The Laird’s French Bride #2
But it was not her dress that struck silence into the four men, nor her amused tone, nor even the sight of her rampant red-gold tresses or dark, flashing eyes. It was the white bitch standing silently at her side, the girl’s hand resting lightly atop its wide, anvil shaped skull.
She wasn’t a particularly large dog, but from her thick neck and powerful shoulders to the heavy, rounded haunches and deep chest everything about her bespoke immense power.
Dark, intelligent eyes stared unblinkingly at them from above a jaw bulging with massive muscles.
A dark teardrop-shaped mark rode beneath one eye.
Rob had seen this sort of dog before. Called an Alaunt, it was used on the battlefield, terrifying the enemy with its tenacity and ferocity.
Of late, however, he’d seen it being used in baiting, a “sport” for which Rob, as one who’d been on both sides of similarly savage and unfair matches, had no love.
Why this slip of a girl was companioned by so fierce a creature interested him. And who the bloody hell was she – aside from the obvious answer that she was kin of Jeanne’s, a fact attested to by the red hair. But as such, why would Jeanne Forbes send her lady’s maid unescorted to his castle?
“I have heard the Scots were a reticent lot, but hadn’t realized they were mutes,” the girl declared as their surprised silence dragged on. “Of course, being overheard plotting the rape of one of the king’s favourites might rob the hubris from even the most arrogant Highlander.”
Her gaze was flickering between the faces of the men silently regarding her, finally coming to rest on Francis Macalvoy’s lavishly clad figure.
Ah, Rob thought, she has been sent beforehand to report back to her mistress her impressions of Jeanne’s future husband and has decided that Francis must be the laird.
Certainly he looked the part more than Rob.
Francis liked well the nicer things of life and dressed in finery and frippery whenever the opportunity arose.
’Twas a crime that even though he wore his dun-coloured hair cut to his shoulders and scented, his face would never win a lady’s heart.
Beneath a thick beetling brow, a battleaxe had skewed an already over-sized lantern jaw permanently out of alignment and the pox had added their deep marks to his gentle, homely visage.
But whatever beauty he’d never claim about his face, Francis seemed determined to make his own in his dress.
To greet Jeanne Forbes, he’d donned a grey doublet, slashed and pinked as were his trunk hose.
His trews were a deep burgundy and the cloak suspended from his shoulder was deep green velvet lined in gold.
In contrast, Rob doubtless looked his subordinate.
He wore but a simple leine and leather waistcoat under a short coat of dark green wool and, of course, his plaid, belted at the waist. Except for his stockings and shoes, his legs were bare.
He’d caught his hair back from his face and bound it, not bothering to let it flow to his shoulders like Francis in the style his foster brother assured him was most admired at court.
Well, they weren’t at court, and best this girl reported back to her mistress that the laird of Barras was no popinjay.
“Some of us speak, lady,” Alex said, a curl on his lip.
“Though we prefer action to words. Perhaps you’d care for a demonstration?
” He leered at her as he stepped forward and Rob was about to intervene when a great, deep rumble issued from the chest of the white dog.
Alex stopped, uneasily regarding the tensed bitch who’d stood up now, her hackles raised.
“Who are you, lass? What are you doing here, unescorted and unprotected?” his uncle, Colin Frasier asked.
The girl touched the dog’s head and at once the bitch dropped to a sit.
She smiled, steel as well as humour in her gaze.
“I’m hardly unprotected, as you see. And as to who I am, I’m Joan, maid of milady’s chamber.
And as to why I’m here, I come bringing the Laird of Barras a gift from the Lady Forbes. ”
Once more her gaze flickered towards Francis who, Rob was amused to suspect, seemed to have been struck mute by the sight of a real French lady. At least French-raised. That hair was born in the Highlands and no doubt of it.
“And what would that be, Joan?” Rob asked, coming forward from where he’d stood in the back.
The girl’s gaze swept over him, widening a bit in an expression Rob could not read before a faint blush spread over her cheeks, confounding and beguiling him all at once, for he had said nothing to give rise to that sweet blush and yet once he’d seen it, it lodged in his heart, enchanting him.
Caught offguard, he shook off the sudden, intense attraction.
’Twould never do to go lusting after his bride’s companion.
He was not that sort of man and he had no intentions of becoming one.
“Well?”
In answer, the girl reached beneath her cloak and withdrew from some inner pocket a small, wriggling white creature, a pup but a few weeks old, Rob guessed.
“He’s an Alaunt,” the girl said proudly, petting the broad head of the beast beside her. “Paula here’s only whelp. Both Paula and the sire’s ancestors came from the Holy Lands, brought back with the crusaders from my … my lady’s family. I,” the girl’s eyes fell, suddenly shy, “I trained her.”
“Paula?” Alex burst out, laughing. “Ye named the bitch Paula?”
“Aye,” she said. “For the saint.”
“What sort of name is that for a baiting dog?” Alex jeered.
Joan swung towards him, her eyes flashing. “She’s no baiting dog and never will be. She’s a companion and a guardian should there be cause. But she’ll not ever spill her blood for the obscene pleasure of a bunch of drunken boys.” Her eyes flashed with contempt and disgust.
At this, Alex surged forward in fury, only to meet the immovable bulk of Rob’s massive arm. “Stay, Alex,” he murmured through clenched teeth.
His cousin needed no further instruction.
Alex was a loyal man, if not a temperate one.
He spun away from Rob, stalking to the door and shoving the girl aside as he passed, spitting down at her, “I’d keep the bitch close if I were you,” and Rob, already angry at Alex’s treatment of Jeanne Forbe’s liege woman, felt a black rage seize him.
Before he realized his own intent, he’d snatched Alex back and spun him around, gripping him around the neck and slamming him to his knees.
“By God, Alex, you go too far,” he rumbled. “If you—”
“Stay!”
Rob felt another’s hand on his shoulder.
“Leave off!”
Again he heard Francis’s urgent voice and looked up to meet his foster brother’s worried gaze over Alex’s head.
“Let him go or Joan will be forced to report to her mistress that having no foreigners to fight we fall upon each other like the very pit dogs she decries,” Francis said in a low voice. “Leave off, I say.”
Thank god for Francis’s reasoned calm, a calm for which Rob himself was usually known.
But some instinct had snapped to life at Alex’s threat and he knew that he would never allow any man to lay rough hands on the gallant girl.
With a bare nod of acquiescence, he released his hold on Alex’s throat, leaving his cousin sputtering and groping his way out the door with the aid of his amazed father.
He looked up at Joan. Her hand was clenched at her bosom, her eyes wide and frightened. Her gown’s sleeve had pulled up revealing a crescent-shaped red welt on her forearm. Rob froze.
He knew the story of that scar: a brazier filled with roasting nuts, a greedy toddler and inattentive nurse. He knew because in one of her first letters to him Jeanne Forbes had written him about her “battle scars”.
Jeanne, not Joan.
But then, Joan was simply the Scottish version of Jeanne.
She had come, Rob realized, to learn about him covertly.
If she had arrived as herself, his behaviour would be at its best and his kin and servants would keep their tongues well guarded.
But if she arrived as a simple companion, she would be more likely to learn what his servants and kinsmen thought of him.
It was, he acknowledged, a practical ploy. And a cunning game.
One that two people could play …
The dark-haired young giant moved with lethal quickness for one so large and broad-shouldered.
One moment the sneering, fair-haired Scot was growling his threat and the next he was on his knees clawing uselessly at the vise-like grip around his throat.
And then the man Jeanne took to be her intended husband – for who else but he would be wearing such princely garb?
– proved further proof of this supposition by staying the giant’s hand and sending the other two men from the room.
He was a judicious man then, neither passionate like the young giant nor violent like the other. A worthy man, then. A man who understood prudence and politics. She should be happy. Delighted. For political reasons had brought her here to this small castle to accept its laird as her husband.
She shouldn’t be surprised by his actions.
In his letters, Rob Macalduie’s commitment to a lasting peace amongst the feuding Highlanders had been framed in careful, weighted words.
His thoughtful and circumspect letters had demonstrated the statecraft that would be necessary to ensure it.
Aye, he was a statesmen in the making, was Rob Macalduie.
And it was for just that reason she had ventured on this impersonation.
For Rob Macalduie’s words had been too carefully select, too self-conscious, had sometimes made her feel that she’d revealed too much of herself in her own effusive ramblings while discovering too little about him.
She wanted to know, to really know, what sort of man she’d agreed to wed.
It was a small enough thing to insist upon.