TENDER FEUD

by Nicole Jordan

  “Who is Ellen?” Katrine asked into the fierce silence.

  Ignoring her completely, Raith narrowed his gaze on Callum. “You’ll mind your own business,” he said in soft warning, “and you’ll keep away from her.” Then he shot a contemptuous glance at Katrine. “Flora will find her something to wear.”

  “Who is Flora?” Katrine demanded with growing frustration at the way the two men were speaking about her as if she weren’t there.

  “Your new jailer,” Raith supplied, getting the last word before ushering his cousin from the room and shutting the door behind him.

  Left alone, Katrine looked around the small garret room in dismay. At least it was clean. And as comfortable as any servant had a right to expect. And she hadn’t been locked in. That was some consolation—that Raith meant to treat her as a servant rather than a prisoner.

  But only some. Katrine bit her lip as a wave of despair threatened to swamp her. How long would she be kept here until her uncle managed to liberate her? A week? A month? The prospect of remaining even one minute in this den of thieves was daunting.

  But then she caught herself and stiffened her spine. She might be Raith MacLean’s captive, but she wasn’t totally at his mercy. There must be a dozen ways she could retaliate for his abduction of her—if she only put her mind to figuring them out. He expected her to submit meekly to her captivity, but she could find subtle ways of defying him, of sabotaging his plans for her until she was ransomed or rescued or managed to escape. Escape. That was what she must focus on. Escape and retaliation.

  She would take every opportunity to make Raith MacLean’s life miserable, Katrine thought with recovering defiance, if not actual relish. He would rue the day he had ever laid eyes on her.

  Chapter Five

  To her immense frustration and dismay, however, Katrine had little opportunity during the next few days to implement her notions of either escape or retaliation. As much as she despised admitting it, she realized that she would have to bide her time for the moment.

  Escape seemed hopeless; her captors were watching her too closely. The day after her arrival at Cair House she twice tested the limits of her prison. At her first attempt, a stout footman barred her path the instant she set foot outside the house. The second time she made it all the way to the stables before Lachlan sounded the alarm. Katrine went scurrying back to the kitchens, for she had no intention of allowing her beefy nemesis to throw her over his shoulder again. It was humiliating enough to be chased back across the yard under the contemptuous, watching eyes of the MacLean men. She would simply have to wait until her captors relaxed their guard, she decided.

  As for her plan to make Raith MacLean miserable, she was required to postpone that, too, for she never saw him. She had ample cause to remember her vow of revenge, though; not only had Raith abducted her, he’d added insult to injury by expecting her, a prisoner, to earn her keep.

  Yet she’d already learned that stubbornness and pride availed her little; her earlier defiance of him had only earned her blisters and a skinned knee. What was more, Raith’s actions then had given her every reason now to believe he meant his threat to imprison her. And so Katrine gritted her teeth for the time being and performed the menial tasks she was assigned, suffering the indignity with grim determination.

  In a way, though, the work was welcome. She had never fancied idleness, and the occupation kept her from thinking too much about her fate. And it was better than being locked in her room. She would have gone daft, sitting and worrying about what would happen to her.

  The work was hard, but her reception was worse. The other household servants, some half dozen in all, barely tolerated her presence, treating her with a stony chill and even sullen hatred. They were obviously under orders not to speak to her, but she had no doubt their repudiation was primarily due to her being a half-English Campbell.

  The scullery maid was the only person who seemed kindly disposed toward her. But that, Katrine decided, was only because she had assumed many of the scullery chores. The day following her arrival she was put to work in the kitchens, chopping vegetables and scrubbing pewter dishes.

  As far as the servant hierarchy went, Katrine figured she ranked somewhere beneath the scullery maid, down among the milk cows and sheep. Indeed, it was clear some of the servants would just as soon have tossed her to the corbies, the Scots’ term for carrion crows. She might be a captive, but no one should be subjected to such disrespect, as she would have told Raith MacLean if he had ever come near her.

  Her chief jailer, the housekeeper at Cair House, dealt with her a bit more kindly at least. Flora MacDonald, Katrine discovered shortly, was a dour, hardworking woman, wiry and gray-haired, with a long nose that looked out of place on her full-cheeked face. Her sharp blue eyes missed little of what went on in her domain.

  If she remembered what the Campbells had done to the MacDonalds at Glencoe, she never let on. It was fortunate, however, that Katrine was never one to shun work and that the housekeeper was a fair taskmaster; for this was a typically frugal Scots household, where every able-bodied person was expected to pull his own weight. Flora accepted Katrine’s presence with a stern admonition that she wouldn’t be ill-treated if she did as she was bidden. How ironic, Katrine found herself reflecting with ill-humor, that her Aunt Gardner, that most fastidious of housekeepers, would have thought highly of Flora.

  Flora, no relation to the Flora MacDonald who had helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after the disastrous 1745 rebellion, had come to Cair House with her late mistress, who was also a MacDonald, Katrine was to learn.

  “‘Tis nigh on seven years I’ve been here,” Flora confessed in a rare slow moment while Katrine cleaned turnips, “and six since I’ve had the running of the house. Above my station, it was, but the mistress would give me the position, whether I wanted it or no’.” A sad look crept into the older woman’s eyes. “Ellen MacDonald was the sweetest lass ye could e’er hope to meet, God rest her soul.”

  “Would Ellen be the laird’s mother then?” Katrine asked, taking advantage of Flora’s nostalgic mood. She meant to discover everything she could about her captors in hopes of increasing her chances for escape.

  “Nay, Ellen was the laird’s wife.”

  Katrine’s eyes widened in surprise. She hadn’t pictured Raith MacLean as being human enough to have a wife. But at least she knew now who Ellen was. And she now understood why Raith had turned so fierce when Callum said she and Ellen were of a size. The Laird of Ardgour wouldn’t want to besmirch the memory of his late wife by allowing a Sassenach Campbell to wear her clothes.

  It was sacrilegious, as well, for someone like her to wear the MacLean tartan. Several of the maids were garbed in skirts of bright MacLean red and green, the dark green tartan being the MacLean hunting plaid, but Flora had found her an old skirt of brown wool homespun that was too long. It was made to be worn over side hoops, so Katrine had to take care not to trip over the hem. Even so, she was grateful to have a garment to don besides her shortened nightshift. Flora’s generosity didn’t go so far as to include a corset or petticoat with the outfit, but she must have been concerned for modesty, for she provided Katrine with a white kerchief to tuck into her bodice, along with a cambric apron and stockings. There was no mobcap, for Scots lasses normally went bareheaded or covered their hair with a length of plaid.

  As for the Laird of Ardgour, Katrine saw nothing of him for three days, and his absence only added to her frustration; it was obvious that Raith MacLean considered her quite beneath his notice. Nor did she lay eyes on his roguish cousin Callum, or anyone else who might have been willing to disobey the laird’s orders to give her the time of day.

  The enforced silence wore on Katrine’s nerves even more than her imprisonment. She was accustomed to sharing her thoughts with her sisters and speaking her mind with her cousins, and the fact that there was no one on whom she could vent her frustration and anger set her temper to boiling.

  Worse, she still had too
much time for contemplation. Her despairing thoughts kept returning to the same questions. How long would it be before she was released? How long before her uncle discovered she was being held in these isolated Highland mountains? Could she possibly expect a detachment of English soldiers to come riding to her rescue? If not, would her frugal uncle be willing to pay her ransom? How could she effect an escape on her own? She had only her wits to rely on, that much was obvious, for she would get no help from the MacLean servants.

  Yet loneliness was her chief grievance. By the third day after her arrival, Katrine was so anxious for company that even Lachlan’s stout figure would have been a welcome sight. She hadn’t spoken to a soul except Flora, and even that discourse was infrequent, since after observing her work, Flora decided Katrine didn’t require as much supervision as some of the younger maids.

  That, in fact, was why Katrine was left alone for a moment on her third morning at Cair House, in the large room that served as a laundry. She was stirring a huge caldron of simmering linens when she felt the strange, hair-prickling sensation of being watched.

  When she glanced over her shoulder, though, she could see only the practical furnishings of the room: a wooden tub and scrub board, a long pine table that served for folding the dried clothes and a copper hip bath that was used for bathing.

  Katrine returned to her kettle of wash, but the odd feeling wouldn’t go away. Some moments later she looked again, and this time caught the flash of something dark behind the hip bath.

  Lifting her skirts to keep from tripping, and raising her stirring stick to defend herself if need be, she cautiously edged her way across the room and peered behind the bath. The sight of a small girl of about eight cowering on the floor astonished her.

  She was a pretty child with rosy cheeks and long black hair—or she might have been pretty, Katrine amended, had she been cleaner. Her face was begrimed with a layer of dirt, her hair scraggly and unclean and her calf-length tartan skirt soiled. Her wide brown eyes stared at Katrine with frightened wariness.

  At once Katrine lowered her stick and returned a relieved smile in greeting. “Don’t be so alarmed. I’d never strike you. Indeed, I was only preparing to protect myself in case you wanted to take a nibble out of me. I thought you might be a rat, you see.”

  Her teasing brought no change whatsoever to the girl’s expression.

  “I should have known better, of course,” Katrine added, her tone light. “Flora would never abide rats in the house. And you’re much too large for a rat. Too pretty as well.”

  The child only stared at her with those huge haunted eyes, glancing once at the door, as if she would bolt.

  But Katrine didn’t want to lose her captive audience. After being shunned like a leper for three days, she would have been grateful to be noticed by the stable cat.

  “Goodness,” she said quickly, bending down to the girl’s level, “you gave me a start, so quiet you are. What is your name? Mine is Katrine.” She didn’t add that she was a Campbell, for if the child hadn’t been warned about her already, she had no intention of divulging a fact that surely would send the girl scurrying from the room. When she received no response, though, Katrine bestowed her sweetest smile on the solemn child.

  “It must be uncomfortable, kneeling the way you are on the stone floor. Would you like to sit over there, in that chair? You can keep me company while I work. Indeed, you came along at just the right time. You can’t imagine how I’ve longed to have someone to talk to.”

  Flora returned just at that moment, bursting into the room, only to come up short when she noticed Katrine away from her work station. Flora’s frown turned into a sharp scowl when she spied the child.

  In two urgent strides, she was across the room and grasping Katrine’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “What are ye about?” Flora demanded fiercely. “Ye keep away from her.”

  Katrine took a startled step backward, thinking it unjust that Flora would ring a peal over her when she hadn’t been shirking her duties for more than a moment. But when the housekeeper placed a protective hand on the girl’s small raven-haired head, Katrine realized the woman was far less concerned about the wash than about safeguarding the child. Katrine was insulted. She would no more have harmed that solemn-eyed little girl than she would have hurt one of her own sisters.

  Her green eyes flashing, Katrine drew herself up to her full height, but before she could say a word in protest, Flora turned to the child. “Be gone w’ ye now, lassie,” the housekeeper ordered, though not unkindly. “There’ll be a biscuit waiting for ye in the kitchen.”

  When the young girl had scrambled to her feet and fled the room, Katrine unbridled her anger. “I only spoke to her for a moment, to say hello. And I never would harm a child, whatever you might think.”

  “Keep away from her,” Flora said again, just as adamantly.

  “Why? Who is she?”

  “Ye dinna need to know.” The housekeeper looked down her sharp nose at Katrine. “Now, back to the wash with ye. And mind what I said about the linens. ‘Tis white I want them. White!”

  “And I thought you a woman of compassion, if not superior understanding,” Katrine muttered, bristling with indignation as Flora stalked from the room.

  Katrine returned to the wash, but the more she thought about the insult that had been leveled at her, the more she seethed, like the caldron she was stirring.

  The heat of the fire didn’t help her temper any, either. After a time she began perspiring, and beneath her prickly wool skirt her scraped knee began to itch. She cast a longing glance over her shoulder at the window, but decided against opening it; Flora would no doubt accuse her of trying to escape and would withhold her meager dinner ration of oats. Brushing a damp lock back from her forehead, Katrine bent over and hiked her skirt up to her knee to inspect her itching wound.

  “If you would turn the slightest degree, I could better see what has so captured your interest.”

  Katrine jumped at the sound of the masculine voice, releasing her stirring stick as she whirled. Callum MacLean was leaning casually against the doorjamb, looking as if he had been there for some time. His arms were folded across his long leather vest, one brogue-shod foot angled over the other.

  “What are you doing here?” Katrine demanded crossly.

  “Watching you.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “You make a fetching sight, if I may be so bold as to say so.”

  “No, you may not be so bold!” Katrine retorted, with all the dignity she could muster. The nerve of the man, spying on her like that!

  But he seemed not at all repentant as he glanced downward at her legs. “Do you need assistance? With your skirts, I mean?”

  Katrine returned his innocent look with a glare. “Thank you, but no, I do not require your assistance.”

  Turning her back on the maddening young man, she tried to fish her stick out of the kettle and burned her fingers in the process. She could have wept with pain and frustration. When she finally found a grasp on the stick, she retrieved a garment from the wash and held it up to drip. It was a man’s shirt, large and finely stitched. The master of the house’s shirt, no doubt, Katrine thought with fury. Reminded again of her captivity, of her helplessness, she muttered an imprecation on the villainous MacLean laird who had landed her in such dire straights.

  Soon, though, she again became conscious of the laird’s cousin. The rogue’s black eyes were burning a hole in her rigid back. When Callum remarked that he had come to see how she was faring, Katrine shifted her wrath to him and refused to answer.

  “What has you in such a pelter?” Callum asked, amusement lacing his voice. “Was it something I said?”

  Katrine ground her teeth, wishing he would stop tormenting her. If he made one more taunting remark like that, she would scream…or explode. “Why don’t you take yourself off? I’m sure you have more fascinating things to do than ogle me.”

  “I don’t know about that. There’s little more fascinating to watch than a
lass in a temper.”

  It was a measure of her frustration and despair that Katrine did what she did next. Whirling, she drew back her arm and let the dripping shirt fly. It hit the white lime-washed wall next to Callum’s head with a soggy splat. Though he’d been in no real danger, he flinched instinctively, but the roguish laughter in his eyes remained.

  It was at precisely that moment his cousin appeared in the doorway. Raith surveyed the scene with cynicism: Katrine’s clenched fists and defiant stance, and the wet bundle that now lay on the floor. He lifted his gaze to his cousin’s, one eyebrow raised in question, then turned his eyes back to Katrine.

  At his sudden arrival, Katrine felt as if her heart had stopped in midbeat. For the first time since they’d met, Raith lacked the dark stubble on his face, and she stared at him, trying to assimilate his changed appearance.

  Handsome was too tame a word. Striking, perhaps. And still dangerous. But with an aristocratic elegance that was unmistakable. He was dressed like any civilized gentleman of wealth and position. His queued hair was drawn back neatly with a blue riband, and his tall leather boots gleamed. In between, he wore buff leather breeches, an embroidered silk waistcoat and a wide-skirted frock coat of blue velvet that reflected the dark blue in his eyes. The white, starched jabot at his throat contrasted starkly with his ebony hair and dark complexion, while the frills at his shirtfront and wrists emphasized his masculinity. In his gloved hands he carried a tricorne.

  As those hard blue eyes leveled at her, Katrine felt hot color seep into her face. She knew she was staring at him, but she couldn’t look away, in spite of the humiliation of having been caught venting her temper on his wily cousin.

  “It was fortunate she missed,” Raith observed dryly, his eyes still on Katrine.

  “I didn’t miss!” she managed to reply tartly, still having no success in dragging her eyes from Raith’s masculine elegance. “I assure you I have a very good aim. If I had wanted to hit Mr. MacLean, I would have.”