Chapter
12
D
uncan sank down onto the pew, unable to absorb the emotional blow Edwina had just dealt him. “If this is one of your jokes,” he said after a moment, “I don’t find it any more amusing than what happened to you on the moor this morning.”
Edwina glanced up uneasily at the strands of rope dangling from the rafters. “I know the Highlands are rather primitive, but don’t tell me they
hang
people in here,” she murmured, unconsciously fingering the pearls at her throat.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Duncan said tersely, irritated by the woman’s lapse in attention. “You
were
joking, weren’t you?”
Edwina sighed, her gaze drifting back down to Duncan’s troubled face. “I only wish it were a joke. Her father and I reacted just like you at first. It was so out of character for Sarah.” She patted his hand. “The cowards sent me all this way to tell you. I was the only one with the guts for it.”
“I can’t believe she would do this to me.”
“Those aren’t chicken feathers on the floor, are they, Duncan?”
“It’s been, what?—only three months or so since she came to me with a list of people to invite to our wedding.
You were there, Edwina. Did you notice anything wrong between us? Did I miss something?”
Edwina glanced away, distressed by Duncan’s uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Duncan,” she said quietly, “that is the problem in a nutshell. It’s been
thirteen
months since you and my niece had that conversation.”
“
What?
Thirteen months? No.” Duncan lifted his head, disbelief and shame spreading across his face. “You’re wrong. You have to be.”
“It’s been over a year, Duncan. Yes, on my honor it has, and so much can happen in that time. You really can’t blame Sarah for doubting there was ever going to be a wedding. I doubted it myself.”
Duncan got to his feet, his voice wounded and indignant. “I’ll bring her back home. No, I won’t. To hell with her. Where did they go? How long ago did they leave? My God, didn’t your family try to stop them? It can’t be too late for an annulment.”
“It is,” Edwina said, cringing at the look of black fury that overshadowed Duncan’s face. She swallowed, her voice faltering. “The last I heard she was pregnant.”
And then Duncan lost his temper.
M
arsali pulled away from the keyhole where she crouched, evesdropping, shocked from head to toe at the swearing and yelling that profaned the chapel. Not that the MacElgins had ever had much use for religion to begin with, except when they were dying or marrying a woman they’d abducted, and then it was only to haul the poor old priest across the moor to administer the last rites or wedding Mass to a clansman.
But the language Duncan used, the creativity of his curses, blistered her poor ear. He used words she’d never used but wished to remember: Wouldn’t the clan be impressed if she could swear like that? She grinned at the thought, wondering how best to use the weapon of her secret knowledge to her advantage.
His English lady love had jilted him, thrown him over for an elderly viscount—which only proved the woman hadn’t been worthy of him in the first place, the way Marsali saw it.
She rose to her feet and stretched, shaking her head at this fortuitous turn of events. He was all the clan’s now, as the good Lord obviously intended it to be. Things were going as planned.
She paused and crept toward the stairwell, then held her breath as the chapel door banged open and Duncan, emerged, to stomp over the very spot where she’d sat eavesdropping not seconds before.
The hurt anger on his face actually moved her to pity him, to forgive him for heartlessly ordering her to make friends with a foolish Englishwoman, while Marsali’s beloved, her brothers and father, lay buried forever under a cairn of cold lonely stones.
She pressed herself against the wall as he swept past. To her surprise, he didn’t
even glance her way, too self-
absorbed in the anger of betrayal to even notice her.
He strode beyond her sight, his profile so forbidding it looked as if it were etched in stone. Releasing her breath, Marsali turned and darted down the stairs, her throat strangely dry, her sense of victory suddenly hollow at the image of the proud man’s pain.
D
uncan stood outside the door to the stone kitchen, struggling to control the foul mood that possessed him. He had sat alone in his chamber for two hours, wallowing in bad wine and self-pity, and then he had sat in a drunken stupor at the head of the banqueting table for another hour in the great hall, staring at Edwina’s guilt-stricken face, Sarah’s betrayal standing like a barricade of stones between them.
Supper had been delayed.
Not a single clansman had appeared. Not so much as a bite of stringy poultry had been served. In fact, a ghostly air of abandonment hung over the castle. The very walls whispered sly accusations and seemed to mock him.
And the reason?
Ah, yes, the reason. Well, the reason herself was perched on the oak chopping block in the cavernous kitchen, holding court to a spellbound audience of MacElgin clansmen. With a dramatic flair worthy of Drury Lane, Marsali Hay performed her passionate little heart out to a captive audience.
Duncan could almost admire her theatrical talent. Her voice caught just the right inflection; her small face portrayed an astonishing range of emotion; her supple body played out the pantomime with brilliant skill.
And the subject of her performance: Was it a Shakespearean comedy? A Highland folk tale?
No. Duncan’s mouth tightened into an unpleasant smile. The girl was acting out Sarah’s betrayal, while in the background Cook and her enrapt scullions allowed the salmon supper to go up in sm
oke. Chopped vegetables cooked
to mush in the forgotten broth. Never mind that Marsali portrayed
him
with embarrassing empathy as the wronged party and Sarah as a heartless, haughty Jezebel. Never mind that a few of his hardened clansmen sniffed back a tear or two in sympathy for their chieftain. Duncan’s humiliation was not only complete, it was also the evening’s entertainment.
Footsteps sounded in the dirt behind him. He glanced around to see Edwina tramping across the unlit yard in a red taffeta evening gown, looking hopelessly lost.
“Finally, Duncan,” Edwina said loudly, her aristocratic face annoyed. “It was bad enough to leave me sitting alone at the table without so much as a crust of bread. But to just get up and—”
“Be quiet, Edwina. Listen to this.”
Edwina listened, her earnest gray eyes widening in amazement as an astonishingly accurate imitation of Sarah’s cultured voice wafted across the yard from the kitchen door.
“It’s been over a year, and is Duncan planning our wedding? Is Duncan sending me tender love notes, consulting a jeweler about my betrothal ring?” Marsali’s voice rose into an indignant squeak. “No. Duncan is in
Scotland.
”
This she pronounced with a shudder of contempt, pinching her nose as if she had stepped in a cesspool. “In a castle with some medieval clan of traitorous men who wear skirts. To think that I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and actually
travel
there…
”
“What a nasty woman,” Owen interrupted, never once questioning that Marsali’s version of the story might be a little biased.
“Aye, holdin’ her nose at us.”
“And makin’ fun of our clothes.”
“She called us traitors too,” Cook chimed in from the fireplace.
“Even the chieftain doesna deserve such a faithless creature,” Lachlan said.
Marsali nodded in agreement. “He’s a hard man, but she’s no cause to treat him like that.”
“Does this mean we have to be nice to him now?” someone asked.
Marsali shrugged. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt. My father always said that even the fiercest beast responds to kindness.”
“The chieftain is well rid of her,” Johnnie shouted from the corner.
Effie pushed to the forefront of the crowd gathered around the chopping block, a piglet squealing under each arm. “Ye’re breaking our hearts, Marsali,” she said with a deep sigh. “What did the chieftain say when he heard the news?”
“I was just getting to that part before everyone interrupted me,” Marsali said in annoyance. “Give me a moment. I’ve got to get back into the mood. Ahem.”
Duncan glanced back at Edwina, realizing by the woman’s enrapt face that she was actually enjoying the brat’s performance herself.
“I’m going to kill her, Edwina,” he said quietly.
“Hush,” Edwina whispered, peering around Duncan’s shoulder for a better view. “She’s doing my part now. Damn, do I really sound like that?”
She did. Sitting on the block, hanging her head in abject shame, Marsali let a long dramatic silence ensue. “The last I heard she was pregnant.”
“And then what happened?” Lachlan prompted, literally on the edge of the seat he had taken with the others on the stone sinkboard.
Marsali narrowed her eyes. “Then he lost his temper, and it was so sad and frightening to see the great man brought low by the faithless Sassenach. Aye, it was the saddest and most frightening thing I’ve ever heard.”
“How frightening was it, lass?” Cook asked bravely, her voice quivering in anticipation. “What did he say?”
Marsali slowly rose back to her full height. She cleared her throat, closing her eyes in concentration.
“He said
…
he said, ‘Those dirty God damned little
—”
The door banged against the wall with enough force to fan the flames under the chickens roasting to blackened embers on the spit. Marsali’s eyes popped open, pinned to the dark figure who thrust his way through her audience toward the chopping block. Nobody breathed a word.
Marsali stared down at him in terrified silence.
“That was quite a performance,” Duncan said wryly. “Your talent for mimicry is surpassed only by your total lack of indiscretion and soaring imagination.”
Marsali swallowed, her self-confidence slipping a notch. His voice had dropped to that baritone again, portending bad things. What had she done wrong? Only spoken the truth. Not a lie had passed her lips. She’d stirred up sympathy and understanding for him, was all.
She crossed her arms over her chest, aware of her heart hammering in triple time. “They had to know,” she said passionately. “They need you, and
she
obviously doesn’t.” He glanced around the smoky candlelit kitchen, at the unfriendly but familiar faces turned expectantly to his. His clan. Dear God, he had lost Sarah, and look what life had left him in return. What a joke. On him.
“I expect supper on my table within the hour.” His lips curled as he surveyed the black smoke wafting from the ovens. “Or what can be salvaged of it.”
Without warning, he headed straight for the chopping block to catch Marsali around the legs and sling her over his shoulders like a haunch of venison. “You’re going to regret this, lass,” he promised softly, his arms tightening around her like a vise until he heard her gasp for breath.
“Dear God,” she grunted, pressing her palms into his shoulder blades for leverage. “Isn’t anyone going to stop him?”
“Apparently not,” Duncan answered calmly, maneuvering his way undeterred through the shocked but unhelpful clansmen, who parted to let him pass.
Marsali threw Cook a desperate look. “What about you, Aggie?” she wailed. “Will you let him treat me like this?”
Cook elbowed into Duncan’s path; pressed to her stout bosom lay a long thin French rolling pin, which had whacked more than one complaining clansman over the head. Even Duncan was not wholly unaffected by the sight. He remembered quite well that same cruel weapon cracked across his kneecap years ago when he had refused to finish his soggy haggis one Hogmanay. His knee joint still ached occasionally on a cold night.
They faced off like gladiators. Cook was herself built not unlike a Celtic warlord. A tall imposing figure with long straight steel-gray hair, she intimidated everyone who crossed her path. Her broad shoulders might have hefted a claymore in her salad days. It was the clan’s collective opinion, however, that she inflicted enough damage with an ordinary kitchen utensil.
In his younger years Duncan had stood in stark terror of the woman. “Step out of the way, Agnes,” he said, unconsciously tightening his grip around Marsali’s wriggling rump.
“Ye’ve no changed at all,” the woman said, her face flushed with anger. “The fancy titles, the medals, the honor—they’re naught but a disguise for the darkness within ye. You always used force to get yer way. ’Tis cruel to take yer pain out on this innocent lassie.”
Duncan despised the emotional chink in his character that allowed her words to penetrate. “Your personal feelings do not change the fact that I am your chieftain, and it is not your place to gainsay me. Now step aside, Agnes. I refuse to argue with a servant.”
The cold authority in his eyes gave Cook pause, forcing her to acknowledge that the wild youth had grown into a formidable man. “What are ye going to do with the girl?” she asked, her gaze flickering to Marsali, who had somehow managed to drape herself around Duncan’s neck like a fox collar come to life.