Only For A Knight (18 page)

Duncan gave a noncommittal shrug.

 

Sir Marmaduke’s gaze sharpened. “Why do you think my Caterine makes the journey to Doon every spring?”

 

“H’mmm . . .” Duncan acknowledged with a gruff nod.

 

Even at his worst, he was unable to deny how much better the Sassunach’s face appeared.

 

“She visits the crone every year?” Robbie glanced at his father, scarce able to believe it.

 

“Do not turn to me for an answer, lad.” Duncan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I do not ken why she goes to Doon, but I vow we are about to learn.”

 

Sir Marmaduke nodded.

 

“And so you are,” he said, looking smug. “She wishes to pay tribute, to thank the crone for all she’s done for us at Balkenzie Castle. Caterine takes her provender . . . plaiding, creels of cut peats, dried haunches of meat and suchlike, and—”

 

Duncan cocked a dark brow. “And she returns with . . . dried bats’ wings and fossilized toe of newt?”

 

“She—” Sir Marmaduke snapped his mouth shut as quickly as he’d opened it. Refilling his ale cup, he took a long, slow sip before he spoke again.

 

“We both have a touch of gray in our hair these days, my friend,” he said, not looking at all distressed by the disclosure. “In most men, wisdom is thought to increase with the arrival of such signs of maturity. I like to think I am now sage enough to know better than to comment on such foolery as just left your li—”

 

“Sage? And only just now, you say?” Duncan grabbed the edge of the table, leaned forward. “Sakes, English, you were born sage. That, I vow!”

 

Sir Marmaduke shrugged. “Then mayhap you will heed your own advice to your son and not make jest at the crone’s gifts.”

 

“Bah! See you, I’ve another question for your aged and wise ears,” Duncan said, settling back in his chair again. “Now that your Caterine is returned, when will you be returning to your own Balkenzie?”

 

Robbie frowned.

 

Their bickering, though good-natured, had gone on long enough.

 

“Have done behaving like mummers,” he said and was rewarded by a sharp, unrepentant look from his father.

 

His uncle continued to stare fix-eyed down the table, calmly sipping his ale in that oh-so-slow way of his, a gesture designed solely to tread on his longtime friend’s renowned impatience.

 

Determined, Robbie seized up his dirk and, raising it high, hammered its blunt-ended handle on the table, promptly catching their fullest attention.

 

He cleared his throat, laid down the dirk. “And I say, my uncle and the lady Caterine stay with us for as long as they desire—to be sure, until my wedding,” he said, deciding the matter for them. “It would not be meet for them to leave the sooner.”

 

His father’s mien lightened at once.

 

“There speaks my lad,” he said, sounding much appeased. Enough so to send a quick triumphant glance down the table. “So you have come to your senses at last?”

 

Borrowing his uncle’s trick, Robbie took a long, slow sip of his ale.

 

“I have come to know my mind, aye,” he said, putting down the cup with a
clack.
“And if I hadn’t, the lady Euphemia’s absence in the hall yet again would have set my purpose, that you can be sure of. I will not wed her.”

 

His father’s brows snapped together, his face coloring again.

 

“Dinna think you will take this . . . this
Juliana
to wife!” he rapped out, a muscle beneath his eye beginning to twitch and jump. “I will not allow such shame to befall this house—know it.”

 

“The lady Euphemia need not be shamed,” Robbie said, glad for the steadiness of his voice. “I have a plan I believe she will receive with favor.”

 

His father hooted. “Saints cherish us—a plan to humiliate her and you say she will be joyed to hear it!”

 

He glared down the table at Sir Marmaduke, jabbed a finger at him. “English, I will personally see you off to Balkenzie if this nonsense comes from you—aye, I’ll see you set sail in a storm—and in a galley with holes bored in its hull!”

 

“And mayhap I aught take my leave indeed,” Sir Marmaduke countered, lifting his cup in mocking toast, “since staying might drive my good temper past its limits.”

 

“Your good temper,”
Duncan grumbled, swinging back on Robbie. “Whate’er fool plans you are hashing, lad, you must give the MacLeod lass a chance,” he said, a strange note of tight-stretched nervousness in his usually so authoritative voice.

 

“She ails, I tell you—wait till you see her,” he went on, the tinge of ill ease quite plain now. “A blind mole could see she fares poorly. A wee teensy bit, she is. Fragile. I pray you, wait before you do aught that will bear grievously on this household.”

 

Robbie sat up straighter. “So ever you say, Father. But you mistake if you believe I wish to bring grief on this or any good house—such is not the knightly way.”

 

“And neither is rejecting a bride—last I heard!” Duncan snapped.

 

A decided clearing of throats and muffled snorts rose at that, Sir Marmaduke and some of the other kinsmen within hearing range not quite able to smother their guffaws.

 

Those old enough to remember knew well how vehemently the Black Stag had objected to wedding his own much beloved lady wife.

 

Robbie raised a hand, waving his father to silence when he looked to spout more objections—or rain darkest epithets on his smirking kinsmen.

 

“Be assured, I only desire what is good for the lass, mayhap even better for her—a possible alliance to one of the many marriageable Douglas lads I met in the south,” he said, warming to the notion. “Clan Douglas is great in number and mayhap the most powerful family in all the realm. And their lands are in the fair south, a climate where Lady Euphemia’s ailments will surely not trouble her so sorely as here, in Highland, with our continual rain and cold.”

 

“You have thought this out.” His father frowned. “Have you sent a gillie south already? Dared to begin negotiating such foolhardiness?”

 

Robbie stiffened, but he held his father’s gaze.

 

“Nay, the idea has only just come to me in recent days,” he admitted. “But I am on friendly enough terms with the Douglases, both the Blacks and the Reds—they even took me hunting wild bulls in Ettrick Forest. They are hard and able men, capable of holding their own against any Highlander, and they are e’er in need of young wives. There could be no shame for the lady Euphemia in becoming a Douglas bride.”

 

“Think you such a high-born family would accept the daughter of a bit laird the likes of Hugh Out-with-the-Sword?” That from Sir Marmaduke.

 

“To be sure.” Robbie helped himself to a fresh cup of ale, his spirits lifting. “They’d jump at gaining a foothold above the Highland line—a lass of good enough house and standing who could make that possible would be greeted with much favor—”

 

“Och, well and I believe it,” the Black Stag said, swinging around to quell the chatter breaking forth at a few of the nearer long tables. “But it matters not, for it is you the lass shall wed.”

 

Pushing back from the table, he stood, rising to his full, imposing height.

 

“I will not have her shunned,” he said, his voice edged with authority. “Not beneath my roof. She has not wronged you—and she’s sent you her regrets at being bed-bound, as you well ken. There will be nothing of it, but that you do right by her. And honor your vows.”

 

Robbie shot to his feet as well, glad for the chill air pouring in on them through the small high windows. “The lady Euphemia has my greatest sympathies that she is . . . of frail health. Would God I had the means to spare her such trials and I do regret she must suffer her days abed—”

 

“Some say she lies.”

 

Gelis, Robbie’s saucy-eyed youngest sister, came flouncing out of the shadows at the back of the dais, her older sister, the raven-haired Arabella, close on her heels.

 

Looking pleased to have drawn all gazes with her impudence, Gelis flipped a bright-gleaming braid over her shoulder and raised a cheeky voice.

 

“Do not gape so,” she said, jutting her chin. “She does lie—and if she doesn’t, then she twists things to suit her.”

 

All round the high table, jaws dropped and eyes stared. And at the long tables close by, the excited buzz of speculation stopped abruptly.

 

“Who would dare spout such nonsense?” The Black Stag wheeled on his daughter, his expression fierce. “The lady Euphemia ne’er leaves her room—all know it. There is nary a one amongst us who has been in her company long enough to make such an unfounded accusation. Tell me true, lass, who would speak so unfairly?”

 

Gelis shrugged, the cheekiness of her dimpled smile not diminishing a jot under her father’s narrow-eyed stare. “Mayhap the laundresses?”

 

“Ssssshhh you,” Arabella sought to silence her. “We cannot know if what they say is true.”

 

“So they did say something?” Robbie strode over to his sisters, his interest arrested. “What did they say, Gelis?” He fixed his attention on his younger sister, the one most likely to babble forth whate’er weighted her tongue.

 

But to his surprise, she blushed, her smooth cheeks turning nigh as bright a red as her hair.

 

She glanced round, her gaze lighting first on her father and uncle, then flicking over to the lady Euphemia’s own guardsmen filling nearby trestle tables.

 

“’Tis not fit to be spoken in front of menfolk,” she said, her flush deepening. She sent a sidelong look at her sister. “Tell him, Arabella—we ought not talk of it.”

 

Arabella said not a word.

 

Indeed, she tried slinking back into the shadows whence the two young women had come.

 

“Och, nay, lass. Too late—you already have spoken of it.” Robbie snagged her arm. “You—and your sister—are not leaving this dais until you tell us what demons have perched on your shoulders.”

 

In sorry plight indeed, Arabella bit her lower lip. “’Tis only that we do not wish to see you cozened,” she said at last, and immediately lowered her dark gaze to the stone-flagged floor. “Is it not enough to know that the kitchens are agog with rumors—and have been ever since she came here from Castle Uisdean?”

 

“Then I would know what you have heard.” Robbie hooked a finger beneath her chin, lifted her pretty face. “Every word of it—kitchen gossip or no.”

 

Arabella pressed her lips together, looked to Gelis.

 

“Ach, leave her be,” that one declared, sashaying up to them and knocking Robbie’s fingers from Arabella’s chin. “With surety, we canna vouchsafe for the prattlings of laundresses, but we can promise you that the lady Euphemia leaves her chamber!” Gelis cried, her eyes flashing triumph. “’Tis addlepated she is, I tell you. We have seen her slinking about where she had no right to be . . . a-talking to herself about nonsense.”

 

“And just where have you seen her
slinking about
?” Duncan wanted to know, lowering himself into his laird’s chair, his expression no longer wrathful, but weary.

 

“Since no one else has glimpsed the maid, mayhap it interests me, as your father, to learn where the two of you have been keeping yourselves?”

 

They all waited, but Gelis kept her rosy lips sealed and Arabella fixed her gaze on the windows.

 

Getting up again, the Black Stag moved round the high table and laid his hands on his eldest daughter’s shoulders. “If you do not wish to reveal where you were when you saw her, then tell us where the lady Euphemia was when you saw her,” he suggested, his tone incredibly reasonable for so hot-blooded a chieftain.

 

Arabella slid an uncomfortable glance at her sister. “S-she was in the passages of the tower where her chamber is, and—and . . . in her room.”

 

“So-o-o—that is how the cat jumps. Now we come to the bit, eh, lassie?” Releasing her, the Black Stag stroked his knuckles down her blushing cheek, then slid a telling glance at Sir Marmaduke before looking back at his daughter. “Now tell me—did the lady Euphemia see
you
?”

 

Her face running red as a sunset, Arabella shook her head.

 

Duncan jerked a much-telling glance back toward the deepest shadows of the dais—to a wedge of blackness where a little-used door stood cracked open.

 

His expression spoke volumes. “Can it be that you and your sister have been skulking about in secret wall passages that ought to have been sealed off many long years ago?”

 

Switching his gaze between his flush-faced eldest daughter and the silent Sir Marmaduke, he let his most penetrating stare settle on the latter.

 

“Is it possible, English, that not all such passages and hidden stairwells were tended to . . . back then, long years ago, when it fell to you to oversee such measures?”

 

Sir Marmaduke had the good grace to appear chagrined.

 

But he caught himself as quickly, and rather than splutter a retort, he, too, pushed to his feet. Stepping forward, he took Arabella’s hand and raised it lightly to his lips.

 

“If you do not wish to tell us what you heard being bandied about by the servitors, perhaps you can tell us what you heard the lady Euphemia saying?” He slanted a warning glance at Duncan. “Regardless of how you came to be close enough to her privy quarters to observe her . . . thusly?”

 

“I—I . . .” Arabella began, shuffling her feet. “W-we were—”

 

“We were in the squint above her chamber,” Gelis blurted, her eyes sparking indignation. She glanced about, her hot amber-eyed gaze pinning anyone who dared to crook a brow at her.

 

“We were bored if you would know the truth of it!” she blurted, not a thread of remorse in her voice. “We meant the lady no harm. We were only curious why she hides herself up there. And so we saw her—prancing mother-naked round her chamber, not a-coughing at all, and talking up a storm about Fladda Chuan, beyond Duntulm Bay on Skye, and how she was certain it is in truth the fabled Tir-nan-Og, the Isle of Perpetual Youth!”

 

At the ensuing silence, she sketched a mocking curtsy.