Amanda Scott (2 page)

“We’re hungry, Cristina,” ten-year-old Sidony lamented for the third time.

Nine-year-old Sorcha echoed her, adding, “’Tis very late, is it not?”

With their fine white-blond hair, thin faces, and pale blue eyes, the two youngest Macleod sisters looked almost like twins, for they were nearly the same height, and presently their frowns were exactly alike as they faced their eldest sister.

“They’ll bring your supper soon,” eighteen-year-old Lady Cristina Macleod reassured them. “I’ve sent Adela to hurry them. Mariota, love,” she added, “pray do not stand so near the fire. Your skirt is almost in the flames.”

“But I’m cold! Can you not tell someone to build this puny fire larger?”

Before Cristina could reply that the fire in the huge fireplace was large enough, seventeen-year-old Mariota added querulously, “Where is Father?”

The laird himself answered that question by striding into the hall through the buttery door at the north end of the great hall, bellowing, “Blast those knaves below, Cristina! I’ve told them the dogs must not be let into the kitchens, and here is Adela telling me that my supper’s been put back because two of the lads got into a snarling fight over a roast they’d put on the carver’s tray.”

Bewildered, Cristina turned nonetheless calmly to meet this new crisis. “Two of the cook’s lads were fighting over a roast, sir?”

“Not cook’s lads! Did I no just say they’d let the damned dogs into the kitchen again? I dinna ken what manner o’ household ye run here, but—”

“Indeed, and you are right to be vexed with me, for I am sure you must have said that about the dogs straightaway, but with everyone complaining at once and that storm outside crashing thunder about our ears as it is, I simply did not hear you. What is it, Tam?” she asked, turning to meet the lanky gillie hurrying toward her from the stairway entrance. “Pray do not tell me ’tis yet another crisis.”

“Nay, mistress. Least I dinna think he be a crisis, only that there be a gentleman rode up t’ the door t’ request hospitality.”

“God bless me, Cristina,” bellowed his lordship. “What sort o’ fool rides his horse through a storm as bad as this one?”

“The sort who finds himself caught unawares, I’d expect.”

“Och, aye, indeed, and if he didna note that the sky has been threatening a deluge all day, then he is a very great fool, as I said from the outset!”

“Would you have us deny him the shelter he seeks, sir? It must be as you command, of course. Tam is but awaiting your instructions.”

“Faugh! Deny him? I said nae such thing, lass, and well d’ye ken that. Am I a barbarian?”

“No, sir, certainly not.”

“Is it no a matter o’ Highland law and custom to admit anyone requesting shelter and to guarantee his safety whilst he accepts our hospitality?”

“You are perfectly right, sir, as always,” Cristina said, gesturing to the gillie to admit the gentleman. “Oh, and Tam, do see that someone looks after his poor horse, too,” she added. “With all this thunder, it must be terrified.”

“Aye, my lady. I’ll see to it.”

“One moment, lad,” Macleod barked. “Did our visitor tell ye his name?”

“Aye, laird. He did call himself Hector Reaganach, Laird o’ Lochbuie.”

Cristina’s breath caught in her throat.

“The devil he did!” Macleod exclaimed. “Calls himself Hector the Ferocious, does he? Well, no matter. I ken who he is—a Maclean. Upstarts, every one of them!”

The gillie hesitated, but recovering her wits, Cristina motioned again to him to go and fetch their visitor up to the hall.

When Tam had gone, she took swift stock of the scene before her. Her three youngest sisters had been playing a game, the rules of which apparently demanded that they chase each other from one end of the hall to the other, scattering any number of articles across the room as they did. To add to the mess, her father had spread documents out on the high table despite its having long since been laid for supper.

“Isobel,” she said to the twelve-year-old organizer of the game, “pray—”

But although she had intended to issue a string of commands to her several siblings and two menservants presently in the hall, a new voice interrupted from the doorway of the inner chamber behind the dais, demanding in shrill tones to know if she had any notion when they were going to take their supper.

“For I fear that I’m nigh starving, and I do believe that we ought to have had our supper more than an hour ago, so if you do not want to have to nourish me back to health or, worse, to bury me, pray send for sustenance, my love.”

Lady Euphemia Macleod looked as if she were starving, for she was rail thin. Although approaching the end of her middle years, she had never embraced the marital state. Instead, she had lived with her younger brother, Macleod of Glenelg, since his marriage some twenty years before, serving as little more than a cipher in his household until eight years before when Anna, Lady Macleod, had died suddenly while fighting to give birth to a ninth daughter.

Sadly, the babe had also perished in the struggle, but Lady Euphemia proved overnight to be an undiscovered asset, taking swift charge of the family in the chaos of shock and grief that threatened to engulf them all. For three long months she had dealt capably with every child, adult, and crisis, right up to the day she had looked at then-eleven-year-old Cristina and said mildly, “You have a capable nature, my dear, and a natural air of command. ’Tis your right and duty, rather than mine, to act as mistress of your father’s household and hostess to his guests until such time as he is kind enough to provide you with a husband. At that time, naturally, you will pass the candle to our dearest Mariota.”

With those chilling words, Lady Euphemia had cheerfully returned to her position as cipher, and Cristina had picked up the reins of the household.

“Leave it to a blasted Maclean to show himself at such an inconvenient hour,” Macleod snapped. “Where’s the jug, Cristina? I’ve a raging thirst on me.”

Nodding to one of the menservants to attend to the laird’s thirst, Cristina was moving to help the children put their things away when a resounding crash of thunder rattled the shutters, black smoke billowed from the fireplace as if the devil himself were about to enter the chamber, and someone shrieked, “Fire! Oh, help!”

“Bless me, what now!” Macleod snapped.

The shrieking continued, but blinded by the swiftly growing cloud of smoke, Cristina could not see what had happened although she easily recognized the voice.

Apparently, Lady Euphemia did as well, because she said, “Mariota, what is it? For mercy’s sake, child, stop that screeching.” But her words had no effect.

“Calm yourself, Mariota,” Cristina said firmly, feeling her way as rapidly as she could past the high table toward the fireplace and her shrieking sister, only to be abruptly shoved aside as a huge figure swept past her.

Having turned his weary horse over to one lad, Hector followed a second one into the central tower of Castle Chalamine. The entry opened onto a winding stone stairway, and as the wind blew the door out of his guide’s grasp and slammed it against the wall, the lad shouted, “I’ll take your damp cloak and battle-axe, sir, an it please ye.”

Removing the ancestral axe he nearly always carried with him in its sling, and shrugging off his sodden cloak, Hector handed over both and was shutting the door as the lad hung them on pegs in the wall, when they heard a great crack of thunder followed by feminine screams from above. The gillie reacted quickly, leaping up the twisting stairway with Hector taking time only to bar the door before following. But at the doorway into the hall, the lad paused, apparently stunned by the smoke billowing past him as the shrieking continued.

Hector pushed the lad aside, took in the smoky scene at a glance, and strode toward the screams, scarcely noting as he did the one or two obstacles he swept from his path.

As he had expected, he found a lass amidst the still-billowing smoke, trying ineffectively and without missing a screech, to beat out flames that had ignited one side of her long overskirt and now shot up to threaten her arms and face if not her life. With smoke blinding him to any nearby bucket or jug, he grabbed the fabric below her hips and, ignoring her screams, ripped it free and flung it into the fireplace.

When she continued to shriek, he caught her by the shoulders and gave her a rough shake. “Stop that screeching,” he commanded. “Tell me if you’re burnt.”

Instead, she burst into tears and collapsed in his arms.

Startled, he held her as he snapped, “Someone get over here, shift these logs, and stir up that fire. It is the only way I know to clear out this smoke.”

A calm female voice nearby said, “Pray attend to that, Tam, and add another log whilst you are about it. Mariota, stop that noise now and tell us if you are hurt.”

The face buried against his chest shifted slightly, and a tearful voice said fretfully, “I don’t think so, but how horrid! It was as if the wind had turned into some demon, Cristina, breathing fire all over me! It was killing me!”

“Don’t talk drivel,” Hector said sternly. “You should certainly know better than to . . . to . . .”

She looked up at him, and the words he had been about to speak died in his throat as he stared into the face so close to his own, revealed now in all its splendid glory as the smoke began at last to clear.

She was stunningly beautiful with eyes as clear green as new spring grass, and hair like the spun gold one heard about in seanachies’ tales. Her figure, as his hands could attest, was slim and pliable, her still-heaving breasts soft and plump, her waist so tiny that he was sure his two hands could span it, her hips flaring voluptuously below. Her lips were so soft-looking and full that had he not been burdened with years of training in courtesy, he’d have tasted them immediately. Never in his life had he seen such a beauty, and that despite his own vast experience with the gender and the fact that his brother had married a woman touted by all as the most beautiful in the Isles. Raven-haired Mairi was glorious, to be sure, but no man of sense would say she held a candle to the beauty he held in his arms.

“You can let her go now, my lord,” said the same matter-of-fact voice he had heard moments before.

Startled, he turned his head and found the source of that voice standing right beside him. Noting her plain russet gown and the simple linen caul that concealed her hair, he nearly decided that she must be the beauty’s maidservant before he recalled the way she had commanded the lass to calm herself and opted instead for a poor relation or paid companion.

The amusement in her eyes was another matter. She was looking at him as if she knew him, but he was nearly certain he had never seen her before. With a polite nod, he looked again at the delectable morsel he still held, determined that she did indeed seem steady enough to stand on her own, and released her.

The matter-of-fact voice went on, “You were right to scold her, sir. I had warned her only moments before that she was standing too near the flames.”

“Indeed, she did,” the beauty said with a tremulous smile that nearly bowled him over with its brilliance. “But I was so very cold, you see, and I never expected the fire to attack me like that. I cannot think how it came to do such a horrid thing.”

“I wager ’twas the lad opening the door below for me to enter,” Hector said. “It blew out of his grasp, and doubtless with the wind as it is, it created a powerful draft that pulled smoke and flames into this room.” Much more gently than before, he added, “You must take greater care in future not to stand so near, mistress.”

“By heaven’s grace, sir,” she said, wide-eyed, as she clasped her slender little hands beneath her round little chin, “how very wise you are!”

Cristina knew Hector Reaganach. She had seen him and his twin brother, Lachlan the Wily, Lord High Admiral of the Isles, on three separate occasions when her father had taken her to court at Ardtornish Castle for the Lord of the Isles’ grand annual Easter hunt and the splendid feast that always followed.

Macleod had hoped that Cristina would attract the attention of some suitable nobleman’s son, so that he could marry her off at last. Her next youngest sisters, Mariota and Adela, had mixed emotions about her lack of success, she knew. Mariota wanted her to marry but did not want to assume her responsibilities, and Adela knew who would have to shoulder them. Adela knew, too, for all of them did, that once Cristina was married, Mariota would quickly follow. All of the Macleod sisters were fair and graceful, but Mariota’s beauty stopped men in their tracks.

It had certainly stunned Hector Reaganach, Cristina thought with amusement as she watched them.

He had attracted her the first time she laid eyes on him, because although men had labeled him “ferocious” or, at the very least, “stern,” his laughter was infectious, his stories and songs amusing, and as big, strong, and handsome as he was, he looked like a man who could easily take care of himself and anyone else he chose to look after.

Feeling deep relief and gratitude that his quick action had saved Mariota, she said quietly, “Thank you, sir,” before adding, “Mariota, love, do you not think that perhaps you should put on a fresh skirt?”

“Indeed I should,” Mariota exclaimed. “I hope you are not scandalized by seeing my underskirt, sir, but if you are, you have only yourself to blame.”

“Mariota,” Cristina said gently, “his lordship has done you a signal service. You should thank him prettily, then go and put on a fresh skirt.”

“But it
is
his fault,” her sister insisted, looking impishly up into his eyes. “He ripped my best overskirt right off me!”

Hector Reaganach chuckled and shook his head at her.

His eyes were the deepest, bluest blue that Cristina had ever seen. Even now, in the smoky, flickering light from the hall’s torches, cressets, candles, and fireplace, she could see how blue they were. But Mariota did not care about the color of his eyes. The saucy girl was still laughing—nay, flirting outrageously with him—and the wretched man did not seem to mind a bit.

“Here now, Mariota,” Macleod said suddenly, reminding Cristina that he was still in the hall, “run along and make yourself presentable, lass. Ye’re making a right fool o’ yourself.”