Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Fort Carlisle, afternoon
“I am sent by King Malcolm to execute Lady Carlisle.”
The voice tore cleanly through the door of Agatha’s chamber, but she was not surprised.
She knew it would come to this as soon as the king’s man had shown up that morning searching for that cursed girl.
It was nearly worth her life to be able to tell the man he was too late.
Too bad Malcolm had not come along so she could have seen his reaction.
Better yet, to have watched him die with her own knife in his belly.
She had tried to fall back upon her old story—that the girl had died from a fever twenty years past—but they had discovered a witness who saw the girl at Fort Carlisle just ten years ago.
That’s when it had truly gone sour. When that bastard from the English courts, Gair Balloch, had stumbled upon her so-called niece.
And a year ago, when Malcolm became king, she knew she had to get rid of the evidence, had to get rid of the sister before Balloch opened his mouth.
Gowry’s offer had come just in time.
The chamber door opened smoothly, and to Agatha’s surprise, Gair Balloch, the devil himself, stood on the threshold. Dripping in red from the scarlet feather on his cap to the tips of his pointed velvet boots, his courtly trappings were a sight. He smiled and winked, his back to the guards.
“Lady Carlisle, I have come to hear your confession before your life is forfeit.”
Enchanted by the flashes of gold toggles and white teeth, she struggled to hide her recognition. She could play along. Satan appeared to have a plan.
Yesterday she had bid farewell to her self-imposed confinement where she kept Kenna from ever learning she was the daughter of the dead King Duncan.
Then she had fluttered about her home, making plans, changing plans, as giddy as a child at Michealmas, feeling half of her 45 years.
Then the King’s man had come and confined here in her own chambers, no longer by choice, and she’d felt a hundred.
Her fortune may just change again, if Balloch’s smile was any indication. And she would use her rusty wiles to make sure it did.
Recognizing a depravity in Balloch’s eyes, she cocked her head and purred. “Oh, my lord. Surely ye don’t have that kind of time.”
He grinned wider, stepped forward, and shut the door behind him.
Balloch was quite handsome, but she remembered that when they’d first met, his white teeth sometimes showed sharp points.
When he smiled, as he did now, those points were hidden behind the plumpness of his lower lip.
She waited for the man to speak again, to verify those dangerous teeth were not just a fanciful memory.
“Agatha, you clever old witch. What did you tell MacPherson?” His hushed tones made her heart leap. He did have a plan.
“I’m not so old…Sir Gair, isn’t it?” She pulled tight the corners of her mouth, smoothing out the wrinkles in her lips with a devious smile.
Since the girl’s departure, she had worn her best gown, disdaining the simple garb she’d worn for so long.
The dark green she wore now was aged but flattering and thankfully, the man seemed to respond to her flirting.
“At your service. Where is Kenna Carlisle?” he asked, as he lifted her hand slowly to his lips and bent forward.
His gold hair hung away from his neck, and his collar showed signs of wear.
As for herself, she hoped he did not notice the brown spots on her hand that were far too large to be freckles.
She grinned over his bowed head. She obviously had something the devil wanted. “Do you have a plan to get me away from here?”
“Aye, milady. I always have a plan.”
Surely he was telling the truth. He did not look the part of an executioner.
But neither did he resemble a confessor.
When he straightened, she had a clear view of his side weapon, more a piece of jewelry than a sword.
It was gilt daintily with gold and a gem here and there adorned the basket hilt.
She imagined a few had been pried off to keep things such as worn collars from view.
“Confess!” he shouted, surely for the benefit of the MacCurrach brothers on guard outside the door, but it sent shivers up her back and into her tightly pinned hair, as did the sight of those points on his teeth.
“I sent her away. Two days ago, I sent her to be wed to Struan Gowry.”
Balloch dropped her hand and paced, flicking his thumb against the hilt of his decorative sword. “Brilliant. What did you tell MacPherson?” His “brilliant” didn’t sound so much like flattery as it did frustration.
“I…I told him the same.”
Balloch stopped pacing and swung to face her. Her stomach took an invisible punch. Satan was unhappy, and he was unhappy with her.
“It’s too late, my lord. She would have been wedded and bedded before he could get to her.”
“And before I could get to her,” he whispered.
What? If this devil wanted the girl, why couldn’t he have said so ten years ago?
“If you were racing against MacPherson, why were you not here yesterday? You could have given me some warning. I could have sent him in another direction.”
He slammed his fist on the back of a chair then glared into the cold hearth. Agatha held her breath knowing she would be safer if he forgot she was there.
“I had to hire men. I had to wait for Malcolm to dismiss me. I had to stand patiently while the others congratulated me.” He spoke the last through clenched teeth.
“Congratulated you?”
Sir Gair tossed Agatha a smile and looked away again. Her heart stopped racing, but it was prepared to jump and run at the merest frown.
“Yes. Malcolm called all the court together to announce he was getting married. He hadn’t said to whom, only that it was time that he did.
Then he held up Lady Macbeth’s red ring.
This ring.” The light from the window did not do justice to the ruby the size of a quail’s egg that graced his smallest finger.
The gold that held the stone in place danced in Celtic patterns around its edges.
The ruby appeared scarcely redder than black.
Balloch could not have guessed how much that ring meant to Agatha.
Every time she had been in the presence of Lady Macbeth, at her mother’s side, she had maneuvered for a look at it.
Once, when the future Queen of Scotland had noticed her curiosity, she had slid it from her finger and allowed Agatha to try it on, saying “Marry a clever man, child, and you will have anything your heart desires, just as I have.”
Well, Agatha had married a clever man. Too clever.
For the first ten years they were married, she had no idea her husband plotted against Macbeth.
She had been duped into raising King Duncan’s offspring!
And marrying a clever man had left her with no such jewelry and the threat to guard Kenna’s life… or lose her own.
But perhaps she could find some way to get the ring from Balloch. If she managed to sidestep her current dilemma, that ring may make up for a good many wasted years.
“How did you get it?”
Balloch collapsed into the nearby chair, then slipped the ring off and held it up into a beam of cold sunlight over his head. Red lights to match Balloch’s ensemble burst around the colorless room while she waited for him to continue.
“Let me tell you what was happening at Malcolm’s court while you packed up the prize and sent her to Gowry…”
“The rule of the House of Alpin is restored to its rightful line, my friends. And thus, it is my duty to marry and beget some heirs for the throne of Scotland. This wee ring,” Malcolm announced while tugging it off his little finger then holding it aloft, “once belonged to me aunt, the Lady Macbeth.” He held the piece so the large blood ruby faced the crowd.
“It has no small value, especially to me, and yet I offer it as a reward.”
The king was grinning. MacPherson was sweating, not an easy feat for springtime in Scotland when the winter’s chill remained bound in the stones of the half built castle. Tearloch MacPherson stood at Malcolm’s left side as he always did. Balloch had no idea why the huge man was nervous.
“I need the name of the bonniest maiden in Scotland.” Wiggling the ring, the king continued, “Such a rich prize I offer for the man who can supply it. And prove it!”
While men and women alike lined up to give names to the king’s scribe, Balloch watched Malcolm, Malcolm watched Tearloch. The latter alternately flushed and paled. Malcolm leaned to whisper something and Balloch approached the two, hoping to catch a snippet.
“…would ye deny Scotland a royal line then?”
Before Tearloch could form a reply, both men stiffened at Balloch’s approach.
A year ago, he had brought them the whereabouts of Lulach, Macbeth’s stepson.
He expected that information, and the result, to have earned him a bit more trust, but it had not.
For Malcolm, he had spied in the English court for two years before being called back to find Lulach.
But perhaps they believed, once a spy, always a spy…
“Balloch.”
Reading their unease, Balloch addressed both men while bowing.
“Majesty. MacPherson. No need to worry. I spy for no one these days. Your generosity has enabled me to retire from such sins. But it is possible I can be of service once more and win myself the Queen’s ring.”
“Ah, you know of a beauty, do you?”
“Aye, Your Majesty. I cannot say if she is yet unwed, for it was ten years ago when I met her, but she was young, and the way she was…how should I say...secluded, leads me to believe the lass is rarely seen.”
“Is something amiss with her then?”