She wiped it on her skirts. "I cannot believe people are playing games down there."
"It's the Scots way," Trick told her.
"Folk were somber early in the week," Niall explained. "But Mam has been gone six days now. All the tears have been shed, all the stories of her have been told and told again. The feasting, the games and riddles—it's all in her honor. The wake is a celebration of her life."
They followed him out into a spacious sitting room that seemed lacking in furniture. Though the windows were small and set back in incredibly thick walls, the stone was whitewashed here and reflected the candlelight, making this chamber much lighter than the one downstairs. A large tapestry hung on one side, looking like it could use a good cleaning, and across from it, four faded red chairs were arranged to face a fireplace.
"Still and all," Niall continued, "this is nothing like Calum MacKinnon's wake last year. They propped up the dearly departed and put a pipe in his mouth, then took turns throwing boiled turnips at him to try to knock it from his lips. I don't think Mam would appreciate that."
"I'd expect not!" Kendra exclaimed.
"Da is in here." Niall pushed open a door. "Come along."
The room was sizable as bedchambers went, with substantial oak furnishings lining the walls and a large four-poster bed in the center. A tall, gaunt man lay beneath the coverlet, snoring softly, and a middle-aged couple sat nearby on two chairs. They began to rise, but Niall waved at them to stay seated.
"Da." He reached to jiggle the man's shoulder. "Someone's here to see you."
Hamish Munroe started and opened his eyes, then blinked and looked again. "Patrick? Is that you?"
"Aye, sir, it is."
To Trick's apparent dismay, the older man's eyes flooded with tears. He held out a hand. "Come here, lad. Let me touch you." With seeming reluctance, Trick gripped his fingers. "Elspeth said you would come. I didn't believe her."
"I received your letter," Trick said, slowly reclaiming his hand. "Or rather, my wife did, and came after me to deliver it." He drew Kendra forward. "My wife, the Duchess of Amberley."
"I'm glad of your acquaintance," she said, reaching for the man's outstretched hand. It trembled in her grasp. "Please, just call me Kendra."
The man's fingers weakly squeezed hers, feeling hot and dry. "Then you must call me Hamish. It's pleased I am to meet you." Dropping her hand, he rolled his head on the pillow, indicating the other couple. "These are my oldest friends, Rhona and Gregor Haig."
"Your grace." Rhona rose and curtseyed, first to Trick and then to Kendra. "Your grace."
Kendra hated the formal address as much as she'd always thought she would. She smiled at the pale woman, wishing she could set her at ease. "I'm glad of your acquaintance," she said.
"Pleased to meet you," Rhona returned softly, not quite meeting Kendra's eyes with her shy blue ones.
Gregor bowed. "Your graces." Blue-eyed and silver-haired as well, he resembled his wife in the way that long-married couples often did. Kendra wondered if she and Trick might end up like that some day, but casting his golden countenance a glance, decided not.
"Sit," Hamish said before turning back to Trick. "They've been keeping me company." He paused and grimaced in pain, then blew out a breath. "I've fallen ill with the same plague that killed Elspeth, you see, and Rhona here is a fine healer."
His friend shook her head. "My possets and infusions don't seem to—"
"Hush, woman. I know you've done your best."
Wiping her hands on the skirts of her cranberry-red gown, Kendra stepped closer. "Your letter said that Elspeth's illness was inexplicable and alarming—"
"I thought so, at first," Hamish said. "But it was only that it was such a coincidence, aye, her sending that letter and then..."
When his voice faded, Niall took over. "It seemed such a coincidence that she should claim she was ill and then suddenly succumb. When Da fell ill as well, the doctor came to visit and"—tears flooded the young man's eyes—"and said they were suffering from a bilious fever. Nothing inexplicable."
"Did he say it was fatal?" Trick asked.
Niall crossed his arms, his familiar eyes radiating a mixture of grief and denial. "That doctor's a bampot if ever I met one. Da is stronger than Mam was. He's not going to die."
Gregor shook his head mournfully. "Last night, a coal in the shape of a coffin jumped from the fire to the hearth. Right there." He indicated the fireplace across from the bed.
"Old beggar-woman tales." Clearly agitated, Niall went to the hearth and grabbed a poker. "I don't believe such nonsense."
As if to contradict his son's opinion, Hamish's face contorted with another pain, and he bent over double in the bed.
Rhona rushed to his side and pressed a cup filled with vile-looking green liquid to his lips. "Drink, Hamish." A tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek. "Have a sip for me, will you?"
He did, and then his eyes closed and he seemed to fall asleep. Niall stabbed angrily at the fire, as though daring another coffin-shaped coal to jump out.
Trick moved closer and took Kendra's hand. "Only at Duncraven," he muttered under his breath, "is it cold enough in the middle of summer to keep a fire burning day and night."
"It's cold within Cainewood's thick stone walls as well," she whispered back.
But that was one of few similarities between the two castles. Though both were centuries old, the parts of Cainewood that had been restored were modern and clean, while this place looked aged and worn out. The white paint was chipping off the walls, and cobwebs lurked in the corners.
As the estate's mistress, she would never stand for such slipshod housekeeping. But Elspeth had been ill these weeks past—perhaps that explained the neglect.
"Come along," Trick said. "Let's leave him to sleep."
"Patrick. Wait. I wish to speak with you." Hamish forced open his eyes. They looked black, until Kendra realized they were light brown but seriously dilated. The older man's voice wheezed through paper-dry lips. "About...about your...your mother's letter."
"You're weary, Da." Niall dropped the poker and crossed to his father. "You're always better in the morning," he said, brushing the straggly gray-blond hair off the man's forehead. "You can speak with Patrick then."
"Elspeth's burial is in the morning," Rhona reminded him in a strangled whisper.
"Oh, aye." The young man closed his eyes for a moment while he recovered his composure. "Then after," he said when he opened them. "Or the next day. You don't have the strength now."
When his father nodded and rolled to his side with a grimace and a groan, Niall ushered Trick and Kendra from the room.
Back downstairs, Niall beckoned to his newfound brother. "Come, you should sit. This must be quite a shock to you both."
Trick allowed himself to be led through the crowd of reveling mourners. Servants passed among them, offering plates of oatcakes and shortbread. Goblets filled with spirits sat waiting on a sideboard, and he snatched one as he walked by, drinking deeply.
Beside the great hall's magnificent canopied fireplace, Niall pushed him into a seat niched into the wall. Trick drank again, then looked around him and leapt to his feet.
"Nay, you belong in the sedile now," the younger man said, gently easing him back down to the fur that draped the stone bench.
Kendra sat beside Trick in the niche and silently took his hand. He gave her a grateful half-smile. Just as he felt uncomfortable in his father's English mansion, neither did he feel that he belonged in this sedile—the seat of honor for the master of the house. Against his back, the stone felt too cold, too solemn.
But he did belong here now—that much was the truth. No matter how awkwardly that truth rode on his shoulders.
Heat rolled out of the fireplace beside them, and torchlight glinted off the armor scattered around the perimeter of the chamber, a reminder of days gone by. Curious glances were slanted in Trick's direction, and people seemed to be edging their way closer.
Oblivious to it all, his mother lay in a box in the center of the room.
Sipping again, he looked away, up to Niall. "I cannot believe she's dead."
"I share your disbelief." Niall hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. "But unlike Da, I'm not entirely sure there's no evil force at work. I intend to get to the bottom of it." His suddenly narrowed gaze hinted at bravery beyond his years. "Will you help me?"
"I wasn't planning to stay here," Trick said. "I came at my mother's request, and now she's dead." He had pressing matters back home. The king's mission still awaited completion. And a trusting relationship with Kendra was waiting to begin.
"Who is this?" a woman asked, stepping close. Her dull chestnut hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and she looked to be near Trick's age.
"Ah, Annag." Niall's smile failed to reach his eyes. "May I present the Duke of Amberley, my mother's eldest son. Patrick, my half-sister, Annag."
"Pleased to meet you," Annag said, although she clearly wasn't. Her dark brown eyes flashed with some emotion Trick couldn't put a name to, but it was plain enough she didn't like him. Or didn't like him here.
"And Duncan," Niall continued as a man joined their little gathering. Another of Hamish's grown children, from the looks of him. He and Annag bore a marked resemblance to each other, the most obvious being their matching expressions of distaste.
Raising the tankard in his hand, Duncan took a deep swallow. "When are you going home?" he asked, skipping the preliminaries.
Wondering why he felt surrounded by the enemy, Trick rolled his shoulders and changed his mind about leaving so quickly. "When I'm good and ready. I've only just met my brother, and—"
"Oh,
him
," Annag interrupted, shooting Niall a look every bit as deadly as the one she'd given Trick. "High and mighty Lord Niall."
Apparently Niall had been passed off as the duke's son, and Hamish's other children resented him for it. But the young man only gave a good-natured shrug. "If you cannot be civil, Annag, I will ask you to leave my home."
Duncan took another gulp of his spirits. "It's
his
home now," he said, indicating Trick with a smarmy, pleased gleam in his eye.
Niall flinched, but recovered swiftly. "And so it is, I suppose."
"I won't be throwing you out," Trick assured him.
"I wouldn't trust him," Annag told Niall, as though Trick weren't even there. "He may have been born here, but he's turned English."
When Niall just glared at her, she continued. "Well, listen to the man speak. English through and through. He's forgotten his Scottish roots, and even you, gowk that you are, ought to know better than to trust a Sassenach."
"Don't the women need help in the kitchen?" Niall asked his sister. "And what are your bairns up to? And Duncan, have you sat some time with Da this day? Rhona and Gregor could use a respite. They're good friends, but you're his son." After that brave speech, he looked down to his scuffed black boots. "Give us some peace, will you? Our mother just died."
"And good riddance," one of them muttered as they shambled away. Trick wasn't sure which, but it didn't seem to matter. So far as he could tell, they both hated him equally. The fact that they'd hated his mother as well came as no surprise.
From what he knew of her, she, at least, hadn't deserved their love or admiration. His father had made no secret of all her faults, and already one had been proven true this night: His mother had been a whore. Perhaps Hamish's wife had been dead when Niall was conceived, but Elspeth's husband had not.
He slumped in the stone niche and extricated his hand from Kendra's, belatedly realizing she'd been holding it in an iron grip.
"Welcome to Scotland," he said, flexing it ruefully.
Although it had grown late, the castle was still overrun with people. Apparently, after his years away had made it clear to Elspeth that her husband was never returning, she'd invited Hamish to live with her and Niall. Hamish's older children had been grown by then and had homes of their own, but since Elspeth's death they'd had been staying here to keep him company. With his grandchildren, too, of course. One big, happy family, as the saying went.
Somehow, Kendra didn't think it applied in this case.
"Are you sure you don't want the master's chamber?" Niall asked.
Trick shook his head. "I wouldn't dream of moving your father. There must be a spare bed here somewhere."
And that was how Trick and Kendra came to follow Niall up what seemed like miles of winding stone stairs, until at last they stepped into a huge, deserted chamber.
Their footfalls echoed off the wooden floor as they entered. A few torches on the walls did little in the way of brightening the place, and the room gave off a musty scent that spoke of long disuse.
Kendra stared up at the gloomy vaulted stone ceiling. "It's spooky."
Niall gave her a wan smile. "Cromwell garrisoned his soldiers in here when he commandeered the castle during the war. A hundred of them, lying foot-to-head on the floor, with a second hundred on another level that rested on those posts you see protruding from the wall." He pressed a key into Trick's hand. "Your staff has moved your things up here already. Shall I have them sent up to attend you? You've a valet, do you not, and a ladies' maid?"
"Aye, my man goes by Cavanaugh, and Jane sees to her grace." Trick's gaze met Kendra's. "But I think we can fend for ourselves tonight."
Though she didn't know if he'd intended to remind her, Kendra's skin prickled as she recalled what she'd promised would happen this evening. Then he looked away, pensively moving off, and she knew that he was no more thinking of such things than she had been.
After all the upheaval today, last night seemed so very long ago.
"Good night, then," Niall said.
"Good night," she returned softly.
Listening to the young man's footsteps fade, she shivered. The candle in her hand wavered, throwing shadows on the gray stone walls. "I dislike to think of Cromwell visiting this place, let alone using it as a headquarters." Oliver Cromwell had been indirectly responsible for the deaths of her parents and her own exile that followed.