Promise Me: A Scottish Medieval Protector Romance, page 19
“The king suggested ye bed me, to see if it may help.”
Tearloch was taken aback. She had stated it so evenly, as if she wouldn’t mind following the king’s advice. He was just as shocked that the king would have suggested it to his own sister!
“Mayhap if ye kiss me, even, ye can see I willna be a cold fish in our marriage bed.” She rose and turned to Tearloch. Her hands fidgeted in front of her, but she showed no other signs of fear.
Either she was no virgin, or she had not found him lacking when she looked him over at table the night before.
“As you will, Milady. I shall try a kiss, but it willnae do us any good.” He started toward her and she met him halfway. He meant to bend to her slowly, to give her a chance to reconsider, but she grabbed his head and pulled him to her for a feverish kiss.
Was he so irresistible? With the fresh memory of a defiant lover in his arms, he had forgotten how women had flirted outright with him here at court. He was a well-made man, after all. His features were by no means repellant. And his betrothed did seem enthusiastic. Perhaps too enthusiastic.
He pulled her arms from his neck and held her away from him to take a close look. She was pretty, but she looked older than her twenty-six years. Then he realized the way she was breathing and licking her lips at him, this was no untried lass he was ordered to marry.
“Call for the guard, my lady. We have our answer.”
With a not so pretty pout, she went to the door and called the guard. Tearloch wondered if his king had seen her in a foul humor as yet.
After Malcolm was informed that his experiment was unsuccessful, he begrudgingly allowed Tearloch to join him for dinner.
Tearloch waved the servants away and kept his voice low, since the brooding princess was seated at the far end of their long table. “Have ye never seen yer sister’s foul humor?”
“Nay, no’ until today. I will concede it wasnae pleasant. She acted quite the spoiled child. Not at all as I remember her.” Malcolm sent a smile the woman’s way, but she didn’t notice. Her attention was bent to her plate.
Tearloch relished his meal as well, relieved that Malcolm was beginning to see the futility of his attempts to marry the woman off to him. Tearloch also knew how disappointed the king would be if he met Fia and decided to make her his bride. His disappointment would come when Tearloch put a dagger in his heart.
The king’s appetite showed he was thinking just that—about the woman and the dagger it might earn him.
A movement at the other end of the table caught Tearloch’s eye. A small blonde maid hovered near the princess, and what was more, she looked quite familiar. He happened to see the woman squeezing the girl’s hand painfully as she questioned her. The maid looked sharply up at Tearloch, and when their eyes met, the girl went pale and swooned.
Tearloch knew her now. The first time he’d seen her, she had swooned as well.
While servants bustled around the table to cart away the unconscious maid, Tearloch sent a man to bring Jamie to him. Within moments Jamie was nodding his understanding of Tearloch’s orders and hastening away in the direction in which the maid had been carried.
The first night of Kenna’s escape, she slept in a barn. The hour was such that no one noticed her bedding down against a sturdy wall whilst rain patted lightly on the other side. The animals sensed no danger from her for they made no protests. Her own horse she hobbled in a copse nearby, and she was gone again before dawn.
The next night she slept in a field with nothing but her horse for shelter. In the morning, she skirted around Gowry Keep on the north, making her way through the moors and eliminating leagues in the process. She rode hard through the more populated areas to avoid being accosted and stayed in the saddle until she couldn’t possibly see the road ahead. She slept in the bed of a wagon for a few hours, pleased to be off the ground, then wearily returned to the road for the last leg of the journey.
Just before dawn of the third day, she neared her former home. Eschewing the gate, she turned her horse toward the small loch and the Clark’s cottage. Sleep was her only intelligible thought.
When she entered the small home, she immediately wondered if she were in the wrong cottage. There was nothing homey about it, but she did recognize enough of Mrs. Clark’s scattered belongings to verify she had come to the right place. It had been stripped of all the Clarks had held dear, and the scattered, forgotten remnants gave Kenna the impression that the couple had packed quickly and fled.
Her disappointment and weariness overwhelmed her. She led her horse inside, barred the door, and after she removed the saddle and quenched both their thirsts, she crawled onto what was left of the bed and swiftly fell asleep.
It was late in the afternoon when the horse’s impatient stamping woke her. Kenna rose quite refreshed and prepared to face whatever fate had in store for her. Through the windows she marveled at the lack of activity about the keep at the top of the rise. A handful of men rode in and out of the gate, but no wagons of supplies. And even stranger was the lack of servants or tenants making the usual hum of daily activity between Carlisle Folly and the village.
Something was terribly wrong. People were missing. Agatha would be outraged, if she were still in a position of power, if she hadn’t been taken away. Even with the old woman’s unpleasantness, the Clarks would never have left their home. Whoever had driven them out must have been quite terrible indeed.
It had been difficult enough to come back knowing her aunt might still be here. She couldn’t imagine facing someone more fearsome.
Perhaps someone at the firth would know where her friends had gone, but she decided to wait for the cover of darkness. Until then, she was able to satisfy her horse with the dried flowers hanging from the rafters. There were enough foodstuffs to keep her belly from complaining, and just enough water to wash it down.
There was little else. Her friends had been fast but thorough. She considered tidying up, but reconsidered. She wanted no evidence that she had passed this way. If Tearloch sent someone looking for her, they would find a cold trail.
Duncan came rumbling down the road from the west and reigned in when he came in sight of the Carlisle keep. He found it hard to believe that Kenna had rested less than he, or ridden as hard in order to have arrived here ahead of him. He’d heard no word of a woman traveling alone, and worried he had guessed her destination wrong, when a movement caught his eye.
The passage of a wagon out of the gate was not unique, but that it was the only sign of life in or around the place made it noticeable. Duncan searched the rise and strained to hear normal sounds of activity, then felt ill when the silence reminded him of a battlefield after the fight was over.
In this case, there were no mourners searching the ground for familiar faces. No bodies left behind, no muffled weeping, no wailing. There was only the tangible lack of life in the valley below him, and he knew the MacCurrachs had it right. The devil did indeed reside here.
Although his senses railed at him to flee, he would not go until he made certain Kenna was not inside.
With the glare from the sun setting behind him, the wagon’s driver was unable to look up at the road, let alone see the lone rider disappearing into the trees. The warm glow of sunset paved the cart’s path with a golden light, but the long cold shadow that stretched in its wake left Duncan chilled. What he saw in the wagon box after it passed froze the blood in his heart and it threatened to crack.
Shaken loose from a large bundle was a woman’s dead white hand, and spilling out from the end of the ragged cover were long, auburn tresses.
The Keith war cry fell on only one pair of ears as Duncan raced to the driver’s side. The echo of the man’s whistle still hung in the trees when his head hit the ground spinning. A heartbeat later his hands released the reigns and his body slumped forward out of the seat, blocking the wheels and stopping the horses.
With his bloody broadsword dripping, Duncan moved to the wooden bed still in a fit of rage. When he folded back the gory covering, he flinched at the damage done to the body beneath. He carefully turned the lifeless face to him and cried out. The poor lass was not Kenna, and a sob broke from his breast, he was so overcome with relief.
When the gloaming found him, Duncan sat upon the craggy hillside above the keep. He did not wonder why the place had never before fallen to an enemy. What conqueror would want a keep that could so easily be taken? A few well-placed archers could sit where he now sat and eliminate the enemy inside the parapets one by one. And a well-planned avalanche would crumble the walls that clearly showed their lack of depth. A place like this begged to be leveled and Duncan was itching to oblige.
There were no sentries on the walls, and a mere handful of torches lit the path between the stables and the kitchen entrance. Darkness covered the place like a blood-soaked shroud, and the unnatural silence continued.
Duncan picked his way to the edge of the cliff and lowered himself on a rope secured to a warped pine growing at an angle out of the rocks. In mere moments he walked unaccosted across the yard and climbed into a low window east of the kitchens.
Just as he was righting himself on the inside, a wagon rumbled noisily into the yard near the kitchen door. The driver showed no signs of alighting. Duncan dreaded what the man may be waiting to load and braced himself for what he might find as he went in search of the devil.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Kenna felt it was dark enough to finally leave her ransacked haven. Taking her store of food wrapped in a discarded shawl, she cracked open the door and watched for a long while before she led her horse outside. There was a plethora of moonlight until she reached the treeline. There, she rode the edge of the shadows while she put distance between her and the folly.
Where her cover ended, she stopped to take her bearings. The tip of the shadows stretched toward her of a sudden, and took hold of the bridle. It was a dark arm that belonged to a man who looked most pleased to see her. His grin showed more gaps than teeth and dark grease was smeared across his bald head.
He was no more frightening than his peers, and she was quickly surrounded by half a dozen men in the same disgusting state.
She was treated to a barrage of horrifying suggestions as to what the new laird may have in store for her, as her newest set of captors led her horse back toward Carlisle Folly with her hung over the saddle and her hands tied beneath the animal’s belly.
Kenna felt strangely calm. The impossible acts described by these men were clearly intended to frighten her, but they failed to do so. Once they arrived, her hands were freed and she was led upstairs to her aunt’s bedchambers, where she was presented to the newest laird.
“We’ve a wee gift fer Yer Lairdship,” her captor announced.
The man at the window, looking out into the night, turned toward the candlelight and sneered. “You are never to enter the house again, is that clear?” His face twisted yet again, into a smile, when he saw her face.
The snake himself, Gair Balloch.
His gaze raked over her briefly, then snapped back to her face.
“You! But I thought…” His thought went unfinished. He took a deep breath, and much to the frustration of Kenna’s smelly captors, he ignored everyone and began to pace the width of the room.
Every few turns he would glance up at Kenna, revealing his immense pleasure at having her land in his lap, but he never slowed his pace or his mumbling. Even when a man came to the door to announce a wagon was ready, he could not seem to stop his frenzied marching.
Kenna struggled to keep her panic from her eyes. She tried to act as if she had come willingly in search of Agatha, which seemed reasonable. He would tell her the woman was no longer here and hopefully allow her to go on her way.
“Where is my aunt, sir?”
“Your aunt. My dear Kenna, your so-called aunt is dead. The king awarded me her properties for uncovering her deception. If your homecoming disappoints, I apologize. But your entire clan has fled.” He stopped pacing and came to stand in front of her. She refused to take a step back and held her chin up. “You owe me a boon, Lady Kenna, if you will remember.”
“I am no innocent child this time, Balloch.”
“No innocent… Not innocent?” He looked her over again, frowning. Then he seemed to see everything clearly. “MacPherson had you!”
“Nay, I was rescued from Gowry by a man name Tearloch, along with his company.”
“Tearloch MacPherson, you silly girl. The king sent him to fetch you, but Agatha had already sent you to hell.” He chuckled.
Kenna pushed the information aside for the moment. She couldn’t allow this man to believe he could hurt her.
“If he never told you his name, I wonder what else he failed to tell you.” Again, his eyes lingered on her pelvis. “Did you lie with him?”
Kenna gasped. “Certainly not!”
“It would be easy enough to find out.” Balloch took a step toward her.
Horrified at the possibility, she cried out, “I just told you I am not innocent!” The last thing she wanted was for this man to believe she had some value he could use.
“Was she alone?” he asked, still watching her. When the men confirmed it, he mused. “If you had wed the man, he never would have allowed you to return. So….no wedding. Hmm.” A knowing leer grew across his face like blood soaking slowly into a cloth. “Take her down with the others.”
Kenna lost count of how many times she stumbled as the men escorted her through the dark manse to the dungeon below the kitchens. The quiet of the empty house changed as she finally detected the women’s voices.
They passed through one sturdy door and into a large chamber, the walls of which were interrupted by doors every ten feet. Small windows in the center of the doors were barred, but large enough to show that many of the cells were occupied. Five women’s faces looked out at Kenna with pity before moving away from the doors.
Kenna had known of the place but believed it was never used. Her aunt had certainly never sent her there, no matter how angry she grew.
One of the men, indistinguishable from his cohorts, opened the door to an empty cell and gestured her inside. Kenna glanced around, judged her chances of escape, but decided compliance was the best choice for the moment.
A single torch was left in the main chamber. The men took the rest with them when they left. Kenna looked out between the small bars to catch a glimpse of her fellow inmates.
“My name is Kenna Carlisle. Pray tell, who are the rest of you?”
A sad laughter rang out from five other cells as the woman made their ways to their doors.
“Look here,” said one woman, “she’s already learnt her first lesson. Aye, lass, we’re all Kenna Carlisle.”
Kenna was thoroughly confused but had no time to question the others as they heard someone coming and retreated once more. She couldn’t bare to do the same.
A large man peeked through the doorway and then entered. His stern face was the sweetest sight Kenna had ever seen.
“Duncan!” she whispered.
“Kenna! Oh, lass!” He went back to the doorway and looked out for a moment before returning to her.
“Is she?” someone hissed. “Is she truly Kenna Carlisle?”
“Aye, I am.”
“Then if he’s found the real one, maybe he’ll let us go.”
“Not bloody likely. Would ye expect him to leave witnesses to what he has done here?”
“Ye’ll all be leavin’ with us, now,” Duncan said, putting an end to it. He produced a ring of keys that he sorted through gently to control the sound. He tried a few in Kenna’s door before one did the trick, then he moved to the next. “I suppose ye needed me not at all, lass, seein’ as how ye can unlock doors by yerself.”
“Not wooden doors, Duncan. How could I reach the lock?” She helped the woman out as he unlocked each door.
“Are there only five of ye, then?” He asked, nodding to the other doors.
“There were six of us, until this mornin’,” one woman said quietly. “Now five.”
Kenna just then realized that they all had her same red hair. Some of them even looked quite like her, but none were as tall. She turned to Duncan and asked, “Why?”
Duncan was in no mood to indulge her. He shook his head and moved back to the entrance to the stairs. When Kenna reached for the torch, he whispered, “Leave it. We’d best feel our way. The light will only show them where we are.”
The women clung to one another as they crept up to the kitchens. Duncan turned toward a hallway instead of the door, and Kenna knew where he was leading them. The laundry had a window through which they could exit without needing to drop far to the ground. It was near the end of the building and the edge of her aunt’s garden. There were shadows a plenty in which to hide. Kenna took the lead and left Duncan to bring up the rear.
The laundry was cold and quiet. Every careful step, every slide of a foot, echoed off the walls and tin kettles that were usually filled with steaming water. A line of clothes were strung across one end of the room, but they failed to muffle much sound. As Kenna moved to the open window, her greasy enemies eased out from behind the drying clothes. Duncan didn’t see them as he backed into the room, his sword point even with Gair Balloch’s throat as he followed him inside. Unfortunately, he had four large men behind him.
“Well done, Sir Duncan. At least you have saved my men from having to carry all these bodies up the stairs…”
“Wait,” Kenna snapped.
Balloch smirked, but allowed her to continue.
“Do you want me dead?”
“No, lass. You are the one that gets to live. My God, Duncan, does she know nothing?”
Duncan did not answer. He was still in his defensive stance.
“I know enough. It would suit your purpose better if I went willingly, would it not?”
“Yes. Make no mistake, you will go willingly.”
“Let them go.”
