by R. L. Syme
Kensey followed him until she could no longer see him, by which time Malcolm and the rest of the men had arrived by her side. Malcolm dismounted and hobbled toward her.
“Kensey.” He took her hands. “We didn’t notice you were gone until just a few minutes ago. I thought you were with Alec and he thought you were with me. Can you ever forgive me?”
Will was soon at her side as well, steadying her. “I should have noticed right when you left us. But the forest…”
“I didn’t leave you.” Kensey stifled a yawn and stared off toward the spot on the horizon where her strange Highlander had disappeared. “I was knocked off my horse and then he came to help me.”
“Who?” asked Malcolm. “Who was that you were with just now?”
“I think we know who that was.” Alec dismounted alongside Will, stopping the conversation.
“It can’t be.” Disbelief flushed Malcolm’s voice. He turned to stare back toward the stranger’s exeunt. “It cannot have been him. He should still be with de Moray. It should have been one of the others.”
“It was too big to be one of the others. They’re still boys.” Alec stood with hands on his hips and all three men stared to the horizon.
“Should I go after him?” Will wondered.
“Enough talk about it. We need to get the lass back to her home safely before her family worries and sends someone out after her.” Malcolm took Kensey’s arm. “We should arrive within the hour if we keep at a steady pace.”
Alec took the reins to her horse and Malcolm swung up onto the back of his brown stallion. The men waited until Kensey was safely in Malcolm’s arms before mounting their own horses and riding.
Feeling a sluggish warmth again, Kensey leaned into Malcolm’s chest as she had the stranger’s and tried to fall asleep. Something about Malcolm was familiar, but the safety and warmth she’d felt all encompassed in the cloak of the outcast Highlander wasn’t there. Something like normalcy. She kept adjusting herself, trying to reclaim that safe, warm feeling, so she could give back in to sleep, but it never came.
Chapter Five
The squat walls of Assynt House were more welcome in the building sunlight than they had been even on Kensey’s return from France. Her entire body ached in protest as Malcolm pulled to a halt in front of her younger brother, Robert.
“We expected you home last night.” His voice was still a tiny reminder of her father’s absence, holding the harsh edges of his native Gaelic tongue.
“Where is Mother?”
The steward took her horse and offered help as she dismounted. Malcolm’s hand remained on her until she’d been firmly planted on the ground. He shot her a disapproving glare, even as he inclined his head to her.
“Your mother waits in the hall. She insisted on coming down to greet you.”
This tension was not new and had been Kensey’s constant companion since coming home. Her mother had been sickly all her life, but never so much as she had been with her husband imprisoned.
Robert, on the other hand, marveled at the large band of warriors around him. Kensey couldn’t blame the lad for his starry eyes. Because their clan was so young—only since her grandfather’s boyhood had they been given the Assynt hills and moved into the Highlands—their numbers were small. Her father’s own war band was almost nonexistent.
Kensey knew of clans who had populated their land for hundreds of years. Since before the foreigners had invaded. These clans had hundreds of warriors, all from common ancestry, and all under one clan leader. But the MacLeods of her father’s family had originally come from an island in the sky, and the first father had not had enough sons to make many warriors yet. That was Robert’s duty, her mother said every time she recounted the story of the MacLeods coming to Assynt. His duty was to have many sons and bring a population of warriors to the MacLeod name that would rival any of his Norse ancestors’ war bands, and any other laird in Scotland. But because they did not have long roots here, their warriors were few, and were often utilized for other tasks.
Robert would do well to learn from the Sinclairs, who had been at Castle St. Claire since before the written record and numbered their ancestors to the time of the first kings of Scotland.
Even if madness had shattered their bonds in recent years. Duncan would see the clan returned to greatness. Surely.
Malcolm dismounted behind her and clasped arms with her father’s steward, Reyf. “We would be most appreciative of food and water for our horses if you can manage it.” He gestured to his leg. “I should redress my wound, and we have food in our packs.”
Robert pulled at the reins of Malcolm’s horse. “Can I help with the feeding and watering, Reyf?”
The stocky steward glanced at Kensey and she sighed. She hadn’t been back long enough to cement in the boy’s head that she was his guardian, not Reyf. She nodded.
“But let the men come inside.” Kensey swept her arms wide and faced her rescuers and new friends. “I’m sure my mother would like to meet the men who saved her daughter’s life.”
They followed without argument, but she heard one of them mutter, “We’d like to lay our hands on the man, as well.” Several of them laughed and Kensey pretended not to have heard, although she had to agree with the sentiment.
Gabrielle MacLeod sat at the head of the long table, dressed in a fine crushed velvet vestment of blue over a white, long-sleeved gown. With her hair back in the French style and a circlet of gold around her forehead, she could have passed for royalty. Even in her and with the dirt of the road on her, Kensey felt like a scar on the beautiful face of her clan.
She sidled up to the table and turned to the men. “Mother, this is Malcolm Sinclair, brother to Duncan.”
Malcolm bowed deep over his wounded leg. “I apologize for the state of our dress, Lady MacLeod. Our desire was to return your daughter with all haste.”
A gracious smile lit Gabrielle’s face and she reached for Kensey’s hand. With a harder squeeze than Kensey anticipated, she received her mother’s attention. Gabrielle’s voice cracked a bit. “You are welcome to share the break of our fast, Malcolm Sinclair, and all the band of your men.”
Ete and Ene, her mother’s twin housekeepers, appeared with bowls full of bread and set them along the table. Gabrielle spread her arms to invite the warriors to sit and Kensey gestured to Malcolm to take the seat next to her.
She’d been waiting for the opportunity to hear what he planned to tell the group about Fiona and Colin Ross, and knew she’d hear the truth of it when the silence was gone and there would be something besides the road to occupy the men’s attention.
Once the porridge had been poured and the bread distributed, the men tore into their meals and Kensey leaned in to Malcolm. She thought he returned the gesture with a bit too much intimacy for her taste, but she needed to hear what he would say only to her about Fiona’s state of being.
“Tell me of your encounter at Ross.” Kensey whispered, facing the rest of the group, but Malcolm turned his face toward her to whisper back. The smell of honey on his breath overwhelmed her.
“I found her at her bedside, the rest of the house asleep. She was… tied to a corner of the bed like a horse.” Malcolm’s face curled in disgust and Kensey held her breath. Certainly, he might be afraid of her running off, but what kind of brute would tie his future wife to her bed?
“At first, she thought I was one of Ross’s men and struck me. By the time I tried to reason with her, she’d practically roused the house.” Malcolm’s expression remained deadpan on his steady face. His fist tightened around the edge of his bowl until his knuckles turned white. “Then that blasted Ross came in and we fought. I bested him, and she still would not come with me.”
“You must tell me what she said.”
“She said her father would find Duncan and kill him, and her as well, if she did not do as he ordered.” Malcolm put his bowl down and sighed.
“But she loves Duncan. I kn
ow it.” Kensey stared across the hall and felt the familiar memories of affection wash over her. What she would have done to keep Albert. What she would have done to keep Margaret away. Sadness crept upon her slowly as she compared Fiona’s lot with her own. A tear slid out of her control and Malcolm grasped her hand.
“I’m sure she loves Duncan.” A shadow passed over his dark eyes. “Apparently love is not enough.”
***
Kensey stood on the battlements all morning, watching the open land for signs of the man who had saved her. Her mother tried to persuade her to sleep, but it wouldn’t come. After hearing Malcolm’s strange tale of Fiona’s reticence, she wanted nothing more than another problem on which to focus.
Robert had followed the Sinclair men on food for as long as he was in sight of the house, and Kensey confessed a desire to watch over him as well. He took the wooden sword Papa made him and ran out onto the hillside to fight with imaginary English soldiers.
She leaned into one of the crenels and hung her torso over the edge of the tower where it dropped, sheer, into a trench her father’s father had dug around the back side of the keep. Kensey remembered being a little girl and not reaching even the edge of the turrets. So much time had passed. So many things had changed.
Near the height of the sun, she heard footsteps on the tower stairs and braced herself for Ete and Ene or Reyf to come and scold her. This was, truth be told, part of why she’d hidden. Instead, the graceful and slow figure of Gabrielle MacLeod emerged. Kensey crossed the tower floor to take her mother’s arm, surprised she’d made it up all the stairs. Although heaven only knew how long it had taken her to climb them all.
“Why are you out of bed, mother?” Kensey led her to the nearest turret and leaned her mother into the resting space.
“I wanted to speak to you, away from the prying ears of the household.” Gabrielle grasped Kensey’s hand.
“You could have summoned me to the solar. I would have gladly attended you there.” Kensey glanced around to spot her brother and angled herself so she could watch them both at once.
“I have no more privacy in my own bedchamber than I do in the great hall.” Gabrielle’s eyes darkened. “I am glad you came up here. It may be the only place in the entire castle that we can be alone.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my full plan when I left,” Kensey began, but her mother held up a delicate hand.
“That’s not what I came here to discuss with you. Your… father…” Gabrielle stopped as though just saying his name might be too much for her. “You can be disciplined at any time. But we are running out of time for me to talk with you, woman to woman.”
A violent cough shook her mother’s body and Kensey grabbed her shoulders. The woman was skin and bones and it barely took any effort for Kensey to hold her up. She swallowed hard. The illness must be worse than she thought.
“Do you know why your father has never secured another engagement for you, after Albert?”
“I assumed Father had some plan for me here.”
“Let me tell you something, dear.” Gabrielle pulled Kensey’s hands into her own and held them plaintively before her. “Your father loves you very much. And he wants both you and Robert to know the kind of love for yourselves that he and I have found.”
Kensey felt tears forming in her eyes and tried to blink them away. Whenever Gabrielle spoke to her like this, she felt as though her mother were preparing her for her death, or for the day they would send her away to marry a man she didn’t know or love, like Gerald Sutherland had done to Fiona.
“He wants you to find your own heart’s love,” continued Gabrielle, wiping a tear from Kensey’s cheek. “But if you force him to make an alliance for you, he will.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if your father had seen you with this Malcolm today, he would have insisted the boy make an offer of marriage right away. I know the French court, and I’m sure the rules are still much more relaxed there, but here, behavior like that precludes that you have already committed to the marriage union.”
Kensey could not respond to her mother’s condescension. She feared that if she tried to stand up for herself, she might launch into her strange experience with the outcast Sinclair—which would surely displease her mother. The man had no family, after all. And she knew nothing about him, except that he made her heart race when he looked at her, or her skin burn when he touched her, or her insides warm when she thought of him.
Where had that come from? Perhaps she’d been thinking of Albert too much today. Granted, her former fiancé had never produced the kind of heat that crept upon her at the thought of her rescuer, but they had been so close to those feelings, she knew the natural progression of arranged marriages. First affection, then desire, then love.
“I do not intend to marry Malcolm Sinclair.”
“Please.” Gabrielle reached for her hand. “I do not intend to discuss this with… well, with anyone. I merely wanted you to understand my feelings. I do so want you to know true love for yourself.”
Kensey walked past her mother and leaned onto a far crenel, watching Robert swing his wooden sword through the air and land over and over on a defenseless tree trunk. “I think I loved Albert.”
But even as she spoke the words aloud, Kensey wondered if she truly meant them. Memories of affection were often intensified by betrayal, her attendant, Agnes, had often told her.
Gabrielle laughed. “If you only think you loved him, you did not.”
Kensey turned and admired the broad smile that lit Gabrielle’s features. She was so beautiful. “I remember loving him.”
“If you’d really loved him, you would never be able to forget it.” Gabrielle put a hand over her heart. “Besides that, he never loved you, or he would not have thrown you over for a woman half your rank and station. Men only make foolish decisions for love.”
Kensey laughed. The bright noon sun beat down, making the back of her neck a bit sticky under her still dirty hair. She badly needed a bath.
“Please promise me.” Gabrielle continued. “You must promise me you will be more discreet. I know we are not a very rich family, and I am too far out of the line for the throne now for you to be bartered away, but you are a beautiful girl, as I was. And that means you should always be on your guard against men who would take liberties.”
“Men have tried before.” Kensey laughed at little at the memories of men in France trying to steal her into a dark corner or whisper too closely to her while conversing, but she never needed protection. She held up a hand in an attempt to silence the conversation “I know how to defend myself.”
“Against the weak little boys who have chased you before, perhaps.” Gabrielle grasped her hand with urgency. “I just want you to promise me that you will guard your actions and your heart. I want to see you as happy as I have been with your father, not trapped in a loveless marriage just because circumstance required it.”
Kensey hugged her mother tightly, although the firm grasp on her hand was starting to throb. She knew how blessed she was to have such a mother, and such a father. And she never wanted to take them for granted, but she also knew that her mother worried needlessly. Not only could she protect herself from anyone, but she was smart enough not to get entangled with the wrong men.
Again, unbidden, the image of her rescuer’s face came to mind. Of course, her father would take issue with his family status, and her mother would never encourage something she knew Lachlan would be against. Plus, she didn’t even understand her own feelings for the man. But if her father wanted her to make a love match, the closest thing she’d felt to love since Albert was the warmth and safety she’d felt in the arms of the outcast Sinclair.
Chapter Six
Another two weeks passed, and still Lachlan did not appear or send word to his wife. As each day dawned, Gabrielle was a little more frantic about his absence. Duncan Sinclair, Colin Ross, and Gerald Sutherland ha
d all gone to Berwick and returned. Lachlan MacLeod had been gone for over a month now, and there had been no messenger, no page, no note. Nothing.
Only news that he had refused to swear fealty to the king and lay in prison.
To make matters worse, Gabrielle had developed another troubling cough. Kensey had some knowledge of healing from working with Ete and Ene as a girl. Nothing like a real healer, but it passed in certain circumstances. In cases where the disease could not be cured, as Kensey had learned about Gabrielle’s coughing, she sought only to make her mother comfortable. They kept her room and her bed as warm as she could stand it, especially as All Saints Day came and went, and the weather became more unforgiving.
One afternoon without warning, the men sighted a group of men approaching, with two oxen between them carrying something on a large wooden cart. Flanking the oxen were two men walking and one man on horseback. When Reyf called for his mistress to identify them, Gabrielle was still abed, and Kensey came down to see who and what was approaching. She immediately recognized Duncan atop his horse, with his flaming red hair a contrast to the grey sky.
Duncan promised to visit before the first light snow flew, to bring a gift for Gabrielle for her hospitality to his men. On his first visit, he had mentioned to her that his mother had a beautiful loom, when he had seen Gabrielle’s own. They never spoke of Fiona.
Kensey brought her mother down to the hall when Duncan arrived, and smiled on as the two carters carried the giant instrument into their home. Duncan stood on the other side of Gabrielle, watching both mother and daughter marvel at the loom.
“My father had it brought over from Norway when he and his first wife were married,” explained Duncan as Gabrielle touched its sturdy warp beam. “That was long before I was born. She loved to weave.”
Gabrielle took a deep, rattling breath. “May I ask? What happened to your mother?”
