Amanda Scott (22 page)

“Aye, m’lady, I’ll see to it, though I’d no bathe m’self in the evening,” Brona said, clearly surprised at the request. “It dinna be healthy.”

“I helped my little sister stack wood today,” Cristina said glibly. “I think I must have wood dust in every crevice of my body, but I’ve no time to bathe now.”

Brona clicked her tongue. “Bless me, me lady,” she said, “there be folks aplenty t’ tend t’ such chores. Ye do too much.”

Perhaps that was all it was, Cristina thought. Perhaps she took on too much and should practice being a proper lady, the sort that appeared in bard’s tales, dining on strawberries and cream, the sort that did no chores. The life such ladies led usually sounded boring, but perhaps they were happy and contented.

Supper seemed to Hector to be a repeat of the midday dinner, but although Mariota flirted as much as she had earlier, he found the repetition childish and annoying rather than blood-stirring.

Isobel kept glancing at him with a wariness that told him she had been up to mischief again, and he found himself repressing a smile as he wondered what she had done. He thought the child more amusing than Mariota. She would never be as beautiful, but her conversation nearly always entertained him. Mariota had a lovely, feminine voice, and he enjoyed listening to her talk, just as he enjoyed flirting with her, but Isobel said things that made him think. She also reminded him of his more mischievous boyhood friends. He had always been ripe for adventure, but their father had more often than not declared such activities mischief or plain disobedience, so he and Lachlan had nearly always suffered for their “adventures.”

Isobel turned her attention to Cristina, and following her gaze, he saw his wife give a slight shake of her head. Instantly the child relaxed, fixing her attention on her supper. So whatever she had done, Cristina knew about it and did not mean to tell him. The evening might grow interesting, he thought, although in the interest of pursuing his own plan, he might let Isobel keep her secret until morning.

Having learned that Cristina’s woman had ordered a tub and hot water to her chamber after supper, he countermanded the order, telling the lads to carry the tub and water into his chamber instead. He would assist his lady wife with her bath.

Ordering claret with supper, he filled Cristina’s goblet with the rich red wine. When she had taken a few sips, he signed to a gillie to refill it.

“Art trying to make me drunk, sir?”

“It seems a fair tactic to employ, considering our history,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “On the contrary, it would be unfair, since I do not need to be ape-drunk to obey your wishes.”

“We’ll see,” he said, grinning at her and wondering how she would react to finding her bathtub in his bedchamber. He felt an eagerness he had not felt since his earliest experiences with the fair sex, an anticipation of pleasure or pure fun. That he was experiencing such feelings with regard to a wife he still insisted he did not want struck him as odd, but not so odd that he intended to deny himself.

That sense of eager anticipation suffered a setback when a messenger arrived as they were finishing their meal. Recognizing the lad as one of Lachlan’s from Duart, Hector took him aside at once, since most of Lachlan’s messages were private ones. However, the message came not from his twin but from their father.

As he read Ian Dubh’s brief, even curt command that he present himself forthwith to discuss a certain matter that had come to his attention, Hector’s imagination carried him instantly back to his boyhood, when such commands were nearly always harbingers of most unpleasant, often painful interludes.

He sighed, realizing it would be nonsensical to sail to Duart and back just four days before he had meant to leave for Ardtornish. His plan had been to sail to Duart then and stay two or three days to discuss in detail Lachlan’s plans for the arrival of Robert the Steward.

The Steward’s safety was primary, of course. His journey to Ardtornish and his stay there had been a matter of concern from the day he announced his intention, and comments made during the Council of the Isles had made Lachlan suspect that certain clans who did not approve of Robert as heir to the throne might make difficulties during his visit. As Lord Admiral, he was determined that his grace’s Shrove Tuesday celebration would involve no mischief, and thus he and Hector had decided to meet beforehand to discuss various ways to foil any enemy plots and, if still necessary, to dispose of the petrel-oil problem that seemed to have spread to several isles. Now it looked as if Hector would be arriving at Duart even earlier.

He would have to leave orders with his steward to have a longboat and oarsmen ready for the morning, and make arrangements for the lads to finish careening his other boats and for them and Cristina to follow him to Ardtornish in due course. But for now, he turned his thoughts to the evening ahead with his wife.

“Have you a moment to spare for me, sir?” Mariota asked, coming up to him with a charming smile and laying a graceful hand on his arm.

“Indeed, lass. What may I do for you?”

“You may entertain me,” she said. “One thing my sister has sadly neglected at Lochbuie is evening entertainment for her guests. We’ve not seen a single player or heard a single minstrel. Surely, you do not treat all your guests so shabbily.”

“Do you not have needlework or some other such thing to occupy you?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, certainly, but such tasks by themselves are boring, sir. I would much rather converse with you. We were meant to be married after all, and I find that I am desperately in love with you.” She fluttered her lashes and leaned closer. A cloud of her musky perfume enveloped him.

“You must not say such things,” he told her gently. “I am lawfully married to your sister and am therefore now your brother according to both the Kirk and the laws of Scotland. You should behave to me as you would to any other brother.”

“But I have no brothers, and although I know you are married to Cristina, that is not my fault any more than my lack of brothers is, for all that my father once told me that had I been a son instead of another daughter, my mother might still be alive. They kept trying to get a son, you see, until it killed her.”

“Sakes, what a thing to say to you!” he exclaimed, shocked by her matter-of-fact tone as much as by what Macleod had told her.

With a shrug, she said, “It was what he believes, that’s all, but I do not wish to talk about that, because he did something much, much worse to us, he and Cristina. Were we both not victims of their foul plot?”

“We can do nothing about that now,” he said, curbing growing impatience because he knew that she had been as upset by Macleod’s trickery as he was.

“Well, but of course we can,” she said indignantly. “Neither of us owes a thing to anyone else. Ireland is quite near the Isle of Mull, I’m told, so can we not just take one of your boats and go there? I know you mean to annul that stupid marriage to Cristina, because nearly everyone hereabouts knows that. Indeed, Isobel said that because of it, your cook rather insolently told Cristina he did not expect her to remain at Lochbuie longer than another sennight or so.”

“My cook will soon learn the wisdom of civility,” Hector promised grimly, realizing that that incident had probably figured among the events Cristina thought not important enough to complain of to him. “My life is here, Mariota, and I do not intend to leave Lochbuie or the Isle of Mull.”

“Well, I own I shall find it more comfortable to stay here than to have to make a new life in Ireland. I’m told the Irish are not at all like we are, although the few I have met seemed ordinary enough,” she added musingly. “But although being with Irishmen would not be as good as being with my own people, I’m sure they would like me once they came to know me.”

“I’m sure they would,” he said, trying to conceal his distaste for the conversation. “Nevertheless—”

“Oh, aye, it must be as you say,” she said airily. “And if we must stay at Lochbuie, I expect we must bide our time until you can gain a proper annulment. Doubtless, Abbot Mackinnon will aid you with that. Indeed, had you not interrupted our ride this morning, I meant to ask him to do so for you.”

Only her obvious naïveté kept him from losing his temper. Retaining rigid control, he said, “Mariota, do you not realize that the men who assaulted you and Isobel this morning were the Green Abbot’s men? They were, I assure you. You must not try to make a friend of him whilst you are here. Indeed, I forbid you to have any contact with him at all. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “Although you are wrong, you know. Fingon Mackinnon has been a particular friend of my father’s and mine for years and years. He would never do me harm.”

“You will obey me nonetheless, or by heaven, I’ll send you home.”

“Do you know that when you get angry, you get two straight little creases right between your eyebrows? They make you look very fierce, but as the years pass, they may engrave permanent marks there, which I will not like so much.”

“Mariota!”

She squeezed his arm and smiled brilliantly at him. “Oh, don’t be cross with me, sir. I shan’t do anything you do not like. Did I not just tell you that I have fallen quite madly in love with you?”

“Aye, you did say that,” he said with a smile, finding himself unable to withstand her smile. Nevertheless, as he went to give his orders to his steward before meeting Cristina upstairs, he found himself breathing a deep sigh of relief. At least, Cristina would not enact any dramatics for him.

Still feeling tipsy from the wine at dinner, Cristina faced her maidservant in dismay. “What do you mean they will not bring my tub in here?”

Brona looked wretched. “’Tis that sorry I am, m’lady, but the lads did say the laird ordered them t’ carry the tub and hot water t’ his bedchamber. He said, too,” she added with a blush, “that he’d take pleasure in aiding ye wi’ your bath.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

“Aye.” Brona’s voice was small. “I couldna make them bring it in here.”

“No, of course you could not,” Cristina agreed. Even she could not countermand Hector’s order. “Help me remove my caul, will you?”

“Aye, mistress, straightaway.”

Cristina sat in bodice and shift on the stool near her looking glass and tried to relax as the woman began to pull the pins out and free her hair.

“Shall I brush it, m’lady?”

“No, thank you. Just twist it into a knot atop my head, and pin it so it will stay up whilst I bathe. Then you may fetch my blue robe for me.”

“Will I help ye off wi’ your bodice and shift then?”

“I’ll keep my shift on for now,” Cristina said, knowing she would feel too vulnerable walking across the landing and into the wretched man’s room with nothing on but a thin robe. She felt less so in her shift, although not by much.

After Brona had brought her robe and helped her slip it on, Cristina drew a deep breath, took her brush in hand, and stepped out onto the landing that separated her bedchamber from Hector’s.

His chamber door stood a few inches ajar.

Pushing gently on it, hoping to find the room empty, she jumped when she caught movement ahead of her, and then relaxed when she heard a splash and saw one of the gillies pouring a pail of hot water into the tub. The tub was nearly full, the water hot enough to send curls of steam into the air.

The lad smiled at her. “Be this tub full enough for ye, m’lady?”

“Aye, thank you,” Cristina said.

“That pail alongside be cold water an ye need t’ cool the water some,” the boy said. “Shall I fetch ye more hot water t’ keep near?”

“Nay, for I mean to be quick,” she said. “You may leave now, and I’ll just bar the door behind you.”

The voice she least wanted to hear just then said with a chuckle from the landing, “Nay, lass, you will not bar the door. No one would be so rude as to walk into my chamber without rapping first and gaining permission. ’Tis the very reason I thought you’d enjoy your bath more in here,” he added as he stepped into the room. He was grinning.

Grimacing, she said, “I wonder how it is that I never noticed before now how devilish your smile is.”

The gillie chuckled as he slipped past his master out of the room, and Hector shut the door firmly behind him.

Cristina said ruefully, “Doubtless, the entire castle will be made a gift now of his version of what just occurred in here.”

“Nay, lass,” he said as he moved nearer, looming over her and making her more conscious than ever of their sadly unequal sizes. He reached out to tuck an errant strand of her hair up into her topknot as he added, “My lads know better than to repeat aught they hear or see of my private affairs, unlike my thickheaded cook.”

Feeling flames in her cheeks, Cristina said awkwardly, “Your cook?”

“You should have told me,” he said, tucking a finger under her chin and tilting it up so that she had to look him in the eye. “I should not have to learn of my cook’s impertinence from Mariota by way of Isobel. God only knows how much truth was in Mariota’s version, though, so before I deal with him, I want to hear the tale from your own lips. Now.”

“It was nothing,” she said, wishing her voice were stronger, firmer, and that he would take his finger away. When he had touched her hair, he had sent shivers all through her, delicious ones. And now, with but one finger touching her chin, he was causing waves of heat to flow through her body, stirring feelings where she had never known such feelings before.

She could not think. “I pray you, sir,” she said, “do not punish him for his impertinence. I reprimanded him, and he apologized. When he did so, I made it clear that his apology was sufficient to mend matters. If you punish him now, he will think I asked you to do so because I need the reinforcement of your authority to manage this household properly. That would undermine my own authority.”

He did not reply at once, but his finger released her chin. She could scarcely breathe for wondering if he would touch her again, and if so, where?

He rested that hand on her shoulder and reached with the other one to take her brush from her and toss it onto his bed. Then he rested that hand on her other shoulder and looked deeply into her eyes. She gazed steadily back at him.