Chapter 27 #2
She pressed a hand to her cheek. She knew what her sister wanted – she wished to warn her not to fall for a MacLean.
After all, she had good reason to doubt him.
An undeniable obstacle that rode the far horizon, a place as cold and silent as Lileas’ grave.
The MacLean was staring at her, his eyes demanding an answer. At her growing silence, his face shuttered again. Even so, she’d caught a glimpse of the hurt in his eyes and it stung her as mightily as the red-hot needles jabbing into the backs of her own.
“I want to believe you,” she finally said. “I truly do.”
“Then why can’t you?”
She glanced at the small window. “That which I did not see, my lord.”
“What?” He lifted a brow higher than she’d have thought possible. “That makes no sense, lassie.”
“Let her be.” Sir Gavin stepped between them. “She will believe Iain’s innocence and the MacKinnons’ guilt when she is ready, not before.”
“She speaks in riddles.” The MacLean didn’t hide his annoyance. “She will no’ see because of what she did no’ see.” He pulled a hand down over his face. “What nonsense.”
“You err.” Isolde returned to the window. Night mist was rolling in, and far out to sea, thick curtains of it had now almost fully cloaked MacKinnons’ Isle. But her gaze still found it, as always.
“How do I err, lady?”
“I do not speak riddles or nonsense.” She clutched the rough edge of the window. “What I did not see were MacKinnon galleys passing through our waters. Were they guilty, as you’d have me believe, my lookouts would have seen them sail past on their way to your end of Doon.”
She released a sigh. “That, good sirs, is why I cannot believe Iain is innocent. My sister might have believed in faeries, trolls, and sea beasties, but I do not. That leaves your brother, Laird MacLean. No one else could have done the deed.”
They said nothing, but she could feel their stares on her back. No matter. She wouldn’t yet she turn to face them.
Doing so might mean capitulation.
She did she wish to believe the MacLean.
Then a rustling noise and the clank of a chain broke the silence, quickly followed by a curse.
Him.
He’d tried to come to her, and her heart turned over at the implication.
“So that is what you think?” he said then, sounding close.
“It is what I know.” She pressed her fingers harder against the cold stone of the window ledge, needing its solidity, hoping to tap its strength. “The MacKinnons have never been our friends, but they did not drown my sister on the Lady Rock.”
“Neither did my brother.”
“Then who did?”
Heavy, black silence answered her.
She didn’t like the sound of it.
Several mornings later, Iain MacLean and all the MacLean fighting men who’d been able to fit onboard the newly repaired galley stood upon the sandy beach of MacKinnons’ Isle.
Stood, and gaped.
Of the massed might of the renowned MacKinnon warriors, nary a hair was to be seen, much less a well-muscled sword arm swinging a finely honed blade.
Of the clan’s formidable sea-going fleet was much to be seen.
And all of it in ruin.
The once-proud vessels lay in wrack. From the most impressive war-galley to the lowliest hide-covered coracle, not one remained intact. They were all broken and sea-blistered, their smooth lines now twisted, jagged, and draped with dried seaweed.
Some of the wreckage had already been half buried by the shifting sands. Sad flotsam, tragic remnants of a foundered fleet, made all the more pathetic by the morning’s brilliant sunshine and cloudless sky.
A day of freezing winds and dense, black fog would have better suited the devastation littering the wide stretch of curved shoreline.
Iain stared at the damage, disbelief whirling inside him, chilling him to the bone.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it appears something is amiss.” Gerbert, Baldoon Castle’s long-in-years steward, nudged a low mound of barnacle-encrusted oak clinker stakes. Ruined wood that had once formed the hull of a galley, or several galleys – it was hard to tell.
Iain said nothing. He feared his mind was boiling.
Gerbert scratched his bristly chin. “Aye, sorely amiss.”
“Gods’ wounds!” Iain whipped out his sword and thrust it into the sand. “Do you think I’m blind? All is amiss.” His face heating with rage, he glowered at Gerbert, the only man along whose purpose wasn’t the skill of his sword arm.
And at the moment, Iain didn’t know what Gerbert’s purpose was.
Save to needle him.
As he’d known the meddlesome old man would do even before he’d wheedled his way onboard. But as the only MacLean to have ever set foot on MacKinnons’ Isle, Iain had been hard-pressed to deny him.
Now…
Iain scooped up a handful of sand, then jabbed his clenched fist at the air over his head. “The MacKinnon scourges will no’ slip through our…”
He broke off, and lowered his arm. Opening his fingers, he frowned at the rusted nails lying on his palm. Some weren’t just rusted, but bore barnacles. With a curse, he hurled the nails into the surf.
Then he sank to his knees and buried his head in his hands. His men, and even old Gerbert, kept a respectful distance, standing where they could among the wreckage. After a long while, he pushed to his feet. He knew he’d look a fright, perhaps even worse than the shattered fleet all around them.
He didn’t care.
He did glance round at his men, saw the horror on their faces.
No one spoke.
Without exception, each man kept his gaze averted. He wasn’t surprised. Anywhere was safer to look than at him during one of his moods. He didn’t look overlong at them either, much to their relief, he was sure.
Instead, he stared at his galley.
A fine vessel, sleek of line with high stem and stern posts, mast straight and proud, a furled sail, and the row of oar ports staring blankly back at him.
Staring accusingly, and with reason.
The war-galley could ply the seaways with great speed at sail, and maneuvered well under the might of stout rowing arms if the wind died. She’d borne them to MacKinnons’ Isle with a swiftness he had not dared hope for, yet…
She merely rocked in the surf, moving in gentle time with the incoming tide. Their whole journey, the arduous days spent repairing the storm-damaged hull, might prove to have been in vain.
A foolhardy mission, as Amicia had repeatedly told him.
Iain stared heavenward. The glare of the sun hurt his eyes, but he welcomed the discomfort. Gulls circled and screamed above, and the sight sent another shard of pain into his heart. Would there ever again be a time when he’d feel so free of cares as the wheeling seabirds?
He doubted it.
Not without Lileas.
He started when one of his men appeared beside him. “Sir…” The man was hesitant. “What are we to do now?”
“What we came to do,” Iain said, his voice as cold as the day was warm.
He yanked his sword from the sand and held it up to the light, catching the rays of the sun in the blade’s steel.
The man before him frowned. “But-”
Iain silenced him with a look.
For good measure, he swept the circle of men with a fierce stare, his sword still held to sun. When no one challenged him, he sheathed his blade.
“One MacKinnon for each year of my lady wife’s life, and all the rest for the grief they’ve wrought,” he vowed, raising his voice above the wind. “We’ve tolerated their antics for years. This time they went too far. Now they shall pay.”
But rather than drawing their weapons and roaring support as they’d done in Baldoon’s great hall before they’d set sail, Iain’s men now shifted restlessly. Some shuffled their feet in the sand, while most looked everywhere but at him.
They seemed to have lost their tongues as well.
Iain snarled. A deep, roiling rumble wrested from the blackest corner of his soul. And then he hollered for the one man whose knowledge he needed.
Gerbert.
Unlike his younger kinsmen, Gerbert wasn’t afraid to meet Iain’s eye. Iain peered hard at him, too, hoping what he saw in the old man’s face was a trick of the light, and not what it appeared to be.
But it wasn’t the light.
Gerbert’s eyes swam with pity.
“Still think you can lead us to Coldstone Castle, the MacKinnon stronghold?” Iain asked him, his voice gruff, his heart choosing to ignore the look on Gerbert’s face.
“Well?” he prodded when the old man remained silent. “Can you?”
Gerbert hesitated. “Aye, I ken the way. But I’d rather not go there, now we’re here.”
“Why not?” Iain hooked his thumbs in his sword belt. He heard a high-pitched ringing in his ears, his rapid pulse giving proof of his mounting anger.
His increasing dread.
For deep inside, he knew why Gerbert didn’t want to seek out the MacKinnons after they’d journeyed so far.
“Speak, man.” Iain leaned toward him. “I want your answer.”
“It would no’ be wise to disturb them, I’m thinking,” Gerbert said, his voice laden with compassion. “Now we’re here, ’tis clear we’ve accused them falsely.”
“Nae!” Iain lifted his hands before him as if doing so would ward off what he knew Gerbert was about to say.
What he didn’t want to be true.
“Nae,” he said again as the old man stooped to take a piece of sun-bleached ship’s planking off the sand. “It cannae be.”
“Aye, well.” Gerbert held out the wood for Iain’s inspection.
Iain looked away.
He’d seen enough. He didn’t need to hear Gerbert put the damning evidence to words to recognize the truth.
The storm that had damaged the MacLean galleys had not been the one that had smashed the MacKinnons’ entire fleet. The condition of the wreckage gave irrefutable proof that whatever storm gales had lashed at MacKinnons’ Isle with such fury had done so long ago.
Too long ago for them to have used one of the ships to sail to Doon to murder Lileas.
The MacKinnons had not killed his wife.
“This evening,” Isolde told Niels and Rory. She kept her chin raised, resisted the urge to rub her arms against the chill of Dunmuir’s vast undercroft. “If he is not there by the time the hall settles for the night, I shall fetch him myself.”
At her feet, Bodo stared up at the two guardsmen with an unblinking gaze as if warning them to heed her wishes. Rory glared at the dog, then jerked his head toward the iron-banded door behind them.
With its heavy drawbar in place, the door’s solid strength kept all those behind it where they belonged: locked away within whatever dark corner of Dunmuir’s dungeons they’d been cast.
“We told you,” Rory began, “Lorne has joined us during the late watches. He’s done so every night since he had the bastard pulled from the sea dungeon.”
He flicked a wary glance at Bodo. “How are we supposed to haul the churl out of the MacFie’s cell, past Lorne, and up to your bedchamber, without alerting everyone to your wicked doings?”
“Wicked?” Isolde folded her arms. “Some would say my goals are bold and daring, their execution costly to none but me.”
She didn’t add that she no longer viewed gaining the MacLean’s favor as an unpleasant task.
“Have you nothing else to say?” She waited.
Rory pressed his lips together.
Niels scratched the side of his neck. “I don’t know how we’ll get him past Lorne.”
“Try.”
“A mite eager, aren’t you?” Niels frowned at her.
“The devil’s done cast a dark spell over her.” Rory made the sign against evil. “Over Lorne, too.”
“Aye.” Niels nodded. “The whole of Dunmuir’s gone mad of late.”
Isolde glanced over her shoulder at the stairs up to the great hall. Rustling noises, the clatter of cutlery, and the low hum of voices drifted down the curving stair tower, an indication that preparations for the evening meal were underway.
Bodo also glanced at the stairs, surely looking forward to whatever tidbits could soon be had.
Isolde turned back to the guardsmen. “Can you not suggest Lorne guard the dungeon entrance in the hall? The one that opens into the broch’s wall passage?”
Niels and Rory exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“What is it?” Isolde looked from one to the other.
Rory glanced aside and began mumbling under his breath.
Niels pulled on his bushy red beard. “’Tis no’ guarding the MacLean and his friend, Lorne is doing. He’s watching us,” he said, a pink stain tingeing his face.
Isolde blinked. “Watching you?”
“We told you the world’s gone addled,” Rory said. “Lorne is worried Struan and the others will have us move the MacLean back to the sea dungeon when he isn’t looking.”
“And would you?” Isolde pushed a braid over her shoulder.
“Sakes, but we’d like to,” Niels admitted.
Isolde assumed her late father’s laird’s look. “But you won’t, will you?”
“Nae,” Niels allowed.
Rory spat on the floor, blessedly not anywhere near Bodo. “Dinnae worry, we will not. Much as the bastard needs the arrogance washed out of him.”
“We answer only to you, lady.” That from Niels.
Satisfied, Isolde relaxed. “There is not much time. Not this night, not at all. I can waste no more. You have not brought him to my chamber in a full week.
“I want him there this e’en.” She drew herself up to her full height. “Do not fail.”
Before they could argue, she hitched up her skirts and strode toward the stair tower, Bodo bounding ahead of her. She hadn’t taken three of the winding stone steps before Rory hurried after her.
“We cannae promise, lady. Lorne-”
Halting her upward climb, she glanced over her shoulder. “Find a way. I must see him.”
I want to be kissed like a knight kisses.