4. Kenneth Would Never
Kenneth Would Never
She didn’t look back, not even once.
Niall watched the infuriating maid stamp away, ultimately disappearing into a narrow doorway. She left a trail of crushed plants in her wake, and he suppressed a tight smile.
The gardeners would be furious. But then, Catriona didn’t strike him as the sort of woman to care much about an angry gardener. Or an angry anyone.
I should leave her be.
The niggling thought arose from the back of his mind, a low and snippy sort of voice, the kind of voice that sounded exactly like Kenneth.
Kenneth would never, ever flirt with a maid or bother a woman who seemed to dislike him.
Did Catriona really dislike him? Sometimes Niall was sure she was getting ready to slap him in the face. No, not a slap, she’d punch him square on the nose with a closed fist.
Then at other times, she stared up at him with veiled, heavy green eyes and he thought…
Well, enough of what he’d thought. She’d taken herself away from the situation, and he couldn’t exactly follow her into the kitchens. One of the cooks would probably throw a joint of meat at his head.
Or worse yet, Sukie would be called, and she’d make him leave.
Swallowing hard, Niall stepped away from the wall and turned his back towards the kitchens. His feet took him away from the gardens, through the courtyards, and all the way to the training fields at the back of the Keep.
The sound of clashing swords, thunking staffs, and muffled shouts rose to his ears, the familiar sounds of hard work. If he closed his eyes, he could differentiate between the noises made by staffs thudding together as opposed to the wooden blades of the training swords.
Rounding a stone corner brought him within view of the fields.
Men stood clumped together or dotted about in twos, arranged in groups to practice various arts.
Swordplay was the most common, with clumsy new trainees left to swing at each other with wooden blades.
MacLeod soldiers were also expected to have a proficiency in wrestling, archery, staffs, pikes, and more.
Clans kept themselves safe by learning to fight, after all, and a good army kept people safe.
Politics might be an ever-shifting bed of quicksand, but fighting? That was always the same, again and again. That could be controlled.
“Niall! There ye are, lad.”
A voice echoed across the fields, and Niall glanced over to see a man waving at him. He waved back and set off at a jog towards him.
A running joke amongst the soldiers was that Peter O’Falle had been born with gray hair. He swore it had once been black, but the idea of a single black hair amongst Peter’s iron-gray locks just didn’t sit right. He claimed to be an Irishman but sounded as Scottish as anyone born in the Highlands.
Niall had seen plenty of trainees challenge Peter to a fight, mistakenly thinking that they could defeat the slim, light-footed Captain of the Guard and earn themselves some glory.
None of them had ever earned more than ridicule and the occasional broken bone.
A smile split over Peter’s vulpine features as Niall approached. He didn’t offer that smile to many people. Never Kenneth, for example.
“Ye missed the clan meeting this morning,” Peter remarked, folding his hands over the top of his staff. “I sent men to look for ye, but ye were nowhere to be found.”
“I must have forgotten about it,” Niall responded evenly, bending to pick up a staff from the pile of weapons.
“I’ll believe that when pigs fly. Ye ought to have been there.”
“Why?”
“What do ye mean, why? These meetings are important.”
Niall rolled his eyes. He twirled the staff, tossing it up in the air and catching it, then spinning it effortlessly behind his back and into his opposite hand.
“Important? Be practical, man. These meetings are nothing more than a waste of time.”
Peter pursed his lips. “They are important. Aye, there’s a fair bit of waffling, I’ll not argue with that, but serious decisions are made. Ye ought to be there.”
“And do what? Contribute what?”
“Well, for a start, ye could consider politics as a form of warfare. Ease up on that spinning, lad. It might look fancy, but we both know it’s pointless. I could get that staff off ye in the blink of an eye.”
Niall balanced the staff along his shoulders, the tip coming to rest along his arm, jutting out over the back of his hand. The position might look precarious, but he knew from experience that it was not.
“Come and claim it, then,” he said pleasantly.
Peter narrowed his eyes. His stance changed, only a little, but Niall knew what he was looking for. A slight tenseness in the older man’s frame, the lifting of his staff just by an inch, hovering above the ground.
“See, with ye, Niall, ye start off with an indifferent stance, as though ye do not care much about the fight. Ye lure them in with yer showmanship, which any decent soldier recognizes as the sign of a boastful lad who cannot wield his weapon. They strike and then… well, ye strike. Hard, fast, and accurately. It’s a tactic that has worked well for ye in the past, I have seen it. ”
Peter moved forward, fast as a blur, the end of the staff swinging out. Niall was ready for it, dodging backwards. The tip of the weapon came within inches of his nose.
“Careful, Peter,” he laughed. “A blow like that can smash a man’s nose into smithereens, and I’m rather fond of mine.”
Peter snorted. “Vain boy.”
He struck again and again, with Niall dodging each blow. He let himself grin, knowing just how much it infuriated an opponent to see their enemy smiling like a lunatic. Not that Peter would make that mistake, of course.
“I heard a rumor that ye are chasing a maid,” Peter observed suddenly.
That made Niall falter, and he nearly received a cracking blow to his shin. The reason for his stumbling, he told himself, was because he hadn’t expected Peter to speak. Nothing to do with the mention of Catriona.
“I am not.” he managed, but he’d already delayed too much in his response.
Peter smiled. “Hmm. Yer cousin won’t like it.”
“It’s not his concern. He was at the meeting this morning.”
“O’course he was. He proposed an alliance with the Frasers and Farrishes. An alliance against the MacAlpins.”
The two men broke apart, eyeing each other. Their half-hearted sparring matches usually ended this way, with no definite ending.
“Did he?” Niall murmured.
“Aye. He did. With the MacAlpin daughters coming out of hiding, their father is growing stronger and bolder. The MacAlpins were once the power of the Highlands, and it seems that they could become that power again. If we allow it.”
Niall cleared his throat. “What should I care about that?”
“Because it affects us, Niall.”
“Ach, those councilors all think I am a fool. They don’t listen to me.”
“Well, as the heir, yer voice should be heard anyway,” Peter responded. He lowered his chin, catching Niall’s eye. “Many a man has been caught out by underestimating an enemy he thought was a fool. And ye, lad, are no fool.”
Niall briefly closed his eyes. He conjured up an image of Catriona’s face, a glimpse caught through the crowds of a marketplace. There’d been something broken and desperate in her eyes, the frustration of not being in the right place, if that made any sense at all.
A stupid idea, of course, but in that instant it really had seemed as though the expression on her face matched the one in the back of his mind. As though she understood.
A stranger could never understand, however, not truly. No matter how pretty she was. And it didn’t matter, because she did not seem to like him.
“I sometimes feel like one,” he muttered.
Peter shook his head. “No, ye are made to feel like one. That is not the same thing.”
“Perhaps not. But…” Niall broke off, movement catching his eye.
Not the movement of sparring soldiers, but something else. A man walked straight across the field towards them, his movements purposeful.
Kenneth.
“Why would Kenneth propose an alliance like that?” Niall murmured, watching his cousin approach.
Peter didn’t reply for a long moment, following Niall’s stare.
“Power is a dangerous thing,” he said at last. “It corrupts a man. I have seen it. Power might disgust ye, Niall, but not everybody is disgusted by it. Some men are drawn to it. Men who, for example, have endured tragedy and helplessness before. Ye, for example, lost yer dear mother to war, lad. Kenneth was orphaned by it. That kind of anger can make a man cling to whatever power he can get. Because once he gets a little, lad, it becomes addictive. It’s like a disease. ”
Niall didn’t bother to ask any further questions, not least of all because Kenneth had nearly reached them.
“Cousin,” he called as soon as he was within earshot. “Will ye spar with me? I could do with the practice.”
Niall longed to say no. He could say that he was tired or that he didn’t wish to spar if Kenneth hadn’t already seen him fighting with Peter. Instead, he gave a tight smile.
“If ye are not too tired, Kenneth.”
Kenneth swept up a staff from the nearby pile, testing its strength. He twirled it nimbly, but not showily.
“Nay, I am not tired,” he responded briskly. “But ye must be. I heard tell that ye did not crawl out of yer bed-pit until nearly noon.”
“What need have I to get up so early?” Niall laughed. “Ye are up before the sun and get enough work done for both of us.”
Kenneth growled and lunged. His first strike was harder and faster than one might have expected from an opening move, the air whistling around the weapon.
Niall dodged easily, again and again, letting his cousin tire himself out with his aggressive swings. Around them, men gradually stopped fighting, turning to watch the laird’s son and his cousin fight. Niall could feel Peter’s eyes boring into his back.
He jumped, nimbly avoiding a low blow from Kenneth which made the grasses bend. He could see a flicker of unease, of frustration, on his cousin’s face. Time to end it, then.