His betrothed would be on her way to Scotland at the end of the month. And yet to his surprise he felt an unwilling kinship with this strange moppet who saw more deeply into his character than he would like. Even his intimate friends were not privy to his past. And this girl seemed to know too much. Was there more substance to her than he’d realized?
He forced a smile. “And what grim tales have you heard about me, Marsali? Did they tell you I tortured the servants in the castle dungeon for sport?”
She met his gaze, honest and unflinching. “No, they didn’t. They told me you had gotten drunk and blown up the clan’s barley mill out of spite.”
His throat tightened. Her words sickened him more than he could show. “Go on.”
“Well.” Her voice faltered a little as she recounted the ugly snippets of gossip. “They said that a man died as a result of your wickedness and that another was disfigured. They said that the cottars went hungry that summer from the loss of income. But we both know how they exaggerate such things.”
“Is that all they say?”
Marsali gazed past him, her voice almost inaudible. “No, there are the rumors about your mother and her husband… and something about a doctor’s wife.”
A cold chill passed through Duncan. What an ass he’d been, to hope he would convince these people that he was no longer that hell-bent youth. Or was he really all that different? Had the old demons within ever died or only gone dormant, dozing until the right opportunity to ruin him came along? This girl, he was sure, would not stare so guilelessly into his eyes if she guessed he was entertaining the idea of luring her to his bed to show her he could master her in more ways than one. That dark thought alone proved he hadn’t changed. He had traded reckless destruction for selfish desire and cold ambition.
“You are right, Marsali,” he said at last, his voice weary. “No one has to like me, but I will be obeyed. Now take me to the keep. I intend to know why Abercrombie has allowed the castle to fall into such disgrace.”
Within twenty minutes of entering the keep, Duncan had tripped over the pair of piglets running down the stairwell; fended off the advances of a well-endowed woman who’d popped out of an empty herring barrel, mistaking him for a clansman named Georgie; and had come face to face with an old portrait of himself as a child that hung in the gallery above the great hall.
He was amazed at first, considering his history and subsequent banishment, that the portrait had remained all these years alongside the other honorable MacElgins. Warriors and chieftains who had not shamed their ancestors with tales of adolescent evils.
Only on closer inspection did he see the Devil’s horns and pitchfork penned over the original portrait, the cloven hoofs protruding from his best knee breeches. Even now he could feel the anger and resentment that blazed from the eyes of the wild boy he had been, the bewilderment of being dragged from the scene of a double murder and discovering his true identity in an unforgettable night with the Beltane bonfires blazing in the background.
He remembered the morning that the portrait had been painted. Only three days had passed since he’d learned that the abusive drunk named Fergus who had raised him was not his natural father, that the clan’s laird and chieftain, the Marquess of Portmuir, Kenneth MacElgin, had waited until the man’s death to claim Duncan as his heir and only child. On the day of the portrait-painting, Kenneth had stood guard at the door with a broadsword to make sure Duncan did not escape. If Kenneth was determined that the world would pay homage to his precious son, Duncan was just as determined to prove he was not worthy of such homage if it killed them both.
Duncan smiled grimly. No, Fortune had not been at all kind to the old MacElgin. For thirteen years Kenneth had kept his long-ago association with Duncan’s mother, Janet, a secret. He had pretended ignorance of the son that had come as a result of their brief illicit union, a trophy of Kenneth’s manhood that he had not dared acknowledge for Janet’s sake, out of respect for her deep religious conviction and the shame of an adulterous affair that had borne fruit.
But when Janet and her cruel common-law husband had been found mysteriously murdered in their cot one Beltane night, Kenneth MacElgin and his tacksman had swooped down like avenging angels to save Janet’s two orphans— Duncan and his older half-sister, Judith. For if Kenneth had appeared to turn a blind eye to Duncan’s existence, he had coveted him in his heart and had waited for the day he could claim him.
At last Kenneth could announce to the clan that he had produced an heir, a feat of virility he had not accomplished with the two legitimate wives he had outlived. Duncan, sullen and belligerent, immediately tried to escape the parade of tutors and tailors, of fencing lessons and servants that now shadowed his every move. He rebelled against the love his natural father tried to shower on him, not trusting it. He rebelled against his heritage, seething inwardly that his father had not intervened before, when Janet was alive.
Fergus may not have sired Duncan from his own seed, but he had left his mark all the same. The constant beatings, the verbal belittlement, had shaped Duncan’s character in devious channels as powerful as the laws of heredity.
And when the inevitable whisperings began that Duncan had murdered his own parents, he had not bothered to deny them. He had behaved like an impostor in his father’s castle, fueling the suspicions. His clansmen gossiped behind his back, recalling the small cruelties he’d inflicted on them in his youth.
“God.” He drew a breath, staring at the portrait. “God. Somebody take that thing off the wall and have it burned.”
“It doesn’t look a thing like you,” Marsali said quietly behind him.
He turned on her, startled from his thoughts and enraged at having been caught in a moment of unguarded vulnerability, the pain of the boy in that painting as raw as if it had been only yesterday. For an instant he was tempted to shove her aside and run, as he would have done years ago, shame threatening to overshadow the man he’d become.
“Look harder, then.” He grasped the crook of her elbow and drew her over to the dim light filtering through the window, his voice deliberately cruel. “Why, I could sprout horns at any second. I could abduct you to my underground kingdom and devour you, little girl. I’ll wager you could find any number of men in the courtyard below who will swear I’ve been seen prowling the hails with smoke pouring out of my nostrils.”
She eased her elbow free of his bruising hold, more sorry for his pain than afraid of his anger, which she sensed was not directed at her. “Isn’t that what you wanted them to think?”
“I don’t give a damn what they think.”
“Yes you do,” Marsali said with infuriating certainty, remembering the stricken look in his eyes when the stable-boy had rebuffed him. “You owe them your help.”
“No, I—” He smiled reluctantly, realizing in amazement that he was arguing his personal affairs with a maidservant. Who was she to remind him of his guilt, his need for atonement? “Ah, we’re forgetting your place in this castle, aren’t we, Marsali? You are to serve me and see to my comfort. You are not to give me advice.”
She shook her head in chagrin. “But you need advice, my lord. In fact, I have never seen a man in more dire need of advising than you.”
“Marsali, hear me well.” He walked her back against the window embrasure, his face pressed to hers. Her eyes widened. She lifted her hand to the black cord at her throat, but she held her ground. Duncan gave her credit for that.
“I can hear you quite well, my lord, as probably can the rest of the castle.”
“Good. Because I want you to know that I have paid advisors to advise me. Men who are mathematical geniuses, historians, military strategists, former soldiers, and ministers of state.”
“You see,” she said with a knowing smile, “that’s the problem right there. All your advisors are men, and all men can think about is fighting wars.”
He had to laugh at her irrational reasoning. “That is what they are paid to think about.”
“Wars and money,
” she said with a sigh.
Suddenly Duncan could not decide if he wanted to throttle her or take her in his arms. Now that she had finally stopped lecturing him, he could enjoy staring at her up close, smelling the elusive honey sweetness of heather in her hair. For the first time he noticed the tiny mole at the corner of her mouth. The pulsebeat at the hollow of her throat drew his gaze downward to a black silken cord that disappeared into the cleft of her breasts. One way or another, either with her convoluted arguing or her beguiling presence, she was going to drive him up the wall. Hungry, travel-weary, disgusted at his homecoming, he had allowed the girl to penetrate his guard.
Marsali moistened her lips, fascinated by the conflicting emotions that crossed his face. The angrier he became, the more she realized she had to be patient with him because her father had taught her that great outward displays of anger usually came from deep internal pain. Men like Duncan did not reveal themselves easily. It behooved her to help him become the great chieftain the clan needed, even if it appeared an impossible task. She would have to call upon all her courage.
“Why are you looking at me in that way?” he asked in a suspicious voice.
A blur of movement in the courtyard below caught his attention before she could answer. His clansmen were playing golf with broadswords and a basket of hard-boiled eggs. The sight wrenched him back to the restrictions of reality. He had an objective, a promise to the Crown, and only a limited time to achieve it. Seducing a bedraggled little baggage who did not know her place was not part of his plans. Perhaps she would even run away during the night. It might be easier for him if she did in the end.
He drew back from the window, noticing the involuntary shudder, most probably of relief, that passed over Marsali.
All the better. He frightened her. That showed the beginning of respect, although he doubted she understood what the word meant, obviously having been allowed to run unsupervised for too many years.
“I’ve wasted enough time,” he said, moving past her but deliberately not glancing at the portrait. “What am I going to do with this place?”
She touched the pendant around her neck. “When I didn’t know what to do about a problem, my mother always read to me from the Bible.”
He almost laughed at her incredible naivete. “I suspect this castle is beyond even the Almighty’s help.”
Marsali stared at his broad, sun-burnished shoulders in annoyance. She had her work cut out for her, all right, turning this hard man into a wise and compassionate ruler. She couldn’t decide if she should question her uncle’s vision on the matter. After all, Uncle Colum had gotten the timing wrong for the ambush on the captain of the dragoons. Her own intuition on the matter had apparently become muddled by her embarrassing preoccupation with Duncan’s physical presence.
“Take me to Abercrombie, Marsali,” Duncan said, sounding impatient.
Marsali didn’t move, dreading what was about to happen. She wasn’t responsible for what had happened to Abercrombie, whose fate no one in the castle either knew or cared to admit. But Duncan would probably find a way to blame her all the same.
He glanced around, studying her worried face.
“Dear God.” He took an involuntary step toward her. “The blasted fools have murdered him, haven’t they? They’ve actually murdered an appointee of the Crown.” Marsali opened her mouth but no sound came out, leaving her in condemning silence.
“Answer me, Marsali.” His face became a study in darkness, unyielding angles, shadowed planes. The devil-boy in the portrait full grown, in the flesh. “When was the last time you saw Abercrombie?”
“Well.” Her voice finally emerged as a nervous croak. “Well, that would have been on Hogmanay.”
“January.” He frowned. “Six months ago. Was he alive?”
She stared down at the tips of her scuffed boots. “You have to understand that he was a horrible little man.”
He came forward, forcing Marsali to stumble back until she stood directly under the portrait of him with all its insulting graffiti. Yes, he was that boy. Urges of a definitely demoniac nature were rearing inside him.
“He was walking the edges of the battlements blindfolded,” she said in a small choked voice.
“What? Was the man trying to commit suicide?”
Marsali put her hand to her heart again. It gave her palpitations when his voice dropped to that ominous baritone. “I was delivering some herbs to Cook at the time, so I never really knew the details. However, from what I could gather, Mr. Abercrombie wasn’t exactly walking the battlements blindfolded of his own free will.”
“Where is he now?” Duncan asked, his face grim.
Marsali dared draw a breath. “To be honest, the last I heard he was hiding out in the chapel.”
“In a coffin?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
He caught hold of her hand, crushing the feeling from her fingers. “The chapel. God help me. Heads are going to roll if they’ve killed a government agent.”
Chapter
5
Duncan plucked loose a handful of the arrows embedded in the exterior of the chapel’s heavy oaken door and threw them to his feet. “It’s Duncan MacElgin, Abercrombie,” he shouted, kneeling at the keyhole. “If you’re in there, man, answer me.”
Silence. Then a shuffling so faint Duncan couldn’t tell if he was conversing with a man or a family of mice inside the chapel. “I’m a friend, Abercrombie. Open this damned door now!”
“Savages,” a muffled voice responded. “MacElgin is naught but another word for savages, and this castle the Devil’s playing field.”
Duncan glanced back at Marsali, catching her broad grin before she could wipe it off her face. “You find this amusing, Marsali?” he asked softly.
“Of course not, my lord,” she murmured, her lips twitching in a traitorous smile. “It’s a disgrace.”
Duncan banged his fist again, dislodging another spray of arrows. “This is General Duncan MacElgin, Abercrombie, and I will protect you. However, I cannot do so if you continue to cower behind that door.”
Silence again.
Duncan swung around, prepared to take his frustration out on Marsali. This time, however, she was ready for him, shaking her head in sympathetic agreement.
“A shocking disgrace, my lord.”
He got to his feet. “This is your last chance, Abercrombie. I swear to God if you do not let me in right now, I am going to get a ladder and order all those nasty children in the courtyard to climb up after you with their crossbows.”
The threat apparently worked.
The crossbar creaked from within. Duncan managed to jump back a fraction of a moment before the door flew open to reveal the diminutive figure cowering in the chapel.
Disbelieving, he stared down at the Lowland Scot administrator who hid behind a MacElgin medieval shield and whose head of unkempt white hair and suspicious face were overshadowed by the holy basin he wore as a helmet on his head. “You—you’re Abercrombie? The Crown sent you to manage my castle?”
“I am. They did.” The suspicion in the man’s hazel eyes hardened into fearful hostility as he in turn noticed Duncan’s half-nakedness and the dingy MacElgin plaid. “But you’re no distinguished marquess and general—you’re one of them.”
Panic in eyes, he extended all his puny strength to slam the door in Duncan’s face. On reflex Duncan threw up his arm and sent the door crashing up against the wall, rattling the row of plucked chickens strung from the chapel rafters. Stepping over the threshold, he stared around him in amazement: papers, books, blankets, eating utensils. The chapel was a regular encampment.
“What the hell has been going on here?” he demanded, his voice booming in the confined space.
Abercrombie dropped his shield and grabbed the broadsword that lay across the pew behind him. “One more step and you’re a dead man,” he said in a menacing squeak, a mouse assaulting a lion.
“Put the sword down before you hurt you
rself, Abercrombie,” Duncan said calmly, struggling not to laugh. “I am not one of them.”
“You’re dressed—or undressed—like one of them.”
Abercrombie poked his finger at Marsali as she sneaked in behind Duncan. “She’s one of them, to be sure. A wild thing, she is, with that bird of prey that follows her like a shadow and her uncle in league with the Devil. And—” Abercrombie broke off, glancing from Duncan to Marsali, as if suddenly wondering if she were the Devil’s handmaiden and this dark man her master.
“I am as much a victim of the clan’s anarchy as you are, Abercrombie,” Duncan tried to explain again. “They assaulted me on the moor and took my clothes. How long have you been locked in here, man?”
Abercrombie lowered the sword, tears of self-pity filling his eyes. “Two months, my lord. Two long months of fending off the wicked bastards.”
“You should not have ordered my cousin flogged your first day here,” Marsali interrupted, her eyes flashing. “It made a very bad impression on the others.”
“Hold your tongue, Marsali,” Duncan said, not looking at her. “Obviously this man has been mistreated, and I will see justice served.”
“Liam was only twelve years old,” she continued, her voice rising at the memory. “Twelve years old and flogged unconscious for a minor transgression.”
“What did the lad do?” Duncan asked Abercrombie.
“Threw a glass of goat’s milk in my face, my lord.” Abercrombie glared at Marsali. “An act of sheer defiance if ever I saw it, and this woman should have been whipped alongside him. Stripping grown men and forcing them to wander about that cold desolate moor. It’s an outrage, an insult to manhood, an—”
“Yes, I have my own opinions of her conduct,” Duncan said in an ironic tone. “But where are the soldiers the Crown sent to remain here and see your orders executed? Don’t tell me they’re holed up in the dungeon?”
“They disappeared their first night in the castle, my lord,” Abercrombie answered, blinking furiously beneath the basin. “I suspect they were chased off by your clansmen. Possibly even murdered.”
Fairy Tale Page 5
