Highland Seer (28 page)

“Then yer plan must work,” Friar Tam said and sighed. “Though I still counsel ye against it. ’Tis a sin ye’re about to commit for yer clan, lass.”

She nodded, the heat of a blush flooding her face and chest, and resumed pacing. She was going to be damned for the lies she contemplated telling in the kirk. For coupling with a man not truly her husband. A man she did not want. It would not matter that MacDuff forced her into it.

Her champion had left her. She had to do what was best for her people, even if it meant eternal damnation. For her life in this world to become a living hell. She would accept it if it kept her people safe.

“My mind’s made up. The Lathans havena returned. It may be that Corum hasna found them yet. Or that MacDuff’s men found him.” She pressed her lips together. Poor lad. Likely the MacDuff had left some men guarding the pass. She shook off the image that formed in her mind of a man lying still as death in the snow. Not a Seeing. Only her imagination at work. So she hoped. The lad was canny. Surely he’d gotten past them and down the mountain on the other side. “’Tis the only way and ye both ken it.”

The friar stood. “Then may God have mercy on yer soul, lass, and may He forgive what ye do for the good of the innocents ye’re charged to protect.” With an ironic lift to the corner of his lips, he made the sign of the cross over her. Ellie bowed her head to it, despite her doubts. Nothing could save her now.

Chapter 18

Donal woke up to the glow of sunlight through his eyelids and a cold that penetrated all the way to his bones. What? Where was he?

“He’s comin’ around.” The voice sounded familiar. He opened his eyes, squinting against the sudden glare. Snow? He was lying in snow. What the hell?

He looked up, then sucked in a breath. A man leaned over him, silhouetted by the bright sky behind him. For a moment, Donal expected to die, and an image swamped him of Ellie’s face, solemn, wide-eyed and worried. Then he saw the glint of red in the man’s dark hair.

Jamie. He exhaled the breath he’d sucked in a moment before.

“Ach, ye’re alive then. I always kenned ye were too ornery to kill,” Jamie scolded. “How long have ye been sleeping in the snow?”

“Last night, I think,” Donal answered, sitting up, groaning at the fierce ache in his head. He reached back to discover a wee lump. The cold of the snow had probably kept it from getting larger. “Bandits,” he said with a rueful grimace. “Hit me from behind.” He gripped Jamie’s offered hand and levered himself to his feet. A wave of dizziness swept over him but he stayed upright. “Not MacDuff’s men. Remnants of the Lowlander army we fought last year, if ye can believe that.”

“Interesting. They’ve settled into this area to rob the locals rather than making their way home. I see they got yer weapons.”

Donal patted the empty sheath that usually held his dirk and sighed. That they had. “Likely they had no home to return to,” Donal reminded him, loathe to admit out loud what was plain to see. He felt naked without his blades. At least the bandits hadn’t stripped him bare. If they had, he would be dead of the cold rather than suffering from little more than a sore head, embarrassment, and a bone-deep chill that left him shivering. “Colbridge slashed and burned everything in his path.” They’d heard how the Lowlander had decimated whole villages on his drive into the Highlands.

A horse whinnied. Donal finally paid attention to the mounted group waiting behind Jamie. At least thirty unfamiliar men gathered at his back and one familiar-looking younger lad, along with a double-handful of Lathans. Jamie had made it as far as the Aerie and back. Quickly, too. “Ye found help, I see. Much faster than I gave ye credit for.” Their timing couldn’t be better.

Jamie grinned. “Aye. We skipped the social niceties on this trip. The situation here seemed dire. On the way, we found that lad, Corum MacKyrie, looking for us. It seems the situation has gone from dire to urgent. Is that why ye are out here all alone?”

“I’m headed there, too. Corum must have told ye the MacDuff rode into the keep two nights ago with at least a dozen men. A lad named Will was out hunting and saw them pass by. He knew the route we were on and found us.” Donal squinted at the sun. Near noon. Damn. His fists clenched. He would not think about what could have happened to Ellie last night in MacDuff’s clutches. “I meant to return to the keep long before this. We need to ride.”

“Where’s yer mount?”

“Tied up a mile back that way, downslope, unless the bandits found it.”

Jamie waved to one of the riders who turned his horse and took off down the trail. Within minutes, he returned, leading Donal’s mount.

Donal was glad to see the spare weapons in his pack had not been touched.

“That’s good then,” Jamie said. “Are ye able to ride?”

“When am I no’? Let’s go.”

Donal mounted and set a fast pace up the trail and through the pass. His head pounded along with the horse’s hooves, but he ignored the pain. In broad daylight with this many men, he had no care for subterfuge. If one of MacDuff’s men got to the keep ahead of them, good luck to him. But as hard as they were riding, Donal knew they had a chance to arrive unannounced.

****

Ellie stood in a spot of late afternoon sunlight beaming through one of the high windows of the kirk, the small chapel inside the walls of the MacKyrie keep. She locked her knees to keep from sinking hopelessly onto them. As much as she’d rather be here alone with her God to pray for forgiveness for what she was about to do, she could not.

Her people filled the kirk, mostly women and children, but the few men, including Fergus, Sawney, and the older lads were in attendance, too. She could hear rustling as they moved, but no one spoke.

The MacDuff stood beside her, a length of the MacDuff tartan thrown over his shoulder, pinned in place by a MacDuff clan badge, his only concession to the ceremony he demanded. In his hand, the quill that he would use—that she would use—to seal her fate seemed a small and insignificant thing. Friar Tam looked on from his perch two steps above them and a step above the small table where the MacDuff bent and signed the paper Ellie dreaded to see.

Then the MacDuff thrust the quill at her. “Sign it, Ellie. All that is yers is now mine.”

Ellie bit her lip against the words she wanted to say. Taunting Lachlan MacDuff would gain her nothing. She counted on silence to buy her time for her prospective groom to make a fatal mistake. For help to arrive. For something to happen to make her risk worth the taking. Once the truth came out, would this document hold up? She didn’t know, but right here and right now, she had no choice. The MacDuff would force her to make an X if she didn’t sign it willingly. In front of all these witnesses. She could not mistake the feral intent in his eyes. His brow lowered but his pupils stayed dark and foreboding with anticipation. As though he hoped she’d fight him so he could force her in front of her clan. She shivered and put point to paper. In her last formal act of defiance, she signed it Elspeth, Laird MacKyrie instead of just Elspeth MacKyrie.

It was done.

The signature was shaky, but recognizably hers. Her ancestral lands now belonged to the MacDuff. She wouldn’t be surprised if the ghosts of all the MacKyries who’d gone before her rose up to haunt her the rest of her living days. But there’d been no other way. Lachlan MacDuff had to believe in her, or their plan would fail.

She expected him to hide this document as soon as they were done. She would find it. Find and destroy it as soon as she could. She made the vow silently, to herself, but here in the kirk, such a vow carried weight.

A woman’s sob echoed in the small space, but Ellie didn’t dare glance around to see who was crying or she wouldn’t be able to hold back her own tears. She refused to give the MacDuff the satisfaction of seeing her break down. Nay, she was laird, at least for a few more minutes. She would behave as a laird would—strong, silent, stoic in the face of catastrophe.

Was this how her father and brothers had felt, facing their deaths at Flodden? The cold, calm sense of inevitability? The fear she would never be warm again? She’d never been this numb, unable to feel her limbs, barely able to move, to read, to speak. But she would get through this. Somehow.

Until tonight. That thought nearly undid her and she forced her knees to hold her up while she fought to keep from swaying. Nay, she would get through that, too. She would not act the terrified virgin. Lachlan MacDuff had not spared her from knowing what he intended once this ceremony was done. She would survive it as she’d survived the last four years.

Oh, but she wished Donal would be with her this night. Not the man beside her now. Donal’s touch she would welcome. She would revel in his arms, safe, secure, wanted and loved, not for her position or her holdings, but because he couldn’t resist her and couldn’t face life without her. With Donal, she could look forward to a bright future for herself and her clan.

With the MacDuff...Ellie shuddered. He’d already threatened violence against her people. Most of them were children! She’d suffer anything to protect them, and the MacDuff knew it. She had no doubt of what was in store. Suffer she would, but she’d survive, and one day, she’d find a way to make him pay.

She would bear it somehow. She must.

Finally, Friar Tam started speaking, mumbling in Latin and making the sign of the cross over her and the man beside her. Ellie shuddered again. No one should bless this union. Nothing blessed would follow it. Pain, degradation, childbirth, again and again. Lachlan took pride in his potency, proven by the number of his legitimate offspring. Who knew how many bastards there might be in the MacDuff clan?

Finally, Friar Tam left the Latin and asked the inevitable question. The MacDuff’s “Aye” echoed loudly in the small space, too loud to be anything but a declaration of triumph. She pursed her lips as Friar Tam turned to her. She could answer him “Nay.” It was on her mind to do it, but that would force Tam to perform the rest of the ceremony on a bride who had declared her unwillingness, against kirk doctrine. Did it matter? He already knew. But saying it aloud would infuriate Lachlan. She could not predict what such an act of defiance on her part would prompt him to do.

Nonetheless, when Friar Tam turned to her, she pressed her tongue against her teeth, ready to pronounce the nay. He must have noticed her jaw jut forward as he finished asking if she took this man to husband. His eyes widened, giving Ellie all the reminder she needed. Lachlan’s first victim of her defiance would likely be the person nearest to them—the hapless friar.

“Aye.” Her response came out as a whisper, with barely any voice behind it.

Tam’s shoulders lowered and he quickly pronounced them man and wife from this day forward.

Ellie’s pulse quickened as her husband took her hand and helped her stand. He would kiss her now and she dreaded it. Dreaded the touch of his lips to hers. Dreaded her people seeing him master her in that way.

But instead he turned away and addressed the silent onlookers, several with tear-streaked faces. “Ye all are witness to this union, performed lawfully in this kirk. I am yer legitimate laird and ye will obey me in all things—or suffer the consequences.” He pulled Ellie closer to his side, took her hand in his and held it up for all to see them joined physically and symbolically together.

It hit Ellie suddenly that his palm was damp. Was he nervous?

Then he turned to her. “As will ye, my dear, or our people will suffer. Ye dinna want that, do ye?”

Ellie swallowed the lump in her throat as her ire rose, flooding her body with a fierce heat, tensing her muscles. How dare he threaten women and children in the kirk! At his wedding. This was no man, but a beast. Then the reality of the situation hit her like a punch to her belly. What choice did she have but to agree? Her anger jeopardized her people. As often as she’d chided Micheil for the loose rein he kept on his temper, she must do better. She’d sworn to protect them, body and soul. And so she must.

“Nay, husband, I dinna want that.” She raised her voice. “Lachlan MacDuff is yer laird now. Ye will obey him in all things. As will I.”

A sob broke the stillness. Lachlan’s men stood silent, a looming presence at the back of the kirk, guarding the door—against entry or exit, she didn’t know. Every MacKyrie face in the crowd appeared wide eyed and tearful, grief-stricken for her. All but one. Sawney stood at the back of the kirk by the MacDuff men, smiling.

Who had betrayed her and opened the gate to the invaders?

Sawney?

****

Donal approached the MacKyrie keep on foot through the silent village. Jamie flanked him to the right. Another man Jamie had introduced simply as Mac, a skilled scout from a treaty clan, moved off to his left. Their mounts and the rest of the men waited back in the treeline for Donal’s signal.

The three of them kept to the long shadows as the gloaming faded to full dark, using the angle of their approach and the walls of the village’s buildings to keep out of sight of the MacDuffs on the battlements. Torchlight there didn’t reach them, though it would as they got closer. Where was everyone? Donal suppressed a shiver that came from more than the cold of the night air. Surely MacDuff had not killed everyone in a village full of women and children? As Donal moved forward, he caught glimpses of the keep. The gates were closed, much as he’d expected. MacDuff would not want any surprises charging within the keep’s defenses. He had men on the battlements now, not MacKyrie lads. They would challenge any approaching riders and bar their entry until their laird approved.

The torches on the battlements showed Donal where the sentries stood and how often they moved from station to station. A breeze brought the scent of roasting meat. Donal caught Jamie’s gaze and pointed. Jamie nodded. He’d noticed that, too.

If the inhabitants of the village were inside the keep’s walls for the evening meal, they were safe for the moment. Or were they? Would the MacDuff threaten to harm them in order to force Ellie to do his bidding? Donal didn’t know him well enough to be sure, but his gut told him MacDuff was that kind of man.