Cha
pter
17
H
e stared across the hall with his hand resting on his scabbard. The rigid set of his rugged features did not reveal that he was prepared to kill the first man to make a move toward the girl who stubbornly refused to leave his side. The girl who was probably going to cause a mass slaughter before the sun rose again over this stupid castle.
The heavy iron-studded doors burst open with such force that nearly all the candles on the table guttered and expired in dancing wisps of smoke. By a trick of light upon shadow, the remaining flames highlighted the tall brawny figure who posed with swaggering pride in the doorway. Young, roguishly handsome, with streaming blond locks and a red-gold plaid secured with a gaudy gold-lion broach, he swept a long assessing look around the hall.
And stopped dead on Marsali, breaking into a boyish whoop of delight.
Duncan heard her gasp in recognition. Then she started forward until he caught a handful of her lace skirts and yanked her back to his side. She threw him an irate frown over her shoulder, her lips pursing in a pout.
Somewhere in the castle a clock chimed midnight. The arrogant intruder snapped his fingers, and two fawning attendants bustled around him, brushing off his plaid,
giving his flowing golden mane a few flicks of a bejeweled comb. The young man stepped through the doorway and paused, allowing his audience to absorb the full impact of his arrival. Moments later a dozen retainers swelled into the hall like a cloud bearing an Olympian deity, six on either side of his golden magnificence, kilts swaying above big knobby knees.
“What an entrance,” Edwina said in admiration. “What timing.”
“What a fool,” Duncan said with a cynical scowl. “Who the hell is the clown?”
No one answered him.
No one, in fact, seemed to remember he existed.
Marsali was practically champing at the bit to fling her exuberant self at the charismatic arrival. His clansmen were gleefully fighting for the honor of being the first to greet the bold Highlander who stomped like a social conqueror into the hall, drained the glass of wine Effie handed him, threw out his musclebound arms, and shouted at the top of his voice with a lustful smirk.
“Someone give Jamie a candle and let him look at the lassie in the light! The wee brat had better be worth his journey here, or there’ll be hell to pay!”
“
J
amie!”
“Jamie MacFay, ye big stupid lout! Ye’re looking bigger and more stupid than ever!”
“If we’d kenned ye were invited, we’d have met ye on the moor!”
“Aye, and left me wanderin’ about bare-arsed in front of the woman I’m to wed,” the popular blond newcomer joked back with a good-humored grin.
“Ye’ve lost touch, Jamie,” one of the kitchen maids shouted from the post she’d abandoned. “Nowadays ’tis Marsali who leads the men on the moor.”
“Aye?” Jamie said, staring with renewed interest at the dainty figure in lace who stood impatiently beside Duncan. “Well, that’s another point in her favor.”
Banging his goblet down on the table, he began to advance on Marsali like a lion who’d spotted its mate and
would not be deterred. Duncan straightened, his hand tightening unconsciously on Marsali’s skirt.
“A friend of yours?” he asked in a wry undertone.
“We’ve met several times, the last when I was eleven,” she whispered, watching Jamie closely. “He and his father visited the castle while you were away at war. Jamie is heir to a chieftainship in his own right just like you were, my lord.”
Jamie was prevented from reaching them by the numerous clansmen who darted forward to clap him on the back, by the women who flirted and begged him to dance, by his own retainers who intercepted him to polish one of the brass studs on his pigskin boots, to clear an overturned chair from his path.
“He looks too young to be heir to anything but his first pony,” Duncan said in a disgruntled voice. “Where are his father’s land holdings?”
“In Dunlaig,” Marsali murmured, reaching up her hand unconsciously to smooth her tangled hair as Jamie approached her.
Duncan raised his eyebrow at the feminine gesture. Was she actually
preening
for the young peacock? He looked up slowly, squaring his shoulders, pleased to find that he stood at least three inches taller than the man who came to a swaggering halt before him.
“Jamie MacFay,” he said in a neutral greeting that gave no hint to the irrational resentment simmering beneath its deep tones. “You’re a long way from home, lad. Did you get lost?”
Jamie tore his gaze from Marsali and glanced up at Duncan as if noticing him for the first time. His cocksure grin slipped a notch at the gleam of hostility in the chieftain’s cold blue eyes. He puffed out his chest and challenged Duncan’s ste
rn
expression of established authority with a grin of reckless youth.
“Did Jamie get lost, he asks?” Jamie snorted, looking at Duncan as if he were a hermit who’d just stumbled into civilization after a fifty-year hibernation. “Was a MacFay bo
rn
who couldna find his bearings in his sleep?”
Duncan granted him a cool smile. “But I don’t recall sending you an invitation.”
“An invitation?” Jamie clasped his hands to his heart in wounded disbelief. “And since when does a MacFay need an invitation to Castle MacElgin? Besides, I’m here on business.”
“Business?”
“Aye.” Jamie’s gaze strayed back to Marsali’s small expectant face. “I’ve come to claim my bride. We’ll discuss the financial details later—after I do a bit of wooin’.”
J
amie didn’t bother to await the chieftain’s response to his brash announcement. His self-confidence would not have accepted a rejection in any case. Before either Duncan or Marsali could react, he had grabbed her hand and ordered the entire hall to celebrate their betrothal.
Gay music erupted to accompany the wild cheers that followed a brief stunned silence. MacFay’s retainers partnered themselves with the warm and willing MacElgin kitchen maids under the watchful eye of Cook. Duncan’s lids narrowed as he watched Jamie whirl Marsali about the hall, all white lace and bewitching laughter at Jamie’s primitive display of male possession.
“Well,” Edwina said in a flat voice behind Duncan, “it looks like you’ve gotten your way after all. She likes him. He likes her. Why aren’t you grinning and clapping in relief with the others?”
Duncan lowered himself into his chair, not bothering to reply. His dark gaze did not leave the dancers until he noticed Johnnie return to the table for his drinking horn. He snagged the lieutenant’s arm.
“Why do you like him so much?”
“Who, Jamie, my lord? Why, he’s a braw fine young fellow, son of the MacFay—”
“I know that.”
“And he’s a staunch Jacobite.” Cook came to stand behind Duncan’s chair like the queen mother. “Ye’d not catch any British soldiers carving up fields for roads in the MacFay holdings. The MacFays would fight to the death to protect their land.”
“Jacobites,” Duncan said. “And you approve of him too, Agnes?”
“I didna say that, my lord. He’s a hothead, a malcontent.”
Duncan glanced up at her in surprise. Even if the old battle-ax disliked him, she obviously harbored protective instincts for Marsali.
He turned his troubled gaze back to the dancers, sitting forward with a jolt of alarm.
The golden-haired man and the girl in white had vanished from his sight. Jamie MacFay had committed an act of sexual aggression right under his nose. It was insult beyond what he could bear.
He stood, his face like stone. “They’ve gone,” he said in disbelief to no one in particular. “He’s taken her without my permission.”
Johnnie took another drink, chuckling wryly. “And how’s he to be courtin’ her in a room full of people? Leave ’em be alone an hour or two, my lord.”
“An hour or two?” Duncan said grimly, pushing his chair back as his self-control threatened to erupt. “Leave them alone so that the arrogant lout can have his honeymoon before I’ve even agreed to a wedding?”
Edwina gave him a strange look. “They’re neither of them children, Duncan. What harm can there be if they’ve decided to take an innocent walk around the castlc or along the beach?”
“What harm could there be?” Duncan repeated. “I could write a damn encyclopedia of personal experience on the subject. Jamie doesn’t strike me as the type to restrain his sexual impulses. And Marsali, well, she’s like a wild strawberry more than ripe for the picking.”
He strode toward the door, angrily sidestepping the pig sauntering in his path. The din of shuffling feet and boisterous conversation faded to a dull humming in his head. In a moment of careless fun, a clansman inadvertently sent a dart whizzing straight at Duncan’s shoulder. He deflected it with the heel of his hand. The stinging pain drew blood but did not pierce the black fury that propelled him outside.
He didn’t know what he would do when he found them. Never in the frenzy of battle, never when defeat hung over his head like an ax, had he permitted his emotions to rule his actions. Not since the raw days of adolescence had he allowed himself the luxury of acting on animal impulse.
It felt damned good to let go of his control. Aye, he
enjoyed the savage rush of feelings that flooded him like a red tide. It was enough that he had the right to decide Marsali’s future, and he’d be damned if some hotheaded oaf with swaggering hips would deflower her under Duncan’s nose. Like it or not—and, to his disgust, he was beginning to—he was the chieftain, and no one would lay a finger on Marsali without his permission.
C
h
apter
18
H
e found them alone in the castle garden, if you could call it that. Actually it was more like an overgrown witch’s forest of herbs, dead flowers, and waist-high weeds. A pair of playful white kittens sprang out at him from behind a wheelbarrow. He scooped them up and set them down in a rusty bucket before closing in on the sound of soft uninhibited conversation. He was ready to murder Jamie with his bare hands.
“You’ve grown into a rare fine beauty,” Jamie was saying in a low seductive voice that set Duncan’s teeth on edge because he’d used that same tone himself often enough in the past, and with success.
“Well, I’m not bad,” Marsali replied with the frankness that Duncan could only love. “I do wish I had more of a bosom, though. My brother
Gavin keeps telling me I’m as fl
at as an oatcake. The chieftain is always scolding me to hold out my chest too.”
Duncan frowned. Now that was a little
too
frank, and untrue. She had a beautiful little body. He adored her perfectly sculptured breasts. Besides, he didn’t care for where the subject would inevitably lead; if he’d been in Jamie’s place he would have exploited her naivete to shameless advantage.
Which Jamie did.
“Come sit on my lap, sweeting,” Jamie said, his voice coaxing. “I’ll have a wee look for myself and prove yer brother a liar.”
There was a long suspicious silence.
Duncan’s face darkened as he was forced into the untenable position of either exposing his hiding place to interrupt the inevitable next step, or of allowing Marsali to expose herself to Jamie MacFay’s sexual curiosity. He pushed aside the blackberry brambles to see what the situation warranted. A thorny tendril snapped back and hit him in the face as if to chastise him for interfering. He swallowed a curse and rubbed the droplet of blood that beaded on the end of his nose. This was the most ridiculous reconnaissance mission of his life.
“Oh, look, Jamie!” he heard Marsali exclaim. “They must have gotten out all by themselves. Aren’t they the sweetest things you’ve ever seen? Would you like to hold them?”
Hold
them? Would you like to
hold
them? Duncan’s heart began to hammer so hard it roared like a tidal wave in his ears. Right then and there he decided he would throw Jamie in the dungeon for a few days to cool his overactive libido. Then he would send Marsali to the convent for some desperately needed moral guidance. The girl was as guileless as a—as a kitten.
“I’ve never seen a pair so white before,” Jamie said with a chuckle. “Aye, and aren’t they the softest things in the world?”
“Mind you don’t squash them, Jamie. They’re not used to being handled.”
Duncan could not control himself for another second. To hell with letting true love take its course. To hell with minding his own business. He burst out of the brambles like an enraged bull, his bellow of outrage shattering the tranquil intimacy of the two figures seated on the bench of the rose bower.
“Good heavens!” Marsali cried, lifting her free hand to her throat. In the other she was holding a tiny scrap of wriggly white fluff across her lap. “You scared the life out of me, my lord.”
“Aye, and the wee kittens,” Jamie observed as the second white ball scampered down his leg and disappeared under the bench.
Duncan blinked. As the black haze receded from his brain, he was shamed by the innocent scene he had defiled with his dark imagination. “I thought
…
I heard
…
”
Marsali rose with an admonishing shake of her head. “I rescued those kittens from my brother’s well, my lord. They aren’t used to being handled, and thanks to your yelling like an ogre, they probably won’t let anyone near them again. You really ought to control that temper.”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, Marsali. Get back inside.”
She put her hands on her hips. “What for?”
“Because
…
” Duncan glanced over at Jamie, who had risen to stand next to Marsali, with his hand resting possessively around her waist. “Just go back into the hall, Marsali,” he said again, his face closed to debate.
Jamie gave her a fond pat on the backside. “Run along then. We’re going to talk man to man. To decide things.”
“To decide what?” she asked, her face suspicious.
“Go away, Marsali,” Duncan and Jamie said in unison. She did, reluctantly. The two kittens dove after the train of white lace hemline that had come unraveled from her skirts. Duncan shook his head disparagingly until she had disappeared behind a wall.
Jamie chuckled and clapped Duncan on the shoulder, affecting a confidential demeanor. “Ye might have waited a little longer before ye interrupted us. Jamie was just warmin’ up to a proper MacFay wooing.”
“I heard.” Duncan did not return the smile; he was thinking of Jamie’s hand on her derriere and of his around Jamie’s neck.
“Unfortunately, you weren’t invited here tonight to woo her. In fact, you weren’t invited here at all.”
“But everybody likes me,” Jamie said, smoothing back his flowing blond tresses. “Especially Marsali.”
“Marsali is not the person you’re going to have to please.” Duncan leaned back against the trellis with his arms folded over his chest. “It’s me.”
Jamie’s grin faded at the chieftain’s look of cruel enjoyment. “I dinna like the sound of that, my lord.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you like. I also don’t like the fact that you have known her for years and have only now decided to court her.
After
learning she has an ample dowry.”
Jamie’s eyes flashed in indignation. “I’d have come for her before but her dad would never have had me. Always gave himself airs, he did. Anyway, I’d heard she was to be wed to someone else.”
“Her betrothed was killed, along with her father and her brothers, in an uprising two years ago.”
“Aye?” Jamie shook his head in sympathy. “Well, four more valiant deaths in the name of the Cause. Marsali has reason to be proud.”
“You’re missing the point,” Duncan said impatiently. “They were unnecessary deaths. Marsali has reason to be sad and furious at the waste of life.”
“But what else is a life for, my lord?” Jamie asked in genuine astonishment. “Would you not protect your castle if it were attacked by the Sassenachs?”
“Of course I would, but—” Duncan broke off in frustration. Why waste his breath explaining the fine points of military strategy to this empty-headed carpet knight? James Francis Edward Stewart would never usurp the Hanover king on the British throne. The Jacobite lairds were too scattered and poorly armed for a war with England.
“A man of your experience understands the glory of battle, my lord,” Jamie said craftily.
“I understand the glory of peace,” Duncan said with a frown.
“Peace?” Jamie scoffed. “They’ll be no peace, what with England stuffin’ its laws down our throats. One way or another, they’re going to kill us. Ye suggest we should die without even a fight?”
“I suggest you should value the lives of your clansmen more.”
Jamie looked uncomfortable, clearly not in agreement but afraid to argue with the chieftain. “I want to marry Marsali,” he said sullenly, like a child being denied a sweet. “Ye’ve no reason to refuse me, not when ye’re dangling her like a carrot to every man for miles.”
Duncan controlled the urge to push his fist through Jamie’s pouting face. “Does she want to marry you?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Jamie asked in surprise. “Dozens of women do.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Duncan said, a snide note creeping into his voice. “Perhaps her standards are higher than those dozens. Why do you want to marry her?”
Jamie hesitated, apparently
more used to action than self-
analysis. “Because she’s Marsali, that’s why. Because she isna like the others.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Duncan murmured with an ironic smile. The fool had captured the essence of her unique charm.
“Can I have her?” Jamie demanded bluntly.
Duncan straightened, releasing a breath. “That’s to be decided in the hall before the clan.”
“Well, everyone likes me,” Jamie said with an arrogant grin. “What’s to decide then?”
Duncan’s smile was not encouraging. “The final decision is mine to make, J
amie. And I haven’t decided if
I
like you yet.”
A
s Jamie stomped off in a huff through the weeds, his kilt swaying around his knees, Duncan turned to the garden wall. “You can come out now, Marsali.”
There was a silence, then the crackling of dry leaves as she crept out into the open with a sheepish smile. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, my lord. I really wasn’t.”
“Of course not.”
“I was trying to find the kittens again. Your bellowing frightened the wee things out of their wits.”
Duncan stared down at her. There were leaves and a few feathers from her discarded tiara in her hair. The wine stain had blossomed into a crimson starburst on her gown. The hemline had unraveled another inch. She looked sweet, defenseless, and enchanting. Why wouldn’t Jamie want to marry her?
“It looks like midnight came earlier than we expected, Cinderella.”
“I’m sorry all your plans for marrying me off came to nothing,” she said, scratching her nose.
He noticed that she held Jamie’s pigskin leather glove in her hand. “A love token already?” he asked dryly.
“What? Oh, this. Jamie was letting the kittens hide in it. I’ll have to give it back. You were spying on us, weren’t you? You should be ashamed of yourself, a chieftain.”
Ashamed, aye, he was that and more. Ashamed, jealous, confused by the ambivalence of his feelings for her. He lowered his voice. “You like him a lot, don’t you?”
“Everyone likes Jamie, my lord.”
“Yes, so everyone keeps telling me. But the question is, Does Marsali like Jamie?”
She crushed a leaf with the toe of her dirty pearl-seeded slipper. Her face was cautiously noncommittal. “Do you want me to like him?”
“It doesn’t matter whether
I
like him, Marsali.”
She lifted her head, looking
puzzled. “But you told Jamie…
It doesn’t?”
“No. I’m not the one who’s going to marry him. You are.”
Her eyes widened. “Am I?”
The two kittens attacked his ankle, little claws drawing blood. “That hasn’t been decided. I can’t give him an answer until I know whether you like him enough to marry him or not.”
She pondered his odd tone. Could the chieftain be jealous of Jamie? The thought brought a teasing smile to her lips. “Well, Jamie is very handsome, isn’t he? He does have that long golden hair.”
“He’s a veritable Rapunzel. I tremble with envy.”
He
was
jealous. Marsali couldn’t believe it. “He has lots of money.”
“Most of which he probably spends on combs and coiffures.”
Marsali tried not to laugh. “He’s a strong man, for all his vanity. Nothing like you, of course. But did you see the size of his shoulders?”
“God, I could squash him like a cockroach,” Duncan said without thinking.
“When he was only a baby, he used to catch the boulders his father rolled down the hillside.”
“That explains it. One of them must have rolled on his head.”
She sighed deeply, plucking a feather from her headdress and letting it float to the ground. “He’s going to be chieftain when his father dies.”
“If he lives that long,” Duncan said wryly. “At the rate he carries on he might not live past your honeymoon.”
“At least he doesn’t think he’s a lobster,” Marsali murmured when it seemed she had run out of other compliments to add to Jamie’s character.
Duncan gently shook the kittens off his foot. His voice was gruff. “You seemed to like him well enough when you were sitting alone together on that bench.”
Marsali smiled at the memory.
“He kissed me,” she confessed softly.
Her mysterious smile was killing Duncan. The smile of a young girl infatuated with the man who wanted to marry her. Duncan wondered what the hell was wrong with him. It was perfectly normal for her to be attracted to Jamie. What was abnormal was
his
reaction, the resentment bordering on irrational rage. Wasn’t this what he had wanted?
“From the silly look on your face, you must have liked him kissing you,” he snapped before he could stop himself.
“I liked it well enough.” She shook her head in confusion. “But something wasn’t right.”
A strange pain gripped Duncan’s heart as he stared down into her face. A voice of logic in his head warned him to stop the conversation before it led to trouble. He told the voice to shut the hell up.
“What wasn’t right, Marsali?”
She shrugged, pretending to stare down at the kittens chewing
on her slippers. “It wasn’t…
well, it wasn’t you.”
Duncan stared at her as if he had been turned to granite. “What do you mean?”