Sue-Ellen Welfonder

by Master of the Highlands

  Sore beset, he squirmed, the tightening of his male parts besieging all consideration of sticky fingers and nunhood, the unwanted bestirrings a greater nuisance than his aching throat, smarting eyes, and the jammed roadway combined.

  Equally perturbing—nay, alarming—he couldn’t seem to lift his hand from his leather purse. His fingers stuck fast as if spelled, the image of the little silver-cast leg dancing before his mind’s eye, its significance perplexing him.

  Abandoning his resolution to ignore MacFie, he slanted a sidelong glance at the bastard. “A question,” he began, his voice scratchy from the threads of smoke wafting out of the pend’s archway and seeming deliberately to curl past his nose.

  “Aye?” Gavin returned, his voice smooth as a fresh spring morn.

  As casually as he could, Iain voiced his concern. “The ex-voto the postulant dropped… such offerings represent a body part in need of healing, do they not?”

  Gavin eyed him strangely, but inclined his head. “So it is believed. Or else whate’er part of the body received a healing, in which case they are tokens of appreciation to the miracle-spending saint.”

  “Can you think of any other use for such votives?” Iain pressed, his fool hand still affixed to his purse.

  “Not in holy places,” came Gavin’s swift reply.

  Iain nodded agreement. He couldn’t think of any other use either… not wholesome ones anyway.

  He swiped at his smoke-stung eyes again, blew out an exasperated breath.

  No matter how he turned it, neither of the most logical possibilities fit the lass. Naught on her indicated a troublesome leg. Far from it, the quick glimpse he’d caught of her trim ankles and lower calves as she’d hitched up her skirts to sprint away, bespoke legs of the shapeliest sort.

  Lithe, well formed, and bonnie enough to haunt his waking dreams for days.

  And make his nights pure torture.

  Especially when he wondered if the nest of curls at the juncture of such succulent limbs would prove the same coppery-gold as the single lock of glossy, curling hair he’d seen tumble from beneath her head veil in the Cathedral.

  At once, Iain’s mouth went bone-dry, a fusillade of lascivious images bombarding him.

  Could her lower hair possibly gleam as bright as that one bouncing curl?

  Or carry a scent as sweet as the light, heathery one that had teased his senses when she’d sped past him?

  Would those curls be lush and plentiful? Soft and damp beneath a man’s questing fingers?

  His fingers—Iain thrust away the thought before it could expand into even more treacherous musings. His misery complete, he yanked his hand from the leather pouch with sheer brute force.

  But any relief at winning that small victory proved short-lived when the still-receding lump on his forehead began throbbing with renewed vengeance… and in nettlesome rhythm with the continued pulsing in a much more bothersome part of his body.

  The mood of the smelly, shabbily clad masses altered subtly as well, shifting to an affable, almost celebratory air.

  Iain slanted another glance at Gavin, then loudly cleared his throat when the other failed to notice him.

  “Did you not say St. Thenew’s Well was a less-frequented shrine?” He lifted his voice, the whole of his perturbation, every head-splitting throb at his temples coloring his tone. “It would seem she is a larger draw than her son, God rest his sacred bones.”

  Gavin shrugged. “Some would deem it heartening for a little-known saint to attract such a crowd.”

  “The pious mayhap, which I am not,” Iain snapped, nonetheless praying for the pain in his head to subside, and most especially for the itch in his groin to cease and leave him be. “Nor do I see a shred of piety walking amongst this mob of cutthroats.”

  A shadow crossed the MacFie’s open face, his renowned patience clearly cracking. “The most are holy men and cure seekers. Have a look about—”

  “The holy men and cure seekers I see appear anything but devout.” Iain rose in his stirrups, made a great sweeping gesture with his arm. “Burghers on their way to a market fair, is how they look,” he said, his gaze lighting on a tall stone cross by the roadside, its age-pitted face carved with Celtic symbols.

  The scores of MacFie’s pious hurried past the ancient way marker without a single reverent glance.

  Iain looked back at Gavin, the explanation for the crush apparent.

  “Off to partake of some form of jolly entertainment, they are,” he said, quite certain of it. “Hair-shirted humblies hoping for a saint’s merciful intervention in their woes? Nay, nay, and another nay.”

  “Mayhap they rejoice o’er some new wonder recently worked by Thenew,” Gavin suggested. “A great miracle that has filled their hearts with hope? It could be.”

  To Iain’s astonishment, an unaccustomed smile began tugging at the corners of his mouth. He glanced about, the underswell of jollity amongst the scurrying throng now almost palpable.

  “Shall we see which it is?” he asked of MacFie. “Fair or piety?”

  A brief flash of reproach flitted o’er Gavin’s freckled face, but Iain ignored it and studied the passersby until he located the most shifty-eyed wayfarer within hearing range.

  “Ho, good fellow!” he called to the man, delighting in the way Gavin blanched at his choice.

  The weasel-faced wayfarer wheeled around, his darting glance filled with suspicion. “Aye?”

  Clearly a man of ill living.

  The sort who favored skulking in shadow… and peddled useless tinctures at market fair stalls.

  Ointments and wonder herbs guaranteed to allay all maladies known to man.

  Iain resisted the urge rub his hands together. He did allow his smile to spread a bit. He could feel MacFie’s disapproval coming at him in waves. He cleared his throat. Saints, but it felt good to needle the righteous bastard.

  To ken he was about to set him on his gullible chin.

  “Sooo! What goes on here, my friend? What is all the bustle?” Iain asked the weasel. “Is there a fair here-abouts? A grand lord’s wedding mayhap?”

  “None of that,” the stranger gave back, already moving away. “’Tis a far greater entertainment we hasten to see.”

  “Wait, you!” Iain tried to stop him, his rusty smile fading before it’d even come close to maturity, the strangest nigglings of ill ease tickling his nape. “What manner of entertainment?”

  “A burning,” the man tossed back, and was gone.

  Iain’s stomach turned over. He’d had enough of flames to last twenty lifetimes.

  “Sweet holy saints.” Gavin’s eyes flew wide. “The burning of a living person?” he asked of no one in particular, his ruddy complexion paling. “At a stake?”

  “Aye, sir, but in a tar barrel,” a young lass answered, flashing him a bright smile. “Though some say her hands are to be cut off,” she added, her eyes alight with excitement. “A thief, she is… caught stealing from the shrine of St. Thenew, and the worst of it”—she paused to cross herself—“they say she’s a—”

  “Postulant,” Iain finished for her, his blood turning to ice.

  The lass nodded. “Have you e’er heard worse?” she breathed, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Make haste, good sirs, for they may have already begun,” she urged, then spun on her heel and sped away.

  Iain stared after her, the girl’s ominous tidings turning the boisterous tumult into a faceless red blur until he saw naught before him but two wide-set green eyes.

  Wide-set, somewhat slanting, and filled with panic.

  Eyes he wasn’t about to let glaze over with the sightless chill of death.

  Somewhere deep inside him, a long-forgotten sense of steely purpose stirred and wakened. And unlike the other times tarnished bits of his old self had sought to surface, this time Iain MacLean, Master of Nothing, seized firm hold of the tenuous threads of his neglected honor.

  His vision clearing, his wits sharper than in months, he whirled ab
out and grabbed MacFie’s arm, determined to save the lass, consequences be damned.

  He would, too… and preferably with Gavin ne’er-tell-a-lie MacFie agreeing to Iain’s decidedly deceptive plan.

  Such a measure would help immensely.

  From nowhere, but feeling oh so sweet, Iain’s smile returned. Just a wee uptilt at the very edges of his lips, but heady enough to flood him with renewed vigor and lend a bit of sheen to the rusted edges of his valor.

  Drawing a deep breath, he tightened his grip on Gavin’s arm and leaned toward the lout’s startled ear, eager to divulge his ruse.

  And Gavin MacFie would comply.

  Iain MacLean, the feeling-almost-his-old-self Iain MacLean, would not accept otherwise.

  A world away from Glasgow’s crowded wynds and closes, amidst deep green woods, heather moorlands, and silver-glinting lochs, the proud strength of Abercairn Castle graced the very verges of the Highlands, its curtained walls and turreted towers rising tall against the gently rolling hills.

  Drifting sheets of thin, drizzly rain blew in from the east, occasional gusty winds tearing leaves off the trees and rattling shutters, while heavy, rain-swollen clouds descended ever lower on the mountainsides, their graytinted gloom stealing the color from a landscape awash with sweetest luminosity on fairer days.

  But inside Abercairn’s impressive central keep, gloom of a different nature—a black-browed, glowering sort— permeated the laird’s bedchamber and anteroom, the castle’s most sumptuously appointed quarters.

  Tapestry-hung, warmed by a fine-smoldering peat fire, and occupied very much against the true laird’s will by Sir Bernhard Logie, a tall, rawboned usurper of middle years. Dark, hood-eyed, and, much to his private dismay, possessed of an increasingly bald pate.

  A staunch leader of the Disinheriteds, the Scots barons once exiled by the late Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, and now returned in Edward Balliol’s tail, and with Edward of England’s support, to attempt foisting Balliol on the Scottish throne and regaining their lost lands.

  Or, in Silver Leg’s case, as Logie was commonly known, adding the lands and riches of others to his own less-illustrious ex-holding.

  A man of little virtue and many vices.

  A proscribed outlaw in the eyes of everyone but himself and those who bowed to his whim.

  And his whim at the moment verged on thunderous. Narrowing a furious glare on the two men before him, he smashed his fist on the fully laden table, the impact jiggling the rich spread of victuals and wine he’d been feasting on and the assorted mounds of Abercairn loot he’d amassed since seizing the stronghold.

  Treasures he trusted nowhere but within a sword’s length of the place he laid his head at night.

  Reaching across the table, he grabbed a heavy, jewel-encrusted candlestick before it could topple over. Righting it, he placed it on the exact spot where it had been, then turned his wrath back on his men.

  “Explain yourselves,” he seethed, leaning forward in the massive laird’s chair. “Tall as she is, and with hair so flaming red, she cannot have vanished into thin air. Someone must have seen her.”

  The older of the two men fidgeted, his feet shuffling on the furred animal skins strewn thickly upon the wood-planked floor. “By God’s own breath, my lord, no one has,” he owned, looking more miserable by the moment. “We’ve asked everywhere.”

  “Ask?” Silver Leg’s eyes near bulged from his dark-frowning face. Dismissing the first, he pinned the second man with a narrow-eyed stare. “And you? Are you sashaying about the land asking the lassie’s whereabouts, too?”

  The man’s face turned as red as the clump of hot-glowing peat popping loudly on the hearthstone.

  Silver Leg stared long and hard at them both, his ill humor seeming to fill the room. He began drumming his fingers on the heavy, oaken table.

  “Persuade them to speak is the way of it,” he said, snatching up a handful of silver coins. “With a wee spot of artful assistance from Laird Drummond’s coffers.”

  He glared a challenge at them until the first man, the older one, stepped forward, his hand outstretched.

  “That ought loosen a tongue or two,” Silver Leg declared, slapping the coins into the man’s palm. “Scour every inch of the heather for hidey-holes if you must, search the most remote cot houses, or trudge the length of every wynd and alley in every burgh in the land. I care not how you find her, just bring Madeline Drummond before me, and alive.”

  “Aye, sir,” the men chorused, bobbing their heads, the younger man’s uncomfortable gaze dropping to the watchful greyhound curled at Silver Leg’s feet.

  “Only she can tell me where her tight-lipped father hides the bulk of his treasure. The fool refuses to speak and may well perish of his own stubbornness before he comes to his senses,” Silver Leg said, visibly calming as his dog began licking the bared knee of his once-trouble-some right leg. “Now be gone with you, and do not come before me again lest the lass is with you.”

  Still nodding their acquiescence, the two men backed from the room, near colliding with a set-faced serving-woman just stepping through the opened door, a basket of freshly cut peat bricks clutched in her arms.

  Ignoring the scuttling men, she placed the basket beside the hearth. But rather than seeking retreat, the grim-faced woman dusted her hands and eyed the greyhound at Silver Leg’s feet… and the second one, equally large, sprawled comfortably across Laird Drummond’s four-poster bed.

  Sprawled there, and gnawing on a well-meated foreleg of roasted mutton… full atop the laird’s finest bed linens!

  Following her disapproving stare, Silver Leg reached down and stroked the first beast’s rough-coated head. “Have you ne’er seen a dog, wench?” he asked the moment a particularly loud crack of thunder rumbled to an end. “They will not harm you… lest I order them to do so.”

  “Dogs make Laird Drummond cough and sneeze,” the woman said, not a single sign of timidity in her voice or in her rigid-backed stance. “I vow we’d have enough of them running about otherwise, and I, Sir Bernhard, am far beyond the age of being called a wench.”

  Silver Leg’s lip curled, but then his mood changed. “Mayhap so, but your bosom is as generous as the bawdiest wench e’er to grace my bed.” Lifting a hand, he toyed with the tips of his beard, his gaze sliding over the serving woman’s generous figure. “Are your legs as shapely?”

  He leaned forward, filled a second chalice with wine. “Are you of a mind to show them to me? Your legs, and other sultry… charms?” He slid the chalice toward her. “Is that why you haven’t yet exited my presence?”

  “I am here because I would ask you to spare a clump of peat or two for the good laird,” she said, ignoring the wine, her voice as firm as her lifted chin. “He ails, see you, and the chill of the dungeon will soon be the life of him.”

  Silver Leg eyed the finely woven Drummond plaid the knee-licking greyhound lounged upon. So many of the beast’s hairs covered the once-proud plaid, the colors of its weft could scarce be discerned.

  “The dungeon is cold, eh?” He sat back in the elaborately carved chair, allowed himself an indulgent smile. “If you fret for Drummond’s health, then pray help yourself to his plaid,” he suggested, flicking a hand at the ruined length of wool. “And if you are willing to warm me a bit”—he paused to glance toward the bed—“I’ll send along yon mutton bone to fill his empty belly as well.”

  Her face flushing as red as his man’s earlier, albeit for another reason, Morven the serving woman pressed her lips together, her gaze sliding to the iron poker leaning against the wall near the hearth.

  Silver Leg followed her gaze. “Enough, wench—away with you now,” he ordered her. “Lest you desire to feel an iron-hard poker of a wholly ’nother sort deep, deep inside you!”

  Her bravura besieged at last, Morven whirled around and flew from the room, Silver Leg’s lewd laughter chasing in her flustered wake.

  Chapter Five

  AYE, IN A BLAZING TAR BARREL!”
A high-pitched female voice rose above the other cries, the woman’s glee joining the massed excitement of Madeline’s tormentors, the whole of their fired-up eagerness to see her burn whirling so quickly in her breast its wild spinning made her dizzy.

  “That’ll teach her to steal from shrines,” another voice boomed from the crowd, a man’s this time.

  “Thieving, and light-skirted, too, no doubt,” a thin-faced woman sniffed. “A brazen whore a-hiding in nun’s trappings.”

  The taunts came from all directions, as did Nella’s ceaseless shouts at their captors as she struggled to break away from the two burly men restraining her.

  Swallowing hard, Madeline closed her eyes to the sea of leering faces. The cacophony of jeers pounded so loudly through her head she feared it would burst asunder before they even shoved her into the pitch-lined barrel.

  Her eyes snapped open when rough hands yanked her arms behind her back, and a man’s large, callused fingers began tying her wrists together with a length of coarse, flesh-abrading rope.

  Biting her lip until the coppery taste of her own blood filled her mouth, she fought the rising urge to spit in the hard-staring faces of those pressing nearest her.

  Or to ruin their pleasure by thanking them for sparing her a life of withering away behind cloistered walls.

  A life without love.

  But Drummonds died with dignity, the men with a bloodied sword in their hands, the women without complaint.

  She would not defile their honor by being less bold.

  So she held her tongue, kept her back as straight as she could, and prayed for a swift passing.

  Blessedly, the increasing chaos in her head and the dizziness soon blocked out the taunts, and the tumultuous mob and even St. Thenew’s little stone chapel and the nearby well shrine faded into a welcome haze of soft, thick gray.

  A cloaking mist shielding her from all but the fierce hammering in her temples, the deep rumble of approaching thunder, and the undulating ripple and wave of the earth beneath her feet.