Once Upon a Plaid

by Mia Marlowe

  She wanted to be free.

  Then, just when he was about to admit defeat and release her, a minor miracle occurred.

  Her clenched fingers uncurled and she grasped the front of his shirt to tug him closer. Her lips, which had been as ungiving as an icebound loch, seemed to melt and part.

  In that moment, he forgot his own name.

  She wasn’t cold on the inside. Her mouth was warm, almost feverish, and she suckled his tongue when he swept it in. He bit her lip lightly and she nipped his back.

  “Will,” she murmured, and he remembered who he was because he was hers.

  He released her head. She wasn’t going anywhere. But he still needed to hold her, to connect with her beyond the joining of their mouths and the pressure of his body against hers, so he gripped her hands. Her fingers were icy, slender and fragile things. Bone and tendon, skin and nails, all small parts of his bonnie Kat, but cold parts. He’d warm them.

  He’d warm her, protect her, tuck her into his plaid and keep her, all of her, as close as his next breath. He’d love away her pain, if only she’d let him.

  With unmistakable need, she groaned into his mouth.

  He was lost, diving headfirst into the dark loch of Katherine, not sure whether the waves would bear him up or drag him down. He didn’t much care either way. He had to have her, and if he drowned in her, it was the death he’d wish for himself.

  There was a pounding in his ears, louder than the steady march of his own blood. It took him a moment to realize someone was banging on the door to Kat’s chamber.

  “My lady! My Lord Badenoch!”

  He heard the voice but didn’t answer. Kat’s mouth was his whole world, her fresh response to him a new and undiscovered country, and he wasn’t ready to leave it for the mundane one of Glengarry Castle.

  Finally, it was Katherine who broke off their kiss with a gasp. She tore herself out of his embrace and picked up the shawl draped over her clothing trunk to wrap around her shoulders. “Come, Dorcas.”

  The door burst open and the serving girl spilled into the room. Her dirty-blond hair had escaped her mobcap and stuck out like the long prickly spines of a startled porcupine.

  “Och, my lord, ye must come quick before he does himself harm. Please, oh, please.” Her voice strayed upward in pitch as she became more alarmed.

  “Who?”

  “’Tis Nab, ye ken. First he was just walkin’ the parapet, leaping from one crenellation to another, but then he climbed atop the southwest bastion.” Dorcas clutched her apron, grinding the fabric between her fists. “I’m afeared he means to jump.”

  William strode to one of the arrow loops that functioned as narrow windows in the room. Sure enough, the fool was perched atop the cylindrical tower that marked a corner of the curtain wall. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his legs dangling over a sheer drop to the loch below.

  “What’s got into him?”

  “I dinna ken,” Dorcas said miserably. “He willna speak to me. He willna speak to anybody.”

  A crowd had gathered in the bailey, pointing and laughing.

  “This is MacNaught’s doing.”

  “I shouldna wonder, milord.” It was a measure of how desperate Dorcas was that she latched on to William’s arm and gave it a tug. “Please, will ye come? While there’s still time.”

  He looked back over at Katherine. Her lips were kiss swollen, her eyes still languid. Their bodies had almost said what his heart feared to voice. If only they’d had a bit more time, they’d have found each other again. He was sure of it.

  “Go, Will,” she said softly, pulling the shawl tighter around her. “Else ye’ll have regrets hereafter.”

  “No fear of that,” he muttered as he stalked toward the door. “I already do.”

  On the first day of Christmas,

  My true love gave to me

  A partridge in a pear tree.

  —From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

  “Weel, that’s a silly gift. Any eejit kens that a partridge will do ye more good on a spit than in a pear tree.”

  —An observation from Nab,

  fool to the Earl of Glengarry

  Chapter Ten

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, Will called out from the parapet, “Nab, what’re ye doing up there?”

  “Ye have eyes. I’m sitting, o’ course.” Nab peered over the edge of the spirelike roof. He shook his head and the tiny bells at the ends of his cap tinkled. “Odds bodkins. And I’m the one they call a fool,” he muttered.

  “Why are ye sitting there?”

  “Have ye seen an owl in the daytime, William?”

  “Come to think on it, I havena. Only after twilight.”

  “That’s because in the day, they sit still as a statue in the crotch of a tree, and after a bit, no one kens they’re even there. They disappear in plain sight.” Nab’s shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “That’s what I’m doing, William. I’m being an owl.”

  “Jump!” someone from down in the bailey yelled.

  William sent them a thunderous glare, and the rowdy crowd that had gathered below went silent, shuffling their feet in the snow. He wondered where the old earl was. There was a time when Lord Glengarry would have been in the thick of things, scattering the malingerers in the courtyard and demanding his fool come down from that benighted perch before he did something monumentally stupid like falling and leaving a bloody stain on the stone for others with more sense to have to clean up.

  Unfortunately, Lord Glengarry was nowhere to be seen. And Nab was the sort who might be easily spooked.

  “Would ye like company?” William asked Nab.

  “If I liked company, I’d be in the great hall, would I not?” Then his belligerent tone fizzled away and he cast Will a hopeful glance. “But I wouldna mind it so very much should ye wish to come up, William. Ye’re not like the others.” Then his ever-wandering gaze darted away. “The view of the loch is verra fine from here.”

  “If ye’ve seen one loch, ye’ve seen ’em all,” William grumbled as he clambered up the uneven stone and hoisted himself onto the conical spire of the thatched roof. Then he walked, careful to step from one supporting beam to the next and avoid the icy patches, till he joined Nab on the edge of the sloping roof.

  A biting wind swirled a breath of snow around them.

  “Seems an odd place to sit,” Will said. “There are any number of more comfortable places down in the keep to practice being an owl.”

  “Aye, but none I deserve,” Nab said morosely. His face seemed to fold in on itself like a crumpled piece of parchment. “I lost it, William.”

  “Lost what?”

  “Yer scepter.” He hung his head.

  Will’s chest constricted and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “Are ye angry with me? Canna say I blame ye. I would be, were I ye.”

  William’s hands had bunched into white-knuckled fists without his conscious volition. That silver rod meant everything to his family. It was a promise and a challenge to each new generation of Douglas males as they took the reins of Badenoch. KNOW BY THIS, it said, THAT ALL THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE YOU ARE PINNED ON YOU. HUSBAND THAT WHICH YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN. INCREASE IT FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE WHO’LL COME AFTER YOU. ’TWILL BE HARD, BUT YOU ARE WORTHY OF THE TASK BECAUSE YOU COME FROM US. LIVE IN OUR STRENGTH. RULE WISELY AND WELL.

  And now he not only had no son to hand it down to, he’d lost the scepter itself.

  “William?”

  “No, Nab, I’m not angry.” He was, but not with the fool. William knew Nab. He’d as soon lose his right hand as lose that scepter. The fool was obsessive about things left in his charge. There was no one he’d have trusted with the family treasure more.

  “I dinna know what happened. I never let it out of my sight. Honest. But my eyes canna stay open forever, can they? Nay, they canna.” Nab picked at his motley as if he might find the scepter somewhere in the folds of his disreputable garment.


  “When was the last time you had it?” William asked, his mind churning furiously. None of the other servants would have dared touch it. As far as he knew, none of the laird’s guests had left the keep, so the treasure was still within Glengarry’s walls.

  “It was with me when I went to sleep last night, but when I woke, there was only this in its place.” He lifted a worm-eaten staff roughly the same length and diameter as the Badenoch scepter. “Ye dinna suppose a fey prince came in the dark and took it back because I didna deserve to touch it?”

  “I’m certain someone came in the night, but I’ll lay odds it wasna the Fair Folk. Where were ye sleeping?”

  Only the laird and his family had dedicated bedchambers. Lord Glengarry’s retainers bedded down in the great hall. If there was a guest in the castle of any high-ranking stature, he’d be allowed to use the solar for privacy, but even then, the makeshift bed would be a hand-me-down collection of straw ticks and linens that were no longer used by his lordship. Servants had to make do with pallets in the kitchen, above the stable in the haymow, or down in the souterrain, curling up near wherever they worked and as near a source of heat as they could manage.

  It made for a close-knit clan of people in the castle. Everyone knew everything about each other. And if a couple in the next set of blankets or cloaks happened to be doing a bit of a rhythmic canter some night, the polite thing to do was to roll so one faced away and pretend not to hear a thing.

  “I sleep on a pallet across the doorway to the earl’s chamber. It’s where I am”—Nab ducked his head and finished softly—“most nights.”

  That made sense. William’s father-in-law would want his fool close by if he woke in the night and needed a bit of company or entertainment. But it meant whoever had snatched the scepter was a bold thief, committing his crime so near the earl’s chamber.

  “How does his lairdship fare of late?”

  “He sleeps a lot,” Nab said. “Sometimes when he doesna mean to, but never deeply or well. I worry about him, William, indeed I do. But ye canna judge by me.” He shrugged. “I worry about everything.”

  “I dinna want ye to worry. Here’s what I want ye to do.” As Laird of Badenoch, it was Will’s job to solve problems and he’d hit upon a plan to fix this. “Ye’re still Laird of Misrule. Tell your loyal subjects ye’ve arranged for a bit of fun. Ye’ve hidden the scepter someplace within the castle wa—”

  “That’s a lie, William. Ye dinna wish me to lie surely. Not with it being Christmas and all.”

  “Dinna think of it as a lie. Think of it as . . .” The fool was right. It was a lie. Why did the simpleminded make everything so . . . well, simple? Black was black and white was white, and Nab wasn’t the sort who’d let a grey untruth tramp across his tongue if he could help it. “Think of it as a play. A bit of make-believe. Ye’re pretending to be laird, aye?”

  Nab nodded.

  “Then all ye must do is pretend ye arranged a game of hide-and-seek for everyone. Only you hid the scepter, not a person.”

  “But I didna hide the scepter.”

  “Fine, ye can say something like, ‘The scepter has been hidden.’ That way ye’re not claiming to have done it, and ’tis the truth. The scepter is hidden. If folk think ye did it, ’tis not your fault.”

  “I didna hide it,” he repeated doggedly.

  “No one but we two knows that.”

  “And him who took it,” Nab pointed out.

  “Aye, him too. In fact,” Will said, “I’m counting on him being the one who finds it.”

  Nab flicked his gaze toward Will. “If he did, then would the thief not ken that we ken that he’s the one who took it?”

  “Aye, but ye must offer an inducement strong enough for him to risk it.”

  “What could that be?”

  It was a thorny question. Will felt to the marrow of his bones that MacNaught was behind this, but he couldn’t accuse the man without proof. What did Ranulf want more than tweaking Will’s nose by taking his family’s treasure?

  “I have it. Proclaim that whoever finds the scepter may take his seat in the laird’s chair for the rest of the week.” Lord Glengarry had vacated it since that first night. He wasn’t likely to complain.

  “I dinna know, William. The throne Ranulf and his friends made for me isna verra comfortable. Antlers are verra pointy, ye ken.”

  “Nay, not that one. Lord Glengarry’s own seat.” It’d appeal to Ranulf’s vanity as nothing else would. But unless Will caught Ranulf “discovering” the location of the scepter, how would he prove that Ranulf knew where to look because he’d put it there? “I need someone to shadow MacNaught till he shows his hand. Is there a likely lad among the pages here?”

  Nab scrunched his forehead in thought. “Fergie might do. He’s the smallest of the lads in the castle. Makes him try a mite harder.”

  “Good. After ye tell your waiting subjects about this new game,”—William waved at the crowd below and several of them waved back—“find this Fergie and tell him he’s to keep an eye on Ranulf MacNaught on the quiet like. It won’t do if the man thinks he’s being watched. And tell him to find me at once if Ranulf comes up with the scepter.”

  William stood and held a hand out to Nab to help him up.

  “Where will ye be?” Nab asked.

  “Talking to Jamison first. I need to find a rider to deliver a message to Edinburgh, and the seneschal should know who can do the job. ’Tis past time Lady Margaret’s husband came home.” For the sake of Donald’s pregnant wife and his father’s uncertain health both.

  Nab grinned. “And if yer hide-and-seek game works, yer scepter will come home too.”

  On the second day of Christmas,

  my true love gave to me two turtle doves.

  —From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

  “What kind of nonsense is this? A creature that’s both turtle and dove ’tis neither fish nor fowl. And a verra unchancy sort of gift, indeed, even if it came from a body’s true love.”

  —An observation from Nab,

  fool to the Earl of Glengarry

  Chapter Eleven

  Not all the castle’s servants worked above ground. The buttery, the carpentry, the bottlery, and the abattoir, where game was hung and dressed, were located under the great hall, with doors leading out through a set of stone steps directly into the lower ward. Even after Jamison directed William to the subterranean reaches of the castle, it took him the better part of an hour to find a servant with the intelligence necessary to memorize a message to take to Lord Glengarry’s son, and another half hour to locate one who knew the way to Edinburgh.

  In the end, he decided to send both of them.

  Taking the unmarked paths through the Highlands in winter might be the shorter route, but it was also likely to take longer. The messengers could become lost between one glen and the next as landmarks changed over the seasons. Or they might run afoul of some local chieftain or other as they passed through the territory of other clans. Then there was always the threat from men who lived rough, outside the bounds of a clan, for whom any traveler was fair game.

  William gave the messengers enough coin to purchase passage on the ferry that plied the loch as far as Inverness. Then they’d take ship and sail down to Leith at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. From there, they’d travel the short distance to Edinburgh Castle, where King James’s court resided. Will gave his messengers one chance in ten of reaching Donald and having him return before Margaret gave birth, but at least he could tell Katherine he’d sent for her brother.

  “I wish ye’d let yer runners wait a day or so, my lord,” the carpenter of Glengarry Castle said after the men William had chosen for the journey left to raid the kitchen for food to take with them. “Then they could deliver his lairdship’s gift to court at the selfsame time. ’Tis a bit unwieldy, ye ken, and will take two to make the trip.”

  Even though Donald was dancing attendance on the young King James, it was politic for the old earl to send
him a gift for the New Year as well. But usually a royal present meant a piece of jewelry or a bolt of precious silk, something that would fit neatly into a saddlebag.

  “What’s Lord Glengarry sending to the king?”

  The man grinned from ear to ear. “Och, let me show ye.”

  It was an ornately wrought trunk of monstrous size. The carpenter’s apprentice was putting the final touches on the lid, sanding a bas relief carving of a thistle so lifelike, despite its extreme size, Will expected to be pricked by its thorns. Still, he wasn’t sure what the gift was supposed to be.

  “It looks like an oversized coffin,” William said. Not the most politically astute gift to send to a young king.

  The carpenter’s face fell. “Nay, my lord, ’tis a chest special made to fit the Honours of Scotland. See for yerself.” He lifted the hinged lid to reveal a padded purple velvet lining.

  “A royal gift indeed,” William admitted.

  The man’s expression bloomed with pride once more as he waved his apprentice away. “Aye, ’tis verra fine, an’ I say it myself. As ye see, there’s room for the royal crown, the sword of state, and the scepter. And a monstrous long thing that scepter is too. Came all the way from Rome, it did, back in my grandsire’s day. Come to think on it, the sword came from Rome too, only later and from a different pope.”

  “I’m sure His Majesty will be pleased.”

  “I hope he will. Och, there’s a secret to the chest, as well. I’d not show this to just anybody, but as ye’re part of the earl’s family, I’ll let ye in on it.”

  The man felt along the edge of the velvet for a silk tab. Once he pulled it, he was able to lift the padded bottom to reveal a hidden cavity in the chest.

  “’Tis a hidey-hole for other precious things. Reckon a king has plenty of gewgaws that he wants to keep to himself,” the carpenter said. “’Twas my idea, the secret place.”

  “And it’s a good one, but ye ought not show it to anyone else.”

  “Och, that I havena. In fact, I may even let His Majesty discover it for his own self. That way, it’ll stay a secret.”