Chapter Eight
There was something severely strange about Monteith Castle.
Lisle noted the strangeness the moment she tiptoed over to her chamber door and opened it to peer into the hall.
She didn’t decipher what it was until she’d walked down the steps, her hand running along a banister of rounded wood, so highly polished there wasn’t a sliver that would dare mar the surface of it, let alone be there to get into her palm.
It was as if the three short blasts had meant something…to everyone but her…something like desertion.
She knew she had the description down perfectly as her stocking-clad feet touched the polished stone of the lower hall, and the movement didn’t disturb so much as a whiff of dust. There wouldn’t have been any allowed in the keep anyway, but it was unnerving.
Lisle hadn’t known desertion and silence felt like that. She’d never felt so alone.
The kitchens weren’t hard to find. She just followed her nose, and just as Mary MacGreggor had said, there was the smell of crumb cake filling the four-room enclave at the back of the keep.
At least, she thought it was the back of the keep.
There weren’t any windows in the kitchens, unless one counted those high on the walls, where interlaced beams were fitted.
That had her squinting, and she knew she was right as she walked from room to room through his kitchens, her chin back and her neck craned while she looked at the beams that all seemed within easy reach of one of those little windows.
That didn’t make much sense. They weren’t large enough to gain access through, and since the walls looked an arm’s length thick, it would be nigh impossible to do more than lie up there and look out of them.
The keep wasn’t a freestanding building. She knew that from her first look at it. It was connected to the back wall, with more yellow-hued stone, and the access to that wall was through the back of the kitchens. It had to be.
Lisle drew her head down when she reached the last room of his interconnecting kitchens, and looked back the way she’d come, through a span of building no other laird could think to own.
She wondered why such a span of room was necessary.
Why, the MacHugh Castle would fit in the space of the Monteith kitchens, she decided, with room to spare.
The Dugall stronghold was farther north, in the glens near Halkirk, and didn’t boast a kitchen one-fourth the size of this one.
She didn’t know much about wealth and position and power, but there had to be only one reason for such a thing.
The Monteith laird had kitchens this size because of the volume of food that must be needed.
Lisle started chewing on her cheek as she walked, looking for the part of the castle that had to connect to the outer wall, and looking for anything else of interest at the same time.
There were four mud-brick ovens at the center of each room, their funnels venting toward the windows.
There were also fireplaces on the inner walls; one even held a full carcass of what looked to be a boar, and upon further investigation was exactly that.
Whomever had the chore of turning the spit was being very lax in their duties, as the fat kept dripping onto the flames from one side, and that side was getting a nice blackened shell to it, while the top wasn’t getting cooked at all.
Lisle mindlessly turned the crank a half-turn, waiting until the meat was fully rotated before securing it with the chain cord there for the purpose.
There wasn’t a soul in the kitchens, there wasn’t a speck of all the food she’d just sent down, and that was almost as odd as the fact that there wasn’t anyone, anywhere, in any of the lower rooms. Lisle gave up trying to find the connecting passage and put her mind to finding one servant, even if it was a minor one, anywhere in the lower rooms.
The mass of furniture that she’d seen cluttering the lower rooms wasn’t as much in the way anymore.
Mainly because he now had it suspended from more of the ceiling beams. The beams looked to all be of the same dimension, although of different grades and types of wood, almost like the architect of such a design had thought about which shading would be most aesthetic to each room.
It probably would have been striking, if there wasn’t furniture dangling about, looking like a fest of some kind was going to take place, with fairies as guests.
Lisle shook her head. She suspected what Monteith was doing. He was putting more of his gold into more hands, but he’d probably be better off building storerooms for the items he kept purchasing and didn’t have placement for, than hanging them about in his rooms.
“’Tis a good thing you have such high ceilings, my lord,” she commented aloud, although her voice had dropped to a whisper before she finished.
The words had echoed back at her, and that had the back of her neck feeling like someone had brushed against it, and that had her jumping and looking over her shoulder and making her feel a bigger fool than she already did.
Her wedding gown hadn’t been made to conquer dragons and demons and other imaginary, but very real-feeling, creatures, and it wasn’t doing a thing to keep her from shivering.
She held the bed jacket closer to her and wished the weave hadn’t been made as loosely, letting the draft feel like it was going right through her.
She should also have found her slippers again, since the sheer stockings weren’t any protection against the cold of his floor.
It was a good thing she was used to going barefoot, she told herself.
She gathered her skirt in a hand that was visibly trembling, despite her telling it not to, and looked up at the towering height of the main foyer ceiling, nearly four stories above her. Her heart was hammering and her breaths were coming swift and hard. It would have been impossible to disguise.
There was a thump above her, and then a curse, or what sounded like a curse.
Whatever it was, it sounded like it had come from a real person, and not her imagination.
It also sounded like it had come from the side that held her bed chamber, and that of the Monteith laird.
The only thing it hadn’t sounded like was him.
The sounds of a scuffle grew louder, blocking out the hammering of her own heart, as she reached the door that had to lead to his chambers. Another curse came; another thump. She turned the handle.
“My…lord?” she asked, biting on her lip and wishing she’d slapped a hand to her mouth instead. She’d sounded like a little girl, and little girls didn’t investigate possible attacks on their husbands in their own chambers!
She waited a few moments, with her head against the door, before daring to push on it.
She was almost afraid of what she might find on the other side, and she’d yet to come to terms with what she’d say, or how she’d let him know that she knew what he was doing, or any slew of other things.
She opened the door and listened. There wasn’t a sound, except maybe that of rustling material, and her own heartbeat.
The door didn’t open directly to his chamber, and Lisle stood in the small antechamber room, wondering what sense this made.
There was a small bench-thing on one side, a large painting on the wall behind it, a marble-topped table with a vase of flowers on it, and, on the opposing wall, another door.
Chieftains needed antechambers before reaching their beds?
She cleared her throat before trying again as she went to the inner door and opened it. “My lord?”
No chambermaids had been in to steal his drapes or his bedding, or even the thick, green canopy that fell all the way from the very top of the ceiling, splitting midway down to reveal the gold brocade–embroidered interior of it, before ending by wrapping about both sides of his headboard.
The opulence and magnificence, even seen with the hazed, rain-cast light, was amazing, and like nothing she’d ever seen, and if she’d thought her own bed large, it was nothing in comparison to his.
She could barely tell where his feet probably were, and that was more near the middle of his mattress than the end.
If that weren’t enough, they’d placed that bed on a three-step-high pedestal, in order to make it look even more overwhelming and larger, almost deifying the being that got to sleep there.
Lisle shook her head, tossing that imagining away, before forcing her feet to move.
She had to climb the three steps of the pedestal, and then she was moving along the side of it, following where his legs and feet were, until she forced her eyes to move to him.
It didn’t matter what she’d been thinking, or how rampant she’d allowed her imagination to roam, for there wasn’t a thought left to her the moment her eyes touched his.
It was definitely Monteith, for none other could have such black hair, perfect features, or take every bit of sense left to her and toss it up to where the ceiling beams had better catch and hold it and hang onto it before giving it back to her.
Lisle’s eyes widened, for he was all-over large, from the heaving strength of his naked shoulders, to the sweat and muscle smell of him, and he was soaking wet.
“What’s happened to you?” she asked, reaching a hand to his forehead, and then having to crawl up onto her knees on the bed to reach it since he moved away.
“Are you ill?” She crawled after him and finally reached him, but only because he hadn’t anywhere else to go, unless he wanted to fall from the mattress.
That would have brought a smile to her lips, for it looked to be a powerfully long fall, and he didn’t appear to be wearing much, but she was too worried for smiling.