Authors: Ladys Choice
Amanda Scott
For Kevin,
Still and always, best of sisters!
Because “ch” is generally pronounced as an “h” in Gaelic, the Highland name Sorcha sounds like Sarah, rather than being phonetically pronounced. Sidony is Sidney. Kilchurn Castle is Kill-HERN. Dail Righ is Dal-REE.
H
e couldn’t believe that a mere female a foot shorter than he was had pushed him off the castle’s wall-walk. He must have fallen a hundred feet and had hit the water with such stunning force that a lesser man would have died from the impact. But although he had gone headfirst over the parapet, he pushed himself away from the wall and twisted like a cat, managing to land feetfirst at an angle that put him face up in the water. He let the river Esk’s swift current do the rest.
Even so, he soon hit one of the river’s mighty boulders, which stunned him and spun him like a child’s top. By using his great strength to avoid the next one, he managed to keep it from knocking him senseless. Then he was in the swiftest part of the flow, face up and feetfirst again, catapulting along at terrifying speed.
To be on his back, unable to see where he was going, gulping what seemed to be as much water as air, and otherwise letting the river control him went right against his
nature. But knowing that the water would be deepest where it ran swiftest, he forced himself to let it carry him as it would until he could regain his wits.
The lass had taken him completely by surprise. But she would pay heavily for that, she and everyone she held dear. Whatever it took, he would survive to reclaim His treasure and seek his own vengeance.
W
here
is
Sir Hugo?” nineteen-year-old Lady Sorcha Macleod demanded impatiently. She cradled a profusion of flowers in her arms as she gazed down the steep hill at the sparkling water of the Sound of Sleat, the deep sea-lane flowing between Glenelg, on the mainland, and the Isle of Skye.
Her younger sister, Lady Sidony, bending to pick some yellow celandine for their collection, said over her shoulder, “You cannot know that Sir Hugo even received your message. The messengers have not all returned. And, even if he did, you cannot know he will come for her or come in a boat if he does. He could easily ride from Lothian or come from somewhere else. He may even be in Caithness.”
“Faith, Sidony, I don’t care how the man arrives, just so he does,” Sorcha said impatiently. “If he does not show his face soon, he will be too late.”
“It is too bad the Lord of the Isles had to die when he did,” Sidony said as she arose and added her flowers to Sorcha’s. “Adela ought to be having as merry a wedding as everyone else has, but I fear that hers will be dreadfully dull. I still do not understand why Father agreed to hold the ceremony here instead of at Chalamine. The feast will take place at the castle, after all, and everyone else was married there.”
“Not everyone,” Sorcha reminded her. “Isobel married at Duart Castle.”
“Yes, but Cristina, Maura, and Kate were all married at home. I hope you and I will be, too—
if
Father ever finds anyone who wants to marry us,” she added.
“I don’t want someone Father chooses,” Sorcha said, grimacing. “At least Adela has a sunny day, and the wee kirk of Glenelg is a pretty site. Lord Pompous insisted that she marry him here on the kirk porch, since Father has no chaplain at Chalamine. And that settled the matter, of course, since Lord Pompous will be her husband unless Sir Hugo arrives in time to put a stop to this wedding.”
“I do not know why you are so sure he’d want to,” Sidony said, pushing a stray strand of her fair hair out of her face. As children, the two of them had looked enough alike to be twins with their fine, silky soft, white-blond curls and light-blue eyes. But although Sidony’s waist-long hair retained its original color, silky fineness, and soft waves, Sorcha’s had darkened to amber-gold and retained only its curls. To her chagrin, in the frequent Highland mist and rain, they tended to frizz.
Their eyes were still a matching light-blue color. But Sorcha’s looked gray in certain light, and a black line rimmed each of her irises.
Semiconsciously mirroring her sister’s gesture, she shifted her floral burden to one arm to tuck an errant curl under her coif.
Sidony went on, “You’ve made such a song about sending for him that nearly everyone expects him now. But Adela seems content enough with this wedding.”
“Faugh,” Sorcha retorted rudely, abandoning her hair. “Adela would marry anyone who’d have her. She wants to be quit of managing Father’s household and us, especially now that he is to marry Lord Pompous’s cousin, Lady Clendenen. But Sir Hugo holds Adela’s heart, I’m sure. And I think he cares deeply for her, too.”
“But they’ve met only twice,” Sidony protested. “Once here in Glen Mòr last summer, and then shortly after that at Orkney.”
“Aye, well, it only takes once,” Sorcha said with more assurance than one might expect from a young woman who had never met a man she wanted to marry, or received an offer. “Adela talked of him for weeks after Prince Henry’s installation.”
“Do you think so?” Sidony asked doubtfully. “She said they quarreled the first time they met. The second time she emptied a basin of holy water over his head.”
Still watching the Sound, Sorcha exclaimed, “Three boats are coming! Oh, but how vexing! If I don’t mistake that banner, ’tis only Lord Pompous.”
“You should not call him that,” Sidony chided gently.
“Pooh,” Sorcha said. “Ardelve is as pompous a man as walks and far too old for Adela. Why, he must be near Father’s age, whilst she is but four-and-twenty.”
“Nearly
five
-and-twenty,” Sidony said.
“Even so, Sir Hugo is of a much more suitable age to
marry her. She is sacrificing herself, just to get away from Chalamine.”
“Perhaps, but Father said he had despaired of
ever
seeing her marry,” Sidony said. With a rueful smile, she added, “You and I are old for wedding, come to that. Not that I am sure I’d want to, even if anyone did want me.”
“You are never sure of anything,” Sorcha said, patting her shoulder. “Depend on it, if you do marry, ’twill be because Father commands it. If you had to make up your mind, the hopeful bridegroom would die of old age first.”
“That
is
his lordship,” Sidony said, too familiar with Sorcha’s opinion of her indecisive nature to take offense. “And I see the wedding party coming. Do you not think we’d better go meet them if Adela is to carry the flowers we’ve gathered?”
“Aye, sure, especially since we already have enough for her chaplet, too,” Sorcha said as they hurried to greet the riders.
As Lady Adela Macleod’s wedding party forded the bubbling burn near the base of the hill and continued up toward the kirk, she felt almost wholly at peace. For the first time in too many years she was responsible for no one and nothing. She just had to be in a certain place at a certain time and say what the priest, a Macleod cousin of her father’s from Lewis, told her to say.