There was a chorus of ‘aye, Mrs. Gillies’s around the kitchen, and one of the women gave Ishbel her hand, helping her hop off the table. Even though she was the Lady of the clan, Ishbel didn’t wish to anger Mrs. Gillies. The woman had a certain aura about her, something that reminded Ishbel of her governess, and if there was one thing that Ishbel had learned as a child, that was that she should never talk back to her governess.
“Yes, Mrs. Gillies,” Ishbel said. “Forgive me . . . they asked for a story and I . . . I got carried away.”
The look that Mrs. Gillies gave her was a mix of fondness and exasperation, not unlike the one that her own mother used to give Ishbel regularly when she was a young child. It seemed like she had never grown out of getting into trouble, even though she was certainly no child anymore.
The rest of the food preparations went without any other distractions, save for the conversations in which Ishbel and the other women were engaged. Ishbel learned many things about the women who worked for the castle that day, and she decided that she would have to have a serious conversation with Angus once he would come back.
If he would come back.
Once he would come back, Ishbel told herself, forcing herself to believe that he would. Once he would come back, she would tell him about how his feasts forced the women to work themselves to exhaustion, how even a simple supper was a lot to handle, and how even Mrs. Gillies seemed to be getting more and more tired as she got older.
Those women needed help, and Ishbel would be damned if she didn’t offer it to them.
Once they had all the food prepared, Ishbel helped them serve it, even though she could hear the curious, shocked whispers of the clansmen and women who had already gathered in the castle. She simply smiled at them, and when she did, their surprise and shock seemed to fade and was replaced by a matching smile, warm and grateful.
Once all the food had been served, it was time for Ishbel to take her place at the table, where Angus would normally be. She hated it; she hated that she had to be there without him, that there was a possibility that he would never sit there with her again, but thinking about such things did her no good. Besides, any fears that she had couldn’t be expressed, not in front of everyone. If Vanora had been there, perhaps Ishbel could have talked to her, perhaps she could have taken it out of her chest. The women in the kitchen, though, had family and friends in the villages that were the most vulnerable, and they had their sweethearts in Angus’ army.
Expressing her own fears would simply agitate them even more.
No, Ishbel had to be like Angus—or perhaps not like Angus, but like the Lady of the clan, the kind of woman that the clan deserved to have.
“As you all know, Laird MacMillan has taken his men to an ambush,” Ishbel said, addressing the entire room of people. “This is no celebration, not yet, but rather a chance for us to pray for our men to come home safe. There will be hardships . . . lives will be lost, and that is something that we must all keep in mind. But, if we ask the Lord to help our men, I know that with His strength, and the strength of our people, we will beat the Keith clan. There will be no more fear in the villages at the edges of our land. There will be no more killings of innocent men, women, and children. There will be no more terror inflicted upon us by the Keith clan. I only ask of you to pray for our men, to pray for our victory, and to stay strong. Soon, they will be back here with us.”
“Slàinte mhath!” the people in the room said, as they raised their cups. Ishbel raised hers, too, in a toast, and they all drank to the health of those who had gone to war to protect them.
Ishbel invited the women from the kitchens, along with the rest of the servants, to join them as well, but even while the hall was filled with people, it was rather quiet. The conversations were kept low, and though there was laughter, there were none of the roaring sounds of the clansmen that were usually in feasts.
Isabel didn't want her people to be mourning already for the men that they would lose, but it hardly seemed appropriate to turn the breakfast into a feast. Once the men would return, and once the dead would be buried, then it would be time to celebrate their win and to remember the fallen ones.
She spent the day watching over her people, the little food that she had on her plate going untouched. She felt as though she could hardly stomach anything, her stomach eager to reject anything that she put in it.
She doubted she would manage to eat or sleep while Angus would be gone, or at least until she had news regarding the ambush. Drinking seemed to help, though, even a little, and she drained a few cups of wine in quick succession until she felt a little calmer.
“Rough day, isnae it?”
The question came from behind her, and Ishbel turned her head to see Mrs. Gillies there, just as the woman placed a hand on her shoulder, soft and motherly.
“It is, Mrs. Gillies,” Ishbel admitted. “It really is.”
“I’ve kent Angus since he was a wee lad, ye ken,” Mrs. Gillies told her. “I havenae seen a lad more stubborn than him. Dinnae worry so much about him. He’ll be back. I ken that he will.”
Ishbel gave Mrs. Gillies a small smile, and she placed her hand on top of hers. She would be lying if she said that simply hearing those words from her didn’t make her feel better, reassuring her just a little.
She had been telling everyone else that everything would be alright, but Mrs. Gillies was the first one to say the same thing to her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Gillies,” Ishbel said. “I . . . I want to believe that, too. I pray and pray that they will all be back, that no one will lose their life today, but . . .”
“Yer setting yerself up for grief then, m’lady,” Mrs. Gillies said. “Ye said it yerself, some will die. Many have died already, but they will always be with us.”
Ishbel nodded, and then she gestured at Mrs. Gillies to take a seat beside her. They began to talk, and though Ishbel still saw the other woman as someone who could easily be her governess—or anyone’s governess, really—she was also a sweet woman, a woman who was perhaps even more concerned about Angus and his men deep down than Ishbel was. Mrs. Gillies was simply better at hiding it with a smile and a word of advice.
The clansmen and women lingered around the castle that day, all of them enjoying each other’s company. Ishbel understood that well; she liked to be surrounded by other people, and she would much rather spend the days with them than alone. Eventually, though, everyone returned to their tasks, and Ishbel was left alone, wandering around the castle and the courtyard aimlessly as she tried to keep herself occupied.
She picked some flowers and some herbs, things that she could bring back to the women who worked in the kitchens to use and enjoy. She sat by a stream and watched the water as it flowed, picking up some stones and skipping them on the water’s surface.
And then she broke down. She broke down, and she began to cry with loud, wracking sobs that no one could hear now that she was not in the castle grounds, her tears falling into the stream and mixing with the water.
She cried because she was afraid. She was afraid of the future of the unknown. She was afraid that even if Angus made it back, something else could take him away from her one day, just like it had happened with her mother and her uncle.
She cried because she simply couldn’t take it anymore, and the façade that she had been wearing ever since Angus had left that morning had finally shattered into pieces, revealing the pain, the worry, and the anger that she hid underneath.
No one could understand why the Keith clan had begun to attack the MacMillan folk, and that was what frustrated her the most. There was no reason behind the war, no logic, and for all Ishbel knew, all the lives that would be lost would be in vain. She detested Laird Keith just for that, even though she didn’t know the man at all.
She detested him, because not only was he sending his own men to their deaths, but he was also pulling the MacMillans and the Camerons into it. He was destroying lives, the lives of people that he neither knew nor cared
about.
Ishbel had half a mind to march right up to Laird Keith’s door and demand an explanation, but the last thing she wanted was to end up his prisoner.
She spent a lot of time there, sitting by the stream, until her sobs turned quiet, and then her tears dried. She splashed some water on her face, fresh and cool, which helped with the heat on her cheeks and washed away the remnants of her tears before she stood up and headed back to the castle.
She had given herself some time to feel bad. She had allowed herself to let everything come out. She had allowed herself to be simply Ishbel.
Now, she had to be Lady MacMillan again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Angus gestured at his men to follow him. He and Donal stayed low, trying to remain hidden behind the bushes that lined the clearing where Hamish and his men had set up their tents to spend their night.
There were several tents there, as Angus could see, which could only mean that there were also several men. He could see that most of them were still asleep, the camp silent and peaceful, save for the two Keith clansmen who were sitting next to a fire, keeping guard.
How much attention they were paying to their surroundings, though, was debatable, as they were slouched over themselves, staring longingly at the tents around them. Angus marveled at the fact that they somehow managed to stay awake, even when they looked as though they could hardly keep their eyes open.
Their plan had been a good one, and Angus knew that the moment that he laid eyes upon those two men. Once they would attack, they would catch the Keiths by surprise, and it would take a long time for the men to gather their brains and their weapons and face them. The two guards would be nowhere near enough to stop his men and Donal’s own combined.
Angus and the rest of the men moved slowly, deliberately. Their heavy boots barely made a sound on the ground as they walked, surrounding the camp that the Keith men had set up so that none of them could escape.
Angus looked at Donal next to him, his sword already in his hand, ready to attack. Then, he glanced at the sky, a darkness that was just beginning to turn blue, and he mumbled a prayer under his breath, asking the Lord to help them through their fight.
Then, he nodded, and it was all it took for chaos to erupt.
Angus and Donal’s men flooded the camp from every direction. They startled the two men who had been serving as guards, and the two of them grabbed their swords and stood back to back with each other, trying their best to protect themselves and the rest of the camp as best as they could.
It was clear to Angus from the very first moment that they would not surrender, even though they were surrounded and outnumbered. They would hold the fort until their fellow clansmen had awakened and joined the fight, just so that they could give Hamish a fighting chance.
It was as Angus had predicted. The two guards brandished their swords, challenging and taunting the MacMillans and the Camerons with every wave of their blades. At the same time, Angus could hear the rest of the Keith men as they scrambled around their tents, looking for their weapons as they emerged from their tents.
Hamish was nowhere to be found. Angus wondered if the spies had been wrong, perhaps, or if Hamish had left sometime between the day when Angus received the information that he was there and that day.
Or perhaps he was simply a coward, who forced his men to fight his fights for him, and he was hiding in the biggest of the tents.
Angus wouldn’t put it past him.
Even if Hamish wasn’t there, though, they had a good chance of decimating his army, and once they would accomplish that task, Hamish would end up with nothing. He wouldn’t be able to attack Knapdale’s villages again, even if he tried, let alone the castle.
Before he knew it, Angus began to hear the clash of blades, iron against iron, loud and jarring like thunder. The Keith men had exited their tents in a rush, all of them wielding their swords and their blades, and his own men responded in kind. He and Donal stood against each other, watching the chaos for a moment until Angus noticed a Keith clansman try to chop the head of one of his own men.
Angus jumped between them, putting his sword right under the other man’s own and stopping him. The two of them battled, with the Keith clansman swinging his sword wildly around and forcing Angus to pirouette around him again and again as he avoided his strikes.
The man seemed to be a good fighter, but he was impatient. Angus could tell that he wanted him dead, the cold, soulless look in his eyes telling him that they were not fighting for a greater cause, or at least the other man wasn’t.
He was fighting simply because he wanted blood.
It was what made Hamish’ men dangerous, the fact that though they seemed to be loyal to Hamish and they fought for him, they mainly fought for the fun of it, because they enjoyed it. They had no fear, not because they were foolish enough to believe that they were unbeatable, but because they didn’t care to die.
Angus wondered where Hamish had even found those men. Some faces in the crowd seemed familiar to him, people that he had seen before when he had visited the Keith clan in the past, which meant that they were, indeed, part of the clan. Perhaps Hamish had chosen the most bloodthirsty ones, the deranged ones who had a lust for death, whether it be other people’s or their own.
He didn’t have time to contemplate any of it, as the man he was fighting seemed to have taken it upon himself to kill Angus in the most brutal way possible. He attacked him again and again, and every time Angus parried the attack, but in the end, there was a sharp pain on his left arm, and he glanced down to see a few drops of blood where the other man had nicked him.
Angus had had just about enough. With a guttural scream, he attacked the Keith clansman, and now it was the other man’s turn to parry his attacks. Every time that he avoided him, though, Angus became more and more determined, until, in the end, he managed to stab his blade through the other man’s chest.
Angus watched as the man dropped his sword and placed a hand right onto Angus’ own blade, wrapping his fingers so tightly around it that he cut his palm on its sharp edge. He looked at Angus straight into the eyes, and then he grinned at him as he took one final, rattling breath.
The man’s eyes were glazed over, then, and even though he was still looking at Angus, it seemed to him like he wasn’t looking at anything in particular at all. That image would haunt Angus forever; he knew at that moment; the image of the man’s grin just before he died.
Angus pulled his blade out of the man’s chest, and as he did, blood began to flow out of him like a river, thick and viscous, and dark as night. Angus watched as it mixed with other blood on the ground, creating a pool under the man’s body.
There were already so many bodies there, some belonging to his own people, but most belonging to the Keith clan. His men were fighting valiantly around him, and he could already tell that the Keiths didn’t stand a chance.
He wanted Hamish, though. He wanted Hamish more than anyone else; he wanted to fight him, to kill him with his own hands, but he was still nowhere to be seen.
“Hamish!” he shouted. “Come out and face me!”
There was no answer from Hamish, but he seemed to have caught the attention of three Keith clansmen, who ran towards him at full speed. They surrounded him, and though Angus knew that he could take one, or perhaps even two of them, he knew that it was impossible to fight all three at once.
Just as he thought that he was going to die right there, Donal joined him. Two against three were better odds, and if Angus were to choose anyone to fight with him, he would choose Donal every time.
The two of them worked together, just like they used to when they were younger, under Cormag’s watchful gaze. Unlike them, the three Keith clansmen seemed to have different styles of fighting, one of them going faster than the other two, while another refused to fight dirty, and the third swung too forcefully, which only ended up making him slow.
Angus and Donal danced around each other, their swords feeling like an exten
sion of their own bodies as they moved. They were in perfect harmony, their movements executed in unison, as they both remembered the lesson that Cormag had first taught them.
When you’re fighting side by side with another man, you must move as one, he had once said, and it was something that they carried with them to that day.
It gave them an advantage over the other three men. The first one, the lightest of the three, who moved faster than the other two, was the first to go. His eagerness and impatience made him sloppy, and Angus pierced him in the gut with his sword, making the man cry out in pain. Angus pushed his blade even deeper, reaching almost to the hilt before the man was dead.
Then, Donal struck down the biggest of them, and the man fell down on the ground with a thud that seemed to shake the entire forest. And yet, the man who was left didn’t seem to be intimidated by Angus and Donal, despite having seen his fellow men be killed by them only moments prior.
Highlander’s Veiled Bride: Scottish Medieval Highlander Romance (Highland Seductresses Book 2) Page 17
