Tempting the Highlander (11 page)

Laurel gave Raelynd a mischievous smile and shrugged. “I did it with practice, of course. Don’t worry. You both have a full month to learn the art of dealing with men . . . or should I say dealing with
husbands
.”

Seeing Raelynd’s and Meriel’s faces blanch confirmed Laurel’s doubts. Neither of them really wanted to be married or more importantly,
thought
they were getting married in a month.

So why was Conor so emphatic for her to do whatever she could to prepare for a wedding?

All three women gathered around the end of the Great Hall table where Laurel asked a nearby servant to bring out a small tray of food. The noon meal had already been served, but Laurel knew that after traveling, she was always ravenous, wanting anything to eat and drink besides water and bread.

“This is wonderful,” Meriel said, licking her fingertips as the last of the meat was devoured.

“Aye,” Raelynd concurred. “Could you please ask them to bring some more?”

“I can only offer you some more bread,” Laurel answered, pointing at the half-eaten mound still on the tray. “We are having a celebratory feast for dinner this evening—a small one since I received such late notice—but even so, the cooks are busy and unable to prepare anything else.”

Meriel sat back, slightly slumped, satisfied by the meager fare. “That sounds wonderful! I love festivities. I hope we have one every night,” she exclaimed, uncaring of the work and time that went into such affairs.

Raelynd, however, believed as guests, they should have been treated better and given more food when asked. “At Caireoch, a visitor’s comfort is more important than that of a few servants,” she mumbled.

Laurel pasted on a friendly smile and said quietly, without any perceived animosity, “Well, I hope for your sake that you might feel differently someday.”

Meriel, an innate peacemaker, tried to veer the conversation to happy topics. “Thank you so much for helping us prepare for our wedding. I cannot wait to begin working on my dress.”

Laurel heard the subtle plea to change subjects but refused to be easily manipulated. “I love Craig and Crevan very much. They are my family and nothing is more important than those close to me. And I am not about to let them enter a marriage I think they might be miserable in.”

Meriel squirmed and sank lower in her chair. Raelynd’s only response was a stiffening of her back, but both reactions were enough to confirm that much more was going on. Laurel began to drum her fingers on the table. Walking into the Hall, her goal had been to get both women to admit the truth—that the wedding was a farce. But after listening to them, Laurel was no longer sure she should coerce them into such a confession.

She had always liked the Schellden twins. Both were incredibly beautiful and usually very sweet natured. Unfortunately for them, they also had an overly doting father who had cocooned them away for most of their lives. As a result, their bodies had matured, but not their understanding of people.

After sequestering his daughters for so many years, marriage was about the only reason Laird Schellden could plausibly give for letting them go somewhere else and for such an extended period of time. So Crevan and Craig were helping Schellden protect his daughters. But from what? Or was it from whom? Laurel could ask them, but she suspected neither Crevan nor Craig knew the full scope of their circumstances. Asking Conor would be pointless, but then . . . he had to have known she would see through the situation. In a way, he was practically begging for her to meddle, because if it
was
a real wedding, Conor would have forbidden her from interfering. It was a leap in logic, but based on years of living with the devious, lovable man, it was a pretty solid one.

A grin crossed Laurel’s face.
Thank you, Conor . . . I accept,
she said to herself, hoping Raelynd’s and Meriel’s resolve was strong enough to see their plan through to the end. Because they were on McTiernay lands now and no one was going to believe Craig and Crevan were actually marrying the two women sitting in front of her.

Conor was right. They did need her help. And she was probably the only one who could provide it.

Laurel opened the door to Craig’s bedchambers and waved her hand at the mess, sighing with genuine exasperation. “This will be your room, Raelynd. I would apologize for the mess, but I am sure you were expecting it, knowing Craig as well as you do.”

Raelynd gulped and looked inside, her eyes wide with horror. Items were strewn everywhere. Forcing herself to enter, she nudged aside several straps of leather to clear a place for her to stand.

Meriel, now able to see inside, yelped with elation when she spotted the large window showering the room in sunlight. With the grace of someone who had significant amount of practice living in chaos, Meriel quickly stepped around the odds and ends to sit on the bench and look down at the courtyard below. “You are
so
lucky!” she giggled with excitement. “To have this bench here with all this light.”

Raelynd shuddered. Her sister would overlook all the disorder and see only how the room could be used for sewing and weaving. The bed was not made, nor from the way the blankets were lying atop the lumpy mattress, did it look like it had ever been made. Clothes—
men’s
clothes—were strewn about, and several types of weapons were lying haphazardly on the floor. Most of the candles had burned down to their nubs with wax pools around them. A few had fallen to the floor or on the settee where they had been snuffed out. The mess could have been Meriel’s if Raelynd had ever let their room get that bad.

“I had someone start a fire in both rooms and I will have someone come in and change the bedding and remove the armaments,” Laurel said, “though Craig really does not like people to touch his things. But I am sure you know that. I hope you are prepared to constantly clean up after the mess yourself, though with Craig, you most likely had better just get used to it.”

Watching Raelynd’s repulsion as she studied the exceptionally cluttered room, Laurel felt a small pang of guilt. Deciding to give her a temporary reprieve, she corralled both women back into the hall. Raelynd impulsively headed to the other room sharing that floor.

Not stopping her, Laurel opened the door, letting them both peek inside the wall-to-wall filled room. “This used to be Cole’s bedchambers,” she said, referring to the third McTiernay brother, who had married and was now laird of a nomadic clan up north. “In a few years, I’ll have the servants clean it out and give it to my son, Braeden, when he is older. But for now it is used only for storage.”

After closing the door, she went back to the tower staircase and up a single flight. Similar to the second floor, the third held two rooms. “Those bedchambers belong to Clyde,” she said, pointing to the locked door. “He has gone south to train with his elder brother Colin. Here is Crevan’s room—which will be yours, Meriel.”

Meriel eagerly peered inside and immediately felt her heart sink. Instead of a large window facing the courtyard with enormous amounts of sunlight, the room had only one small window and several narrow arrow slits facing the ravine and hills outside the castle walls. Seeing her things on the bed’s very smooth coverlet, she felt her pulse start to thump wildly. Working on her tapestries would not be possible in the dim light.

Ignoring her sister, Raelynd strolled into the wellarranged room with a smile. The dimmer firelight produced a warm feeling she far preferred over the glaring afternoon light and everything seemed to have a place. Raelynd moved to the bed and caught herself just in time before she sat down. It had felt natural, like something she would have done in her own room.

Raelynd wondered if Crevan had similar instincts when he came in after a long day. What if she were already there? There was only one chair—would they both sit on the bed?

A soft sob interrupted her stream of thoughts and Raelynd realized Meriel was crying. Pulling her sister into her arms, she explained to Laurel, “I don’t think my sister wants to be alone. Maybe we should share a room.”

Meriel immediately nodded and pulled away. “If it’s not a problem,” she sniffled, wiping the tears from her eyes. “We have always slept together.”

In many ways, Laurel felt for both sisters, but she also knew that continuing to treat them as their father had would not be fair to them or their future spouses. Letting go a critical chuckle, she asked, “Are you going to sleep with your sister on your wedding night as well?”

The comment had been directed at Meriel, but Raelynd felt its full impact. Not wanting Laurel to tell Crevan about the request, lest he think her incapable of acting like an adult, Raelynd clasped her hands together and said to her sister, “Meriel, this is how a room should look.” Then to Laurel, she asserted, “For years I have been trying to get my sister to put things where they belong. A room should have order and be organized, which is how I run my father’s castle.”

Laurel listened as Raelynd rattled off all the things she oversaw. The self-aggrandizing list surprised Laurel, for it proved that Raelynd did know an enormous amount about running a castle. Unfortunately, she had never actually experienced all the work she supervised—only directed it.

“Before I leave you to get ready for tonight, there is one more place and someone I would like to introduce you to.”

Raelynd followed Laurel and then Meriel up one more flight of stairs to the top floor. There were seven McTiernay brothers, and even in her sheltered existence, Raelynd had heard about all of them. Conor, Laurel’s husband, had assumed the weighty responsibility of becoming laird of the McTiernay clan upon his father’s death. The second eldest had married into a Lowland clan and the third in line had accomplished what many had thought impossible—uniting the northern nomadic tribes. And since she and her sister were engaged to the twins, that left only the two younger brothers. One was gone and the other one was supposed to be awful.

Just before they arrived at the door, Raelynd licked her lips apprehensively. “Who is it we are going to meet?”

Laurel stopped in midstride. “Conan, of course,” she said, and seeing the blood drain out of Raelynd’s face, bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “Remember, he is about to become your brother as well.”

Laurel gave the door a firm knock and upon hearing a deep grunt from the other side, opened the door and entered. “Hello, Conan. We have guests.”

Across the cluttered, scroll- and paper-filled room was a man who was propping his forehead on his palm while he studied something on the table. “Tell her to go away. I am not in the mood. If she is lucky, I’ll say hello tonight at dinner.”

Ignoring his condescending remarks, Laurel prompted, “And how do you know it is a she?”

Without looking up, Conan jotted something down on the map he was staring at and asked patronizingly, “When have you ever tried to introduce me to someone who was
not
a woman?”

“This time you are wrong. I have not come to introduce you to a woman.” That got Conan’s attention. He looked up and immediately grimaced as he realized his mistake. “I would like to introduce you to Raelynd and Meriel Schellden.”

“I know them.”

“Did you also know they are engaged to your brothers, Crevan and Craig?”

Conan tossed the quill pen on the table. “I don’t believe you.” He shifted his gaze from Laurel to Raelynd and then Meriel before coming back to his sister-in-law. “They’re more attractive than when I last saw them, but still not pretty enough to entice anyone into marriage.”

“Well, then it is a good thing you aren’t the one marrying one of us,” Raelynd snapped. The rejoinder should have gained her an apology or he should have at least shown some type of remorse, but the man just raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.

When Conan McTiernay had trained with her father as all the McTiernay brothers did at one point or another, he had avoided Caireoch Castle, much like Craig had done these past several months. Nonetheless, Raelynd had heard about Conan and how he belittled women. She had assumed he was like her father’s more rough-mannered men, but never,
never
had anyone talked that way about her. And certainly not when she was standing right in front of them. After all, she was not just anyone; she was Laird Schellden’s daughter!

Laurel saw Raelynd visibly bristle and was sure Conan had caught the reaction as well. Raelynd didn’t realize that chastising him would not convince Conan to cease his ridicule, it would only encourage him. The second-toyoungest brother was undoubtedly the most brilliant of the McTiernay clan, and as a result, he had little patience for anyone not as smart as he was.

Since few women had the unusual opportunity to learn at an abbey as Laurel had, Conan truly believed females were good for only pleasure and creating families. As far as Laurel knew, he had only made two exceptions to that belief—her and her good friend Ellenor, who studied with her at the abbey. It was unfortunate that neither Raelynd nor Meriel would be able to put him in his place like Ellenor had.

Still, encounters with Conan would be an excellent way for them to learn how to handle difficult people. Raelynd would not be able to order him to behave and Meriel’s female wiles would do her little good. Both would have to devise other means to control his conduct toward them. Laurel also knew that unless provoked, he would successfully avoid them.