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24
M
a
rsali disappeared with the midwife behind the crude stone wall partition of her brother’s cottage. Her abandonment left Duncan at the mercy of her eight unsupervised nieces and nephews, who ranged in age from two to twelve. They gathered around him in a circle of awestruck silence. He smiled uncertainly and backed toward the door.
The eldest boy pushed to the fore with a belligerent sneer. “My da said if we was bad, he’d send us to the castle for the chieftain to punish.”
His twelve-year-old sister nodded in agreement. “He said ye’d boil us in a broth of blood, eat our wee bodies, and use our bones to pick yer teeth.”
“Did he indeed?” Duncan asked dryly as Gavin of the gruesome stories himself limped through the doorway, his face flushed with embarrassment at what he’d overheard. Apparently the man had overheard enough of the conversation to make frantic hand si
gnals at his offspring to stop.
Gavin set a bucket of freshly caught trout by the hearth and cleared his throat. “Children will exaggerate, my lord.”
“
Adults will too in my experience,” Duncan retorted. “Anyway, now that you’re here, Hay, I think I’ll go outside and examine—”
“Oooh. Aaah.” Gavin released a loud groan of agony.
Clutching his back, he sank down onto the oak settle by the fire. The children crowded around him with sympathetic faces, the little ones covering him with a plaid. The older ones brought him a pillow and pulled off his wet boots. The baby toddled over and patted his foot.
It was obviously an established ritual.
“Forgive me for not standing in your presence.” Gavin paused to grimace dramatically. “The pain is that awful, my lord.”
Dunc
an frowned. “Yes, I can see…
”
He was distracted by the sudden moan that rose from behind the partition. Low and inhuman, it raised the fine hairs on his nape.
“Is everything all right in there, Marsali?” he asked, edging closer to the door.
“Everything is fine, my lord,” she replied in an amused voice.
Bride moaned again
Gavin groaned.
Duncan eyed the children. They eyed him back. “If you need me, M
arsali, I’ll be inspecting…
”
Bride was moaning.
Gavin was groaning.
Duncan would have sworn they were competing in a contest of whose agony was greater. He pushed the door open, trying not to appear desperate to escape.
“Take the children with you, my lord,” Marsali shouted as he sneaked his first step over the threshold.
He froze in midstep like an escaped convict caught by his warden. The children rushed him, with whoops of delight, clinging to his legs with astonishing enthusiasm, in light of his reputation for being a cannibal.
“ ’Tis good of ye, my lord,” Gavin said in a weak voice from his chair. “They wear me out, if the truth be told.”
Claire, the three-year-old, was unraveling a thread in Duncan’s plaid. Her twin brother, Connor, was shooting spoonfuls of porridge into the air from the breakfast bowl he’d taken from the table.
“Wait a minute.” Duncan carefully freed himself from the children and ducked behind the partition.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” Bride said, giving him a
brave smile before another contraction caught her off guard, and she groaned, arching her back.
Then Gavin moaned.
Duncan took Marsali by the arm to draw her aside. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. “It looks as if you’ve got everything under control. I’ll ride back to the castle and send Effie here to watch the children.”
Bride wasn’t just groaning now. She was swearing like a fishwife. Duncan paled under his swarthy tan, stumbling over a stool.
“You can’t leave now,” Marsali said calmly. “She’s very close.”
“Close to what?” he whispered in alarm.
Bride squatted down in the corn
er. Duncan stepped back into the wall in bewilderment. Battles were one thing, delivering babies another. The mere thought of childbirth overwhelmed him. Women looked so fragile.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with eight children?” he wondered aloud.
“Well, don’t swear at them, for one thing, and don’t lose your temper. It scares people when you do—except for me, of course.”
Duncan didn’t move, a look of panic on his face.
“Take them o
utside. Let them play in the burn
.” Marsali hurried off to Bride’s side, grasping her sister-in-law’s shoulder in support. “Tell them a story, my lord,” she said impatiently. “Do whatever you did to amuse yourself as a lad.”
“Fine,” he retorted. “I’ll round them up and we’ll go dropping mud pies down smoking chimneys for a start. If that gets boring, I’ll take them down to the cove to drill holes in the fishing boats. Then we’ll watch the boats sink from the caves while the men bail frantically and curse. After that, we’ll steal a few goats and dress them in the tenant farmers’ clothes hanging behind the cots to dry.”
“That sounds lovely,” she said without glancing up. “Just be sure that Amelia doesn’t get too wet. She’s had a nasty cough.”
As he left, he heard them laughing behind his back, whispering about him in amused exasperation.
“And did ye see the look on his face when Bride squat
ted?” That was the midwife speaking. “I dinna care how strong and powerful
a
man is, they’re
all
the same when it comes to practical matters.”
“Hopeless,” Bride agreed in a gasping voice.
Marsali giggled softly. “Well, I know he can handle a troop of horsemen. But eight b
airns…
I have grave doubts.”
“
T
his is awfully kind of you, my lord,” Gavin murmured as Duncan stomped to the door, a gaggle of chattering children at his heels.
Duncan glanced down at the grinning faces. “How long will I have to watch them?”
“Bride usually doesn’t take long.” Gavin sat up, moaning faintly. “Probably another hour. Would you mind passing me that jug on the table, my lord? Yes, that’s it, thanks. Oh, and the cheese beside it. The knife too, if it’s not a bother. And a wee bit of honey—no, that’s the wrong jar. Aye, there ye go.”
Duncan put his hands on his hips. “Anything else?”
“Well, the Bible over there, since you were kind enough to ask. And if you could just open the shutters for a wee bittie more light.”
Someone tugged on Duncan’s trousers. “Gordie’s gone, my lord.”
It was the twelve-year-old girl named Dara. As Duncan stared down into her bright blue eyes, he realized with an unexpectedly sharp pang of regret that his own unknown daughter, had she lived, would have been even older. Had that unwanted baby experien
ced any love at all in her too-
brief time on earth? Or had she, like Duncan, been despised from the moment of conception by the father who could not claim her?
He swallowed over the knot of repressed grief in his throat. “Gordie can't have gone far. I saw him not two seconds ago.”
“Aye, my lord. That was before he fed yer horse an oatcake and rode it like hellfire over the hill.”
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25
D
uncan was exhausted. The battle of Brihuega hadn’t taken this much out of him. Childbirth, children. He didn’t have the stamina for it. A summer with Marsali had worn him down. War was beginning to look like fun in comparison.
He had chased down both horse and horse thief, herded up the remaining flock of children, and assembled them with military precision on the sunlight-dappled banks of the bubbling bu
rn
. They stared back at him, their faces openly challenging, promising more mischief.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Now the chieftain is going to show you how he
really
plays nursemaid. Military style.”
Gemma gave a squeal of delight and pointed excitedly through the trees. “Look at that!”
Duncan glanced a
round in amazement at the tiny-
heather-thatched cottage. Sparks of colored light exploded from the chimney in a plume of grayish smoke. He half expected the roof to fly off. Then the water in the bu
rn
reversed direction. The children shrieked in delight, staring down at the current of churning wavelets.
“Oooh,” Dara whispered in admiration. “Auntie Marsali must be working a spell.”
Before Duncan could agree or disagree, the lusty cry of a newborn baby broke the silence, magic unto itself.
Leith snorted in disgust, kicking a stone. “Another baby. We’ll never get to Virginia at this rate.”
“Perhaps we could leave
you
behind,” his older brother Keith suggested, giving him a punch in the shoulder.
Duncan grabbed both boys by the scruff of the neck. “There’s to be no talking among the prisoners. The next one to break the rules knows the punishment.”
M
arsali trudged down the grassy incline to the bu
rn
. She could hear Duncan’s deep rich voice rising above the water gurgling over stones and a joyful warmth washed over her, much like the satisfying sweetness of watching Bride nurse her newborn son. Her feelings for the chieftain threatened to resurface: the yearning, the anger, the fascination. What an emotional void he would create when he left.
How lovely, she thought. He’s telling the children a story. Who would have believed the powerful chieftain capable of such tender behavior? And look at the children gathered round him, wide-eyed and unmoving, hanging on his every word. Why, it was a scene to bring tears to her eyes. She sniffed, deeply touched, moody and emotionally fragile.
“I’ll tolerate no drunkenness among the ranks,” the chieftain was announcing in a gruff voice. “Any soldier who disobeys will be lashed to the gun wheel and flogged with the cat.”
Marsali gasped, halting in her tracks. He wasn’t telling them a story—he was threatening them with corporal punishment! The children weren’t standing voluntarily in that rigid circle—he had tied them to the tree with Bride’s clothesline! Warping their wee innocent minds with the harsh images of army discipline.
Hiking up her skirts, she pelted down the incline. “And just what do you think you’re doing, Duncan MacElgin? Who gave you permission to corrupt my nieces and nephews?”
Duncan turned his head, taking a moment to admire her shapely brown legs as she barreled toward him. “Would you like me to tie you up too?”
“No! Dinna stop the game, my lord,” Gordie begged him, his young boy’s voice breaking the spell.
“He’ll be giving you nightmares for months,” Marsali said angrily as she marched up to the tree to untie the children.
“But we like being tied up,” Gemma said with a shy smile. “It’s fun.”
Duncan leaned back on his elbow, chuckling at Marsali’s efforts to undo his knots. Her tangled curls covered her flushed face. The agitated rhythm of her breathing thrust her breasts out against her dress. God, he wanted her, and last night had only made it worse.
“What happens after we’re flogged senseless, my lord?” Gordie demanded, shying away from Marsali in irritation. “What if we still haven’t learned our lesson?”
“Well, depending on how much blood you’ve lost, and if you’re still con
scious…”
Marsali paled. “Don’t you dare say another word, my lord.”
“We might just leave you standing there a little longer to let the suffering soak in.”
Marsali thrust her hand to her mouth, then recovered and began tugging at the knots in frustration; somehow, for all her struggling, she only managed to tie them all the tighter.
“It’s all right, Auntie Marsali,” Keith said in an undertone. “He took us prisoner.”
“Aye,” she said, “the barbarian, tying up helpless bairns.”
“But we like it,” Keith explained in a patient whisper. “It’s only a game, after all.”
Marsali dug her heels into the ground, her face turning purple with ex
ertion as she grunted. “Aye…
you’ll be tied to this
…
damn
…
tree forever, by the look of
…
it.”
Duncan rolled onto h
is back, remembering how sweet
and ripe for seduction she had been last night in his arms. Then a startled “O-o-o-oh!” broke his train of thought, and he sat up to see Marsali come flying backward through the air. Before he could roll out of her path, she went tumbling over his shoulders.
His world went black, an explosion of delectable if conflicting sensations. Her skirts impeded his vision; the scent of her skin unleashed a sea of dangerous impulses in
his blood. He grabbed her around the knees. She pounded on his back, laughing and cursing him for tying those damned knots in the first place. Obviously she had forgotten about the children.
He’d forgotten about them too. Then Marsali gave him a warning nudge. Sighing, he plunked her to the ground.
“My knots aren’t meant to come undone,” he said with a lazy smile. “That’s the whole point. I keep what I take.”
The children, not realizing he was waging an entirely different kind of tactical assault on their young aunt, attacked without warning. Gordie and the other boys jumped on his shoulders. The twins pounced on his feet. Wee Claire bombarded him with old acorns. Gemma tickled him.
“Shall we tie him up, Auntie Marsali?” Keith asked breathlessly, helping Dara to unravel the line from the tree.
Marsali backed away slowly, her heart heavy with poignant awareness as she watched Duncan gently wrestle the boisterous children, who pummeled and pounded him without mercy. It was almost impossible to reconcile this playful giant with the arbitrary chieftain who had only last night broken her heart.
“Tie him up,” she said with forced cheerfulness, wishing that a simple rope were all that she needed to bind him to her.
Because she loved him.
Because she could not bear it if he left.