by Amanda Scott
He wondered what impulse had taken his imagination in such a direction.
The splatter of raindrops caught him unaware. The sky overhead was blue, the dispersion of smaller clouds still looking carefree and innocent, although the billowing one that chased them had darkened more despite the late-morning sun.
“I think we’re about to get wet, Scáthach,” he murmured drowsily.
The dog perked its ears but did not move another muscle. Its muzzle rested on its forepaws. Its tail stayed still. Scáthach knew Rob’s every tone and nearly every habit. Such a sleepy murmur rarely resulted in movement, let alone haste.
The single dark-gray cumulus mass seemed to slow, although the once-lazy, albeit chilly breeze from the northwest was picking up energy and the raindrops came closer together. The sky above him grew darker. Tilting his head, he saw that more clouds were drifting westward from beyond the ridge, evidently having gathered on the other side and now moving to meet the oncoming storm.
Distant, ominous rumbles from the west and steadying rain urged him to return to the cottage. He sighed, collected his wits, and got to his feet.
Scáthach opened her eyes and lifted one gray eyebrow. Then with a sigh that echoed her master’s, she rose, shook herself, and awaited his command.
The first chilly drops of rain caught Murie as she passed through a clearing in the forest, making her glad that she had worn her boots and the warm, hooded cloak. Soon, she heard thunder, but the canopy overhead kept most of the rain off her. That would not be the case when she returned, though. By then the forest, still damp from the previous days of rain, would be drip-drip-dripping all over her.
She had seen no sign of her father, but she was enjoying herself too much to think about that. He had likely taken another path, something she had realized when she had not caught up with him quickly. But she had reveled in her freedom and was in no hurry to turn back. She would be soaked before she got home, though.
Walking faster, she decided that if she could reach the Wylies’ cottage before the rain grew too heavy; she could stay with Annie until it stopped. Then she could follow the river path, which dried faster, back to the tower. At this time of year, storms usually began wearing themselves out after an hour or two, although it was possible that the rain might continue through the night as it had on Tuesday.
The thought of Annie reminded her of the yarn, still in its sack near the postern door. Having had no reason to carry it while she looked for Andrew in the yard, she had forgotten about it when Pluff opened the gate for her.
“Just as well, too,” she murmured. “It would only have got wet.”
She could hear rain spattering on leaves high above her. The forest canopy was dense, a mixture of beech, pine, birch, and lesser trees. The evergreens were more useful now than the others, though, because the beeches—which were the tallest trees—and the birches had only just begun sprouting new leaves.
Her mother would doubtless say that she ought to turn back, but it was Murie’s first outing in days, and she yearned to talk with someone besides Tibby and the other women in the tower. Yarn or none, she wanted to see Annie.
Her mother had been right in suggesting that she missed Lina and Dree more now than ever before, Murie decided. They had done nearly everything together until—
Her skin prickled as if every hair on it had risen and gone stiff. The woods that had darkened just moments before lit up, and a deafening crack of thunder sounded so nearby and so loud that instinctively she wrapped her arms protectively around her head and folded low to the ground. It was as if the thunderclap had erupted from the nearest tree for the sole purpose of scaring her witless.
Its first reverberations were beginning when she heard other nearby cracks and crashes, as if limbs, branches, or even whole trees had fallen. Drawing breath, she straightened, but pounding rain drowned out every other sound.
It was useless now to think of going to Annie’s. If she did not drown before she got there, Annie would scold her when she arrived for not having had the sense to turn back as soon as she saw clouds gathering or heard muttering thunder.
It was a pity that Andrena and Mag were gone and had let…
That random thought ended with a mischievous grin. “What would he do, do you think?” she asked the ambient air. Delight surged through her. She had been bored for days. But now, adventure beckoned.
Surely, if her father had gone that way, she would have seen him by now. Likely he had agreed to meet MacAulay elsewhere.
“If so, the cottage might be empty,” she murmured.
Then, smiling again, she decided that would be good, too. She wanted to know more about Robert MacAulay, and if he was there, he could no more refuse to let her in than Annie would. And in any event, she would at least see if he was keeping Dree’s cottage tidy or had created the chaos that so often accompanied the men of Tùr Meiloach when they slept on pallets in the great hall.
Without further ado, she altered her course, glad that Dree’s cottage was closer than Annie’s. Both were in the forest, but Dree’s was nearer the timberline.
Lengthening her stride with increasing eagerness, Murie soon spied the cottage in a small clearing ahead. Her skin tingled again at the thought that MacAulay might be there, and she wondered if Scáthach would bark to warn him.
No sound but rain, two more cracks of thunder, and their rolling echoes greeted her approach. Hurrying to the door, she lifted the latch and entered, deciding that if he was there and unhappy to see her, she could say she had been in such a hurry to get out of the rain that she had forgotten he was staying there.
Remembering his warning about lying, she felt a distinct chill before she saw with relief that the main room was empty, and shut the door. The cottage’s slate roof barely muted the drumming rain.
She saw at once that the dusky interior was as tidy as usual. Unlike most cottages on the estate, Mag’s boasted not only a slate roof instead of thatch, but a front room with a hooded hearth and a proper chimney.
The wee kitchen beyond possessed a small stone oven built into the fireplace wall. A loft occupied the area directly above Muriella, which one could reach by means of the sturdy ladder that angled upward near the wall to her right. In the curtained corner beyond that ladder stood Mag and Andrena’s bed.
With her back to the door, Murie faced the fireplace. The floor of the loft above provided a lowered ceiling for two-thirds of the front room, so it was warm. The open door to the kitchen was beside a small settle just left of the fireplace.
“Is anyone here?” she called out loudly enough for anyone in the cottage to hear her. No one replied.
Inspection proved that the front room was indeed tidy, the bed in the corner neatly made. The cauldron hanging from a pothook over glowing, half-banked coals on the hearth had mutton-scented steam puffing from under its iron lid.
That sight gave Murie pause. Surely, even in a cottage with a slate roof and a deep stone hearth, MacAulay would not have left live coals to burn untended for long. Looking into the kitchen, she saw nothing to interest her. Perhaps the loft…
Casting her cloak onto the wooden settle by the hearth, she went to the ladder, kilted her skirts up high enough to keep them out of her way, gripped the ladder’s rails, and put her right foot on the bottom rung only to hesitate when she heard a slight rattle of stones outside.
Keeping an eye on the door, she listened intently but heard only wind, rain, and grumbling thunder, distant again. Deciding that a pine cone or branch must have fallen but keeping a wary eye on the door, she climbed until she could see into the loft. Faint gray light through the small loft window revealed only Wee Molly’s cradle, a bundle or two that likely contained some of Mag’s and Andrena’s things, and a pallet like those that her father’s men slept on in the tower’s great hall.
“What the devil are you doing up there?”
Startled, instantly recognizing his voice, Murie froze.
He had certainly not come through the fron
t door, but perhaps he always used the other one. In any event, although he had spoken evenly, she discerned a note in his voice that warned her to tread carefully.
He did not seem angry, though, only surprised.
Drawing breath, reminding herself to take care as she descended the ladder so she would not make a fool of herself with a misstep or fall, she glanced over a shoulder just long enough to see him filling the kitchen doorway.
Scáthach stood before him, her gray head cocked, eyeing Murie curiously.
MacAulay revealed no curiosity, but he had begun to look irritated.
Murie did not look at him again until she reached the bottommost rung. Pausing there, still reluctant to face him, she turned just enough to see that he had pressed his lips together, reminding her that she had not answered his question.
“I got caught in that downpour,” she said hastily, striving to sound normal. Her voice squeaked, though, and she knew that the cause was the green, stonelike glint in his eyes when his gaze collided with hers.
She swallowed. Whatever his mood was, he was not happy to see her. Unable to think, let alone to take that last step to the floor or speak, she moved her right hand to her mouth and nervously nibbled a fingernail.
Rob stared at her, wondering just how foolhardy she was. To have come into the cottage when she must have known that a man she scarcely knew and had no reason whatsoever to trust was staying there alone—
His body’s sudden stirring stopped that thought in midflight. With her damp plaits loosened, her pink skirt rucked up as high as it was, and one finger in her mouth, she resembled an untidy child. But the softly rounded breasts under her bodice, and her splendidly shaped knees and calves, proved that she was not a child.
Nevertheless, the uncertain way she eyed him now made him want to reassure her, even comfort her, instead of telling her bluntly what he thought of her behavior. So perhaps he was the one who was mad. A suspicion stirred that she was accustomed to disarming even truly angry men in just this sort of way.
His body stirred again at that thought, so sharply that he was glad he was able to hold her gaze and keep it focused on his face.
He said, “Why are you out alone in this storm and so far from the tower?”
With a slight shrug and still looking into his eyes, she said, “I was going to visit Annie Wylie. She is married to Malcolm, our steward.”
“I do recall that,” he said. “Their daughter, Tibby, is your maid, is she not?”
“She is, aye, and their Peter is one of our gillies.”
“Then why is Peter not with you? Did your father not say that he should be?”
“I did not see either of them,” she said, stepping down at last and turning fully to face him. “Moreover, when I asked Pluff where Father was, he said he might have come here to visit you again. Then Pluff opened the gate, so here I am.”
He was glad that she stayed by the ladder, because she had evidently forgotten that she had kilted her skirt almost two inches above those splendid knees. They were barer now than any he had seen in six months.
“You should not be here,” he said flatly.
She shrugged again but with a tiny, mischievous smile. “Where else could I have found shelter so quickly?” she asked, lowering her eyelids with demureness he did not believe. “You surely won’t send me back out into this dreadful storm.”
Feeling stirrings of real anger that she might be truly so naïve about a matter that could create real trouble for her—perhaps even for him—Rob kept silent long enough to be sure he would say nothing more than he had good cause to say.
“Do you fear my being here?” she asked, looking away while she flicked something from her skirt. “You need not, you know. I can see that you are taking good care of the cottage. And I would not tell Dree or Mag even if you were not.”
“It is good to know that you can keep some things to yourself,” he said dryly.
She gave him a sour look, raised her chin, and said, “You might at least offer something to warm me. Your man seems to have left soup or a stew in that pot, and I confess that I neglected to eat enough to sustain me before I came outside.”
“Then you must be hungry,” he said, exerting himself to keep his eyes off the bare skin between her rucked-up skirt and the tops of the muddy rawhide boots that covered ankles and feet likely to be just as shapely as what he could see.
“However,” he said firmly, “you are wrong about who left the food to cook. Mag did ask someone named Calum Beg to look in on me and see to aught I might require, but I can look after myself. I put the pot on at dawn, before I went out, but the meat was fresh yesterday and will not be ready yet to eat.”
“It should be cooked enough in an hour or so, though, should it not?”
“It might be, but you will not be here,” he said firmly. Much as he might enjoy the pleasures her body would offer a man, honor forbade such activities with young noblewomen to whom one was not married. Come to that, whether the lady Muriella knew what she was doing or not, she was doubtless still a maiden.
Looking at him from under her lashes in what she must have thought was a winsome or mischievous manner, she said, “But I cannot go anywhere else, Master Robert MacAulay, not until this rain stops.”
“You are wrong about that,” he said, measuring his words and holding her gaze again. “You are going home.”
Before Murie could overcome the stunning effect that his stern gaze was having on her, let alone contradict him, he added, “You had to see how early those clouds appeared this morning. You must also have smelled rain in the air again. Therefore, to have come out at all was foolish. To come this far, by yourself, means only that you will reap the results of such behavior. The consequences—”
“But you are creating the consequences!” she exclaimed, her anger igniting. “If you were at all chivalrous, you would protect me from them.”
“Sakes, lass, I am trying to protect you. You must know you have no business being alone here with me, or I with you.”
“But if you cared about my safety—”
“Don’t interrupt me again,” he said curtly.
And rudely interrupted her to do so!
She would have liked to tell him just what she thought of such rudeness, because it was certainly more disrespectful for a gentleman to interrupt a lady than the other way around. However, the look he was giving her warned her that he might reveal even greater rudeness if she pushed him too far.
Easily reading her reaction and determined not to let her fire up his temper to match hers, Rob continued calmly to explain that she should not trust any man she barely knew. When she started to interrupt him again, he gave her another look that silenced her before she could, and caused her to put that finger in her mouth again.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
Snatching the hand away and holding it at her waist with the other one, as if she had heard such commands before, she scowled and said, “You cannot mean to send me back out into that horrid storm. I’ll drown!”
“You won’t drown. The rain has eased, and the thunder has moved on, so no lightning bolt will strike you, either. You know as well as I do that you cannot stay here. Only think what Mag would say to you—and to me, come to that—if he learned that you had done so. You have already stayed too long.”
“But I don’t want to go. I’ll be soaked through!”
“Which is, I’m afraid, exactly what you deserve,” he retorted, picking up her cloak from where it lay on the nearby settle. “You will dry off quickly when you get home, so I doubt you’ll catch as much as a cold from the experience.”
Striding to the front door, he pulled it open before he could change his mind and held her cloak for her until she unkilted her skirts and came close enough for him to drape it over her shoulders. Then, still stern and commanding, he gestured for her to be on her way and waited implacably until, with one more furious look at him and her chin in the air, she stepped outside.
He watc
hed until she moved out from under the eaves into the downpour.
Muttering under her breath, Muriella stalked out of the cottage, certain that if she did not obey him, MacAulay would pick her up and throw her out. The moment she left the shelter of the jutting eaves, however, the rain enveloped her. She could barely see her way across the clearing, but snatching up her skirts, she ran.
How she wished she could command Scáthach to bite the beastly man!
That thought brought an unladylike snort. The dog had lain quietly by the hearth and watched sleepily with its head on its forepaws while they talked.
Glancing back as she raced across the open space to the trees, Murie saw that the door had shut behind her.
He had not even been polite enough to shout farewell.
“Putting me out of my own sister’s cottage, too,” she muttered. “What sort of brute dares to order a lady outside into such a deluge?”
The last word made her smile, mocking herself. It was hardly a deluge now that she was amidst the trees again. Faith, it wasn’t that much of a storm anymore. The lightning and thunder had moved on and were no longer a threat, although the rain was heavy enough in the open and the trees were dripping enough now to soak her to the skin long before she got home.
She would not return to the tower yet, she decided. She would go on to Annie’s, which was closer and where she could dry out and get warm. Annie might scold. She surely would if she learned where Murie had been, and with whom. But Annie would see that she got warm, and Annie would have food to share.
Inside the cottage, Rob tried not to think about her ladyship, reminding himself again that actions always had consequences, and consequences formed the best pathways to better decisions. Better that she suffer a soaking than the cost she might have suffered had he been a different sort of man.
Warriors often took their pleasures where they found them, and the chivalry she mentioned had long since become scarce in the Highlands, if indeed, chivalry had ever held sway there. Jamie Stewart and his beloved queen, Joanna, might hope to encourage chivalry again, but, for more than two decades, Scotland had been a lawless, untamable country.