Chapter Twenty-One
Langston donned the Monteith chieftain attire, according it the reverence it deserved from over four centuries of pride, pain, glory, and bloodlust. He’d worn it before, but it had never felt so poignant.
He looked up once, checking the connecting door, through where the woman who held his heart lay, and touched his fingers to his lips before releasing them toward her.
She had turned into the woman every man lusts after and seeks—a woman of fire in his bed, with only the slightest hint of it everywhere else.
He wasn’t ever going to bargain for anything she wanted.
He was terrified that she would want her freedom.
He knew she still slept, because he’d been at her side watching her.
Now, it was deep into the night. Time to let the MacDonalds know they’d found the clan they’d sought, and they could start acting like the men they were, rather than the animals they had become.
He slipped the sett across one shoulder, strapped it beneath the silver-and-gold-embossed belt, and pulled until it slapped against the backs of his calves where it was supposed to.
Then, he was donning the band covered in medals, the garter that belonged to one of his ancestors as a Knight Templar in the Crusades, the silver-embossed sporran, and the row of skeans that swung from a cord at his hip.
Last of all, he put the tam atop his head, slipped his broadsword into the scabbard at his side, and opened the door to be met by fifty men of his clan, all honored to be at the laird’s side.
They moved soundlessly, as they’d been doing for almost a year now, down the steps and then into the door beneath the hall, and he didn’t allow the pipes and drums to start until they were at the bottom of the dungeons, lighting torches as they went.
MacDonalds were getting to their feet, rustling the straw he’d given them to camp on, and they were pressing their faces to the bars of the prisons, staring.
Then, one of them sent a dirk right into Langston’s chest, where by luck of his ancestry, a medal sent it astray and into the flesh of his upper chest, instead of his heart.
Langston didn’t even break stride, although he could feel the heat scoring his shoulder and instantly numbing his left arm. He didn’t even look down. The drums and pipes halted and he waited until the echo of them died away before speaking.
“They tell me you are MacDonald clansmen!” he shouted. “You doona’ look like MacDonald clansmen to me!”
The answer was garbled from more than one throat. Langston stepped forward, narrowed his eyes, and glared at each in turn. “I came for MacDonald clansmen! And I doona’ like to repeat myself…are you the MacDonald I seek?”
This time there was a chorus of noise, and it grew until he stepped back, with a satisfied nod.
“That is very good. For you see before you what you seek. You see the clan you’ll join, the one you’ll live, and the colors you’ll wear!”
“Monteith?” one of them said derisively.
“There is nae clan better,” Langston replied loudly.
“The traitor?” someone yelled.
“Who better?” he yelled right back, his voice hollow-sounding in the stone and damp and decay of centuries.
“Who better to make certain the ship got Prince Charles Stuart from this country? Who better to supply the gold that keeps him alive and ready for us in France? Who better to supply an army of clansmen with cannon and arms and horses, and everything else needed to get our country back? And who better to keep the cursed Sassenach from ever…ever…thinking different?”
He waited until the echo of his words died away.
“I say again—see before you the Clan Monteith!”
There was a sound rising, glancing off the stone and reaching the span of beams at the ceiling before falling back down.
It was almost a cheer, from throats too parched and weak to make one.
Langston waited for it to settle about him.
His arm was turning into a throb of ache, and he suspected the damp feeling beneath the large sleeve of his shirt was his own blood, but he reached across his body to pull his broadsword and lift it with that arm anyway.
“The Monteith Clan now opens its arms for MacDonald! I need men. I need strong-willed men, with aims straight and true, and hearts pumping out red-hued Scot’s blood. And I need them now! Now! Are you these men?” He was yelling it until the cords of his throat felt like they’d burst.
Their answer wasn’t distinguishable as an aye or a nae, but was loud enough to make the rafters tremble above them. Langston slowly lowered his sword.
“Then take that MacDonald sett from your bodies. Cut a piece for remembrance, and know that when this is finished, they’ll be more setts crafted, and more clans created.
And get these auld plaides ready for the Sassenach bastards that I have stolen from beneath Captain Barton’s stiff English nose, to replace your sorry arses! ”
There was chatter and a bit of grumbling and laughter at that.
“And then don the Monteith green and gold. Etheridge?” Langston stepped aside, slid his sword back into its scabbard with a hand that trembled visibly if anyone chanced to look that way, and motioned his men forward with his right arm.
The iron gate was unbarred, plaides were divvied out, and there were flashes of bare skin amid clanging of belts, armbands, and weapons.
“You’ll each be given a knight portion. You’ll be fed—well fed.
As much as you can hold and still keep up your regimen.
You’ll each be given the weapons to train with.
If you have a skill, speak up! We need blacksmiths.
We need archers. We need marksmen. We need cannoneers.
We train. Hard. With an exact perfection they canna’ match!
Daily. And then we hide. We have a strict regimen.
The man who does na’ follow it dies. By the hand of the clansman at his side.
Without jury, without trial. You ken all of this? ”
There were murmurs of assent. Langston stepped back farther, keeping his left side in the shadows to the fullest extent possible.
No clan army would follow a leader that wasn’t strong, fit, had stamina, and was healthy.
That was the business he was in. It had been since he was too young to think differently.
He turned away, and had men at his heels as he left the dungeons.
He still had to select fifty of his best Arabian stallions to send over to MacCullough Castle, and he had to find the other eighteen volunteers to go into service to Barton.
That had to be a man’s greatest nightmare, serving the enemy, wearing his colors, and acting like it was a normal state of affairs.
He didn’t envy them…except for the one thing he had left to do after all the other things were seen to.
The thing that was making the knife wound feel like a scratch.
He had to say good-bye to Saladin.
Lisle rolled over, flung her arm over the lump that was Monteith, and squeezed until feathers puffed out.
Her nose twitched. Her eyes opened and she sneezed.
She lifted her head and then she narrowed her eyes.
It wasn’t Langston. It should have been.
He’d carried her, wrapped in the remnants of her wire-enhanced petticoat, that beautiful ballgown, and covered over with a Monteith green and gold cloak, up the steps and set her in this bed with a reverence that was akin to awe.
She lay back and stretched, and there wasn’t any tight bodice restricting that movement.
Lisle gasped and lifted the covers and gasped again.
She hadn’t been dreaming. Monteith had slept beside her, just as she’d dreamt.
The entire episode felt that way. Her body told her it was no dream, the destroyed ballgown that she was still semiwearing told her it was no dream, but the man she’d given herself to in the white, satin-lined coach had been a dream of a man.
She slid out of the sheets and snuck over to the connecting door. She wanted to see him, just to reassure her. He was no dream. He was the most handsome man birthed. He was very stirring and rousing and passionate and all those other illicit things she’d whispered of. He was also hers.
He wasn’t snoring. That must happen only when he was severely exhausted.
Lisle lifted onto her tiptoes to look. His bed was empty.
The entire chamber reeked of emptiness, and she spun in place.
He hadn’t stayed? After what had happened, he’d been out marching, or practicing with that claymore, or deciding on yet another torment for his prisoners?
She was rushing to find a serviceable gown, or at least one that she could fasten by herself, and pulled a dark blue daygown from the dressing room that had more than fifteen gowns already hanging in it. Although it was costly, it would get her about the rafters without too much trouble.
She just had to get out of the room before Mary MacGreggor came looking for her, and from the amount of light entering the chamber through those diamond-paned windows and the small slits above, it was almost time for Mary MacGreggor and the bath that was designed to sap her energy, take her will, and make her groggy with nothing better to do than look about her and continue breathing.
She shoved her feet into shoes, ignoring socks.
She was buttoning the front of her gown as she ran.
She didn’t bother checking her door. She knew it would be locked.
She went through the connecting door, locking it behind her and tossing the key high up on one of his armoires before she realized how self-destructive that was.
It was too late to wish it undone. The sun was licking across the floor in front of her, warming everywhere it touched, and if she didn’t hurry, she was going to have to use his fireplace for beam access, rather than the staircase right outside his door.