Chapter Nine
Hours later, Rory left the quiet of Paiden’s room. Too quiet. Too still. Barely his friend at all despite the jolt of joy and relief when he first entered the room to see Paiden sleeping in a different position.
All hope dashed when Hannah, the servant tending him, recited the litany of tasks she done since the wedding. One of which was to move Paiden’s prone body so he did not get sore.
His vibrant friend adjusted by a woman. When he woke, he’d give his friend hell for missing the opportunity. Hannah, with her ample curves, was a woman Paiden would try to woo.
Why hadn’t he fought Paiden harder to stay behind? They’d all known it was a trap when the field had been empty of McCrieffs. Because of that they’d all stayed on their guard, even during the feast, his men had carefully watched the food, the McCrieffs, the doorways.
It wasn’t until he’d announced his wedding that they forgot themselves. Forgot that they were on enemy land. It wasn’t until he had lowered his guard, had gazed like a lust-filled fool at Ailsa that his friend was poisoned.
All his fault.
Out of all the Lochmores, Paiden was the only one who accepted him, who made him feel as if he belonged. He should have ordered his friend to stay behind, but he’d been weak. If Paiden died, Rory wouldn’t want to return to castle Lochmore because he wouldn’t have a home.
Forcing his thoughts away, he turned in the hallway, intending to go outside, when Duff came around the opposite corner.
‘You’ve returned,’ he said. When he announced they would continue with the marriage, Rory had directed Duff to return to Lochmore land and sent a message to his parents.
‘It was quick, they were already mounted on the other side of the stream. There wasn’t a battle, and they’d heard nothing.’
So they’d intended to storm McCrieff land to rescue them which would have nullified all their careful planning to keep to a negotiation first.
Duff gave a quick grin. ‘It’s not as if they’d risk your precious neck.’
As an only heir. Of course because he was an heir and now they were here.
It was early morning. They must have packed and travelled by night.
He thought he’d completed everything quickly enough that his father wouldn’t interfere.
He was satisfied that he had at least managed to wed the McCrieff woman before he was stopped or his father demanded more terms.
He’d done the best he could under the circumstances. Except Paiden’s health was in the balance and that would take some explanation. The missive he’d sent explained most of his reasoning, but not all. He wished for more sleep, not for endless discussions and strategies.
‘Tell my father—’
‘Your father’s not here.’ Duff gave a slight shrug. ‘Neither is your mother, but that was to be expected.’
Rory was tired, exhausted. He ached... He woke yesterday morn with thoughts of battle. To lose friends and comrades. To gain some bit of McCrieff land. And instead he’d gained a wife. So of course, he didn’t understand Duff when he’d said his father hadn’t come.
‘You carried my missive to my father.’
‘Aye, and I stood before him as he read every word.’
If only he could have been there to see the expression on his father’s face. ‘And?’
‘He rolled it up and handed it to your mother, who opened it twice as slowly and read it twice as long as that.’
This was why he gave the missive to Duff, not because he thought he could fight off whoever stopped him along the way from McCrieff lands to there.
It was because Duff had the observation of a hawk and the tongue of an ale-doused whore.
Nothing would get past him and he’d freely give Rory the details he craved without losing his pride in the asking.
Still, he felt like asking, his exhaustion making him impatient, not the need to know his parents’ reactions to what he’d done. ‘Then what?’
‘Your mother placed her hand on your father’s arm and acted faint. Your father leaned over her and with some words to his man—’
‘Harold.’ His father’s man-at-arms and advisor. The man Rory talked to more often than his own father.
‘Yes, him. He bid me good eve, told me to rest and thanked me.’
Rory couldn’t come up with further words, but something on his face must have given his shock away because Duff continued.
Shrugging, his friend said, ‘Then he...gave me a nice coin and left. I didn’t sleep, but got straight to work with what Harold wanted me to do.’
‘And that was?’ Rory said through the closing in his throat.
‘To bring more men and a trunk. It seemed your mother wanted to give the bride a token of appreciation. I didn’t know where to put it, so it’s with the men now in their quarters.’
‘That...is welcome.’ Rory said as evenly as possible. ‘You rode hard, Duff, I’ll see that you get another coin. After fast, bring the trunk to my chambers and leave it there. After that, get some rest and I won’t be bothering you for three days.’
‘Three?’
‘I saw that black-haired lass giving a pout when I sent you out the door and, if I’m not mistaken, you noticed her as well.’
‘Black hair, you say? I think I was looking at the way her—’
Rory held up his palm. ‘Spend your time well. You can regale me with the details later.’
Duff turned abruptly, if unsteadily, and was gone in an instant. Duff was built like an oak tree. If he was that off balance, he’d ridden hard and fast.
This part of the hallway was empty, with only faint distant sounds coming through.
It appeared most of the keep was still asleep.
And so, for the first time since he’d begun the long journey yesterday, he was alone.
The halls were narrow and dark, which Rory hoped hid some of his reaction to the news he received as he slapped his hand against the stone wall to support himself.
He was exhausted. Drained. His father gave no congratulations or asked questions on how he accomplished a feat no other Lochmore had achieved in all the years before or after the Great Feud.
Centuries of living next to the clan and nothing of this had ever been thought of or attempted. Except that one time, the one time which started this endless warring.
The story was that around seventy years before, a Lochmore lass was betrothed to the McCrieff Chief.
How they met no one knew, but just before the wedding, the lass returned to Lochmore where the Chief took her in.
There were plenty of rumours of mistreatment and abuse leading to her escape and subsequent return, but she and the Chief fell in love and married soon after.
All seemed well until she grew fat with a baby and died in childbirth, the baby as well.
When the McCrieff Chief heard of the news he rode up with a few of his men. Drink was involved. Pride was as well. Now there were witnesses aplenty and the story didn’t waver or fail from fact or fiction. It was told the McCrieff accused Lochmore of stealing the woman he loved and wished to marry.
Lochmore would hear none of it and roared that he wanted McCrieff off his land to mourn his wife and child.
McCrieff refused and Lochmore drew his sword first. In the melee, Lochmore’s nephew Rory, for whom he was named, tried to stop the two drunk men and McCrieff’s sword sliced clean through the young man’s stomach.
It ended in more tears than it started with, McCrieff’s men tearing him away and Lochmore broken in grief.
And for seventy years only more falsities and slights had been done by McCrieffs to Lochmores until his father had sided with Edward and was granted some of McCrieff land.
It was a decided victory and one that the Lochmores never thought to ever achieve over the cruel McCrieffs who caused a grieving man to break after killing a young man who simply wanted to stop two drunken men from killing each other.
Now Rory meant to bring peace to their clans. To marry a McCrieff and end the feud. More than that. An easier relationship with the Tanist would help prosperity and gain wealth no other Lochmore had before.
To bring pride to his clan and to prove to his father he could rule it one day. Except...he hadn’t achieved any of it. It appeared his mother sent kind words, no doubt more polite than actual happiness for her son, and his father sent nothing.
Worse still, he had a wife whom he couldn’t trust, but who he wanted more than anything.
After Ailsa found her pleasure, he’d nigh on almost lost his mind with the want and need firing through him.
She was well tousled, a flush to her cheeks and her lips swollen from kisses. She was so lovely his heart ached.
Until she reminded him that Paiden lay at death’s door.
She could not have said words more chilling to his ardour and adding more to his confusion than those.
She was a McCrieff. She was the enemy and, to prove it, Paiden was in another room, possibly dying while he trailed his fingers along soft skin and longing to kiss parted lips.
He didn’t want this. He didn’t need this.
The land, the power, yes. The confusion, never.
A McCrieff, his wife, and one who might have poisoned his friend.
Except the wariness, fear and confusion in those bright green eyes of hers told something else.
So, too, her knocking the goblet aside. She had not been the poisoner and possibly had worries over who was.
She seemed unsettled by it as well. A different reaction than the outrage and surprise she’d given her father when he suggested they marry. By no means could Ailsa be part of a conspiracy.
Yet years of mistrust did not go away simply because he felt something for her, because he hoped she was honest. So he’d held back last night, but they’d argued all the same.
He shoved himself off the wall and brushed his hands against his breeches. No matter what he did between his family and his wife, there would always be failure. However, he wouldn’t fail his friend and he would find the culprit who poisoned him.
That meant talking with a few important people. Hamish McCrieff for one. Last night before their vows, he and Ailsa had been escorted to his room, only to see that he was asleep.
Frail, grey and waxen with a weak rattle to his breath. Here was another fact that proved true. Hamish, Chief of Clan McCrieff, was truly ill. Which meant Frederick, as Tanist, was in control.
If so, why invite him, offer his daughter and then try to kill a Lochmore? Perhaps even kill him. He did not know what was in the goblet that Ailsa had shoved away.
That, out of all of this, was the most perplexing. So why was he visiting Paiden this morning, why wasn’t he confronting Frederick, why even now did his feet take him to Hamish’s room first?
He feared that it was because of Ailsa. Because without thinking this through, he had married her. Without thinking, not even once, if he proved the poisoner was Frederick, how could he face his wife?
Not his wife.
A thought that didn’t sit well with him. Rory raked his fingers through his hair. However, it was possible by not consummating the marriage, he’d done something right by her clan. He’d only thought of Paiden and Clan Lochmore, but he realised now Ailsa had a chance out of the marriage as well.
A deed done for the rightness of Clan Lochmore, for Clan McCrieff. To have a chance to right wrongs to their clans.
He wondered, however, if by denying them both last night, what wrong he’d done by them?