Highland Charm: First Fantasies

by April Holthaus

  The Earl eyed his brother with new interest. "Do ye say so?" His gaze flicked from John to Muriella, where it lingered. "Damn me!" he cried. "Then 'tis more of a celebration that we bargained for." Griming, a malicious glint in his eye, he called to the men below, "What do ye say we have a fete in one week's time? A grand event to commemorate the defeat of the Macleans and anything else worth getting drunk over?"

  A cheer greeted his suggestion from the ranks of men who filled the hall. Some waved their chunks of bread in the air to show their approbation. The Earl nudged John with his elbow. "What do ye say, Johnnie, m'lad?"

  With an effort, John choked back his anger before he replied, "I say ye should have yer celebration, but ye'd best remember that when they're drunk, men sometimes lose all fear and sanity. Likely to do anything, they are." He met his brother's gaze and noticed the lump was in danger of appearing between his sandy eyebrows.

  "Are ye threatening me, little brother?" the Earl asked, no longer smiling.

  "No' at all. I just thought ye should remember." The gleam in John's eyes belied his words.

  Colin was suddenly aware that everyone was watching him with great interest. "We'll discuss this foolishness later," he hissed under his breath.

  "Aye," John said, "no doubt. And ye'll see I have as much to say as ye do."

  "M'lord?" Jenny stepped between John and Colin with her back to the younger brother. "Will ye have some sweetbread?" She held the platter out, swaying provocatively in an effort to distract the Earl.

  His eyes narrowed while he considered shoving her out of the way, but he decided John was best left alone right now. He replaced his scowl with a forced smile and took some of the bread.

  Muriella released her breath in relief. She had feared the brothers would come to blows, and that would only have made things worse. She watched her husband struggling to overcome his anger, glaring at his half-empty platter, his hands clenched on the pitted tabletop. When he became aware of her gaze, he turned. "Ye'll have to forgive my brother," he whispered. "I'm afraid my father didn't teach him manners."

  "It doesn't matter," Muriella whispered back.

  "It does." John turned his attention back to his breakfast. He did not trust himself to discuss Colin's behavior further.

  Muriella began to eat the cold beef and sweetbread Jenny had served her, but when she heard a murmur of curiosity rippling through the men, she looked up. A disheveled stranger stood in the doorway, looking about him. He had obviously been riding hard; his hair was windblown, his body covered with a fine layer of dust, his face strained with exhaustion. He held a leather packet under his arm.

  John looked up and saw the man in the same instant his wife did. He knew the messenger at once. Glancing at Muriella in apprehension, he cursed the man's poor timing.

  As the stranger started toward the high table, John rose, intending to stop him before he'd crossed the hall, but he had barely swung his leg over the bench when Colin called, "Where have ye come from, man? Do ye bring me letters?"

  "I come from Cawdor, m'lord, and my letters are for Sir John."

  Annoyed, the Earl stood, ignoring his brother's angry exclamation. "Not again!" Colin snapped. "Don't tell me there's more trouble brewing in that little keep in the north."

  "Aye, m'lord," the stranger said. "There's trouble enough."

  Out of the corner of his eye, the Earl saw Muriella lean forward, suddenly intent. He smiled to himself. "What is it now?" he demanded. "Another murder or another scandal?"

  "Whatever it is," John hissed in fury, "'tis my business, not yers." He saw what his brother was trying to do, but John did not intend to let this touch Muriella. "Come," he said to the messenger, who had paused at the foot of the platform. "We'll discuss yer news in the library." With a sidelong look at the Earl, he added, "Where 'tis quiet and a man can think." Before he left the table, he tried to smile reassuringly at his wife but knew he was unsuccessful. As he joined the stranger and started to wind his way through the rows of trestle tables, he could feel Muriella's bewildered gaze burning like a brand into his back.

  Chapter 39

  The dream began as it always did. Muriella was a child again, happy and without fear, running with the wind in her hair on the hills near Kilravok. Laughing into the cool morning breeze, she lost herself among the rustling shadows of the leaves in the forest. She had to hide before her cousin found her and won the game.

  "Muriella!" Hugh called softly, as he ducked beneath the low branches of an oak. "I'll find ye in the end," he whispered, his voice warm with teasing.

  She moved deeper into the woods, where she could watch him yet not be seen. Holding her breath, she smiled when he paused to listen, the speckled sunlight dancing over his bright red hair. Then she blinked and he vanished, his raw leather boots making no sound on the soft earth of the forest.

  Muriella crept from behind the oak that had concealed her and stood peering among the hawthorns, pines and oaks. She tried to catch a glimpse of Hugh's red hair, but saw only the green of the leaves and the gray of the shifting darkness. Then she heard a shout of glee and her cousin was behind her, winding his hands in her long auburn braids. "Ye see," he said, "I told ye I'd find ye!" He tugged on her hair, swinging her around. She went gladly, laughing as she turned to meet his triumphant gaze. But when she saw his face, the laughter died in her throat. This was not her beloved Hugh, but the grotesque mask of a stranger. The eyes were sunken, hollow, the skin black and scarred. The mouth was twisted into a leering smile of contempt.

  Muriella awoke, gasping, but even when she opened her eyes, the image of the ghastly face would not leave her. Always before, the dream had left her with a feeling of peace, but this time the contentment had turned to a deep foreboding that lingered and grew in the enveloping darkness.

  Instinctively, she turned, reaching for the reassuring warmth of her husband's arms, but he was not there. With a rush of despair, she remembered; it had been a week since he'd held her after the battle, but he had not come to her again. Almost from the moment the messenger arrived from Cawdor, John had been away. He left before dawn each morning and returned long after the keep had fallen silent for the night. Muriella was sure his absence had to do with the trouble at Cawdor. Hour after hour, Colin's words rang in her head: What is it this time? Another murder or another scandal? She would have given much to know the answer. But more than that, she thought, hands clenched against the inevitable pain, she would have given much to know why John had not held her again, kissed her, made her forget her fear in the rush of her newborn happiness.

  Unable to sleep, she knelt at the window, throwing open the shutters in an effort to get some relief. Even in the darkness, she knew a deluge was coming. She could feel the seething moisture in the air. The storm she had expected had not yet broken, but every day the mountains grew bleaker, the clouds darker and more threatening. And every day the emptiness inside grew until it consumed her from within and there was nothing else.

  * * *

  On the floor by the open window, Muriella waited for dawn, then rose, put on her mauve silk gown and kirtle, and made her way downstairs. She had not thought anyone else would be about, but when she reached the Great Hall, she found several men coming and going from the room on the far side where the weapons were kept. Though their voices were raised in excitement, Muriella could not make out the words. Without conscious thought, she turned in that direction. Long before she'd reached the place where the men were gathered, she heard John's voice above the others. "Are ye sure this time?"

  Muriella paused. It seemed like an eternity since she had heard that voice. Its power mesmerized her for an instant.

  Then Richard answered, breaking the spell. "Aye. I told ye, I took care to make certain."

  "Then we'd best be on our way as soon as possible. Are the horses saddled?"

  "Aye, m'lord."

  Moving forward soundlessly, Muriella stopped on the threshold. She had never felt comfortable in this chamber, whose walls we
re lined with broadswords and daggers, claymores and spears. She felt uneasy among the implements of war, but she saw at once that John was at home here. He stood in the center of the bare stone floor, arms akimbo, waiting with impatience while Duncan adjusted the wide, strong leather of his master's sword belt.

  Her husband, like the others, was armed for battle in his long saffron shirt, leather doublet, and thick wool trews. His father's sword hung at his side and two large daggers had been thrust into his belt. Muriella felt a strange constriction in her chest. Somehow in the past week, she'd forgotten how broad John's shoulders were, how dark and wild his hair—forgotten, too, how harsh and unyielding his face became when he was angry. That he was angry now she had no doubt; she could see it in every rigid line of his body, in the energy that seemed to radiate from him in waves until it touched every other man in the room. The sense of foreboding grew more insistent and she had to force herself to breathe evenly.

  At last one of the men noticed Muriella hovering in the doorway. He froze with his sword in midair. Slowly, one by one, the men sensed his discomfort and a hush fell over the room.

  John looked up. "What the devil—" He broke off abruptly when he saw his wife.

  "I'd like to speak to ye," she said.

  His eyes gleamed with an emotion she could not understand and the lines of his face hardened. For a moment, she thought he would refuse her outright. Then, with a curious twist of his lips, he nodded at the men. No one said a word as they took their weapons and left the room. Duncan was the last to go.

  "I can't linger," John said, before the door had closed at the squire's back. "What is it?"

  He struggled to speak calmly, but could not disguise the tension in his body. He had not been sleeping any better than she, Muriella realized. "Where are ye going?" she asked.

  Her husband looked away, running his hand through his hair in agitation. "There's something I have to do. Something that can't wait any longer."

  "But why do ye need yer sword and shield and leather doublet?"

  His answering smile was grim. "'Tis wise to have them when ye go to surprise an enemy before he surprises ye."

  "What enemy?" his wife asked in desperation. "Why must ye speak in riddles?"

  John saw the dread in Muriella's eyes and hesitated. There were things he must tell her that had nothing to do with his sword and his shield, things that must be said with gentleness and care. Just now he found it impossible to summon such feelings. He had to be away before it was too late.

  She was waiting expectantly, nervously. Even through the slow-simmering rage in his blood, he ached for her and wanted to take the confusion from her eyes. But the memory of her tortured voice came to him like a warning: The horror is here, inside my own head.

  He would not add to that lingering horror. He had made a silent vow to her, and he would honor it now. "Muriella," he said, keeping his voice steady with an effort, "when a man is too blind to see he's gone too far, 'tis time to show him the error of his ways. And I intend to do just that before the day has grown much older."

  He closed one hand tightly around the hilt of his sword and with the other, stroked his dagger in a fierce caress.

  The feeling of foreboding was now so great that Muriella thought it would choke her. She lunged forward, grasping John's doublet in her hands. "Please don't go!" she cried. "There's danger waiting for ye; I know it. Please!"

  John stiffened, stepping backward until her hands fell away. "Don't ask that of me," he said harshly. "Not ever. Danger or no danger, live or die, one thing I won't ever do, even for ye, is give up my honor."

  I wouldn't ever stain the name of Campbell by hiding like a coward in my keep. What I do, I do because I must—for honor. How often, Muriella wondered, would John echo his father's words? But as she met her husband's implacable gaze, she knew that, no matter what he said, it was not concern for his honor that drove him now. The look that glittered in his eyes was rage—pure and bright and coldly menacing.

  * * *

  "I've come to say farewell."

  At the sound of Elizabeth's voice, Muriella looked up from the tapestry laid out on the floor of the solar. For the past few hours she had been kneeling on the cold stone, stitching together the slits between the different colors on the backside of the finished hanging. "The trunks are ready?" she asked her sister-in-law.

  Elizabeth closed the door behind her. "Aye, at last. Once Megan took over, things went much more smoothly. Thank ye for giving her up for a morning."

  "I would have come myself—" Muriella began.

  Elizabeth shook her head. "I told ye, I couldn't have borne that. I didn't want ye there, reminding me—" She broke off and busied herself brushing the rushes aside, then seated herself on the floor.

  "I wouldn't have spoken a word if ye didn't want me to," Muriella told her.

  Smiling gently, Elizabeth said, "Ye needn't say a word to make me remember. I told ye before, 'tis in yer eyes." She glanced away. "'Tis difficult enough to start for Auchinbreck so soon, but my husband says his men are restless and he doesn't wish to leave them for so long. 'Tis odd," she mused, looking around the small stone chamber pensively, "when I first realized they'd brought me to Kilchurn, I wanted to be anywhere but here, yet now I don't want to go."

  "Maybe ye'll find ye like it at Auchinbreck, once ye've made it yer home."

  "Mayhap," Elizabeth murmured. "But that doesn't make it any easier to leave ye. 'Twas ye, after all, who kept me alive when I would have given up."

  Brow furrowed, Muriella regarded her sister-in-law in concern. "Ye said once that I should have let ye die."

  Elizabeth shivered at the memory. "I was mad with grief then. Things are different now."

  Muriella could see it was true. Elizabeth had clearly been sleeping better; the shadows under her eyes were fading and the color had begun to creep back into her cheeks. "Ye're looking well," the younger woman said. "Mayhap yer marriage suits ye better than ye expected. I've been watching ye over the past few days, and it seems as though 'twill no' be hard after all to accept what ye can't change."

  Elizabeth frowned at the thought of her own words. Had it only been a week ago that she had stood in Muriella's chamber and felt the world dissolving into darkness at her feet? It seemed a lifetime had passed since that cold, gray morning. "Sometimes Archibald frightens me," she admitted in a whisper. "Not because he mistreats me, but because he doesn't. I don't know how to fight his kindness."

  Muriella stared at the needle threaded with blue wool in her hand. "Mayhap," she said at last, "ye don't need to fight anymore."

  With a sigh, Elizabeth settled herself more comfortably on the floor. "I try to tell myself I must. I warn myself to think, to remember how much they've all hurt me before. But sometimes I forget, just the same. This morning I did." Her eyes misted over, and she struggled to find her voice. "Archibald came to me and told me he'd had my things sent from Duart to Auchinbreck. I'm sure the Macleans weren't happy to give them up. My father had given me some wonderful jewels before I left Kilchurn, and many of the gowns were worth a great deal."

  She paused to look up at Muriella. "Archibald says they gave him no trouble, but I'm certain 'tis not the truth. He only said it because he didn't want to distress me. I know he had to threaten them somehow."

  "So the trunks will be waiting for ye when ye reach Auchinbreck?"

  "Aye." Elizabeth took a deep breath. "I'm not certain I have the strength to look inside them. Before I could tell him so, my husband said if I never want to open them, I needn't do so. But if I find, in time, the past is easier to bear, then my things will be there—waiting." She gazed at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. "When he told me that, I wanted to weep."

  Even now her eyes filled with tears, yet she smiled. And for the first time there was no sadness in her smile, no bitter realization, no regret. Muriella, moved by her own aching memory of a chamber emptied of scarlet and filled instead with green and gold and brown, put her arm across the othe
r woman's shoulders. "I'm glad for ye," she said. "Mayhap Archibald Campbell is exactly what ye needed to make ye forget."

  Elizabeth nodded. "Ye know, at first I thought 'twas cruel beyond words that my husband shared my father's name. But now I sometimes wonder if the second Archibald Campbell isn't meant somehow to make up for all the pain the first caused me."

  "I hope 'tis so," Muriella whispered.

  "Aye." Once again the two women glanced away from one another. Seeking a distraction, Elizabeth turned her attention to the tapestry spread across the width of the chamber. "I've watched ye work on this so often since I came to Kilchurn that I can't believe 'tis finished at last. May I see it before I go?"

  Muriella rose, hands trembling as she lifted the huge tapestry, then drew one end up and across the other so that, when she reached the far side of the chamber, the front of the hanging was visible. No one but she and Megan had seen the completed design, and she awaited Elizabeth's response with eagerness and apprehension.

  Eyes wide with admiration at the vivid colors, Elizabeth knelt beside the first panel, in which the bubbling burn flowed by while the Kelpies watched from the protection of their leaf-shrouded bower. In the distance, the golden-haired woman led her friends as they rode to the hunt, laughing, their plaids caught up in the wind behind them. "'Tis lovely," Elizabeth murmured, "Ye can almost hear their laughter."

  She moved to the second panel, where the water swirled around the woman's waist as the burn swelled into a deadly torrent. Her mouth was open in terror, the wreath of flowers askew on her long, flowing hair. Within the rushing water, among the leaves and in the darkness beyond, the Kelpies laughed and danced, celebrating their victory over the lady who had ruled their valley for too long. Elizabeth shivered at the gleaming triumph in their eyes.

  Finally, she came to the last panel. She leaned forward to look more closely at the sweeping grandeur of Loch Awe. The islands of birch and larch were lovely in every detail of earth and bark and shadowy leaves; the water rippled gently, the moon shone down in silver radiance, and the path of golden light touched the water with ethereal brilliance. Elizabeth held her breath, running her fingers over the fabric, marveling at its fine weave and subtle shading of color. Then she noticed for the first time the red-haired woman kneeling on the near bank, staring at her reflection in the water. But it was not her reflection. It was—Elizabeth's hand grew still above the image of her brother's blurred but vibrant face. She looked up to find Muriella watching, eyes dark with grief. Neither spoke for a long moment.