Page 14 of The Highlander's Virgin Widow
Rory nodded gently. “Aye, M’Laird.”
“Tell me, am I a visitor?”
“Nay.”
“Have I come here to stay for a short time before returning?”
“Nay.”
“So why the devil would I need a spare room? No matter Lady Blythe’s theatrics, it would do ye well to remember that I am, in fact, the Laird of this castle. And would a laird sleep in a spare room?”
“Nay, M’Laird. He would sleep in the Laird’s quarters.”
“Good. Take the trunk there, then.”
Rory opened his mouth, about to say something else, but then he closed it. Evander was not sure if it was the look on his face or the tense air about him, but his man-at-arms kept his words to himself anyway.
“Anything else?” he asked after a moment of silence.
“Yer sister-in-law and Tommy will arrive by the end of the week. I have arranged lodgings for them in the village,” Rory elaborated.
“Where will they be staying?”
“In her maither’s house. She said they will stay there till the end of the week.”
Evander nodded. That was fair. The last thing he needed was to subject them to the drama in the castle before he got everything sorted out.
“Good, good,” he muttered, his voice coarse.
The young man who had left his table to look for aid returned with another young man. Evander watched them lift the table from the bottom and turn to him expectantly. He gave them a nod of approval and watched them both make their way into the castle.
“In the meantime, I need to tame the lady of the castle. That may take some work… She’s proving a bit more difficult than I thought.”
Rory nodded, executed a bow, and turned around, carrying the trunk into the castle and up what Evander imagined to be a narrow flight of spiral stairs.
He was left to his thoughts again. The crowd in the courtyard began to thin, and so did most of his things. Before the sun dipped below the horizon, everything would be in the castle, and there would be one less problem he had to deal with.
His mind returned to Keira as he made his way toward the castle a while later. She may be a pain, but he did know how to handle her—how to rid the castle of her as soon as possible. He had told her what he planned to do as well. He promised to find her a husband.
So why didn’t the mere thought of her with another man sit as well with him as he thought it would?
The moon illuminated the dirt path as Keira made her way back to the castle. She had gone to the village that afternoon after her rather unsettling conversation with Evander. She needed to see something else, something except his face, but she also needed to speak with the villagers.
Hudson had informed her that they had a lot of questions and would love to talk to her and see what they could do about theseintrudersencroaching on her land.
So she had gone to talk to them. To appease them and let them know that this was only temporary, even though she was struggling to believe that herself. She had promised to find the councilman who had gone against her and decided to hand over the castle to the stranger, instead of inviting him to negotiate as initially planned. But she had also insisted that they needed to be kind to the newcomers and treat them as their own—for now.
“I promise ye, we will come out victorious in the end.”
The resounding applause and roars of agreement that had followed her words continued to ring in her ears as she walked past the fence and into the courtyard. The walk in the dark had quelled some of her boiling anger, and she only had her people to thank for it.
The castle was a bit darker than usual, and it proved to be a challenge when she stepped into the Great Hall and tried to find her way to her room. While the moon did provide ample illumination, the walls blocked most of the light, and she had to be more careful as she felt her way up to her quarters.
“Bloody candles,” she whispered to herself, remembering that Stella had in fact mentioned something earlier about the castle running out of candles.
She made a mental note to order more candles the next day as she stumbled over a step in her path. For now, she would have to deal with the darkness.
Finding her quarters wasn’t exactly hard. It was the only room on the entire floor, as the other spare room served as a study and also a place where she sometimes held rather secretive meetings with her councilmen.
