Chapter 3
With Creighton gone, swallowed up in the crowd of milling MacColl men and women, Nora was alone.
Not literally alone, of course. A small group of MacColl women, all dressed in maids’ garb, inched warily down the steps toward her.
“Me Lady?” one ventured. “If ye follow us, we shall take ye to yer chambers. They are all prepared.”
Nora swallowed hard, tearing her eyes away from the crowd around her.
The maids all stared at her with cold, dark eyes, faces blank.
Behind them, the entrance to MacColl castle loomed, and she couldn’t help thinking of it as a mouth once again.
Someone had led her horse away, effectively cutting off her escape.
Forcing a smile, she met the eyes of the maid who’d spoken, hoping for a smile in return. She didn’t get one.
“Follow me, me Lady,” the woman repeated briskly, then turned on her heel, scuttling back up the steps. The other maids moved as a pack with her, and Nora was left to follow as best she could.
Up the steps they went, and into the castle. Their steps echoed again and again in the cavernous hall, the uneven stone floors cold beneath her boots.
“This is the Great Hall,” explained the maid, not bothering to turn and look at Nora. “It’s the largest room in the Keep. We daenae use it for much. There’s a Feast Room, a council room—although nobody is to go in there without an express invitation—and others. Somebody will give ye a tour.”
Nora noticed that the maid did not offer to give her a tour.
“Me name is Nora,” she ventured, hurrying to keep up. “What is yer name?”
Nobody answered. She wondered briefly if they couldn’t hear. Or perhaps they just had no intention of sharing their names.
This is goin’ to be a long year.
They trotted across the Hall, passing sentries stationed to guard doorways, servants on their own errands, and other people who seemed to be just drifting around. They all cast long, curious looks at Nora. She did her best to hold her head high and look straight ahead.
“Ye’re the Bryden lass?” called one brave man, but fell silent when one of the maids scowled at him.
“Aye,” Nora called back anyway. “I am. It’s a fine Keep ye have here.”
The man beamed at that, nodding at her. The maids seemed to increase their pace.
It took a lifetime to cross the hall, but at last they reached a large, circular crossroads with at least a dozen doors and halls branching off.
The sheer number of choices made her heart sink, but the maids never hesitated.
They chose a hallway and trotted down it.
This corridor was narrower, almost oppressively so after the vastness of the Great Hall.
“This is yer room,” one of the maids announced, coming to an abrupt halt in front of a narrow door with an arched frame. “Go on in, then.”
They pulled back, eyeing her expectantly, and Nora realized that she was going to have to step in first. That was fine. She could do that. Breathing out, she pushed open the door, and forced herself to step over the threshold. After all, she’d already gone past the point of no return, hadn’t she?
The room inside was a far cry from her modest chambers back at Bryden Keep.
The ceiling was not high, but the room was so wide that she couldn’t take it all in with one glance.
Furniture, a fireplace that seemed half the size of her room at home, tapestries, wall hangings, carpets—there was just so much to look at.
More doors were set deep into the walls. Where did they lead?
The silence grew oppressive, and Nora realized uneasily that the maids were waiting for her to speak, to say something.
“Who needs a bed that large?” she managed at last, nodding at the vast four-poster bed in the corner, with its velvet curtains and piles of blankets.
The maids exchanged looks but did not speak.
One of them, the woman who’d spoken to Nora to begin with, made a quick hand gesture.
There was a smothered sigh from someone, and then two maids slid forward into the room, heading to one of the doors.
When it opened, Nora glimpsed a washroom, of all things, beyond.
There was a tub, another fireplace, and drying sheets hanging everywhere.
The rest of the maids scuttled off along the hall.
“They are goin’ to fetch water for yer bath, Lady Nora,” the maid explained, not quite meeting her eye.
“I… I daenae need a bath,” Nora stammered. “And when I do take a bath, I’m more than capable of fetchin’ me own water.”
The maid stared at her as if she were slow. “Laird MacColl ordered that ye should have one. It’ll be ready as soon as we can manage.”
Nora bit her lip. She knew exactly how long it took to heat up enough water for a bath, especially a huge copper tub like the one in her washroom. The maids would be working for the best part of an hour, probably resenting every step. In the meantime, what should she do?
Casting her eye around the room, Nora pointed at a small door beside the washroom. “Where does that lead?”
The maid wordlessly pushed the door open, revealing what appeared to be a small dressing room.
Inside, there were wardrobes, trunks, and bookshelves, with enough space to hold at least a hundred times more than what Nora had brought.
She nervously shifted her leather satchel on her shoulder.
There was one fine dress inside, the one Laird Bryden had insisted she bring.
Would that be enough? For a year? None of Nora’s other dresses, muddy and patched as they were, would be suitable.
I daenae fit in here. I’ve made a mistake.
She dragged her gaze away from the accusingly empty dressing room, and pointed at the third door in the room, the last one. This door was even narrower than the others, and set deep into the wall at the head of her bed.
“Where does that one lead?”
The maid fixed her with a long, curious stare.
“That one leads to the Laird’s chambers, Lady Nora,” she answered.
Nora blinked, rocking back on her heels. “Oh. Aye. I suppose it will.”
So this room was meant for the lady of the Keep, with a secret doorway connecting her room with her husband’s. It felt a little presumptuous for the betrothed to be put in a room like that.
But we are betrothed, she reminded herself. Perhaps Keep MacColl is less strict about such matters. Perhaps betrothed ones share beds before their weddin’ day.
Nae that I will do such a thing.
She imagined it, just briefly. Laird MacColl—Creighton—slipping open the door in the dead of night, his broad-shouldered frame reduced to a shadow. She could see him in her mind’s eye, moving noiselessly across the room to the bed, where she lay.
Nora could almost feel the cool linen sheets against her skin and gave herself a tight shake.
It’s a pretend betrothal. He’ll nae bother me.
“The door has a bolt, I see?” she remarked, as off-handedly as she could. Not off-handedly enough, judging by the sharp look the maid gave her.
“Aye, it can bolt from both sides,” the woman responded tightly.
At that moment, one of the other maids returned, red-faced, bearing a sloshing pail of hot water.
Nora could see steam rising from its rippling surface.
The poor maid’s apron was already damp. She tottered into the washroom, hefted the bucket above the lip of the tub, and poured it inside.
The bucketful barely covered the floor of the tub.
With a sigh, the woman rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead and went back the way she’d come. It would take many, many more buckets before the tub was full. Nora felt a stab of guilt.
“May I take a look around while the bath is bein’ prepared?” she burst out. The words came almost as a surprise to her, too. The maid blinked up at her, frowning.
“To go where, Lady Nora?”
“I daenae ken. I willnae go far, I just… just want to look around.”
Why am I askin’ permission?
The maid bit back a scowl. “Well, I suppose ye can if ye want. I’ll nae stop ye. But please, daenae be too long, Lady Nora. If ye are too long, the bathwater will go cold, and we’ll have to refill it all over again.”
Nora imagined that and winced.
“I willnae go far, and I willnae be long.”
The maid folded her arms unhappily, but said nothing. Nora gratefully scurried out of the room, biting back a sigh. Another trio of maids was wobbling toward the room, each carrying a bucket of hot water, and she hastily turned away, hurrying off in the opposite direction.
The hallway ended in a circular crossroads. Nora paused, frowning. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get lost. How embarrassing that would be. The maids would be angry over the cold bath, and her first day at Keep MacColl would be all humiliation and mistakes.
I have to make a good impression.
She suspected that she’d already made a bad impression on Laird MacColl. He wasn’t what she’d expected, not one bit.
Whether that was a good or a bad thing remained to be seen. Nora briefly closed her eyes, letting out a slow breath. Mercifully, there were fewer people in this part of the castle, and nobody was here to see her uncertainty.
I shouldnae let his opportunity go to waste. I have to start learnin’ about where Margaret might have been taken. Right away.
She opened her eyes, reinvigorated. Discovering what happened to Margaret—and if she even had been taken here—would involve talking to the guards. She couldn’t talk to Creighton about it yet, not without making him suspicious.
But the ordinary folks, such as guards and maids, might want to talk. They were more likely to remember an individual prisoner, especially a pretty woman like Margaret. And Margaret would not have gone quietly. They would remember her, for sure.