Amanda Scott (38 page)

“You will gain much,” Niall said. “For one, I shall certainly prove a better guardian than your father. He’s been far too indulgent.”

As often as Lachlan had echoed that sentiment, he grated his teeth at hearing the words from Niall Mackinnon, especially knowing the villain had beaten the child Mairi at least once. His fists clenched, and a low growl escaped his lips.

Shim stood watchfully, his now-sheathed sword temptingly near, had the situation not been such as to guarantee death to anyone foolhardy enough to think a snatched sword might gain him the upper hand for more than a heartbeat.

Mairi had visibly struggled to ignore Niall’s comment about her father’s indulgent nature, but she said now, bitterly, “I suppose you pretend to love me.”

“Don’t be childish,” Niall said. “Love is for peasants.”

“But you cannot expect to gain wealth or power by this . . . this outrage!”

“That depends on circumstance, but whether I do or not matters not one whit. I have wanted you for years, my dear, since long before my wife died.”

A startled look crossed her face. Then, grimly, she said, “Doubtless since the day you spanked me.”

“Before then,” he said with a reminiscent smile. “Still, when I turned up your skirts and saw those little pink cheeks and watched them redden under my hand as you screamed in fury, I knew I wanted the right to guide and correct you, always.”

“To punish me, rather. Indeed, I warrant you are as much of a brute as Mellis MacCoun. Is that what drew you to Elma? Oh, yes,” she went on when his eyes narrowed and his expression hardened, “I know you seduced her. She tended your chamber as part of her duties. She would have been easy game for you, I imagine.”

“One might more accurately say the wench seduced me,” Niall said testily.

“When a man wields such power over a woman’s life as you wielded over Elma’s, no one can blame her if she complies to save her hide or her house. You could easily have rejected her, but she could rebuff you only at her peril. Did you kill her, Niall? Is that what lies in store for me if I disobey you?”

“Nay, then, I did not, and that’s enough,” he said sternly. “No longer will I allow you to give free rein to your temper, lass, so you’d do well to restrain it now.”

Not much to Lachlan’s surprise, Mairi scorned that advice.

“You have no right to command me, Niall Mackinnon,” she declared. “I won’t obey or submit to you unless you beat me into a stupor. Nor will you ever succeed in overthrowing my father. That
is
what you hope to do, is it not?”

Shim stepped closer to her, as if he expected her to strike his master. As he did, the hilt of his sword moved even more temptingly into range.

Niall began to speak, but she talked over him, snapping, “You are despicable, sir, the worst sort of traitor, because you pretended loyalty whilst you plotted murder and destruction. Even your so-called blood feud against Clan Gillean is a lie, because they committed no murder, as your presence here testifies plainly. Indeed, aided by this wicked, so-called holy brother of yours, you foisted a fraud onto your own kinsmen and stirred trouble by pretending to be dead. The Council of the Isles will make short shrift of any claim you make to martyrdom and shorter shrift if you try to claim the Lordship of the Isles.”

“By God, I’ll show you who is master!”

Niall’s temper had snapped, but as he reached for Mairi, she ducked under his hand and turned away. As she did, Lachlan snatched the sword from Shim’s sheath, knocked him aside with a blow worthy of Hector, and stepped between Niall and Mairi, sword at the ready.

“Try showing me who is master, Mackinnon. There is no hole hereabouts to dive into, none large enough, at all events, to accommodate a rat of your size.”

Niall whipped out his own sword and faced him, shouting, “To me, lads!”

His attention riveted to the other man’s eyes as the best indication of his first movements, Lachlan was aware nonetheless that the atmosphere in the chamber had changed. His skin prickled at the thought of the many swords doubtless drawn and aimed at him, but he detected no such motion in the men within view.

Fingon Mackinnon, rather than leaping to his brother’s aid, stepped back out of the way, but if the holy man was armed, Lachlan had seen no sign of it.

“Dinna move again, or I’ll spit ye where ye stand,” a voice behind him said.

“And ye, your holiness, heed his words, for I’ve me own sword at your back.”

The first command startled Lachlan, and had he not seen Niall’s blade move, he might have turned. The second command came from in front of him, and as Niall lunged and he parried the stroke, he saw a man behind Fingon, evidently holding him at sword point, and keeping everyone else thus momentarily at bay.

“Aidan is behind you, sir, with his sword drawn,” Mairi said quietly, “and the other is our man, too, but I think we should all leave as quickly as we can.”

The observation seemed singularly foolish under the circumstances, and Mackinnon clearly agreed, for he said snidely, “Where do you think you will go, lass? I’ve only to shout and the portcullis will fall in a trice, and whilst I doubt your father’s contention that it makes this place impregnable, I’m thinking ’twould take an army of axes a day to breech it.”

“Aye, it would, but I’d feel safer in the antechamber than here,” Mairi replied with an urgency in her voice that, despite the apparent foolishness of her words, gave Lachlan time to think.

Clearly determined to slay him instantly, Niall increased the pace of his blows, and for several minutes, it took Lachlan’s full concentration and every ounce of his skill to defend himself. But the strength and fury of Niall’s blows soon eased, because swords being the cumbersome, heavy weapons they were, even the best swordsmen could fight with such fever for only minutes at a time.

Recognizing that the older man’s strength was waning, Lachlan began pressing him and said, “You’ll not best me, Mackinnon. I am not even the best swordsman in Clan Gillean, and yet I had you beat on that wharf. That’s why you dove into the water, you coward, pretending to be gravely injured.”

Clearly energized by the taunt, Niall slashed his sword upward, nearly catching the back of Lachlan’s hand where it gripped the sword.

“A clever stroke,” Lachlan said, striving to speak without gasping. “But then you’re a clever man as well as a coward. I warrant you ordered Elma MacCoun killed if you did not murder her yourself.”

“I had naught to do with her death,” Niall snapped. “I was at Finlaggan the whole time she was missing, as anyone can tell you.”

“Aye, sure, but you sent your lad Shim here to kill her and then conspired with him to blame young Ian Burk.”

“Aye, well, Shim may have killed Elma. He’d wanted her for years.”

“Here now, what are ye saying?” Shim cried.

“’Tis true,” Mackinnon said, stepping back. He was breathing hard, and made no attempt in that moment to fight, but Lachlan, though glad of the respite, kept his sword ready and his eyes on the other men.

They seemed spellbound by their chief’s accusations.

“She led you on to believe you could have her, Shim,” Mackinnon said insistently, regaining his wind. “Then she married Mellis, but still she played with you, teased you, right up until she offered herself to me. And for that you—”

“’Twas ye, ye villain! She were carrying your bairn, not mine,” Shim cried, forgetting Aidan in his fury until the lad pricked him with his sword.

“Niall!” Mairi exclaimed. “Is that true? Did you get Elma with child?”

“More likely the bairn was Mellis’s,” he said, flashing his sword up again. “He would have accepted it, and so I told her, but she wanted me to support it and take her away from Mellis’s fists. Still, ’twas Shim killed her, not I.”

“Liar!” Shim screamed. “Ye said t’ see she didna trouble ye nae more!”

“Put away your sword, Mackinnon,” Lachlan said, watching him warily. “We’ll sort this out in a more peaceable way.”

“Nay, then,” Mackinnon snapped, lunging hard. “I never said to kill the lass, nor did he ever admit he did it until now!”

Lachlan parried the stroke easily, for Mackinnon was tired. “Put up, man!”

“Not until one of us is dead, damn you!” He lunged again, wildly.

Lachlan countered the stroke again, but this time Mackinnon stepped into the path of the counterstroke, and Lachlan’s sword went straight into his chest.

Mackinnon collapsed at his feet, and Lachlan stared down at him until a roar of rage erupted from the Green Abbot.

“Take him, lads! Now!”

Swords clashed, and whipping toward the sound, Lachlan saw the lad holding Fingon at sword point fall, the victim of another Mackinnon sword. That Mackinnon leaped toward him, but he sidestepped the thrust and spitted the would-be killer instead.

“This way!” Mairi shouted as he yanked his sword free. “Hurry!”

Others had drawn swords, and Aidan waved his menacingly as he dashed with Mairi toward the archway into the anteroom. Realizing they would all have a better chance standing on the anteroom side of the archway, fighting one man at a time as the others passed through it, Lachlan ran after them, only to meet one of the Mackinnons’ swordsmen just as Shim attacked Aidan.

Speeding his own attacker to his Maker swiftly enough to make two others approaching him slow their pace, he saw Aidan take a stroke to his right leg that made him stumble. Shouting at Shim, Lachlan felled him as he wheeled and lunged, then grabbed Aidan by an arm, and dragged him through the archway, turning as he did to meet the immediate fierce onslaught he expected.

Instead, the moment they were clear of the opening, a portcullis he had not known existed in the archway crashed into place.

“Hurry!” Mairi cried as she pushed an iron pin through a hole in the wall nearby. “Men might be in the windlass chamber, so we don’t have much time.”

Helping Aidan, Lachlan followed her to the main door, unbarred it, and pulled it open, sword at the ready.

Only moonlight met him. No one was on guard.

“Everyone must be in the hall,” Mairi said, moving past him. “Come on out and shut it. Oh, do hurry, both of you. That inner gate will not hold them long if anyone is upstairs and . . . Oh, do be quick!”

Lachlan did not question her but did as she bade, and was astonished when, instead of running to the creek path, she ran to the far side of the huge door, grabbed a rope hanging there, and pulled hard.

Nothing happened.

“Help me!” she cried.

Leaving Aidan to look after himself, he hurried to her side, grabbed the rope above her hands, and pulled with her. To his further astonishment, the great portcullis above the main door crashed into place.

Back she ran to snatch up a bar near the door that he had thought must be for men to scrape their boots. Hefting it into a slot in the wall, she shoved hard.

“Come,” she said, holding up her skirts and hurrying toward the path, clearly visible in the silvery glow of a half moon. “You help Aidan and, Aidan, do try to move quickly. I do not think Niall can have known the trick to the portcullis—”

“Faith, my lady, even I did not know about the wee one!”

“Only the family does,” she said, increasing her pace despite the danger that she might miss a step in the uncertain light. “My father showed me last year when we were here, but until I passed through that archway, I’d remembered only that the main one can be lowered from outside as well as in—supposedly by one person.”

“One man could do it,” Lachlan said. “But how does it work?”

“That rope we pulled connects to the ratchet in the windlass room. When it’s pulled free, the gate falls of its own weight. But we must hurry,” she added. “If anyone is in that room, the gate will be open again in a trice, and even if they are not, the pin holding the small one can be reached from inside if anyone thinks to feel for it. And two men can easily lift that gate back into place.”

“’Tis a most unusual arrangement,” Lachlan said, glad to see they were nearing the creek. “One usually thinks of shutting folks out of a castle, not into it.”

“It was my father’s notion,” she said. “I don’t think anyone has ever even questioned that rope.”

“Doubtless, most folks seeing it expect it to ring a bell,” he said. “How—”

But Mairi had reached the landing place. “Faith,” she exclaimed, “they’ve beached two cobles here. They’ll be able to follow us!”

Lachlan glanced toward the castle again to see flames leaping high on the ramparts. “Someone lit the beacon fire,” he said.

“I did that,” Aidan said. “Her ladyship said I should tell anyone who asked that she wanted t’ spread word o’ her wedding like his grace did for Lady Marjory’s wedding two years ago, but I kent fine why she wanted it.”

“Her ladyship’s reasoning is, as always, excellent.”

“Aye, but me hands did shake so I feared I’d never get it lit, ’cause that lot would ha’ killed me, sure, did they catch me.”

“Then it is a very good thing they did not. Can you row, lad?”

“Aye, sir. Me leg be bleeding still, but it doesna seem too bad. I doubt we can row both boats wi’ any speed, though.”

“No, but we can tie one to the other and sink it when we get to deep water,” he said. “Help me launch them.”

It took all three of them to get the two boats into the water, for they proved heavier than they looked. Mairi climbed into the bow of the first one, followed by Aidan, who quickly unshipped an oar to steady the rocking craft as Lachlan climbed aboard, and their weight lifted the boat away from the pebbly beach. Lachlan tied the second boat’s painter to theirs, moved to his seat, and unshipped the oars there. The second boat’s weight slowed them considerably, so they were just rowing into the inlet from the creek when the first Mackinnons appeared on the hilltop.

Shouting, the men descended fast, and Lachlan ordered Mairi to sit as low as she could behind Aidan to protect herself. “Row harder, lad,” he ordered, doing the same himself. The other boat swayed back and forth, jerking the connecting rope and making it hard to gain momentum, let alone speed, but he knew that if they stopped to untie it, the others would be upon them in a flash. As it was, they would have to swim to catch them.