The Winds of Change
The chamber door opened a crack, enough for the scullery maid posted as guard to hiss, “He’s coming!”
Alec Montgomery groaned. The buxom brunette wriggling in his muscled arms stiffened, tearing her lips from his with a moan of marked reluctance.
“Ye must go!” the woman swimming before his eyes gasped breathlessly. “My father canna find ye here, Alec. He’ll run ye through!”
“’Twould be worth it,” he murmured, quirking his carved lips into a smile before planting a trail of heated kisses along the curve of her neck.
“Ach, but your bonny green eyes are a sin,” she panted, dragging her bottom lip over the small cleft in the middle of his chin.
Trailing her fingers over his tanned, toned chest, she added, “So braw, so handsome. And your hair!” She grabbed fistfuls of his thick, chestnut-colored hair and yanked his head back before proceeding to kiss him harder in a frantic frenzy of lust.
Again, the maid hissed, “Hurry now! He’s already set foot on the stair!”
The woman reluctantly pulled out of his embrace. “Aye, ye must leave, Alec.”
“Ach, Maude,” he protested, slurring the name.
A sharp slap stung his cheek.
Startled, he peered down the lengths of his aristocratic, high-bridged nose and forced his eyes to focus on the silversmith’s daughter balanced upon his knee.
“Maude?” the brunette repeated, outraged.
“I’m Sheila MacGregor, ye daft fool, and I’m of a mind to teach ye a lesson now, eh?
” She didn’t waste a moment pondering the matter.
Hastily tugging her violet gown back over her shoulders, she ran to the door and bellowed, “Da! Da! Come quick, there’s a drunken sot here in me chamber! ”
Alec staggered up, the floor lurching beneath his feet like the deck of a ship. He winced. He should’ve stayed at the inn with his cousin—and he should’ve turned down that last round of whisky.
“Make haste, Da, afore he hies away!” Sheila insisted spitefully from the door.
“Aye, but you’re a cruel one,” Alec snorted, weaving a bit. No matter how pleasingly plump she filled a gown, he should’ve known, drunk or no, it was daft to dally with a MacGregor.
The scullery maid ran up to him, a small wiry lass reminding him of a wet bird.
Grabbing Alec’s linen shirt off the floor along the way, she shoved him towards the window.
For such a wee thing, she was surprisingly strong.
“Jump,” she urged, yanking the shutters open as Sheila’s voice rose an octave.
“Jump afore ye lose your head, ye green-eyed fool.”
If he hadn’t been drunk, his good sense would have asserted itself.
He wouldn’t have jumped from the second floor—without looking first, anyway.
It was a narrow miss. His shoulder grazed a stack of wooden crates as he fell into the freshly mulched herb garden below.
Grinning, he rolled, sprung to his feet, and glanced up at the maid leaning out of the window above.
“Lady Luck is watching over ye,” she called down, smiling in open relief. “But dinna forget this.”
He watched his linen shirt float down to pool gracefully at his feet. With a chuckle, he adjusted his plaid and blew her a kiss. “Thank ye kindly, Anna.”
Disappointment wrinkled her brow, but she giggled anyway. “I’m Elspeth, and I’ve told ye that twelve times or more.”
With an unapologetic twinkle in his jade-green eyes, he executed a fine bow. “’Tis your beauty that makes me forget, lass. You’re as bonny as a summer’s rose.”
She giggled again.
The deep baritone of Sheila’s father roared from above, signaling Alec’s time was done.
Spying a rain barrel nearby, he quickly dunked his head into the water.
The jarring cold jolted his awareness remarkably and shaking his wet hair, he sprinted down the village lane in a half-skipping kind of run, shrugging into his shirt along the way.
The late autumn afternoon was a chill one, promising to clear his mind even more before reaching his cousin, Taran, at the inn.
Hopping over a low stone fence, he took a shortcut through several garden plots to burst back onto Stoneywood’s main road.
He nearly flattened a woman twisting the ear of her son and berating the lad for his forgetfulness.
Directing a wordless apology at the mother and a commiserating grin at the son, he darted down the narrow alley and slipped into the back entrance of the inn, a vine-covered establishment bearing the honorable name of “The Three Lions”.
Winking his way through the bustling kitchen, he dashed up the creaking stairs to the small room they’d been assigned upon their arrival.
Alec paused before the door, hand hovering over the latch.
His lip twisted in a wry grin. If Lady Luck truly favored him, Taran would be downstairs in the common room, glowering at its occupants instead of waiting for his younger, wayward cousin’s return.
But then, it didn’t matter. Not really. No one truly cared what he did—not even he himself.
Half chuckling, he opened the door.
There, before a newly laid fire, sprawled the heir to the Mackenzie of Leod, Alexander Taran Mackenzie—the embodiment of scorn itself.
Long, dark hair fell over his broad shoulders, and muscled arms draped loosely across his long, lean thighs.
One hand cradled a finely crafted dirk with silver inlay.
With is hard blue eyes shut, Alec would have thought him asleep if it had not been for the firm line of his clenched jaw—and the minute twitch of a finger upon the hilt of his dirk.
Without moving, the highlander grunted, “And when shall I expect the pounding of an irate father or husband upon our door?”
Alec grinned, sauntering over to lean lazily against the mantle. “The smith willna come,” he replied, hooking a casual thumb into his belt. “Robert’s dropped many a coin there that he might bedeck his greedy lady’s hand.”
“’Tis unseemly to speak of your brother’s lawful wife in such a fashion,” Taran chided, but without rancor.
Neither man approved of Robert Montgomery’s marriage to Margaret Cunningham, an alliance forged by the king to end the feud that had lasted almost one hundred years.
Aiming to improve clan relations, his majesty had ordered a household of Cunninghams to accompany the bride to the Montgomery earl’s lands, to reside with her there at his many castles.
But after two years, little trust had been fostered between the clans—and outside the earl’s castle walls, anger at the king’s interference had only worsened the feud, giving rise to rumors of pending treachery.
“She’s a Cunningham first,” Alec mused, more serious than he was wont to be. “And ‘tis well believed they’re stirring up some horrendous plot, aye? I wouldna ride through Cunningham lands myself now, not even to call upon the Cunningham of Glencairn himself. The king erred, ‘tis plain to see.”
“And so says every Montgomery,” Taran said then, finally opening his blue eyes.
“Ach, but are ye not one of us?” Alec laughed lightly. “By half?”
“My Mackenzie blood allows room for naught else,” Taran grunted. Arching a brow of frank disapproval, he switched subjects by adding, “’Tis time ye yourself wed, Alec.”
Alec laughed. “And where’s the need?” he asked.
“Robert’s the heir. I’m simply the spare.
” With the last word, his laugh took on a bitter cast. Taran didn’t miss it.
Alec forced himself to grin wider and fake a yawn.
He’d never been truly needed in his family.
Or relied upon. Or wanted. There were a handful of brothers even younger than himself—spares for the spare.
Now that Robert had inherited the earldom and had safely wed, the lot of them were little more than inconveniences.
“If my mother has her way, I’ll be entering Holy Orders soon,” he added, snorting a little.
The thought of Alec living the celibate life of a priest made even his irascible cousin’s lip twitch in momentary amusement, but then the man’s dark brows twisted into a scowl. “Ye shouldna speak of the Montgomery birthright with such disrespect,” he objected.
“’Twas never my birthright,” Alec replied with a flippant shrug.
“And soon, Robert will father his heir, aye?” The words scarcely left his lips before his mood soured.
Aye. The next Montgomery chieftain would hold the ancient seat of the clan with Cunningham blood sullying his veins.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought. They could well use it to gain Montgomery lands. Why had the king interfered?
Taran grunted.
A loud banging on the door caused them both to jerk in surprise.
Rising swiftly, Taran half-unsheathed his dagger and growled, “I thought ye said the man wouldna come. Ach now, why did ye return this night?”
“Mayhap I missed the sweet dulcet tones of your voice,” Alec quipped in a light, distracted tone.
“And mayhap I cherish the sound of silence,” Taran countered darkly. Striding to the door, he challenged, “Who goes there? Answer, and right quickly!”
“Open the door, Taran Mackenzie, or I swear I’ll have your head on a pike,” Robert’s distinctive gravelly tones responded through the weathered oak.
Taran relaxed at once and threw the door open as Alec joined to greet his elder brother with a roar of delight and a hearty clap on the shoulder.
Robert Montgomery, the Earl of Eglinton, shared the same moss-green eyes as his younger brother, along with the cleft in the center of the chin, but he was shorter, darker of hair, broader of shoulder and built like an ox.
Dropping a mud-spattered cloak on the floor, he exchanged greetings before insisting they all join him in the common room below for a pork-currant pie and a bottle of wine.
“’Tis fortunate I found ye here,” the earl said as they descended the groaning, wooden stairs.
“Fortunate?” Alec snorted in mock contempt. “Ye ordered me to Stirling, Robert, and there’s only the one road in these parts.”