Feiyan appeared slightly more concerned. “Did your man find her?”
He shook his head. “He hasn’t returned.”
He caught a quick glimpse of Jenefer. He would have sworn she smiled at that.
“I hope she’s all right,” Feiyan murmured.
Jenefer mumbled cryptically, “I hope your man is all right.”
“If they’re not back on the morrow by midday, I’ll send another man.”
Those were his words. But he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to do that. They needed every man they could spare if a siege was to take place. And the last thing he wanted was to give the Laird of Rivenloch another hostage to use.
He just hoped the king’s messenger would arrive before then to relieve him of all this complicated intrigue.
The guard knocked on the door to deliver a bucket of extra peat.
Morgan stirred the fire and added several thick black chunks. “Ye seem to go through a great deal o’ fuel.”
“No doubt we’ll go through a great deal more,” Feiyan said sardonically, “now that we have no coverlets.”
With that, she brushed past him to visit the garderobe.
Once she was gone, Jenefer confided, “I was watching your soldiers from the window.”
“Aye?” He hunkered down to poke at the glowing coals.
“The knights are quite good,” Jenefer she told him between bites of chicken.
“They’re the best in the Highlands,” he said. It wasn’t a boast. It was the truth.
“That may be,” she said, “but they haven’t faced the knights of the Lowlands.”
“Not yet,” he admitted. But if Lowlanders couldn’t handle Highland ale, they probably couldn’t defend against Highland knights.
The peat caught fire. He leaned the poker against the hearth, dusted off his hands, and came to his feet.
“Your archers, however,” Jenefer said, wagging a chicken bone to emphasize her point, “need improvement.”
Morgan stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded and amused. He folded his arms over his chest.
“Is that so?”
How the wee lass could possibly think he would take military advice from her, he didn’t know.
“The small one needs a lighter bow,” she said, smacking her lips. “He’s not drawing it all the way back.”
That was true. Robert had left his own longbow for his younger brother in the Highlands, and there had been no time to make him a new one. So he was borrowing Colban’s bow, which was far too heavy for the lad.
“Also, that stocky one is flinching when he fires.” She licked her lips. “That’s what’s making his arrows go astray.”
Morgan blinked. How would she know that?
“And the one who keeps shooting to the left of the target? I’d wager he’s squeezing his right eye shut.”
“And ye know this because…”
She tossed the chicken bone down on the platter just as Feiyan was returning from the garderobe. “I’m a master archer.”
His lips twitched, but he forced himself not to smile. “I see.”
“Oh aye, she is,” Feiyan confirmed. “She’s better than all the men in her father’s retinue.”
“And your father’s retinue,” Jenefer said.
“And my father’s retinue,” Feiyan agreed.
Morgan gave them an indulgent smile. The Rivenloch archers must be poor indeed if they could be outshot by a lass.
On the other hand, she did seem to know a great deal about longbows. The weapon Danald had found beside her clothing in the wood seemed well-crafted and well-used.
Still, he couldn’t let her get any ideas about usurping his command. She was already trying to usurp his castle.
“Perhaps I shall call upon your counsel then, master archer, when I fill out my army at Creagor.”
That he’d audaciously claimed Creagor as his own didn’t escape her. Green fire flared in her eyes. She was still sputtering when he inclined his head in farewell and made his exit.
Chapter 26
Lying on a pile of sheepskins outside his own bedchamber door—particularly when his bed had been appropriated by two Lowland lasses—was a travesty of his authority.
Morgan, however, was used to sleeping on the hard ground. Despite the unwelcome circumstances, he might have spent a perfectly comfortable night where he was.
Instead, he lay on his back, unable to sleep.
Staring up at the dark beams of the ceiling.
Listening to his son cry.
And cry.
And cry.
He knew the maidservants were doing all they could.
He could hear the change in the bairn’s cries when Bethac jostled him or the wet nurse tried to give him suckle.
He could see the subtle shift of shadows leaking beneath the door as they passed back and forth in endless pacing.
He even heard a faint melody between the sobs as Bethac tried to lull the bairn to sleep.
They all knew what would stop the cries.
But Morgan had forbidden it.
At the time, it had seemed like the right idea. Jenefer was his captive, after all. He didn’t dare give her an opportunity to use the child as a hostage.
Besides, no matter how strenuously the wench proclaimed she was never leaving Creagor, she would eventually return to Rivenloch. Somehow, the maidservants were going to have to figure out how to calm the bairn without her.
In the light of day, his decision to wean the lad away from Jenefer had seemed practical.
But now, in the middle of the night—with his eyes gritty from sleeplessness and a painful pulsing in his temples—Morgan reconsidered.
As much as it irked him to yield to the demands of an infant and the whims of wenches, he knew it was foolish stubbornness on his own part to refuse the one thing that would solve the problem.
So with a sigh of defeat, he came to his feet and rapped softly on the bedchamber door.
It startled him how quickly it was snatched open. Peering through the crack was Jenefer, looking as lovely as ever, even with sleep-mussed hair and weary eyes. Had she been standing behind the door, waiting?
“Aye?” she asked.
He gave her a black look. She must know why he’d come. The bairn’s cries echoed down the hallway like the clang of cathedral bells.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, as if she were deaf to the noise.
He narrowed sleepy eyes at her. She was going to make him beg. He could see that now. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to never mind, to go back to bed, to have a restful sleep.
But just then the bairn let out a particularly melancholy cry. Morgan couldn’t let his pride keep him from comforting the poor child, giving the maidservants a reprieve, and getting a good night’s rest himself.
So with a sigh of humility, he murmured, “If ye’d be so kind…”
“Aye?” She winced only slightly when the bairn started up with a piercing wail.
“To give a wee bit o’ comfort to Allison…”
“You mean Miles?” she inserted with a raised brow.
He bit back a retort. “I mean the bairn—whatever ye’re goin’ to call him—so we can all get some rest.”
She clearly didn’t intend to do his bidding so readily. “I thought ’twas forbidden.”
He was too tired to argue. Instead, he gave her a drowsy smile. “I un-forbid it.”
At that, she opened the door with a knowing smirk. “Then stand aside.”
Even acting smug and superior, Jenefer was one of the most beautiful lasses he’d ever seen. Her proud chin tipped upward, displaying lips as ripe and succulent as cherries. The firelight kissed her unbound curls and danced in her eyes. He retreated to let her pass, and he couldn’t help but breathe in her scent—the womanly, sweet, spicy fragrance all her own.
As she moved toward the nursery, he thought again about how different she was from Alicia. Neither meek nor mincing, Jenefer strode with confidence and purpose. And when Beth
ac opened the door to let her in—glancing toward Morgan for his approval—Jenefer didn’t wring her hands in indecision or uncertainty. She took the bairn in capable arms, trusting she could resolve his troubles.
To Morgan’s amazement, the bairn grew quiet almost at once. With the sound of her voice and the power of her touch, Jenefer convinced him there was nothing to cry about, that all was right with the world.
Indeed, there was something compelling about her reassurances. Morgan himself was almost ready to believe her.
Almost.
And then he remembered he’d lost his wife.
Nothing was right with the world.
Nothing would be easy from now on. Not with the clan. Not with the keep. Not with this child.
Especially when the child’s father could be so easily distracted by a green-eyed, golden-haired Lowlander and so easily dismiss the woman who had given the child life.
No longer kept awake by the bairn’s cries, he could only blame his sleeplessness on guilt. And that guilt was compounded by the fact that he couldn’t remember the exact color of Alicia’s eyes or the sound of her voice.
Chapter 27
“Nay!” Feiyan screamed, jolting Jenefer out of her peaceful nap.
Jenefer sat bolt upright and fumbled in panic for the bow that wasn’t there.
But Feiyan’s face wasn’t marked by fear as she glared out the window. It was full of outrage.
Jenefer sighed in exasperation. Her cousin wasn’t being killed after all. She slumped back onto the bed.
She’d spent half the night awake in the nursery, coaxing Miles out of tears. Every time she’d put him in his wee bed, he’d cry to be held. In the end, she’d curled up on the nursery floor near the hearth and fallen asleep with him in her arms.
Now, back in Morgan’s bedchamber, satiated from a breakfast of oatcakes, ruayn cheese, and watered ale, she’d hoped to garner a few hours of serene slumber.
Feiyan, however, seemed determined to destroy that serenity.
“Fool!” she was yelling at someone in the courtyard.
Jenefer groaned. “Feiyan, must you?”
“Nay!” Feiyan cried again at some unseen enemy. “Oh, nay!” This time she sounded truly distressed, as if someone were drowning a kitten in the castle well.
Jenefer edged up onto her elbows. It was useless to try to sleep.
“Odin’s blood, Feiy, what is it?” she grumbled.
But Feiyan’s attention was riveted to whatever was happening in the courtyard. Her fists were clenched on the sill, and she chewed at her lip.
“Feiyan,” she repeated, “what’s wrong?”
Feiyan cringed. Her jaw dropped in outrage. She angrily ground her teeth.
With a resigned, impatient sigh, Jenefer got up and joined her cousin at the window.
“Look!” Feiyan snarled, stabbing a finger toward the activity on the ground below. “Just look!”
Jenefer rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand and followed Feiyan’s gaze. Then she drew her brows together. “That looks just like your sword.”
“’Tis my sword.”
Of course. It was inevitable someone would retrieve Feiyan’s curious abandoned weapons from outside the keep. Four burly men-at-arms were currently taking turns, swinging the strange, narrow blade around, examining its curved edge, hacking at a straw target.
“What are they doing with it?” Jenefer asked.
“Exactly!” Feiyan huffed. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled down, “Halfwits!”
That finally got the men’s attention.
“Bloody fools!” she added.
They stared in silence.
“Dunderheaded clods!”
At last, the one wielding her sword took offense. “Hey now, lassie! There’s no need to—”
“You’re doing it all wrong!” Feiyan shouted.
“What?” he yelled back.
“I said, you’re doing it. All. Wrong!”
“Am I now?”
Predictably, the knights elbowed each other, snickering at the idea of a wee lass daring to tell a pack of seasoned warriors how to fight.
“Well, lassie,” the man jeered suggestively, “why don’t ye come down and show me what ye know about handlin’ three feet o’ steel?”
The others laughed uproariously at his crude humor.
Feiyan ignored their crassness. “First of all, you don’t swing it like that. You have to use it like a blade, not a bloody sickle.”
The men stared, dumbfounded.
She continued. “And you don’t hack haphazardly at your target. You only waste motion that way. Watch.” She leaned out the window and, as if holding her sword, made a slow, smooth, slicing motion in the air. “’Tisn’t a claymore. ’tis a fine, sharp dao that cuts with ease. It requires finesse, not brutishness.”
To Jenefer’s surprise, though the men around him were chuckling, the knight holding the sword attempted to imitate Feiyan’s movements.
“Aye, like that,” Feiyan said. “You see? It takes very little force.”
The man repeated the movement.
“Keep your elbows close in,” Feiyan said.
He did.
“Now try it on the target.”
He brought the sword down in a graceful arc, easily slicing through the corner of the straw.
The others oohed and ahhed.
Another man held up one of her steel stars. “What about this?”
“That’s a shuriken. You throw it like a dagger,” she called down. “Pinch it between your thumb and first finger. Aim at the target, and give your wrist a quick flick.”
He flung the star forward, vertically.
Unfortunately, he missed the target.
Fortunately, he missed the other men-at-arms.
“Sideways,” Feiyan said, “a sideways flick, like you’re casting grain to hens.” She flicked her wrist sideways, parallel to the ground, to demonstrate.
The man nodded, retrieved the star, and tried again. This time, the star stuck in the lower corner of the target. The others cheered.
“That’s it,” Feiyan said with satisfaction.
Jenefer looked at Feiyan in wonder. She thought her cousin would be upset that her beloved weapons were in enemy hands. But the daft lass was more concerned that they were using them improperly.
Continuing to observe, Jenefer could see these Highlanders were skilled indeed. They might be wild, ferocious, unruly. God only knew how Morgan managed to mold them into a disciplined fighting force. But they were eager to train and fast to learn. Though at first they’d laughed at Feiyan, they listened to her now with as much respect as they would a commander.
But it seemed careless on Feiyan’s part. Jenefer wondered how her cousin would feel if one of these men used her weapons to kill a Rivenloch knight.
On the other hand, the knights of Rivenloch were formidable foes. And once the Highlander saw he was outnumbered, he’d probably choose to negotiate rather than wage battle.
Besides, Feiyan seemed to be enjoying herself. Though she’d no doubt rather train on the ground with her newfound apprentices, at least shouting directions down to them from the window relieved her boredom.
Unfortunately, it also awakened Miles next door, who began whimpering.
Jenefer suspected Bethac would come calling soon.
Feiyan beckoned the men closer to the window so she could teach them to use her spined fan.
Jenefer shook her head and crossed the room. When she cracked open the bedchamber door to peer into the hallway, the young guard posted there nodded toward the nursery. Apparently, Morgan had granted permission for her to tend to the babe.
Bethac answered the nursery door with the bleating child in one arm. “Thank ye for comin’, Miss. I fear wee Miles won’t have anyone but ye.”
Chapter 28
It wasn’t lost on Jenefer that Bethac had called the babe Miles. She smiled in approval and reached out for the lad.
“He’s b
een fed,” Bethac said as she handed Miles over to her. She ushered Jenefer in and closed the door. “And Cicilia’s gone downstairs to sup.”
Jenefer lifted the squirming babe to peer into his distraught face.
“So, lad, what’s got your trews in a bunch today? Aside from my noisy cousin trying to command your laird’s army.”
“Is that what the fuss is about?” Bethac asked, wide-eyed.
“Oh, aye. She’s a bossy wee minx, my cousin.”
The old woman whispered in awe, “Is what they say true then? Are ye both…warrior maids?”
“Aye.” She cocked her head at Miles. He was still crying, but he’d stopped writhing about. “My cousin Feiyan is a master of fighting skills from the Orient. And I can outshoot anyone with a longbow.”
This time her boast wasn’t empty. It was true.
“Indeed?” Bethac clasped a hand to her breast. “By my faith! A woman-at-arms. ’Tis remarkable.” Then she worried one corner of her lip with her teeth. “But ye haven’t…killed anyone, have ye?”
“Nay.” She smiled in grim recollection. “Though I have maimed a few amorous knaves who refused to heed my younger sister’s refusals.”
Bethac gasped.
Jenefer squinted at Miles. “You’d never do that, would you, lad—try to take a lass against her will?”
Miles stopped crying and peered at her intently, as if he were trying to decipher what she was saying.
“Nay, you’re a good lad,” she told him.
Bethac shook her head in awe. “’Tis marvelous the way the bairn has grown attached to ye, Miss. God’s truth, ’twill be a shame when ye go. I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Jenefer glanced sideways at the maidservant. It was too early to broach the subject of Bethac remaining with her when Morgan was sent home. But she was encouraged by the fact the woman liked and appreciated her. And unlike her disparaging cousin, Bethac seemed to be of the opinion that Jenefer had good mothering skills.
As long as they were exchanging pleasantries, Jenefer thought, she might as well try to get some useful information from Bethac.
Resting Miles’ head against her shoulder, she strolled slowly around the room.
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