“Ach … ,” she stalled, her gaze going to the keep’s forebuilding with its steep stone steps up to the great hall. “See you, the truth is, men from Eilean Creag have visited Fairmaiden a time or two over the years,” she finally explained. “They always came for the same reason—claiming your father’s asking price for his cattle was too high and wanting to know if my da could make them a better offer.”
“And did he?”
“Oh, aye. Every time.” She waited until two gear-toting MacKenzies hastened past, then lowered her voice, “He’d tell them they could have all the cattle they desired and for nary a coin.”
“For nothing?” Jamie couldn’t believe it.
“Not exactly nothing,” she hedged, still avoiding his eye. “There was a catch. They could have the cattle if they took one of my sisters as well.”
Jamie almost choked.
The only thing that saved him from laughing out loud at his good father’s gall was the sudden appearance of a creature almost as ill-starred as his bride’s sundry sisters.
“Jamie! You’ll ne’er guess who’s sitting in our hall, and why!” Beardie came panting up to them, his broad, pox-marked face flushed with excitement. “Och, nay, you’ll ne’er guess,” he repeated, his great red beard jigging.
Jamie winked at Aveline then looked back at his cousin. “Could it be MacKenzies?” he ventured, feigning ignorance.
“O-o-oh, aye! To be sure, but what MacKenzies!” Beardie rocked back on his heels, gave Jamie a sly wink. “Your jaw will hit the rushes, I say you.”
“Then do.” Jamie folded his arms. “Say me who is here and causing such a stir.”
“The Black Stag’s womenfolk! His son Robbie’s wife, Lady Juliana, and”—Beardie’s eyes lit—“his own two girls!”
Jamie’s jaw did drop. “Arabella and Gelis are here? And with the Lady Juliana?”
Beardie nodded. “Who would’ve thought it? They’re looking for husbands.” Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “I think they have me in mind for one of ’em. They’ve been making moon eyes at me.”
“That may well be,” Jamie agreed, thwacking the other man on the arm, knowing he couldn’t bring himself to dash his bumbling, bushy-bearded cousin’s hopes for a new wife. A mother for his five bairns.
A female he suspected would be found amongst the lesser kin of an allied laird. A toothsome, big-hearted lass willing to mother Beardie’s brood, but with surety not so fine a catch as Duncan MacKenzie’s maidenly daughters.
Lively, beautiful, and high-spirited, the well-dowered MacKenzie lasses were destined for only the highest-ranking husbands.
As Beardie would know if he had even a jot of sense.
Instead, he stood preening. Brushing at his plaid and hitching his wide, leather belt to a more advantageous sit across his round and impressive girth.
“I’m off to fetch my great-great-grandda’s winged helmet,” he confided, speaking again into Jamie’s ear. “The fiery lass, Gelis, was impressed when I told her I had a touch o’ Norse blood!”
Jamie opened his mouth to tell him there was nary a Highlander who didn’t have a few drops of Viking blood in his veins, but Beardie was already running off, barreling a path through the throng, clearly bent on retrieving his rusted treasure.
A relic the likes of which could be found aplenty at Eilean Creag.
Jamie blew out a breath, looking after him.
The moment Beardie vanished from view, he reached for Aveline’s hand, pulling her with him toward the keep stairs. Something was sorely amiss and the sooner he found out what it was, the better.
Lady Juliana might well be escorting Duncan MacKenzie’s daughters across the Highlands, but the reason wasn’t to find them husbands.
Especially not at Baldreagan.
That Jamie knew so sure as the morrow.
He was doubly sure when they neared the top of the forebuilding’s steps and a small, grizzled woman materialized out of the shadows to block their way.
“Saints be praised, you’ve returned!” She swooped down on them like a black-garbed crow, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. “The whole world’s a-falling apart and I’m running out o’ ways to hold it together!”
“Ach, Morag.” Jamie flashed her his most disarming smile. “I’ve seen you ready the hall for far more illustrious hosts than two wee lassies and Lady Juliana.” He reached to ruffle her iron-gray curls. “Dinna tell me—”
“It isn’t them troubling me.” Morag grabbed his arm, drawing him into the deeper shadows of the door arch. “It’s your da. He’s in the hall now, at the high table, making merry with the MacKenzie lasses—”
“He’s left his room then?” Aveline stepped forward, the notion pleasing her. “Praise be,” she said, smiling at the old woman. “These are good tidings. We’ve been trying to get him to come belowstairs for days.”
She paused, sliding a glance at Jamie.
He’d stiffened beside her and whether it suited him or nay, she was determined to help bridge the gap between them.
“Your da has been missed, see you. Especially of an evening,” she tried to explain. “No one feels spirited enough to tell tales or even enjoy their ale, and his hounds mope about with hanging ears and sad eyes.”
Jamie surprised her by nodding.
“Aye, his presence in the hall is naught to be fretting over,” he agreed.
Morag pursed her lips. “It is when I tell you he’s only in the hall because he’s vowed ne’er to set foot elsewhere!” she said, wagging a finger at him. “He’s pretending to be at ease. In truth, he’s in a greater dither than he’s been since I can remember.”
Aveline’s smile froze.
Jamie’s expression hardened. A muscle began jerking in his jaw.
Seeing it, Aveline edged closer to him. “Did Munro have another visitation?” she asked, lacing her fingers with Jamie’s and squeezing. “Was it Neill again?”
Morag nodded.
“Aye, that’s the rights of it,” she confirmed, her head still bobbing. “And the poor laird took such a fright, he barricaded himself in his room. We found him huddled in his chair, talking gibberish.”
She sent a wary look over her shoulder. “Like as not, he’d still be there if four clansmen hadn’t put their shoulders to the door,” she said, lowering her voice. “And if the MacKenzie lasses hadn’t arrived when they did. They’re the reason he came belowstairs.”
Jamie raised his brows. “And now he’s vowing to stay there? In the hall?”
“So he says.”
Aveline frowned. “He canna sleep in the hall,” she objected, the image of the old laird passing the night wrapped in his plaid in the draughty cold of the hall making her shiver. “For all his bluster, he’s old. And not himself of late.”
Jamie bit back a snort.
So far as he’d seen, with the exception of his newfound fear of bogles, Munro Macpherson was still very much his crafty, cantankerous self.
But his bride seemed to have tucked him into her heart, so he gave her the most reassuring look he could muster. “Ne’er you worry,” he said. “I willna let him bed down in the hall. He’ll sleep abovestairs as befits him.”
“Tchach! We shall see.” Morag clucked her tongue. “That old goat is as thrawn and unyielding as the day is long. Nay, I canna see him going back to his room.”
Jamie shook his head. “Last time I spoke with him, he was vowing ne’er to leave his bed.”
“Aye, he was all for hiding beneath the covers,” Morag agreed, stepping closer. “But that was before Neill’s ghost came a-calling, all wet and dripping from the grave.”
Jamie’s heart stopped.
Aveline grabbed his arm, holding tight.
“What are you saying?” Jamie stared at the old woman, the fine hairs on the back of his neck lifting. “What do you mean Neill was ‘wet and dripping’?”
“Just what I said.” Morag put back her bony shoulders. “Your da won’t be going back to his bed because he’s afraid of drowning
in it. If we want to believe his rantings, the last time Neill appeared to him, he was dripping wet and the very waters of the Garbh Uisge were flowing all around him.”
“That canna be,” Jamie argued.
Morag shrugged. “Be that as it may, his bedding and the floor rushes were drenched when we found him.”
“You saw this?” Jamie asked, though, in truth, he already knew.
The icy chills sweeping down his spine answered him.
Indeed, he didn’t even hear Morag’s reply. The blood was roaring too loud in his ears. And in his mind’s eye, he was seeing only one thing.
The sopping wet plaid flung across his ancestor’s tomb.
Chapter Seven
Jamie paused just inside the hall door and immediately found himself surrounded by jostling, rowdy clansmen. Clearly in good cheer, they pushed, shoved, and wrestled in the aisles between the trestle tables. Others stood apart, indulging in that favored Highland pastime of storytelling, the more golden-tongued among the visitors regaling circles of listeners with rousing tales about their ancestors.
But it was another MacKenzie who caught Jamie’s eye.
Burly and bearded, the man stood nearby, thrusting a great drinking horn in the air and claiming he’d filled it to the brim with uisge beatha. Grinning broadly, he challenged any who’d dare to gulp down the fiery Highland spirits in a single draught.
Jamie frowned at him, thinking he’d borrowed the clan’s famed Horn of Days. A treasure only touched when the reigning Macpherson chieftain relinquishes his authority to his successor. Certain the man didn’t know the horn’s significance, Jamie started forward. But on closer look, the reveler’s drinking horn was only a common ox horn.
The man simply enjoyed the carouse—as Gaels are wont to do.
Even so, his ringing voice added to the mayhem, the whole commotion proving so crushing Jamie slid an arm around his bride, keeping her close as he blinked against the thick, smoke-hazed air. But it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the shadows and torchlight, his ears to grow accustomed to the raised voices and laughter.
Boisterous laughter, clamor, and song.
A stir and tumult the likes of which he doubted Baldreagan had seen in years.
Truth be told, the din and disorder almost matched the chaos in the bailey. And ne’er in all his days had he been more grateful to lose himself in such a raucous swirl of noise and confusion.
Every blessed distraction took his mind off the wet plaid and a nagging suspicion so disturbing it felt like an iron yoke settling around his neck.
The morrow would be soon enough to ponder such troubling matters.
For the now, he’d force a smile and the best spirits he could summon. And for good measure, he’d watch his back and keep a wary eye on over-dark corners.
Including corners well known to him, much as such a notion displeased him.
But as Kenneth MacKenzie once said, pigs aren’t likely to sing from trees. And neither did sopping wet plaids sail into dark and empty chapels and fling themselves across stone-faced Highland knights.
Jamie drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He also tightened his arm around Aveline.
Och, aye, something was amiss.
And until he solved the riddle, his new lady wasn’t leaving his side.
“O-o-oh, I see the trumpet tongues spoke true,” chimed a female voice just to his left. “You have found yourself a beautiful Sithe maid!”
Jamie swung about, almost colliding with a glowing-eyed, flame-haired lassie no one would dare call a faery.
“Gelis!” he greeted Duncan MacKenzie’s youngest daughter. “Saints, but you’ve grown.”
He looked down at her, amazed at how womanly she’d become in the short months since he’d last visited Eilean Creag. “You are a fury unbound—sneaking up on us when I’d hoped to escort my lady to the dais in style.”
The girl tossed her bright head and whirled to face Aveline, eyeing her with open curiosity, but a warm and teasing smile lighting her face.
“Ah, well, then I shall take her,” she trilled, grabbing Aveline’s hand and leading her away, pulling her deeper into the hall, straight through the milling, carousing throng and up onto the dais.
“He will catch up, dinna you fear.” She gave Aveline a conspiratorial wink. “That one needs a jolt now and then,” she added, urging Aveline to take a seat at the high table. “He worries too much about propriety.”
“And you do not?” Aveline looked at her, certain she’d never seen a more vivid, breathtaking creature.
All burnished coppery hair, sparkling eyes, and dimples, she breathed charm and enchantment.
She was worldly as well. Aveline could see it in her eyes. “You do not care what the glen wives say?”
Gelis laughed and dropped onto the trestle bench beside her. “Not if I can help it!” she said, settling herself. “Worrying is for graybeards and … Jamie!”
“Hah! And the moon just fell from the sky,” a raven-haired beauty put in from across the table. “My sister worries all the time. Regrettably, too often about things that do not concern her.”
Lifting her wine cup, she smiled. “I am Arabella,” she said, as serene and self-assured as her sister brimmed with gaiety. “And”—she indicated an older, equally stunning woman farther down the table—“that is the Lady Juliana, our brother Robbie’s wife. Like myself, she is along to keep young Gelis out of mischief.”
“‘Young’?” Gelis leaned forward, her plump breasts swelling against her low-cut bodice. “I am not so young that certain braw eyes haven’t been admiring my charms!”
Arabella set down her wine cup. “As you can see, she is overly modest as well.”
Gelis gave a light shrug. “If you weren’t so swaddled in the folds of your arisaid, I vow you’d have a few manly eyes looking your way, too,” she quipped, picking up the end of her braid and wriggling it in her sister’s direction. “We both know your charms are even bigger than mine.”
Running a finger up and down the side of her wine cup, she looked through her lashes at a passing MacKenzie.
An especially bonnie one.
“Yours jiggle more, too,” Gelis observed, returning her attention to her sister. “Or they would if you’d put them to better advantage,” she added, her fiery hair bright in the hearth glow.
Arabella flushed. “We did not come here to flash smiles at hot-eyed guardsmen,” she minded her sister, something in her tone sending a shiver down Aveline’s spine.
But the dark beauty’s face revealed nothing. She sat ramrod straight, the image of polished dignity, her sole attention on the bannock she was smearing with Morag’s special heather honey.
Only her flame-haired sister seemed fidgety.
Gelis squirmed on the trestle bench and kept sliding cheeky glances into the main area of the hall, her gaze going repeatedly to a long table crowded with young MacKenzie guardsmen.
And, Aveline knew, several of Jamie’s bolder cousins.
She also knew no man had ever looked so hungrily at her.
Unlike the MacKenzie women, she had tiny breasts that would never strain and swell against her bodice, threatening to spill over the edging in a provocation that had surely delighted and stirred men since the beginnings of time.
And in her case, a pitiful lacking that clamped white-hot fire tongs around her heart, squeezing hard and jabbing sharp little green needles into soft and hurtful places she didn’t care to examine.
Until she heard someone mention Jamie’s name and remembered how his eyes had darkened with passion when they’d kissed in her father’s solar and her gown had slipped, baring her left nipple.
She remembered, too, how gently he’d touched her.
At once, a pleasurable heat bloomed inside her making her almost ache with the need to feel his hands on her again. She’d never imagined a man’s touch could be so exquisite. Just remembering sent tingly warmth sweeping across her woman’s parts and a deliciously weighty sensatio
n to her belly. She shifted on the bench, hoping no one would guess the reason for her restlessness.
Hoping, too, she might later have the chance to explore such tingles in earnest.
“Baldreagan cattle, eh?”
Munro’s booming voice cut into her reverie, and she glanced down the table to see him in deep conversation with Lady Juliana. To Aveline’s relief, he looked anything but feeble or frightened. Indeed, she recognized the glint in his eyes. It was a look she knew from her father, as well, but the MacKenzie woman appeared Munro’s match.
Well made and exceedingly comely, she had fine glowing skin and a wealth of reddish-gold hair that glistened in the torchlight. And like her two young charges, she’d been blessed with one of the fullest, most alluring bosoms Aveline had ever seen.
“My good father, Duncan MacKenzie, wishes a new stirk come the spring,” she was saying, watching Munro over her wine cup as she spoke. “He might even take two if the conditions are amenable.”
“‘Amenable’?” Munro slapped the table and hooted. “My conditions—”
“Will be more than amenable,” Jamie announced, his voice brooking no argument. “They will be fair and good.”
Munro glared at him. “What do you know of cattle dealing?”
“I know more than you suspect.”
Striding up to the table, Jamie nodded to Lady Juliana, then poured himself a healthy measure of ale, draining it in one long draw before setting down the cup with a loud clack.
He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth, his gaze fixed firmly on his father.
His bride looked far too fetching in the soft glow cast by the well-doing dais fire and he couldn’t allow such a tempting distraction—not with the image of that dread wet plaid looming in his mind.
But he did wish to distract his father. Only so could he squeeze more than rants, splutters, and snorts out of the man.
So he took a seat, snitching a bit of cheese from a platter and tossing it to Cuillin. Then he got comfortable and launched his assault.
“Anyone who can afford blazing log fires in every hearth can also allow a bit of openhandedness when selling cattle to a long-time ally.”
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