Chapter Twenty-Seven
Langston Monteith was known as the Black Monteith, and it was due to his temperament.
It had to be. Lisle had been ill every morning they were sailing, although the ship was making very good headway with a healthy wind behind it, making any wave unnoticeable.
By afternoon, she was always feeling better, drinking broth, and trying to sway him.
There was only one thing left in her arsenal, and she was afraid to use it.
He wasn’t speaking with her anyway. He was studying things at his table, spreading maps and charts and drawing lines, and coloring in glens and shading forests, delineating even the gulches and moors, and if she chanced to try and look, he was bundling it all into a large roll and walking out.
He hadn’t said a word to her after leaving the residence where their prince was staying.
He hadn’t said whether his plan to sway the prince had been successful or not.
He had such a dark look about him, she thought it must not have been.
Then again, if his plan had worked, and the prince was aboard any other ship, then Langston was planning and preparing and gearing up for a large confrontation that might result in death, in which event he might look just as grim.
Any man would.
He wasn’t sleeping, either. Or he wasn’t sleeping with her.
Lisle reached out every night for the place he’d been, and never once did she connect with him; until the last night.
He must have finalized what he had to do, for when she woke the final day, he was there, watching her, and he was smiling.
“’Tis been rough, Lisle love,” he said in a gruff voice that probably went for an apology.
“Better than my first crossing,” she replied.
“Truth. You are a horrid sailor. You’d have been tossed overboard had this been Solomon at the helm.”
“Nae!” she responded.
He smiled. “I’d say I jest, but it would be a lie. Then again, since I lie very well, how would you know?”
“’Tis a strange honeymoon you accorded me, Langston,” she remarked when all he did was sit there and trace little circles about the coverlet’s quilting threads.
He looked across at her and smiled. “Aye. That it was.”
Lisle gathered her nerve and asked it. “Does the prince sail with us?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“Of course! There is a huge bounty on his head. He’ll na’ be safe anywhere in the country.”
“I’ve enough men to guarantee his safety.”
“The Sassenach have more, Langston. They always have more. That’s why they always win.”
“Not always. Recollect I told you of…Saladin, the Arabian general?” His voice broke before the name, and a shadow went across his face.
“Was there huge loss of life?” she asked.
He looked at her, and made her wonder if he was going to tell her the truth. “Aye,” he replied finally.
“Then…was it worth it?”
“To gain what we must, it will be worth it. Trust me.”
“I canna’ trust you, Langston.”
He sucked in air at the surprise. “Why na’?” he asked.
“Because to be trusted, a man must be trustworthy. His word must be his bond. He canna’ tell lies, and expect to be believed when he is na’ telling a lie.”
“I doona’ think I like this conversation very much, Lisle love.”
“You’re going to like it a lot less in a moment, Langston Leed.”
He smiled at her use of his names, since she’d given them the same inflection he had. “Go on,” he said finally.
“I doona’ wish you to risk it. There is too much to lose.”
“There is too much not to try.”
“You’ve given them back their self-respect. You’ve given clansmen back their joy, their worth, made them walk like men again, rather than slink about like shadows. You’ve given the glens new life, and you’re willing to toss it all away? For what?”
“Freedom,” he replied.
“There is nae such thing.”
“There is. It’s in everything about us. Do you na’ see?
It’s in every drop of rain that hits the ground.
It’s in every wisp of fog, every gurgle of every burn, and it’s in every whisper of the grasses out on the moors.
It’s everywhere. It’s just not in here.” He thumped his chest with a sideways fist. “And that hurts too much to let it go.”
“What if you’re…taken?”
“I had the dower house constructed for a reason, Lisle. ’Tis very fine, the best stone, the finest furniture from the finest craftsmen. I had it hidden away, cleared forest to make it as sheltered as possible. ’Tis na’ even possible to see it, unless one knows where it is.”
“I canna’ live in a dower house, Langston,” she whispered.
“Why na’?”
“Because I am na’ a widow.”
“You’ll na’ need to take up residency anytime soon. I’m simply preparing for everything that could happen.”
“Langston.” Lisle reached out and touched his hand with her forefinger. Then, she opened her hand and spread it atop his, much like she had in the carriage following their wedding.
“Aye?”
Something had shifted, turning the black back into the amber brown she loved. Lisle knew what it was. He couldn’t pretend when his emotions were involved, and that was the only hold she had.
“You dinna’ plan for our son,” she whispered.
His eyes went huge as he stared at her. Then he was grinning, and then he was whooping great, loud gusts of sound, until the cabin rang with it.
“You’re na’ unhappy?” Lisle teased.
The Langston she loved pulled her into his arms, put her against the solid pounding of his heart, and held her there, soothing her with the drumlike rhythm of it.
The entire time he had her clasped to him, he was cupping the place that held their son, with hands that contained reverence to each finger.
“I love you, Lisle Monteith. You are the life in every breath I take, and the joy in everything I see, and I’m a-feared you’re in every thought I am having, and will ever have.”
She reached up to ruffle the edge of where the black hair was just deciding to drop onto his forehead, and then she moved her gaze down to his.
“Then, doona’ do this thing,” she said softly.
He went rigid. Cold. Dark. The arms about her dropped away and then he was moving from her, standing, and there wasn’t anything on him that was loving.
“There is nae bargaining tool you can use to stay my destiny, Lisle. None. You canna’ even use my son.”
He turned his back on her and strode out.
The Duke of Cumberland was exactly on time.
Lisle stood in her chamber, the white and maroon one with the light wooden beams crossing it, and listened to the horns the Sassenach were blasting as they entered the enclosure of the castle yard.
She could almost hear the portcullis falling at every gate they went through, and she was surprised they didn’t hear it and take note of it, or at least feel a brush of suspicion about the entire thing.
But no. This William was an arrogant, pompous, overly proud son, the favored son of their King George, and he had subdued the Highlands as no man before him could have hoped to.
He was making a triumphant return journey, since, being a second son, military success was the most he could hope for from his father.
Lisle was under house arrest, although there was no order given, and no room denied her.
It was an understanding, and she’d been made aware of it ever since she’d decided to try and use her own son for negotiating.
There was a Highlander in Sassenach dress at every door she decided to try, and in every window she peered out of, and they also seemed to know what she was being punished for and had tried to do.
Lisle felt the tears filling her eyes and forced them back down.
She wasn’t going to cry! She was going to go down to the amazing feast Monteith Castle had prepared and she was going to charm the socks off that Sassenach bastard, if she had to learn how to be an actress in order to do it.
And she was going to wear the dress Langston had ordered her to, although she felt like a kept woman in it.
He knew what he was doing. He was keeping Cumberland’s eyes on her, or on anything other than the obvious, until the trap was sprung.
Then, there came the sound of a long, drawn-out note, overriding the Sassenach flare of noise and making everything stop and listen. It was followed by two short blasts of a horn. Two. Lisle waited for the third, but it never came. Two? What did two mean?
“Show him the prisoners, Monteith.”
Captain Barton’s eyes were gleaming, and the mug of chilled ale he’d swigged only seemed to intensify them. Langston swung his glance away from where all the troops they’d brought with them were also partaking, and smiled with a sardonic, evil expression.
“I’d best prepare them first.”
“For what?”
“Viewing.”
Barton laughed heartily. William didn’t look like he had much intelligence for the jest, but he was drinking fully of the ale, too. That was a good omen, a very good one.
Servant women flitted about, taking tankards, filling others, and always slipping a sleeve down onto an arm with the movement, showing every red-blooded male there that a Highland wench was just as well endowed as any they’d find in any of the finest taverns in London. Langston smiled.
“My dungeon, it is. Gentlemen?”
They rose from the thick, overstuffed chairs they’d been in, and followed him.
They were joined immediately by at least thirty men to accompany them, coming from the ranks of William’s personal guard.
It was obvious they were a well-trained unit, too.
They hadn’t partaken of a drop of anything offered, nor had they shifted glances to anything the women displayed.
He knew that Etheridge and the Green Company were also aware of it. As the most elite corps, it was going to be their chore to subdue any that hadn’t had a tankard of the ale.
“These are the MacDonald clan you spoke of?” William asked as they went down first one hall, and then another.