Authors: Prince of Danger
“We know only that his galleys lurk there, not who is aboard them. And Waldron is always welcomed in Caithness, and at Roslin, for that matter.”
“Mercy, why should he be?”
“He is my cousin despite the circumstances of his birth,” Michael said, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “He is also a prime favorite of my mother’s, because he has always been most charming to her. I had not thought about all this before, because he said naught to me about Henry or his ceremonies and I knew naught of any treasure. Waldron just insisted that I should tell him where ‘it’ was, and since ‘it’ was a mystery to me, I thought only about his stubborn refusal to accept that I did not know what was missing. A treasure of any size complicates things. Moreover, Ian Dubh said there are other claimants to the princedom.”
“Are you saying that Waldron may be one of those claimants?”
“He cannot be a true claimant, because he is baseborn and he comes from the French branch of our family. Henry’s claim originated not only through our mother, who is cousin to the Norse King, but also through Henry’s first wife.”
“He was married before?”
“Aye, his first wife was the Norse King’s daughter. They were very young, and she died soon afterward. Her father helped ours arrange Henry’s second marriage.”
“But none of this will matter once Sir Henry is made Prince of Orkney.”
“That’s true, and I believe it is too late now to contest it, in any event. But since Waldron believes it is God’s will that he should have whatever he wants, he may try to claim the princedom anyway, either by guile or by force.”
Isobel’s head was whirling, but she tried to return his thoughts to the subject at hand. “Even so, I warrant your brother can take care of himself, and we—”
“No more now, lass. You need to sleep, and I must not miss this opportunity to learn what I can from Ian Dubh. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Her mouth opened in protest, but he had his hand on the door latch, and before she could think of anything to say that might sway him from his decision, she found herself inside the bedchamber with the door swinging shut behind him.
As she took off her gown and, in her shift, slipped quietly into bed beside Lady Euphemia, she promised herself that she would make everything clear to him, somehow, before anything else happened the next day. She could not allow him to marry her if she might taint his children with the same demon that cursed her.
W
ith the help of a gillie who directed him, Michael found Ian Dubh’s chamber easily. When he entered, the older man was reading a parchment, weighty with red wax seals, at a table lighted by a number of candles and cressets. Other such documents, neatly rolled, lay in a tumble nearby.
“Come in, lad,” he said, looking up. “I trust all is well with your lass.”
“Aye, sir,” Michael replied, shutting the door. “But I do not want to keep you up longer than necessary, so pray, let us proceed at once to the matter at hand.”
“I have the documents here,” Ian Dubh said, gesturing toward the tumbled pile of rolls on the table. “You may peruse as many as you like, and I’ll give you fair copies of the two that pertain particularly to the St. Clairs. The one suggesting that your grandfather helped arrange for the Templars to come here is most interesting. You will find, however, that he spelled his name differently from the old style.”
“I know, sir; he spelled it ‘Sinclair,’ the way one pronounces it,” Michael said. “My mother prefers the French spelling, however, and Henry indulges her preference just as our father did.”
“Does he? I had heard as much, but believing that your esteemed grandfather’s wishes must prevail, I own, the news did surprise me.”
“It would not if you had enjoyed the privilege of meeting my mother.”
“I see. Well, come round here, and I’ll show you the references to Sir William. Before I do, though, there is one other detail that you should know.”
“Indeed?”
Ian Dubh nodded. “I left one thing out of my tale about the ghost ships,” he admitted. “Sithee, I was not alone that night.”
“No?”
“I was but six years old, and I own, I’d not have had courage enough at that age either to defy my father or to sneak out after I was supposed to be in bed.”
“But you did both.”
“Aye, but to follow someone else, someone I greatly admired.”
“An older child?”
“Aye, a close cousin, and one whose father had even more right than my own to order things at Castle Tarbert.”
With a tingling sense of anticipation, Michael said, “If, as you told us, your father was constable at Tarbert, he yielded authority to only one man.”
“Two, if one counts the King of Scots,” Ian Dubh said, “but in view of the controversy that raged over who
was
king at the time, we need consider only one.”
“His grace’s father, Angus Og. So the cousin you followed was . . .”
“His grace, of course,” Ian Dubh said. “In view of his illness now, I took advantage of your interlude with our Isobel to intercept the gillie Lachlan has arranged to send to Ardtornish, and conveyed my own orders to him.”
“May I ask what they were?”
“To see that his grace becomes acquainted with your presence here. I think that you should speak with him, if he agrees. Sithee, but for having seen the ships myself, and knowing at the time that Angus Og was aware of their presence in West Loch Tarbert, I have learned no more than what little I have read of the matter. Indeed, when I pointed out the existence of these documents to his grace, he refused to discuss them, saying that what lies in the past should remain in the past.”
“Then why do you believe he would speak with me?”
“Because I also told the lad to say that your life has been threatened. His grace has a great fondness for Isobel, so I believe he will want to meet you in any event, to give your marriage his blessing. Then we shall see what we shall see.”
With that, he proceeded to acquaint Michael with the documents and to explain more about them than Michael had energy to absorb. The hour was late before he got to bed, and he fell at once into a deep sleep.
Isobel’s first glimpse of the new day was Mairi’s smiling face, as that lady leaned over her and said cheerfully, “Wake up, Isobel. The priest is here, and I have come to help you dress for your wedding.”
From that moment, Isobel felt as if all control over her life had fallen to others, that she retained none for herself. Being checked, restricted, and compelled were constraints that she resisted with every fiber, but the people who commanded her were those she was least accustomed to disobeying, so when they massed against her, as they did now, she found it impossible to protest with her usual energy.
Not that she did not try.
As Mairi whisked her out of bed, Isobel said she was not by any means certain that she wanted to marry just yet.
“Nonsense,” Mairi replied briskly. Then, to her maid, she said, “Brona, it is the moss-green silk we want.”
Isobel tried again. “But, Mairi—”
“Cristina is even now gathering your flowers for you, my dear. I know many consider it bad luck for anyone but the bride to gather them, but I know too that you care as little for such superstitions as Cristina does, so you will be grateful to have one less task to perform. You know that neither Hector nor Lachlan is blessed with much patience, and if I judge your Michael correctly, he possesses little more than they do. Moreover, it has been my experience that once men have determined upon a course of action, they do not happily brook delay.”
In this manner, she kept up a running discourse that allowed Isobel time only to reply to such questions as her ladyship fired at her from time to time almost midsentence. Did she want her hair up or down? Did she think the moss-green silk would look well with a dark-blue-and-yellow shawl? Did she not think that perhaps she would prefer to wear stout shoes rather than flimsy slippers with her wedding dress, since they would be taking ship for the north directly after the ceremony?
It occurred to Isobel only as she was answering the last question that doubtless Mairi was attending her rather than Cristina, whose right it was as her elder sister, because the latter believed Isobel was unlikely to offer Mairi resistance, let alone outright defiance. If that had been Cristina’s reasoning, Isobel admitted—if only to herself—she had been right. As for declaring her independence to Lachlan or to his grace’s priest, who had clearly arisen betimes to travel from Ardtornish for the sole purpose of performing her wedding, or insisting that she would wait a while longer to marry, she could not bring herself to do either.
Thus it was that she went meekly downstairs with Lady Mairi to the great hall, where she discovered that nearly all the inhabitants of Duart Castle had gathered to see her married. Hector and Lachlan stood near Michael on the dais with the thin, grizzled parson. Sir Hugo, standing beside Michael, smiled and winked at her. When she smiled back, Michael glanced at Hugo, but Hugo ignored him and winked at Isobel again.
Cristina moved forward to give her the bouquet of flowers she had gathered. As she did, she plucked two pink roses from it and put them in Isobel’s hair, which Isobel wore in loose flaxen waves down her back. Standing back to judge the full effect, Cristina said, “You look more beautiful than ever, dearling.”
“’Tis true,” Lady Euphemia agreed. “None of the rest of you will ever match our Mariota for looks, but I’m thinking that today our Isobel draws close.”
“Thank you, Aunt Euphemia,” Isobel said, but even to her own ears, her voice sounded weak, because the last thing she wanted was to be like Mariota. Catching Michael’s gaze on her, she suppressed a grimace, straightened her shoulders, and tried to believe he deserved whatever he got from their marriage.
The priest stepped forward, spread his arms to silence everyone in the hall, and directed Michael and Isobel to the makeshift altar at the front of the dais. From that moment, the proceedings took on the semblance of a dream, and it seemed only minutes later that Isobel heard him say, “I present to you Sir Michael and Lady St. Clair. You may kiss your bride now, sir, if you choose.”
Michael grinned, and before the entire Duart household, he put an arm around Isobel to draw her close, tilted her face up to his, and claimed her lips in a kiss that heated her to her toes. As she felt herself melting toward him, she collected her wits, became fully aware of her audience, and stiffened abruptly.
Michael held her closer, and in prolonging his kiss, he touched the tip of his tongue to her lips, but he did nothing else other than to kiss her right cheek and then her ear. As he kissed her ear, he murmured, “It is done, sweetheart. Do not forget that you have promised to obey me and to be meek in my bed and at my board. I shan’t be a harsh husband, but neither am I one to relish feminine fits of temper.”
“You said we would talk first,” she muttered, trying to ignore the fluttery sensations that heated her body, and surprised as she had been before that he could read her mood so well. She hoped that no one in their audience was doing the same.
“Aye, well,” he said, “events moved faster than my brain did this morning, and, too, I saw no sign from you that you objected.”
Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing her admit that she had allowed similar events—or Mairi—to sweep her right to the altar, she kept silent.
Servants swiftly produced a simple breakfast of bread, meat, and ale, and afterward, Hector slung Lady Axe, his legendary battle-axe, over his shoulder. The others gathered up their belongings, and everyone who would join the flotilla descended the steep path to the harbor and boarded galleys to begin their journey.
Five miles later, when the ships turned into Ardtornish Bay, Isobel, lost in her own thoughts, glanced at Cristina in vague surprise that they were stopping so soon. But Mairi said with a grin, “Surely, you remember that we sent word to my mother yestereve of our intent to depart today. She sent her reply with the parson this morning, promising to be ready, but we are all to go up to the castle first, because my father desires that you present your new husband to him.”
Isobel had forgotten all about Princess Margaret, but glancing at Michael, she noted his lack of surprise, and guessed that he had known all along that they would stop at Ardtornish. He smiled, and although his smile had the same effect on her that it always did, she vowed to herself that, one way or another, he would pay dearly for having put her in such a position.
Then he stood and reached a hand out to her. Taking it, feeling it enfold hers, and looking into his smiling eyes, she recalled with a start that one other aspect of marriage existed to which she had given much too little thought.
Michael had only begun to savor his success in winning Isobel. He had thought her beautiful from the start, but seeing her now, dressed as she would be for court, with her smooth, rosy cheeks, her blue-gray eyes showing only gray today, her flaxen hair hanging like a gilded sheet nearly to her waist, and her low-cut gown framing pillow-soft breasts, he thought no one could be more beautiful, and he wondered again what the oft-mentioned Mariota had been like.
Well aware that this was no time to indulge his curiosity further, he and his lady led the way up steep steps carved into the cliff from the harbor to the great black-basalt castle on its jutting promontory above. Inside, they continued up more steps to the great chamber, then through it to a smaller one beyond.
The inner chamber contained a great blue-curtained bed, its drapery exquisitely embroidered with red, green, and white birds and flowers. In the bed, propped up against cradling pillows, lay MacDonald, Lord of the Isles.
Clearly weakened by his illness, he looked gaunt and, to Michael, much older than Ian Dubh. His hair was thin and white, his pale blue eyes watery and reddened, his face gray and shadowed with stubble. As they entered, he straightened on the pillows, and as his gaze caught Michael’s and held it, Michael found himself enduring a shrewd, measuring gaze and hoping that he would not fall short.
Ian Dubh had stayed at Duart, and Lady Euphemia remained in the hall with the waiting women, so only Hector, Lachlan, and their lady wives had accompanied the newlyweds into his grace’s presence.
Mairi stepped forward, and when he extended a hand to her, she grasped it as she bent to kiss his cheek. “Good morning, sir,” she said. “I have brought Isobel and her new husband to meet you before we all depart for the north.”
“Aye, lass, I see that,” he said, and his voice was strong despite his illness.
“I warrant I should present them to your grace properly, as Sir Michael St. Clair and his lady wife,” Mairi said with a grin.
Michael bowed and Isobel curtsied as MacDonald said, “Step forward, the pair of you. I would learn more about this hasty wedding.”
Mairi opened her mouth to explain, but Michael forestalled her by saying calmly, “I regret the necessity for haste, your grace, but I must be at my brother’s side when he is installed as Prince of Orkney, and it seemed wiser to take my lady wife with me than to leave her behind. My enemies know we have been together long enough for her to learn something of my affairs, and although I know less than they believe, I want her safe and will worry less if I keep her with me.”
MacDonald’s eyebrows rose. “Do you think us unable to protect her, sir?”
Michael smiled and waited for an answering gleam before he said, “I know you can protect her, your grace, but although I’ve arranged settlements with Hector Reaganach, I warrant you will agree that such matters arrange themselves better after marriage than before. You see, I want her protected in more ways than one.”
“You make an excellent argument, lad,” MacDonald said, adding bluntly, “Does that mean that you’ve already bedded the lass?”
Noting Isobel’s flaming cheeks, Michael suppressed another smile as he said, “Not yet, sir. We have felt some need for haste today.”
“It will not hurt your enemies to wait an hour or so longer,” MacDonald said. “Whilst she retires with Mairi and Cristina to the bedchamber my lady has set aside for her, and prepares herself for you, you may remain here and bear me company.”
This time, Michael did not risk looking at Isobel. Her gasp had been enough to tell him that she had not yet wholly accepted this duty of marriage, and he had no wish to stir her to rebellion in his grace’s bedchamber. Nevertheless, he was relieved when Ladies Mairi and Cristina took command of her and led her from the room.