Fairy Tale

by Jillian Hunter

  Chapter

  11

  Duncan advanced on Marsali like a panther, forcing her back toward the heavy Jacobean four-poster that dominated the castle bedchamber. “I can’t quite decide what to do with you,” he said with deadly calm. “The thumb screws come to mind. And there are other ways…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Your father used to leave me alone down in the dungeon for days at a time himself.”

  She wrapped her thin arms around the carved bedpost, her heart pounding in her ears. “Everyone in the castle will come running to my rescue if you hurt me.”

  His smile chilled her. “The damage will be done by then, won’t it? Let them come. I’m in the mood for a fight.”

  He began to peel off his gloves, tossing them down upon the bed with cold deliberation. Marsali closed her eyes, pressing her spine against the post. Where was Uncle Colum when she needed him? What good did it do to have a damned wizard in the family if he had no sense of timing?

  “Help,” she whispered weakly, feeling the angry heat of Duncan’s body against hers. And then in a louder, frantic voice, “Help! He’s going to kill me!”

  Nothing happened.

  Eun did not slam against the shutter and burst into the bedchamber to peck off Duncan’s nose.

  Her clansmen did not batter the door down to save her. Nothing.

  His warm breath brushed her cheek. His low voice sent chills of anxiety arrowing down her spine. “Do you have any idea whose coach you ambushed today, Marsali?”

  She gave a stiff shake of her head, then gasped in terror when he cupped her jaw, forcing her face toward his. She squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation.

  Duncan stared down at her scrunched-up face, resisting an absurd impulse to laugh. “Stop cringing like that, for God’s sake. I am not going to hurt you.”

  She cracked one eye partially open to take a peep at him. “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  She opened her other eye, regarding him with suspicion. “What about the thumb screws?”

  “I don’t think they’d fit.”

  She swallowed, searching his face for a sign of forgiveness. “I did what I had to do,” she said loudly.

  “That was my future aunt-in-law’s coach you ambushed.”

  “What? Oh, hell.” She released her breath, guilt and embarrassment deflating her fear. “Well, how was I supposed to know?”

  “You’re a reckless, impulsive creature.”

  “You should have warned us, my lord,” she said, with an injured sniff at the insult.

  He studied her face in silence. “What do I have to do to put an end to the ambushes?” he asked unexpectedly.

  “Make them stop building the road.”

  “I can’t. You’re asking the impossible.”

  She lowered her arms, her throat aching. The repercussions of his calm resignation frightened her more than his temper. “But if you can’t stop them, then no one can and the killing will go on.”

  “Not necessarily. However, I’ll handle it in my own way, and you are not to get involved.”

  “How are you going to handle it?”

  “Leave the matters of war to men, little girl,” he said quietly. “Your interference will only make things worse.” They stared at each other, anger and antagonism preventing any attempts at understanding. He wondered how such a fragile slip of femininity could harbor such a fierce soul. She wondered what it would take to make him care.

  “What good is a warrior who refuses to fight?” she asked aloud, her face challenging.

  The door burst open before Duncan could reply, and he felt a stab of resentment at the interruption, not only because he’d had no chance to defend himself but because she had actually managed to engage his emotions at a deeper level than anyone else had ever dared.

  She froze in her flight to escape halfway across the room, realizing in shock that the figure in the doorway was not a clansman who’d come to her rescue but a stately older woman in a Chinese silk dressing robe. The woman with the English army officers whose carriage she had ambushed on the moor.

  Marsali backed away from her until she bumped up against Duncan, who stood unmoving, his face exasperated at the interruption. She felt trapped, caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

  The Englishwoman grinned, recognizing her, her heavily painted features warm and friendly. “You’re the girl on the moor,” she said, studying Marsali’s disgruntled face in amusement. “That was a wonderful joke you played on us, by the way. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in ages.”

  Marsali looked at her in suspicious silence, taking in her powdered silver-blond hair, the pearl necklace and dangling earrings, the broad, almost masculine shoulders, and expressive gray eyes. Why was she not furious for being humiliated like the others? Why did she wear that silly green gown with butterflies embroidered along the billowing sleeves? And what was the old fool blathering about? Was she a mental case?

  She jumped, startled out of her thoughts, as Duncan bent his head to hers. “I explained to Edwina about our little “prank’ this morning. About the Highland sense of humor, the ambush you staged to welcome her.”

  “And she believed you?” Marsali asked in an incredulous voice.

  “Duncan and I have always played jokes on each other.” Edwina sauntered into the room, eyeing the heavy Jacobean furnishings with a delicate shudder of distaste.

  “Yes.” Duncan smiled wryly. “I remember the Christmas Eve that you and Sarah brought all the barnyard animals into the drawing room.”

  “That wasn’t a joke,” Edwina murmured. “The poor darlings were freezing.”

  “Sarah cut up my favorite cloak to make dresses for them, and she thought it was funny.”

  At the mention of Sarah, Edwina’s pleasant expression took on an edge of tension. She made a great pretense of examining an ivory casket on the dressing table. “Sarah had her moments,” she said after a pause, as if she were speaking of someone who no longer existed.

  Marsali gave her a sidelong glance. Sarah. This frivolous old Sassenach’s niece was the woman the chieftain loved. Marsali felt her first pang of possessive jealousy of all the people outside the castle who had laid claim to Duncan’s loyalty. The world had kept him long enough.

  Duncan moved around her, his demeanor unruffled. “This is Marsali Hay, Edwina, the daughter of the clan’s late tacksman.”

  Edwina gave her a friendly smile; she almost seemed relieved to turn her attention away from Duncan. “You’re a very lovely young lady, Marsali.”

  Marsali plopped down on the bed, refusing to be moved. “You’re a silly old thing.”

  Duncan swung around, his eyes boring into hers. “You will apologize to her ladyship for that rude remark.”

  She scowled up at him, her toes twitching with a tension that gripped her entire body. Apologize? She set her jaw, stubbornly silent. The day she apologized to a grinning Sassenach with pearl earrings was the day she died.

  Duncan leaned down until his face was level with hers. His low voice vibrated with warning. His hand pressed down on her backside. “There are rats in the dungeon, lass.”

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows and glared at Edwina. “Oh, all right. I’m sorry that you’re a silly old thing.”

  Edwina began to laugh. “How refreshing! The girl is as straightforward as a pin.”

  Duncan squared his shoulders, forcing a smile. “She could take a few lessons in decorum from Sarah, couldn’t she?”

  Edwina met his eyes in the mirror. “I’m not sure about that,” she said in an undertone.

  Duncan gave her a puzzled look. “It’s that Highland sense of humor,” he said again, a little uneasily. “She and my clansmen take getting used to.”

  “Well, I suppose I can’t blame her for resenting me.” Edwina stooped before the pier glass to smooth her powdered ringlets. “After all, I am considered the enemy in these parts. Believe it or not, though, Marsali, I do have sympathy for the Scottish cause. I’ve r
ead all about your plight in the papers.”

  Marsali flipped onto her stomach, hiding her face in the pillow. She refused to let the silly creature charm her. Bad enough that she herself was so enamored of the chieftain, who hadn’t done a damn thing to earn her trust. She refused to be disloyal to those she had loved and lost by liking the enemy. If not for the English, Marsali’s family and many others would still be alive.

  “We will expect you downstairs for supper, Marsali,” Duncan said in a cool voice. “You will please wash your face before coming to the table. And you will change into another dress.”

  She bounced over onto her back. “I don’t have another one. I’m poor. The chieftain of my clan prefers gallivanting around the world to taking care of his people. What does he care that he left us in rags?”

  Duncan’s blue eyes held hers in a long intense stare until she began to squirm. “I’m not through with you, Cinderella,” he said with a heartless smile, and then he turned away, quickly ushering Edwina to the door as if afraid of what Marsali would say to embarrass him next.

  She lay unmoving where he’d left her on the bed, glowering at his back and listening intently to the conversation between him and that damned Englishwoman in the robe.

  “When did you say Sarah was arriving?” she heard Duncan ask in an anxious voice. Then, “God, I wish you’d told me you were coming… Come on, let’s go to the chapel. It’s the last place in the castle where we’re likely to be interrupted.”

  Chapter

  12

  Duncan sank down onto the pew, unable to absorb the emotional blow Edwina had just dealt him. “If this is one of your jokes,” he said after a moment, “I don’t find it any more amusing than what happened to you on the moor this morning.”

  Edwina glanced up uneasily at the strands of rope dangling from the rafters. “I know the Highlands are rather primitive, but don’t tell me they hang people in here,” she murmured, unconsciously fingering the pearls at her throat.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Duncan said tersely, irritated by the woman’s lapse in attention. “You were joking, weren’t you?”

  Edwina sighed, her gaze drifting back down to Duncan’s troubled face. “I only wish it were a joke. Her father and I reacted just like you at first. It was so out of character for Sarah.” She patted his hand. “The cowards sent me all this way to tell you. I was the only one with the guts for it.”

  “I can’t believe she would do this to me.”

  “Those aren’t chicken feathers on the floor, are they, Duncan?”

  “It’s been, what?—only three months or so since she came to me with a list of people to invite to our wedding. You were there, Edwina. Did you notice anything wrong between us? Did I miss something?”

  Edwina glanced away, distressed by Duncan’s uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Duncan,” she said quietly, “that is the problem in a nutshell. It’s been thirteen months since you and my niece had that conversation.”

  “What? Thirteen months? No.” Duncan lifted his head, disbelief and shame spreading across his face. “You’re wrong. You have to be.”

  “It’s been over a year, Duncan. Yes, on my honor it has, and so much can happen in that time. You really can’t blame Sarah for doubting there was ever going to be a wedding. I doubted it myself.”

  Duncan got to his feet, his voice wounded and indignant. “I’ll bring her back home. No, I won’t. To hell with her. Where did they go? How long ago did they leave? My God, didn’t your family try to stop them? It can’t be too late for an annulment.”

  “It is,” Edwina said, cringing at the look of black fury that overshadowed Duncan’s face. She swallowed, her voice faltering. “The last I heard she was pregnant.”

  And then Duncan lost his temper.

  Marsali pulled away from the keyhole where she crouched, evesdropping, shocked from head to toe at the swearing and yelling that profaned the chapel. Not that the MacElgins had ever had much use for religion to begin with, except when they were dying or marrying a woman they’d abducted, and then it was only to haul the poor old priest across the moor to administer the last rites or wedding Mass to a clansman.

  But the language Duncan used, the creativity of his curses, blistered her poor ear. He used words she’d never used but wished to remember: Wouldn’t the clan be impressed if she could swear like that? She grinned at the thought, wondering how best to use the weapon of her secret knowledge to her advantage.

  His English lady love had jilted him, thrown him over for an elderly viscount—which only proved the woman hadn’t been worthy of him in the first place, the way Marsali saw it.

  She rose to her feet and stretched, shaking her head at this fortuitous turn of events. He was all the clan’s now, as the good Lord obviously intended it to be. Things were going as planned.

  She paused and crept toward the stairwell, then held her breath as the chapel door banged open and Duncan, emerged, to stomp over the very spot where she’d sat eavesdropping not seconds before.

  The hurt anger on his face actually moved her to pity him, to forgive him for heartlessly ordering her to make friends with a foolish Englishwoman, while Marsali’s beloved, her brothers and father, lay buried forever under a cairn of cold lonely stones.

  She pressed herself against the wall as he swept past. To her surprise, he didn’t even glance her way, too self-absorbed in the anger of betrayal to even notice her.

  He strode beyond her sight, his profile so forbidding it looked as if it were etched in stone. Releasing her breath, Marsali turned and darted down the stairs, her throat strangely dry, her sense of victory suddenly hollow at the image of the proud man’s pain.

  Duncan stood outside the door to the stone kitchen, struggling to control the foul mood that possessed him. He had sat alone in his chamber for two hours, wallowing in bad wine and self-pity, and then he had sat in a drunken stupor at the head of the banqueting table for another hour in the great hall, staring at Edwina’s guilt-stricken face, Sarah’s betrayal standing like a barricade of stones between them.

  Supper had been delayed.

  Not a single clansman had appeared. Not so much as a bite of stringy poultry had been served. In fact, a ghostly air of abandonment hung over the castle. The very walls whispered sly accusations and seemed to mock him.

  And the reason?

  Ah, yes, the reason. Well, the reason herself was perched on the oak chopping block in the cavernous kitchen, holding court to a spellbound audience of MacElgin clansmen. With a dramatic flair worthy of Drury Lane, Marsali Hay performed her passionate little heart out to a captive audience.

  Duncan could almost admire her theatrical talent. Her voice caught just the right inflection; her small face portrayed an astonishing range of emotion; her supple body played out the pantomime with brilliant skill.

  And the subject of her performance: Was it a Shakespearean comedy? A Highland folk tale?

  No. Duncan’s mouth tightened into an unpleasant smile. The girl was acting out Sarah’s betrayal, while in the background Cook and her enrapt scullions allowed the salmon supper to go up in smoke. Chopped vegetables cooked to mush in the forgotten broth. Never mind that Marsali portrayed him with embarrassing empathy as the wronged party and Sarah as a heartless, haughty Jezebel. Never mind that a few of his hardened clansmen sniffed back a tear or two in sympathy for their chieftain. Duncan’s humiliation was not only complete, it was also the evening’s entertainment.

  Footsteps sounded in the dirt behind him. He glanced around to see Edwina tramping across the unlit yard in a red taffeta evening gown, looking hopelessly lost.

  “Finally, Duncan,” Edwina said loudly, her aristocratic face annoyed. “It was bad enough to leave me sitting alone at the table without so much as a crust of bread. But to just get up and—”

  “Be quiet, Edwina. Listen to this.”

  Edwina listened, her earnest gray eyes widening in amazement as an astonishingly accurate imitation of Sarah’s cultured voice wafted
across the yard from the kitchen door.

  “It’s been over a year, and is Duncan planning our wedding? Is Duncan sending me tender love notes, consulting a jeweler about my betrothal ring?” Marsali’s voice rose into an indignant squeak. “No. Duncan is in Scotland.”

  This she pronounced with a shudder of contempt, pinching her nose as if she had stepped in a cesspool. “In a castle with some medieval clan of traitorous men who wear skirts. To think that I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and actually travel there…”

  “What a nasty woman,” Owen interrupted, never once questioning that Marsali’s version of the story might be a little biased.

  “Aye, holdin’ her nose at us.”

  “And makin’ fun of our clothes.”

  “She called us traitors too,” Cook chimed in from the fireplace.

  “Even the chieftain doesna deserve such a faithless creature,” Lachlan said.

  Marsali nodded in agreement. “He’s a hard man, but she’s no cause to treat him like that.”

  “Does this mean we have to be nice to him now?” someone asked.

  Marsali shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt. My father always said that even the fiercest beast responds to kindness.”

  “The chieftain is well rid of her,” Johnnie shouted from the corner.

  Effie pushed to the forefront of the crowd gathered around the chopping block, a piglet squealing under each arm. “Ye’re breaking our hearts, Marsali,” she said with a deep sigh. “What did the chieftain say when he heard the news?”

  “I was just getting to that part before everyone interrupted me,” Marsali said in annoyance. “Give me a moment. I’ve got to get back into the mood. Ahem.”

  Duncan glanced back at Edwina, realizing by the woman’s enrapt face that she was actually enjoying the brat’s performance herself.