Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
While the three travelers stopped near a stream to rest their horses and eat their midday meal, they were comfortable forgoing conversation.
Kincaid was thinking of his sister, who was at court, and whom he was pleased to be seeing again.
He had advised her a little harshly, before he had left her the last time, and was anxious to make amends.
The woman was twenty and one and married. He had little right to lecture her.
Jamie wiped away the sweat from his neck and face then lovingly washed out his white kerchief.
He’d heard how well they worked and had harried the lass until she’d given him the one she had made for Tearloch, but had yet to give it to him.
The smile on Jamie’s face was for the young thing whose eye he had caught with his first attempt at a gallant gesture.
Kincaid had warring feelings about leavin’ one particular MacPherson lass behind, but Lady Fia had assured him that it would give the woman a chance to miss him, which should intensify her feelings for him.
He had gone to say farewell to the imprisoned woman just before they departed for Edinburgh, and was pleased that she only wept and carried on when she believed Tearloch was listening.
She had greeted him cheerfully, listened to his concern over leavin’ his new lady love, then advised him and encouraged him without once mentioning the fact that she had been unfairly dealt with.
Jamie suspected Fia loved his leader and pitied her for it. To Kincaid’s thinking, there was not a man alive that deserved her. And now, from the corner of his eye, he watched as the man who had stolen Lady Fia’s heart paced up and down the bank.
Tearloch had left his problems behind him, safely under lock and key. He now forced himself to consider what awaited him in the city at which they would arrive in a few hours’ time.
The king had said she was as beautiful as Balloch had described. He remembered back to a fortnight before, when he stood before his king listening to the English peacock. Thanks to an intrigued and impatient king, Tearloch was soon headed to the Carlisle Clan with his heavily armed company in tow.
Tearloch now hoped that Agatha Carlisle yet lived so he could make her pay for every wrong she’d done to his lass.
And make her pay dearly for lying to him.
She had laughed when she confessed she’d sent the girl to be married to Gowry.
Perhaps he should have made sure the woman had been telling the truth. But if he had never gone to Gowry’s…
He tried yet again to shake Kenna from his mind and consider his bride-to-be. If he and the king were both married and working toward heirs, the country would indeed become a quiet place. There were no realistic contenders left for the throne, and they could relax a bit.
Although a generation too late, Malcolm II’s intentions had been wise, if blood thirsty.
The man had killed off all other male descendants of Kenneth III, eliminating all distant cousins of his grandson, Duncan, and securing his ascension.
Perhaps he should have taken a closer look at the female descendants as well, for that was the source of his grandson’s death.
Lady Macbeth was a woman with two weapons; royal blood and an ambitious husband.
Trusting Duncan never had a chance against them.
Malcolm III, with the help of his uncle Siward and his MacPherson friends, put an end to the reign of both Macbeth and his stepson, Lulach.
Still young, he had taken his rightful place as Monarch of Scotland, just as his great grandfather had intended.
An heir now would dissuade anyone with a drop of Kenneth MacAlpin’s blood, no matter how thin, from looking expectantly toward the throne. If, in fact, any still lived.
The kings of Scotland had been a violent bunch of cousins who lay in wait for their current king to be killed in battle, or simply hurry his demise along.
Since the royal line followed the tradition of tanistry, the next king need not be a son of the last, but rather the next best choice in the family.
Cousins became heirs to the throne and there was little love and much blood lost between these relatives. More were murdered by their heirs than ever died of natural means or in battle. And it was this history of violent ends that had motivated Malcolm II to do what he had done for his grandson.
Tearloch himself was anxious for an heir. He wanted to pass on his father’s wisdom to his own sons before he began to forget it all. He also longed for the happiness he had seen between his parents. He wanted a woman to worship as his father had worshipped his mother.
He would often catch his father smiling to himself, then shake his head and resume his task.
His mother, he observed, had a skip to her step and she hummed continually.
But what had struck him most of all was the way they looked at each other from across the bailey or the great hall.
His father would smile at her for long moments at a time.
She would smile back and then blush and turn away.
He also noted how little they spoke to each other some days.
Even when retiring to their bedchamber together, they went mutely on their way.
This is what Tearloch wanted in a wife, besides wide hips that would help the woman survive the baring of his bairns. He wanted to feel at peace with her when neither of them spoke. He wanted a smile from across a crowded room.
He tried to imagine that with the woman to whom he had been betrothed, but he saw only the face of his lass smiling down at him from that window in Gowry’s keep. He imagined taking his new bride into the woods, to love her in private, but only saw Fia lying in a field of flowers.
He forced his thoughts back to his parents.
His father had been the trainer of warriors and leaders, a hard man who pushed every man to his breaking point and beyond.
But Leith MacPherson was also an honest man who was eager to admit when he had made a mistake—on the rare occasions that he had done so.
He was slow to make decisions outside of warfare.
If decisiveness were a virtue, he would be quite the sinner, for he mulled over every choice he made.
The longer he took to rule on a matter, the more sound his judgment proved to be, however, as if he could see every possible effect of each possible choice, even far into the future.
In physical clashes, though, he was a different man entirely. He and his men were trained so well as to let their instincts take over on the battlefield. Their movements were automatic. React and follow through. Hesitation was death, and there were few losses in his numbers.
Tearloch studied his father on the practice field as well as off. And to the older man’s credit, Tearloch had also lost few men in his company, and had gained nearly the same reputation as his father for his ability to train exceptional warriors.
When he pictured training his own sons, he saw them with his same dark hair, but they had the warm brown eyes of Fia...
With the memory of his strong but sweet mother it was no wonder Tearloch had not married sooner. With Fia, though, he had found a glimpse of his matriarch and had taken heart.
What fluff-minded woman from court could have the wisdom and spirit of a Highland lass? His mother had been a Chatten, but more basic than that, her head was held high by a fire within, a knowledge of something that Tearloch had felt eluding him, until recently.
The closer he got to Edinburgh, the harder it would be for his betrothed to impress him. Deep in his heart, where he did not wish to look, he knew, princess or not, she would fail.