The Maclean Groom (2 page)

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 fas
cination. 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.