Chapter Thirty-Two
“You must allow me to accompany you,” Isobel beseeched her husband, not for the first time. “As your wife, it is my right to be there and speak on your behalf. It may make a difference. I have much to say to the King, and you shall not face him alone.”
And, Isobel thought to herself, she refused to watch Dougal ride from her, not knowing if she would ever see him again. The summons from the King had come three days ago, and since then she had been sick over it, and desperate to persuade Dougal round to her thinking.
She could beg the King for her husband’s life if necessary, and promise anything in return for mercy. But Dougal shook his head, a closed look coming to his face—just like every other time she asked him.
“Stay here,” he bade, “where you are safe.”
“What good is my safety, if I lose you?” They stood in the bedchamber they now once more shared. “If you do not return to me?” Isobel felt perilously close to tears—they threatened to blind and choke her. “I could not bear it!”
Dougal caught her shoulders between his hands and stared into her eyes, and she found herself unable to hide anything from him. All her love and longing must be visible, for he lowered his voice and his tone became unusually gentle.
“Do not worry, Wife, I will return. Do I not take your brother-in-law, the erstwhile Thomas, with me to speak as to the situation, and MacNab’s part in it? The King shall hear how events transpired, and that MacNab is not blameless.”
“Oh, Thomas!” Isobel exclaimed with some disparagement. She found herself unimpressed with Catherine’s husband, who now seemed almost staid and lacking in fire. “Why should the King listen to him?”
“He can give the truth of it, how Bertram MacNab’s betrothed was actually the woman who became his wife, not mine, and how the switch came about.”
“And I can tell the King the truth about MacNab—how he abducted me from my own garden—”
“As I abducted you on the road?”
“—and what he meant to do to me, had I not escaped.”
“Wife, I ken fine you are afraid—”
“You know nothing of it. Can you imagine how it will be for me waiting, not knowing how you fare? Surely I will be safer, even traveling, in your company.”
Some emotion moved in the stormy grey eyes: caution, perhaps. “Nay, but I would not have you possibly return from Stirling alone—”
“Alone?”
“Should I be taken into custody.”
Isobel’s heart dropped sickeningly. “You say that will not happen.”
His lips tightened in an ironic smile. “It should not. Still, if happen it did, you would be vulnerable.”
“I would be with the erstwhile Thomas, would I not?”
That made Dougal grimace. “Stay here under guard, please, with your sister and Meg. Do this for me.”
Since he asked it so, Isobel could not refuse—she would deny him nothing.
But her head came up and she met his eyes in challenge.
“I will, Husband, but only if you will do something for me in return, before you go.” At the question in his eyes, she began to unfasten his tunic, and tug free the shirt beneath.
“Lie with me now. If I am to be left without you, I would at least have your child.”
The mist in his eyes ignited and transformed into fire. He would not deny her this, Isobel thought, and she would savor every kiss, every touch. For this memory might have to last her a lifetime.
****
“For the love of all that is holy, will you not sit down?” Meg begged impatiently. “You have been pacing for hours; you will drive me round the twist.”
The three women shared the solar, on a day turned vicious and cold. Outside, the wind once more tore at the stones of the keep, shrieking like a woman in mourning.
The fire in the hearth barely succeeded in fighting back the pervasive chill, which seemed to have penetrated clear to Isobel’s heart.
“I cannot help it,” she said. “I am unable to settle. They will be in Stirling by now, yes? Do you think he has seen the King?”
Meg shrugged. “The King is capricious and lives by his own rules. He may not have arrived as expected. The weather may have kept him.”
“I will go mad with not knowing!”
“And you will drag us with you.” Meg sounded truly exasperated. She shot a look at Catherine. “Can you not reason with your sister?”
Somewhat to Isobel’s surprise, her sister and sister-in-law got on amazingly well. At the moment, they definitely stood united.
“Sit down, pray, Isobel,” Catherine bade. “Give us all some rest.” In an aside to Meg, she went on, “Isobel has always been headstrong which, indeed, began all this trouble.”
“Me? And I suppose you have naught to do with it? No matter,” Isobel exclaimed bitterly, “recount my past sins if you will. I care for but one thing.”
“You should care for your own well-being,” Meg said. “Lachlan tells me MacNab has sent out raiding parties these two nights past—when Lachy and our warriors rode out, they saw the tracks in the snow.”
“I am concerned with my own safety.” Isobel knew full well MacNab wished to get his hands on her again, his sole purpose, now, revenge.
MacNab could have no way of knowing Catherine—Bertram’s true intended—was now here at MacRae’s keep, nor that she had also become another man’s wife.
He wanted to cause pain, distress, and fear.
“Then behave accordingly,” Catherine said. “Sit down and sew.”
“I cannot possibly!” But Isobel did pause in her pacing to eye Catherine’s needlework.
She labored at embroidering a tiny white gown for her baby, a lovely thing that evoked pleasant images.
Fleetingly, Isobel wondered if her seduction of her husband, the morning he left for Stirling, had good effect.
He had certainly been thorough in his pursuit of the task...
“Since when do you sew?” she demanded of Catherine.
“Motherhood requires patience,” Catherine told her implacably, placing one hand on her expanded belly. “As you may one day learn.”
Isobel, spared from answering that ridiculous statement, swung round as the chamber door opened and Lachlan came in. She did not miss the way Meg’s face lit at the sight of him.
Lachlan, clad for the outdoors and wearing his sword, looked unusually grim. He beckoned to Meg, who rose and went to him. They held a whispered conversation.
“It is rude, that,” Isobel protested, “keeping secrets in front of others.”
The couple parted and looked at her. Lachlan spoke, “I am saying only that I will be out riding with a troop of men. I have doubled the guard—”
“Why?” Isobel demanded. “Because you saw tracks in the snow?”
Lachlan exchanged looks with Meg, who shrugged.
“Aye,” Lachlan spoke directly to Isobel. “I swore to Dougal I would keep you safe while he was away. I would sooner perish than fail in that.”
“You believe we are in danger?”
Lachlan scowled. “I do. The weather is vile, and I am thinking raiders from MacNab’s keep could use that as cover for creeping in close. I mean to ride the borders, even if I freeze myself through.”
“Dougal has a good friend in you,” Isobel told him.
Lachlan’s eyes once more flew to Meg. “Aye, so, but do not forget I have a treasure of my own here to guard.”
He went out and a brief silence ensued. Then Isobel observed, “He is in love with you, Meg.”
“Foolish man!” Once more Meg sounded exasperated.
“How do you feel for him?” Both Isobel and Catherine stared at their companion, awaiting her answer.
“I swore off love long ago,” Meg replied acerbically, “if that is what you ask.”
“Just like your brother,” Catherine observed comfortably. “But the head cannot always command the heart, and yon Lachlan is a charming bugger. How do you truly feel?”
For an instant it seemed Meg would not answer, then a spark of mischief entered her dark eyes, and her lips curved in a smile.
“I have to admit, I will not be glad to see the back of him any time soon. As you say, he is charming as a hound pup, or a child—but he loves like a man. I vowed, after murdering my last husband, I would never take up with another, yet I now find myself content.”
Catherine lowered her sewing and stared. “You murdered your last husband?”
“Do not fash yourself. He deserved it,” Meg said breezily.
“And Lachlan knows of this?”
Meg smiled. “I told you he is a fool.”
For Isobel, the day dragged on. She paced the solar and, when her companions continued to complain, the hallways, where drafts of cold air made her shiver. She was one of the first to hear the pounding at the front door.
Could it be Dougal, returned? But no—surely not so soon.
Two of the household guards, one the estimable Rab, ran to the door, Rab with his sword drawn. But when the door was drawn open, Isobel saw her husband’s own warriors in a cluster and bearing a rough litter constructed of cloaks and pine poles.
The men spoke together, quick and fierce, their accents blurring the words. Isobel ran forward to see a man on the litter, covered in blood—Lachlan. He looked dead.
She gasped, and Rab roughly pushed her out of the way. “Lady, let us get him in!”
“What happened?” Isobel asked. “Does he yet live?”
One of the men bearing the litter answered her, though she caught perhaps one word in ten.
They had come under attack by a large number of MacNab’s warriors under the leadership of Bertram MacNab.
Lachlan had fought valiantly, as had they all, but once he fell it became a battle on the part of the others to get him away.
“They came like an army,” the man told Rab. “They mean to attack while the Devil is awa’.”
Isobel’s heart clenched in her chest, but she had eyes only for Lachlan.
She lifted her voice and called, “Meg! Meg, come quickly!”
The two women ran from the solar into the ghastly scene. Isobel watched the color drain from Meg’s face.
Meg wasted no time with questions and instead gestured to the men. “Bring him into the solar, where ’tis warm. Carefully, now!”
“How sore hurt is he?” Isobel asked her sister-in-law. “Can you save him?”
Meg shook her head. “Who can say? There is healing in these hands, as well as harm. I cannot tell if ’twill be enough.”
The men bore Lachlan off, and Isobel turned to Rab. “If MacNab attacks the keep, it will hold, yes? Can he breach the defenses?”
Rab shrugged and his gaze turned uneasy. “We will fight to the man to protect you, Lady—and die if need be.” He grimaced. “Better death by the sword, I am thinking, than to face the ire of the Devil Black.”