will ever need lies untapped inside your own mind. Use your strength of will. Help yourself.”
Duncan had followed her, obviously afraid she would disappear and spoil his plans. She put her hand to her heart as she saw the dark rider thundering down the winding road that led to the castle. It wasn’t fair. Despite everything, the sight of his powerful figure astride the heavy war horse still sent fierce chills down her spine. She could hardly catch a breath as he neared, his stone-cast face riveting and merciless.
He reined the horse to a halt within an inch of where she stood, a sprite defying a soldier. She looked up steadily into his eyes. Her courage faltered. For a heart-stopping second she shared the same sinking sense of defeat that enemy troops experienced when they saw the famous warrior across the battlefield.
This man would always win. Who was she to challenge his will?
“My God,” he said softly. “Look at you. What have you been doing in that dress, lass? Running through a pigsty?”
Temper flashed in her eyes. Her fighting spirit flickered back to life. Her uncle was right. No Hay ever surrendered this easily. Hadn’t she always managed to emerge from her trials unscathed?
Except that this time the chieftain was her foe, and her weak human heart was the weapon he used against her with consummate skill.
Duncan shook his head at her woeful appearance: the defiant little face, the half-curled windswept hair, the gold tulle gown sopping at the hem and caked with sand. “I’m trying to be patient, Marsali. Edwina has explained to me that you’re very nervous about tonight and that I have been insensitive to your feelings. I want you to know that…”
She stared up at his face, not listening to a word he said. It was such a strong beautiful face. Her fingers ached to trace its angular symmetry, feature by feature. She loved his eyes the most, though, the fathomless blue of the loch at midnight. She loved it when a flicker of emotion showed.
“And no matter what—” He broke off abruptly. “Are you listening to me?”
“Aye,” she lied, lowering her gaze.
“You’re going to have to change before the ball,” he said with a sigh. “And put your shoulders back, Marsali.”
She slumped like an old crone with the burden of the world on her back.
He leaned across the pommel. “Hold out your—”
Her head snapped up. “It is out, my lord,” she retorted, giving him a offended look before she stomped past his horse toward the dark brooding castle where her fate would be sealed before the day ended.
In a heartbeat he had wheeled his horse and blocked her way. Like a dark avenging angel, he plucked her up by the waist and settled her across his lap. She struggled, but he held her fast without straining a muscle. Her body fitted alarmingly into the haven of his, curves yielding to the hard contours. The blood in her veins hummed.
“Chin up, lass,” he whispered in mock sympathy as he touched his heel to the horse’s flank. “It will all be over by midnight.”
Duncan rode back to the castle in bittersweet silence. This was the last time, thank God, he would hold the wee troublemaker in his arms. He inhaled the nostalgic perfume of sea air and heather that wafted from her hair. He savored the arousing warmth of her small body. He remembered the first day she had stood up to him and rendered him bare, as it were, to the world.
He realized grudgingly that she had been breaking down the barriers to expose his unsuspecting heart ever since.
He also realized, as the castle loomed into view, that Marsali’s submissiveness made him suspicious. It was almost too much to believe that his plans for tonight would not blow up in his face.
“I am the chieftain, Marsali,” he said in her ear, “and I’m warning you right now: It’s either a husband or a nunnery. If you embarrass me tonight, you’ll be embroidering Scripture on a sampler tomorrow.”
Or perhaps it was only his own reluctance, his regret at losing her, that preyed on his mind. His body ached with the elusive imprint of her weight where he had held her. If she were anyone but Andrew’s daughter, she would have been in his bed for the past month. He would have seduced her, taught her, made her his own.
A disturbingly familiar noise broke his worried reverie. He glanced up to see the drawbridge jerking in a slow grinding ascent. “Here!” he shouted in alarm. “What do you think you’re doing? Open that damn drawbridge, Archie, or whoever the hell you are, and open it now! Marsali, if this is your doing, it is not amusing.”
Effie appeared on the walkway above him, putting on her spectacles to give him an unsympathetic look. “Is that you, my lord?”
“Yes, it’s me, you impertinent woman. Let me in!”
“Sorry, my lord,” she bellowed. “ ’Tis laundry day, and Cook’s just ordered the wash hung up to dry. The castle is closed for the afternoon!”
Duncan almost fell off his horse. “What? What do you mean, it’s laundry day? It can’t be bloody laundry day because we are expecting visitors to the bloody ball! How are they supposed to get in?”
Effie shook her head as if pondering one of life’s great mysteries. Then Marsali appeared beside her, staring down at Duncan with a malicious grin. “Is something wrong, my lord?”
“Open the damn drawbridge,” he roared, jumping down into the dust, which only sent the chickens into a squawking frenzy.
The commotion lured Johnnie onto the walkway, followed shortly after by Owen, Lachlan, and a bevy of other curious clansmen. They watched Duncan with wary interest as if he were a lion in a coliseum. Finally Cook came onto the scene. The crowd parted respectfully to give her formidable girth room.
“This is all verra disruptive, my lord,” she said, huffing for breath. “Here I was wi’ my elbows buried in flour for yer ball tonight when I heard ye shouting and swearin’, and us expectin’ a castle full of guests.”
“Guests?” Duncan repeated, his voice rising into another roar. “How the blazes can we admit guests with the drawbridge raised?”
Cook took his display of temper in stride. “And how can we admit guests, my lord, when our laundry is not properly washed and dried? What would these strangers think of us, I ask ye, if we greeted them like savages in our sweaty plaids?”
“She has a point,” Lachlan said in support. “ ’Twould reflect poorly on wee Marsali if we smelled bad, my lord.”
Duncan thought he was going to burst a major artery before he won this argument. “And when did this castle of slobs become a castle of snobs?” he demanded. “What am I to tell the visitors who are left standing outside after traveling for days to reach this godforsaken pile of rocks?”
“The castle gate is to open at eight o’clock,” Cook answered in a voice that brooked no disagreement. “The visitors can make of that what they like.”
Sabotage. Conspiracy. Duncan smelled its rank threat brewing in the air like a whiff of a London sewer. He was beside himself. He was being bested by the biggest bunch of fools in Christendom.
One by one the crowd of Highlanders melted away, until Marsali stood alone on the walkway like a bedraggled princess awaiting a prince who might never come.
She gave him a sly smile. “You might try to enter by the latrines, my lord,” she suggested. “That is, if you can stand the smell.”
Edwina suddenly appeared behind her. “What smell?”
“Edwina.” Duncan released a long sigh of relief. “Thank God. Raise the damn drawbridge, would you? The idiots have locked me out of the castle.”
Edwina frowned. She was wearing her nice Chinese dressing robe. Her wig was powdered and curled. “I can’t raise the drawbridge, Duncan,” she said after a long hesitation.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’ve just done my hair and it’s laundry day, and Cook—”
Duncan’s face reddened. “You…”
“—is pressing my best gown for the ball,” Edwina concluded. “Rules are rules, Duncan. You of all people should understand the need to obey established authority. Anyway, I need to do something about Marsali’s appearance. She wouldn’t attract a ragpicker for a husband looking like that.”
Chapter
14
Duncan had dressed to the teeth for the occasion, aware a display of authority was desperately needed to thwart the undercurrents of mutiny in the castle. A breacan and feilidh of blue-green tartan shot with gold swathed his powerful frame. The lower length of the plaid was pleated into a kilt, the upper part fastened to his shoulder with a bone pin. Beneath the coarse wool he wore a long white linen shirt with lace cuffs. Tartan stockings and buckled shoes completed the image of the deceptively proud chieftain.
The chieftain whose own clan would lock him out of his castle.
His clansmen behaved as though the drawbridge incident had never happened. As though he hadn’t had to climb up the latrines and take a boiling hot bath with lye soap afterward. They tiptoed around his chair and took their places at the table as if he were an ogre who would eat them. Marsali’s fate was foremost on their minds. He was surrounded by more moping faces and mournful sighs than had been at Queen Anne’s funeral. Everyone seemed to think the poor wee lass was about to be sacrificed to some cannibalistic Celtic god instead of being offered in holy matrimony to a decent husband.
He glanced to his right at Marsali, a frown darkening his face. She didn’t look unlike a sacrifice in her flowing ivory gown of Brussels lace, the dress that was to have been her wedding gown because she had ruined the gold tulle. She looked virginal. Untouched. A fragile rosebud waiting for a man’s warmth to burst into bloom. She was achingly sweet for all the trouble she had caused him. She was, in fact, a portrait of submissive femininity, all a husband could possibly desire, and then some.
Until Lachlan leaned across the table and knocked a flagon of burgundy into her lap. Instead of complaining about her ruined dress, she giggled helplessly. Lachlan threw Duncan a terrified look and whipped off his blue bonnet to mop up the mess, dribbling wine all over his own damp but newly washed plaid in the process.
“She’ll have to change,” Edwina said in dismay, stylish herself in a rose satin gown with an embroidered stomacher. “This is a tragedy. She’ll have to wear the yellow brocade, and it washes out her complexion in the candlelight.”
Duncan’s frown deepened. “Get upstairs and change, Marsali. Lachlan, for God’s sake, don’t put that dripping bonnet back on your head.”
“The first of the suitors for the hand of Marsali Hay is here, my lord!” Johnnie yelled from the door.
A miserable silence met that untimely announcement. Cook almost dropped her platter of truffles on her way to the table. Heads turned in sly anticipation as a strange clunking sound echoed loudly from the hall.
“What the Devil?” Duncan sat forward, his hand sliding to the sword on his hip. A peculiar rotund shadow filled the doorway. Johnnie stepped back just in time to avoid being crushed by the herring barrel with hairy legs that burst into the hall.
Duncan bolted from his chair, his voice like a clap of thunder in the awestruck silence. “What in God’s name is the meaning of this?”
The herring barrel sprouted a head and a pair of short bare arms. “I might ask ye the same thing, my lord,” it said in sputtering indignation. “If this is an example of MacElgin hospitality, to lure a man over mountain and moor only to strip him naked and—and—”
He dropped the barrel to reveal a plump backside plastered in peat and chicken feathers. Marsali covered her eyes with her hand but could not suppress a chuckle of delight. A few guffaws broke out here and there, only to die at the withering look the chieftain cast around the hall.
Duncan’s gaze checked off the prime suspects one by one. Marsali, Johnnie, Lachlan, Owen, Donovan. None of the usual offenders were missing. But, by God, someone was going to pay.
“Who are you, sir?” he demanded, redirecting his attention to the indignant herring barrel.
“I am Dougal MacDougall of Glen Beag, my lord, here at yer own invitation and attacked by a band of your own clansmen.”
“Is there anyone in this hall you can identify as your assailant, Dougal MacDougall of Glen Beag?”
Dougas hoisted the barrel back over his backside and waddled over to the table. His homely face furious, he examined each and every person present until his gaze stopped at Marsali, softening a little.
“I recognize no one here, my lord,” he said stiffly.
“Perhaps a rival clan attacked you,” Lachlan suggested.
Donovan gave his harp a discordant twang. “Aye, ’tis those damn MacKelburnes again. Always tryin’ to stir up trouble.”
Duncan narrowed his eyes, his long fingers tapping an impatient rhythm on the back of his chair. Rival gang, his big toe. He recognized a nasty MacElgin assault when he saw it, yet he couldn’t very well admit that the “prize” he was trying to palm off was the leader of the ruffians who’d attacked the man. He glanced down at her in grudging respect. Her eyes glittered back at him with unholy humor.
“My men will scour the moor for the culprits and see they’re brought to justice,” he said quietly. “Describe your assailants to me.”
Douglas looked mollified at the offer. Bumping his barrel against the table, he tried to reach the glass of wine Lachlan was holding out to him. “It was a woman, a skinny woman with spectacles, and her piglets.”
From the corner of his eye Duncan watched Marsali cover a grin behind her own goblet. “A woman… and her pigs did this to you?”
Dougal raised his quivering chin. “She wasna alone. There was a band of ’em.” He clutched his barrel higher in a self-defensive stance. “I was overcome, outnumbered—”
Fairy Tale Page 17