Authors: Susan Sizemore
Instead she walked right on past without giving him a look. Perhaps she wasn’t hungry, he thought as he watched her go to the door. Or more likely she just didn’t want to share his company. Annoyed at the thought, he left his meal and followed her outside.
As he suspected, she headed for the kitchen hut. He hurried after her. He grabbed her by the arm before she reached the kitchen door.
She spun angrily to face him. “What?”
“Rest easy, lass, I’m not going to try to kiss you. I’m here to offer a warning. It’s not safe for a woman to step into that building.” Was that a hint of disappointment he saw in her eyes when he said he wasn’t going to kiss her? The woman was maddening. Did she want him or didn’t she? It was probably his imagination and he knew well how to keep that in check.
Maddie glanced from Rowan to the hut. She nodded. “Oh right. Malcolm.”
“Aye, Malcolm. You’d best stay away from Malcolm’s fief.”
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Even Rosemary, who planned the meals, rationed out the stores, kept the inventory of foodstuffs and saw to serving what emerged from the kitchen, kept a respectful distance from the cook’s domain.
“He’s a terror, all right.” Maddie grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in his job. I don’t cook.”
Rowan frowned. “You dinna?”
“Nope.”
“Rosemary said you’re not the domestic sort.”
She waited for him to complain, to say something disparaging about her lack of femininity. When he didn’t, she asked, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
He was not the most forthcoming man Maddie had ever met. “Well, are you going to say something about how every woman should know how to cook and clean house and all that other domestic junk?”
“No. Are you going to leave Malcolm in peace? Or do I have to stand at your back with my sword in hand while you invade his den?”
Maddie was confused by his answer and amused by his question. She couldn’t help but smile as she looked him over. His long hair was windblown and there was a glint in his ice blue eyes that might be answering amusement. “You’re not wearing your sword.”
He patted the long dagger at his waist. “My dirk then.”
She pointed toward the kitchen building. “I’ve been told there’s smoked salmon in there. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?”
“Aye. Better than porridge.”
“That’s what I think. You up for an assault?”
Rowan rubbed his thumb along his jaw. After a few moments he said, “Aye. Lead on, Lady Maddie.”
She chuckled. “Lady Maddie. That sounds silly.”
His perpetual frown returned. “You’ve a right to the title while we’re wed.”
While.
She felt a brief prick of annoyance, or maybe it was regret, at the impermanence of the situation. Or maybe it was just hunger. It wasn’t as if she wanted the situation to be permanent. She tossed her head. “If you’re going to call me a lady, Lady Madalyn sounds fancier. I’d rather just be called Maddie though.”
“Maddie’s a pretty name.” Rowan was startled that the words had come out so easily, just a truth spoken without thought. He wondered what was the matter with him. He was not given to flattery, but he found himself wanting to tell her that he liked the way her hair caught fire in the sunlight, that he—
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Och, he’d seen how foolish it was to say such things to one female, how her vanity had grown with each flowery word that had poured from his father’s lips. It would not do to spoil his own woman with such foolishness, despite Rosemary’s admonitions.
She blushed at his words, looked down then up through long lashes. “Thank you.”
Rowan fought against finding her reaction charming. “It is no more than the truth.
Do you want that salmon or not?”
Maddie tried very hard not to be flustered just because someone who wasn’t her parent had said something about her was pretty. She was relieved to latch onto Rowan’s practical question after his flattering words. She took a deep breath and made herself look him squarely in the face. His expression had hardened back into his usual dour countenance. Good. She could deal with dour.
“Let’s go get that salmon.” She marched confidently off with the lord of Cape Wrath at her back.
The kitchen was smokier than the hall with a fire blazing the length of long central hearth. Maddie got a quick view of grates and spits and oversized cooking utensils all suspended over the blaze. Unidentifiable things hung from the sooty rafters, jars and dishes and boxes were stacked on the floor and worktables. It was not like any kitchen she’d ever imagined.
A large-bellied, half-naked, red-bearded man stood over a gigantic boiling pot at one end of the hearth. He turned angrily on them the instant they stepped into the room. “What are you two doing here?” he shouted at them. “Be gone!”
Maddie fleetingly wondered what her mother, sisters, aunts and cousins would do to organize this disastrous-looking kitchen but couldn’t come up with a clue. Her natural response was to wonder how to go about building the man a proper stove and getting some ventilation into the place. Unlike the drafty hall where people lived and slept, it was damned hot in here where all they did was cook. Maybe she could figure out some way of connecting the two to tap into the energy wasted in this environment.
“Welcome to hell,” she muttered, and stepped up to the cook. “Good morning, Malcolm, you old devil.”
He must have found her cheerfulness disconcerting. For an instant the patented Murray glower that twisted his face relaxed. He took a step back. “I don’t allow women in my kitchen.”
“My mother doesn’t allow men in hers. I think you’re both terribly sexist. I also think you’re lucky I’m the one who married your laird and not her.” She gestured toward Rowan. “We came for breakfast.”
His glower came back, full force. “I sent porridge to the hall hours ago. Leave me to get on with my work.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me.”
“Aye,” Rowan spoke up. “You’ll show respect to my lady.”
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“Did I invite you in here, Rowan Murray?” was Malcolm’s surly reply. “You mind training the fighters and overseeing the village and leave me to my work. You’re altogether too much of a busybody and everyone knows it.”
“I do my duty.”
“You do too much and you can do it elsewhere.”
Maddie crossed her arms, looked from one man to the other. “You can discuss this later. Where’s the salmon?”
“The what?” Malcolm demanded angrily.
“It’s a fish. Sort of pink. My favorite food in the whole world.” She looked around.
“Where is it?”
“What makes you think I’ll give it to you?”
“Not the milk of human kindness, that’s for certain.” Malcolm gave an unfriendly laugh. Maddie decided to try this “lady of the clan” thing to see if it worked. “That’s an order, cook.” She hated going through all this nonsense because of something so simple as wanting a decent meal. “I mean it,” she added as Malcolm’s face went red with anger.
“You’ll not have it,” was his stubborn reply.
“My lady gave you an order,” Rowan told the cook. “You’ll do as you’re told.”
Malcolm drew himself up to his full height, his belly stuck belligerently out before him. “I’ll not waste the best food in the castle on a woman’s whim. I’m saving the smoked salmon for the lord of the Isles.”
Rowan was appalled at his next words but he couldn’t stop them. “You’ll give my wife what she asks for and the devil with the lord of the Isles!”
He couldn’t believe it, he was indeed indulging a woman’s whim but she smiled at him when he gave the order. That smile brightened his day, blinded him for an instant to what he was doing. He knew Malcolm was right about Maddie’s taste for salmon, it was a foolish, selfish whim. Porridge was good enough for the household, they should save their best for the upcoming visit from the clan’s overlord. Here he was spoiling the woman instead. He was as bad as his father, but having said it, having promised her his help, it was too late to back down now. “Do it,” he said. Then he turned around and walked out of the kitchen but not before giving Maddie a hard look on the way out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Maddie wondered, but she didn’t waste time pondering Rowan’s odd behavior. She commandeered enough salmon and fresh bread for both of them and hurried to catch up with Rowan.
She found him sitting on a bench by the curtain wall, shoulders slumped and apparently studying his feet. She settled beside him, made a quick pair of sandwiches and held one out to him. “I’m a firm believer in sharing the booty. Come on, you’re too skinny,” she added when he hesitated. He was all rangy, spare muscle actually. “Come on,” she coaxed, “waste not, want not and all that. I could never eat all this myself.”
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That got him. The man had a deeply frugal soul. He took the sandwich and began to eat. A grudging, angry silence emanated from him but Maddie waited until she’d polished off her own meal before she said, “So what do you perceive I did wrong?”
“You’re a woman,” he answered after a further few minutes of silence in which she didn’t go away. “You cannot help being sly, lazy, dissolute, perfidious and greedy. I should keep a more careful watch against your wiles.”
Wiles? What wiles? She’d never used a wile in her life—she wouldn’t know a wile if it bit her on the butt! And speaking of pains in the butt, Rowan Murray deserved a good trouncing.
Maddie managed to hide her anger and kept her voice calm. “Oh I see. Do you think this about all women or just me?”
“Some women are better than others.”
“Uh-huh. Is Rosemary one of the good ones?”
“Aye.”
“Micaela?”
“Aye, for the most part.”
“Flora? Meg? All the other Murray women?”
“They’re good women.”
“But I’m not.”
Rowan wished he’d never answered her at all. He wished she hadn’t spoken her last words as a statement of his beliefs when he wasn’t sure what he thought at all. “I have work to do.”
He started to get up but she grabbed a handful of his kilt in her fist and hauled him back down. “No one calls me a slut and walks away.”
He turned to her in shock. “I called you no such thing!”
She was crying.
She hadn’t sounded like a weeping woman when she’d been questioning him. It twisted his insides to see a woman crying because of his words. It made him ache to take her in his arms, to comfort her and swear that he was the worst fool who had ever lived.
Before he could do anything, she shifted her grip to his shirt and hauled his closer, until their faces were inches apart. “I have had it with you. At no point have I taken advantage of you. You’re the one who dragged me here. You’re the one who forced me to marry you. This is your game, not mine. I’m sick of playing it. Your attitude sucks, your opinions are dead wrong and of no importance, and I’m out of here.”
Her words were furious but he was too close not to see the deep pain he’d put in her eyes. Rowan was so shocked, chagrined and confused by everything that had happened in the last few minutes he didn’t react as quickly as he should when she got up and walked away.
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In fact, Maddie was through the fortress gate before it sank in that she meant to leave Cape Wrath and him altogether.
“No, wait!” he shouted, and ran after her.
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I’ve had it with all the Murrays,
Maddie thought as she ran blindly toward the sea.
The castle was behind her and the village. If there were people around, she didn’t see them. She didn’t care. She didn’t know where she was going, she just wanted to get to the water’s edge. She’d grown up among the valleys and cliffs of the Rockies, but her heart belonged to the sea, especially the great, rolling, gray North Atlantic. It was the place she went to for comfort for her aching, lonely, deeply wounded soul.
“I’ve had it with Murrays,” she said as a she reached the black shingle where a few fishing boats were beached. She halted at the spot just where the shore ended, looked down at the foamy edge of a wave that stopped not an inch from her feet then glanced up at a loud call from a stand of nearby boulders that leaned out over the bay. It was a steep place, fit more for puffin and gull nests than for people, but a group of children had climbed to the very top. They were waving and calling to her.
Maddie scrubbed tears off her cheeks and half-heartily waved back
. Not all Murrays
are bastards
, she reminded herself.
Just one.
The kids were kind of cute. She’d become fond of the women as well. Nobody was to blame for how she was feeling but the laird of the clan. The same laird who’d forced her into his family but suspected her of every nasty bit of behavior humans were capable of.
“He forgot to mention murder, pillage and cheating on my income tax,” she muttered as she stepped back to avoid spray that splashed in from a particularly powerful wave.
“What’s income tax?”
Maddie whirled around at the sound of the voice, lost her balance and would have fallen back into the water if Rowan hadn’t made a swift grab for her.
“Get your hands off me!” she shouted, and pushed hard against his chest. He didn’t budge. The man was as immovable as Scottish granite.
Rowan wasn’t sure what he should do with Maddie now that he’d caught up with her. Throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her back to the privacy of his room came to mind. “I’m not letting you go,” he told her. “Not now. Not for a year and a day.
You’re my wife.”
Her eyes blazed while the wind whipped at her coppery hair and the sea roared at her back. “You don’t give a damn about me.”
“I care about what’s mine.”
“About your clan, you mean.”
She struggled to break out of his grip while Rowan struggled to find the words that would calm her. Nothing he’d said so far was of any use. He’d be angry himself if 87
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someone he’d been forced to marry spoke only of clan loyalty when something more personal was needed. “You’re part of my clan,” was all he could manage. He knew that wasn’t enough.