Chapter 34
“Riders approaching!”
With a curse, Brice was out of bed and tossing his shirt over his head and rolling into his kilt before Eleanor had a chance to slide out of bed. The call came from the bailey, and she could hear a confusion of noises from outside.
“Who is it?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. They’d been asleep only a few hours. It didn’t seem like nearly long enough.
“Stay up here until I know who it is,” Brice said as he strapped on his broadsword. He was out the door before she could nod.
Quickly she grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be one of Brice’s shirts hanging on the back of a chair. It came to his knees when he wore it, as was the custom in Scotland. On her it came to mid-shin, and the sleeves were well past her fingertips.
She passed through the connecting door to her chambers and looked out her window above the bailey.
Brice was already down there, ready to face the approaching riders, Lachlan beside him and his men behind him.
All were fully attired with their weaponry.
The sight made Eleanor shudder. They were always ready to defend themselves here in the Highlands, trusting few people.
The riders came through the portcullis and Brice stepped forward to greet them, Lachlan at his back, his hand on the hilt of his broadsword.
Very quickly Brice, Lachlan, and the other men relaxed their stance.
Upon closer inspection, Eleanor thought she recognized the colors of the visitors’ kilts, but she couldn’t place whom they belonged to.
Brice spoke to them at length, and the entire group of warriors entered the castle, out of Eleanor’s sight.
Grooms scurried forward and took charge of the horses, and the activities in the bailey resumed a natural rhythm, which eased her fears.
She called for Cecilia, deciding that after the ride last night, she needed to bathe before she faced her brother again.
Her door opened and Brice was standing there, his expression desolate. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so, and she hurried to him. “What is it?”
“Colin. He’s been arrested by Blackwood and taken to Fort Augustus.”
Eleanor’s hand covered her mouth but not before it could stifle her gasp of horror. “Oh, no. What for?”
His look was bleak, and it made her blood run cold. She well knew what it meant to be arrested and taken to Fort Augustus, where Cumberland and his men were living. She’d seen many Highlanders come and go through that dungeon, and those who left weren’t released to continue living their lives.
“He was arrested for attacking the soldiers who had yer brother.”
“But he did that for us. To help us.” She’d been so positive Colin would escape that she’d given him little thought after the episode last night.
Colin was a warrior, a fighter, and a smuggler.
He could get himself out of any situation.
“Brice…” She didn’t know what to say. She saw the guilt in Brice’s eyes, the self-blame.
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask Colin to be a decoy so we could grab Thomas. ”
Brice cursed and ran a hand down his pale face. “That damn MacLean. He always was impulsive. He never did think before he acted, and now look what happened.” He was speaking of his friend in the past tense, as if Colin were already dead.
“There has to be something we can do.”
“And what would that be? Walk in and ask for him back?”
She pressed her lips together, recognizing the futility in that. But there had to be something they could do. There had to be. She wrapped her arms around his waist and put her head against his chest to listen to the steady beat of his heart. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He lifted her head and kissed her, a hard and passionate kiss that poured out all of his fear and sadness for his friend. She took that fear and sadness from him gladly, making it her own so he would not be alone in it.
Her door opened. “Eleanor—”
Eleanor jumped away from Brice at the sound of her brother’s voice. Thomas stood in the doorway, his gaze jumping from one to the other, his lips twisted in disapproval.
Brice’s arms dropped to his sides and his chin dropped to his chest. He cursed and rubbed his eyes. “Thomas, can you please knock before entering? I could have been dressing, for all you knew.”
“I’d rather you were,” Thomas said tightly. He took in her attire, or rather, lack of. Dressed in Brice’s overlarge shirt, she might as well have been wearing nothing. Realizing this, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her brother.
Brice stepped in front of her. “Eleanor will meet you in the great hall as soon as she dresses,” he said, his tone broking no argument.
Thomas’s lips thinned, but he nodded and backed out, closing the door behind him.
Brice gave her a long, steady look filled with disappointment.
Eleanor looked away. She didn’t know what to do or how to behave.
Her actions were bordering on—no, definitely crossing over—indecent.
For her brother to see her acting so loose was embarrassing.
And yet she knew Brice was feeling as if she were drifting away from him.
“I’ll leave ye to dress.” He left her standing in the middle of her bedchamber. Cecilia entered, chattering incessantly about the MacLean’s men. From the sparkle in her eyes, Eleanor concluded that Cecilia had found one to her liking. She let the girl talk while her mind wandered.
“Cecilia,” she said suddenly.
The girl stopped her observations on the attributes of a man named Rory.
“I see the Sutherland women occasionally wearing a plaid over their gowns.”
“Oh, yes, my lady. We don’t wear kilts like the men, because that would reveal our knees.
” She giggled as if such a thought were ludicrous.
“So the women wear what we call an arisaid and attach it with a broach.” She thought for a moment.
“I believe the former mistress”—she shot Eleanor an apologetic look that Eleanor waved away—“might have one somewhere.” Cecilia went to the wardrobe and, on her hands and knees, entered headfirst, talking the entire time.
“She never wore it much, to my lord’s disappointment.
She wasn’t much of one for the Highlands, even though she was a Highlander herself.
Here it is!” Cecilia backed out and held up a length of tartan in the blue and green of the Sutherland clan.
She draped it over Eleanor’s shoulder and gathered it at her waist with a belt she unearthed from the floor of the wardrobe.
Eleanor looked at herself in the mirror and barely recognized the woman staring back. She’d gained weight since coming to Castle Dornach, and there was color in her cheeks and on her nose from the days she’d spent in the sun. Her blond hair was streaked with lighter blond.
In England women would have been appalled that there was color on her cheeks, claiming she was ruining her skin.
And the fact that she rarely wore shoes inside the castle would have been completely unacceptable.
Not to mention the plain linen tunic she preferred to wear instead of elaborate, expensive gowns.
In England she wore silk and French lace. And she didn’t miss it one bit.
Cecilia rummaged through a jewelry box and produced a sapphire broach.
It was breathtakingly beautiful in its simplicity.
Cecilia pinned it to Eleanor’s breast, then stepped back and smiled.
“Ye look like a proper Highland woman now. No’ like a Sasannach at all.
” Her eyes widened. “My apologies, my lady. I didn’t—”
“It’s all right, Cecilia. I’m proud to look like a proper Highland woman.”
Satisfied with her attire, Eleanor made her way down to the great hall. Brice and Thomas were sitting at a table across from each other, glaring at each other. Eleanor hurried over, unsure how she was going to dispel the tension between the two, worried that she never would.
She sat next to Thomas because it seemed that it was he she needed to work on the most, but as soon as she sat down, she knew she’d made the wrong decision.
Brice’s eyes flashed. And yet if she’d sat with him, Thomas would have been angry.
She was caught between the two men who meant the most to her.
Thomas took in her attire with a steely-eyed glare.
His gaze went from her bare feet to the simple linen tunic to the arisaid draping her shoulders.
He looked at her without words, telling her she was dressing and behaving inappropriately.
She lifted her chin and stared back, letting him know she didn’t care.
“We will leave as soon as we can be prepared,” Thomas said to her, dragging his gaze from Brice.
“I still say it’s no’ safe,” Brice said.
Thomas looked at him before turning to Eleanor. Eleanor winced at her brother’s rudeness and clear dismissal. From the color climbing in Brice’s cheeks, she gathered he hadn’t missed the slight, either.
“We’ll go to Campbell and ask him to lend us some of his men for safe passage. According to Blackwood, Campbell is sympathetic to the English.”
“If ye’re hell-bent on leaving, I’ll lend ye the men to get ye to the Campbell,” Brice said, but Eleanor could tell the words cost him. He looked at her, but there was nothing in his cool blue eyes that alerted her to what he was thinking.
“That’s very good of you. I thank you,” Thomas said.
Eleanor hated that they were speaking about her as if she weren’t there. She hated even more that neither of them asked what she wanted.
And what would you answer?
She had no idea. She desperately wanted to see her parents, and she knew they needed to see her as well.
She wanted to hug them, to feel her mother’s familiar arms around her.
She’d never properly grieved Charles’s death, and she needed to speak to his family, to reassure them that he had not suffered and that she would do what it took to clear his name of the treason charges.
And yet she didn’t want to leave Brice. Scotland, Castle Dornach, was where her heart lay and where she felt the most complete.
However, Brice had never asked her to stay.
Beyond telling her he loved her, he’d never spoken of marriage, and she would not stay outside of marriage.
She may have thrown away most of her beliefs of how a lady should behave, but she wouldn’t discard that one.
“My lord.”
Both Thomas and Brice looked up at Angus. When Thomas realized he wasn’t the one being addressed, he turned away.
“What is it, Angus?” Brice said.
“Ye’re needed in the stables, my lord.” Angus’s gaze flicked to Thomas.
Brice rose. “Excuse me,” he said.
As soon as he left the hall, Thomas said, “Pack your things, Eleanor. We’re leaving within the hour.”
She looked at her brother in disbelief. “Pack my things?” she asked, her anger overtaking her.
“Yes. Be ready to leave.”
She stood, her legs shaking, and without a word she turned and lightly ran up the steps to her room.
Like Cecilia had earlier, she dug through the wardrobe until she found what she was looking for.
She stomped down the steps and back into the hall.
Thomas was still sitting there, eyeing a group of men on the other side of the room as they laughed and talked.
A clutch of serving women were a few tables away, chattering to each other.
Eleanor slammed her hand on the table, making Thomas jump.
“You wanted me to pack? Well, I’m packed.
” She placed the garments on the table in front of him.
He looked at the shredded, torn, and dirt-caked dress she’d put in front of him.
Slowly his hand came up, and he fingered the once fine material, his thumb running across a bloodstain.
“That’s all I have. That’s all I had on me when Brice found me. This is all I own. Are you happy now?”
He looked up at her in dawning horror. “Eleanor—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Thomas.” She spun on her heel and marched out of the castle and straight to the stables.
Brice was standing outside, his head bent as the stable master spoke to him. The sun glinted off his dark blond hair, and Eleanor paused to admire his broad shoulders and the muscled calves beneath his kilt. But her anger didn’t allow her to stop for long.
He saw her coming before she reached him, and dismissed the stable master. He waited for her with indifferent eyes, his feet spread wide, his arms folded in front of him.
She marched right up to him until they were toe-to-toe and she had to look up at him.
She poked him in the chest. “I am not Alisa,” she said with clenched teeth.
“I do not go to London because I miss that life or because I want the excitement of a big city. I go because my family needs me and I need to see them. Do you understand?” She emphasized her last question with a poke to the chest for each word.
His expression did not change, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. “I understand.”
“Good.” She dropped her hand to her side and looked at him for a moment. “That is all,” she finally said, and turned around to head back to the castle and her chambers, where there were no men looking at her in disappointment and sadness.