Chapter Fifteen
If the trio of gentlemen facing them were clergymen, they had chosen the wrong profession.
Lisle looked over the three large, well-defined men, and wondered why even here, where no man was supposed to need more muscle than it took to turn a page, or lift a quill, the men looked fit, strong, and healthy.
She was almost surprised to see them in long, black-cassocks, rather than kilts.
The last tone of a note filtered down from the heights of the Gothic-designed chapel, easily recognizable as the same note she always heard, although it hadn’t come from a horn of any kind. It had come from the organ that another clergyman was just rising from.
“Thank you…for opening the door,” Lisle said, although she had to clear her throat midsentence.
“You should na’ be here,” the older of them said.
“Why, please?” Lisle asked.
“And we should na’ have opened the door.”
Lisle smiled slightly. “You’re right. Such a thing is monstrous to consider, because you should have had it opened and unlocked to begin with. Such a thing is normal with houses of worship.”
He frowned. “We weren’t aware of visitors.”
One of her servants giggled. Lisle could see why.
Men who were this fit, muscled, and smooth of voice and charm were difficult to find, especially in the lower echelons of Monteith Castle on this morning.
Lisle looked askance at Betsy, who had been the perpetrator of the giggle. She was also rosy with a blush.
“I am nae visitor, Father. I am the new lady of Monteith,” she announced.
The sound of her words carried upward, sounding like they gained in volume, and showing the acoustic qualities of the room, as well as how gifted the designer had been.
She was just surprised it hadn’t been one hired by Langston.
“Oh.”
The other man had joined them, making a united front of four men facing them. Lisle told her imagination to hush. “So, you see, I have every right to be here, right here. Right now. I have every right to every room in the castle.”
The older one, who had been speaking, reached out to pull on his collar. Lisle watched him gulp before speaking.
“We had heard the laird had taken a wife.”
“Good. Your hearing is fine. Now, if you’d be so good as to assist me with my business? I’ll na’ be long.”
“What is it you’re wanting?”
“To look about.”
They all looked like they’d been expecting her to say something horrible, and her words were it.
She watched as eyes widened, they all looked to each other, and then to the floor.
Only the speaker was watching her. Lisle tempered the satisfaction she felt.
She’d known they were hiding something. She just didn’t know what. She smiled.
“I’m looking, in particular…for the family Bible.”
“The Bible?” His face was carefully blank as he asked it.
“We do have one, doona’ we?”
“All clans have such,” he agreed.
All four men were nodding in agreement. She sensed it was with relief, although she couldn’t prove it. All of which could mean anything, but she guessed it meant that whatever they were hiding wasn’t anywhere near the family Bible.
“Good. I would like to see it then. Now.”
“Now?”
Lisle smiled again. “The sooner I see it, the sooner I will leave you to your duties. We’d all like for that to happen, I think.”
“I’ll see it fetched.” He inclined his head.
“Where is this window you spoke of, Mary?” Lisle asked, turning to her servant, who looked more prepared to run than stand behind her mistress.
Mary walked farther into the chapel and pointed to where blood-red hues, vivid green, and yellow washes touched onto the floor directly below it, before taking the eye to the work of art responsible for them.
Lisle followed to it, smiling inwardly that time.
The motion of looking up had her eyes following beams, checking for steps.
If she wasn’t mistaken, they had to be secreted near the massive organ that was framed in the middle of one wall, and topped by one lone beam.
“I’ve set up the Bible, my lady.”
Lisle dropped her head, looked across at the man, who, now that he was smiling and bobbing his head, didn’t look threatening at all.
“Very good,” she replied, and followed him to a podium where the sunlight didn’t quite reach, but if she’d come earlier it definitely would have.
The book was opened to the center, where the register was.
She flipped to the last of the center parchment.
There was no entry of any marriage with Langston Leed Monteith—not to her, and not to anyone named Shera, either.
Lisle bent closer, checked the date of the previous laird’s death: July 1746.
Such a thing matched Mary MacGreggor’s story, and Langston’s excuse of being out of the country.
Such a thing had happened two months following Culloden, so it might be true that Langston was a traitor, not a coward.
All of which was less than nothing next to the disappointment of not seeing a Shera.
“Where is the entry of Lord Monteith’s marriage?” she asked finally.
“We’ve but heard the news recently, my lady. We’re awaiting the ink.”
“Ink?” she asked.
“Uh…His Lordship wants every entry done with a special ink—from India. We’re awaiting its arrival.”
“Of course we are,” she replied. “What is your excuse for not listing his first marriage, please?”
All four faces held the exact same look of surprise, and Lisle guessed if she turned around, she’d see the same expression on Betsy’s and Mary’s faces.
“Were we out of ink then, too?” she continued.
“I…uh…his first marriage? His Lordship was wed a-fore?”
“I believe I’ve seen enough, Father. You may show us out now.
Or, you can trust that we’ll see ourselves out.
Thank you for allowing me in to see my own chapel.
I look forward to the sermon on the Sabbath.
We all do, doona’ we, ladies?” Lisle kept saying words, sounding like a fool, as she backed from them toward the doors.
Then, one side of that enormous wooden structure was opened, showing that every servant man who had been missing was now in the hallway outside the chapel, and more besides.
They looked prepared to do more than serve anyone.
They looked ready to do battle. The longer Lisle and her retinue stood facing them, the more the impression grew.
The large doors shut behind them, relocked loudly, and then the bolt drew down, rasping into place.
Lisle told herself she probably should have stayed in the sitting room as her heart jumped to lodge in her throat, and from the corner of her eye, it looked like Betsy was going to faint.
Lisle didn’t dare move her gaze to check on Mary.
She was looking at her own husband. If she’d thought him a devil before, it wasn’t a far-flung thought, especially with the claymore that was held directly out, pointing unerringly at her bosom.
She longed to tell him it would have been useless to strike her there.
Her heart was still in her throat, sending pounding pressure with each beat of it. She swallowed around it.
Langston pulled back a fraction and the tip of his sword lowered, showing the sinew all along him, since he was clothed in sweat and exertion and heavy breathing, and not much else.
He was bare-chested and he was in a kilt.
Lisle caught her breath. They were all dressed like her husband, although she couldn’t tell if anyone else had a weapon.
Something clicked through her mind, and she’d die before she admitted it had anything to do with the way his upper lip lifted as he passed the large broadsword to a man at his side, who then passed it farther. Lisle lost sight of it after the third pair of hands.
“Good day, Lisle.”
“Doona’ color this anything other than what it is, my lord,” she replied evenly.
“And what is it?” he asked, in the same tone she’d used.
He was folding his arms, leaning slightly to one side, and if Betsy hadn’t sighed, Lisle was afraid she would have.
“Not a very good day,” she answered.
He smiled broadly, showing white teeth and the small crinkles about his eyes, and making it nearly impossible to look anywhere else, although something told her it was too staged, and thus it wasn’t quite perfect.
She watched as behind him the edges of his horde were dispersing, stepping backward, one by one, and sliding around a bend in the hall, without making much sound.
Lisle sharpened her ears. She couldn’t hear that they were making any sound.
“I thought you engrossed with your new wardrobe,” he said.
Lisle’s chin lifted and her focus returned to him.
If anything, he’d preened himself more, and the two humps of his chest had striations of muscle going through them now.
She wondered how that was possible, and why he did it.
She didn’t like the answer the moment she got it, either.
He was using whatever it took as a diversion… even his own body.
“I got bored,” she said.
Beside her, she heard Betsy gasp. Lisle didn’t think it was due to her words, and she turned her head to check her instincts.
It was because Betsy was watching Langston with such a wide-eyed look of adoration, Lisle clenched her hands to keep from hitting something with them, something that was probably going to be him.
“Truly? Fitting a new wardrobe…bores you?”
“Anything, if done to such a length of time, is boring, my lord.”
“Anything?” he asked.
“Even that,” she replied.
That got her a wider grin. Betsy was coughing on her reaction. Lisle nearly rolled her eyes.
“If you were bored, you should have said something.”
“Why?”
“I make arrangements to that effect.”
“You make arrangements to keep me from being bored?”
His eyebrows lifted; then he nodded.
“How, please?”
“You have but to say the word. Whatever you desire will be proffered. Without exception. Even me.” His voice was lowering. “Especially me,” he finished.