Page 140 of Bride of Mist
Feiyan took pity on the worried maid. “Gellir will be fine. After all, he survived a bout with Dougal and lived to tell the tale.”
Both of them lifted their brows at that. Dougal apparently didn’t remember, but he’d attacked Gellir at the Creagor tournament.
“There’s no one like Gellir with a sword in his hand,” Feiyan said.
“Unless ’tis ye, m’lady,” Dougal said. Then he turned to Merraid. “Were ye able to—”
“Och, aye!” Merraid exclaimed.
She lowered the satchel she’d been carrying, carefully emptying its contents onto the floor and unbuckled the belt fastened diagonally over her shoulder.
She’d brought the rest of Feiyan’s weapons. Hershoudao.Herduandao.And hersais.And buckled across her back was Dougal’s claymore, which Laird Deirdre had returned in good faith.
“Find him,” Fergus snarled as he burst through the keep doors into the great hall. Snagging Gaufrid’s upper arm to keep him securely at his side, he stabbed his finger at two of the guards. “Ye. And ye. Check the keep. He can’t have gone far.”
He scoured the great hall, which was teeming with servants. He cursed his own carelessness, which prevented him from being able to discern the real mac Darragh servants from possible Rivenloch warriors.
Then his gaze fell on the orange-headed lass stealing from the stairwell toward the buttery. That one he recognized. She’d been at the keep for a month at least. She was the one who’d told them their captive was a warrior maid of Rivenloch. He’d been intrigued by her fresh face and the rumor that redheads were as hot as fire between the linens. But the wayward lass had shunned his invitation to come to his bedchamber last night. And now she was creeping about like an outlaw.
She also had a key to the gaol, since she’d been taking meals to the prisoners. The satchel she was lugging might contain food. But what was buckled across her back was hardly provisions. It was a sword.
He could have stopped the maid with a shout. She might be a sly vixen, but she was also timid. One sharp bark from him, and she would have dropped her burden and likely wet her skirts.
But she was definitely going somewhere with that sword. And he could guess who she was taking it to. The meddling Dougal mac Darragh, whom she’d been swooning over for weeks. The man she’d undoubtedly just freed from the gaol.
Fergus’s lip curled into a smile. The stupid wench was leading him right to his quarry.
He let her proceed. Once she ducked behind the buttery screens, he waved Morris forward and tugged Gaufrid along with him, motioning the laird to silence.
He had her cornered now. He hadbothof them cornered. The maid and her hero. He’d catch them unawares, before she had a chance to hand over the weapon. Then he’d get rid of the lass and take Gaufrid’s brother prisoner. That was better than killing him anyway, in the event Gaufrid didn’t survive.
That was his plan.
Unfortunately, when Fergus burst into the buttery, he didn’t foresee coming face to face with a dead woman. A woman whose throat he’d just seen slashed.
His heart caught. His eyes widened in disbelief. The breath that scraped across Gaufrid’s drunken throat at the sight of her was loud enough to wake the dead. And perhaps that was what he’d done. For before them, as whole and hale as ever, stood the lass that the Laird of Rivenloch had refused to ransom.
Unlike Gaufrid, Fergus didn’t waste time trying to figure out how she was still alive. Instead, he wanted to make sure she stayed dead this time. Shoving the laird out of the way, he bolted forward and seized the sword belt out of the maidservant’s hand. Unsheathing the blade, which he recognized as the curious sword he’d confiscated from her, he turned his attention to Dougal.
“Ye’re comin’ with us,” he said, pointing the sword point at Dougal’s belly.
“Nay!” the Rivenloch lass cried.
She dove toward the floor, where the satchel lay, its contents strewn on the stones. When she came up, she had steel forks in each hand.
Chapter 35
For one instant, it occurred to Feiyan to try the ploy her cousin had once used on her husband to frighten him away—feigning to be a ghost. But despite Gaufrid’s gasp of fear at seeing her come back to life, the Fortanach brothers seemed to be the kind of men who believed in only what they could reach out and throttle.
So she used one of hersaisto shove Fergus’s weapon away from Dougal. With the other, she defended herself against Morris’s dagger.
Dougal raised his claymore. But in the tight quarters of the buttery, he could do little with it.
While hersaiswas still tangled with Morris’s dagger, Fergus came back at her with theshoudao.Fortunately, he didn’t realize the sword was single-edged. The blow that struck her shoulder hit with the dull side, leaving a bruise, but not a cut.
She managed to catch theshoudaoagain. But as she attempted to break Fergus’s blade between the tines of hersais,Morris thrust forward with a second dagger. Dodging just in time, she collided with the shelves, knocking several blocks of cheese to the floor.
Meanwhile, Dougal walloped Morris’s head with the hilt of his claymore, distracting him. Feiyan dropped hersaisand drew thebishouhidden in her gambeson.
