“Nay—I’ve nae shared my suspicions with her. But that’s just it—Laird Douglas fell ill after most of the folk had died. Once the sickness was realized, he never left the hold.”
The gouges in the door…
“You know just as well as I that the miasma can lay sleeping in a man for days before he succumbs.”
“But Lady Glenna affirms he had no cough, no boils a’tall. And his fingers and toes…” She glanced around and then leaned forward in her chair, whispering to him. “Black.”
“If he never left the hold, the only one who could have poisoned him was his own daughter,” Tav reminded her.
Mam shook her head. “Nay. That…that man, Frang Roy. He was the last one to see the laird before the door was barred from the villagers. He brought the eggs. They were part of the last meal Laird Douglas ate.”
Tavish glanced at the table, now cleared of dishes. “We didn’t eat the eggs he brought, did we?”
Mam shook her head. “I threw them out straight away.”
“Good.” Tavish paused. It was possible that Frang Roy could have had opportunity to poison Iain Douglas. But tainting the laird’s food didn’t make sense to Tavish. “What reason would he have for injuring the laird, Mam? Frang Roy’s only a farmer—and a poor one, at that. It’s not as if he could aspire to rule Roscraig.”
Mam placed her hand atop Tavish’s. “He wants Lady Glenna,” she said pointedly. “Once her da was dead, there would be no one here to stop him.”
“No one save me, Mistress Cameron.”
The smooth, accented voice drew Mam’s and Tavish’s attention to the doorway, where Roscraig’s newly installed man at arms entered with a hooded figure at his side.
“Beg pardon, laird,” Alec said. “Dubhán said he was expected.”
Tavish pushed to his feet. “My thanks, Alec.” He looked to the dark-skinned man standing in the long robe. “Good evening, Dubhán. I should have come to the hermitage sooner.”
“The rain, laird,” the man said, opening his palms and giving Tavish a slow, bright smile as he looked pointedly around the hall. “You have had much more important work to do in bringing the Tower back to life than greeting a lowly servant such as myself.” He turned toward Mam and gave a nod. “Mistress Cameron. I am blessed again by your presence.”
Tavish felt his brows raise. “The two of you have met?”
Mam nodded. “I took a march up the cliff earlier today—my legs needed it after being cooped up in the keep for so long. I forgot to mention I invited Dubhán, Tav.”
“I do hope my arrival is not inconvenient. It isn’t often that I come into the village—Laird Douglas is not devout, and I am in truth no vicar.”
“Not at all. Please.” Tavish returned to his seat and gestured to the chair on the side of the table, between himself and Mam.
“This is a special treat for me, to partake of such hospitality.” The monk bowed his thanks before sitting and accepting the cup set in front of him. “Since the village all but dissolved away, I keep to the cliff and tend the dead—what I was sent to Roscraig to do.”
Tavish regarded the calm, exotic-looking man with pleasant curiosity. “How long have you been at Roscraig, Dubhán?”
“Oh, the lord sent me here many years ago,” he said with a fond smile. “Before Lady Glenna was born. I have watched her grow.”
“Was Laird Douglas ruling when you came?”
The black man looked mildly surprised. “Aye.”
Tavish couldn’t help but glance at his mother, and wished he hadn’t when he saw her smug expression. He looked back to the black man, who seemed to be relishing each tiny sip of wine, cradling the cup in both his hands and closing his eyes with a small smile as he swallowed.
“Did you know the laird before him?”
“Forgive my ignorance, but nay. As you might have guessed I was not born of this land. My parents were killed in Tunis when I was a small child, and I was raised by Franciscans. I was sent here after I submitted to the lord, to care for the cave. Here I have remained.”
At this, Tavish sat up, his sea merchant ears perking. “Cave?”
“In the cliff below the hermitage. One of the first saints of Scotland is said to have died there. Though I do not receive many pilgrims of late.”
“That does interest me, Dubhán,” Tavish said, his mind going at once to the heavy chest currently residing beneath his bed. “I would like to visit this cave myself.”
“As you wish, laird,” the man acquiesced. “It is a dangerous path, though, I warn. Many are rumored to have disappeared from the cliff. Most are never seen again.”
“I thank you for the counsel,” Tavish said, the monk’s words calling to mind the warning from Frang Roy.
Things have a habit of disappearin’ at Roscraig…
An awkward silence descended for a moment as the dark monk seemed to be considering his words carefully. “Do not think me impertinent, laird, I pray. But…Lady Glenna has no family to speak of if—” He paused and Tavish saw his pale nail beds go even whiter as they gripped the cup. It was obvious the man was struggling with unexpressed emotion. “Have you spoken to Laird Douglas?”
“I have not,” Tavish said, not liking the guilt he felt tugging at a corner of his conscience.
Mam reentered the conversation then. “The laird is still quite unwell, Dubhán. He’s only spoken a handful of words, and those are mostly nonsense. He might yet die.”
Dubhán gave a solemn nod toward Mam and then turned his doleful gaze toward Tavish. He leaned forward. “Perhaps you will permit me to bless him, milord? While there is still time?”
An exasperated feminine sigh floated on the warmed air of the hall. “We’ve talked about this a hundred times, Dubhán.” A moment later the slight, pale figure of Glenna Douglas stepped from the shadow of the corridor into the room. “You know he stopped believing in such things long ago.” Glenna walked toward the table as she spoke, but her attention seemed to be on the room itself, her gaze going about the hall.
The monk stood as she reached his side, and Tavish himself felt the instinctive urge to rise, but kept his seat as he thought of the way she had dared strike him, as if he were no more than a stable boy; her boldness in occupying his dreams the past fortnight.
This was his hall and he would not stand for her.
Dubhán dropped his head in humility. “There is always hope.”
“I know,” she said, reaching out to take both of the monk’s hands in hers. “You have done your best. But I will uphold his wishes. If you love him, you will do the same.”
“My first love must always be for the lord,” he replied with an easy smile. “And bringing those of unbelief to his unyielding mercies.”
“I understand.” She let his hands drop and then turned to Tavish, and her lips parted as if she meant to speak straight away. But she closed her mouth and her slender throat convulsed, her nostrils flared.
Tavish noticed that, although she was again wearing the same faded gown as upon his arrival at the Tower, tonight her hair was swept up in a complicated labyrinth of twists that culminated in a regal peak at her crown and adorned with a small sprig of spring greenery that was trembling ever so slightly. Her green eyes flashed at him, suggesting her hatred for him was still just beneath the surface. She was so thin, her skin so pale and smooth, Tavish could see the flutter of her wild pulse in the delicate column of her neck.
“Have you a request, Miss Douglas?” Tavish said courteously, deliberately goading her as a distraction from her exquisite appearance. “Directions to the nearest town, mayhap?”
“My first request, Master Cameron, is that you not continue to shame your mother by lazing on your haunches like some ill-mannered mongrel when a lady enters a room. I have full confidence that Harriet taught you how to behave.”
Tavish was not expecting
his barbs to be so expertly returned to him—and with such accuracy. So for a beat of time, he could do nothing more than blink while he recovered the use of his brains. She really did think a lot of herself.
He looked left and right, leaned back slightly to glance beneath the table and then let his gaze rove her leisurely from head to foot and then back to her eyes.
“Forgive me—I didn’t see a lady enter. Is she hiding behind you?”
The gibe struck its intended target, for Tavish saw the roundness of her chest rise, her cat eyes narrow even further.
“I will show Dubhán out,” Mam piped up brightly as her chair legs squeaked on the floor. “Good night, Tav.” She gave Glenna a rueful smile. “I’ll look in on your da before I retire, milady.”
“Thank you, Harriet,” Glenna Douglas whispered, but her hateful gaze remained trained on Tavish, as if she dismissed a servant worthy of not even a glance.
Tavish looked up at her benignly, stretching out one leg and folding his hands atop his stomach. “Why does the close of the first dry day in a fortnight find you yet in my house?”
“Roscraig isn’t yours. Besides, even if it were, I have nowhere to go, and well you know it.”
“That’s not true at all—I gave you your choice of any of the cottages in the village.”
“If you think to so easily be rid of me upon naught more than a questionable scrap of parchment, you are as dense as you appear,” she said. “It will take no less than the king’s command for me to be moved.”
“He will be here within the month,” Tavish rejoined easily, pleased at the flash in her eyes. “Not long to bide one’s time in the village.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind waiting there,” she offered.
Tavish couldn’t help but laugh. He glanced up, indicating the portrait once more hanging over the great hearth. “I have a court-witnessed decree from my father—an English lord—that Tower Roscraig and its title belong to me. What proof have you?”
She stormed toward him at last, her skirts swinging against his legs as she stood over him. Her arm pointed behind her toward the doorway. “My proof is my father: the laird of Roscraig who lies above your head, dying! You are a naught but a bastard interloper who doesn’t have the decency to so much as pay his respects to the man whose home you think to steal!”
Tavish gained his feet, noticing that Glenna initially flinched at his movement but continued to stand her ground.
He leaned down close to her face. “Insult me once more in my hall, princess, and I shall give you the back of my hand. Test me and know. I have been most generous in giving you this past fortnight. I owe you—and your da—naught. Your time is come. Be gone.”
“If you would have a dying man moved,” she said to him steadily, “then you go above and do it yourself, so that his death can be only on your hands. You remove him from your mother’s kindness and care. You explain his death to the king when he comes to entertain your common groveling. You do it, and be damned.”
“You didn’t come down here only to curse me,” Tavish said aloud as he realized it. He let his gaze flit over her face, her hair pointedly. “You want something. You want to deal.”
Her eyes widened so slightly that, had anyone else been watching her, they likely would have never have known. But Tavish was alert to every pore and curve of her face, and Glenna seemed to recognize that as she blinked then took a step away from him. “The king could deny you,” she said.
“Nonsense,” Tavish scoffed.
“Your father was English,” she insisted. “And so that makes you half. Posture all you like, but you know as well as I that James hates the murdering bastards. He would be well within his rights to toss you out on your swollen head, and then where would you go, hmm? I’m of the impression that you’d not receive a warm welcome upon your return to Edinburgh.”
“I can give James all the coin Roscraig owes—every last shilling. The amount of income I can glean here is limitless, and the king will recognize that.”
“If all the king wished for was wealth, many flags would fly across Scotland. When he chooses to fight, you would make a fine trumpet.”
Tavish stilled. This woman was no imbecile. As much as he wanted to deny it to Mam and even to himself, the points Glenna Douglas made were valid and entirely plausible. But if she realized their likelihood, she also knew that there was an equal if not better chance that King James would award Roscraig to Tavish rather than an impoverished, ineffective corpse or the corpse’s even more impoverished daughter.
What intrigued Tavish most in that moment, though, was Glenna Douglas’s heretofore secret agenda with him in the hall.
“I’ve been in the business of commerce long enough to know when I’m being sold a cargo of questionable worth. So I’ll ask you once more: What is it you came down here tonight for? And say it right out—no more dodging. What do you want?”
“Very well.” She lifted her chin. “I want to marry you.”
Chapter 7
There, she’d said it. It was out in the open now, and all Glenna had to do was withstand this terrible, awkward silence while Tavish Cameron stared at her. She steeled herself not to squirm, not to look away from him for even an instant. He took a quick step back, letting in a rush of fresh, cool air, and Glenna drew a deep silent breath through her nose.
“You want to…marry me?” His brows were drawn together between his eyes like the folds of a drapery.
Glenna lifted her chin the slightest bit. “That’s right.”
His frown was suspicious now. “But…you hate me.”
“I do.”
“And I hate you,” he added.
“You’ve made that clear, aye.”
“Then why would—” Tavish Cameron broke off, then a smug, knowing smile softened his rugged features. “Of course you’d rather marry a man you hate than try to manage somewhere without the benefit of a title.”
She tried to smother the tiny flames erupting from the rippling bed of angry coals inside her before she spoke. “I have nowhere to go, whether my father lives or nae. I was born within these very walls—my mother is buried on yon cliff. I’ll not leave, even if it means I must shackle myself to one beneath me, and whose very presence I loathe. I will withstand any suffering if it means my father and I remain.”
“Your enthusiasm is tempting,” he quipped with a quirk of his mouth. “I do see that becoming my wife would be the best solution for you. But what of me?”
Glenna blinked. “What of you?”
“Aye,” he insisted with a growing smile as he strolled back toward his chair and lowered himself into it, picking up his abandoned cup and pausing it before his lips. “What benefit would it be to me to take such a shrew for a bride? You’ve no dowry, I assume.” He drank.
She shook her head slightly. “None,” she admitted. “But you need me. Marrying me all but guarantees Roscraig will remain in your hands.” Glenna could see that she had the man’s ear. Perhaps he was a skilled merchant after all, willing to hear the full details of the bargain.
“Go on,” he said, watching her intently now.
She steeled herself for the plain facts she must voice aloud. “It would clearly be in the king’s best interest from a standpoint of coin to strip my father of Roscraig and grant it to a successful man of commerce.”
“Not to mention I’m the rightful heir,” Tavish Cameron quickly interjected.
Glenna ignored him. “He would be paid what is owed him and stand likely to receive a comfortable profit from your future efforts. I,” she paused but forced herself to go on, “have naught to give him.”
“You’re not much of a catch so far, I must say.”
“Would you shut up and let me finish?” she snapped.
He grinned at her, increasing her fury. Glenna took a quick, calming breath. “Even so, it is said that James is a fair m
an. It would prick his conscience—and his reputation with his people—more than a little to so oust a son of Scotland, in favor of a common…shopkeep.”
“Resorting to flattery, are you?”
“I was refraining from calling you bastard.”
“Ah. Courteous, as well. Becoming more and more of a prize the longer you speak.”
“If you marry me,” Glenna forced through clenched teeth, “James has the best of both worlds—he is paid his debt, has honored his loyal subject—my father—and stands to profit from Roscraig’s prosperity under…skilled management,” she muttered, the words nearly causing her physical pain.
Tavish Cameron’s eyebrows rose. “You think I’m skillful?”
She sighed and gestured with her open palm around the hall. “My resentment of you doesn’t make me blind. Walking into the hall tonight was like walking back into my youth. I would not have thought it possible to accomplish what you have in only a fortnight. I must admit that I would like to see…” She faltered.
“See what?”
“I’d like to see what you can do for Roscraig in a year,” she finished in a rush, her chin tilted even further. “If you are in fact the rightful heir to Roscraig, and you marry me, James could never refuse your claim.”
“What of your father?” Tavish Cameron suggested. “What would you tell him?”
“If he recovers…well, we might tell him that we made these arrangements in preparation of his death. So that Roscraig…and I…would be cared for.”
“What, I just wandered up the Tower Road past three score signs of plague, fell madly in love with you at first sight, and determined you would be my wife?”
Her cheeks ached they burned so intensely. “There’s no need to lie.” She paused. “So blatantly. We would portray you as a wealthy merchant in search of a respectable bride.”
“But I thought I was to marry you?”
Again, she outwardly ignored his goading, although inside she wanted to brain him with the ornate candelabra on the table.
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