Chapter Three
“I need for ye to make me a promise.” Mother whispered the words to Annista under the guise of leaning close and drawing her cloak up around her neck.
The morning held a stark chill, spring having yet only barely tiptoed into these northern hills and glens.
Indeed, snow still lay on the tops of the distant mountains.
Annista would have a chilly journey, if not a lengthy one. Kallan lay no great distance from home.
It might as well be half of Scotland away. Robena had come home but once, and they had visited her there only the once also.
“What is it?” She met her mother’s gaze in the uncertain light, the gloom that boded either rain or snow.
Ma leaned still closer. “Promise me ye will kill him.”
Annista clamped down hard on her rampant emotions. She’d run a whole gamut of them from doubt to anger to terror, and had settled—so she thought—into a measure of hard resolve. But now, at her mother’s words, her stomach churned with something close to panic.
She was going away to marry a man she did not want. One she was convinced had killed her sister.
She went with but one purpose.
Unflinching, she held her mother’s gaze. “Aye, I do so promise.”
“Good, good.” The words were little more than breaths in Mother’s throat, but her eyes—och, her eyes burned with near-maniacal fervor.
“And here’s an extra bit o’ encouragement for ye.
Once ye’ve killed him—and mind ye, I do no’ care how so long as ’tis bloody—ye will be a widow and can come home.
Unless,” the fervor backed off a step, “there’s a bairn ye will no’ leave behind. ”
“There will be nay bairns,” Annista said with grim resolve. “If ye suppose I will let that monster touch me—”
“Ye may have to. Sacrifices ha’ to be made on behalf o’ justice.”
“Wha’ are ye two blathering about?” Father stepped up to them, looking bored rather than curious.
He would be accompanying Annista, along with a contingent of guards—times were dangerous even this far north—and Annista’s maid, Bonnie.
To make sure Annista went through with it, no doubt, though he said he went only to bear witness and visit his old friend.
“I ha’ just been telling Annista how grateful we are to her for going to tak’ her dear sister’s place.”
For an instant, a great grief showed in Robert MacRowan’s eyes. He was not an unfeeling man at his best and, presumably, cared for his daughters if not so much as for himself.
Had he truly known what Evan MacKallan was when he’d sent Robena to him? Perhaps not the full of it. But, she reminded herself, he certainly knew what the man was now. Yet to assure his own position, he sent Annista, regardless.
Her heart hardened. She looked at her father with clear eyes in the cold morning light.
Brown hair like her own, only thinning and creeping back across his head, a truth now hidden by his bonnet. His eyes, also like hers, were hazel. Had she inherited his stubborn jaw and strong nose? She hoped not.
“Let us go.” He dismissed Annista’s feelings and his own. “Before the accursed rain starts.”
Mother embraced Annista and under cover of a supposed farewell whispered a final question. “Ye ha’ the knife?”
“Aye.”
To Annista’s great surprise and mild horror, Mother had produced the dagger, one small enough to be carried secreted around a woman’s person.
It had been given during the moments Mother had supposedly been telling Annista precisely what happened between a man and a woman in the privacy of the marriage bed.
Naught Annista did not already know. She and Robena used to laugh about it—
Robena.
Like the dagger, she must carry the memory of her sister close.
It did begin to rain shortly after they were out on the road. It made the roads, never very good, that much worse and the journey that much more miserable.
To be sure, the guards had been banished to the exterior of the coach, poor souls. Inside, no one spoke. Father seemed lost in his thoughts and Annista half hoped he would call for the coachman, Marc, to turn around, having changed his mind.
She did not want to go through with this.
Bonnie sat with her hands tightly folded in her lap, absolutely silent. Cowed by the presence of the master, no doubt. Other than an involuntary oof when a wheel hit a rut or stone in the road, or an occasional groan, the miles were passed in silence.
Before noon, the rain changed to snow and a wind came up, slowing them still farther. Father swore. No one fell asleep.
They passed through a small village that Father, speaking at last, said belonged to Kallan.
Peering out, Annista saw nothing but huddled cottages she barely remembered from her last visit, snow-covered and looking as miserable as she felt.
But she kept her nose near the window, and not long after, they turned in at a narrow drive.
The carriage slid through ruts filled with slush and slowed still more.
She’d been here before, of course. But other than finding the place dark and a bit forbidding, she’d paid very little attention, focusing on her sister and, then, her distress over Robena’s appearance. Now, Father would leave her here. Abandon her.
She sucked in a breath and leaned out between the folds of leather that covered the window.
Built of dark stone, the house retained the look of the ancient keep it had no doubt been—just like their own house back home.
From the color of the stone, she could see that the central portion was the oldest. A tower stood at each corner and out from them spread newer wings.
It was more a fortress than a home. Robena had been trapped here until her death. Annista shivered involuntarily.
“Daughter,” Father said and motioned her back into her seat.
The coach stopped. Father pushed forward, claiming the right to exit first. Then Annista, with poor, terrified Bonnie after her.
Annista never knew whether it was an omen foreshadowing the troubles to come, but she stepped out into a full-blown storm.
The snow now fell so thickly she could barely glimpse anything beyond the house itself, and the wind cast her clothing all around her.
She held to her father’s arm once he helped her down.
Someone called—a male voice—and they all hurried up a flight of stone steps so worn they dipped in the middle.
Inside, at least, the wind ceased to badger her, though it did not feel much warmer, despite a large fire burning at the far end of the room. A kind of entry hall this was—perhaps the great hall in days gone by—with a lofty ceiling and stone walls.
“Robert, my friend!”
A large man embraced Father—Neilan MacKallan, to be sure—and they slapped one another on the back like the old friends they were.
“How was your journey? No’ helped by this foul weather, I will wager. Come in, come in.”
They went up another flight of stairs, these equally worn. Above the entry hall ran a gallery open on one side, fenced by a blackened oak balustrade. There, Earl Neilan gave orders for Bonnie, along with Annista’s bags, to be taken off to her chamber. Bonnie sent Annista an agonized look and went.
Annista and her father were ushered into a chamber at the top of the stairs.
Faint warmth met Annista as she entered, not nearly enough.
When she’d been here before, the only time they’d visited Robena, it had been summer and she remembered this room as pleasant.
It did not seem so now, with snow and wind rattling the mullioned panes of the windows and a dire draft sweeping across the floor.
Annista could scarce make herself step in.
A woman waited there—Lady MacKallan it was. No one else.
Annista’s beleaguered nerves eased just a mite. A swift sweep of the chamber assured her that nay, Evan was not there. Lady MacKallan hurried forward to greet them.
A pretty woman she was, her red hair well streaked by silver and her brown eyes soft. Something quick and clever hovered in her face.
She seized both Annista’s hands. “Come in, come in, my dear. My, how cold ye be! Come nearer to the fire.”
Annista did so, stepping carefully across the worn wooden floor. The fire, in a large hearth, struggled to burn.
“We are so grateful ye ha’ come.”
Annista looked up to meet Mistress MacKallan’s eyes once again.
“I wished to tell ye—I am grieved over your sister’s death. Sorry for your loss.”
Then why did ye fail to help her? Annista ached to speak those words, to shout them. Why did ye no’ protect her from the beast she was forced to wed?
The same Annista must marry now.
The woman had been right here. She must have seen what was happening to Robena.
Annista did not speak the words, but Lady MacKallan might well have seen the reflection of them in her eyes, for her gaze dropped.
“The alliance between our two houses is very important,” she said more loudly. “To all of us.”
As was providing to Evan MacKallan what he deserved.
“Here, let me tak’ your cloak. Tillie,” she called to a servant who hurried in. “Mak’ sure Mistress Annista’s wraps are dried. And her shoes—”
“I will keep my shoes, thank ye.”
Father and Earl MacKallan still stood near the door, in a clutch, talking furiously.
A man stepped into the chamber and diverted his steps around them.
Still not Evan. Annista narrowed her gaze and attempted to identify him. Tall he was, and very dark-headed, nothing like Evan, in fact. There had been a brother, a younger brother whom she recalled but dimly from their visit. Could this be him?
Indeed, he wore clothing that might well dub him a son of the house, a dark blue cotte over a white shirt and dark trousers. His gaze, which from a distance also appeared dark, fixed upon Annista and did not waver.
“Ah,” said Lady MacKallan. “Annista, my dear, ye will remember my son—my other son, Alan.”
“Aye,” Annista said though any such remembrance was foggy at best. Surely she’d glimpsed him when they visited here last, but she seemed to think he had involved himself in no activities and gone off as often as possible.
She, being focused on Robena and their limited time together, had neglected to notice him.
She could not help but notice now. A fine-looking man was Master Alan MacKallan—if one liked the dark and brooding type. Which Annista just happened to.
That thought made itself felt as he stepped forward into the light, providing the warmth that the fire failed to do.
He looked nothing like his brother—save perhaps with that height and the breadth of his shoulders.
Even then, Evan, as she recalled him, had a bulkier build, like a red bear.
This man, in his fine clothing, appeared slim, and strong as tempered steel.
He must take after his father, that she could see in one glance, but his face looked far more angular than that of his sire. A strong nose and a pair of eyes set under soaring brows, and that fall of black hair that framed it all…
Annista eyed him with considerable distrust and little liking. She did not suppose he had lifted a hand to help her sister either.
All these here, and her sister dead.
She gave Alan MacKallan a hard nod.
He bowed to her, not so much as a flicker of a smile touching his face. “Mistress MacRowan. Alan MacKallan, at your service.”
And where was her bridegroom? Annista glanced around the solar and toward the door where the two men still spoke together. She almost missed the words Lady MacKallan spoke.
“My son, Alan, wi’ whom ye are to wed.”