Chapter Twenty-Two
Veronica could tell something was bothering
Lachlan, but she had no idea what that something was. She frowned
thoughtfully at him as he stripped off his clothes and climbed into
their bed. She wanted to know what was wrong, but didn’t wish to
come across as a nag. When he blew out the candle on his nightstand
and made no move to have sex with her, she sighed. What on earth
was going on?
As much as she hated admitting it to
herself, her feelings were definitely smarting. Was he upset that
she had killed that eater instead of him? Did he feel emasculated
by her? It was difficult to conjecture on how a medieval warlord
would feel about the day’s earlier events. Still, Lachlan knew what
he was getting before he chose to marry her. If he’d wanted a weak
wife then he should have picked out a different bride
altogether.
The next morning, Veronica woke up when the
roosters started crowing. Setting aside the covers, she got out of
bed and, at the sounds of swords clanging, padded over to the
bedroom window. She moved the heavy drapes aside then shivered at
the wintry weather blasting her in the face. She worked her hands
up and down her arms, trying to warm herself, teeth chattering, as
she scanned the grounds below. There he was.
Lachlan was fighting five of his own men,
shirtless and wearing only a kilt and boots despite the bitter
temperature. His muscles bulged, growls accompanying every strike
of the sword. He took his men down one by one, emerging as the
clear victor when all was said and done. Even from the window she
could see his labored breathing, yet he barely rested a few seconds
before ordering, “Again!”
Freezing, Veronica closed the drapes and
quickly made her way to the fireplace. She warmed herself for a few
minutes before throwing three additional logs into the fire,
stoking them with a poker. Once they began to burn, she set the
poker to the side of the hearth and quickly dressed. She chose a
velvet, emerald-hued bliaut with a braided golden rope around her
hips and dyed green shoes on her feet. She kept her amber curls
unbound, but chose a head bangle with a big emerald crest set
against her forehead to complete her ensemble. Glancing into the
polished silver looking glass, she decided she was presentable
enough.
Leaving her bedroom, she ignored the
soldiers posted at either side of the doors and made her way to
Victor and Catriona’s bedroom. The soldiers, Douglass and Cameron
if she remembered correctly, followed her in silence. She didn’t
know why Lachlan had posted both of them to guard her in the first
place this morning. He knew she could take care of herself. She
knocked on Victor’s door; Catriona answered the knock. “Come in,
sister,” she said with a smile. Veronica did so, shutting the door
with Lachlan’s men on the other side of it.
“I keep trying to lure Victor from his
studies that we might break our fast in the great hall,” Catriona
told her. “Mayhap you’ll enjoy better luck than have I.”
“It’s not advisable to starve your wife,
Victor,” Veronica said, shaking her head as she walked towards
where he sat at his desk. “Surely you can stop long enough to
eat?”
Victor, hunched over one of his gadgets and
staring into what she could only presume was an oddly small
microscope of sorts, said he’d be ready soon. He was smiling at
whatever it was he was looking at. “It’s definitely the pig fat,”
he said, finally looking up at the women. His grin was contagious.
“I have no idea why or how, but it’s the pig fat.”
“How can you be certain?” Veronica asked,
for once curious about his scientific reasoning. She again folded
her arms and used her hands to warm them. This room was chillier
than her own. “Tell us.”
“Like I said, I don’t know why.” He pushed
his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It could be any number of
variables. What’s important is that we now know, for whatever
reason, it’s the pig fat.”
“Give me a little more to go on than that.
Just a little.”
“Basically when I looked at the dead brain
matter under my AI scope, it was just that—dead. When I added a
drop of liquified pig fat onto it, boom! The cells began
regenerating.”
“Fascinating,” she murmured. “So the flesh
on me from the eaters wasn’t infected until you burned it down
with—”
“—Boiled pig fat. Exactly!” Victor stood up.
“I’ve got to tell Lachlan about this. Then he can send a messenger
to the Campbells right away.”
She knew Lachlan had promised to send a
messenger as soon as they had an answer, but sending men out on an
errand during the maelstrom outside? “You already told them not to
use pig fat for fueling fires.”
“Just to be safe,” Victor assured her. “It’s
best they understand I know for a fact it’s pig fat—or maybe just
liquified pig fat—so they definitely don’t resort to using it.”
That was hard to argue with. “True.”
Hopefully Lachlan’s men were accustomed to riding in snowstorms.
Her husband was outside wearing nothing but a kilt and boots so
perhaps native Highlanders weren’t as affected by the cold
temperature as she was.
“Well this is wondrous news, aye?” Catriona
asked.
“Very,” Victor told his wife. He smiled at
her. “I’ll get dressed so we can go eat.”
“Wait a second,” Veronica said, jabbing a
finger at the AI scope. “How are you going to kill that shit?”
Catriona gasped at her curse word. Veronica
cocked her head a bit. “Don’t be scandalized. Lachlan is used to my
filthy mouth. Please get used to it too.”
Her sister-in-law snorted at her confession.
“Verra well. Just dinna let mum hear you. ‘Twould be a lecture
without end.”
Victor threw a kilt on and Catriona helped
him pleat it. “I don’t know yet,” he admitted, turning the
conversation back to the undead brain matter. “I’m going to try
boiled tar first. Hopefully it kills it.”
“And where do you plan to get boiled
tar?”
“No clue. I’ll have to ask Lachlan.”
Later, when the trio was downstairs in the
great hall having breakfast with Moira, Lachlan strode inside, his
shirt back on, still looking larger than life. His dark, unreadable
gaze clashed with Veronica’s. Hero looked up from his favorite
place in front of the hearth, recognized who it was, and went back
to sleeping.
“Good morn, wife,” her husband said, taking
his seat beside her at the head of the table. “You are looking
quite beautiful.”
“It’s good of you to notice,” she said
icily, her pride still smarting from the previous evening’s lack of
sex. Not to mention the two guards stationed to shadow her every
move today. Even now they stood behind her. “You need to eat,” she
said crisply. “I saw your morning workout. You should have a bear
of an appetite by now.”
One eyebrow rose at her obvious ire. Even
Moira seemed aware.
“Is all well, child?” her mother-in-law
asked. She put down her eating dagger and looked at Veronica.
“Yes,” she lied, forcing a smile to her
lips. “I just want to make sure my husband eats well.”
Lachlan gazed at her suspiciously, but let
it go. Victor took the ensuing silence to bring the laird up to
speed about the pig fat.
“Can you get me some boiling tar?” Victor
finished. “And send word to Euan and James?”
“Aye and aye.” He called Veronica’s shadows
over to him and gave them the chore of riding to Campbell land with
his message.
“What of milady?” the one called Douglass
asked.
“I am done for the day. She will remain with
me.”
Veronica frowned at her food. She didn’t
like being talked about as though she wasn’t here. She also didn’t
want to be thought of as someone who needed to be watched over. It
made her sound like a child.
Lachlan must have noticed her reaction for
he bent his head to hers and lowered his voice. “We shall talk in
our bedchamber after we break our fast.”
“Okay,” she said a bit stiffly, not looking
at him. “After breakfast.”
Unfortunately breakfast carried on for
another hour once Finn and Ramsay joined them at the head table.
Exasperated, Veronica finally spoke up. “We’ll be eating the next
meal by the time we finish this one.” She stood up. The men present
all took to their feet when she rose. “Please excuse me. I’ll be in
my bedroom.”
She didn’t look at Lachlan to glean his
reaction nor did she care if anyone thought her rude. She didn’t
like the esoteric and heavy-handed way her husband was behaving.
Didn’t he want her for who she was? Or did he want to turn her into
a weeping, meek woman who became overwrought at the drop of a
hat?
Once upon a time she would have faulted
Catriona for being amongst the weak and meek, but Catriona was
taking to Kalari like a fish to water. Another six months of
lessons and she’d make for a formidable opponent. Still, unlike
Veronica, her sister-in-law had been raised to be the ideal
medieval wife. She knew she shouldn’t fault Catriona for being who
she was, but it made her wonder if Lachlan saw Veronica as lacking
by comparison. She didn’t sew much less embroider and, truth be
told, she relied upon Maisie to run the household instead of
herself. She just wasn’t interested in the very things she was
supposed to be interested in by medieval standards.
By the time Veronica reached her room, she
had tears in her eyes, damn it anyway. She swiped them away with
the arm of her bliaut. She took off her expensive, ornate head
bangle and put it back inside her chest of drawers. The bedroom now
feeling hot from the three additional logs she’d put into the
fireplace earlier, she opened the window’s heavy animal skin drapes
halfway to allow some cold air inside. There was no such thing as
glass windows yet, unfortunately, so she doubted she’d keep the
drapes open very long at all. She looked down to the courtyard,
seeing the swordplay amongst the Gunn warriors, but paid it little
attention.
The bedroom doors shut behind her. She
didn’t glance away from the courtyard below.
“What is wrong, wife?” She remained quiet