Heat of the Knight

by Jackie Ivie

  Lisle crawled backward, disturbing the straw enough that he lifted his head and looked her way. She prayed for the cover of obscurity in the black ranks of the stable floor as she had never winged a prayer before, and it must have been heard, because Langston bowed his head and turned back to the saddle. His shoulders started heaving again with misery and loss and pain.

  Lisle clapped a hand to her mouth, scuttled as far away from him as she could before she dared risk it, and then started running.

  God was with her the entire flight. He gave her feet wings, and her body stealth, and her mind direction. She was on her knees thanking Him the moment she reached her unlocked chamber and stumbled over to the bed. Langston wasn’t ever going to hear of this from her. No one was…ever.

  She was still on her knees when Mary MacGreggor came back, clucking her tongue over Lisle’s attire, and her ballgown, and then she was ordering another bath and making everyone else leave. There wasn’t a hint of salts poured into this water to send any fragrance into the air, or make the water silken-smooth to the touch.

  It wouldn’t have changed anything. It was still flavored with tears.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She was on the wrong beam.

  Lisle looked over her head at the proof and groaned the frustration aloud. Since she was in the castle’s chapel, and almost directly over the center, the sound seemed to search out every corner of the room far below before it came thundering back. She laid her head down on the beam she would be straddling if it were small enough, and waited for the sound to dim. She’d been so sure! After what seemed like hours of inching along this one, it was all for nothing. It looked to be much higher once she’d crossed over the wooden entry doors, too. Her question was answered for her, also. The wooden doors were thick enough that any perpetrator would need a battering ram to get through them.

  It had taken some time to clear the doors, and her nerve had almost completely deserted her then. It seemed so much higher than the starting point she’d taken, which had been a large step up from the top shelf of what was probably the castle’s library.

  Mabel Beamans wasn’t going to have to worry about dust on this great piece of wood. Lisle had taken care to get a light blue daygown this time, and a petticoat, both of which were looped through the ties at her waist, making a balloon affair. That bunching of skirts, her woolen socks, and her pantaloons were doing a very good job of dusting the entire beam, especially since she was so afraid of moving that she’d slithered along inch by inch. It was wide enough they could probably walk two abreast along it, but she wasn’t a marksman set on getting to his perch. She was a lady of a castle—one that should have better things to do than sneak across the beams into her husband’s empty chamber, get lost twice trying to find the chapel, and then follow a beam backward to the starting point amid the bookshelves. And never once had she checked and looked to see her destination. If such a thing had happened, she was afraid she might look down. That was enough to make her hands wet with sweat again…all of which made the dust turn into grime on her palms and required wiping them on her skirt again. There was no way she was going to able to explain further clothing damage of this nature to Mary MacGreggor, and her partner the maid, Betsy.

  It was a good thing Langston had hired her lady’s maids that were closemouthed about such things, and didn’t question shredded ballgowns, mud-streaked daydresses, and now a morning dress that would need a place in the nearest dustbin.

  All of which made the frustration greater when another beam seemed to come out of nowhere and cross a good four feet over her head. Her eyes followed it again…right to the pipe organ.

  It was a good thing she had been raised among brothers, for a more ladylike woman would have started sliding back the way she’d come. A girl who’d successfully finished the convent school wouldn’t even think of getting to her feet and trying to climb even higher. Why, any one of a thousand other girls wouldn’t be up on a beam so high above the floor for no reason other than there was something hidden in the chapel, and she wanted to know what it was.

  Lisle took a deep breath, gathered her courage to get to her knees, and was forestalled by the sound of footsteps across the floor below her. She eased the breath out slowly, said a prayer of thankfulness that she’d been saved from her own plan, and moved her face a little closer to the edge…not enough for danger, but enough to see what was happening.

  It was a clergyman. It was probably the largest one of them, but he looked very small from her vantage point. He was lifting the bolt by using a lever at one side, unlocking the doors, swinging one of them wide, and the entire chapel floor seemed to be filling with two lines of armed men…very armed men.

  The other clergy fellows were standing at the massive wall organ, and as each man approached, he was taking bows, arrows, claymores and muskets, and skeans and daggers, swords, and things Lisle hadn’t any experience with, and handing some over before going behind the pipe organ. Then, they’d disappear inside.

  Lisle narrowed her eyes and slid a little closer to the edge, tipping her head straight so the view wouldn’t be so distorted. After tens of men had gone behind the pipe organ and none had reappeared, she had to accept the obvious. It was a tunnel. It had to be.

  She saw a flash of movement on the other side…near the statue of Mary and her child that Mary MacGreggor had told her of, what seemed like months ago. Lisle slid to the opposite side and watched as the men started coming back up, still in Highland dress, but without a sign of weaponry anywhere.

  It was an arsenal! That’s what he used the chapel for, and while it was sacrilegious, it was also cunning and wily and smart, and everything Langston Monteith obviously was. She’d conjured him, for the next moment she heard his name spoken, but it was coming from behind her, and that meant she had to swivel in place.

  It wasn’t as hazardous as she’d suspected, she wasn’t going to have to risk her life getting to another beam, and she had everything she wanted.

  “Prepare, lads.”

  Monteith’s words carried up to her, and she inched her way to the side of the beam again to see what he was doing. He was at the entry doors, he was nodding to each man who passed him by, and he wasn’t looking anything like the fellow who’d been in Saladin’s stables yestermorn. He looked like a full-blooded Scot, who was proud to be a Scot, and not ashamed to show it.

  Lisle’s smile widened. He was also her Scot…hers. The thrill that thought brought made every bit of her tingle. It also made every bit of her aware of him. She peeked over and looked at him and caught the sigh. He made an efficient guardian of the room. He was also well aware of what was happening throughout the chapel. She watched as he put his hands on his hips and looked about, almost as if he sensed something. Then he looked up, although she saw the movement coming and ducked her head out of sight while she waited for her heart to calm enough that she could hear what else was going on.

  “Laird Monteith?” a voice said in a low, soft tone that carried to her perch and was such an odd thing that it caught her ear.

  “Aye?”

  “Green reporting in.”

  “Very good.”

  The men were leaving and Lisle let out the sigh. It was followed by the intake gasp of breath as men began filing in again, making the same strange sound of a very large, silent crowd. They weren’t talking. There was just the sound of boots on stone, steel against leather, blade to scabbard. She slid close to the edge, not so much that Langston might see her if he looked up, but close enough that she could see what she suspected was happening. The chapel was filling with a double column of men again. The same kilts, the same amount of arms, the same purpose of movement.

  At least they had that much freedom. She wasn’t going anywhere…and she’d done such a thing to herself! She watched until they were filing out, counted to a hundred, another hundred. It was stupid to count; she didn’t have a starting point, and they all looked alike, except for the colors of their hair, and the occasional ba
lding head tossed in. She yawned.

  “Laird Monteith?” a voice said again in the same soft, low tone.

  “Aye?”

  “Yellow reporting in.”

  “Very good.”

  Lisle watched him nod. The men filed out. There was a moment of silence from the almost empty aisles. Then another stream of men filled the gap…then another: red, blue, black, orange, white, brown, and purple. After that, they started on jewel tones. Her eyes were wide on the ninth or tenth company of men, and she was growing more and more astonished as the morning progressed, and her belly grumbled with hunger, and there was nothing to do for it but stay where she was and try to keep her mind on how many companies of men he had. Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

  It was incredible. It was impossible. It was unbelievable. Captain Barton would have fallen off his new stallion if he knew. Ruby, emerald, sapphire…. When they listed pearl, Lisle had to catch the giggle. The men in that company must have done something to deserve such a moniker.

  The sun rose higher, sending the colors of the stained glass window across the floor and to the pews, and still there were men milling about, in the same silence, giving the same salute to Langston, receiving the same response in reply. They were probably receiving breakfast, too, she told herself. They’d be sitting down to a feast of rolls and meats, some cooked, some chilled, some in gravy, some sliced, and Lisle had her belly growling again with her own salivating thoughts.

  Mary MacGreggor had been right that first morning. They didn’t have any food that went to waste. It probably took another fortune to feed them, and she wondered again just how much gold Monteith had, and if it really was earned in the fashion he’d told the captain, and then a shiver of dread crossed over her spine, pressing her into the wood with the force of it.

  She knew what he was doing.

  He was planning on waging war with England again! The same war they’d lost, Monteith was trying to change. He was trying to buy a win. It wasn’t possible. Such a thing took The Stuart, and rumor had it Bonnie Prince Charlie was on the continent, living a life of luxury in Germany, or Austria, or France, or any number of places that didn’t resemble Scotland.

  She had to stop her husband, but her attempt at negotiating for his prisoners had gone so far astray, it hadn’t been Langston that should have declared himself the loser. It was her, and that beautiful ballgown. Lisle felt the blush, lying flat on a beam stories above the chapel floor which kept filling with men and emptying of them, until there couldn’t possibly be any room beneath the castle for more armament. And more just kept coming.

  Monteith was insane. He was going to ruin everything he’d worked for. He was going to reap the same punishment, and all these men were going to be the same as those at Culloden…dead and rotting beneath the sod. All of them. The dread was like a blanket, holding her down, punishing her with the future, frightening her more than a walk across any number of beams, and still men kept coming in.

  She was going to be up there forever. She was going to fall asleep and roll and then she was going to fall off, and they’d find her body on the chapel floor, with her petticoat and skirts in a bundle of material about her waist and covered in dust. Worse…she was going to be found years from now, her skeleton still clinging to the beams, dead of starvation. She told her own mind to hush, but there wasn’t anything else to pass the time except the litany of troops filing in, disarming, filing back out. She was being ridiculous. She knew she was, but it didn’t help. She could curse her imagination. That never helped, either. She could curse Langston. He should be hungry by now. He should be exhausted again. He’d stayed out almost all night again. He’d been standing and accepting their honor and recognition for hours. She’d been in the same position for hours. Her legs were cramped. Her belly was cramped. Her mind was cramped.

  She peered over the edge again. The splash of color from the stained glass window had barely moved. Such a thing wasn’t possible. Time was passing with a slowness she hadn’t felt since she’d been sent to the Mother Superior’s office and made to sit in the corner, fingering her rosary and saying her prayers, all of which had happened too often to recall the times individually.

  The names changed after ruby. They started on the elements: storm, blizzom—for the winter holocaust, fury, and rain. Lisle’s lips twitched. Rain? That wasn’t very original.

  It didn’t occur to her that the process of disarmament was complete until a span had passed with no new names said and no words of “very good” by Monteith, either. Lisle tilted her head back upright so she could look down. There was only Langston left. There wasn’t even a clergyman with him.

  Of course there wasn’t a clergy fellow available to assist anyone. They weren’t going to be able to do a proper sermon, either. They were probably going to be busy for the next fortnight trying to get all that weaponry put back away, Lisle thought, and then everything went still as Langston looked up toward the organ, and grimaced a bit as he moved his left arm.

  And then he whispered her name.

  “Well! You are one for scrapes and such, aren’t you, my lady?”

  Lisle took back everything she’d thought about Mary MacGreggor being even remotely closemouthed. The woman hadn’t stopped, except for breath, ever since Lisle had come running up the stairs and been caught even before she got to her door. There was no way to explain attire such as hers, nor how it got there, so she didn’t try. She let Mary come up with the explanations, and left it to Betsy to either agree or disagree.

  She almost choked with laughter when Mary came up with digging a tunnel with which to find her own gold, and why Laird Monteith’s wasn’t good enough for her. Betsy nodded to that, like it made sense. Lisle didn’t say anything. Her mind was elsewhere. She had to shove as much food in her as she could fit, since it was almost noon by the time she gained her chamber; she had to get a bath, luxuriate in any fragrance and oil they brought, except one with opiate; and she had to decide which of her various nightgowns and chemises were going to be enough to get him to negotiate.

  He’d gained so much! To toss it away was the height of idiocy. She had to save him from ruin. She had to save everyone who relied on him from ruin. She had to do whatever it took to get him to bargain for dropping his plans. She only hoped he’d stay true to his word once he gave it.

  He was going to give it, all right. She was doing everything in her power to get him to. He wasn’t going to get Lisle Monteith into his bed without negotiating first, and striking a bargain second, and she prayed for the fortitude to make certain he didn’t.

  And he’d almost caught her, too! That part was the most frightening. After whispering her name, he started looking along the pipe organ and to the wrong beam, all of which gave Lisle time to roll onto her side, making the smallest image possible, and try to keep her own breathing from giving her away. She’d had to resort to breathing out her mouth, shoving the breath through a ring of space with her lips to mute it, and then suck in another one. Anything else would have been too loud. Her heartbeat certainly was. Then, she heard him sigh, call himself a fool, and walk out. He was the fool? she wondered. At least he got to eat breakfast. She got to wait for the trembling to die down enough she could inch her way back to the library, and hope the entire time that the army of men hadn’t eaten everything involved with breakfast before she got there.

  Then, Angus MacHugh arrived.

  The morning stalled when they announced that the Laird MacHugh was awaiting her below. Monteith could have spoken to him, but he’d disappeared—along with thousands of other fellows—and Lisle had to rush through the rest of her toiletry to see to Angus. Mary wouldn’t let her out without her hair properly braided and everything perfectly in place, making it feel like another hour had passed. Lisle ground the frustration with her teeth. If she said anything, they’d double their efforts to delay her, and Angus was probably getting more and more angered at being kept waiting by what was, in essence, a Monteith.

  Angus
wasn’t angered. He was fidgeting and going from foot to foot and he wasn’t looking up at anything or anyone when she entered the salon. Any other visitor would have chanced to look up at where furniture still dangled haphazardly, although it didn’t appear as cramped as before. Lisle frowned for a moment as she wondered what Langston was doing with the tables, chairs, bedsteads, and other items. He wouldn’t be paying good gold to dismantle them as firewood, would he?

  Surely he wasn’t that wasteful…was he?

  Angus had a dejected air about him that went straight to Lisle’s heart, like a skean-thrust. She had to suck in the gasp so he wouldn’t hear it, instinctively knowing what he’d think if he did. Angus MacHugh looked like a shadow of himself; a saddened, wizened, diminished shadow. Lisle swallowed. It didn’t work. Her eyes still filled with tears.

  “Angus?” she asked.

  He looked up at her, and the red-rimmed eyes told their own story, as did the ashen color of his skin and the tremble of his lips.

  “What’s happened to you?” she asked.

  “’Tis very good whiskey that gold buys, lassie. Very good.”

  “You’re drinking?”

  “It takes the sharpness from women’s tongues away,” he answered. “Makes other things…nice, too.”

  “Oh, Angus. I’m so sorry,” Lisle said.

  “Now, lassie—” he began.

  The door swung open with such force it slammed against the wall support at its side, and Langston strode in, dressed in full Highland attire, covered in a sheen of sweat and grime, dripping blood down his left arm, and there was a very large claymore pointing straight at Angus. There wasn’t a hint of tremble anywhere along him. There were two other green-and-gold-plaide-wearing Highlanders with him, equally attired, and equally frightening.