May 1498
Kinlochleven Castle
Western Highlands
Surveying the formidable forty-foot stone wall, Fearchar grinned mirthlessly. “Welcome to your new home, laird.”
Rory’s scowl deepened. “And ’tis a damn strange feeling I’ve got about it.”
If he’d hoped to find festive banners and a joyous celebration to welcome Kinlochleven’s future laird to his castle, Rory would have been sorely disappointed. Not given to flights of fancy, he rode across the lowered drawbridge with a wary gaze on the ramparts overhead and his hand on his sword hilt.
The lack of resistance made him edgy.
An heiress’s fortune wasn’t a prize easily relinquished to a foe, and he hadn’t expected the Macdonalds to submit to the king’s decision without a fight. He’d brought along fifty of his kinsmen, armed and ready for battle, in the event he’d have to force his way into the fortress. If a long siege was required, he would send to his uncle’s castle in Appin for reinforcements.
Damn it to hell, marrying into a nest of treasonous vipers hadn’t been his idea. The preposterous scheme to bring the Glencoe Macdonalds peaceably under the authority of the Scottish Crown had been hatched by James IV.
Once through the arched gateway and inside the eight-foot-thick sandstone walls, Fearchar seemed to feel the same disquiet. His gaze moved constantly about, skimming the outer bailey for any sign of a trap.
But the inhabitants of Kinlochleven barely looked up from their tasks at the large party of horsemen. The blacksmith continued to swing his hammer, his brawny apprentice beside him at the fire. A cooper sauntered leisurely across the grassy courtyard with an ale barrel perched on his shoulder. Two dairymaids ducked into a barn with frightened backward glances, as though sighting Satan and his legions on Judgment Day. From the bakehouse, the tantalizing aroma of fresh, warm bread lingered on the still air.
Not a blasted soul offered a word in greeting.
At Rory’s signal, his men dismounted and followed him into the keep’s dim vestibule, where a man in his early sixties, with thinning brown hair and stooped shoulders, appeared to be waiting for their arrival. He rose from a carved bench the moment he saw them. The fellow suffered from what appeared to be an old leg injury and moved with an obvious limp.
“I’m Kinlochleven’s bailiff, David Ogilvy,” he told Rory as he inclined his head in a brief salute. His gaze quickly assessed their strength, and his bristly brows met in a frown over his slightly protruding eyes. “Please follow me, laird.”
With a brusque nod, Rory motioned for Ogilvy to proceed. The bailiff led them with a slow, shuffling gait up a flight of stone stairs to the castle’s upper hall, where the Macdonalds stood waiting in small groups, their weapons sheathed. About twenty were men-at-arms, the rest, castle retainers along with a handful of menservants. A thin, ascetic priest stood at the edge of the gathering, his hand on the shoulder of a dirty-faced lad.
Brilliant colors adorned the vaulted timber ceiling; rich tapestries covered the walls. Ornately carved cupboards held silver tankards and jewel-encrusted plates. Even the floor boasted thick carpets from the Levant, as glorious as any made for an Ottoman’s harem.
To a man used to the spartan furnishings of a ship, the magnificent display of household comforts in a Scottish castle should have been a pleasant surprise. But the setting’s opulence only increased Rory’s uneasiness. Anything this fine had to come at an exorbitant price. And as the new laird of Kinlochleven, he wasn’t about to pay with his own blood—or that of his kinsmen.
With a flick of his hand, he signaled his men to be prepared for an attack from all sides.
At the far end of the hall, a middle-aged lady in a gold-trimmed black headdress sat waiting, her embroidery on her lap. She shifted nervously in her chair as they approached. Standing next to her, a maiden about the age of Rory’s bride-to-be cradled a plump white cat in her arms.
“Laird MacLean,” the woman said before they’d quite reached her, “welcome to Kinlochleven Castle. I am Lady Beatrix, Lady Joanna’s cousin.” Without offering her hand for his salute, she added briskly, “I’m sorry that my husband isn’t here to greet you. The king’s letter arrived only yesterday, and Laird Ewen remains at Mingarry Castle, unaware of the proposed alliance.”
As Rory inclined his head in curt acknowledgment of the chilly greeting, he studied the younger female from the corner of his eye. The king had told him the heiress favored her notorious grandfather. Her large nose, square body, and frizzled hair made the resemblance to Somerled Macdonald unmistakable.
Having no lands of his own to bring into the marriage, he was scarcely in a position to quibble about the lassie’s face and form. But somewhere in the back of his mind, Rory had always hoped his future bride—chosen for prudent reasons, of course—would be easy to gaze upon.
His wife-to-be’s English blood was another disappointment. Her father, Alasdair Macdonald, had married Lady Anne Neville, whom he’d met in London while trying to enlist the aide of Edward IV against the former King of Scotland, James’s father. And the lass herself had spent half her life in Cumberland. So now Rory was forced to mate with the offspring of a traitorous devil and a Sassenach witch.
But here he was, at Kinlochleven—the dutiful future bridegroom—ready to present his gifts to the bride-to-be.
Hell, he hadn’t come expecting a bonny lassie, any more than he’d expected a festive welcome. Rory glanced up at the resplendent ceiling. For a castle such as this, most men would gladly marry a toothless hag. Determined to get the worst over, he turned to greet the heiress.
“Laird MacLean, this is my daughter, Lady Idoine,” Beatrix said.
For the first time since he’d entered Kinlochleven, Rory smiled. “Milady,” he said warmly.
Idoine froze beneath his gaze. In her obvious fright, she squeezed the cat, and the outraged pet scratched her hand and leaped down. “Ouch!” she squawked, kicking out at the scurrying ball of fur with the toe of her silken slipper. Her lumpy features darkened in a sullen glower as she watched the feline scamper across the hall and out the door to freedom.
With a sense of relief, Rory looked about the room filled with men and boys. “And the Lady Joanna?”
“My cousin isn’t here,” Beatrix answered brightly.
“Not here?” His gaze snapped back to the woman. “You said you received the king’s letter yesterday. I expected the maid to be waiting to welcome her future husband.”
Beatrix’s eyes glittered suspiciously beneath his glare. Twin spots of scarlet stained her cheeks. “And s-so she should be, laird,” she replied, her voice high-pitched and quivering, “b-but I’m afraid that’s not so. When the contents of the letter were read to Joanna, she immediately disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
Beatrix looked to her daughter for verification, and Idoine nodded vigorously. “She’s gone, laird.”
Rory stepped closer to tower over the two cringing females. “Just where did Lady Joanna go? Mingarry Castle?”
“I have no knowledge of my cousin’s whereabouts,” Beatrix answered with a nervous flutter of her ringed fingers. Her embroidery hoop slid to the ground, and she reached down to retrieve it, then reluctantly met his gaze once again. “We searched everywhere for her, once we discovered her missing. But when the lass is upset she frequently vanishes without an explanation, only to be found later, wandering about the forest or glen in a daze.” Beatrix touched the middle of her forehead with the tip of one shaky finger. “Joanna’s a little slow. I’m sure His Majesty warned you about that.”
“I was given no such warning,” Rory growled.
Directly behind him, Fearchar moved restlessly. “Shall we search the castle?”
“Oh, please do!” Beatrix exclaimed. “I worry about the poor dear when she’s missing like this. Sometimes we can’t find her for days—till she’s half-starved and caked with dirt. She’s as helpless as a child, you know, without someone to care for her.”
Rory drew his sword with an oath. His men immediately followed his lead, showing the steel of their broadswords and dirks. He turned to face Lady Joanna’s kinsmen, and his words rang out in the still hall. “I am The MacLean. By order of His Majesty, King James of Scotland, this fortress now belongs to me, as does all the property and goods of my future wife.”
The Macdonalds watched him with sullen faces, but made no attempt to draw their swords. Clan MacLean’s reputation for savagery in battle was known throughout Scotland. The hall’s fancy carpets would be soaked with Macdonald blood should they try to resist.
“Take their weapons,” Rory ordered. “Then search all the buildings within the castle walls. I want every blasted female in Kinlochleven brought to this chamber at once.”
The women and girls spilled into the upper hall from all directions, like a flock of sheep driven before a pack of hungry wolves. Clearly terrified of the large, ferocious MacLeans, many buried their faces in their aprons and wept. Others held the hands of the frightened children they’d brought with them, or drew the halflins close to their skirts with maternal protectiveness.
“Line them up,” Rory said as he jammed his sword back into the scabbard.
Hands locked behind his back, he marched up and down the rows of females, searching for a lass of about seventeen with the beak nose and grizzled locks of the Red Wolf—and the empty eyes of a simpleton.
They came in every shape and size. Tall, thin household servants with pursed lips and pointy chins. A cook and her daughter, both round as haystacks. Middle-aged women who sewed and bleached linen. Dimple-cheeked dairymaids whose work-roughened hands proved their occupation. Hook-nosed crones who did the spinning and weaving. And fresh-faced lassies with long braids and freckles who tended the ducks and geese.
Rory stopped and asked each her name and position in the household. Most of them were bawling so hard, he couldn’t understand a word they said. When he asked them to repeat their answers, they averted their eyes, as though addressing a fiend from hell.
“Jesu,” he muttered to Fearchar, “I’ve never seen such a gaggle of puling, timid-hearted wenches. All this wailing is enough to unnerve a man.”
“’Tis true,” his cousin replied, his teeth flashing in a cheery grin. “Ten of them together wouldn’t equal one MacLean woman in her dotage.”
’Twas easy to see that not one of them could be the mistress of this splendid castle. The king had told Rory that the future bride’s maternal grandparents were the Marquess and Marchioness of Allonby, and along with her aunt, she was their co-heiress. As part of her inheritance, Lady Joanna had been awarded Allonby Castle in Cumberland. Dull-witted or not, Lady Joanna would have all the haughty pretentiousness ingrained in the Sassenach nobility.
“This is all of them?” he asked Fearchar, who nodded glumly.
Rory strode back to where Idoine stood clutching her mother’s arm and studied her. Of average height, the coarse-featured young woman looked to be about nineteen, but she could be younger. Her stubby fingers showed no sign of toil, and the gown she wore was rich, its red velvet sleeves and ermine trim fit for the wardrobe of a queen.
Beneath his inspection, Idoine broke into a nervous, high-pitched giggle. She clapped both hands over her mouth, and her watery blue eyes glistened with fear.
His hopes sinking, Rory realized that Lady Idoine was the only female in the castle of the right age and rank. And she clearly resembled the Red Wolf of Glencoe.
Yet the obviousness of such a trick made him cautious.
There’d be no righting the error, should he wed the wrong lady at his own insistence. Once having taken the maiden to bed, he might be obliged to honor the marriage contract, regardless of her true identity. The girl’s real terror would be understandable, considering his anger if he found out later that he’d been deceived.
Rory reached a quick decision. Since his future bride’s kinsmen thought of him as a fiend from hell, he’d act like one. He caught hold of a child about two years of age and dragged him out of his mother’s arms. The woman let out a startled yelp, then covered her mouth to smother her cry, lest she frighten the wean.
Drawing his dirk, Rory brandished it near the innocent head. “If Lady Joanna doesn’t reveal herself at once, the laddie dies,” he told the shocked assemblage. He repeated the threat in English, uncertain if the Maid of Glencoe could understand her native Gaelic after so many years in Cumberland with her Sassenach relatives. Surely, if she were listening from a place of concealment, she’d now give herself up.
Though Fearchar must have been as stunned by Rory’s brutal announcement as the rest of their men, he calmly folded his arms and stared straight ahead of him. From the look of boredom on the giant’s face, with its scars and sinister black patch, it appeared as if the two of them habitually hacked up wee bairns for the sheer pleasure of it.
The other MacLeans held their tongues as well. Rory had purposely chosen a laddie so young, he wouldn’t understand what was being said, nor have dreadful memories to haunt him.
An agonized silence descended on the hall, broken only by the muffled sobs of the frightened mother. Motionless, the Macdonalds gaped at him. Every violent tale they’d ever heard about the King’s Avenger must have rattled through their empty brains.
For a long, torturous moment, no one spoke. Then at the back of the hall, a bedraggled serving lad stepped forward from his place beside the priest. His cheeks covered with soot, his deep blue eyes wide with fright, he held out one dirty hand in a pathetic bid for mercy. He opened his mouth to speak, but appeared too terrified to form the words.
“Wait!” Beatrix shrieked. “Wait! I’ll tell you the truth. Don’t harm the baby.”
Rory swung his gaze back to the frantic woman. Beatrix caught her daughter’s arm and dragged the struggling girl to where he stood in the center of the hall. “This is the Lady Joanna,” she declared breathlessly. “My daughter, Idoine, remained at Mingarry Castle with her father.”
Rory handed the child back to its mother and nodded in dismissal.
Joanna slumped against Father Thomas’s side, her heart beating a painful tattoo against her breastbone. Disguised as a serving lad in a frayed plaid, ragged shirt, and torn stockings, with a knit cap pulled down over her ears to cover her hair, she watched The MacLean with morbid fascination. She’d had no idea he’d be so stalwart and virile. But then her tutors had warned her that even Lucifer had been beautiful before his fall.
Well over six feet, MacLean soared above her kinsmen. All of the MacLeans were large and fearsome, but their chief exuded an almost diabolical power. And though fortune had blessed the Sea Dragon with golden hair and piercing green eyes, he was as cunning and ruthless as everyone had warned her.
Joanna had been certain he’d fall for their trick and hurry off to Mingarry Castle in search of the missing heiress. After reading the king’s letter yesterday morning, commanding her to marry the chief of the MacLeans, her shock had quickly turned to indignation.
“You are wondering why I invited you to my chamber this morning,” she’d said, meeting the curious gazes of her loved ones. Holding the missive between the tips of two fingers, as though it were a loathsome insect she’d just removed from the hem of her gown, she shook the vellum, and the sheets rattled portentously. “This is why.”
Seated on a large chest at the end of Joanna’s bed, Beatrix and Idoine had watched her with hands folded neatly in their laps. Father Thomas stood on one side of them, Joanna’s former nurse and present companion, Maude Beaton, on the other.
“This missive is from the king,” Joanna had explained. “The very villain who made me his ward after hanging my grandfather on false charges of murder and treason. James Stewart writes to inform me that he’s chosen my bridegroom.”
“Oh, dear God!” Beatrix cried, wringing her hands. “This can’t be! You’re to marry Andrew, my dear—though it will take time to arrange for permission from Rome.”
“She can’t marry my brother,” Idoine stated with a careless shrug. “Not if the king says otherwise.”
Beatrix shot her daughter a furious look. At eighteen, Idoine resented the fact that, in spite of her advanced age, her parents hadn’t found her a husband before arranging her younger sibling’s marriage.
Joanna’s cousin, Ewen Macdonald, planned to wed the clan’s new chieftain and heiress to his sixteen-year-old son Andrew. But the future bride and groom were too closely related according to canon law, and a papal dispensation had to be obtained before the nuptials could take place.
“I won’t marry as the king decrees,” Joanna had stated. She ripped the pages in half before their astonished eyes, then ripped them again for good measure. “I shall throw myself from the top of the battlements before I do.”
“Whom has the king chosen for your husband, milady?” Father Thomas asked kindly. Like the others at the castle, he’d known Joanna as a small child—before she’d left for Cumberland with her mother at the age of seven. He didn’t seem the least alarmed at either the treasonous gesture or the heroic threat of self-immolation.
Joanna dropped the torn sheets to the floor and ground the pieces under her heel. “According to this letter, I am to marry the vile, wretched, blackhearted, pig-faced lout who captured my innocent grandfather and delivered him to his executioners.”
Beatrix gasped. She jumped up from the chest, her hands clasped to her breast, her face drained of color.
“God’s truth, you’ve the right of it,” Joanna said, somewhat mollified by their looks of horror. “I am betrothed to none other than the vicious, salacious, perverted chief of Clan MacLean.”
“Dear Lord, save us all,” Maude muttered under her breath. She quickly made the sign of the cross, then withdrew the holy medal of St. Maelrubha from under her bodice and kissed it fervently.
Idoine stared at Joanna in stupefaction. Suddenly a sparkle of joy flared in her narrowed eyes, and Joanna knew exactly what her cousin was thinking: Thank God, it isn’t me.
Beatrix finally found her voice. “All our plans are ruined!” she wailed.
His thin face creased with concern for Joanna, Father Thomas shook his head. “How could the king betroth you to our ancient foe?”
Joanna snapped her fingers. “As easily as he made me his ward against my wishes.”
“You’ll have a husband with a tail,” Idoine said with a gleeful smirk. She smoothed the velvet on her sleeve, her thick fingers caressing the soft blue material with lingering satisfaction.
“Hush!” Maude told her sharply. “My lady is upset enough. Don’t make matters worse.”
Joanna flung her arms wide in exasperation. “Oh, don’t try to hide the truth from me. What Idoine said is certainly no secret: I know very well what’s hidden beneath that contemptible fiend’s plaid.”
For every Macdonald child had heard the tale of how the MacLeans were once evil sea dragons, who’d changed to human form and come to the coasts of Scotland from the north in long ships with dragon heads at their prows, sacking and pillaging remorselessly. The shocking story was told by firelight that every MacLean chief was born with a dragon’s scaly tail, which was clipped at birth so its stub could be concealed beneath his plaid. It was why, even now, the chief of their wicked clan bore the name of Sea Dragon.
Joanna had paced back and forth, trying desperately to think of a solution. As the heiress of two great families, she’d been taught that she must marry whomever was chosen for her. The chivalrous knights in the English ballads sung by the troubadours were only figments of her imagination.
This was real.
As real as that terrible day last spring when Somerled Macdonald stood on the gallows in Edinburgh. Joanna despised James Stewart. But even more than her grandfather’s murderer, she loathed the hellhound who’d captured him and turned him over for execution.
“What will you do, milady?” Maude asked. She crossed her arms and waited with staid resignation. As always, Joanna’s companion was her usual down-to-earth self, the one rock of stability in her charge’s otherwise unpredictable life.
“Somehow, I must gain time. I must delay my marriage to The MacLean until the dispensation comes from Rome.”
Idoine straightened the silk cap perched on the back of her head, then coyly twined one wiry brown curl around her finger. “To openly defy the king’s orders would be treason,” she reminded her cousin.
“Then I’ll have to do it secretly,” Joanna declared.
“Why not try hiding in the secret staircase?” Beatrix urged. “’Tis cleverly concealed.”
The stairwell had been built by one of Joanna’s ancestors for reasons no one could now explain. Its entrance was a false back in a large service cupboard in the laundry room, and the stairs led to a movable wall of oak paneling in one of the private chambers on the third floor. Joanna and her cousins had played in the staircase as small children, but it’d been many years since anyone had used it.
Joanna considered the idea for a moment, then shook her head. “’Tis possible The MacLean might discover it, and then I’d be trapped.” She stared down at the rug, pondering her limited choices. “But if he thinks I’ve already escaped to Mingarry,” she continued, half to herself, “he’d likely ride off after me on a fool’s errand.” She turned to Father Thomas and clasped his arm. “Ask everyone in the castle to gather in the great hall at once.”
The priest frowned. “What are you thinking, my child?”
“I have a plan, Father. But everyone in Kinlochleven, from the youngest bairn to the eldest grandfather, must help to carry it off. If but one soul betrays me, I’m lost. I’ll either be hanged as a traitor for disobeying the king, or I’ll be forced to marry The MacLean.”
“I’d rather be hanged,” Idoine had offered cheerfully.
Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Joanna stared at the very personification of wickedness now standing in the middle of her hall. The look of dismay on his face as he gazed at Idoine was enough to make a corpse snicker. MacLean clearly believed Joanna’s cousin was his promised bride. And from the grimace contorting his sharp features, the idea must taste like gall on that forked dragon’s tongue of his.
“This is the Lady Joanna,” Beatrix repeated, holding Idoine tight to keep her from bolting. “She is your affianced bride.”
“’Tisn’t true! ’Tisn’t true!” Idoine bawled, nearly hysterical at the thought of being forced to marry the ferocious man. “I’m not Joanna.” She tried to pull away, but her mother shoved her toward The MacLean.
Sarah Colson, the bairn’s mama, took the opportunity offered by the commotion to disappear from the hall while MacLean’s eyes were fastened on the sobbing female in front of him.
“Be still, you ungrateful wretch!” Beatrix snapped. “Would you have him murder the wee laddie, just to save yourself from an unwanted marriage?” She pinched Idoine’s earlobe, and the girl howled in pain and humiliation.
Rubbing her injured ear, Idoine looked about the room as her eyes pooled with tears. “T-tell him,” she implored her clansmen. “T-tell him I’m n-not the heiress he seeks. Tell him I’m n-not the M-Maid of Glencoe.”
No one moved.
Not by a twitch of an eyelid did a single Macdonald give away the truth.
But the look of desperation in her cousin’s eyes melted Joanna’s resolve the way The MacLean never could have—even if he tortured her on the rack or chained her in his dungeon with only moldy bread and brackish water to eat for the rest of her woesome days.
Although Beatrix was willing to sacrifice her own daughter to save her niece for Andrew, Joanna couldn’t allow Idoine to suffer the hideous fate that had been meant for her, and her alone.
Still, a shaft of pure terror struck Joanna’s chest at the thought of revealing her true identity. Like St. Agnes and St. Catrìona, she’d rather be a virgin martyr, willingly tied to a stake and riddled with a thousand arrows by her heinous foe rather than marrying him.
Joanna prayed she wouldn’t bring shame on the ancient and honorable name of Macdonald. More than anything, she wanted her father’s clansmen, once mighty Lords of the Isles, to be proud of her.
She was a Macdonald.
She was courageous.
She was invincible.
She was scared to death.
In an agonizing moment of self-revelation, Joanna realized she’d rather be given to Beelzebub himself than surrender to the perfidious, diabolical, dragon-tailed MacLean.
As she started to step forward, Father Thomas caught her hand. “Wait,” he said under his breath. “Let’s see what happens.”
MacLean had the ears of a fox. He caught the hushed sound of the cleric’s voice and turned his head to stare at them thoughtfully. He studied Joanna for what seemed like an eternity, then suddenly a light flared in his eyes. “Priest,” he called, “fetch a holy relic from the chapel and bring it here.”
Father Thomas left at once and quickly returned with the finger bone of St. Duthan enclosed in a small gold case. It was the chapel’s most sacred relic, having been safeguarded by the Glencoe Macdonalds since the battle of Bannockburn.
“Open the box,” MacLean commanded. When Father Thomas had done so, the tall warrior nodded to Idoine. “Now place your hand on the relic and swear by its saint that you are not Lady Joanna.”
Choking back her sobs, Idoine gulped, then swallowed noisily. She looked at her mother with pleading eyes and her chin trembled.
A hush came over the chamber.
Even the angels painted on the ceiling seemed to hold their breath.
Beatrix narrowed her eyes and glowered at her daughter in wordless warning. A shudder shook Idoine and her gaze flicked to Joanna, then darted back to the powerful man in front of her.
What Joanna saw in her cousin’s eyes in that brief second told her all she needed to know, and she offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Idoine had no intention of throwing herself on the sword for the sake of her brother’s marriage to an heiress.
“Do it,” MacLean ordered grimly. “Swear on this holy relic that you are not the Maid of Glencoe.”
Her hand shaking, Idoine placed two fingertips on the bone. “I swear,” she whispered, “I swear I am not the Maid of Glencoe. By the sacred finger of St. Duthan, I swear that I am not Lady Joanna Macdonald.”
The merest hint of a smile flickered across the Sea Dragon’s lips. “I don’t believe you,” he said softly. “Only a Macdonald would swear to a falsehood on the bone of a saint.”
In the upper hall’s candlelight, the earring in his ear glittered the same emerald green as his eyes, gleaming now in satisfaction. Joanna peeped at him from lowered lashes, unable to understand the strange feelings that swam through her insides, like trout darting about in a stream.
Godsakes, he had the most arresting mouth.
And his intelligent eyes, crinkled at the corners from the sun and wind, promised a quick and lively wit.
But then—she reminded herself sternly for the second time—even Lucifer had been beautiful before his fall.
She would have to continue to deceive The MacLean for as long as it took for Ewen to come and rescue both her and Idoine.
Rory sheathed his dirk and turned to survey the Macdonalds, fully aware of the trick they’d attempted to play on him. Lady Idoine had spoken the truth; the honest terror in her eyes was unmistakable. And he’d seen the frantic glance she’d cast the serving lad—who was no lad, at all, but a lassie. He’d wager his life on that. Christ, did they think he wouldn’t notice the long curving lashes or the clear, creamy skin beneath the dirt stains on her cheeks? The lass was a peach, whoever she was.
As the supposed lad stared at the toes of his scuffed brogues, Rory noted the delicate features beneath the striped stocking cap that hid every strand of hair, the long, curving russet lashes—lowered now to hide the startling blue eyes—the arched brows, the graceful hands. Could this be the missing heiress?
The idea that this slim lass, barely over five feet, resembled the mighty Somerled Macdonald seemed preposterous. Then Rory remembered the gray-haired man’s indigo eyes—eyes the deepest blue he’d ever seen.
Eyes exactly like this dirty-faced urchin’s.
And the fierce chieftain had been named the Red Wolf in his youth because of his head of coppery hair.
The astonishing—nigh unbelievable—possibility that Lady Joanna might be attempting to hide right under his nose stunned Rory. If it were true, everyone in the whole damned castle had taken part in the deception. Once again, he looked around the great hall.
Could it be possible?
Had all these people connived to fool their new laird?
At that moment, the lass looked up to meet Rory’s gaze. The brilliant blue eyes danced with mirth. He found it incredible that a Sassenach noblewoman—an heiress worth a damn fortune—would play the role of a servant. What would she do if he set her to mucking the stables?
Well, he’d go along with the ruse for now, pretending to believe Idoine was his future bride, while he sent messengers to Mingarry Castle to notify Ewen Macdonald of the marriage alliance and to make certain that Lady Joanna wasn’t there. Meanwhile, ’twould prove an interesting diversion to learn the true identity of the little vixen dressed in a boy’s shirt and plaid.
“Rather than return with my future bride to Stalcaire immediately as first planned,” he told the Macdonalds coldly, “we’ll await the arrival of your war commander.” He favored Idoine with a brief glance. “He can accompany Lady Joanna and me to my uncle’s castle, where we will be wed. From this moment on, I’ll assume the responsibilities and privileges of your new laird.”
Idoine started to protest, but Lady Beatrix clapped one hand over her daughter’s mouth before she could utter a word. Grumbles of dissatisfaction swept through the hall. The Macdonalds’ furious expressions told him they’d expected the chief of Clan MacLean to dash off to Mingarry Castle, thinking to find Lady Joanna with their clan commander, Laird Ewen.
“Place a guard at the gate and posterns,” Rory told Fearchar. “No one is to leave without our consent, not even the lowliest serving boy. And send four men to Mingarry to invite Ewen Macdonald to his cousin’s wedding.”
With a nod, Fearchar left the chamber with several broad-shouldered MacLeans.
Next, Rory addressed the twenty weaponless Macdonald men-at-arms. “By order of His Majesty, King James, you are to travel to Stalcaire, where you will swear your fealty to him. Any man who does not appear there within the next two days will be charged with treason and dealt with accordingly. You have my permission to leave at once.”
As the dispirited Macdonald soldiers filed out of the upper hall, Rory motioned to David Ogilvy, and the bailiff hurried as fast as his dragging gait would allow. “Have the chamberlain take my things to the castle’s finest bedchamber.” He glanced at Beatrix and Idoine, whose bottom lip was thrust out in a sulky pout. “I trust that won’t inconvenience either of you ladies.”
“Certainly not, laird,” Beatrix answered sharply.
With a jerk of his head, Rory brought the brown-robed cleric a step nearer. “You may take the relic back to the chapel, Father.”
“Father Thomas Graham,” the priest replied, belatedly introducing himself.
“And have a candle lit before the Virgin’s altar,” Rory added as he turned to leave. “My gillie will bring you a crown for the offering as soon as my saddlebags are unpacked.”
“For what intention, laird?” the priest asked in surprise.
“For the wedding couple,” Rory told him with a frown. He’d thought the reason obvious. “That the bride and groom, soon to be joined in holy wedlock, will be blessed with a long and fruitful union.”
Father Graham hunched his narrow shoulders as though caught in an embarrassing mistake. “Of course, milord. Of course.”