CHAPTER 22
Sìleas held onto Niall’s arm as they walked their horses through the crowded, cobbled streets of Stirling. Despite being exhausted and filthy after days of travel, she stared about her. She’d never been in a town of this size before.
“Can ye let go of my arm?” Niall said in a low voice. “I don’t like the way people are looking at us, with ye dressed like a lad and all.”
Sìleas snatched her hand away. In her amazement, she had forgotten her disguise.
“It looks like a palace built for the gods,” she said, looking up at Stirling Castle.
They had seen it for miles before they reached the town, perched on top of the towering rock cliffs that protected it on three sides. The side of the castle that faced the town was the only way it could be approached, and this was protected by a curtain wall and massive gatehouse.
“What if the queen isn’t here?” Niall asked. “The royal family has more than one castle, ye know.”
“Your da says that if the queen has any sense at all, this is where she’s brought the baby king,” Sìleas said. “He says not even the English can take Stirling Castle.”
They retraced their steps to a tavern at the edge of town that had guest rooms upstairs and a stable behind for their horses. After paying for the night, they took their supper in the tavern.
Sìleas had never been among so many strangers in her life. Most of the men spoke in Scots, the English spoken by Lowlanders. Although she knew some Scots, they spoke it far too quickly for her to understand much. Most wore the English style of clothes.
“Will ye stop staring at their codpieces,” Niall hissed and pushed her cap lower over her eyes. “You’re going to get us hurt—or an unpleasant invitation.”
Sìleas stifled a laugh behind her hand. She had heard that English noblemen wore a padded cloth over their private parts, but she had not truly believed it.
“I’ll need a bath before visiting the queen.” She looked down at her own clothes and sniffed. “I smell of horse, and that’s the best part.”
“I’ll ask the tavern keeper to send up water,” Niall said, getting to his feet. “It’ll cost extra.”
Sometime later, she saw a woman carrying two sloshing buckets up the stairs—the closest to a washing those stairs had gotten in a long, long while.
She and Niall followed the woman up to a small, serviceable room with a single cot. After warning Sìleas to bar the door, Niall returned to the tavern to wait while she had her bath.
Sìleas shook out the blue gown she’d stuffed in her cloth bag, pleased that in the chaos of her flight she had thought to bring her best gown for court.
After spreading it out on the cot to air, she scrubbed herself clean as best she could in the small wooden tub and put on the chemise she would wear under the gown tomorrow.
When Niall returned, he insisted she take the cot. She lay with her back to him while he took his turn washing in the same water. When he was finished, he wrapped himself in his plaid on the floor in front of the door.
She blew out the candle and tried to make herself comfortable in the strange bed.
“Thanks for coming with me, Niall,” she said into the darkness. “I don’t believe I could have gotten here without ye.”
“To tell ye the truth, I’m not sure we should have come at all,” Niall said. “The town is filled with Lowlanders and worse—there are English here, starting with the queen herself. We’ve no notion what we’re getting into. Perhaps we’d best go home and solve your problems there.”
“After coming all this way, I’m going to see the queen,” Sìleas said, but she closed her eyes and prayed hard for guidance. Was Niall right? Was coming here a mistake? She had never been this far from Skye. And she felt guilty for bringing Niall with her.
Niall was silent so long that she thought he had fallen asleep, when he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what we saw in the kitchen.”
“And what about that did ye find worth considering?” she asked, her voice coming out sharp.
“Well, what if Ian was just taking a bath, and Dina came in, unexpected?” Niall said, hesitation in his voice. “Ye saw the tub, and Ian dripping water.”
“Ye failed to mention that Dina was naked as well,” Sìleas said between her teeth. “And don’t try to tell me ye didn’t notice.”
“I could hardly help that, now could I? And at first I believed the same as you about what they were up to in the kitchen.” From the discomfort in Niall’s voice, she could tell he’d rather be rubbed with stinging nettles than discussing this with her.
“But ye see, Dina is the sort of woman to drop her clothes without a man even asking.”
Sìleas sat up in the bed and glared down at the dark shape on the floor. “And how would ye know this, Niall MacDonald?”
“Well… Dina did it for me,” he said.
Sìleas’s mouth fell open. How dare Dina work her wiles on Niall? He was a boy still—despite being over six feet tall.
And Dina’s tendency to shed her clothes did not explain how the MacDonald Crystal ended up around her neck.
“Are ye expecting me to believe nothing happened in that kitchen?” she snapped. “Is that what happened when Dina took her clothes off for you, Niall? Nothing?”
Niall’s silence confirmed his guilt.
“Your mother would be ashamed of ye.” Sìleas lay back down and punched her pillow a few times to fluff it.
“I am not a married man,” Niall said. “And what I do with a willing woman is no concern of my mother’s.”
“Hmmph. I’m disgusted with the lot of ye,” she said, turning her back on him and pulling the blanket up to her ears.
The noise from the tavern below was all that interrupted the long silence between them, until, finally, Niall spoke again.
“If I had a wife like you, Sìl, I wouldn’t have taken what Dina offered.” Niall paused. “That’s why I keep thinking that maybe Ian didn’t do anything he shouldn’t have. Maybe ye ought to give him a chance to tell ye what happened.”
Sìleas tossed and turned on the narrow cot half the night, slapping at the bugs in the straw mattress and thinking of what Niall had said. She had such an abiding weakness for Ian MacDonald that she could almost believe anything that would absolve him.
When she felt her resolve begin to fade, she made herself remember seeing Ian in all his naked glory, his cock standing at the ready, and Dina right behind him without a stitch on—except for the pouch with Sìleas’s crystal hanging between her breasts.
Every time she managed to set aside her thoughts about Ian and Dina, she tossed and turned, worrying about meeting the queen.
Was she on a fool’s errand, bringing her problem to the queen?
Ach, but she was tired of men deciding what to do with her.
A woman was bound to be more concerned with her than with her castle.
Even if the queen chose not to help her, what harm could there be in asking?
When Sìleas got tired of slapping at the bugs and chasing her thoughts in endless circles, she got up and lay on the hard floor a little ways from Niall. She was grateful to him for staying with her and respecting her decision, even if what she did seemed foolish to him.
By annulling her marriage to Ian, she would also sever her formal tie with Niall. That was one more loss, and a hard one. She lay listening to him breathing, knowing Niall would always be the brother of her heart. She hoped he felt the same and that she would not lose him as well.