Chapter Fourteen #2
threaten me, old mon?” he asked softly. Too softly. Men familiar
with that warning sign would not have been daft enough to keep
running their mouths. Euan had never been known for his
intelligence.
“Aye, I do!” He spat on the ground. “That’s
a promise, Gunn.” His red face twisted into a sneer. “My heir James
tells me you took a wench to wife. ‘Twas her basin they emptied on
the borderlands! ‘Twould be a shame if your battle prize was taken
from you and wed to a Campbell.”
“You threaten my wife?” Lachlan bit out.
Every muscle in his body tensed. The old bastard had no idea how
close he was to being struck down with The Gunn’s sword o’er his
bedamned taunt. Veronica belonged to him and him only. Let every
mon ken as much.
“Father,” he heard James whisper to the old
laird. “Mayhap—”
Euan held up a palm, silencing his son and
heir. Lachlan was itching for a fight now. Every mon save Euan
seemed aware of that fact. The deuce of lairds stared each other
down, both of their nostrils flaring.
“Mayhap I should do your clan a favor and
kill you here and now!” Lachlan roared. “Threaten my wife again,
bastard, and I’ll do just that!” He smiled without humor. “Not that
my wife needs protected from the likes of you. She could kill you
herself with a quickness.”
Euan’s face flushed at Lachlan’s perceived
insult. Finn and Ramsay chuckled. The old bastard broke Lachlan’s
stare and threw out an insult of his own. “I dinna desire your
bride,” Euan grumbled. “Mayhap she stinks verra badly did you need
to empty her bath water so far from your keep.”
Lachlan rolled his eyes again. Now The
Campbell had the sound of a petulant child. “We are done here,
Euan,” he said, wanting to return to the lilac-scented wife of his
in question. “You have not been poisoned. I dinna take actions in
secret like a coward. If ever I decide to strike you down, ‘twill
be to your face and by my sword.”
*****
Her reunion with Victor was especially
sentimental. Both of them shed a lot of tears—a fact Veronica made
him promise nobody else would ever find out about. They had been
raised not to be criers after all and some lessons just weren’t
forgettable. Veronica spent the entire morning with her brother in
his bedroom, both chastising him for his role in her marriage and
repeatedly hugging him to ensure they were actually together. It
had taken four years and more close calls than she cared to dwell
on, but the siblings had finally been reunited. Their parents, she
knew, would be pleased.
“We’re going to have to go down to the great
hall soon,” Victor said, looking out the sole window in his room.
“For their lunch—or nooning meal—as they call it.”
Her nose wrinkled. “How do you know what
time it is?”
“The position of the sun.”
Ahh. Stupid question. She should have known
better than to ask.
“What happened to your watch?” Victor
asked.
“I’m wearing it. It’s hidden under the
sleeve of my gown.”
Victor frowned. “I’d find a better hiding
place if I was you. Nobody except Lachlan, Finn, and Ramsay should
ever be permitted to see it. Anyway, we really need to go
downstairs and join them for lunch pretty soon here.”
“I don’t know, Victor,” Veronica said
quietly. “I feel very uncomfortable. I know what our cover story
is, but I don’t know anything about being a lady. It’s hardly a
role I’d ever thought about or aspired to.”
He kept his voice to a hush. There were eyes
and ears everywhere in the castle he’d told her earlier. “Just be
yourself. Well, be yourself minus the weapons and the sailor’s
mouth.” He sighed. “Look, sis, you have to be someone here. There
are much worse fates than being a lady.” At her raised eyebrows, he
clarified, “Do you wish to be the one shitting into a bedpan or the
one who has to clean it?”
“I don’t want to be either,” she said
honestly. Veronica was accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle—a fate
worse than death to her brother. That had caused some less than
ideal situations when it came to relieving herself, but this? “And
while we’re on the subject, why can’t you figure out how to build a
bidet-toilette here anyway?” she grumbled. Good grief.
Bidet-toilettes were part and parcel of everyday life in the
future. On the run she’d had to make do with what she could, but
she wasn’t on the run anymore. “Like I want the humiliation of some
poor woman seeing my waste.”
“I’m actually working on the prototype for
one.” He cheered at the subject. He pushed his glasses up the
bridge of his nose—an endearing affectation of his, Veronica mused.
“It’s just a matter of getting the proper pieces built and creating
a sewage system. That’s the good news. The bad news being I expect
it will take a lot of time to get this done unless the laird lends
me some of his men to do the requisite digging.”
“I’ll try to talk him into it when the time
comes. If he says no, it’ll be totally worth the wait though.”
“Agreed.” Victor looked at her intently as
he took off his glasses and set them on the desk Lachlan had
provided him with. “Is he really that bad, sis?” he asked, changing
the subject. “Laird Gunn I mean.”
She sighed like a martyr. “No, but also not
the point, Victor.”
“Nica,” he returned pragmatically, “In this
world, well, let’s just say a woman cannot make it on her own.
Neither can a man for that matter. We both need the security that
only a powerful group like this clan can provide. And just so you
know, I did my research before choosing which clan we’d go to.
There were other possibilities, but our calculable odds with the
Gunns were best.”
“You really think we couldn’t make it on our
own?”
“No, I honestly don’t think we could. And do
you really want to try?” Victor shook his head. “I know you’re
accustomed to doing your own thing, but how happy have you
ever been while doing it?”
Veronica frowned. He had a valid point, but
still. “I don’t know that I can ever be who he wants me to be,” she
quietly admitted. “I’m not gowns, lace, and frills, Victor.”
“Just because you need to dress
appropriately in order to fit in does not mean he’s looking to
change you. Truth be told, I could tell just from watching him
watch you on the AI scanner that he fell for who you are, not who
you think he wants you to be.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but she
hoped it was true. She’d consider the matter later. “So what
happens at the ‘nooning meal?’” she circumvented. “Who will be
there?”
“The ladies of the castle and Lachlan’s
favored warriors. Not to mention his best…” His face flushed. “…Uh,
wizard.”
Veronica snorted at that. “I take it you are
his best wizard?”
He sighed. “Yeah.”
She gave him a throaty chuckle. “Nice. So,
basically it’ll be you, me, his mother, his sister, and some of his
soldiers?”
“In a nutshell, yes. The number of soldiers
depends on the day. It all comes down to who’s responsible for what
at any given moment.”
A thought struck her. “Do you wear your
glasses in front of the ones who don’t know where we really came
from?”
“Never. I leave them on my desk. If the
maids have questions about them, they’ve never said anything to me.
I can tell they think of me as something of an eccentric
anyway.”
Which wasn’t far from the truth. Spot on
actually. All that aside, it was wise to leave the glasses on his
desk. She and Victor were enough of an oddity without adding fuel
to the fire. “Is it time?” Veronica asked. “To eat, I mean?”
Her brother nodded. “We’re slightly late
actually.”
“Might as well get it over with,” Veronica
capitulated. She took to her feet. “This is going to be weird as
hell for me.”
“You’ll get used to it. Promise.”
“Pinky swear?”
Victor rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not
into old-timer sayings,” he muttered, “but yeah. I pinky
swear.”
She chuckled. “Alrighty then. Let’s go get
our weird on.”
Granted, she’d take weird over deadly any
day of the week. Having lunch while wearing a dress and making
small talk with Lachlan’s mother and sister seemed a small price to
pay in exchange for not having to be on her guard for the undead
every second of every minute.
“Let’s stop next door and grab Hero before
we go downstairs,” she added. “He’s probably hungry again by
now.”