Page 14 of Seduced By the Reckless Highlanders
“No!” he hissed. “Leave him.”
Now McTavish sat down, and the others maintained yet another tense silence.
“Needless to say,” the laird went on, “anyone who breathes a word of this outside this room will be dealt withveryseverely, and I mean that, so keep your mouths shut. The operation will take place a week from now, and I trust you will take that time to prepare your men. I will accept no excuses for your absence that night except death. Do you understand?”
There was a mumble of affirmation from around the table before everyone stood up to leave.
The laird poured himself another whiskey and put his head in his hands, wondering if he should go see his wife. Lately, making love to her had stopped being a pleasure and had started to become a chore. She lay on her back and closed her eyes so that she did not have to look at him, then opened her legs and lay passive until he had done what he had to do, then she left. He always summoned her to his chamber instead of going to hers as a way of making her obey him, but he had tired of that novelty now.
Should he send her away? Find some excuse to have the marriage annulled? Or should he dispose of her the same way he had done with the first two? At least a quick dip in the moat had rendered his first wife unmarked, and the second had been declared an accident.
He decided to wait for a while, perhaps until the New Year, and redouble his attentions to his wife. He had managed to conceive a child before with Marion, so it was not as though he was infertile. With that thought, he swallowed the rest of his whiskey and went to seek his wife. He did not care if she found their coupling tedious or painful; she would do her duty as she always did. That was all that was required of her.
Dougie and Murdoch began to walk back to their quarters without speaking for a while. Dougie knew Murdoch well, and he had learned to recognize the signs that his friend was ready to explode with rage and that it was better to leave him to cool down of his own accord.
However, instead of making for the keep where Murdoch, as Captain of the Guard, had a little room of his own, they began to climb the stairs to the topmost turret where only a few guards were stationed. Murdoch ordered them to go downstairs to the next level down and then stood looking out at the countryside below them for a while.
It was a beautiful patchwork of plowed fields, hedgerows, and dry stone walls, where crops of barley, rye, and wheat were just beginning to poke their spring shoots above the earth. Stands of spruce and pine trees gave way to new growths of gorse bushes, whose flowers would soon color the hillsides a bright lemon yellow. Scottish Blackface sheep grazed on the emerald-green patches of grass between the bushes, sharing the field with Highland cattle with their shaggy orange coats and terrifying curved horns.
The sky was beginning to clear, and a weak show of sunlight washed the sky. Murdoch felt his anger cool a little, although it had by no means disappeared.
“Why do we work for him, Dougie?” he asked at last, dragging a hand back through his tangled hair in agitation.
Dougie looked at his friend and sighed. He possessed a much calmer disposition, and one of the things Murdoch valued most about his friend was his ability to soothe him.
“Because we need the money an’ a place to live,” Dougie replied flatly. “We are common people, although ye were lucky tae get a wee bit o learnin’ at school. But even ye cannae pick an’ choose, an’ we are lucky tae have the little we have. Many people are no’ sae fortunate, my friend.” He patted Murdoch’s back. “Come, let us eat and then get back tae work! We can worry about that eejit later.”
7
Adaira, dressed in her male finery, was trembling with nerves. It was just after dark on a Sunday evening, which in late spring meant that it was very late indeed since the last daylight did not fade from the sky until the tenth hour after noon. Adaira knew this since the laird had just acquired a timekeeping device called a clock.
When she had asked for one, he had acquiesced, much to her surprise. It now hung on the wall beside her bed, and she had ascertained that McTavish always summoned her at around the same hour every night, which was between the ninth and tenth hours. Now she knew exactly when she would be free, which was an extremely useful piece of information.
She had just done her marital duty and had washed the laird’s seed from herself, a task she found utterly disgusting, and now she was creeping along to Keira’s room via the secret passage that ran behind the passage wall. The laird knew of it too, of course, but the servants did not, and this made it very convenient for lovers or friends. An old building like the castle was riddled with such hidden corridors.
She emerged from the passage from a door just opposite Keira’s chamber and knocked on the door softly in the rhythmof their prearranged signal. The door opened quickly, and Keira stood aside to admit her.
“Let me look at you,” she said, running her eyes over Adaira from her threadbare cloth cap, patched clothes to her toeless shoes. “Very convincing!” Her voice was admiring. “Now, all you have to do is follow me and keep quiet. Don’t be scared. I have done this a hundred times before, and I will look after you.”
She hugged her friend, whose eyes were wide with fear. “We are sharing my horse, and Moira is waiting at the bottom of the stairs to keep the way clear. One of the stableboys is part of our little band, and he has readied for us.”
She took Adaira’s hand and led her downstairs, where Moira gave them the signal to pass.
“Good luck, milady,” she whispered to Adaira.
Adaira could not speak. When they reached the stables, Diamond, Keira’s grey mare, was already waiting for them. She was a docile, pleasant animal and made no fuss when first Keira, then Adaira, mounted and rode out.
“How did you get the guards to leave us alone?” Adaira asked, puzzled.
They were moving at a walking pace since the darkness was almost complete, and they had to pick their way with care.
“That is my secret.” Keira chuckled and tapped her nose. “Let us just say that one of them is not quite what he seems.”
Presently, the lights of the village began to twinkle through the trees, and in a moment they were outside the tavern. Keira quickly installed Diamond in the stable, and the two women stole downstairs to the cellar, through the secret door, and into the hidden room where the rebels were seated. They looked up, surprised and a little wary when Adaira came in.
Keira grinned at their startled faces. “Gentlemen,” she said theatrically, standing aside to let them have a look at Adaira. “This is my stepmother, Lady Adaira.”
“Very funny, Keira,” Ralph McNab said, laughing heartily. He looked at Adaira. “Who are ye really, hen?”
