At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle Book 3) (13 page)

Most especially I didn’t want to go with him.
 

In spite of the pleasure I’d given and taken from him, I resented being traded away. Given, like a book. I couldn’t let him read my pages. So I took the carved Rune jar and followed Ian Macrae silently, sullenly, lost as I had never felt before in my life.

When we entered his chambers, I saw that my pitiful little collection of belongings had been given over to him. The vial of rose perfume. And the pearls the laird had given me, too. Setting the rune jar beside them on the windowsill, I nearly sobbed to see them.

The Ian surprised me by saying, “I’ve made up a pallet on the floor. You may take the bed.”

I could make no sense of this offer. It was a sign of Ian’s status in the clan that he retained a chamber of his own in the castle—especially given the crowded conditions of the siege. That a man of his importance, especially one who the laird considered his heir, should offer me his bed while he took to the floor was unthinkable. And I worried that even after having been inside my body, he still held me in contempt. Too much contempt to share even a bed.

“I—I don’t take up much room,” I offered, tears brimming in spite of my efforts. I valiantly swallowed them back, but I wasn’t yet adept at artifice. I suppose if this was to be my profession, I would have to learn. “I can be comfortable on the floor if that’s where a man should want me.”

Ian glanced over his broad shoulder, a look of consternation on his face. “Where I should
want
you…you’re not sated yet, woman?”

A flare of embarrassment burned my cheeks. Embarrassment I didn’t think I was still capable of feeling. Anger, too. When the laird shamed me for my wanton ways, it was with always with approval. But Ian’s shaming I couldn’t bear. “I—I didn’t mean it that way. It’s only that growing up, I slept on the floor sometimes and left the bairns to cuddle together upon the bed. I meant that if you didn’t want to share the bed, I wouldn’t mind the floor.”

Perhaps I
wouldn’t
mind it, given that I felt so cold and hollow inside already I couldn’t imagine the floor would make any difference.
 

“What kind of man would I be to make an injured woman sleep on the floor?” Ian asked, mindlessly readying himself for bed, taking off his white linen shirt.

Remembering how we came to be in this situation, I answered, “The sort of man who needs rest so that he can relieve the watchmen on the walls. I’m not the only one injured.”

Ian glanced down at his bandaged forearm, “
Och
, I’ve taken worse. I wouldna taken it at all if I hadn’t been taken unawares, and fighting in the dark.”

 
“But you
were
taken unawares in the dark,” I said softly. “I think it half a miracle that you were able to find your sword.”

“I like to know where it is at all times, even when…” A blush actually came to his cheeks. “I s’pose it makes no sense to pretend that what’s passed between us hasn’t passed between us. That we haven’t—that you aren’t…”
 

I would have helped him in his struggle, but I was struggling too. “No, and I don’t suppose sharing a bed now might make any difference.”

“Except to him,” Ian said.

At which point I began to cry.

And Ian Macrae, the most unfriendly, disapproving man I’d ever met, fell to pieces. “Oh, no, lass. No, don’t do that! For the love of God—” He rummaged about and found for me a little cloth for me to blubber into as I sank down onto the foot of the bed. He put a hand to my shoulder, patting it awkwardly as he said, “Please stop that, I beg of ye.”

“Why should I?” I sniffled. “It’s not the first time you’ve seen me cry.”

Ian winced, perhaps remembering the day I dropped to my laird’s feet and wept, begging him to take me instead of my father’s life. My father had earned the laird’s wrath; his execution would have been
justice
. But I couldn’t let it happen, I knew I’d have done exactly the same again, even knowing where it would lead me.
 

“Listen, lass,” Ian said, clearing his throat. “I don’t stand proud of how you’ve been treated. Not by the laird and not by me. I realize what last night must have been like for you and don’t wish to make it worse.”

“Then you must know the laird doesn’t
care
if we share a bed together,” I said, anguished. More anguished to know it wasn’t true. He
did
care. In fact, he
wanted
us to share a bed. But I was too raw to be precise. “Or didn’t he prove it to you last night? He’s done with me now. I’m his cast off leavings, so you needn’t worry—”

“Stop,” Ian said, breaking through the litany of my upset. “Please. I canna have my mind filled with women troubles right now. You need rest. It’s what we both need. You will feel better with some rest. So leave off your crying, climb into the bed and sleep unmolested by me or anyone else.”

That’s what we did that night. We slept. Him far to the edge of his side, me far to the edge of mine. We didn’t touch. Not even accidentally in adjusting the covers. I had found my way into Ian’s bed, but as for the rest…it still somehow felt like a betrayal of my laird and my heart. I would not,
could
not, do it.
 

And neither could Ian.

So it remained, night after night, as the siege on the castle went on and on.

Brenna was the first to fall sick.

She lost her balance on the stairs carrying a tray to the laird’s rooms. Then she was lost in some sort of delirium, the pupils of her eyes wide and fearful as she murmured seeing the ghost of the legendary MacBeth.
 

“Brenna!” I cried, snapping fingers before her eyes to bring her back to the present. “Can you hear me?”

“Heather,” she said, tenderly touching my cheek, her eyes deep dark pools as if she were seeing into a waking dream, rambling nonsense. “Sweet heather. Every man loves heather honey on his biscuit…”

It was good that she was a tiny thing, and I was able to get her below stairs myself, to the makeshift infirmary, where my sister and I could tend her. But then others fell prey to the strange illness, too.

A shepherd’s boy was brought to the physicker with a rash, flushed and barely of coherent speech. Ten more were ill before the end of the day.
 

“My God, is it plague?” I asked my sister, wishing Arabella would don a mask as she nursed the sick.

“The Physiker doesn’t think so,” Arabella told me, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm. “He thinks it’s poison.”

My heart beat faster at the thought. Glancing over the prone bodies of the sick, I whispered, “Who would poison a maid and a shepherd’s boy?”

“I think it’s in the well-water,” Arabella said, grimly. “It’s the last thing your friend did before falling ill. Brenna went to fetch water for the cook. She may have only sipped a little and she’s lucky. I think she’ll recover.”

I was glad for that, but disturbed beyond measure that someone could have poisoned our well. I’d been too miserable to drink much of anything. But how many others had slaked their thirst? “It must have been the attacker; when he slipped over the wall to murder the laird, he must have poisoned the well, too.”

“Then why are we only seeing signs of it now?” Arabella hissed through her teeth. “There
is
a traitor amongst us. Either way, without an easy water supply, we are in the greatest peril—and it would have never happened if Davy…” Arabella trailed off, miserably. Terrified, too. “He’s been gone for weeks!”

Had it been that long since her betrothed had disappeared? My days and nights were such a fog of grief and loneliness, I had scarcely kept count. Every cold miserable day without my laird blended into the next, and every hollow night in Ian’s bed was just as uneventful.

“Davy’s come to harm,” Arabella said, choking back furious tears. “He wouldn’t stay so long from us otherwise. What could the laird have asked of Davy that would keep him gone for so long?”

I didn’t know. And though I’d promised to ask the laird about it, he’d given me no opportunity to speak with him since making a gift of me to Ian Macrae. I had no right to approach the laird’s bedchambers any longer and I never saw him but at mealtime, when our rations were carefully doled out.

For myself, I had no appetite at all.

Especially now that our porridge could only be made with rain water and melted snow or water that we hauled up from the loch and boiled. It meant more labor, more exhaustion—a blow to the already crumbling morale within the castle.
 

And it meant that everyone began to suspect one another.

When the February snows began to fall in earnest, I came upon my sister shouting at the crofter she’d been betrothed to before she met Davy and Malcolm. “Is it you, Connal?” she demanded to know. “Have you turned traitor on Clan Macrae? If you’re the reason I go down to the sea gate each morning to search for Davy’s body floating in the loch, I’ll kill you myself. I’ll kill you myself!”

Malcolm and I had to pull her back from the bewildered farm boy, who protested his innocence. And though Arabella didn’t believe him, I did. What, after all, did
he
stand to gain from helping the Donalds? And how would he have any contact with them?
 

He had no power or position or connection to those who, like Ian Macrae, were permitted to carry messages back and forth from the enemy. But Lady Fiona did. And while I no longer suspected Ian of anything more than too upright and uptight a bearing, I began to suspect that his mother wanted more for him than to be merely the heir of the laird…

Fiona must have known that I suspected her. Must have sensed my eyes on her in the Grand Hall where our rations were dispensed. Because she sought me out one day in the corner where I’d settled myself in the shadows. “
Heather
, is it? You must eat your salt-beef. Here. Take my rations, too.”

She shoved her bowl into my hands, but I was wary as a cat. “Thank you, but others are needier. I’m not hungry at all.”

“You must eat anyway. Your pallor is unhealthy.”

I was sure she was right. In my sadness and heartbreak, I felt miserably unwell. I hadn’t dared go to Arabella complaining of the way my stomach tossed and heaved. Not when so many were poisoned. It would worry her even more, and she was already facing the terrible prospect of having lost one of the men she loved. I was merely facing a stomach that heaved at the smell of my rations. I would just have to endure it. “I thank you, Lady Fiona, but surely someone else is in need of your charity.”

“It isn’t charity,” Lady Fiona sniffed. “You’re likely with child. And though it’s supremely distasteful for me to take notice of my son’s infatuation with you, it occurs to me that the bairn in your belly might be my grandchild.”

I nearly dropped the bowl in my shock.
 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Lady Fiona snapped. “This can’t be a surprise to you.”

But it was a surprise. A very great surprise. Even though the laird had, himself, said that I might be with child, I’d been too sad and miserable to think of my late courses, not to mention, quite certain it would be too early to tell. There was a bit of puffiness at my ankles and wrists, but also under my eyes because of all the weeping I’d been doing. And while I’d been sick most mornings as of late, it had seemed only my misery to blame.
 

Had Ian told his mother of this? I doubted very much that Ian had any sort of infatuation with me. I wanted to tell her that if I had got with child, it couldn’t be Ian’s. That though I slept in his bed, that was all we did there…

…and yet, that hadn’t been all. There had been the once when the laird shared me with him. I remembered how Ian had been ready to finish in my mouth when the laird had suggested he take me between my legs.
 

Almost as if he’d planned it that way.
 

The thought made me so furious I threw myself back from the table. “Pardon me, Lady Fiona, but I must speak to the laird.”

“Don’t humiliate yourself in such a way,” the lady sniffed, her distaste for me as plain as ever. “That one has likely sowed a hundred Macrae bastards in the countryside. But my son actually
cares
for you. Which means, in turn, that I must make you my concern.”

I didn’t know if I should be glad or terrified to be of concern to the lady my laird had once called a dragon. “I believe you are mistaken, Lady Fiona.”

With that, I rose to find the laird. But Lady Fiona stopped me with a hand on my elbow. “If you’re off to share the news with our chieftain, you needn’t bother. My nephew has given orders that you’re not to be admitted to see him. He’s made very plain to everyone in the castle that he’s done with you.”

I knew it. I had despaired of it. Wept of it. Wanted to hide away in shame. “But he will want to hear—”

“He will not,” Fiona insisted. “Besides, if you go to him with this now, it will be a distraction he doesn’t need in negotiating his marriage.”

The pain I felt at hearing these words was crippling. I nearly doubled over of it, as surely as if she’d thrown an elbow into the softness of my belly. “His—his marriage?”

Lady Fiona clucked her tongue. “Don’t you know how sieges are settled, you poor, deluded girl? The chieftain of the Donald clan has an unmarried daughter. He’ll offer her to the laird in exchange for giving up the castle and breaking his alliance with the MacKenzies. Without reinforcement it’s likely our only way out of this standoff. I don’t like it; I never thought I’d live to see the day a laird of this clan would surrender the castle at
Eilean Donan
. But I’m not one to hide from the realities of this world.”

I sat—no, fell, really—back into my chair. The laird had told me from the start that he wasn’t interested in marriage. I suppose I had put too much stock in it. That was before he was pushed into this position. It made more sense now—why he’d sent me away from him. Why he’d fobbed me off on his second-in-command. And though a part of me railed against the laird for speaking words of love to me and promising to be as true as any husband while considering a marriage proposal, another part of me rejoiced to think there might be some way out of this that would not cost him his life.