by L. L. Muir
“My lady,” said one of the others. “I have heard that Stout Duncan’s war chief is building a stone keep near Loch Rannoch.”
The first guy frowned. “Aye. But James Duncan can do anything he likes and no man will dare tell him he’s foolish.”
They finally made it to flat land free from the bracken and heather that liked to cling to her wool skirt. They cut straight for the fort, and as they began encountering other people, all busywork ground to a halt. Folks lined both sides of the bridge that went over a dry and empty moat. And some of the women stared so hard at Phoebe’s gown, she wondered if she was as out of style as Wickham would have been. One woman even reached out and tested the fabric of her skirt before snatching her hand away. Phoebe just hoped she wasn’t dressed in something so foreign they’d think she was a witch.
Holy cow. Witch burnings, plagues. Who knew what she’d walked into? But hopefully, Mr. Perfect was going to hustle onto the scene and walk her right back out of it again.
She tipped her head back as they walked through the open gates and saw half a dozen faces looking down at her through what she suspected were called murder holes. Thankfully, nothing dropped on her. As their little parade marched on and on, she realized the fort had seemed much smaller from high on the mountainside. It took a solid five minutes to reach the epicenter of the well-populated town inside the pointy wall.
They came to a stop beneath a hide-covered canopy in front of a man seated on a large, high-backed chair—a makeshift throne—with a slice of a tree stump set in front of it. He wore the same blue as the soldiers, but his tunic was trimmed in gold and his legs were covered with black. A wide piece of black fur sat on top of his shoulders like football pads and were held in place by leather belts that crossed his body.
The stump, she decided, was probably necessary for the guy to climb up onto the chair, but it also kept his feet from dangling. She assumed the throne had been made with someone much larger in mind. Someone he’d stolen it from? Or had he killed the man and taken over his fort?
She had to face the fact that she was now standing in a world populated by dangerous people—a land with laws that probably changed from village to village. And in this village, the man before her was in charge.
Laird Stephan, I presume.
He seemed displeased that she’d noticed his stool, but his narrowed eyes relaxed as he looked her over. She tried not to smile when she saw the inch-wide gold band half hidden by his hair. A smattering of silver hairs shot through the unkempt brunette waves and put his age between forty and fifty.
If she’d learned anything by lurking on the IT fringes of the corporate world, it was that you didn’t mess with the guy in the big chair, crown or not, army or not. But the fact that he also had a long dagger hanging from each hip and poking out the sides of the chair, in addition to two guards standing behind him, meant the guy was paranoid.
Maybe he was worried someone would do the same to him that he’d done to the last guy.
The spear-bearing welcoming party offered a quick bow, so she thought she’d better do something. She decided a curtsy might be too dangerous to try with so many sharp weapons around, so she inclined her head instead.
He didn’t acknowledge it. “What manner of woman comes to spy on Clan Duncan?” He projected his voice so the onlookers could hear him. Or maybe he was asking his men. But either way, she pretended she didn’t know the difference between someone talking to her and talking around her.
“I am not spying, yer lairdship. Just lost.”
“Lost, she says.” He laughed, and his men laughed with him. “How did a woman as homely as ye ever escape home in the first place? Surely, someone would have sent the dogs after ye.”
“Uh, homely?” She narrowed her eyes at him, opened her mouth to ask if he’d had trouble with his eyesight before, but stopped when she realized he was teasing her. Badly. “Perhaps someone should teach yer lairdship a more effective way to compliment a woman.”
“Auch, and I suppose ye’re the woman to do it?”
“Maybe I am.”
“Cuthbert! Take our guest inside. I’ll not have her frightening the bairns with her disturbing countenance.”
“Disturbing?” She smiled. “See? You’ve improved already.”
A man with short hair came toward her, but Laird Stephan hurried to his feet to knock the man away. He then held out his hand like he intended to catch a hawk or something on his fist. After an awkward couple of seconds, she realized he was waiting for her to put her hand on his, and together, they walked toward a very long cabin-like building that sat off on its own. Smoke snaked out of three different points in the roof, and just like everything else she’d seen thus far, the size was deceiving.
A guard opened the large door and Phoebe was struck by how dark it was inside. What made her hesitate, however, was not a fear of the dark as much as…
How would her Viking pirate find her if she went inside and they never let her out?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Speaking of Vikings…
The longhouse was a lot like a Viking hall she’d glimpsed on TV, which made sense considering how close Scotland was to the Nordic countries. Three fire pits were spaced evenly down the center of the building, but only the farthest away had much activity going on around it. Small groups of people clustered in the shadows, but compared to the outside, the place was pretty empty. Of course, more came in to watch after she and Laird Stephan entered.
Another throne-like chair waited on a raised platform along the side of the left wall. Two women already occupied the seats to either side of it, one about forty, the other about twenty. Both were dressed as she was, but even in the dim light, she could tell they wore pretty colors. The older one in blue, the younger one in a paler tone.
The laird pulled his hand out from under Phoebe’s and climbed up to take his seat. Then he pointed to a bench behind her. “Grets, Spa, this is our new guest.” He frowned. “Yer name, woman?”
“Phoebe…Jones.”
“Phoebe Mac Jones, this is my wife, Grets, and another of my guests, Spa. She’s visiting us from the north. I have vowed to help her find a husband.”
Grets sneered. “Taking yer time about it, ye are.”
The man laughed and took a goblet from another woman who made no eye contact with anyone. Her dark gown would have made her practically invisible if it weren’t for a face so pale it glowed.
Stephan noticed Phoebe noticing. “Marta is a slave taken from the English,” he said. The expression on his face suggested what sordid things he did with his slaves, but his wife didn’t seem to care, even though she’d seen the same smirk. Either that, or she didn’t dare complain.
Phoebe’s chest tightened. This dangerous man she’d been joking with had a firm grasp on his community. There was no one standing at his shoulder, waiting to advise him. In the shadowy hall, he seemed even more menacing than he had outside. And she realized that if he wanted Phoebe Jones to be his next slave, she was it.
She suspected there were no Muirs tuning in to her new reality TV show, either. They’d left her defenseless in the middle of a barbaric point in history—they’d pushed her into the deepest part of the pool, and expected her to swim. And, idiot that she was, she’d essentially signed on the dotted line.
But just in case Loretta and Lorraine were waiting for some sign from her—in case they could read her mind over time and space as easily as they’d done in person—she had to let them know she was done. She wanted out. And no matter how wonderful a man was, out roaming the uncivilized world, or sailing his brains out looking for her, they’d both have to settle for someone else, because she didn’t think she’d be able to survive long enough for him to find her.
With a very clear, firm voice in her head, she sent the Muir witches a message.
Get. Me. Out of here.
Commotion erupted near the door and people shouted both inside and out as a group of large men blocked the sunlight. They began fil
tering into the hall, and only then did Phoebe realize that most of the people in the shadows had been women. Maybe these were their husbands coming home after a long day of raping and pillaging. But three of the men didn’t seem to have anyone waiting for them, and they made their way through the crowd to stand before Laird Stephan.
The trio wore much lighter clothing than the rest. Their browns and leathers and pale leggings would have made it easy to hide on a mountainside—they might as well have been wearing camouflage. The tallest, a blond, glanced down at her, looked away, then back again. She might have been flattered by a double-take in the real world, but here, it just made her nervous.
She ran a hand down her face, then folded her arms in an effort not to feel so exposed.
“Laird Stephan,” the man chided, “ye let a woman like this roam about unguarded, where anyone could see her?”
Her mouth opened automatically to respond, but a frown and shake from the crowned head was a warning she took seriously, and snapped her lips shut.
“Unguarded, Flanders? I think I could still skewer a man if the need arose, aye?” He waved Spa away and the girl jumped at the chance to scurry away into the shadows. Flanders took the girl’s seat and when his butt was settled in the chair, his eyes darted back to Phoebe’s face. For a full minute, he just stared at her while she struggled to keep her features blank. Eventually, he smiled, but only with the side of his mouth away from the laird.
“What do ye think?” The older man said, clearly referring to her.
“I think I want half,” Flanders said with no hesitation.
She gracefully folded her hands in her lap, smiled at each man, then was careful to enunciate. “Bullshit, Charlie.” She hoped it translated to something appropriate when it went through the Muir’s Magic Filter.
Both men blinked, then turned and blinked at each other. Flanders broke into laughter and the laird watched with a little furrow of worry above his left eye. But eventually, he laughed along.
A fleeting glance, though, told Phoebe he wasn’t pleased with her. In fact, he may have been promising that she would pay for her pithy outburst. But she didn’t care. No one was going to get half of her. Not him. Not Flanders. Nobody.
Come on, Lorraine! Loretta! Get Wickham back here. Or just send someone!
~ ~ ~
The chief turned to his wife and spoke low. When he was finished, he met Phoebe’s gaze with a blank expression of his own. The wife’s nostrils flared behind his back, but she eventually got off her chair and came down the step. She waved for Phoebe to follow her, then headed for the door.
In the silence of fifty people eavesdropping, she heard Flanders’ voice.
“What about a guard?”
Stephan laughed. “Just you pity any man so foolish. Gerts will guard her like her own treasure. Believe it.”
A smaller row of buildings butted up against the outer wall, and the woman led Phoebe inside the one in the center. Once the door-covering was shut, Gerts turned to her with a grin on her face—a different woman completely.
“Auch,” she said. “I wish I could have been sitting beside ye so I might have seen my husband’s face when ye defied them.” When she took a close look at Phoebe’s face, she laughed quietly. “Dinna fash, lass. The only enemy around here are the men. Ye’re not to blame for being dragged here against yer will, aye?”
Phoebe thought it best not to correct her. She’d seen the woman’s sober side, and she didn’t want to make that one mad.
After the one-sided man bashing went on for a while, Phoebe offered her opinion about men treating women property, just to hear a different voice. But Gerts made her promise to keep those opinions to herself for her own safety. Phoebe asked the woman how she dared speak up now, if it put her in such danger.
“Dinna fash,” Gerts said. “A fool cannot sit at Stephan’s side as long as I have. I only nip at him now and then to remind him I have teeth, aye? And he reminds me that he can have those teeth pulled on an impulse.” She poured water in a silver cup and handed it to Phoebe. “As for ye, Phoebe Mac Jones, I suggest ye do more than just try to keep a civil tongue in yer head. For a man will think nothing of cutting out a woman’s tongue if it suits him.”
“That’s…barbaric!”
“I don’t ken the word. But take my advice. Never make a man pay in public. In private, however, ye can make them pay dearly without them knowing just what they’re paying for.”
In private? Well, the conversation just went somewhere Phoebe had no intention of following. So she downed her drink and quietly gasped when she found out the hard way it wasn’t water. As the two of them sat on opposite benches, leaning against the walls at their backs, facing each other, she realized why Gerts watched her so closely with a slight smile on her face.
Her drink had been drugged. But whatever she’d been given seemed to be working slowly.
“Dinna fash,” the woman said for the second time. “Ye’ll only sleep.”
Phoebe held her head as still as possible and held onto consciousness as long as she could.
Gerts went on talking, though her voice moved further and further away. “When Flanders said he wanted half, lass, he wasn’t referring to you. I believe they referred to the reward they will get for you, once Flanders takes ye to James Duncan. They say that the man who delivers a worthy bride to the war chief will earn a rich treasure. It’s all my laird thinks about. ‘Tis why he kidnapped Spa. He sent for Flanders to deliver the girl. Now, he can deliver ye both.”
Phoebe shook her head, but it moved slowly. “That is no better. They want to sell me, like a slave.”
“There is no shame in being the spoils of war, lass. But if ye take a mighty warrior to husband, ye will be as fortunate as I. And even if James Duncan does not choose ye for his own, I suspect Flanders might. He blushed three shades of red afore he took a good look at ye. Though I’m certain he wishes to keep his interest a secret from my husband, he liked the look of ye. And Flanders is a mighty fighter indeed. So was my husband, once. Perhaps again, if King Robert requires it of him.”
At last, she would learn where she was exactly! All she had to do was stay awake long enough to tattoo it into her brain.
“Uh, King Robert? Of Scotland? Not Robert the Second?”
“The second?” Gerts scoffed. “Give the man some time, aye? His crown is but eight years old. Dinna be handing it off to that bairn of his already, poor thing.”
The father of Robert II was Robert the Bruce! She might not know her history, but she knew the movie. It was going to be okay. She could work with this. It was going to be okay.
Then she remembered the shelter made of sticks and the rain pouring down.
Dang it!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
James narrowed his eyes and glanced back and forth from the wee laddie standing before him and the stone he struggled to lift that was only the size of James’ palm. “Found another, did ye, Mac?” It was the fourth the boy had brought that morning, and they had yet to have breakfast.
The men in line behind his foreman’s youngest son tried to be patient, but they, too, wished to present their loads and eat their rewards. Now that summer had come, the lines were shorter, but there were plenty willing to trade stone for a good meal, and heaven knew he needed the stone.
“Aye, Chief Duncan. My fourth.”
“Ye’re not wanting a fourth meal, now, surely.”
Mac shook his head and pointed to the door where a child in rags looked on with wide eyes. “The stone is his, laird.”
“A fine stone. Well worth the price.” Then he leaned down and whispered. “Listen, my man. If ye have any other friends who might be hungry, ye take them to the kitchens and tell the cook that James asks her to fill their bellies. Will ye do that?”
Mac frowned and twisted his lips while he considered. “What about the stones?”
“They need bring me no stones.”
Relief settled over the boy like a light blanket and James kne
w why—he suspected it didn’t sit too well with the boy to have to lie every morning, because the white stone with the silver cracks was getting too familiar to them both.
As compensation for their patience, James walked down the line and quickly approved meals for each man who’d delivered a pile of heavy stone. There was no reason to weigh any of it, for one man’s strength varied from the next. He only hoped that his generosity would inspire them to do their best, whatever that best was.
The men he suspected of trying to cheat the system got their meals too, along with a list of other duties.
A man on the completed tower whistled. “A rider from the east!”
James waited for more.
“Blue!”
He disliked Laird Stephan and hated the need to deal with him at all. The man reeked of ambition and greed like a twenty-first century tycoon. Unfortunately, he had set his sights on the reward James had pledged to whatever man introduced him to the woman he chose to marry, so every month or so, a rider in blue would arrive from the east to announce the laird’s imminent arrival.
Stephan never failed to bring the most beautiful young women to show him. But he failed to learn that beauty was not what James was looking for.
Of course, he never allowed any of Stephan’s party to eat unless they brought an offering of stone—and that included Stephan. He laughed in anticipation of the moment when he would demand that the laird’s rocks be weighed.
After half an hour of waiting, James shouted up to the tower guard and asked what was taking the rider so long.
The man laughed. “I believe he is searching the road for stones, yer lairdship.”
Sadly, there were few stones left within half a mile of the place, but maybe if the rider managed to look hungry enough, wee Mac would find a rock for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Phoebe was relieved to find herself alive and unmolested the next morning and told Grets so. The woman laughed and told her she’d had nothing to worry about, that men weren’t allowed in the little row of houses, even her husband. And besides, Phoebe was much too valuable as a potential bride for James Duncan, and if any man so much as looked at her for too long, he might have his eyes burned out.