Highlander Enchanted (6 page)

It was no larger than a minor baronet’s holdings in England, and far less grand than the home she knew.

The raiding party was greeted with the same cheer as knights returning from the Crusades: with cheers, flowers and a stream of children and wolfhounds that ran from the gates to greet the men on horseback.

The laird and his men dismounted to meet the children. Richard and his knights followed their lead, while Isabel remained on her horse, afraid to tax her injured leg. She watched Black Cade, wanting to find reasons to hate him. The children of his clan squealed and surrounded him, their displays of affection making her rethink what she had heard of him. They bestowed hand woven garlands upon him and those with him. From the depths of the bailey, upbeat music sounded, and women in long dresses with flowers weaved into their hair swayed and sang greetings.

The warrior Cade, and the two big men with him, beamed smiles at their greeters. She had never seen her own vassals greet her with smiles and flowers or dance out of happiness for any reason, and she was the most generous noble she knew. The warm welcome extended to the English as well. Children draped garlands over the heads of the uncertain English knights. Even Richard was unusually gracious, as if he, too, did not know what to think of the happy people spilling out of the gates. Isabel stilled her horse as two youths brought a garland for the destrier and draped it over its neck before they ran away giggling.

Cade lifted as many children as he could carry to cart them back into their home, smiling and laughing with them.

The beast she knew from stories would not be welcomed by children or greeted with smiles from the men and women awaiting him at the gate. In a short time, he had managed to overturn most of what she had learned at court, but it was impossible for him to escape the blame for what he had done to her family.

Black Cade entered his home proudly, pausing to greet his kinsmen and return the children clinging to him to their mothers. He even joined the dancers briefly with unexpected agility and danced a complete circle before ducking out to lead the newcomers towards the stables.

She entered the gates behind Richard. The hamlet tucked inside the walls was charming, crowded and boisterous with music. Beyond the wooden homes and structures, past the stables and sheep pens, was a stone keep, two stories tall with dozens of windows. It was half the size of the area beyond the walls, a good size for a baronet. She found herself approving of all she saw. Having managed her father’s household for years before his death, she was able to appreciate the care and detail that went into maintaining the keep.

Richard led her to the stables, and she dismounted.

Whispering drew her gaze to the children hovering at the edge of the paddocks, watching the English guests with open curiosity. Self-conscious of her state, Isabel drew the cloak Richard had provided her closed to hide the ill-fitting clothing she wore. Her hair was in a braid slung over one shoulder.

The first step on her bad leg robbed her of breath. Fire shot through her. Isabel bit her tongue and swallowed a cry. She gritted her teeth and readied herself for another step.

“M’lady, the laird wishes me t’show ye t’yer chamber,” said a young girl with copper hair, blue eyes and freckles. She, too, wore flowers in her hair.

“Thank you,” Isabel murmured.

“Yer hurt.” The girl leaned into Isabel to peer at the bruises forming on her face.

Isabel did not put her in her place as she might an English handmaiden. After traveling with Ailsa, she understood better that the normal bounds of privity did not exist with the barbarians.

“I can ‘elp ye,” the girl said. “Come, m’lady.” She started away at a trot.

Isabel moved more slowly. She cast a look towards Richard. He was speaking to his knights. Every day she was not wed to him was another day he resented her. She dreaded the day she wed him, or any man, most of all. She hastened her pace the best she could, not letting her hunched shoulders relax until she was out of his sight in the keep.

The girl led her through the stone dwelling to the second floor and down a hallway littered with fragrant rushes and sprinkled with flowers, tiny pops of color that brightened the dreary interior of the stone hold. Isabel was impressed by the cleanliness and order of all she saw, and the bedchamber was no exception.

He has given me the best in the keep.
The massive room was appointed with paintings, tapestries, weapons and baubles he had to have brought back from the Crusades. Their colors and shapes were too exotic for it to be otherwise. A hearth was lit, the drapes open and the large pallet befitting a laird.

“This is beautiful,” she breathed. It was cozy and quaint compared to her bedchamber in Saxony, but after a fortnight of sleeping on a horse or on the ground, the room before her was exquisite.

The girl beamed with pride.

Black Cade’s scent was in the air, a combination of man, leather and dew. It confused her once more to feel the fever return and the fluttering in her stomach. How did she lust after the man she came to kill, who slayed her brother and drove her father into madness?

Isabel centered herself. She was here for vengeance and death, whether it was his or hers. “Thank you,” she said to the smiling girl. “You may go.”

The girl left whistling and closed the door behind her.

Isabel sagged against a chair, too exhausted to think about whether she should have turned down the chamber, and any other luxury offered by Black Cade, out of a sense of loyalty to her dead brother. She did not care about what Lord Richard might say if he were to discover she had been provided the laird’s chamber. The tinge of guilt was for her brother’s sake.

Fist closed around her medallion, her last link to her brother, she went to the bed and sat down heavily. Her boots came off with effort and she observed her bloodied, blistered feet with a grimace.

She examined her hurt leg next and saw the black bruise forming beneath the lump on her shin. The skin on her cheeks was tender from Richard, the bruising on her neck painful from where he had started to choke her, after the laird left them by the river. Distraught by her injuries and appearance, she unwound her hair from the braid to let it dry. With a jolt of awareness, she reached for the satchel that had been with her for a fortnight at least.

It was gone, and with it, every chance she had at any future.

The mettle binding her emotions cracked. She began to cry, fatigued and bereft.

Isabel rested across the bed with its thick coverlets. Unable to quell her desperation, she rolled onto her stomach and sobbed away the pain and sorrow of knowing she had come so close, only to fail at the feet of the laird she intended to slay.

Chapter Eight

“I doona like this man,” Niall whispered for the third time.

“I ken,” Cade replied.

They strode through the halls of his keep towards the bedchamber of Father Adam. The day had been spent with Lord Richard, and every word the arrogant man uttered made Cade despise him a little more. Finally, he and his knights had retired for the night.

At his limit with the noble, Cade was also less clear about what was going on around him than he had been before. Lord Richard spoke as if he and Lady Isabel were already wed and had been for many years. He avoided answering direct questions about why his betrothed had fled and claimed ownership of her father’s lands.

Of her.

It doesna matter. She is nothing to me.
He had uttered the chant to keep from leaping across the table to slash the haughty lord’s head off. He had been able to control his unseillie streak well now for a year or two, but first Isabel, then Richard, made all his work containing the dark, violent streak seem for naught.

The downpour outside left his cousins no doubt what he felt, even if he managed to remain civilized with Lord Richard.

“She is wealthy, if he’s t’be believed,” Niall said, his bemusement shared by Cade.

“If,” Cade echoed. He stopped outside the door of the priest and pounded on it. “Father Adam!”

The muffled sound of something heavy hitting the floor – probably the priest’s bible – reached Cade, an indication the elderly man had dozed off while in the middle of his duty.

“Enter, Cade,” the priest called.

He did so. The priest’s bedchamber was the largest in the hold, save for Cade’s. Father Adam kept a trove full of books, scrolls and parchment with which to write letters on Cade’s behalf. Brian was leaning over the priest’s shoulder to peer at the writs.

“What’ve ye found?” Cade asked, too irritated by his night to render the proper greeting.

“A delightful scheme!” was the unusually enthusiastic reply.

Cade exchanged a look with Niall. They approached the priest’s desk. It was littered with scrolls, and his thick bible lay on the floor. Cade picked it up and then kissed the cover out of respect for the book and his priest.

“Ye forgot t’cross y’self first,” Father Adam reminded him.

Cade obeyed and solemnly made the sign of the Christian cross. The priest smiled, a gleam of laughter in his ancient eyes.

Father Adam had tried hard to convert the clan to Christianity and upon failing, had managed to bridge his religion and the nature-focused seillie beliefs by drawing upon similarities between the two. The result was a healthy respect of a religion not entirely theirs among the clan members, and the priest’s appreciation of his god’s miraculous creation of the seillie and their magic.

“What is it ye found?” Cade asked gruffly.

“These writs are the same,” the priest proclaimed, lifting two scrolls.

“That doesna mean nothing,” Cade said impatiently. He folded his arms across his chest.

“Och!” The priest appeared annoyed. “If ye listened t’me years ago, Cade, ye’d be readin’ by now!”

“I doona wish t’read when I ‘ave ye!”

“Are we wee lads again?” Niall interjected with a laugh. “Tell us what ye found, Father.”

Cade clamped his mouth closed. His temper was shorter than normal, and he blamed the English nobles in his home for it while forbidding his thoughts from straying to the memory of Lady Isabel in his arms.

Like she belonged t’me already.
The magic had tried to warn him she was special. He shook his head.

“This writ is t’the Scottish King John,” the priest started. He held up the second. “This is t’the English King Edward. Both writs read the same.” He leaned closer to the candles lighting his desk and began to read slowly, translating from Latin as he went. “I, Isabel de Clare, daughter of Lord William de Clare of Saxony and Lady Martha MacCosse, respectfully inform ye, sire, that I have chosen a husband, in accordance with the contract granted me by His Grace, King Edward. Be it known from this day hence that I am to be known as Lady Isabel de Clare MacLachlainn of Saxony and MacCosse. By the grant of God, and beneath His Heavens, fer which we give grace and gratitude for each day the sun shines His good will upon us, I am humbly grateful fer yer favor, Yer Grace, and may God bless ye and yer reign.”

Cade’s brow furrowed. “Her mother was a MacCosse.” The clan was rumored to have perished completely when their chieftain died childless. He knew little else of the clan, having never had a chance to meet any of its members.

Niall had frowned at the mention of Saxony, his look of consternation one that Cade shared, despite firm evidence there was no link between the Englishwoman in their midst and their time in the Holy Lands.

“In this writ, she addresses King Edward rather than King John and claims to be Lady Isabel de Clare of Saxony betrothed to Lord Richard of Stewart,” the priest finished. “There is no other difference betwixt th’two.”

“How is one wench betrothed to two men?” Niall asked, baffled.

The priest shrugged. “I havena read these.” He indicated two more scrolls. “I believe the question is, what contract did the English and Scottish kings grant her that she can choose a husband. The writs are no’ signed though there is a place for the mark of her uncle, a Duke of some note, to affirm the contract.”

“Two contracts, each made in secret with a king. ‘Tis treason,” Niall said and stared hard at the writs.

“Yea, my thought as well.” Cade picked up the smaller of the two remaining scrolls. It appeared older, its paper less fine and the edges tattered, as if she had kept it for some time. If it were not important, there was no need. “Read this one.”

Father Adam nodded. “It will take me some time. These are no’ written in my tongue but Latin.”

“Verra well. I can wait.” Cade glanced out the window at the tempest. He could keep his visitors here as long as he wished with the rain. “She called herself a MacCosse,” Cade mused. “If her mother was a MacCosse, she is the sole heir t’clan MacCosse’s land.”

“Yea,” Niall said softly. “The land is under the protection of the king. But why did she choose ye in place of a wealthy laird, and why does she want ye dead?”

“I doona ken.” Cade’s thoughts flew with possibilities. His sole purpose since returning from the Crusades had been to reclaim the lands of his clan lost when his father fell into illness. With no gold and no official title, he was able to do neither, hence the agreement he considered from the MacDonald clan.

The MacCosse lands, however, ran along the northern coast. They were fertile, easy to defend – and unclaimed after the death of the chieftain. The war that ensued after Laird MacCosse’s death was brutal, even by Highland standards, and King John had been forced to step in to end the feud for the sake of peace. The lands were placed in the royal holdings pending the claim of its rightful heir, which all but the Crown seemed to believe was dead.

“Even if ‘twere possible she was yer wife, ye have the MacDonald’s drawing up a contract already, with lands that are equal in size.” Brian pointed out. “We doona ken if this is real.” He waved a hand at the writs. “But Laird MacDonald is old. He willna last five years, and the lands will be yers.”

Niall paced away to the window, rubbing the back of his head in what Cade knew to be frustration.