Knight In My Bed (22 page)

His words chased her through the dimly lit passageway, even pursuing her into the stair tower and down its winding stone steps.

She would have dashed right into the darkened hall the moment she reached the bottom, for her intent had been to seek the bailey and the quietude she'd find there at this early hour, but grumbling voices, some raised in anger, halted her as soundly as if she'd run full tilt into a wall.

Pausing, she searched the murky darkness. Most of the pitch-pine torches had burned out, but a low-burning hearth fire and a few braces of tallow candles on a nearby trestle table managed to cast some illumination.

And it was around the trestle table that the elders huddled, their collective grousing and cross-tempered snorts echoing in the vastness of the otherwise empty hall.

Slipping into the shadows outside the stair tower's arched entrance, Isolde tilted her head to the side and listened. The youngest council member Lorne's commanding voice rose above the others' grumbles. "I say a resounding nay. Balloch MacArthur is a braggart. He will not keep silent about such a coup."

A chorus of gnarled fists pounding on the long, oaken tabletop signaled the council's agreement.

All save one.

The war leader, Isolde's uncle, Struan, glowered at the others, anger flashing in his hawk-like eyes. "And what would the lot of you have us do with them? Put good horseflesh to the cliff along with the MacFie?"

Isolde clasped a hand over her mouth, and shrank deeper into the shadows, her heart thudding.

"'Tis madness to harm the MacFie," Lorne argued. "We have no quarrel with his people."

"I'm with Lorne," came white-haired Ailbert's quavering voice. "Every clan in the Isles will ill-wish us for such a misdeed."

"Aye, doing so would be placing a spark to tinder," yet another agreed, slamming his tankard on the table for emphasis. “We cannot kill Gavin MacFie, nor can we give Balloch MacArthur the horses. The pompous arse has a loose tongue."

With a furious oath, her uncle shot to his feet. "Blithering idiots! MacArthur also has a stout sword arm and a fat purse," he thundered, raking the others with a furious glare. "What shall we give him for our lady's dowry if not the MacLean's two fine steeds?" he demanded, his barrel chest heaving. "A chest of old stones?"

Ailbert, clan oldest, tittered. His perfidy in doing so earned him a sharp glance from the
ceann
cath.

"Think before you cackle, you feeble-headed nitwit," Struan upbraided him. "Old stone is all we have, and it isn't a precious commodity since every last one of these isles and all the land beyond is riddled with them."

"Archibald says we must honor the old," came a singsong female voice, and only then did Isolde spot her vacant-eyed mother. The lady Edina sat in a dark corner near the council members, a thick woolen plaid draped like a winding sheet around her slight form. "Archibald says-"

"Archibald is dead." Struan cast an irritated glance at her, but when her once-beautiful face clouded with confusion, his countenance softened. "You should be abed," he said gruffly and started toward her. "Come, I will help you above-stairs."

Lady Edina grabbed the arms of her chair. "Nay. Not until Archibald returns."

Struan muttered something under his breath and turned back to the table, his countenance dark. Taking his seat again, he took a long swig from his ale cup. "We've no choice but to dispatch the MacFie after the MacLean's execution. If we release him, and the two horses with him, as you simpletons would have us do, he'll ride straight for Baldoon. Within hours we'd have the full gale of the MacLeans' wrath blowing down our necks."

"I do not like it." This from the end of the table.

The others joined in.

A fool plan fraught with peril.

Too dangerous
.

Lorne pushed to his feet. "Donall MacLean has thus far proved himself manly and resolute under his sufferings," he said, candle-glow casting a play of light and shadow across his angular face. "We have no reason to inflict a penance on MacFie. Mayh-"

"What would you say?" another elder cut in, his voice laced with ill humor.

Still well concealed by the hall's deep gloom, Isolde held her breath, and kept her gaze trained on Lorne, her favorite among the elders.

"What I am saying," Lorne answered, "is that mayhap we should release both men and their horseflesh afore a worse fate is visited upon us than we could possibly wreak upon the MacLeans."

Isolde's heart swelled with gladness, but her elation proved short-lived. Outraged huffs and rants filled the hall as each gray-beard present voiced his disapproval.

...
we'd vowed to have no pity ...

... make him pay until he shrieks with agony ...

Lorne compressed his lips. Isolde expected him to attempt a second assault of wisdom upon the council, but he sank back onto his chair with naught but his troubled expression declaring his displeasure.

Struan, though, fair glowed with victory. "Donall the Bold and his friend will be executed within the month. Balloch MacArthur's men should arrive shortly thereafter to arrange the betrothal of his lord and our chieftain, the lady Isolde," he announced. "When he leaves, he shall take the MacLean's two horses as our gift to his liege."

He aimed a needling glance at Lorne. "Should any come
 
nosing about, we will claim we lost the MacLean, Sir Gavin, and their steeds, on the voyage to Glasgow. No one will be able to prove otherwise."

Isolde stared at her uncle, straining to hear more. She could see his lips moving, but his words were lost in the babble and mayhem that had erupted among the graybeards.

With the exception of Lorne, their agreement with her uncle's views could not be denied. Only Lorne seemed to have found the same path she followed, but even he would balk if he knew exactly how she hoped to attain peace.

Then, with a look of utter disgust on his face, Lorne pushed to his feet again and strode from the hall. She would have to leave, too. But at the moment, her feet felt too much like lead for her to go anywhere.

One month.

She'd known the MacLean's execution had e'er been loosely planned for on or around the Summer Solstice, but somehow the date had seemed to loom in the far future. Struan's words had driven home the harsh truth. Midsummer would soon be upon them, a scant month and a few days away.

A shudder snaked down her spine at the date's bitter irony.

Just as the days following the Summer Solstice would shorten in length, their light gradually swallowed by longer and longer hours of darkness, so would blackness engulf all she held dear if she could not dissuade the elders from going through with their plans.

And she had but a few short weeks to do it.

Her heart heavy, she slipped back into the stair tower, all desire to seek the quietude of the bailey forgotten. Without a backward glance, she mounted the circular stairs, her progress much slower than her hasty descent a short while before.

And this time, the demons following her had naught to do with a handsome devil's roguish words and everything to do with the cold dread laying bold claim to her heart.

CHAPTER TEN

It Took Isolde several hours of plunging through bramble patches, trudging across the eerie grandeur of Doon's cairn-strewn moorland and worse, before she spotted the cailleach picking her way along the edge of the bogs.

Her stooped shoulders bent, a large willow basket on her arm, the crone searched the ground as she shuffled along the peaty bank of the nearest bog pool.

"Devorgilla!" Isolde hurried forward, Bodo on her heels.

The old woman plucked a dark purple flower from a small cluster of green by the water's edge and dropped it into her basket before she greeted Isolde. "A good morrow to you, lass."

Isolde almost told her a more foul morn had ne'er dawned. Instead, she peered into the willow basket. It held all manner of greenery. Roots still clumped with earth, tiny purple bog violets, and something that smelled most familiar.

Something she wished worked as powerfully as it smelled.

"Are you gathering ingredients for the potion?" Isolde's nose twitched at the pungent reek clinging to the basket.

"My bones told me you'd be needful of more," Devorgilla said, her voice oddly guarded, the look on her wizened face unusually bland, somehow ... closed.

Secretive
.

As if she'd been taking lessons in feigning indifference from a certain insufferable knight.

'Tour bones are accurate as always." Isolde pushed a damp tendril of hair off her face. "I do need more ...
much more
, and of a stronger potency."

Devorgilla's hazy eyes widened. "How so?"

"The potion isn't very effective," Isolde said, her cheeks coloring at the admission. "And do not taint my viands again. He noticed."

Devorgilla clapped a knotty hand to her face. "By the moon and stars, but I forgot he's dining with you," she said, and Isolde knew she was lying through the gaps in her teeth.

"Just double or triple its strength, I pray you," Isolde said. "And see it's delivered only into my own two hands."

"As you will." The crone bobbed her grizzled head in a ludicrously poor attempt at humble acquiescence. "Did the MacLean eat the victuals I treated with the potion?" she wanted to know, the barely suppressed excitement in her voice a sure sign she'd hoped he'd done exactly that.

Isolde ignored her question. "I've been searching for you since cockcrow. I vow I still would be had Lugh not told me where to look."

"He spoke?" A spark of interest shone in Devorgilla's cloudy eyes.

"Only a few words as he is sometimes wont to do." Isolde glanced out across the still, black-surfaced pool. "He worried I'd lose myself out here if he didn't tell me the direction you'd taken," she said, trying to ease her way into asking what she must. "I told him I must speak with you on a matter of great urgency."

The crone bent to pick another teensy bog violet. "More urgent than being needful of the potion?" She parted die cluster of leaves until her bony fingers found the wee purple bud.

"Aye, something most grave." Isolde glanced at the clear blue sky and wished her life could be as cloudless. "A favor I would ask of you," she said, looking back at the crone. "Nay, a request. Something you must do for me."

Straightening, the crone held up the tiny flower and peered intently at it. "A favor borne of a grave matter, that is a request I must do?"

Isolde nodded.

The
cailleach
clucked her tongue. "Be it Laird MacLean's bonnie smile or his braw embrace that's tied your tongue in knots?"

What would you know about his bonnie smiles and knightly kisses?
Isolde almost blurted. "You speak as if you know him," she said instead.

"I know of him," Devorgilla quipped, her foggy-eyed gaze remarkably bright. "And I have seen him."

"In the cauldron's steam?" Isolde tried to outsmart her, hoping she'd reveal if he was indeed the man shown to her by the yarrow sprig on Beltaine.

The true soul mate Devorgilla claimed to have seen that night as well -- in the vapor rising from her great iron kettle.

"In your dungeon, lass: " Devorgilla gave her a sly little smile. “`Twas enough."

"Enough for what?" Isolde blurted, her voice agitated and loud enough to make Bodo jump up at her, his forepaws slamming against her skirts, his quizzical expression and crooked teeth making her smile despite her woes.

"Simply enough," Devorgilla evaded. "You should ken I dare not reveal all I see. Doing so would vex those who confer such gifts."

Shuffling forward, she touched the violet lightly to Isolde's cheek. "Ah, child, do you not yet ken there are some things we must see for ourselves?"

Uncomfortable, Isolde glanced at the little flower in Devorgilla's age-spotted hand. "Then tell me how did you see that?" True puzzlement drew her brows together. "Even I wouldn't have noticed it, hidden as it was beneath so many leaves."

A sage smile curved Devorgilla's lips. "'Tis the most precious of treasures we find when we look in unlikely places," she said, and dropped the violet into her basket.

Knights admire wenches with steel in their veins.

The MacLean's words swept past her ears, riding the tail of a soft, sun-warmed breeze.

So soft and warm, chill bumps broke out on her arms.

Isolde frowned.

Then she squared her shoulders. "I want you to get a message to Balloch MacArthur," she blurted before her rush of steely courage could desert her.

Devorgilla blinked. "Even the worst winter storm will spend its force, lass," she said, worry replacing her usual spry caginess. "Those who are wise do not disturb sleeping dogs.”

Isolde turned away. Seeing the crone's distress only stoked the flames of her own. "It is too late," she said, swallowing the cold lump of dread rising in her throat, gulping it back down to join the larger ball of icy apprehension spinning in her stomach.