Chapter Seventeen
“Lady Alice is missing now, too?” Morgan glared at Gregory as if he were the one responsible for another lass gone.
“Aye. She is nowhere in the castle and her mam says a satchel with her clothes is gone from her bedchamber.”
“And the king is here?” Abraham asked, drumming his fingers on the table in front of him.
Gregory nodded. “He just arrived with his people. Lady Chisholm has the wedding planned for tomorrow.”
“With who? Both lasses the king sent are gone.” Abraham turned to Richard. “We are cursed.”
“Where is the laird while all this is going on?” Morgan asked.
“The same place he’s been for the last few days. Questioning everyone in the village, searching everywhere, angrier than a bear with an arrow in its arse.”
“Has he at least greeted the king?” Richard asked.
Gregory nodded. “Briefly. He made sure accommodations were ready for the king and his party, then after checking with the cook that food and drink was available, he left again.”
Richard ran his hand down his face. “We have a wedding planned for tomorrow, a ferocious almost unhinged groom roaming the land, a missing bride, and a king expecting to meet the new Lady Mackenzie since he would assume his edict had been followed.”
Abraham looked over at Richard. “Two missing brides.”
*
Joshua grew more nervous as the days went by with Lady Beth still in the dungeon. He’d gone every day, sometimes twice with ale and food, but she looked awful.
Most times he had to stay there and make sure she ate what he brought her. She had lost her initial spirit from when they first put her there. His sympathy for the lass, and for the laird who was frantically looking for her, was increasing every day.
When he agreed to do this for the benefit of marrying Meggie and having a place of his own and a living for the rest of his life, it didn’t seem to be a problem.
He never would have guessed that the lass would be stuck in the dungeon so long. He knew Lady Chisholm wanted the laird to marry her daughter, but Joshua hadn’t known that the man was so against it.
It was Lady Chisholm who had come up with the plan to kidnap her and had Meggie ask him to help. She’d had him search the castle and find a place where Lady Beth could be held that no one would find.
By asking questions, he learned that there was a dungeon in the castle that hadn’t been used for years. After investigating the place himself, he presented the information to Lady Chisholm.
She once again agreed that in payment for him helping, she would see that Lady Alice would provide a bothy for him and Meggie once they were married, as well as permanent jobs for them both.
Once they arrived at Lady Beth’s bedchamber the night they took her, he refused to hold a knife to her throat, but Lady Chisholm had insisted it was the only way to keep the lass quiet as they moved her through the keep.
To appease both his conscience and Lady Chisholm’s demands, he merely waved the knife at Lady Beth’s face.
He needed to speak with Meggie since she saw Lady Chisholm every day and he needed to find out when this would all end. But every time he tried to speak with Meggie, she was always too busy and said she would talk to him later.
Later never happened and now he was growing both anxious and angry. He needed to know how much longer they would keep Lady Beth in the dungeon. He saw how she was suffering, and they did not. After what he’d seen and heard from Lady Chisholm, she wouldn’t care, anyway.
Things had become crazier with the king arriving and Lady Alice also disappearing. He wished he’d never become involved with Lady Chisholm. He should have found a way to get a house by himself for him and Meggie.
He had skills and could have found a way to support them, too.
Joshua had been attracted to Meggie from the time she’d arrive with Laird and Lady Chisholm. She was a black-haired beauty who had caught the attention of a number of the Mackenzie warriors.
When she asked him to help with kidnapping Lady Beth, he knew it was his way to get her for himself.
The best way he could speak with Meggie would be to catch her in the small maid’s room once everyone in the keep was asleep.
Joshua made his way quietly to her room when things finally appeared to be settled down with the king retiring to his chambers and Lady Chisholm receiving a potion from Emma, the healer, to quiet her nerves.
He knocked softly on Meggie’s door and then opened it, assuming she was asleep.
She was not asleep.
Meggie was enjoying very enthusiastic bed sport with Damon, one of the guardsmen.