Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
A few days after breaking up the brawl in the hall, Lucy woke up with her face pressed against a brick wall covered in muscle. She tried to roll away, but strong arms closed around her, and held her in place.
“’Tis too early to rise,” Tair said, his voice a tired grumble. “Be still.”
She would have happily agreed, but she knew why she had been waking up earlier and earlier every day: him.
The laird had been pulling her into his arms while she slept and held onto her so that they woke up facing each other.
The new tactic was undoubtably meant to push her into a decision.
Lucy originally had had no intention of being intimate with the laird again, but sleeping and waking up with him was starting to wear down her resolve .
She also knew she couldn’t let that happen. It would have been simple if it were only sex, but things were changing between them.
“Would you please stop squashing me?” As his arm fell away she shifted to his side. “When did you come to bed last night?”
“Too late to find you awake.” He dragged a hand over his face before he faced her, and curled his hand around the side of her neck. “You called for me in your sleep. Mayhap ’tis time you choose me as your lover.”
“I never talk in my sleep.” She hoped. “Don’t lie to try to get into my knickers. You’re a laird, remember. It’s beneath you.”
“I’m a man before I’m a laird, woman, and you tempt me sorely.
” He reached out to catch a piece of her hair and tuck it behind her ear.
His thumb then strayed to her lobe and rubbed it gently as he looked all over her face.
“Gods, but you’re lovelier than the sun in the morn.
I wish I might wrap myself in your beauty. ”
Lucy smiled. “You can’t wear me like a tartan, sir.” She held out her chained wrist. “I’d like to get an early start on my day, so would you do the honors?”
“You may start with me.” Tair rolled on top of her, pinning her with the weight of his big body to the feather-stuffed mattress. When he tried to kiss her, she turned her face away. “Dinnae deny me, wench. I shall ravish you time and again until you agree to be mine.”
“If that were true, you would have ravished me time and again the very first night.” It was hard keeping her expression bland with all his lust glaring down at her, but she couldn’t afford to lose this battle.
“You’re a wretched liar, you know. Beating me might work, but you don’t hurt females, either.
Like that kitchen maid who splashed your arm with the brew she was pouring for you the other day.
You just took the pot from her and finished filling your mug. ”
His mouth came down to within a breath of hers.
“You cannae persuade me to believe you dinnae want me. When I come to you, you cannae take your gaze from me. As you slumber you drape your body over mine. I dinnae force myself on females, but I desire you too much. You desire me as well. We’ve waited long enough. Decide.”
Lucy hadn’t realized he could read her so easily.
“If you must have an answer from me this morning, it won’t be yes,” she promised. As he unfastened her shackle and then rolled off her she hid her relief. In a softer tone, she said, “I’m really sorry, but I’m not ready to commit to you. ”
“Now you lie.” He jerked the coverlet over himself and presented his back to her.
Lucy knew if she touched him now he’d be on top of her and there would be no stopping him again, so she gingerly climbed off the bed and went to dress by the hearth. When she turned around to look for her boots she saw the laird was sitting up and watching her.
She smiled cheerfully. “Do you want me to bring you some brew later?”
“I dinnae want brew.” Tair’s eyes narrowed as she turned away from him. “You conceal naught from me, wench, for I’ve seen every naked inch of you before now.”
“I’m trying not to lead you into temptation.” Keeping her tone impersonal was getting harder, and she really wanted to go over there and thump him. “Besides, you need sleep more than my ravishment.”
“You should get out now, else I prove you wrong again,” he said, almost growling the words.
Lucy grabbed her boots and left, stopping in the outer passage to put them on before she went downstairs to the kitchens. As she approached the arch she heard a group of maids talking, and what they said stopped her in her tracks.
“I’m so weary of the ruse,” Garia was complaining.
“My hair, ’tis full of knots, and I’ve a rash from scratching myself.
The stink from leaving the old wet straw to rot in the dungeons instead of burning the stuff as we ever do, ’tis filled every passage and chamber now.
When shall the laird send her away so we can end our pretenses? ”
“At least you didnae have to play harlot,” another maid said. “I spend half the afternoons bouncing on some lap or another instead of attending to my work. Maister Ronan, when shall we be rid of the outsider?”
“That you should go and ask Seneschal,” the cook said. “After you’ve finished serving. Get on with you now. The men, they’re hungry.”
In that moment Lucy knew she had been hoodwinked since the moment she had arrived—but why? What purpose would it serve to convince her that everyone here was dirty, lazy, and/or sex-crazed?
It’s not just me. It’s any outsider. They don’t want anyone who doesn’t belong to the clan or work for them to know the truth.
Lucy walked away from the arch and went out into the gardens to sit and think.
She needed proof of what she’d heard before she confronted Tair about this game he and his people had been playing with her.
It might work more to her advantage to say nothing for now.
She might be able to find out on her own why they wanted outsiders to believe they were like this .
Who am I kidding? I can’t even find the cluet.
She had spent the last several days searching through the stronghold for places where the enchanted treasure might be concealed.
Lochran advised her on where to look, but his day blindness made it impossible for him to help her.
Sgathan she already didn’t trust, and he was probably the mastermind of this ruse that the maids had mentioned.
Lucy simply avoided Dorchad and Cath because they’d make her too nervous to focus.
I’m on my own. That’s the first problem to solve, too.
Since she didn’t want to go to the laird to request more manpower, she decided to see if any of the maids who worked for Ronan could be spared.
“Take Garia,” the cook told her when she went back into the kitchens after breakfast to ask him. “She’s mostly idle, for she attends only to you. She cannae work after donning unwashed garms and strewing herself with ash.” He then grimaced.
“You know she’s doing that on purpose to make me think she’s manky?
” When he shrugged she threw up her hands.
“No matter how dirty they are, I’m staying.
Please tell your girls to wash up, do their laundry and stop pretending to be covered in vermin.
After Garia does, have her meet me in the watch tower. ”
Lucy had thought long and hard about where the clever treasure might hide itself, and her first thought was the Night Watch’s quarters.
Lochran couldn’t see during the day when he worked at his carvings, and at night he was busy overseeing the castle’s defenses.
Today, however, she found his steward Ninian waiting outside the door.
"You cannae go in, Mistress,” Ninian told her. “The Night Watch sleeps until mid-day.”
“I didn’t think about that.” Of course he slept in the mornings; he had to work all night. “Would you ask him when he wakes up if I can search his room later?”
The steward nodded, and then frowned past her. “You’re no’ wanted here, wench.”
“Oh, shut it, Nini. Mistress bid me come.” A much cleaner looking Garia grinned at Lucy, with both of her eyes appearing wide and functioning. She also carried a bag that was glowing with blue and amber lights. “How may I serve?”
She decided to draw on the girl’s superior knowledge. “If you wanted to hide something in the castle, where would you put it?”
“Down the privy.” Garia laughed at herself. “Well-wrapped in plenty of oilcloth, no one should see or filch it. Unless ’tis food. Food I’d carry in pouches under my skirts.”
The thought of hiding anything in the castle’s toilets made Lucy’s breakfast form a solid lump in her belly.
“Let’s rule out those two places,” she told the maid. “Is there anywhere else that’s secluded and no one likes to go near?”
Garia thought for a moment. “The old spence, mayhap. All the maids reckon ’tis haunted by the caoineag .”
“Is this another thing that’s supposed to scare me off the island?” Lucy demanded.
“No, my lady. ’Tis a ghaist of the cook who ended herself after losing her only lad in the Battle of Embo. ’Twas just after the clan built Gealladh.” Garia told her. “When death shadows the island, her spirit wails all the night long.”
Lucy didn’t believe in ghosts. “Let’s begin with the spence, then.”
The maid led her downstairs and toward the back of the castle, and then outside to the inner bailey, where several decrepit outbuildings stood.
“The auld kitchens,” Garia told her, nodding at the largest structure. “Cook couldnae get the meals to the men still hot, so the laird built new kitchens just off the great hall.” She gestured toward a smaller, neglected-looking shack toward the back. “That, ’tis the spence.”
As soon as Lucy stepped inside the lingering smell of something acrid and burned made her frown. “What is that stench?”