Chapter 9
9
Lachlan had unexpectedly invited some friends he had not seen for a while to a dinner party at the castle; this was something that he had not done since before his wife died, and everyone was astonished.
The maid servants were all eating breakfast in the kitchen and talking over the event in somewhat shocked, but pleased tones. They were all happy for the Laird, even if the coming occasion was a bolt from the blue and meant a great deal of extra work for them.
“I am that glad tae see he is goin’ tae be among his friends again,” Flora said, smiling. “It has been three years since Milady passed on. Maybe he is finally gettin’ over her, maybe he will soon be courtin’ again!”
There was a murmur of agreement. “He deserves the love o’ a good woman because he is a good man,” Alison added. “An’ he didnae deserve what happened tae him. Bloody MacAdams! Savages!”
“The Robertsons are just as bad,” Catriona put in angrily. “If no’ worse. I hate them.”
They all knew that Catriona had a good reason to hate the Robertsons, since her father had been murdered by one of them, and the culprit had never been caught.
Flora patted her back and said soothingly, “Dinnae worry, hen, there will be nae sign o’ any Robertsons in Leithmuir. If one o’ them tried tae set foot in here, he wouldnae last very long!”
This time the chorus of acquiescence was very loud indeed, and Alyth was shocked to hear the naked animosity in the women’s voices. It seemed that it was not only Lachlan Carrick who had been badly affected by the clan wars.
She had grown very fond of the women she worked with, but now, hearing their anger when her family’s name was mentioned, she felt terribly afraid. What if anyone found out who she was? She had taken great pains to hide her identity, but it only took one person to recognise her, and her fate would be sealed.
She decided to change the subject to something a little lighter. “Did anybody see the new guard the Laird has just hired?” she asked, looking around the women with a mischievous smirk on her face.
“No!” It was Heather who spoke. “What is he like?”
“Well.” Alyth stood up and held her hand up about eight inches higher than her head. “About this tall, with golden blond hair and the brightest green eyes you ever saw. And handsome. He is an absolute god!”
“Do ye know his name?” Catriona asked eagerly.
Alyth looked sad. She shook her head and said, “No, I do not, but I’m sure Heather can find out.”
Heather was the one who always solved mysteries and rooted out secrets faster than a bloodhound on the scent of a criminal.
“I will have the name before bedtime!” she said determinedly.
They all laughed and began to eat their breakfast again, but just then, Maisie came in with a large sheet of paper in her hand.
“Mornin’, lassies,” she said pleasantly. “Ye have heard that the Laird has some guests comin’. Well, quite a lot o’ guests, actually, so there is an awful lot o’ cleanin’ that has tae be done! A’ the bedrooms above the Great Hall an’ the ones leadin’ tae the chapel need tae be done—an’ I mean really scrubbed!”
Everyone groaned, but Alyth was glad that she would be cleaning and making up guest-bedrooms for the next few days. These were farther away from the busiest parts of the castle and less likely to be seen by the Laird.
She was also happy to know that she would be able to search for the pendant undisturbed, since she knew that the maids had a room allotted to each of them, and did not share one between them. At the end of the day, Maisie would come to inspect their work, and if it was not to her satisfaction, they would have to do it again.
Alyth resolved to do her work as quickly as possible and sneak away to where she thought Lachlan might have hidden a piece of jewellery.
Could it still be in his wife’s bedchamber? Alyth knew which room it was, since she had been about to search it when she first came to the castle, but she had been moved on to other duties and the opportunity had been lost. However, she was deeply disappointed to find out that the room had been tightly locked up, and a guard was posted outside it. Lachlan Carrick was apparently protective of his wife even after she was dead.
While she was doing that, Alyth searched every room that she cleaned without much hope of finding the jewel. No doubt, Lachlan Carrick kept it in a place where no one else would think to find it—not in a chest or a secure vault, but hidden somewhere that was the last place anyone would search.
She was beginning to understand the way his mind worked now; it had not been too difficult. Like most men, he was completely vulnerable to seduction, and Alyth was planning to use that to her advantage. After she had achieved her objective, however, she planned to flee back to her father, whom she was sure would have given her up for dead by now. She had wanted to get a message to him, but could think of no way of doing so without attracting unwanted attention.
Alyth had been working so hard she had not had time to see Davina, which saddened her because she had become fond of the little girl and missed her very much. By the time Alyth was finished in the evening, Davina was asleep and there was no chance to read her story to her.
Three days passed like this, but on the fourth, one of the guards came striding towards her as she was washing the floor of one of the passageways. Alyth was about to give him a piece of her mind when he held a hand up and said, “The Laird wants tae see ye, Jeannie.”
“Me?” she feigned surprise. “I wonder what I have done wrong?”
The guard stared at her. “I’m sure it’s nothin’ tae worry about, hen.”
Alyth nodded in agreement, although she felt deeply apprehensive. She made her way down to the courtyard, where she found Lachlan and Davina seated together on Lachlan’s grey stallion. There was another horse nearby, a much smaller chestnut mare.
“Jeannie!” Davina called.
Alyth felt a leap of joy in her chest as she strode over to the little girl. “Such a great voice ye have there, Davina,” she cried.
Lachlan regarded them both with an unfathomable expression as he heard Davina’s speech. He knelt on the ground to look into her eyes, and Alyth had a fleeting glimpse of a tiny smile on his face, but it disappeared almost at once. It seemed to Alyth that he wanted to be happy, but was afraid that it would be snatched away from him again. That was supposition, of course, because his inscrutable face gave nothing away.
As she studied him, he glanced up and met her gaze. Alyth panicked and looked away hastily, feeling utterly terrified. How was she going to cope with a situation like this after what had occurred between them? She was sure that he regretted their kiss, but was too embarrassed to say so. Accordingly, she decided to act as though nothing had happened; it was not as though it were going to happen again, after all!
She took a deep breath and asked: “Are you going somewhere, M’Laird?”
“Davina wants to go and see if there are any snowdrops and heather about. She loves heather, especially white heather, so we will go in search of some since it will make you happy, eh, miss? She would like you to come with us.” He looked back at his daughter, and she giggled.
“I will be happy to,” Alyth replied, smiling. She felt jealous of the great love they shared, which was obvious every time they looked at each other. She mounted the mare with the aid of one of the guards, who made a stirrup with his hands for her. She wondered how Lachlan had guessed she could ride, though.
“I know you cannot probably ride well,” Lachlan answered her thought. “But we won’t be going more than a few hundred yards away, and the horses will only be walking.”
“Thank you, M’Laird,” Alyth said, with a bob of her head.
In fact, she could ride better than many men she knew, but now was not the time to tell that to Lachlan Carrick.
They rode for a short-distance away from the castle, and the land began to slope downhill. The sun was bright that day, and the tough winter heather showed a brilliant pinkish-purple in its glare. A stand of trees stood a little farther away, and Alyth knew there would be snowdrops there. Apparently, so did Davina, since she ran to Alyth as soon as they both dismounted and grabbed her hand before running into the spinney to bend over a little patch of the tiny white flowers.
Alyth was glad when she saw that Lachlan was tending to the horses and not following them. Since the morning of their kiss, she had not been able to stop thinking about it, the firm pressure of his lips, his tongue stroking hers. She had never been kissed before, and was almost ashamed to admit that she wanted more; not just more kisses, but more of Lachlan himself.
However, she was confused. The sides of him that she had seen were so different; on one hand there was the tender, loving father, and on the other was the fierce warrior who had almost scared her to death.
And there was yet another side too, the broken part that he kept hidden inside, and which she had only seen a few times. This part of him was so vulnerable that when it was touched, his temper flared into a fiery rage in self-defence.
However, today he was the loving father, and Davina was taking full advantage of this, using her wiles to get her way. Alyth laughed inwardly; even at the tender age of seven, Davina was learning the art of twisting a man around her little finger, even if the man in question was only her father.
They bent down under a tree to see a patch of tiny white flowers, their heads bent as if in sadness. Davina bent down to pick one, but she had barely touched the flower when Alyth heard a sound that almost froze her heart. She whipped around to see two heavily armed men in the livery of the Robertson Clan crashing through the undergrowth behind them.
Alyth heard Davina scream, and immediately pushed the little girl behind her, then faced the two men armed with nothing but her little knife. It looked quite pathetic compared to the Robertsons’ mighty broadswords, but Alyth knew she could do a lot of damage with it if she managed to get within arm’s length. She was definitely the weaker of the two sets of combatants, but she would never give up.
“Alyth MacAdams!” one of the guards, a tall dark bearded man, jeered as he moved in closer to her, holding his sword pointed directly at her. “Your father has put out a big reward for ye, hen.” Talking to the other guard, he said, “There are men lookin’ for ye all over the place, but we have found ye!”
Alyth had surreptitiously taken the knife out of her pocket, but was holding it behind her back out of sight of the two men. “I think ye might have buttoned yer heid up the wrong way this mornin’, pal,” she said scornfully. “My name’s Jeannie an’ I’m a maid!”
The man looked at her doubtfully, then at the other guard, who was much shorter and heavier. In the fraction of a second when their eyes were not on her, Alyth leapt forward and knocked the first man’s sword out of his hand with her elbow, then sliced him across his cheek with her knife.
He screamed and fell backwards, clutching his cheek, which was now pouring with blood. Alyth picked up his sword, which he had dropped on the ground. However, events were unfolding almost too fast for Alyth to keep up with, and a moment later she saw the shorter of the two guards grabbing Davina, who looked frozen with terror.
“Let go of her,” Alyth growled, “or you will be very sorry.”
The man laughed at her and pulled Davina even closer to him, his arm just under her chin. If he had applied just a little pressure, he could have choked her, but Alyth had no intention of letting him do that. She held up the sword and advanced towards him with murder in her eyes.
However, it seemed that Davina had other ideas too. Although the guard was heavily armoured, his hands were bare, and Davina bit him as hard as she could. It was obviously painful, not as bad as his friend’s wound, but enough to make him let go of her. He cried out as Davina broke free of him, then he reached out to grab her, but Davina was too fast for him, and ran back to Alyth.
At that moment Lachlan, hearing the noise of fighting, dashed up behind the guard Davina had bitten, his sword unsheathed. The man half turned, but Lachlan’s blade pierced him from behind, and he dropped dead without making a sound. The first guard was running for his horse, but Lachlan tackled him from behind, knocking him to the ground. He took hold of the man’s helmet, wrenched it from him, and hit him on the back of his head with it three times as hard as he could before the guard was completely immobilised. Looking down at him, Lachlan saw that he had killed him.
He stood over the inert body of his enemy for a moment, his face twisted with hate, before he ran back to Alyth and Davina, terrified that they had come to any serious harm. He expected them both to be bloodied and wounded, perhaps even dead, and his heart was pounding, and he prepared himself for the worst, as he ran into the trees to find out their fate.
Alyth was kneeling, holding Davina in a tight embrace. Her face was white as a sheet as she looked up at him, and she jumped, startled at his sudden appearance. Clearly she had been expecting the Robertsons to return, judging by her terrified expression.
Lachlan almost collapsed with relief, and took Davina in his arms at once. She clung to him tightly and laid her head on his shoulder, her whole body shaking.
“This clever girl bit the arm of the man who was holding her,” Alyth said. “Then she ran back to me. She may have saved both of us.”
She attempted a smile, but the muscles of her face would not obey her. In truth, she was scared to death. What if Lachlan had heard the men calling her by her real name? She had no doubt what her fate would be if he knew her real identity!
Lachlan was still holding on to tightly to his daughter, but now he kissed her and said lovingly, “I am so proud of you, Davina.” When he let her go, Davina looked at the men on the ground. She pointed to them, one after the other. “Bad,” she said with a deep frown.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Very bad. But you scared them away. Now, shall we go back home?”
Alyth was almost limp with relief. She looked at the two bodies on the grass as they walked over to their horses. “What are we going to do with them?” she asked.
“Leave them,” he answered. “If they were still alive, I might get some useful information out of them, but dead… Well, they might be of some use to the wild boars. They are always hungry, and we can take their horses as a reward for this trouble. I like to get horses as a bounty.” He smiled grimly.
Before he helped her onto her horse, he said, “Thank you, Jeannie. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been here.”
She shrugged. “But I was, and anyone would have done the same,” she answered, still looking down at the bodies.
“I doubt that very much,” he replied. “There are not many who are brave enough; most people would have run away. I can see you are very shaken, even though I can tell you are trying to cover it up. I will have the healer come to see you to give you something to calm you down, and you must take tomorrow off to rest.”
Then he grasped Alyth around the waist and lifted her into the saddle. She was rather shocked; she had never mounted a horse this way before, but she was not displeased. She loved Lachlan touching her.
Just before he walked back to Davina, their eyes met and held for a moment, and Alyth was surprised to see the warmth in his expression. She had a feeling their relationship was about to change—but did she want it to? It was a question she was too afraid to answer.