Highland Master (23 page)

Catriona took her place beside Morag, trying to decide if the older girl had been crying. Morag’s expressions were so slight that it was always hard to read them.

Aware that Ealga was talking with Lady Annis, Catriona leaned close to Morag and murmured, “James is looking for you.”

“Is he?” Morag said without looking at her. “He must know gey well that I come here to break my fast.”

“Of course, he does,” Catriona said, striving to conceal sudden impatience. “I’d wager that he looked here before he went out to the woods.”

“
Did
he go outside the wall?” Morag signed to a gillie to pour ale into her goblet. “How do you know that he did?”

“I saw him, of course, and he asked if I had seen you. Look here, Morag, I know that you don’t like me—”

“When did you come to think that?”

“Good sakes, you scarcely ever speak to me unless I speak first. And then you talk as if you are annoyed that I have disturbed you. What else should I think?”

Morag gave a shrug. “I expect you are right then.”

“Are you angry with James?”

“Should I be?”

Catriona’s temper stirred sharply. But courtesy and the present royal company required that she keep it in check. Forcing calm into her voice, she said, “He thinks that you are angry with him and do not want him to find you.”

“I am a dutiful wife,” Morag said. “A dutiful wife does not hide from her husband. Moreover, I should find it gey hard to do, since I cannot get off this island without permission from your grandfather, your father, or from James himself.”

“God-a-mercy, you are furious. What did he do to deserve such anger?”

“Why nothing at all,” Morag said. “How could he
have done aught to displease me when he stayed with the Mackintosh yestereve until long after I had fallen asleep? One assumes that they were drinking whisky with the other men.”

“I see,” Catriona said.

“I warrant you do. But James does not.”

“Nay, for he told me what he said to you when you told him you had missed him,” Catriona said with a sympathetic sigh.

“So he told you that, did he? Well, if he is going to share our private converse with you, there can be no need for me to tell you anything more.”

“Morag, James is an ass, and so I told him. But he
does
love you.”

Morag looked at her then, her pale blue eyes widening.

Catriona saw tears welling in them before Morag looked away again.

After they had broken their fast, Ivor said to Fin, “I mean to reacquaint myself with Strathspey today, and I’ll take my bow. Do you want to come?”

Knowing that Rothesay would hold no meeting until Donald of the Isles and Alex of the North arrived, Fin accepted with alacrity.

As soon as he had spoken with Rothesay, the two friends took bows and quivers and rowed to the west shore. From there, they hiked to the river Spey and along its bank to a field where Ivor said they could get some good practice.

Returning to Rothiemurchus late that afternoon after exploring much of the countryside, they discovered that during their absence, Donald and Alex had both arrived.
To Fin’s astonishment, it appeared that the burly, bearded, forty-year-old Donald and his companions had traveled on garrons through the west Highlands with a mendicant friar, all six of them dressed in robes similar to the holy man’s.

“A good disguise, especially at this season,” Ivor observed. “One hopes that Donald will not try to sneak in an army under the same guise.”

Laughing, Fin pointed out that an army of monks might stir some curiosity. His leisure time had ended, though, because Rothesay had left word that he wanted to see him straightway. Fin found him alone in the inner chamber.

“You are to be another pair of eyes and ears for me,” Rothesay said. “Donald did support my taking the Governorship when I did, and Alex has nae love for Albany. Still, I’ve learned that I can trust any man only whilst his future depends on my success. Donald did come here, but he is ever surly, and I need his ships to curb Albany in the west. As to Alex…” He shrugged.

“He did raise an army of his own from throughout the North to support yours in the Borders,” Fin reminded him. “Forbye, sir, both men are your close cousins.”

“Aye, sure, so they’re bound to support me,” Rothesay said confidently.

However, when the household gathered soon afterward for supper in the great hall, Fin noted few signs of good cheer between the cousins. Rothesay was amiable enough, but burly, dark-haired Donald of the Isles seemed dour, even irritable.

Alex looked enough like his fair, blue-eyed cousin to be Davy’s brother but was quieter by nature. He remained reticent and watchful, albeit courteous.

Doubtless to cheer them all, the Mackintosh suggested that Catriona or Morag might sing for them after supper. But Donald declared when he had finished eating that he had endured a long, tiresome day and would seek his bed.

Rothesay was wide awake. But since he chose to entertain himself by flirting with Catriona, Fin would have preferred him to follow Donald’s example.

He was grateful when the lady Ealga engaged him in desultory conversation but noted that James disappeared with Morag and Ivor moved to talk with Alex.

Looking toward the latter two a few minutes later, he saw that Ivor was grimly eyeing Rothesay and Catriona. Alex, also watching the pair, looked amused.

Fin was not. In the short time that he had been a guest at the castle, he had come to think of Catriona as more than just a good friend, and he did not want Rothesay to offend her. When her father joined them and spoke to her, Fin was relieved and felt more so when the lass made her adieux shortly afterward.

The next morning after breakfast, the three powerful lords met with the Mackintosh in his inner chamber. Alex and Donald insisted that their companions accompany them, and Rothesay kept his two and Fin with him. Shaw, Ivor, and James also attended, so the chamber was crowded.

After an hour of discussing past events—such discussion at times growing testy—Rothesay said, “Our uncle Albany, as you all ken fine, resents having lost the Governorship and its attendant powers. He wants them back.”

“And your provisional term as Governor o’ the Realm expires in January, lad,” Donald said. “We all ken
that
fine. But what has that to do wi’ me?”

Fin knew that Donald considered himself as equal, if not superior, to the King of Scots. The Lord of the Isles descended from a much older dynasty, owned many more castles and hundreds more boats, not to mention the great administrative complex at Finlaggan on the Isle of Islay, which boasted a palatial residence larger than any noble or royal equivalent on the Scottish mainland.

Rothesay eyed him measuringly. “You and Alex know as well as I do how Albany ruled when he was Governor before, by amassing power wherever and however he could. He holds the treasury, uses it as his own, and is greedy withal, which affects everyone in Scotland. I want to curb him wherever I can.”

“As ye should, Davy,” Alex said, nodding. “But ye ken fine how long I ha’ been away wi’ ye. I canna leave the North to look after itself again so soon, lest our uncle Albany swoop in with an army. Or someone else does,” he added dulcetly.

Fin glanced at the Lord of the Isles, as did a few others, but Donald’s thick beard concealed his mouth and thus much of his expression. The talking went on, but both cousins remained elusive, willing to talk but unwilling to speak plainly.

Some of their adherents seemed to Fin to be trying to stir dissension.

His thoughts drifted to Catriona, and he wondered what she might be doing.

Catriona was busy. The great lords had brought companions with them, but they had not brought the host of servants one usually expected with visiting royalty.

Each nobleman had a manservant. But they looked after only their masters and expected castle servants or womenfolk to attend to anything akin to menial labor. Thus it was that she and Morag were in the kitchen, aiding the cook’s minions with preparations for the midday meal.

The two barely had enough time when they finished to run upstairs and change their gowns, but Ailvie was waiting for Catriona, so the change took little time. After a final look at herself in the glass, she hurried back downstairs, slowing only as she approached the landing between her parents’ room and Fin’s.

She told herself that she was just protecting her dignity and did not want to risk running full tilt into one parent or another on the landing. If her gaze lingered on the closed door of Fin’s room instead of on the one opposite, no voice, including the self-critical one in her head, spoke up to chide her.

Entering the hall to see that people were still gathering at the lower tables and on the dais, she paused now and again to speak to those who greeted her. When she stepped onto the dais, her gaze collided with Fin’s, and something in the way he looked at her warmed her through.

Movement to his right drew her notice to Rothesay, Shaw, and her grandfather as they emerged from the inner chamber with Alex Stewart and Donald of the Isles.

Rothesay caught her eye then, and if Fin’s expression had been warm,
his
was searing. Aware that she was blushing and that her grandfather or Shaw would notice if she lingered where she stood, she moved hastily to the women’s end of the table and took the place that a smiling Morag had left for her beside Ealga.

As soon as Donald’s real mendicant monk had muttered the grace and everyone had sat down, Catriona said to her mother, “Do you ken aught of what happened this morning, Mam?”

“I do not,” Ealga said. “You know that your father rarely confides his business to me. And you know, too, that when he does, I do not talk about it after.”

From Catriona’s right, Morag said, “James did tell me that he thinks they will talk long before they find consensus. There are issues, he said, which seem to stir much disagreement and men amidst them who seem to encourage it.”

“God-a-mercy,
James
told you all that?” Glancing at her mother to see that Ealga had turned to talk with Lady Annis, Catriona said, “What else did he say?”

Morag looked self-conscious. “I should not tell you. But I did want you to know that… that he will not be revealing our confidences to you anymore. And I must warn you that I told him what you said about him being an ass. I expect that was as bad as his telling you what I had said and what he had said to me, but—”

A gurgle of laughter welled in Catriona’s throat, and some of it escaped as she said, “You may repeat whatever I say if it will help bring James to his senses.”

Morag looked relieved, but she said, “Sithee, I think he was irritated, so he may scold you. And when James scolds one, it is most unpleasant, believe me.”

Catriona stared at her. “Good sakes, do you mean to say that he is brutal to you? ’Tis hard for me to believe that.”

“James is not brutal, but I do not like him to be angry with me.”

Catriona bit her lower lip and then decided to say what she was thinking. “Look here, Morag, have you ever seen Ivor in a temper?”

“Nay, I am thankful to say that I have not. I have heard others say that he does naught to restrain himself but flies into a fury.”

“I can be much the same way,” Catriona admitted. “But, by my troth, Morag, compared to either of us in a temper, James is… is most temperate.”