The Kissing Stone

by Amanda Scott

  “Do you?”

  She glanced up to catch him smiling again. He did have a warm smile, one that lit up his eyes and made her want to smile back.

  So she did smile, and met his twinkling gaze as she said firmly, “I do.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, grinning now. “Do you know, I feel much that way, myself. I see Finlagh now, yonder on its knoll.”

  “Aye,” she said. “I must go on alone from here. You won’t want men on the ramparts to see you, I expect, so—”

  “What you mean is that you do not want to have to answer questions about me,” he interjected mildly. “I do understand, but I mean to linger nearby until I see you approach the knoll path and know that the guards have seen you.”

  “Very well,” she said, having already learned that she would not dissuade him. He had been right about her not wanting to answer any questions about him, and he had not promised to keep himself out of sight.

  She would also have preferred to approach the castle from the west, which was how they would expect her to come, but her companion was unlikely to agree to that. Moreover, she was too late now to risk wasting more time.

  Fortunately, she saw no sign that men were searching for her.

  When the forest began to thin, he stopped and said, “I’ll bid you farewell here, lass. I see no one on this side of the ramparts, so I will keep watch until you and the dogs begin heading up the knoll path.”

  “Thank you again, Will,” she said, offering him her hand and looking up into his eyes. “I ken fine that I may have sounded sadly ungrateful before. I am truly thankful that you were near, though, and quick enough to keep me from falling.”

  “I’m glad, too, Katy,” he said with a smile that warmed her to her toes and sent more pleasant tremors through her body. “Now, get on home with you.”

  She took a few steps homeward then only to feel a strong urge to look back one more time. When she did, he was watching as if he had been waiting for her to do just that. He winked, and though she felt an odd temptation to stick out her tongue at him, she knew she dared not linger, so with a smile and slight nod, she hurried on down the hill, over the arched bridge of the nearer of two streams that forked around the knoll, and onto the pathway that wound up to the castle. At the top, it took her to the castle’s hornwork entrance on the knoll’s north side.

  A guard opened the narrow postern gate in the tall double iron gates to let her in. As she thanked him, she saw her tall, dark-haired father talking to one of the other men in the courtyard. Worse, Fin saw her and began to stride toward her.

  “Where the devil have you been?” he demanded when he was near enough to do so without shouting.

  Chapter 2

  Her father’s expression told Katy that he wanted to shout and sent a shiver up her spine. “Your face is smudged,” he added. “You look as if you’ve been dragged through the bushes, and that dress is fit only for the ragbag now!”

  She opened her mouth, hoping to offer an explanation if she could just think of a rational one.

  He stopped the words on her tongue with a slight gesture of one hand. “Go straight up to my chamber,” he said, referring to the room he customarily used to deal with agents, important visitors, and malefactors. “You and I will talk there.”

  Hurrying inside and up the stairs to the small chamber off the first landing, she strove to collect her wits. She had to compose herself and form some notion of what she could say to him without telling an actual falsehood.

  Fin entered the small chamber minutes later and shut the door.

  Instead of sitting at the table where he usually interviewed persons standing before him, as Katy was, he stood just inside the room, a bit too close, crossed his arms over his chest, and glowered at her. Viking tall, he was head and shoulders taller than she was. She could stand under his outstretched arm without her head touching it. Sufficient light came through the chamber’s solitary window to reveal the glint of anger in the deep-set light-gray eyes that matched her own. His dark-brown hair showed a few strands of gray, but his movements were still youthful, and she knew he was still a warrior who intimidated other warriors.

  His temper seemed about to erupt.

  Katy drew a breath, hoping to steady her nerves.

  He said grimly, “I doubt that you have been delivering bread all this time, so just where did you go?”

  Having decided to plump for something close enough to the truth to pass muster, she said hastily, “I finished with the bread at Granny Rosel’s and then walked up to the pool and into the forest. I know I should have come home sooner, sir, but you need not worry. I did have the dogs. So—”

  Cutting her off, Fin snapped, “Not worry? Just how far into the forest did you go, in what direction? No one on the ramparts saw you, my lass, which tells me that you took good care they should not see you. So now, and for the last time before I lose my temper and put you across my knee, where did you go?”

  Swallowing hard, Katy said, “I just went up the hill, Da, mayhap farther than I should have. But I—”

  “Which means that you disobeyed my orders and your mother’s and chose to do so without concern for your own safety. So now—nae, not another word do I want to hear from you,” he added when she opened her mouth. “You will first hear exactly what I think of your actions. If you are wise, you will do naught more to irk me more before I have finished.”

  He went on in that vein for some time before a rap on the door stopped him midsentence. “What?” he demanded in the same fierce tone.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” his porter said from the other side of the door, “but ye’ve a visitor requesting immediate audience wi’ ye.”

  “I’ll be down shortly,” Fin retorted.

  “The man insists the matter be urgent, sir.”

  “Who the devil is it, then?”

  The porter remained silent.

  Drawing a deep breath and letting it out, Fin said to Katy, “You may now go straight up to your bedchamber and stay there until I summon you. I have much more yet to say to you.”

  Making a hasty curtsy, she fled gratefully upstairs, dashing tears from her eyes with the back of each hand as she went.

  Having watched Katy until she reached the path up to Castle Finlagh and then turned on his heel and headed for home, Will let his thoughts dwell on the intriguing lass he had just met. She had shown no fear of him as a stranger, an attitude that common sense told him to deplore. Any young female ought to have wisdom enough to be wary of strangers. Conversely, their meeting had been no ordinary one and he was glad that she had seemed to know he would not harm her.

  He wished that he might see her with her face washed and wearing what he assumed would be her normal attire, clean and undamaged.

  Her oval face, even smudged as it was, was most appealing with its tip-tilted nose and full, sensuous lips. Her light-gray, dark-lashed eyes, their irises rimmed in black, were eyes that a man could look into forever and never grow weary.

  Shaking his head at himself, he muttered, “Put her out of your head, my lad. That one is likely nobbut trouble.”

  Will moved at a good pace up and along the slope of the ridge, and by the time he approached Raitt Castle, from the southwest, the sun had sunk below the ridge behind him, casting Raitt into shadowy depths.

  Two decades ago, de Raite had seized the castle from the Mackintoshes—specifically from Fin of the Battles, while Fin was away, fighting in the Battle of Harlaw. That seizure took place during the young King’s English captivity, and Scotland’s Regent, the Duke of Albany, ordered the Mackintoshes to keep the peace and let the Comyns keep Raitt and its estates of Meikle Geddes.

  On his grace’s return nine years ago, he had issued a similar order to de Raite to keep the peace, which de Raite oft chose to disregard. However, thanks to heavy winter setting in soon after the illegal hangings, the area had
been quiet since then.

  Although most people thereabouts called Raitt a castle, Will had seen real castles and knew that Raitt was no such stronghold. True castles were fortresses, protected by their settings, as Finlagh was by its knoll some two hundred feet above the base of the ridge’s west slope. Finlagh’s massive hornwork, curtain wall, ramparts, and outer deep-ditch defenses provided yet more protection.

  Raitt boasted excellent stonework, a tower that could serve as a siege tower, if necessary, and a fine stone hall house, which, with its impregnable undercroft and a solitary entrance ten feet above ground level, had stood for over a century.

  However, the wall surrounding the castle and its courtyard was only eight or nine feet high. Outside it, in woods to the east, stood a clachan of tenants’ cottages with smoke curling from three or four of them. Their residents would expect to shelter inside the hall house during any attack.

  Approaching the southwestern angle of Raitt from above, Will noted that weeds and grass had overgrown the defensive ditch between the wall and the slopes above it, nearly concealing the ditch. Likely, it had acquired more dirt from runoff over the winter, too, but if he were to suggest that someone ought to clear it, his father or an older brother would likely assign the thankless task to him.

  The hall boasted two towers and a high-pitched roof with short corbelled parapets at each gable end. A round three-story tower with a vaulted, conical roof projected from the southeast corner, and a square tower containing the garderobe projected more than a dozen feet from the hall’s long, northwest-facing side.

  The walls of the hall house were nearly six feet thick and topped with a wall walk accessed only from the attic above the great hall. An ancient chapel—Raitt’s oldest structure—and other outbuildings stood in the courtyard southeast of the hall.

  Raitt lacked a proper gatehouse, but its imposing gateway boasted red sandstone facings similar to those of the hall house’s arched entrance and the unusually large arched and traceried windows of its upper floors. The Mackintoshes his father had hanged by the tall iron gate had long since been unceremoniously buried in the nearby forest.

  Nodding to the guard who opened the gate to admit him, Will crossed the courtyard to the timber bridge that stretched from a low, central knoll to the hall’s main entrance, ten feet above the ground. In an attack, the porter could raise the last few feet of the bridge from inside and lock that portion against the hall doorway in much the same way as a drawbridge over a moat.

  When he was near enough to the tall door to see the teeth of the portcullis peeping out from above and just in front of it, he saw the porter peering through the squint beside the door. The door opened, and Olaf, the plump, gray-bearded porter, said, “A good even tae ye, young sir,” as Will passed him into the entry hall.

  Separated from the huge hall, as the entry was, by a massive wood screen stretching three-quarters of its length, Will could hear enough from the hall as he replied to the porter’s greeting to know that most of the men had already come in.

  “I kent fine that ye’d be home for supper,” Olaf said, shutting the huge door.

  “Has someone been looking for me?”

  “Just her ladyship,” Olaf replied, moving to peer through the squint again. “She’ll still be in the solar, for Himself has nae come in yet. But Masters Hew and Liam must be peckish, for they be on yon dais wi’ your Lowland cousin, the noo.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Will said dryly. “I must wash before supper.”

  “Our Tam just took a basin and jug intae the inner chamber for Himself,” Olaf said. “If ye be quick, ye can use that and tell Tam tae refill the jug after ye.”

  Taking his advice, Will went around the screen into the long hall, noting as he passed under the minstrels’ gallery that men had already claimed most of the places at the two trestles stretching from the dais at the other end of the chamber. No one had taken a seat, nor would anyone do so before de Raite or his chaplain—if that gentle man joined them, which was rare—had said the grace before meat.

  A fire roared in the handsome hooded fireplace near the south-corner entrance to the round tower. Framed with red sandstone like the windows, the fireplace corbels carried a lintel and formed the flue. Two elaborate iron sconces flanked the opening on either side, each holding a large candle, which would soon be lit.

  Daylight was rapidly dimming outside.

  Stepping onto the dais, Will strode toward his father’s private inner chamber, nodding to Hew and Liam, the two eldest of his four remaining brothers, and his cousin Dae as he passed the high table. His eldest brother, Rab, had died at the Battle of Lochaber, killed by a Clan Chattan warrior, Sir Àdham MacFinlagh.

  The inner chamber furnishings consisted of a writing table, a washstand, and a great sword de Raite had inherited from his father, which hung between two narrow lancet windows on the wall to Will’s left. Young Tam was filling the washstand basin. Washing quickly, Will said, “Empty this, lad, and fetch more hot water for Himself.” Recalling the porter’s words, he added, “Is her ladyship in the solar?”

  “Aye, sir,” Tam replied. “That is tae say, I havena seen her come doon.”

  Thanking him, Will took the narrow stairway from the inner chamber’s passageway to the solar on the next floor of the tower, saying as he neared its doorway, “It’s just me, Aly. Art within?”

  “Aye, Will,” was the soft reply. “Come in.”

  Katy’s bedchamber was empty when she entered, but Bridgett, the curvaceous, dark-haired maidservant who attended her and her twin sister and whose mother, Ailvie, served Lady Catriona, came in while Katy was washing her face.

  Handing her a towel, Bridgett greeted her in a tone that told Katy the young woman knew she was in disgrace.

  Thankful that Bridgett had not seen her tears and hoping her father would not come in while Bridgett was there, Katy accepted the towel and turned away as she patted her face dry. Then, draping the towel on its rod, she said, “Prithee, fetch out a fresh kirtle, Bridgett. I must change for supper.”

  “Bless ye, m’lady, I see that much for m’self,” Bridgett said, glancing at each of two cupboard beds that flanked the window wall as if to be sure no one had mussed them since she had made them up. Only then did she open the woven willow kist in the alcove between the door and the bed on the left, which contained Katy’s fresh clothing. “Wherever did ye go tae get yourself in such disarray?”

  “I’d liefer not answer that question, for I have heard all I want to hear on the subject,” Katy said, adding with a grimace, “I expect I’ll hear more anon, though.”

  “Aye, sure, an’ ye will, too, for I did hear that ye were gone so long as tae put your da in a fret. Certes, but ye should ken better nor that, so I’m puzzled as tae what … or who might ha’ held your interest so long.”

  “And, pray, who has been carrying such tales to you?” Katy demanded.

  With a shrug, Bridgett said, “’Twas that Lochan as told me, that’s who.”

  “Faith, Bruce Lochan, our captain of the guard?”

  “Certes, he be the only Lochan as either of us has ken, is he no?”

  “I expect so, but he should not be prating about me to you or to anyone else.”

  “Then ye’ll no want tae hear aught else he said,” Bridgett said lightly as she tucked a stray lock of dark hair back into her cap and bent to the kist. Extracting a pink kirtle with white lace edging at neckline, sleeves, and hem, she gave it a snapping shake and held it up to waning light from the window.

  “I don’t want that kirtle,” Katy said. “’Tis my best one.”

  “As I ken fine,” Bridgett said, her blue eyes gleaming. “Ye’d best take that clout from the basin, though, and wash your face again, and your hands. Ye’ve still got smudges on ’em. There be a dab by that wee scar on your forehead, too, and others on your cheeks. I’ll wager ye didna get them a-visiti
ng me granny, neither.”

  Wetting the towel and scrubbing her forehead, both cheeks, and her hands again, Katy said, “What else did Lochan tell you?”

  “I thought ye didna want tae hear aught more that he said.”

  “Marry, but I wish Cousin Àdham and Fiona had taken you with them to the Borders for their annual visit with her kinsmen,” Katy said grimly. Her cousin, Sir Àdham MacFinlagh’s lady wife, hailed from the Scottish Borders and had married Àdham two years ago, at the King’s behest, in St. John’s Town of Perth.

  “Ye ken fine that Sir Àdham and Lady Fiona had nae need o’ me,” Bridgett said, hands on her curvy hips. “Forbye, I’d nae wish tae leave Finlagh, nor tae travel so far, and so I did tell her ladyship.”

  “But you’ve not yet told me what else Lochan said to you,” Katy reminded her. “You take too many liberties, Bridgett, and so I do not hesitate to tell you.”

  “Nae, then, why should ye?” Bridgett replied with a warm smile that revealed twin dimples in her cheeks. “Ye’ve had ken o’ me since me Granny Rosel brought ye intae this world, and this be how I were then and how I be the noo. I say what I think, just as ye do. Ye should be accustomed tae me by now, and I learned long since that them as speaks plain must be able tae bear plain-speaking in return.”

  It was on the tip of Katy’s tongue to remind Bridgett that she was a servant, but her better sense intervened. Not only would Bridgett laugh at such a reminder, but it might also stir her to recall and mention more of her mistress’s faults.

  In any event, the chamber door opened then to admit Clydia in her favorite blue kirtle, laced over a cream-colored smock. Despite likely having spent much of the afternoon in her kitchen garden, she looked as neat as could be.

  “Oh, good, Bridgett, you are here,” she said, shutting the door. “Lochan told me you might be, so I came straight upstairs to warn … That is—”

  When her gaze met Katy’s frown, she stopped and pressed her lips together.