TemptationinTartan

by Suz deMello

  What if she followed?

  He couldn’t continue to evade her questions without lying outright and his feelings for her, as well as his honor, wouldn’t allow that.

  He was aware of the gossip. Had she also heard the muttering and the murmurs? News traveled around the clan in Gaelic so mayhap the blather hadn’t reached her ears.

  What he’d done to the MacReiver had spread among the crofters like spilled blood and this morning, like every morning at breakfast in the Great Hall, guards and servants peered at Lydia’s delicate throat, noting every mark and nibble. He couldn’t stop, not with her tender neck offered so sweetly and she so eager… The pointing and whispers wouldn’t stop either. Might as well try to prevent the tide from coming in or the fog settling on the meadow.

  But he could distract his wife. She had shown a love for the sea. P’raps an outing would shift her attention.

  He gestured and a servant hurried to his side. “Owain, please fetch Niall when he returns from the sea this day.”

  “Niall the fisherman?” Lydia asked as Owain left.

  “You know of Niall?”

  “Yes, he and his family often eat here and I have been to their croft.”

  “Have ye, lassie?”

  “Of course.” Her expression became regal and he couldn’t suppress his grin. Despite that new wrinkle between her brows, Lydia was adjusting to her new role with grace. “What do you think I do with my days while you are out hunting, milaird?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Och, I dinnae ken. Embroidering bonnie pictures in the solar, p’raps?”

  Her frown could have soured fresh milk, but not his hopes.

  “Dinnae be angry at a bit of teasin’, lass, for we’ll have a fine day.” Kier winked at her and was pleased when the curve of her lashes swept her blushing cheek. “Niall possesses the means to a great adventure, milady wife.”

  He enjoyed the way her expressions shifted from annoyed to confused to delighted. “His boat? His boat! We’re going on his boat!” She bounced in her chair like an excited wee bairn.

  Distracted, she was. So far his plan was working.

  * * * * *

  Instead of waiting for Owain, Lydia insisted upon going down to the beach to watch Niall bring in his morning catch. So he wouldn’t miss his midday meal, servants brought baskets of food for the excursion—ale and whisky, plus hot bannocks and sausage, venison pie and a fruit tart.

  She’d donned her old brown woolen sacque with a plaidie thrown over for extra warmth. Kieran was in his customary black and the fishermen’s children, waiting on the beach to help their fathers, wore a motley assortment of rags and tatters. Had Lydia not been to their crofts and huts, she would have been disturbed by the sight of so many barefoot ragamuffins. As it was, she knew they wore their shabbiest garb to bring in the catch.

  Like the others, Niall’s boat was small, the better to drag it up onto the beach, for the clan lacked a pier. She guessed that any mooring would be smashed in the brutal tides of winter.

  The narrow cove was strewn with more pebbles than sand, and the cliff bounding it was pocked with caves. Above them, gannets and other seabirds wheeled and cried. Mist still hung in the air, unusual for such a late hour. Most often it burned off by eleven or noon, but the sun would not peek out this day. The air was still. How could they sail?

  But Niall and the other fishermen apparently knew how to maneuver their craft, for the clan’s tiny fleet—all seven boats—came into sight just as Lydia began to wonder if her feet would ever feel warm again. Wiggling her toes in the stout boots she’d bought in Edinburgh, she watched the red-sailed boats tack this way and that, catching every stray wisp of breeze while avoiding the sea stacks that rose from the ocean just off the promontory.

  The first boat to gain the shore was Niall’s. She recognized his shaggy reddish brows and bright blue eyes peering at her above a scrap of tartan wrapped around the lower half of his face. He leaped out of his craft and dashed to where she was standing while Kieran helped to drag the boat ashore.

  He dragged off his scarf so he could speak while bowing swiftly. “Milady! Is there aught amiss?” A tiny gold ring in his left ear glinted in the dim sunlight.

  She realized that her presence at his landing was unusual and to Niall could mean ill news of his family. “Oh, no, not at all. All’s well. We just… I believe my husband has a favor to ask of you. Involving me.” She wasn’t certain of her right to ask Niall to take them aboard his boat.

  Kieran advanced, rubbing wet hands on his leather breeks. “Ho, there, Niall.” He tugged a flask from his pocket. “A wee dram to warm your bones?”

  “Thank ’ee, milaird.” Niall took the flask and drank deeply.

  “In the mood for a pleasure sail? Milady wishes to see the ocean close, as it were.”

  Niall finished drinking and wiped his mouth with the back of his toil-roughened hand.

  “We brought food,” Lydia said. “Lots.”

  A grin split the fisherman’s face. “So milady knows the way to a man’s heart?”

  She grinned back. “How about fresh, warm venison pie?”

  They ate watching his mate—his eldest son, Ian, a lad of p’raps thirteen years—and the other children unload the catch, mostly herring and whitefish. Lydia put down her bannock and went to see, with Kier following. Among the silvery fish, a wet brownish mass lay quivering.

  “What is that?” she asked, prodding it with the toe of her boot.

  Kier bent down and seized it, whipping it around. Tentacles swung, some just an inch from her face. She gasped and jumped back while he and the children laughed.

  He waved it at her, grinning. “’Tis just a wee gibearnach, what you would call a squid. Nothing to be afeared of.”

  She gave it a closer look. Mottled and gray-brown, it looked like offal, but it didn’t smell…yet. A tiny tooth broke the dully shining surface and its many tentacles writhed. “Ugh. Who would eat that?”

  His mouth twitched with distaste. “None of our people. We use it for bait.” He tossed it back onto the pile and went to the shoreline to rinse his fingers.

  After they had eaten, Kieran lifted her aboard Niall’s boat, an undecked craft that had but one mast with two sails. With Niall’s help, and grasping the slippery side rail in her leather-gloved hands, she inched to the back of the boat—the stern, Niall called it—and sat gingerly on a plank set athwart the boat’s two sides.

  The three males set themselves at the pointed prow and shoved it hard backward into the cove’s softly lapping waves, then jumped aboard. After grabbing oars, Niall and Ian rowed them out until the limp sails caught the breeze flowing from the north, then tacked to the east. At the same time, she thought she sensed an opposing tug from below. Subtle, almost lost amidst the pitch and heave on the small boat on the swells, it was nevertheless there.

  She trailed a hand in the water, trying to feel the pull of the current, but that slight energy was lost in the boat’s motion, for a brisk snapping gust had caught the craft. She thought she saw a line of current out to sea.

  Kieran set a hand on her shoulder. “The ocean flows from the south, but the wind opposes, blowing from the north, especially in winter. ’Tis a fine trick, taking advantage of each depending upon the direction of sail.”

  “Where are we going?” She gulped deep breaths of the chilly air, controlling her belly, which seemed to pitch and heave along with the ocean.

  “Northeast, but not far, for ’tis but a small craft. Duck!”

  She did, and the jib swung around as the boat tacked in the opposite direction. The sail grabbed the breeze and sped along the coast. Her seasickness fled, replaced by wonder. To her right, she could see the stony coast, riven occasionally with deep clefts. Where the land sloped to the sea, meadows topped the dark cliffs. Rough pillars of pale stone stood on one, sentinels watching over land and sea.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Ah, memorials of my pagan ancestors.” He winked at
her. “They are standing stones, great blocks of rock arranged in a circle, just so, catching the sunlight perfectly.”

  “When there is some,” she said, wry, turning her head away as they sailed past the stones.

  He grinned. “The ancient ones used them for rites at midsummer and winter solstice, and at other times of the year.”

  The clouds broke and allowed a ray of light to shaft from the heavens to the coast, briefly illuminating a massive Celtic cross set atop the cliff. “That marks the border of our lands,” Kier said. He swiped a hand through his dark hair, gathering it at his nape, and tied it with a thin leather strip.

  She shivered. “So that’s the MacReiver clan’s outpost?” She pointed.

  “Nay, they’re in the other direction. This is the Gwynn’s.” He sniffed the wind.

  “What do you smell?”

  “Nothing much. Not like the MacReiver lands, for example. They are somewhat odorous.”

  “What’s our relationship with Clan Gwynn?”

  He shrugged. “We’re not enemies, but not bosom bows, either. We get along with them well enough.”

  “Does the cross mean there’s a church?”

  “Aye, there’s a wee kirk. Do ye wish to attend services? They’re Papists, ye ken.”

  “P’raps,” she said with a flash of guilt. She had been so busy that she hadn’t missed church. “We lack kirk or chapel?”

  “Aye, we’re so isolated that no priest will stay.”

  She wanted to know why Clan Gwynn managed to keep a priest but the Kilborns couldn’t, but a distant expression in Kier’s eyes kept her silent. Instead, she again slipped off her glove and bent to the side to slide her hand through the cool, flowing water, and looked in the other direction, toward the dim horizon.

  “I’m drawn to it,” she said. “The sea.”

  Niall, approaching, must have heard her, for he laughed. “Have a care, milady, for what the sea wants, she will have.”

  His laugh had been bitter, not merry. “What do you mean?” she asked, remembering old Mhairi’s talk of sea sprites.

  “I’ve lost my brother and my da to these waters. Dinnae love them too much. She’ll return your love with heartbreak.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “It’s what I ken,” he said simply. “And, like ye, I love her. I cannae help myself. One of these times I ken she’ll take me, and my wife will have to use this for my funeral.” He touched the golden earring he wore and left them again to tend to the mainsail.

  Kieran glanced at her. “We Kilborns are full of tales of the sea and the fearsome creatures that live beneath its waves and on its shores. Did ye ever hear of the kraken?”

  She shook her head.

  “Och, the kraken is a fearsome beastie indeed.” Kier settled his back against the gunwale. “Ye recall the wee gibearnach ye met this morn?”

  She winced at the memory.

  “Well, the kraken is also a gibearnach, but so great that it can wrap its tentacles around a boat and crush it.”

  She shivered but found her voice. “Nonsense!”

  “’Tis true, milady,” Ian said “When ye see the spars of a destroyed boat wash ashore in midsummer, when there have been no storms, it be the kraken at work.” The lad stared at her with the same blue, somber eyes as his father.

  “A little boat like this would be a tiny bite to a kraken, and we but teatime snacks,” Kier said.

  “Then I s’pose we needn’t worry.”

  The men laughed. “That’s the spirit, milady,” Niall said.

  “Do you go out in all weather?” she asked.

  Niall hesitated. “Nay,” he finally said. “Though the sea may cry for us in winter, we try to ignore her pleas.”

  “Her pleas?”

  “The crash of a stormy sea is a powerful call.”

  “She calls to you in the wind and the waves.” Staring at the line of current far out to sea, Lydia understood.

  His smile flashed white against sun-darkened skin. “Aye, a call, a test of skill and bravery.”

  She glanced at Kieran.

  “Those are calls and tests that must be resisted,” he said stiffly. “Ye’re too good a man to lose to such foolishness, Niall.”

  The fisherman bowed his head in apparent acquiescence, but Lydia caught a secret smile that he vainly tried to hide.

  “That was how we lost Ivor.” Kier continued to scowl at Niall.

  “Who was Ivor?” she asked.

  “Ivor Kilborn, a clansman and good Fenella’s husband. Father to Moira.”

  “Ah.”

  “Aye, he wished to test his mettle against the wild winter storms. ’Twas foolish.”

  The day darkened toward nightfall and Niall turned the craft homeward. With the wind in their favor, the boat sped over the flat sea.

  Scant minutes later, a light gleamed through the gathering darkness: Castle Kilborn. As they approached, Lydia was startled to see a glow emanating from the seaward tower…the old keep. She nudged Kieran and pointed, raising her brows.

  His forehead wrinkled. “That’s not possible,” he muttered. “Or is it?”

  “Someone’s in there,” she said. “Isn’t the Dark Tower forbidden to everyone?”

  “Aye, it is, but for me and Euan, and Euan should be out on patrol.” He looked grim, his jaw set. “Niall, make all speed.”

  In the back of the boat, Niall adjusted the tiller and his craft leaped over the waves. She grabbed Kieran as she bounced up and down on the hard seat. He hauled her onto his lap. Bending his head, he murmured into her ear, “I like your bottom burning, but not from a wood plank.”

  Embarrassed, she turned her face into his chest. “Kier!” she snapped in a fierce whisper.

  His low laughter vibrated against her cheek, but stopped as he gazed at the mysterious light in the forbidden keep.

  When they gained the pebbly beach, he jumped ashore and quickly helped to drag the boat up beyond the tide line. “Niall, help her ladyship to the Laird’s Tower,” he called over his shoulder before dashing up the cliffside trail to their fortress.

  Lydia stared after him, astounded by his odd behavior. Orders or no orders, she’d investigate the keep.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, after finishing her duties with Fenella, Lydia again donned her old brown sacque, warm gloves and sturdy boots, then climbed the stairs in the Laird’s Tower to the upper walkway. Kieran had left in the morning to hunt, and most days he didn’t return to the castle until nightfall. His seconds, Euan and his son Dugald, patrolled the clan’s borders night and day. She’d noticed that their duties were at opposite times of the day and night. She assumed that they rested whenever they weren’t on horseback.

  Guards did patrol the castle walk, but she chose the midday hour, when many were eating and their shifts were changing, to quietly enter the old keep’s upper door. She was reasonably sure she wouldn’t be seen.

  The door’s hinges seemed well-maintained, opening and closing with nary a squeak after she’d disengaged a metal latch. The latch was also in good repair, as though Euan, the castle caretaker, sought to keep something in rather than others out. She wondered about that, and about the door itself, which was stoutly fashioned of good wood rather than rotted away, which would be more likely in such an ancient structure.

  Inside, the keep was much like the other towers, built of stone with wooden floors and walls. It was lit only by thin light filtering through the narrow arrow slits. Above her, the wooden ceiling was rotting, pierced by random holes. Desiring to avoid notice, she had not brought candle, lamp or torch, and trod with caution. Though the door had been rebuilt, she wasn’t sure of the quality of the wood beneath her feet. As she walked, she stared at the floor, examining it before taking each step.

  The room smelled of dust and ancient, rotted things, things she didn’t wish to contemplate. Probably mice, she told herself. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it to her nose. The deathly still character of the p
lace led her to move quietly, slip so slowly and carefully that the ring of keys hanging at her belt, the chatelaine’s keys, mark of her authority, didn’t clash together and chime to announce her intrusion.

  The bare, dusty room bore a track through the dirt to a narrow archway she guessed led either to a staircase or another room. She crept forward, the oppressive silence grating on nerves already jangled by the guilt of disobeying her husband. She quaked to think of Kieran’s reaction should he discover her transgression. He was normally the mildest-mannered of men, but she had seen his temper when roused, and feared it.

  The archway did lead to another room on what she judged to be the courtyard side of the keep. She avoided chance observation by anyone down on the ground or in the other towers by staying away from the cuts in the stone. Larger than the usual arrow slits, for they faced away from potential invaders, they admitted a fair amount of afternoon light.

  Though with wildly beating heart and trembling step, she explored farther. The Dark Tower was a warren of small, low-ceilinged, interconnected rooms and twisting corridors. She didn’t know much about the history of the place, but she imagined that it had been in use for centuries, housing generations of Kilborns.

  Finally she believed she’d searched the upper floor, so down she went, carefully negotiating the broad wooden stairs. A board squeaked beneath her boot, a scream in the unearthly quiet.

  She stopped with one hand on the wall to support herself, the other at her nose. The handkerchief fell from a nerveless hand. She placed a palm over her madly racing heart.

  Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.

  Silence held the tower in its sure grip.

  Finally she bent to retrieve her handkerchief. She didn’t dare to leave a single trace of her presence. The stairs weren’t as dusty as the rooms, so she tucked the scrap of cloth back into her pocket.

  When she could raise her foot, heavy in her boot and weighted with trepidation, the board again squeaked.

  She froze in place.