by Nicole Locke
It was a mistake. Any confusion or heat in Rory’s eyes disappeared. Almost flinging her wrist, he launched himself off the bed. Chilled, she yanked the quilt around her.
‘Rory?’
‘Don’t,’ he bit out. ‘I need to see Paiden.’
If he checked on Paiden, she would remain a virgin. He couldn’t want that. Surely, after all she felt? All that he felt, too.
‘Don’t you want to...?’ She gestured around the bed and patted the space beside her.
Grabbing his tunic, he shoved it over his head.
He wasn’t understanding. Taking a breath, she continued, ‘I may be an innocent, but I know we aren’t finished.’ She paused. ‘I know you’re not finished.’
Carrying his boots, he sat in a chair. ‘You found pleasure.’
‘Except you—’
He looked up at her at that and something naked and raw surfaced before he shut it down. ‘It was pleasurable for me as well.’
‘You’re leaving the room’
He shoved his boots on. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you not intend to honour this marriage? Tonight they’ll expect...’ She clutched the bedsheets closer to her. ‘There’s no seed or blood.’
‘I vow I’ve never heard a woman talk as you.’
Ailsa bit back her retort. Arguing the benefits of an intelligent and verbal wife wasn’t the issue. The fact that if he walked out of this room without taking her maidenhead was.
‘You married me so that no blood would be spilled. I’m holding you to that.’ His eyes were almost murderous.
And she felt it, felt as if she’d been murdered, but she wouldn’t stand for it. ‘What of your political alliance?’
‘Maybe I would care for my alliance if my friend wasn’t poisoned mere moments after the announcement of our marriage.’
‘You insisted that we marry. Why are you doing this?’ And then she knew. ‘You agreed to marry me knowing this would be our wedding night. You never intended to make this a marriage in truth.’
‘Not right now,’ he said.
‘Maybe not ever?’ she said.
At his silence, Ailsa wanted to gut him with a thousand shears. His friend was poisoned and could be dying, and there was still a part of her warning her to give him leniency. But she had lost Magnus and still married the enemy of her clan, expecting to make a true marriage. She was willing to make a true sacrifice for her clan, when he hadn’t intended to at all.
Because now she realised everything depended on who had poisoned his friend and whether he lived or died. Her friend had been trampled. Many other McCrieffs had died since then. If they didn’t make this a true marriage, then her vows to Rory, and her lying in his bed tainted all the loss and pain in her past. She wouldn’t allow him to do this to her.
‘Your friend sleeps,’ she said, lacing her tone with as much accusation as she could. ‘He’s not dead.’
The string of curses was more a growl than words, but she understood them all the same as he turned back to her again. Every bit of him was as menacing as when he had entered the courtyard that very morning. ‘Yes, Paiden does sleep, McCrieff. But will he wake or sleep for ever?’
She had no answer to that. None at all.
‘I thought so,’ he said, closing the door behind him.
Chapter Nine
Hours later, Rory left the quiet of Paiden’s room. Too quiet. Too still. Barely his friend at all despite the jolt of joy and relief when he first entered the room to see Paiden sleeping in a different position.
All hope dashed when Hannah, the servant tending him, recited the litany of tasks she done since the wedding. One of which was to move Paiden’s prone body so he did not get sore.
His vibrant friend adjusted by a woman. When he woke, he’d give his friend hell for missing the opportunity. Hannah, with her ample curves, was a woman Paiden would try to woo.
Why hadn’t he fought Paiden harder to stay behind? They’d all known it was a trap when the field had been empty of McCrieffs. Because of that they’d all stayed on their guard, even during the feast, his men had carefully watched the food, the McCrieffs, the doorways.
It wasn’t until he’d announced his wedding that they forgot themselves. Forgot that they were on enemy land. It wasn’t until he had lowered his guard, had gazed like a lust-filled fool at Ailsa that his friend was poisoned.
All his fault.
Out of all the Lochmores, Paiden was the only one who accepted him, who made him feel as if he belonged. He should have ordered his friend to stay behind, but he’d been weak. If Paiden died, Rory wouldn’t want to return to castle Lochmore because he wouldn’t have a home.
Forcing his thoughts away, he turned in the hallway, intending to go outside, when Duff came around the opposite corner.
‘You’ve returned,’ he said. When he announced they would continue with the marriage, Rory had directed Duff to return to Lochmore land and sent a message to his parents.
‘It was quick, they were already mounted on the other side of the stream. There wasn’t a battle, and they’d heard nothing.’
So they’d intended to storm McCrieff land to rescue them which would have nullified all their careful planning to keep to a negotiation first.
Duff gave a quick grin. ‘It’s not as if they’d risk your precious neck.’
As an only heir. Of course because he was an heir and now they were here. It was early morning. They must have packed and travelled by night. He thought he’d completed everything quickly enough that his father wouldn’t interfere. He was satisfied that he had at least managed to wed the McCrieff woman before he was stopped or his father demanded more terms.
He’d done the best he could under the circumstances. Except Paiden’s health was in the balance and that would take some explanation. The missive he’d sent explained most of his reasoning, but not all. He wished for more sleep, not for endless discussions and strategies.
‘Tell my father—’
‘Your father’s not here.’ Duff gave a slight shrug. ‘Neither is your mother, but that was to be expected.’
Rory was tired, exhausted. He ached... He woke yesterday morn with thoughts of battle. To lose friends and comrades. To gain some bit of McCrieff land. And instead he’d gained a wife. So of course, he didn’t understand Duff when he’d said his father hadn’t come.
‘You carried my missive to my father.’
‘Aye, and I stood before him as he read every word.’
If only he could have been there to see the expression on his father’s face. ‘And?’
‘He rolled it up and handed it to your mother, who opened it twice as slowly and read it twice as long as that.’
This was why he gave the missive to Duff, not because he thought he could fight off whoever stopped him along the way from McCrieff lands to there. It was because Duff had the observation of a hawk and the tongue of an ale-doused whore. Nothing would get past him and he’d freely give Rory the details he craved without losing his pride in the asking.
Still, he felt like asking, his exhaustion making him impatient, not the need to know his parents’ reactions to what he’d done. ‘Then what?’
‘Your mother placed her hand on your father’s arm and acted faint. Your father leaned over her and with some words to his man—’
‘Harold.’ His father’s man-at-arms and advisor. The man Rory talked to more often than his own father.
‘Yes, him. He bid me good eve, told me to rest and thanked me.’
Rory couldn’t come up with further words, but something on his face must have given his shock away because Duff continued.
Shrugging, his friend said, ‘Then he...gave me a nice coin and left. I didn’t sleep, but got straight to work with what Harold wanted me to do.’
‘And that was?’ Rory said through the closing in his throat.
<
br /> ‘To bring more men and a trunk. It seemed your mother wanted to give the bride a token of appreciation. I didn’t know where to put it, so it’s with the men now in their quarters.’
‘That...is welcome.’ Rory said as evenly as possible. ‘You rode hard, Duff, I’ll see that you get another coin. After fast, bring the trunk to my chambers and leave it there. After that, get some rest and I won’t be bothering you for three days.’
‘Three?’
‘I saw that black-haired lass giving a pout when I sent you out the door and, if I’m not mistaken, you noticed her as well.’
‘Black hair, you say? I think I was looking at the way her—’
Rory held up his palm. ‘Spend your time well. You can regale me with the details later.’
Duff turned abruptly, if unsteadily, and was gone in an instant. Duff was built like an oak tree. If he was that off balance, he’d ridden hard and fast.
This part of the hallway was empty, with only faint distant sounds coming through. It appeared most of the keep was still asleep. And so, for the first time since he’d begun the long journey yesterday, he was alone. The halls were narrow and dark, which Rory hoped hid some of his reaction to the news he received as he slapped his hand against the stone wall to support himself.
He was exhausted. Drained. His father gave no congratulations or asked questions on how he accomplished a feat no other Lochmore had achieved in all the years before or after the Great Feud.
Centuries of living next to the clan and nothing of this had ever been thought of or attempted. Except that one time, the one time which started this endless warring.
The story was that around seventy years before, a Lochmore lass was betrothed to the McCrieff Chief. How they met no one knew, but just before the wedding, the lass returned to Lochmore where the Chief took her in. There were plenty of rumours of mistreatment and abuse leading to her escape and subsequent return, but she and the Chief fell in love and married soon after. All seemed well until she grew fat with a baby and died in childbirth, the baby as well.
When the McCrieff Chief heard of the news he rode up with a few of his men. Drink was involved. Pride was as well. Now there were witnesses aplenty and the story didn’t waver or fail from fact or fiction. It was told the McCrieff accused Lochmore of stealing the woman he loved and wished to marry.
Lochmore would hear none of it and roared that he wanted McCrieff off his land to mourn his wife and child. McCrieff refused and Lochmore drew his sword first. In the melee, Lochmore’s nephew Rory, for whom he was named, tried to stop the two drunk men and McCrieff’s sword sliced clean through the young man’s stomach. It ended in more tears than it started with, McCrieff’s men tearing him away and Lochmore broken in grief.
And for seventy years only more falsities and slights had been done by McCrieffs to Lochmores until his father had sided with Edward and was granted some of McCrieff land.
It was a decided victory and one that the Lochmores never thought to ever achieve over the cruel McCrieffs who caused a grieving man to break after killing a young man who simply wanted to stop two drunken men from killing each other.
Now Rory meant to bring peace to their clans. To marry a McCrieff and end the feud. More than that. An easier relationship with the Tanist would help prosperity and gain wealth no other Lochmore had before.
To bring pride to his clan and to prove to his father he could rule it one day. Except...he hadn’t achieved any of it. It appeared his mother sent kind words, no doubt more polite than actual happiness for her son, and his father sent nothing.
Worse still, he had a wife whom he couldn’t trust, but who he wanted more than anything. After Ailsa found her pleasure, he’d nigh on almost lost his mind with the want and need firing through him. She was well tousled, a flush to her cheeks and her lips swollen from kisses. She was so lovely his heart ached.
Until she reminded him that Paiden lay at death’s door. She could not have said words more chilling to his ardour and adding more to his confusion than those. She was a McCrieff. She was the enemy and, to prove it, Paiden was in another room, possibly dying while he trailed his fingers along soft skin and longing to kiss parted lips.
He didn’t want this. He didn’t need this. The land, the power, yes. The confusion, never. A McCrieff, his wife, and one who might have poisoned his friend. Except the wariness, fear and confusion in those bright green eyes of hers told something else. So, too, her knocking the goblet aside. She had not been the poisoner and possibly had worries over who was.
She seemed unsettled by it as well. A different reaction than the outrage and surprise she’d given her father when he suggested they marry. By no means could Ailsa be part of a conspiracy.
Yet years of mistrust did not go away simply because he felt something for her, because he hoped she was honest. So he’d held back last night, but they’d argued all the same.
He shoved himself off the wall and brushed his hands against his breeches. No matter what he did between his family and his wife, there would always be failure. However, he wouldn’t fail his friend and he would find the culprit who poisoned him.
That meant talking with a few important people. Hamish McCrieff for one. Last night before their vows, he and Ailsa had been escorted to his room, only to see that he was asleep.
Frail, grey and waxen with a weak rattle to his breath. Here was another fact that proved true. Hamish, Chief of Clan McCrieff, was truly ill. Which meant Frederick, as Tanist, was in control.
If so, why invite him, offer his daughter and then try to kill a Lochmore? Perhaps even kill him. He did not know what was in the goblet that Ailsa had shoved away.
That, out of all of this, was the most perplexing. So why was he visiting Paiden this morning, why wasn’t he confronting Frederick, why even now did his feet take him to Hamish’s room first?
He feared that it was because of Ailsa. Because without thinking this through, he had married her. Without thinking, not even once, if he proved the poisoner was Frederick, how could he face his wife?
Not his wife.
A thought that didn’t sit well with him. Rory raked his fingers through his hair. However, it was possible by not consummating the marriage, he’d done something right by her clan. He’d only thought of Paiden and Clan Lochmore, but he realised now Ailsa had a chance out of the marriage as well.
A deed done for the rightness of Clan Lochmore, for Clan McCrieff. To have a chance to right wrongs to their clans.
He wondered, however, if by denying them both last night, what wrong he’d done by them?
Chapter Ten
‘I don’t know why he is like this today.’ Ailsa snapped the linen off Hamish’s bed.
This was a task she would have delegated to others, but Hamish wouldn’t have it and so, along with his waste bucket, she often replaced his ruined clothing and sweat-laden sheets. She didn’t do it because he was the Chief, she did it because it was her duty to God and to her craft. Hamish ordered her to do it because she was the Tanist’s daughter.
‘Last night, I couldn’t rouse him for the pain tincture,’ Hannah said, grabbing the other side of the fabric.
That was unusual. As was him still sleeping on the mattress that was laid on the floor as they replaced his bed with the new mattress. To keep his sores at a minimum, they did this often, and he just as often complained. Now they exchanged mattresses and he didn’t once wake.
For him to remain sleeping this long was concerning. He also hadn’t been awake last night when they went to talk to him before the marriage.
‘I thought you were seeing to Paiden?’ Ailsa said.
‘I was, but he was sleeping so I checked on Mary...just in case. She, I and Kit also helped get Hamish to the floor this morning before Kit left and Mary went to care for Paiden.’
It would have been helpful to have had Kit, the falconer’s son, stay to al
so get Hamish back on the new bed. ‘Did Hamish wake at all?’
‘Mary said that last night he woke to relieve himself and take some broth, but that was all,’ Hannah replied.
‘Anything else?’
Hannah scrunched her lips. ‘His breathing has changed since yesterday.’
Hamish was sick with an illness that was deadly and painful, but familiar. His uneven breath and deep slumber wasn’t usual. Something was wrong. ‘You should leave now, you’ve been up far too late and have done too much going from room to room.’
‘If I leave, who will help you with the mattress and Hamish?’
‘It’s not as if you can help lift him, either, and you need your sleep.’
‘I have slept some,’ Hannah said quietly.
‘You did?’ Ailsa said. ‘You never sleep. What brought that on?’
A pale blush went to Hannah’s cheeks.
‘Is there something you aren’t telling me?’ Ailsa said, dripping much humour into the words. Hannah with her generous curves loved to flirt and was pursued by many a male. If Ailsa didn’t find her at her duties, it was because some interest pulled her away. Maybe the blush was why Kit didn’t stay...
‘It wasn’t—’ Hannah flapped her hands in front of her. ‘I slept some because I didn’t know how long you’d be gone. I thought I’d help Mary with the linens this morning. It was your marriage night. I didn’t expect to see Rory enter Paiden’s room or for you to help with Hamish so soon.’
At the reminder of her marriage night, it was Ailsa’s turn to blush. As for the rest, she knew that Rory would go to Paiden first. He said he would and nothing in his countenance made her believe he lied. In fact, he forsook the marriage night altogether to see to his friend.
Her emotions were as tangled as her laces. Her reason warred with her heart. She’d exposed all of her body and part of herself to him, and she felt—No. She didn’t want to think about last night.
She’d think about here, now, and that Rory should be with his friend, but not Mary. ‘If Mary’s there and you’re here, we don’t have enough help for the daytime.’ Old Rhona would have planned their care better. But Rhona didn’t have to marry without a moment’s notice.
