Highland Guard

by Hannah Howell

  She glanced down at Benet who kept looking back at the men following them into the keep. Until she had seen Harcourt again, she had not allowed herself to even think on how much Benet looked like the man. All she could do was pray no one else noticed, especially since there had been the faintest similarities in coloring between David and Harcourt. She would also have to be very watchful for even the smallest possibility that she or Harcourt were giving the secret away in how they treated the boy.

  “M’lady,” Joan whispered in her ear as they entered the hall and pulled away from the men who went to wash their hands, “it is not as clear to see as ye think it is.”

  “I pray ye are right, Joan.”

  “I am. I only see it because of what I ken and I have ne’er heard a whisper that would tell me anyone else here kens the truth or that those who may would e’er say a word. So, ye just be careful in what ye say and do and all will be weel.”

  Annys wished she had the confidence in that that Joan had. The looks on the faces of the men who had come with Harcourt, looks the men were doing a pitiful job of hiding, told her that they noticed something already. She prayed Harcourt would have a stern word with them all.

  “Allow me to introduce my companions, m’lady,” Harcourt said once they were all seated. “This is Sir Callum MacMillan, Sir Tamhas Cameron, Sir Nathan MacFingal, Sir Ned MacFingal, and Sir Gybbon Murray.”

  Annys nodded a greeting to each man as he was introduced. Two redheads, a brunet, and three raven-haired men. All handsome. All warriors. All tall and fit. It was not going to be easy to stop the maidens of the keep from seeking them out. They were, however, a treasure of skill and strength she could not turn away, no matter how much she worried over the chance that her secret might come out.

  “I thank you all for coming,” she said. “Please, eat, drink, and we can talk once ye take the edge off your thirst and hunger.”

  The only conversation that ensued as the men ate concerned the journey they had taken. Gormfeurach was not as far away as Annys had thought, although far enough when one half of the partners in a huge secret were concerned. She ate very little, her stomach tied in knots, as she struggled to push aside all worry about what might or might not be exposed by Sir Harcourt’s presence. The people of Glencullaich needed these men. They had to take precedence over all of her fears.

  As she sipped her wine she glanced between Harcourt on her left and Nicolas on her right. Both were extraordinarily handsome men yet she experienced not one single twinge of womanly interest when she studied Nicolas. Hair the color of dark wood, gray eyes, and a strong body were all things that could please a woman but, although she did like the look of him, nothing else stirred inside her. Harcourt stirred everything inside of her and not all of it was good. The warmth was side by side with the chilling fear of secrets being uncovered. The need was side by side with the guilt for having given in to it even with the urging of her husband. The pleasure of seeing him again sat side by side with a lingering anger over the way he had left her. Somehow she had to clear her heart and mind of all the confusion.

  Annys noticed that her son was chatting merrily with the man called Callum, a handsome man with his green eyes and copper-colored hair. Sir Callum showed no sign of being irritated by her son’s chatter even though it kept interrupting his meal. The fact that Benet was so at ease was surprising, however, as he usually took a long time to warm up to someone, especially when that someone was a man so much bigger than he was. There was no doubt in her mind that Sir Callum was a skilled warrior yet it was clear he had a magical way with children.

  Sir Gybbon Murray’s relationship to Harcourt was clear to see even though his eyes were blue. That man kept looking between Harcourt and little Benet in a way that made her nervous. She also noticed that the looks he gave Harcourt not only demanded an explanation but held the gleam of deep disapproval. Since, from all she had heard, men had no real problem scattering their illegitimate offspring around the world with no thought and few penalties, it puzzled her.

  Sir Tamhas Cameron sat between the two MacFingals, the three of them jesting and eating heartily. There was a strong family resemblance between the two MacFingals despite one having light brown hair and the other black. They certainly both had the same smiles, ones touched with a hint of recklessness and wickedness. Sir Tamhas appeared to be the most staid of the three men although his green eyes often shone with laughter. She envied his red hair, the color of a fox pelt. Those three she knew would be the ones to watch most carefully around the maidens of the keep.

  Catching Joan’s gaze where she sat at the far end of the table, Annys glanced toward the three and then slanted a glance toward the four young women lurking in the doorway to the kitchens. The way Joan’s mouth thinned and she glared the girls into retreating back into the kitchens told Annys that she could leave that concern safely in Joan’s hands. She just wished it would be as easy to leave the rest of her troubles in other hands.

  Annys silently sent an apology up to David. He had told her to call for Harcourt if there was trouble and her husband had been an excellent judge of men. She would have to accept that and carry on. David’s cousin Adam was mostly a nuisance at the moment. But the crimes he was committing in what she was certain was an attempt to make her look so weak that the people of Glencullaich would call on him to take the laird’s seat were rapidly getting more dangerous. It was past time to do more than clean up after the many messes Adam had left behind.

  Chapter Two

  “So what is this danger ye fear is stalking Glencullaich, m’lady?”

  Harcourt relaxed in his seat, his belly pleasantly full of good food, and sipped at the strong wine he had been served. He could see that his abrupt question had startled her, but only for a moment. She recovered her composure with an admirable quickness. There was now a look in her eyes that told him she was very carefully considering her reply as she signaled a young page to take Benet from the hall. He wondered what she wanted to hide. Or why she would bother to hide anything. She had sent for him after all.

  “Did Ian nay tell you?” she asked and clasped her hands together in her lap in what she prayed appeared to be a stance of complete calm.

  “Not in much detail, nay. Ye have someone troubling you with petty intrusions, thefts, and some threats. Since such things could be seen to weel enough by the men ye have here, I am thinking ye fear the trouble will soon grow far more severe.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Joan wave away the women who had slipped back inside the hall and was pleased to see them go. Her people were increasingly uneasy. The things she had to discuss with Sir Harcourt would only make them more so.

  “Our trouble has a name,” Annys said. “Sir Adam MacQueen, cousin to my late husband and a man who would have been the heir to Glencullaich if David had had no son.”

  “But David did have a son.” Harcourt was not surprised at how difficult it was to calmly name David as Benet’s father.

  “Adam doesnae accept Benet as David’s son. He doesnae believe a woman should be acting as laird here, either. It is his loudly stated opinion that the lad needs a mon to tend to his inheritance. That is, if the lad actually has one. Adam believes he should tend Benet even as he tries to prove Benet is nay the heir yet doesnae see why that is ridiculous. I am nay sure his opinion on who should be acting as the laird here would change e’en if he finally has to accept that Benet is David’s heir and naught will change that. Naught will change his mind that it is wrong for a lass to act as a laird either.”

  Harcourt shrugged. “A complaint we have heard before,” he said and his men nodded. “’T’will get the mon nowhere. Did David nay name some mon to stand for ye then?”

  “He named Nicolas Brys as his second several years ago,” she replied and nodded to the man seated on her right. “Then, when David began to grow so ill, an illness he couldnae shake free of, he named Nicolas as the mon he wished to oversee the protection of Glencullaich as weel as Benet. He also stated
the wish that it be Nicolas who trained Benet in all a laird must ken to be strong enough to protect his lands and people.”

  “And Sir Adam disagrees with that as weel?”

  Annys nodded. “Quite vehemently. At first he attempted to have Nicolas removed but that did not work. It is verra difficult to get the courts to ignore the stated and witnessed last words of a laird. E’en those in power who leaned to Sir Adam’s side didnae want to do that for they wouldnae want anyone to think it could be done to their wishes after they are gone. After that failed, he made the claim that Benet wasnae David’s true son. He hasnae succeeded with that, either.” Although she hated to reveal Sir Adam’s latest game, Annys knew she had to tell Harcourt everything. “He now spreads the tale that I killed David.”

  The way the men all grew still and stared at her made Annys both angry and embarrassed. It was hurtful enough that not everyone Adam voiced his accusation to had shrugged it aside as nonsense. She did not like to think that these men, ones who had come to help her, might now be suspicious of her. It embarrassed her to repeat Adam’s false accusations. It angered her that anyone would even briefly consider that such accusations might be true, and that anger grew stronger every day. Unfortunately, so did her fear that Adam may have finally found a way to be rid of her and take Glencullaich, perhaps even be rid of her son for, as a convicted murderer, she would not live long.

  “Is anyone listening to him?” Harcourt asked after glancing at his companions and seeing only a recognition of the threat such accusations carried.

  “A few.” She hastily took a drink of cider, attempting to ease the dryness of fear from her throat. “David was kenned weel by many in power, and weel liked. He didnae die in battle or”—she smiled just a little, knowing it was mostly bitterness and not humor that curved her lips—“in some monly accident. He died in his bed like a sickly old mon.” She shook her head. “In the end, he bore a likeness to one as weel.”

  “A wasting sickness?”

  “Who can say? David was ne’er truly robust yet he was ne’er what ye would call sickly.” She pushed aside a sadness that always twisted her heart when she thought of her husband’s slow, painful death. “I cannae say what afflicted him nor could any of the others I sent for in the hope of finding some help, some cure, for him.”

  “But nay one of those fools kenned what ailed the laird or how to help him,” said Joan. “Most often they just wanted to purge the poor mon or bleed him. That was the verra last thing our laird needed. He was naught but skin and bone in the end.”

  Annys reached out to pat Joan’s hand, clenched tight on top of the table. Joan had grown up with David, the daughter of his mother’s maid. He had been as much a brother to her as he had been her laird and Annys knew the woman grieved for him as deeply as she did.

  Harcourt frowned. “It sounds akin to a wasting sickness.”

  “And so it may have been, yet I remain too uncertain to name it so,” Annys said.

  “What were the signs of his illness?” asked Sir Callum.

  “The one most clearly marked were the pains in his belly,” she replied. “He couldnae keep food down. E’en the plainest of broths would have him retching. Then it would pass for a wee while and we would think he was regaining his health, only to have it begin all over again. And, aye, ’tis true that purging and bloodletting were the worst things to do since he was so weak, yet there were times, after a purging, that David recovered for a while.”

  “Ne’er after a bleeding though,” said Joan.

  “Nay, that ne’er seemed to help him,” agreed Annys.

  “What else?” asked Sir Callum. “Was there more?”

  The intent way the man watched her as he asked his question made Annys wary even though she could see no hint of condemnation or accusation in his expression. “David would complain about burning pain in his hands and feet, at times e’en in his throat, although all that miserable retching could weel have caused that.”

  “He began to lose his beautiful hair,” Joan murmured.

  Annys nodded. “And his skin would be covered in a rash and then it would peel away. The most frightening times were when he couldnae move at all, but that, too, would then pass. In the end he had such fits it would take several of us to hold him down and e’en then it wasnae easy. Ye must see how difficult it is for us to put a name to the disease which ended his life. There are too many things it could have been and, just when one thought one kenned what it was, there would be something that didnae fit.”

  “There is one ye may nay have considered,” said Sir Callum. “Poison.”

  The blood drained from Annys face so quickly that she became dizzy and welcomed Joan’s steadying hand on her arm. “I didnae poison my husband.”

  “Of course ye didnae,” said Sir Harcourt. “That isnae what Callum was saying, is it, my friend,” he said to Callum, giving the younger man a hard look.

  “Nay,” Callum said quickly and smiled faintly. “I didnae say ye did it, m’lady, or e’en considered that ye had, but I do believe the mon may have been poisoned. ’Tis an old poison, if I am right in what I now believe, and one that has been used before at least once within my own family. It was but a few years ago that a distant MacMillan cousin of mine was poisoned by his wife’s lover. The signs of his illness sound verra much akin to the ones your husband suffered.”

  “Did he survive?” Annys asked.

  “Aye, though it was a verra long time ere the mon healed. But, with care, he was soon strong enough to see his wife and her lover hanged.”

  Annys winced at his hard words but understood. Those people had tried to murder one of his kinsmen. She also agreed with the punishment. It was just one that always made her shudder just a little. She had seen one hanging in her life, stumbled upon it by accident while wandering the streets of a village near her home. It had been a spectacle that had held her horrified attention despite how sick it had made her. It was not an easy way to die.

  “How did ye ken that was what was wrong?” she asked.

  “Caught the one putting it into his drink. He, too, would seem to become better now and then. Most often after a hard purging. I think that clears out a great deal of the poison thus starting a cure. Then the one with the poison just doses them again.”

  “Which means it would be someone close enough to dose his food or drink.”

  It was a horrifying thought. That meant that someone in the keep, one of the people they trusted, had murdered David. It was hard to think that anyone at Glencullaich would do so. David had been well loved by his people, respected and honored. She could think of no one who had ever shown any sign of being angry with him or hating him.

  “I have no idea how we would e’er discover who may have done it,” she said as she rubbed her forehead. “David was beloved. I cannae e’en think of who could be persuaded by anyone to do it. And, e’er ye ask, Sir Adam was ne’er here in any way that would have given him the opportunity to do it.”

  “It is just something one should consider, I think.”

  “Aye,” agreed Harcourt. “Sad to say there can be many a reason for someone to turn on their laird, e’en one as weel loved as David. They could simply be someone easily convinced of some lie or given some promise that made them do it e’en if they may have had regrets for their actions afterward.”

  Annys studied him for a moment, thinking on how careful he had been with his words. “Ye think it may have been some woman.”

  Harcourt sighed and gave her an apologetic smile. “Poison does tend to be a lass’s weapon.”

  Considering the other ways there were to kill a man, she supposed he was right. There was something less intimate, less violent about poison. Women could be violent but they had the disadvantage of usually being smaller and weaker than a man. Poison required neither strength nor stature. Yet, again, she could think of no one who would do that to poor David.

  “Could it not have simply been as we thought? A sickness, some kind of wasting illness we had
just ne’er seen before?”

  Sir Callum smiled. “It could be. It was just that the signs ye mentioned sounded akin to what my cousin suffered.”

  “And that means it would be wise to consider the possibility,” said Harcourt. “Ye ken weel that there is one who wants what David had, who has always wanted it. He may nay have been close enough to easily do the poisoning himself, but there is always the chance he found someone within these walls who did it for him. Through lies, promises, or threats.”

  Annys nodded. “Ye are right. It would be wise to consider it. If only so that we keep a keen eye out for any hint that it is happening again.”

  “And to take some time to watch those who would have had the chance to do it,” said Joan.

  “Ah, Joan, I dinnae want to do it. I ken it, but it must be done. If that mon has convinced someone in this keep to do his sinful work for him then we need to find them.”

  “Now that David is gone there remains you and the lad in his way. He could decide to set that ally on either of ye.”

  That was the fear she had tried to ignore. It was foolish to do so. Ugly though it was, if there was even a small chance that someone inside Glencullaich helped Sir Adam, he could turn that person against her or Benet next. It was only wise to accept that hard truth and act to protect herself and her child.

  “Agreed,” Annys finally said. “Mayhap we shall be fortunate as someone will be so crushed with guilt they will simply confess. Then we will have them and Sir Adam.”

  “I will wish ye luck in that,” said Harcourt and briefly raised his tankard in a toast before taking a drink. “Howbeit, I would like ye to make up a list of those who would have had the chance to slip some poison into David’s drink or food.”