Once Upon a Plaid

by Mia Marlowe

  “Life isna fair, is it?” Nab observed as the big dog returned to her place by the fire.

  “No, it isn’t,” Will agreed, disgusted with himself for envying a damned dog. He ought to give up and go home, but he couldn’t leave without the Scepter of Badenoch. At least, that’s what he told himself. “Have ye found the Rod of Misrule yet?”

  “No.” Nab’s smile sank like a capsized coracle. “We’ve been looking everywhere. I dinna think we’ll ever find it.”

  William exhaled noisily. There wasn’t much point to the symbol of his family’s ruling line if the line was dead. “’Tis a small matter now.”

  But it wasn’t. Katherine was right about that. However much he protested, he did want children. He wanted a whole castle full of them.

  He envied his younger brother’s pride in his sons. There was something a bit godlike about the moment when a man sees his own features stamped on his son’s face. After a man ran his course in this world, his children were the promise that a bit of him would go on. Since Will had all but renounced the Church, having his blood flow through the veins of his offspring was the only sort of immortality he might hope for.

  William pulled his plaid tighter around himself against the morning chill. Dorcas came in and began to poke at the fire, sending sparks flying up the chimney and flames licking at the wood she fed it. After she finished tending the fireplace, she rose and gave Nab a saucy wink.

  The fool blushed to the tips of his oversized ears.

  “Nab, are ye sweet on Dorcas?”

  “Dorcas?” He repeated the name stupidly, as if he’d never heard it before.

  “Aye, Dorcas,” William said with growing amusement.

  “Nay, I’m not sweet at all. Ask anyone.” His gaze followed the sway of her hips across the hall until she disappeared into the kitchen. “Why d’ye want to know?”

  “Because the way ye’re lookin’ at her, anyone might think she was the last sugared plum in the bowl.”

  Nab’s eyes grew round. “Dinna tell anyone. Please, will ye not?”

  “Why? She’s a comely enough girl. If Dorcas returns your feelings—and that wink tells me ’tis more than likely—folk will think ye’ve done well for yourself.”

  “Aye, but they’ll think she has not. I’m a fool, William. The butt of every joke. For some odd reason, Dorcas doesna see me that way. But she might if everyone starts pointing it out to her.” He stood and wrung his hands. “Just imagine what fun Ranulf MacNaught would have with a fool in love.”

  As much as Will wanted to continue needling him, he had to admit that Nab had a point. “Your secret’s safe with me. But if ye want to keep it from others, ye need to guard your face when she’s around. Ye practically melted when the lass did no more than smile at ye.”

  “Ye mean I should ignore her?”

  “If ye dinna want others to know your feelings for her,” William said with a nod. “They show plain enough when ye look at her.”

  “Dorcas wouldna like it if I ignore her.” Shaking his head, Nab settled back down on the floor next to William’s chair. “Besides, meanin’ no disrespect I’m sure, but I’d be more apt to take yer advice in matters of the heart were ye sleeping in yer lady wife’s bed instead of in this chair.”

  William shrugged. “Ye have a point.”

  A pair of men stalked in from the bailey, stomping the snow from their boots and beating their bodies with their arms to banish the cold that followed them in. Will recognized them as the two he’d sent to fetch Donald home from Edinburgh.

  There hadn’t been enough time for them to make the journey there, let alone back again.

  “We have news for Lady Margaret,” one of them said.

  William hadn’t seen his sister-in-law since she’d been confined to her bed. He was pleased to find her sitting up, her smile as bright as ever and her hands busy with a pair of knitting needles producing what looked to be the smallest cap in the world.

  He was less pleased to find Katherine in a chair beside her bed similarly occupied. There was no way to avoid her this time. His heart still lurched whenever she was near. He damned himself for a weakling, unable to walk away like a man. If his wife didn’t want him—and she’d made that abundantly clear—he ought not to want her.

  Except that he did.

  Katherine rose when she saw him, but it was as if a stranger peered at him through her beloved eyes. She started to go.

  “No, dinna leave. I willna be long,” Will said, raising a hand to forestall her. When Katherine perched on the chair once more, he turned his attention to Margaret. “I’ve news of your husband, good-sister.”

  Her face, though pale, brightened at this. “What of my Donald?”

  “He sends ye his compliments and wants ye to know he’s near.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad. After that bad turn, I had a feeling this time would be different. Did I not tell ye he’d change his mind and come home for my lying-in, Katherine?” Then a shadow passed over her face. “But there hasna been time to send a message all the way to Edinburgh. The runners left but a few days ago or I’m mistook.”

  William shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “They met Donald in Inverness.”

  “He was already on his way! Oh, Kat. Feel my heart.” She took Katherine’s hand and pressed it to her breastbone. “’Tis racing like a young lass waiting for her first beau. When will he arrive?”

  William swallowed hard. “He says to tell ye the whole of King James’s court has removed from Edinburgh to Inverness till after Twelfth Night. Seems a white stag was sighted in the Highlands thereabouts and His Majesty is keen to bag it. He and his courtiers ride out daily in search of the beast.”

  Margaret seemed to shrink back into her pillows. “Donald’s down at the end of the loch from me only on account of . . . a deer?”

  “A rare deer, to be sure. There hasn’t been a white stag taken since my father’s father’s time. Donald says if he’s the one who helps the king find it, the future of Glengarry will be secure.”

  Margaret’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Did the messengers tell him I was in some difficulty with this babe?”

  William nodded. “Your husband says to tell ye he prays for ye nightly. God, he reasons, can do ye more good here than he can, and he can do ye and all your sons more good at court than the Almighty.”

  Donald had said nothing of the sort, but William thought Margaret might appreciate the sentiment. According to the messengers, his actual words had been “Lady Margaret isna having trouble. Ye must be mistaken. If there’s one thing that woman excels in ’tis pushing out bairns.”

  William wasn’t about to repeat that.

  “And it seems his prayers have had effect,” Will said. He didn’t believe in prayer one whit, but if it helped Margaret deal with her husband’s absence, he was willing to play along. “If I may say so, ye are looking radiant, good-sister.”

  That was a bald-faced lie. Margaret had the scraped-back look of a woman whose body has been taken over by another. She wouldn’t be in full possession of herself again until that Other was expelled. Katherine’s skeptical glance told him she wasn’t the least fooled by William’s falsehoods on Donald’s behalf.

  Margaret, however, smiled tremulously. “Thank ye, Will. ’Twas good of ye to send word.”

  He wished he had his brother-in-law in front of him that very moment. He’d shake the man till his teeth fell out. “After the runners rest a bit, do ye wish to send another message?”

  “No. No need. I’ll not trouble Donald again till after the bairn is born. ’Twill be time enough then. ’Tis the news he’s waiting for, after all,” she said, staring down at the knitting needles that had fallen quiet in her hands. “I’m tired of a sudden. Leave me to rest, if ye please. Ye too, Kat.”

  Katherine leaned over, gathered up the knitting, and kissed Margaret’s cheek. She filed out of the room ahead of William and started down the spiral stairs.

  They hadn’t gone two steps b
efore Margaret’s soft sobs stopped them. Kat turned and would have gone back up, but Will blocked her path.

  “She wouldna thank ye, I’m thinkin’,” he said softly. “She asked for solitude. That small dignity is the only gift ye can give her.”

  “You’re right. Donald didna say he was praying for her, did he?”

  Will shook his head.

  “The selfish beast. Oh, how I wish I were a man,” Katherine hissed. “Then I could beat my brother senseless.”

  “I’d be happy to do the honors for ye.”

  She smiled up at him for the first time in days. “I believe ye would.”

  “Say the word and Greyfellow and I are off for Inverness.”

  “Then consider the word given, but I dinna think we’ll range that far afield, laddie.” A booming voice came from below them on the stairs. It belonged to Lord Glengarry and he sounded more like his usual self than he had since Christmas Eve. “I’m declaring a hunt and all able-bodied men are to form up in the bailey as soon as may be.”

  Evidently, Katherine’s father had overheard only part of their conversation. They continued down the twisting stairwell to meet him at the doorway to his chamber.

  “Seems Jamison has his garters in a twist over the state of our larder, though I’ve inspected it and have my doubts about the need for fresh meat,” the earl said. “Still, it’ll give us an excuse to get out of the castle and blow some of the stink off, aye?”

  He tromped down the spiral stairwell, bellowing for Nab to roust the men.

  “Well, I guess if ye’re off with my father, ye’ve no time to pummel my brother,” Katherine said.

  “Lady Margaret wouldna want me to, in any case.”

  “No, she wouldna. She’s a far better person than I.” Katherine started down the stairs, but he caught her hand.

  “That’s not true. To see an injustice and want it made right doesna make ye a bad person. It means ye care. If ye like, I will still go fetch your brother and drag him home. Ye know I will.” God help him, he sounded so blasted pathetic, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words from pouring out of his mouth. “There’s nothing I wouldna do for ye.”

  One of her brows arched. “Really? Let’s test that, shall we?”

  Hope surged in him. He was ready to scale a castle wall for her. Should the waterhorse appear in the waves off Glengarry, he’d mount the hell-bound beast and ride it to the depths of the loch if Katherine asked him to. Whatever she wanted, he was ready to attempt if only she’d believe he was hers till there was no breath left in him.

  “I want ye to do something for me, William.”

  “Anything.” He brought her hand to his lips.

  “After ye return from the hunt . . .”

  “Aye?”

  “I want ye to spend the night . . .”

  He’d do it right this time. Whatever it took, their lovemaking would be all about her pleasure. It was the only thing that would please him.

  “In the chapel praying,” she finished.

  He had not seen that coming. “Katherine, ye know I dinna—”

  “Ye said ye’d do anything.”

  Trapped by the words of his own mouth. “And just what am I supposed to be praying for.”

  “Wisdom.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I want ye to pray that God will show ye the right path ahead for the two of us.”

  “I already know what that is.”

  She tilted her head. It wasn’t right that she looked so fetching when she was tormenting him. “I want ye to ask God honestly if ’tis right for us to seek an annulment. I’ve prayed till I’m blue but I canna seem to hear an answer.”

  Perhaps because no one’s listening to your question, he thought. But she looked up at him with such an earnest expression, he couldn’t belittle her faith.

  “All right. I’ll go to the chapel,” he said. “But only for half a night. I’ll spend the other half with ye, telling ye the answer.”

  On the tenth day of Christmas

  My true love gave to me ten lords a-leaping.

  —From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

  “I’m thinkin’ the ten lairds probably heard there were ladies dancing hereabouts. That might account for any amount o’ leaping, aye?”

  —An observation from Nab,

  fool to the Earl of Glengarry

  Chapter Nineteen

  The hunting party headed into the Highlands, leaving Glengarry Castle far behind. The men split into smaller groups, stalking game trails leading in different directions. Lord Glengarry and William, along with Ranulf MacNaught and his cronies, took the steepest path into the deep woods.

  William and his father-in-law stopped at an overlook and leaned on their pommels to gaze back at the castle. It seemed to sprawl along the coastline of the loch in the distance, its grey stone sprouting from the earth like the bones of some long-dead creature risen halfway from its grave.

  “It’s never been taken from without,” the earl said. “Glengarry was besieged for a whole year back in my six-times great-grandfather’s time, but it never fell. O’ course, according to the old tales, folk did take to eating rats and boiling their own shoes before help came.” He glanced at his nephew Ranulf MacNaught, who was ranging a few yards ahead, laughing with his group of toadies. “Perhaps Jamison is right to see that the larder is full to bursting. We can always salt the meat down.”

  “We have to find some first. Red deer are shy this time of year,” William said. The pair of deerhounds loped alongside them when they started moving again. The dogs rarely sniffed after a prey’s trail, but once they caught sight of anything with hooves, they could run it to earth in a few heartbeats. “A good many deer have probably wandered to the Lowlands.”

  “Yet I see signs of them hereabouts.” As they rode past a towering pine, Lord Glengarry pointed to a pile of small round droppings near the base. They didn’t appear fresh. MacNaught’s laughter echoed back to them again.

  “Ranulf,” the earl called in a half voice, “ye and your men will scare the deer clear to the coast and send ’em swimmin’ out to the Orkneys if ye keep up that racket. I thought ye were going to try Murray’s peregrine and see if it can roust up a brace of coneys for the stewpot.”

  Hugh Murray’s medium-sized falcon was a vicious bird, as ill tempered as its master. The peregrine had nearly taken the thumb off of one of the lads who tended the castle mews. It screamed now from its perch on Murray’s heavily gloved forearm.

  “A peregrine doesna usually take to small game like rabbits.” Sinclair, as usual, considered himself the fount of information on every topic being discussed even though the bird in question wasn’t on his fist. “It prefers to hunt other birds.”

  “Aye, and I dinna think much of anything, be it man or beast, that preys on its own kind,” Lord Glengarry said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Take the bedeviled thing out of my sight.”

  “Verra well, uncle.” MacNaught turned his horse’s head away from the earl. “We’ll descend a bit for our hunt then, since ye seem to prefer Lord Badenoch’s company over that of your own blood. I’ll leave ye two with the hounds. Good hunting.”

  Ranulf and his men plodded back down the hillside through the rotten snow. A warm wind had started melting the mantle of white. Once the other men were gone, the woods were still enough that William could hear water running beneath the crust of snow, forming into small rivulets and pooling in shallow puddles in low places.

  “Ranulf is just like his mother,” Lord Glengarry said, shaking his head after his retreating nephew. “My sister was always looking for offense where none was meant. I’ve tried to help him along, to give him an opportunity to improve himself, for her sake, though she never showed the least appreciation. Besides, it doesna look as if Ranulf will take any chance I give him.”

  “I’m more concerned that he’ll take his own chances,” William said. There is a certain glimmer in the eyes of a stallion who intends to rule the whole herd. Will had seen t
hat same glint in MacNaught’s eye more than once.

  The earl snorted, whether in agreement or dismissal William wasn’t sure. “I canna like his companions overmuch.”

  “From what I’ve heard, Sinclair, Murray, MacTavish, and Gordon are the best of the lot.” Rumor had it that MacNaught had offered a haven to every masterless man in the Highlands. His crumbling keep was home to any highwaymen, reiver, or draw-latch who’d swear fealty to him. William shifted uneasily in his saddle. If Ranulf could control them, he’d have a formidable fighting force made up of men who had nothing to lose.

  “Sir Ellar Dinglewood is sending his wife back to her father after Christmastide,” the earl said softly so as not to spook any game that might be nearby. “He says she willna breed so he’s claiming nonconsummation and having their marriage put aside.”

  It was an abrupt change of topic, but William was used to his father-in-law’s penchant for dropping things he didn’t want to discuss. Evidently, he wasn’t ready to consider what MacNaught’s plans might be.

  “Dinglewood and his lady have been wed for nearly ten years,” William said.

  “And ye and Katherine have been wed for four.” The earl tossed him an inquiring look. “Are ye planning to send my daughter back to me, William?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I ask because Katherine has been after me to find a friar who can deliver a letter to Rome. What do ye know about that?”

  “Nothing.” He didn’t want to accuse Katherine. “I dinna want our marriage annulled. I gave your daughter my vow. I will never put her away.”

  Lord Glengarry gave a grunt of approval. Then he frowned. “But she may put ye away. She’s headstrong, is my Kat. I thought she’d come home to help Margaret, but after watching the pair of ye lately, I’ve been wondering if she had another reason to leave Badenoch. Far be it from me to come between a man and his wife, but . . . ye’re not harsh with her, are ye?”

  “Never.”

  “Good. I’d have to throttle ye, if ye were.”