Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
T wo hours later, she was summoned to Aiden’s private study. To say he was angry would have been a terrific understatement.
Margaret soon realized that, when he was angry or upset with her, he began to pace back and forth as he shouted the rafters down. Just as he had done a sennight ago, when he thought she had been kidnapped or injured. She sat quietly in the tall-backed chair in front of his desk as David, Danial, and George stood behind her. Before even entering Aiden’s study, she took a vow of silence. She didn’t want to repeat what had happened the last time her husband gave her a dressing down.
Making a conscience effort to ignore his tirade, her thoughts were kept on the little boy above stairs. As far as she was concerned, she had done the right thing.
“How big was the limb?” Aiden asked, directing his question at David.
David feigned ignorance. “I dinnae think I could say.”
Aiden stopped his pacing, his glower hot enough to melt iron. “Cannae say or refuse to say?”
David shrugged his shoulders with indifference. “’Twas just a stick.”
Aiden was aghast. “Just a stick?”
“Aye,” David said as he stood his ground. “No bigger than a twig, really.”
Aiden rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, his patience clearly growing as thin as a spiders web. “A twig? A twig would nae crush a man’s skull, David. A twig would nae make Garrett bleed half to death.”
David remained stoic and silent.
“I will ask ye once again, David. How big was the stick ?”
David shrugged again as if he didn’t have any earthly idea. A quick glance at her husband, and Margaret knew, instinctively, that he was close to exploding. His face was dark and his eyes slits as he glared at his younger brother.
She soon realized David was being her champion; she found comfort and solace in the young man’s efforts.
Margaret decided then, mayhap, ’twas time to break her vow of silence. Standing to her full height, with her shoulders drawn back, in confidence this time instead of anger, she said, “’Twas about four feet long, if memory serves. And about six inches around.”
Aiden stood, momentarily dumbfounded. His jaw had fallen open, his eyes large and round with either shock or disbelief. She couldn’t rightly tell.
“I dinnae ken why ye are so angry with me,” she told him.
“Because ye meted out a punishment that ye had no right to do!”
His glower should have pinned her in place, should have kept her from speaking another word. Mayhap ’twas her own anger or her own ignorance that made her continue to argue with him. In the end, it mattered not to her.
“So, instead of stopping that vile man from killin’ an innocent little boy, I should have come to ye first for help?”
His jaw fell open for a second time before he quickly regained his composure. Aiden took in a deep breath before he could answer. “Of course nae,” he told her. His tone was firm, and she could tell that he was trying to reign himself in.
“Then what, my most wise husband, should we have done?”
Aiden was upset, but not for reasons she may have assumed.
He was bloody furious that she had risked her own safety in order to protect Duncan. Had her blow to Garrett’s head not been so powerful, or if she had missed her mark, Garrett could have attacked her. It was risk she clearly hadn’t even considered.
“What ye should have done was allow David to take care of the situation, nae attack the man yourself.” He tried to keep his tone as calm and as measured as possible. He didn’t want to repeat what had happened the last time he was upset with her.
Her eyes were as wide as trenchers. “Because I am just a lowly, weak, ignorant female?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Lass, ye are far from weak or ignorant.”
With slitted eyes, she said, “But I am lowly.”
“I did nae say that.”
Nonplussed, she stepped forward, placed her palms on the top of his desk and said, “Mayhap ye should go above stairs and look at Duncan’s back. Look at his skin and bones. Look at the bruises and the gashes. Then ye can tell me I did nae act properly.”
She stood upright and headed toward the door, pushing past the gauntlet of men who had been standing behind her. David smiled with pride. Danial gave a wink of approval. George, however, glowered fiercely at her.
Aiden didn’t bother to call after her, to order her to stay so that they might discuss the matter further. Nay, he let her go before he had the chance to say something else that might infuriate her.
She left the four men staring in her wake, long after she was out of view.
“I like her,” David said, still smiling proudly.
“I do as well,” Danial said. “She is a good woman.”
Before Aiden could proffer his agreement, George spoke up for the first time that afternoon. “I dinnae trust her.”
Appalled, David asked, “How can ye nae trust her? Ye barely ken the woman.”
George crossed his arms over his chest, preparing for either a banter of words and insults or an all-out fight. “And ye ken her better than I?” He shook his head in dismay. “Ye are too young to ken any better. Ye are swayed by her beauty.”
Danial stepped forward. “Aye, she is a bonny lass. But there is far more to her than that, and ye ken it.”
“Do I?” he challenged.
“Just because we are young,” David began, “does nae mean we are fools. Ye, Aiden, and Brodie have taught us all better than that.”
George shook his head dispassionately. “I said what I said. Ye are swayed by her beauty. Before ye go givin’ that woman?—”
Danial and David interrupted in unison, stepping closer to their older brother. “That woman?” David exclaimed. “That woman is Aiden’s wife.”
“Aye, and ye best nae forget that,” Danial said most harshly.
Aiden raised his voice over their arguments. “Brothers!” He stepped around his desk. “Enough!”
The three brothers instantly halted their argument. Each of them turned, their full attention now on Aiden.
“We will continue this conversation later,” he said. There was no mistaking how serious he was.
Each man remained quiet, feeling duly chastised simply by the piercing glare he had aimed at them.
“First, I wish to see the boy.”
It was all Aiden could do to keep it together when he saw Duncan’s back. The boy hadn’t woken up since David brought him into the keep hours ago.
The poor lad was on his stomach, his arms hugging the pillow under his head. Ugly sores could be seen scattered about his nearly bald head. At the moment, Lizabet and Margaret were working diligently to rid the lice from what was left of his hair.
Fury came first. Absolute and unrelenting. How could any man do this to his own son?
Disgust soon followed. How did I nae ken this was happening? Aye, he was more disgusted with his lack of knowledge than he was with Garrett. I am the chief of this clan. ’ Tis my duty to ken what is happenin ’ with my people.
Next, he felt nothing but sheer adoration for his wife, for a whole host of reasons. Not only had she knocked the fool—a man bigger than himself—on his arse, she had rescued this child from the jaws of death. Margaret was tending to him with such gentleness and tender care that it made his heart nearly seize.
Now, he was finally able to witness for himself what everyone else had been telling him for a fortnight or more: Margaret does have a very tender heart.
“George,” he spoke in a low voice over his shoulder. “Where is Garrett now?”
“Still at his cottage. The healer went to tend to his head.”
That bit of news did not sit well with Aiden. Not one little bit. “Ye mean to tell me that my healer is tending to the bloody son of a whore who did this to his son, instead of being here to tend to a child who is on the precipice of death?”
No one seemed to have an answer that wouldn’t infuriate him, thus they all remained mute. “I want Garrett brought to me at once,” he said in a harsh whisper. “And ye tell our healer, that if he is nae inside this keep within the next quarter of an hour, tending to Duncan, he will be hangin’ next to Garrett.”
David and Danial offered broad smiles before quitting the room. Smiles that seemed a little too gleeful considering the current circumstances. There was no doubt they were going to enjoy what was about to happen to the vicious man.
Aiden turned his attention to his wife, who sat beside the bed. She had the oddest expression on her face, and tears pooled in her eyes. For the life of him, he didn’t know what had prompted her tears.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Lass? Are ye well?”
Margaret had paused in the delousing of the boy when Aiden had voiced his anger regarding the healer. Turning slightly, she looked up at her husband, utterly confused by what he had just said.
Oh, there was no way of denying his anger. He was mad enough to bite his sword in half. However, he wasn’t angry with her. His anger was placed right where it belonged: with Garrett Randall, the disgusting abuser of a small boy.
Something akin to adoration fluttered inside her heart. A heart she had, until this very moment, thought long dead. ’Twas if that cold heart of hers had been lying dormant and was only just now coming to life.
Pride blended with that newfound adoration for her husband. For the first time, she was able to see clearly. He hadn’t been truly mad at her but at the situation she had put herself in earlier today; she could very well have been killed when she confronted the monster.
If they hadn’t been surrounded by people, she would have flung herself into his arms and kissed him soundly. Right on his full, chiseled lips.