Chapter Ten #2
Ready to cast politics and niceties aside and retire for some privacy with his precious new wife, Drummond forced himself to remain calm. He lifted his goblet. “Then ’tis a good thing we find ourselves trapped with such an abundance of fine food and drink, aye?”
“Aye,” Heberdy said, biting out the word like an angry beast. The man was struggling. This situation strained him, and Drummond completely understood.
Lady Merelys abruptly rose from her seat. “Forgive me. The journey wearied me a great deal more than I realized. Perhaps something could be sent to our rooms?”
“Of course.” Drummond smelled a plot brewing, and it reeked of danger and deception.
“Aye, forgive us.” Heberdy rose to stand beside her. “I feel all of my clan should retire. With the weather what it is, ’tis certain we shall have ample opportunities to enjoy a meal together.” He managed a polite bow. “The long trip wore on all of us.”
Slightly insulted by their snubbing of his clan’s hospitality, Drummond still couldn’t deny he was also glad to see them go.
Thanks to the storm, they’d not be able to leave completely, but at least they’d no longer be under his very nose.
He forced a smile. “Cook will send the verra best of the feast to yer rooms.” He nodded at the lad refilling their goblets with wine. “Inform her to make it so, ye ken?”
“Aye, m’lord.” The servant set the pitcher on the table and rushed to complete the task.
Heberdy bowed again. “Clan Heberdy thanks ye, Lord Blackmorrow.” Then he, his daughter, and the two guards followed the MacMuirrow servant assigned to see to their needs, leaving the same way they’d arrived. The rest of Clan Heberdy’s men left the hall as well.
Drummond stared after them, knowing deep in his gut they had returned to their rooms to adjust for a second attack.
He also couldn’t help but notice that his fellow clansmen settled in to enjoy their food and drink as soon as the Heberdys left.
It was almost as if they were glad the visiting clan had retreated.
Murdoch nudged him with his elbow. “Glengarten. In the archway. Look at that face of his. Reckon he brings ill news about the MacMuirrow?”
“No. That sourness of his is because he just witnessed the failure of his plan.” The faintest rustling beside him drew Drummond’s attention back to Evie.
She sat there with her head bowed and eyes closed, filling him with guilt and worry.
This was not the vision of newfound love. Pure misery tormented his lady. “Evie?”
Shifting with a deep sigh, she lifted her head and opened her eyes.
“Sorry. I just needed a minute. I’ll be all right.
” She held up her left hand and fixed a pained frown on her ring.
“Still green. I guess that means the Heberdys are exactly who they say they are.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, the way he’d learned she always did when feeling particularly troubled or nervous.
“Lady Merelys would fit into your world a whole lot better than I do.”
“Ye are my world, Evie, and always will be.”
She stared up at him, lips trembling and begging to be kissed. Then she pleased him with an adoring smile. “You say the best things.”
“I speak from the heart.” He rose and offered her his hand. “Come. Let us escape all these prying eyes. Yer pallor concerns me.”
Lightning flickered up and down the rows of windows as if the gods themselves ran along the outside of the keep with blazing torches.
The grumble of thunder followed, and the wind and rain rattled the wooden shutters that had yet to be closed to protect the precious glass panes that the clan prized as a sign of affluence.
Not every keep possessed such rich magnificence.
With a shy smile, she slid her hand into his and stood. “Thank you.”
Those gathered in the hall clapped and cheered. “Sons and daughters,” they chanted. “May the Lord bless ye with sons and daughters.”
Drummond pulled Evie’s arm through his, grandly escorted her out of the room, and to the stairwell. He winced as she struggled to climb the steps. “Enough.” He swept her up into his arms.
She stretched out her arms and legs, ridiculously attempting to wedge herself in the narrow tower of the winding staircase and prevent him from moving farther. “I’ll never learn if you don’t let me try to do it myself.”
“I dinna wish ye to break yer wee neck.”
“Then catch me if I fall.” The way she stood up to him—like a fierce wee pup backing down an old hound—would be his undoing. “You know I’m right,” she said.
Without another word, he set her back on her feet and pointed her in the proper direction. “I’ll be here behind ye. Proceed.”
“Look.” She held up her left hand. “My ring is red again. At least that’s good.”
“Aye.” It merely meant that the enemy hid among his people within his own keep. But he didn’t wish to worry her any more than she already was.
Rather than starting up the stairs, she eyed him, suddenly appearing ready to weep. “Morganna will be back, right? With reinforcements?”
“Of course, lass.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth: that the Fae did whatever suited them and cared less than nothing about anyone else. “She said she would. Did she not?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t known her that long, so I wasn’t sure.” She turned back to the forbidding stone steps and started climbing. “Uhm…so you said we’re legally married?”
Drummond braced himself as he followed along behind her.
What was it she really wished to know? “Aye. ’Tis an irregular marriage, since we neither spoke the vows in front of the priest nor handfasted ourselves and repeated the binding oath in the auld way, but we are man and wife—in the eyes of God and Scotland. ”
She didn’t comment. Just nodded and kept climbing.
Taking care so he wouldn’t cause her to fall, he caught hold of her by the waist and stopped her. “Why do ye ask, m’love? What fills yer voice with such darkness?”
Glancing back at him, she started chewing on her bottom lip again, then her brow wrinkled with a faint frown. “I was just wondering about the marriage stuff, and it’s been a really long, eventful day.”
It had at that, but now they had the night to restore themselves and become even stronger.
“When we reach our suite, we shall have some food and rest, aye? The servants know to bring it. Dinna fash yerself.” He stretched and brushed a chaste kiss to her cheek.
“We have the rest of our lives together.”
The way her jaw tightened told him everything he needed to know.
“I will never force ye to do anything ye dinna wish to do, Evie.” Although he prayed she wouldn’t choose to keep him at arm’s length for very long. He stroked the silk of her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I treasure ye, my own. I would never dishonor ye.”
Smiling a smile that made him feel a great deal easier, she ducked her head.
“I know you’d never force me to do anything I don’t want to do.
Yet another reason I’m glad you were the one to find me.
” Wrinkling her nose, she lifted her head, then leaned toward him and whispered, “It’s just that I’ve never been with a man before.
At least, not all the way…if you know what I’m trying to say. ”
He hardened to the point where he didn’t know if he’d be able to walk the rest of the way to their chambers. Had she never known a man’s touch? At her age? “I am honored.”
She tipped her head to one side, appearing a bit dubious. “In concept, I suppose it’s a good thing to be a virgin on my wedding night, but that also means I don’t know what to do and what not to do. I also don’t know anything about birth control in this century.”
“Birth control?” Was she saying she wanted to plan out when she had their bairns? Was it not a mite soon for that? They’d not even consummated their union. “I dinna understand.”
“Birth control.” She stared at him for a long moment as if willing him to read her thoughts and know of what she spoke. “You know—the things you do to keep from having babies?”
That pushed him back a step and made him prop both hands on either side of the winding staircase’s walls. “Ye dinna want bairns?”
She frowned. “Well, not right away. Don’t you think we need to go slow? We barely know each other, and this isn’t exactly a conventional situation. You said yourself that it was irregular.”
He felt somewhat better regarding her outlook, but still didn’t like the entire gist of it. Folks had bairns whenever God willed it to be so. “Bairns are a blessing.”
“So is a union where two people really love each other because they’ve taken the time to get to know one another.”
“What is to know? We are fated mates.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m getting so sick of those two words.” She snapped her mouth shut, and her face flashed red. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that you and Morganna throw the fated mates term around pretty freely and use it as an excuse for everything.”
“Those words are everything, lass. Ye are the other half of my soul. Now that I’ve found ye, I am complete. We both are. Not everyone is so blessed.” He motioned up the stairwell. “Come. To our private chambers, aye? We can speak of it more freely there.”
She stared down at the steps, then growled something under her breath that he couldn’t quite make out.
Gathering her skirts well above her knees, she climbed the staircase with the agility of a Highland goat, leaving him standing there staring.
When she reached the top, she turned and looked back at him with her lovely legs still revealed. “What?”
“Dinna ever do that with anyone but me, ye ken?” He didn’t mean to sound stern, but no one but himself deserved the right to see the temptation of her bare legs.
She wrinkled her nose and let her skirts drop back into place. “Sorry. It was just easier to manage the steps that way.” She shouldered open the door and eased into the hallway, glancing all around as if fearing what might lurk in the shadows.