Wings of Morning (3 page)

She noted now that many of them were bloodied, their shirts torn, and some wore bandages. Fear stabbed through her. What had they been about last eve?

Her glance searched them more closely now, seeking but one face in the mass of men approaching her. Walter, his face twisted in anguish, strode along at the side of one of the men carrying an end of the plaid. Regan’s hand went to her throat. Nowhere did she see Roddy.

And then she knew. They carried Roddy!

With a strangled cry, she ran to them, shoving her way past the men, crowding up to stand beside her husband. The men halted, and she could finally see what had been hidden before. Roddy lay there, pale and unmoving. She reached out, touched his cheek. It was cold.

“How?” Regan forced out the word. “How did this happen?”

No one replied.

“How?” she repeated on a thread of hysteria. “How?”

“He wanted to prove himself to ye,” Walter said at long last, moving to her side. “He wanted to make amends by giving ye a fitting bridal gift. So we went on a wee ride into Campbell lands to lift a few fat cattle.”

She turned a horrified gaze to Roddy’s younger brother. “Ye . . . ye went reiving? On my wedding night?”

“It wasn’t my idea, lass,” Walter said. “I tried to talk Roddy out of it. Ye can ask any of these lads here. They’ll vouch for me, they will.”

“What happened?” Regan dragged in a shuddering breath. She gestured to the lifeless form of her husband. “How did
this
happen?”

“The Campbells weren’t in a verra forgiving mood when they caught up with us. We found ourselves fighting for our lives. Finally, Roddy cried out to the Campbells that we yielded. That seemed to satisfy them, once we had thrown down all our weapons. I thought then that we might actually live through this, especially when the Campbell leader next ordered us to depart. Things got a bit confused then, in the darkness and all, and I lost track of Roddy. Soon thereafter, a shot rang out.

“The clouds momentarily parted and, in the moonlight, I saw Roddy fall. I wheeled about just in time to catch a flash of a silver pistol in the hand of the man who had just fired it. Fired a bullet into my brother’s back.” His mouth contorted in hatred. “The cowardly, cold-blooded knave!”

Time stilled. Blood pounded through Regan’s skull until she thought she’d scream. All the while, though, a chill calm spread through her. Roddy was dead, and the man who had murdered him still lived.

“Who?” she gritted out the demand. “Who killed Roddy?”

“The laird of Balloch Castle, no less,” Walter hissed. “None other than Iain Campbell himself.”

2

It’s strange what kinds of thoughts enter yer head when ye least expect them,
Regan mused three days later as she watched the final shovelfuls of dirt tumble down onto Roddy’s casket. Rather than dwell on the morbid scene of glum MacLaren clansmen or the still wailing
bean-tuiream
—professional mourning woman who had followed the coffin to the kirk graveyard—Regan chose instead to consider her current options. Mayhap it was just her way of distancing herself so she might cling fast to the tattered remnants of her control. Or mayhap she truly was, in the end, as cold-blooded and hard of heart as Roddy sometimes accused her of being.

One way or another, Regan knew she had to maintain her sanity, had to survive. That resolve hadn’t changed but only evolved over the years from a childish, unthinking instinct to one of now-conscious intent. With Roddy gone, however, the only question remaining was should she continue on here or attempt once again to return to her own clan? Unfortunately, the decision was no simpler than it had ever been.

Walter had already made it clear that her place was here, that in everything but birth she was now a MacLaren. And there was some truth in the fact that Strathyre House, whether she had ever wished it so or not, had long ago become her home.

She had been only five when her parents had brought her here to stay with one of her mother’s cousins, a dour-faced, imposing woman who was by then Roddy and Walter’s stepmother. But only for a few months, her parents had assured her, while they journeyed to Edinburgh to attend the widowed queen, Mary of Guise’s, appointment ceremony as Governor of Scotland to rule in the place of her young daughter, Mary, until she came of age. Though that day had been over twelve years ago, Regan recalled it yet as if it had been yesterday.

She had begged her parents until she was hoarse, then screamed and wept until her voice was gone, pleading with them to reconsider and take her with them. But they had remained adamant, promising to return just as soon as they could. Their departure had sent Regan to her bed for nearly a week, in which she refused to eat or be consoled. Indeed, what could be said that would justify such desertion? It was a wounding the likes of which she hoped never to experience again.

But experience it she had, but three months later, when word came that both of her parents had died of typhus. All good intentions aside, they had never returned for her. They had never even set out on the road back home, having died in some miserable, louse-infested lodging in Edinburgh.

This time, Regan was inconsolable. Though but a child, she knew the truth of what had happened. Her beloved father and mother were gone, headed for a distant place she could never reach in this life. They had left her behind. They had rejected her. They didn’t love her.

But neither had Regan found much comfort or love from her two caretakers. Roderick senior had been too busy trying to provide for his family to spare the grieving five-year-old much time. And his wife, for some reason still unknown to Regan, found a strangely sadistic pleasure in taunting her at every turn, accusing her of driving her parents away and, in the process, inadvertently causing their deaths. The cruel words, however, didn’t long suffice. And then the beatings began.

Not that Clan Drummond, her father’s people, appeared to bear her any true sort of love either. Though at the time of her parents’ untimely demise Regan had been too young even to think about returning to her ancestral home, much less even care to do so, factions had soon risen within the peevish Drummond clan over who should or shouldn’t assume the now-vacant clan chieftainship. And, with several uncles to contend with—all of whom, for one reason or another, felt their claim was the most legitimate—no one had given much thought to a wee girl child’s own, even more valid, claim. No one had lifted any hue and cry, for that matter, that she should even be returned from the temporary—and presumably far safer—care of the MacLarens.

In her heart of hearts, despite the brutality of Roddy and Walter’s stepmother, Regan knew she had always been far safer at Strathyre than in her own lands. It was why, over the years, she hadn’t ever seriously broached the matter of returning home. And it was why she gave it only passing consideration now, as she stood at Roddy’s grave, contemplating what path her life should next take.

She was now a MacLaren and would live her life as one, until the day came when some other man would take her as his wife. She wasn’t a fool. Her only value lay in whatever future suitors saw in her. After all, having squandered the one opportunity to become impregnated with Roddy’s heir, Regan knew Walter would now inherit Strathyre and its lands.

He could never wed her himself, though,
if
he even desired to do so. Highlanders were an independent lot and frequently ignored the laws and social strictures of their cousins to the far south. The taking of one’s widowed sister-in-law in marriage, however, wasn’t one custom easily discarded. Especially not when the Kirk itself also frowned on such a practice.

For that reason alone, Regan had little worry Walter would ever consider her as a possible wife. Unfortunately, he also lacked the funds to put together sufficient dowry to entice any other potential husbands. Only her claim to the Drummond fortune would offer any hope for future suitors.
If
they were of a mind to go to war with her uncles over it.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. Regan lifted her gaze to the pewter gray skies. Rain was in the offing, as it frequently was this time of year. Best they hie themselves home while they still could, or soon be trudging through a torrential downpour and the resulting mud.

Not that Strathyre offered any promise of respite, Regan thought as the gathering finally began to disperse. Even on the sunniest of days, it was still a damp, dreary, rundown place. Once the seat of a mighty clan, Strathyre, perched on the shores of Loch Voil, was a superbly defensible tower house that had, in the last century, been additionally fortified with two additional conically capped turrets on opposite corners from the already existing gabled watchtowers.

As she headed up the hill toward the old stone dwelling, Regan’s gaze lifted. A four-story, square tower topped by an attic and a garret story beneath its steeply pitched roof, the building’s seven-footthick walls had withstood numerous assaults in the three hundred years of its existence. Made of local stone, the dark gray house was a sophisticated balance of intricacy and symmetry. It was also, however, a dwelling of few comforts or amenities.

The ground floor, which held storage cellars, a small armory, and two prison cells, was dark and dank, its only illumination three narrow, vertical, defensive loopholes. A turnpike stair led to an L-shaped first floor, which housed the kitchen, several more storage rooms, and a general workroom. It at least, though, had three windows and a garderobe. The Great Hall on the second floor, plastered and painted with rapidly fading scenes, was even more brightly lit, with windows in each wall, two with stone seats, a fine fireplace, and garderobes at both ends of the south wall.

On the third floor, in addition to the two, large bedchambers with fireplaces, was another, smaller bedroom in one of the turrets that had always been Regan’s. Or, leastwise, she thought sadly, her room until her wedding night, when she had gone to join Roddy in the largest of the two main bedchambers. Access to the lower stories of the turrets—which additionally held garderobes—was also available from the third floor.

The fourth story was the attic. Besides offering entry to the upper stories of the turrets, in inclement weather the attic was used to hang the wash from ropes strung from the rafters. It had also been, throughout the days of her girlhood, a favorite place for her to play.

At the memory, Regan’s lips curved in a sad little smile. Many the times she had escaped up there to hide from the wrath of Roddy and Walter’s ill-tempered stepmother. Perhaps the woman had been dull-witted enough never to suspect the attic as a hiding place. More likely, though, with her ever-increasing corpulence, she lacked the energy to climb the additional flights of stairs on the twisting, circular turnpike.

One way or another, the attic had become Regan’s haven. From its imposing height, she could peer out the windows on each wall and see for miles in every direction. Sometimes, when the weather was particularly miserable, Roddy and Walter would even deign to entertain her childish pleas to play with her. Together, they’d create all sorts of scenarios, of knights and ladies, of heroes and dragons, and sometimes, though not as often, of saints and martyrs.

High up in the lofty heights of the attic, for a short while Regan was temporarily able to set aside the raw wound of her grief, the ever-present doubts and questions about her role in her mother and father’s deaths, the waking nightmare that had become her life. In those blessed, highly imaginative moments, she could almost believe her parents were yet on their way home. She could almost believe that they’d soon be reconciled as the loving, happy family they had once been, and all the misery and fear would disappear as if it had never, ever happened.

Those fleetingly happy times with the two brothers, however, had soon faded. Roddy’s interests rapidly turned to more carnal ones, and he began spending what seemed both day and night pursuing every maiden in sight. And Walter, but two years younger, wasn’t long in joining him.

By that time, wee Molly had been born, and Regan soon had her care to preoccupy her. So Regan watched the two brothers’ escapades in curiosity, then shook her head in bemusement, secretly grateful they continued to view her as naught more than their little foster sister.

The day came, though, when all that changed.

“R-Regan!” a male voice, unsteady most likely from the exertion of running up the steeply winding hill to Strathyre House, rose from several feet behind her. “Hold up, l-lass. I need to speak with ye.”

It was Walter. She heaved an inward sigh. Notwithstanding that she didn’t always get along with Roddy’s self-absorbed, eternally calculating younger brother, she was in no mood right now to talk. All Regan wanted to do was retire to her little turret bedchamber, be alone with her thoughts—and especially her regrets—and shed some more tears.

Still, Walter was grieving too. Perhaps he but wished for a few words of comfort, for assurance that all would someday be right again with the world. Problem was, Regan wasn’t convinced of that herself.

Nonetheless, she halted and turned to await his arrival. Walter soon drew up at her side.

His dark brown eyes skimmed her slender form and, as always, Regan couldn’t help but wonder what direction his thoughts were taking. She soon discarded that consideration. No one could ever really be certain what Walter was thinking. To dwell on it was a pointless waste of time.

He was as tall as his brother had been, but instead of Roddy’s sturdily muscled form, Walter was thin and wiry. His hair was brown, but a drab shade, with none of the glinting highlights of Roddy’s wavy mane. And there was nothing of singular appeal about his face. He was neither handsome nor ugly. The best and worst that could be said of Walter MacLaren was that he was . . . average.

“Aye?” Regan met his impenetrable gaze with an open, steady one of her own. “What is it?”

He stepped around to her side and took her by the arm. “As I said, lass. I need to speak with ye—in private. Come,” he said, tugging now on her arm. “I’m thinking the library would be best.”

Irritation at his suddenly high-handed manner surged through her. Did he think, now that Roddy was gone and he was laird of Strathyre, that he could begin ordering her about? But then, perhaps Walter, who had always stood in Roddy’s shadow, was but unfamiliar with being in a position of authority. She shouldn’t misjudge him so quickly.

“As ye wish.” She fell into step beside him.

It wasn’t long before they reached the big tower house and climbed the stairs to the third-floor library. Tucked in one corner off the Great Hall, it was a cozy, if windowless, room, lined with two half shelves of books, a long, high-backed oak settle, and two plainly fashioned wooden benches.

The room always had a musty, closed-in smell, but Regan didn’t care. Few people frequented the little library, save for a private conversation or meeting, and so she generally—and quite happily—had the place all to herself.

She entered, and Walter followed, closing the door behind them. Regan walked to the settle, took her seat on one end of its wooden expanse, and quickly smoothed a fold of her most elegant gown, its severe lines of gray wool adorned with but a bit of lace at the edge of the high-collared neck and ends of the long sleeves. It was, at the very least, five or more years out of date compared to the current fashions at Queen Mary’s court. Fine dresses these days, though, came dearly for the now almost penniless Clan MacLaren. Not that it mattered much to her. She had long ago learned to content herself with the everyday dress of a simple clanswoman.

Only the silver cross, rich with openwork scrolls and flourishes, that she wore constantly about her neck reliably alluded to her higher standing in the Scots’ nobility. At the cross’s center was a tiny hinged compartment for keeping a written prayer close to the heart. It was a parting gift from her mother, and though the script on the enclosed scrap of yellowed parchment was now faded with age, Regan kept it still. As she’d likely do until the end of her days, she imagined, her fingers touching it fleetingly before falling once more to her lap.

She cocked her head at Walter, who hadn’t yet exited his spot by the door. “Well, what is it? Ye’ve never been one to mince words before, so what’s holding ye back now?”

He inhaled a deep breath. “Now that Roddy’s been prayed over and buried, we need to talk about what to do about the man who murdered him.”

Regan went still. Och, holy saints and martyrs! What would going after Iain Campbell accomplish now at any rate? Roddy was dead, and no amount of talk of revenge or reliving that fateful night would bring him back.