The Laird's Vow

by Heather Grothaus

  Only it wasn’t stick-thin any longer, she realized with a start. She glanced down and saw that her fingertips had left dimples in the smooth, spotted flesh, like footprints in wet sand.

  Glenna walked around the end of the bed and dragged the heavy chair away from the window to move it closer to the side of the bed. Iain’s eyes followed her as she positioned her seat and sat down on the edge of the threadbare and faded cushion.

  “After you woke,” Glenna began, “you asked me who was here. I put on as though I misunderstood what you were asking.

  “By now, Mistress Harriet might have told you that she has come with her son from Edinburgh, where they tended a shop. As I know it, that is very true. However…” She paused a moment, struggling to order her words as best she could. “That is not all of the truth. When Harriet arrived at Roscraig with her son, Tavish Cameron, they begged shelter from a storm. But Master Cameron also had business to address at the Tower, and he requested audience with…with the keeper of Tower Roscraig.”

  Iain Douglas’s gaze did not waver, nor did it dull. He was still listening.

  “I am ashamed to admit that I granted them entry in exchange for the handful of coins he offered in payment. If I had known…” She broke off, swallowed. “Perhaps not. I’m sorry for it though, Da.” She reached out then and took hold of his fingers, spindly and yet at the same time seemingly encased in a thin leather glove that had been filled near to bursting with water.

  “He carried a document with him. A document that says he has inherited the Tower from his father, the rightful laird of Roscraig. A man called Annesley.”

  Iain’s left eye widened almost imperceptibly, and his lips seemed to flex as his jaw made a series of chewing motions. A strangled hum came from his throat. Glenna waited for him to speak, but his chest only rose and fell rapidly beneath the coverlet.

  Glenna went on. “He has taken over the Tower in your illness. Brought in servants and workers. Done wonderful things for the keep, really. I—I wish you could see the hall. There have been feasts for days—grand ones.

  “It’s all in preparation for the king’s arrival,” she continued quietly. “Da, Tavish says…he says that you aren’t laird of Roscraig. That you never were. And that when the king comes, he will make a decision about us.”

  Glenna tried to push down the emotion that was rising up within her at speaking all this aloud, at the anticipation of what she was about to say. But she knew her chin trembled, could feel her eyes swelling.

  “He’s wrong, isn’t he, Da? Tell me he’s mistaken—you are laird of Roscraig, aren’t you? Won’t the king tell him so when he comes?”

  Iain Douglas’s eye began to leak a thin thread of tears.

  Glenna sniffed. “And then there’s this.” She fished in her purse for the silver, double-barred brooch and held it out in her palm before his eyes. “It’s in that portrait—the one that hung in the west tower. The man in the painting wears it. Is it true? Is it Thomas Annesley’s?”

  Her father continued to weep silently, and as she looked into his yellowed, dying eyes, the fissured ground that made up the foundation of her life began to tremble and crack. His chin jerked downward.

  “Nay,” she whispered, the image of him growing watery through the thick wall of tears in her eyes. She sniffed and blinked, setting the sadness free to run courses down her cheeks while she took up his hand once more and turned it over, pressing the brooch into it and curling his thick, rubbery fingers around it. “Roscraig is ours. You are the laird here—you always have been,” she whispered quickly, like an incantation, hurrying to speak the words aloud so that they might be made true.

  She doubled over in the chair and laid her forehead against her father’s hand, still clasped tightly in both her own. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her breaths were hard-won.

  “Am I even your daughter?” she rasped.

  The weak hand encased in her own flexed, and Glenna raised her face to look at her father. Even in his illness, she saw the fire of his answer there. He struggled to open his fingers against hers and then grasped for her hand. The brooch slid free and fell to the floor with a tumbling clink.

  Glenna felt the weak tug, and she rose, bending Iain’s forearm up until their clasped hands were between their chests and Glenna’s face was only inches from her father’s.

  His lips pulled apart slowly and with much effort. “My,” he exhaled, and his breath was hot and tinged with the smell of wet vegetation.

  She wanted to reassure him with a smile, but it felt as though the corners of her mouth were hung with weights. “If the king grants Tavish Cameron Roscraig, we’ve nowhere to go, Da. Tavish—he seeks to wed another and doesn’t want me here. The king might see me cloistered, or wed to someone of his court. But you…” She broke off, unable to speak aloud the possibility that James could have her father charged with some crime.

  “I’ve a friend, though—John Muir. He is captain of a merchant ship and, with your blessing, has offered to take us both from Roscraig. I trust Captain Muir; he feels for our situation and—”

  “Go,” her father interrupted in a whisper. His head twitched in a weak nod. “Go.”

  “He said he will take you, too. We only—”

  Iain Douglas jerked his head to the side.

  Glenna stared into his eyes for several moments, and the silent communication between her and her father was more painful than any words either could have spoken aloud.

  I will not live long enough for the journey.

  I can’t go without you.

  I want to die at Roscraig.

  But you’re all I have left.

  “Da,” Glenna pleaded on a quiet sob.

  His jaws made the chewing motion several more time, in fits and starts, before his lips peeled apart once more.

  “Ann’sley,” he slurred. “Good.”

  Glenna stilled. “You knew him?”

  His head twitched in another nod, and this time his yellow eyes held a glint of the man Glenna remembered from her youth. “Good.” His jaws worked futilely for a moment and his next words were like a creaking wind. “You…go. Sssoon,” he slurred.

  Iain Douglas was clearly not afraid of the judgment of the king, but he seemed to want Glenna away from Roscraig before the monarch’s arrival. Which led to another question burning a hole in Glenna’s brain.

  “Da,” she began softly. “What happened to Mother?”

  “Harr’et,” he replied.

  “You want Harriet?”

  Iain shifted his gaze away from her to the window.

  “Please tell me,” Glenna pressed. “It wasn’t fever, was it?”

  He wouldn’t look at her again.

  Glenna stepped back from the bed, and a beam of sunlight glinted off the silver brooch lying on the floor just beneath the edge of the bed. She stooped and picked it up, looking at it as perhaps a stranger might, as if she had never seen the thing before.

  In truth, perhaps she hadn’t.

  “You’re tired, I understand. There is another feast tonight, and I have been ordered to attend. Perhaps after you have rested…”

  Iain didn’t blink, didn’t nod. He seemed to have retreated back into his catatonic state, perhaps in exhaustion, perhaps in defense against Glenna’s questions. Either way was acceptable for what Glenna felt she had to say next.

  “I think I love him, Da. I think I’m in love with Tavish Cameron. In the beginning, I thought to marry him to save Roscraig—I thought I could convince him.” She looked down at her hands, polished the silver of the brooch with one thumb. “But he still doesn’t love me. And now he never will.” She looked up.

  Her father made no indication he’d heard anything she said.

  “I’ll fetch Harriet.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead while she curled Iain’s fingers around the brooch. “I love you
, Da. No matter what.” And then she straightened and left the room quickly, eager for the fresh air of the stairwell.

  On her way down the steps she spied a servant girl descending before her and called out. “Maid?”

  The girl stopped and turned, looking up with a patient expression. “Aye, milady?”

  “Please tell Mistress Cameron that the la—” She broke off. “That Iain Douglas wishes to see her.”

  “Aye, milady.” She bobbed her head and was gone.

  Then Glenna stood before her closed chamber door, a flutter of dread in her stomach. She hadn’t spoken to Tavish since leaving the bed they’d shared the night before, and although she doubted he yet slumbered, her heart raced at the idea that he could be just beyond this barrier.

  She hated him, hated what he was doing to her father, her life, her dignity.

  She longed for his comfort in her distress, for him to love her again, and set aside his prejudices and consider that they were well matched, that she could be his companion—to choose her, please choose her.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Her deep breath turned into a relieved sigh at the empty chamber. Glenna closed and bolted the door. The conversation she’d had with her father had shattered her, but she could not yet let the pieces fall. Her mind whirled with the choices before her and their myriad consequences, but she could not order them. And so she threw herself into preparing as best she could for an unknown future, not thinking of the why or the how of the task.

  She chose for the feast the shimmering violet with slit sleeves that allowed the embroidered emerald underdress to flow through. A white veil paired with a tall birdcage headpiece; silken stockings and new leather slippers completed the fine ensemble.

  Then Glenna searched through Tavish’s large table, her eyes going over the surface quickly, spying the inkpot and quill in its stand. She rifled through cubbies until she discovered a stack of small pieces of paper and carefully removed the top leaf. She paused with the quill raised over the pot.

  What had she planned on writing? There were so many things she wanted the courage for speaking aloud to Tavish Cameron; but perhaps there was not enough ink in all the oceans to express the regret and heartbreak she felt if this letter was to be her goodbye, not only to him, but to all of Roscraig, to the life she’d known up to that very morning.

  When Glenna at last began to write, she was finished in only a moment—the truth she now knew was concise, after all. Once the ink had dried, she folded the note and placed it in the center of one of the fine linen handkerchiefs, where it could be refolded without suspicion. After replacing it in the trunk, she quit the room to see about having water sent up for a bath.

  She must look her very best upon playing the lady of Roscraig at her first—and last—feast.

  * * * *

  Harriet came into Iain’s chamber once more, her arm pressing oddly against the front of her apron. She closed the door and bolted it, then went around the end of the bed, fishing in her bodice as she approached.

  “Is this what you wanted, milord?” she asked, holding up the stolen vellum and writing utensils.

  Iain grunted in assent and struggled against the ticking.

  “Just a moment; just a moment.” She placed the items on the stone sill and then rushed to his side, helping him to curl against the rough headboard. Then she turned back to the window and retrieved the vellum. “I canna write, milord; just my name, I’m afraid. Neither can I read.”

  Iain’s head twitched, and his left fingers swung inward in a “come” gesture where they lay on his hip.

  Harriet laid the vellum atop the blanket and uncorked the inkpot, nearly overturning it. “Oh! Mercy! All right, then. Here we are.” She picked up the quill and dipped it, tapped it as she’d seen Tav do a thousand times, then placed the quill in Iain’s limp grip. She slid a sheet of thick vellum from the roll and then fed it awkwardly between Iain’s wrist and the coverlet, until the ink-darkened tip of the quill shuddered over the top of the page. She was shocked when the words began to sound out on the paper; skittering, quick, shaking. The swift writing was juxtaposed to the man’s blank face, his slowly heaving chest.

  Iain’s good eye was rolled down toward the vellum, watching his efforts, although it couldn’t be said whether or not he actually saw the script. It didn’t matter—the story he wrote was vivid in the part of his mind that wasn’t damaged, and he had no doubt that he would remember it all exactly as it happened.

  Unlike his daughter’s swiftly composed farewell, Iain Douglas’s note would take a very long time.

  Chapter 14

  The already long trestle table had been further augmented by the addition of several quickly hewn extensions, and the finely carved chairs were now interspersed with both short and long backless benches to accommodate the scores of guests that had come to Roscraig in anticipation of the royal visit. Sixty-seven, at Tavish’s last count; which brought the number of invitees now seating themselves at his feasting table to sixty-nine, counting himself and his mother.

  Only one seat at the table, six places down on the right from where Tavish was seated at the head, remained conspicuously empty. The idea that she would deliberately disobey him by refusing to attend had not entered his mind before that moment. But then he remembered that Glenna was planning to leave him at first light, with the man now seated two down on his left—Captain John Muir.

  If she thought so little of him as to leave him completely, surely she would think nothing of failing to appear at the feast. She could be hiding aboard the Stygian at this moment, seeking to evade him altogether before her escape.

  The idea of it maddened him so that Tavish pushed back his chair and stood, even as the first in a line of servants bearing laden trays appeared in the hall doorway. Dinner be damned—he would find her, and he would bring her to the hall, bodily if need be.

  But then the first maid jostled around and slipped sideways back into the darkness of the corridor, and an iridescent wash of violet and green swept through the doorway and came to a swinging halt as Glenna Douglas stared at the scores of people within the hall.

  And they all stared at her. Tavish’s breath caught in his throat as her eyes met his.

  He’d always thought her beautiful, from the first moment he’d seen her pale countenance and cat eyes within the blackness of the entry corridor in the storm. And it was true that she had grown even more beautiful to Tavish in the interim. But tonight she was exquisite—slender and sparkling like a dark scepter in the gown Tavish had bought for her, the stone doorway around her like a royal fist.

  The Lady Glenna, of Roscraig.

  She broke gaze with him and gave an elegant curtsey to the room before sweeping across the boards toward the empty seat, her chin lifted. One by one, the male guests pushed back from their chairs or stood from their benches until Glenna had sat.

  Only Tavish remained standing now, and he knew that his blatant attention for the woman whose own eyes seemed fixed on the candelabra in the center of the table was drawing awkward glances, but Tavish didn’t care the least.

  This was his hold, his hall, his table, his woman. And he would look at her whenever, and for as long as, he liked.

  Glenna finally turned toward him, and the way her eyes glittered in the candlelight, holding the memories the two of them had made the night before, nearly caused Tavish to lose his composure and drag her from the feast.

  Dinner and guests be damned.

  “Forgive me, laird,” she said. And Tavish wondered if she was speaking for her tardiness or her plot to escape him.

  But he was saved from his impetuous urges by the entrance of the servants, and so he finally sat and, as he did so, relieved chatter burst forth along the table in an accompanying clatter of knives.

  The meal seemed to last hours. Thankfully, Tavish was kept in distracted convers
ation by the guests to either side of him, participating when he could tear his attention from the blond woman farther down the table. Glenna herself seemed to be in high demand of the male guests particularly, and once again he heard her laugh rise above the crude clatter, like the tinkling of crystal. When Tavish determined the last course had been partaken of sufficiently, he rose with his chalice, signaling to the guests and the servants that the meal had ended.

  The musicians who had been playing quietly in the front of the hall struck up a lively melody to lure the guests away from the clearing efforts, and several couples formed up immediately for a dance, while others milled to greet those whom they hadn’t been seated near. Tavish himself struck out through the crush toward the sparkling gem that was Glenna, but before he could reach her, Audrey Keane had taken her arm and was pulling her toward the dancers, bringing Tavish to a rocking halt on his feet.

  The two seemed to have come to some understanding. And he realized that it was perhaps that Glenna was leaving Roscraig—and Tavish—to Audrey.

  Tavish watched Glenna swirl into formation, bobbing, kicking out a delicate ankle, clasping hands with Audrey and circling another couple. She was of course graceful on her feet, a talented dancer. And it was clear by her easy smile that she was enjoying herself and filled the role she played perfectly.

  Of course she would fill the role perfectly, he said crossly to himself. This is her home. It is I who am standing in the center of the floor like a simpleton.

  He felt like a fool, in so many ways. He exchanged his empty chalice for a full one and made his way to stand at the hearth and compose himself. It did not help his sour mood that Captain John Muir chose that moment to join him.

  “More people here than I reckoned,” the captain said mildly.

  Tavish stared out over the crowd, trying not to strain too obviously for a glimpse of Glenna. “Aye.”

  “Glad I’ll be to take up less crowded quarters. This noble life holds little appeal for a seaman.”