Bride of Lochbarr

by Margaret Moore

“Nay, I can’t. And if that’s the way you feel, we’ll take our leave.”

  He stood up, intending to go, but there was a bustle at the door and the men who played the pipes, tabor and whistle came into the hall.

  “I’ll go after I’ve had a dance with my wife,” Adair declared, holding out his hand to lead her forward.

  “Oh, no!” she cried as she got to her feet and moved swiftly around the table. “I’m not going to try to dance the way you Scots do, jumping about like you’re treading on hot coals.”

  The slight annoyance he felt at her criticism disappeared as she went to stand beside the hearth in the center of the hall and addressed the musicians. “Play something slow, if you please.”

  She raised her voice so that everyone could hear. “I’m going to show you how the Normans dance.”

  Then she closed her eyes and began to sway to the music, her body as sinuous as a snake. She lifted first one hand, then the other, palm out, before she turned, doing a little hop-skip. She made a few delicate steps and turned the other way. She had an enticing little smile on her face and her dusky lashes fanned on her flushed cheeks. Her body undulated like a wave in a way he’d never seen a woman’s body move before.

  Adair would never have believed anything so simple could be so completely arousing if he hadn’t witnessed it himself.

  A quick survey showed that everybody else in the hall was staring at her, too. Roban was slack-jawed, and Lachlann looked as if he couldn’t tear his gaze from her swaying hips. His father, mercifully, had dozed off, his head against the back of his chair.

  “I think that’s enough, Marianne,” Adair said, hurrying toward her. “We get the sense of a Norman dance.”

  Marianne’s eyes snapped open as the music stopped. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No,” Adair said as he joined her. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’d just rather you showed me how the Normans dance when we’re alone.”

  She tilted her head and gave him a coy, yet knowing, smile. “All right.”

  He thought he’d die of desire right then and there. Instead, he picked her up and strode to the door, accompanied by cheers, laughter and cries to let Marianne stay.

  His father roused and raised his head. “Take good care of the mother of my grandson, Adair, and apologize nicely,” Seamus called out, his words slightly slurred.

  Outside, the quarter moon, sometimes covered by scudding clouds, was still bright enough to light their way. The air was chill, and Marianne snuggled against her husband. “Was your father ordering you to apologize for telling everyone about the baby? You already have.”

  Her bold, brave husband blushed. “Oh, he probably thinks I should apologize every night just to prevent quarrels.”

  “I hope you’re not annoyed with me about the dancing,” she said as she fingered the edge of his broach. “I was only trying to show you the sort of dances I learned in Normandy.”

  Never had it seemed so far from the hall to their quarters. “I’m not annoyed.”

  “I want you to be proud of me.”

  “I am, although I’m surprised they’d teach anything like that in a convent. What was the place called, St. Seductia of the Swaying Hips?”

  “The sisters couldn’t watch us every minute of the day, although they did try.”

  “If we have a daughter, I’m not sending her to any convent. Heaven only knows what she might learn.”

  “Your father seems convinced our firstborn will be a boy. What if it’s not? Will you be very disappointed?”

  “A boy will please my father, and I can’t deny I’d like sons, but a wee bonnie lass will be welcome, too,” he said, envisioning a family of children with Marianne. “We’ll just have to keep trying for sons, that’s all.”

  They reached the teach at last. Adair shoved the door open with his shoulder and carried her inside, eagerly anticipating making love with her again. And again.

  She slipped down from his arms, the sensation nearly enough to make him climax then and there, before she turned her back to him and moved her hair so that the pale nape of her neck was exposed. “Will you untie my laces?”

  “With pleasure, my lady,” he replied, attempting to control his raging passion. “Will you dance for me again?”

  “With pleasure.”

  He slipped his finger in the laces and tugged gently, undoing the knot. Then he pulled the laces out of the holes, exposing her back.

  “Are you finished?” she asked, holding the bodice of her gown to her breasts.

  “Not quite,” he said, his voice husky with desire. Putting his arms about her waist, he pulled her close and pressed his lips to the nape of her neck.

  Holding her slipping gown against her breasts, she giggled. “That tickles.”

  “What about this?” he asked, sliding his lips lower.

  She laughed. “You’re still tickling.”

  “And here?”

  She squirmed. “Not exactly.” She jumped and whirled around. The gown slipped down a little more. “Did you just…lick me?”

  He grinned with a mischievous glee. “Did you like it?”

  “Perhaps,” she replied, her eyes sparkling with mirth as she backed away from him. Her legs hit the bed and she lost her balance, falling onto it. Laughing, she held out one hand and with the other, pulled up her bodice. “Help me.”

  “Not yet,” he said coming to stand between her knees, looking down at her hair spread across the black fur.

  “You want me to lie here in this awkward position?”

  “I want to look at your hair against the black fur for a moment, with that red gown against your skin. Before I undress you.”

  “I see,” she whispered, her eyes darkening, expectant and excited.

  He put his hands on either side of her head and leaned down to kiss her again. Slowly. Leisurely.

  Her arms wrapped about his neck, the movements as sinuous as when she danced, and she responded with the passion he’d come to expect, and crave.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Adair raised his head. “Go away!”

  The pounding continued.

  With a low mutter of complaint, Adair shoved himself backward and strode to the door, flinging it open.

  Dearshul stood in the dim moonlight, her face white, her eyes wide, her lips trembling. “You’ve got to come quick, Adair. It’s your father. He got up from the table and fell down and we can’t rouse him.”

  “Surely there’s no need for you to fetch me,” Adair said as Marianne sat up. “He had too much wine, that’s all.”

  “Nay, it’s not that,” Dearshul said anxiously, looking past Adair to Marianne. “It’s not from the drink. It’s something else.”

  With a sick feeling of dread, Marianne reached back for the ends of her laces. “This is serious, Adair.”

  Her husband gave her a look of sudden, deep dismay. Then he pushed past Dearshul, who flattened herself against the frame of the door to let him go by.

  Marianne shivered, and it wasn’t only from the chill air coming in the open door.

  “Help me with my gown, Dearshul, please,” she said, trying not to believe her father-in-law, so healthy and vigorous only a short while ago, could be gravely ill now.

  Dearshul sprang forward and grabbed the ends of the ties, pulling them tight with quick efficiency.

  “How long ago did he fall?” Marianne asked as Dearshul knotted the laces.

  “A moment after you left, my lady. He stood up, like I said, to excuse himself for a bit. He was laughing and clapping with the music, heading for the door, when he just…well, his knees seemed to give out. He didn’t make a sound. Ceit and Lachlann tried to rouse him, but when they couldn’t, they sent me for Adair.”

  Marianne remembered the older woman who had tended to her feet. “Has anyone gone for Beitiris?”

  “Aye. Ceit sent Fionnaghal.”

  “Good.” Marianne started for the door, with Dearshul following.

  She c
ouldn’t be much help with the nursing, but she could see that Seamus was made comfortable. She could take charge of the servants. She could ensure that Adair and Lachlann weren’t bothered, for they’d surely be worried about their father.

  The whole fortress seemed hushed and expectant, as if even the buildings were waiting for word of the chieftain.

  When she arrived at the hall, the serving women stood clustered in the corner, and even the usually efficient Ceit appeared as helpless and worried as any of the silent, subdued men huddled around the fallen Seamus. Looking bewildered and lost, wringing his hands, Barra was at his feet. Lachlann knelt beside the chieftain, while Adair cradled his father’s head in his lap.

  Adair raised his head. Their gazes met, and in his, she saw a tormented dread that wrenched her heart.

  Yet no matter how upset she was, this was no time to be weak. Strength was needed—a woman’s strength, the sort of strength that had nursed generations of men, women and children through illness and injury, childbirth and death.

  So she strode down the hall like a conquering general. With a voice that didn’t waver or give any hint of dismay, she began issuing orders. “When Beitiris arrives, she is to have anything she needs. Ceit, take some others and go to our teach and bring our braziers to Seamus’s quarters. The candles, too, and any other candles or lamps you can find in the storerooms. I want the chieftain’s chamber well lit and warm. Una, fetch an ewer of cool water, and the freshest bread for when the chieftain wakes. Isaebal, go and see that there is hot water ready, in case Beitiris needs it.”

  The woman hurried to obey, while the anxious men shuffled their feet and looked at her expectantly, as if they wanted to be told what to do, too.

  She opened her mouth to order them to take Seamus to his teach when she recalled something her brother had told her on their journey from France, about a comrade-in-arms who had seemed well after a blow to the head, only to die later in the night. “Did Seamus strike his head when he fell?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lachlann answered, his voice strained, his eyes anguished. “He was walking toward the door and his knees buckled and down he went.”

  “That’s a relief,” Marianne replied briskly. “His head probably isn’t injured. Now we should take him to his own bed. Bring a bench and lay him on it.”

  The men sprang into action, except for Adair. He stayed with his father, holding him as gently as if Seamus were a slumbering child.

  While the men fetched the bench, Marianne studied Seamus’s face. He looked as though he was sleeping a deep sleep, except for one thing: the right side of his mouth was more relaxed than the left.

  She’d heard of this—apoplexy. Often it led to death, but not always. Sometimes people survived, although they might be crippled afterward.

  It was hard to imagine Seamus enfeebled, but surely that was better than death.

  “Adair,” she said softly, bending down to address him when Lachlann and Roban returned with the bench. “We must move him now.”

  Adair carefully lowered his father’s head to the ground and dispatched Roban and Barra to bring torches. He himself took hold of his father’s broad shoulders and helped lift him onto the bench. Then they were on their way, a silent procession with Seamus borne aloft as if this were his funeral.

  Marianne glanced at Adair and hoped that notion hadn’t struck him, too.

  When they reached the chieftain’s quarters, Beitiris and Fionnaghal were waiting. Fionnaghal shifted impatiently from foot to foot, while Beitiris, with a basket over her arm, stood still.

  This would not be the first time Beitiris had been summoned for such a thing. She’d probably seen all manner of sickness and death.

  “Put him down,” Beitiris ordered.

  The men did as she commanded. In the flickering light of the torches, Beitiris immediately bent over Seamus, examining his face. Touching his cheek. Raising his eyelid.

  Seamus didn’t stir, except to breathe.

  “Inside,” Beitiris snapped as she straightened, nodding at the door.

  The men quickly moved to obey.

  Was there nothing more she could say? Marianne thought with dismay. No suggestion of what had caused this? No hope that he could recover?

  “Fionnaghal,” she said, trying not to let her distress overwhelm her. “Go to the hall and see that the food is cleared away and the tables taken down. Ceit is too busy with other things.”

  Fionnaghal nodded. “Aye, my lady,” she said immediately, and without so much as a hint of protest before setting off for the hall.

  Marianne moved closer to Beitiris. “Seamus…is he…?”

  “It’s early yet, my lady.”

  “I thought it best to bring him here, to his own teach, where it would be quieter. I hope that wasn’t wrong.”

  “No. Here is better than the hall for a sick man.”

  “You’ll have anything you need to tend to him. And any servants you require.”

  “Thank you, my lady. I’ll do my best,” Beitiris replied as she turned to enter the chieftain’s teach.

  Marianne put her hand on Beitiris’s arm. “Is there any hope?” she asked quietly, unable to hide her dread.

  A look of sympathy appeared on the old woman’s wrinkled face. “There’s always hope while there’s life, my lady. I’ve seen men live who should have died twice, and men who had little more than a cough go down in a day. Sickness and death are mysteries we can’t hope to understand.” She gave Marianne a small smile. “Your father-in-law’s a braw, healthy man, and that’s to the good.”

  Finding some relief in Beitiris’s words, Marianne thanked her and sent up a brief, fervent prayer that God would spare Seamus.

  After Beitiris entered the teach, the men began to file out. Marianne stood in the shadows, watching and waiting for her husband.

  Adair still hadn’t come out when Lachlann approached her. He took hold of her hands and pressed them between his, gazing sadly into her face. “Lady, I…”

  Too full of emotion, he could say no more, and only shook his head.

  “Marianne?”

  She pulled her hands free and hurried to her husband, who was standing in the open door of his father’s teach. It closed behind him with a dull thud when she reached him.

  “Oh, Adair,” she murmured, embracing him, his body warm against her cheek.

  He made no effort to hold her.

  “Beitiris wouldn’t say a word except to order us from the teach,” he muttered.

  Beneath his frustration, she could sense a fear she shared.

  “So that she could do her work without a lot of people getting in the way, I expect,” Marianne replied, trying to offer him a comforting explanation, and hoping she was right. “Before she went in, she gave me cause to think your father would recover. He is, as she said, a very healthy man.”

  Adair let out his breath in a great rush, as if he’d been holding it since Dearshul had appeared at their teach. “Then I’ll try to be hopeful, too.”

  Marianne managed a little smile. “We should have faith in her skill, and your father’s vitality.”

  “Beitiris is skilled.”

  “Whatever she put on my feet healed them almost overnight,” Marianne reminded him as she slipped her arm through his.

  “That’s true. I’d forgotten.”

  She shivered and leaned against him. “Let’s go back to our teach. If there’s any news, I’m sure Beitiris will send someone to tell us.”

  He nodded. “Aye. There’s nothing I can do here.”

  “I understand older people have spells sometimes, a dizziness and swooning,” Marianne said as she walked beside him across the yard. “I remember old Sister Mary used to complain of them regularly, and she lived to be over eighty years old. Your father’s surely nowhere near eighty. Or perhaps it’s the start of an illness, something that requires a potion or some herbs to make him better.

  “Maybe it was something he ate, or too much of that drink you Scots make. It
tasted very potent. Perhaps all he requires is sleep, or maybe a purgative will make him better. Sometimes food can make people very sick.”

  She was babbling, her voice falsely cheerful, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to reassure Adair, and herself, that Seamus would be well, and saying such things seemed a way to stave off the worst of her fears.

  She thought she was succeeding, until they were alone in their teach. Then Adair’s head lowered and his shoulders slumped, and she realized that his confident strides as they’d crossed the yard had been as false as her good cheer.

  Sitting on the bed, he put his face in his hands and his voice dropped to a strangled whisper. “Oh, God, Marianne, my father’s going to die.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” she cried as she hurried to embrace her husband. “He’s robust and healthy for his age. He’ll get better. You’ll see.”

  Again, she tried to sound far less worried than she was, for she wanted to offer him all the comfort she could. “While he lives, we must have hope, Adair. And pray.”

  “Pray? Why should I pray?” her husband demanded, jumping to his feet and striding toward the window. “God struck him down—the finest, best man in Scotland.”

  It was blasphemy, but the blasphemy of a man in pain. She ran to her husband and embraced him. “We should pray because we can’t know the will of God. Because there is nothing else we can do, and perhaps God will listen.”

  “And if He doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll know it was time for Seamus to go to heaven. Maybe God wants to confer with the finest, best man in Scotland.”

  As Adair looked down at her, the anguish in his eyes smote her to the core. Then he slowly, awkwardly, knelt at her feet. “Will you help me?”

  She couldn’t have denied that request for anything. And as she knelt beside him, she realized something more.

  She loved Adair Mac Taran with all her heart. She cherished her strong, trustworthy husband and wanted to protect him from whatever blows life might send his way. He was more dear to her than anyone, even her own kin.

  Adair clasped his hands and looked at her. “I’m not much good at praying,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ve always left it to holier men. And I have no head for Latin.”