Once Upon a Plaid (2 page)

Nab reached out and haltingly took the scepter this time. Then he clutched it tight to his chest. “I’ll take good care of it till Twelfth Night, Lord Badenoch.”

“Call me William. Ye’re the laird now. And I know ye’ll have a care for the scepter, else I’d not have lent it to ye. Come, lads. Raise a glass to Laird Nab. Well may he reign, though it be not long!”

After the men drank to the Laird of Misrule’s health, Nab waved the scepter while he instructed his new subjects in the fine art of balancing on one foot while hopping in a circle. The half-drunken crowd followed suit to great hilarity.

William gave Katherine’s father a quick bow in nominal acknowledgment of his host, and then left the foolery behind to head across the room to her.

She wanted to pick up her skirts and flee, but she couldn’t stir a step. It was as if she were trapped in her recurring night phantom, the one where an ogre pounds down a mountainside toward her but she can’t move. Just as in her dream, her feet seemed rooted to the flagstone floor.

Will stopped before her, reached into his plaid, and pulled out Angus, offering the little dog to her as if he were a loaf of bread. Of course, this particular loaf squirmed and whined, his stubby legs churning the air as though he might swim through it to her if only William would turn him loose.

“This is yours, I believe.”

Katherine took the terrier from him. Angus melted into her, nuzzling her neck and pressing nosy doggie kisses against her skin. “Thank ye, Will.”

“I have somewhat else with me that’s yours as well.”

She knew better than to ask him what that might be. His dark eyes were speaking for him. Will could be silver-tongued when he wished to be, and she couldn’t bear to hear his protestations of love. Anything he said would ring false. She could endure much, but she drew the line at untruths.

“I suppose ye’ll be wanting to refresh yourself after your journey.” Normally, Margaret served as chatelaine since she was married to Katherine’s brother. It was her place to cater to the needs of guests, but since Margie was in the final days of her confinement, Katherine had taken over those duties when she arrived at Glengarry Castle two days ago. “I’ll show ye to your chamber.”

“So long as it’s also your chamber,” William said, shifting his oilskin pack on his shoulder. “Or has it slipped your mind that ye’re my wife?”

—From “The Gaberlunzie Man”

 

 

—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry

Chapter Two

“Nay, what’s between you and me is topmost on my mind,” Kat said. “Though I rather think ye’ve not given it much thought of late. In fact, I’m surprised ye noticed I was gone.”

William kept his expression carefully neutral. She was right. It had been a day and a half before he realized she’d absented herself from Badenoch Castle. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Aye. Just in time for the goose and trimmings.” One of her russet brows cocked up.

William wished he could smooth down that brow, but she’d probably bat his hand away. She’d pushed him away for weeks. “D’ye really want to have this argument in your father’s hall before God and everybody?”

Katherine’s lips tightened into a thin line. She liberated a candle from one of the sconces and led the way out of the great hall. She didn’t say a word as she preceded him up the twisting spiral staircase that exclusively served the family portion of the castle. But her hips twitched with each step, warming Will more than the fire in the great hall ever would.

William had to half stoop as he ascended behind her. Even then he nearly smacked his forehead on the lintel each time they passed through a corner of a room and reentered the private stairs.

The family chambers were stacked one upon another on succeeding levels of the tower, all joined to the same twisting staircase. They passed through Lord Glengarry’s spartan room first. After Katherine’s mother had died, the earl had removed all hint of feminine frippery from his chamber, content with only the most basic of necessities—a comfortable bed, a chest for his clothing, and a larger one for his weapons. His only extravagance was the private garderobe, where he could bathe in a copper hip bath on occasion and use the latrine built into the castle wall.

The next chamber up belonged to Donald, Lord Glengarry’s heir and Kat’s only brother. He obviously shared it with his wife, Margaret, because the walls were covered with tapestries and the space was crammed with furniture in the heavy new Tudor style. The pads on the kneeling bench of the prie-dieu in the corner were deeply indented, proof of Lady Margaret’s piety.

William was sure Donald spent little time on his knees.

Finally at the top of the tower, as befitted a daughter of the house, Katherine’s chamber was situated in the most secure place in the keep. It was the room she’d occupied all her life until she became his bride four years ago.

She set the candle down before her silvered glass mirror, where its light could be magnified and cast back into the space. Then she crossed over to the hearth and poked the banked fire into a flickering dance.

Katherine stooped and set down wee Angus, his short legs scrambling even before his feet met the fragrant rushes on the stone floor. The terrier made a running jump and planted himself firmly in the center of the string bed.

“That bed will be a tight enough fit with just you and me, Kat,” Will said as he set down his oilskin sack. “I dinna think there’s room for the wee beastie as well.”

He was marginally ashamed of the fact that he envied the terrier. His wife lavished a goodly amount of affection on that little flea trap. William would be pleased with even a small portion of it.

“You presume a great deal if ye think ye’ll be allowed to join me in that bed.”

“Ye’re my wife, Katherine. Ye promised before God to obey me. If I want to sleep with ye, I damned well will.”

It was worse than a sore tooth that he had to force the issue. Before he’d married, William had been invited into plenty of feminine beds, though he hadn’t accepted any of the offers. He’d been betrothed to Katherine when they were both children and to tup another woman hadn’t seemed respectful, either to her or to the agreement their fathers had made. He was spoken for and he was determined to honor his marriage bed. Even though his young body had burned with curiosity about what passed between a man and a woman, William made sure he and his bride had learned together.

And the lessons they’d given each other were sweet indeed. She was warm and responsive, and beneath her gown, his wife was curved and soft. Will had thanked God and set out to explore his new kingdom with thoroughness. Katherine returned the favor.

At least, at first.

The invitations to other ladies’ beds hadn’t stopped after he’d given his vow to Katherine. He still turned away from those welcoming smiles but it was getting harder. After all, the one woman who ought to be most welcoming of all seemed to want nothing to do with him.

“If ye mean to bring God into this,” his wife was saying, “let me remind ye that the Scriptures teach us that if the wife’s body belongs to her husband, the husband’s body likewise belongs to his wife.” Kat’s green eyes sparked dangerously. “So if I choose to see that your body sleeps elsewhere, husband, ’tis my God-given right.”

Suffering Lord.
He never should have let Father Simon tutor her. She’d become far too good a theologian for him to cross verbal swords with. He decided to take a different tack.

“I dinna know what ye have to be angry about.” He fisted his hands at his waist.

“Then let me refresh your memory.” Her neat brows drew closer together over her pert nose. “Does Lady Ellen ring a bell?”

“Lady Ellen?”

“Aye, the nubile young thing ye’ve seen fit to add to our household.”

Nubile?
William would have called the girl hopelessly skinny. He liked a woman with a bit of meat on her bones, all soft and curved. Like his Katherine. “Lady Ellen’s but a child.”

“She’s fifteen. Younger than she are mothers made.”

“That’s what her family fears. She’s to be betrothed to my cousin John, ye see. My uncle asked would we foster her until the wedding next May. Her family lives in the Lowlands and John will be worth less than nothing to his father if he’s running off to court her instead of tending to his father’s holding.”

“I see.” Her shoulders relaxed a bit, as if she were a coracle with the wind spilling from her sails.

“Besides, her family wanted us to vouchsafe her purity since they feared the girl was apt to run away with John unless she was closely watched.”

“Oh.” Katherine worried her lower lip.

“Dinna fret. I’ve set Duncan to sheep-dogging her.” Will was certain the girl was safe in Duncan’s care. Their grizzled, one-eyed retainer didn’t suffer fools gladly. Especially not young ones. “He’ll not let anything befall the lass. No matter how much she might wish it.”

“Why did ye not tell me these things?”

“Ye haven’t exactly been wanting to talk with me of late.” In fact, since Michaelmas she’d insisted on separate bedchambers, as if they were damned English nobility whose reputation for chilly marriages was well known even in the Highlands. “Do ye really think so ill of me that ye supposed I’d bring a mistress under the same roof as my wife?”

Her shoulders stiffened again. “So are ye telling me ye keep a light-o-love elsewhere?”

“God’s Teeth, what do ye take me for, Kat?” he growled. “One woman in my life is trouble enough. What would I do with two? Ye’ve no right to be angry.” He stomped over to the only chair in the room and plopped down in it to tug off his boots. “I’m not the one who went haring off in the dead of winter without so much as a word. Did ye not think I’d be worried about ye?”

The left boot slipped off with ease, but try as he might, William couldn’t seem to get the correct angle on the right one. Katherine sighed and came over to help him. At least she didn’t neglect all her wifely duties.

“My brother’s wife is about to give him another child,” she said as she straddled his outstretched leg and gave the boot a yank. It wouldn’t budge. “Did ye not suppose she’d appreciate a kinswoman with her for her lying-in?”

“Aye.” But would it have hurt her to tell him her plans? “That’s why I came straight here once I realized ye weren’t out visiting sick crofters or delivering food baskets to every gaberlunzie begging by the side of the road again.”

Any beggar with a sad story to tell found an easy meal or a coin forthcoming from his Katherine. William thought her devotion to giving obsessive, especially since it meant she often neglected her other duties as his chatelaine to attend the poor.

“Seems ye think every scruffy mendicant who turns up at our gate is a chance for you to host an angel unaware.”

And of more importance than your husband
, he thought with bitterness.

He put his stockinged foot on her backside and gave it a push to help remove the other boot. It finally eased over his heel and Kat stumbled forward. She’d have fallen headlong if he hadn’t caught her by the waist and pulled her back onto his lap.

“Ye make my charity sound silly,” Katherine said accusingly. She struggled to rise, but he held her fast.

“No, ’tis not silly.” If married life had taught him anything, it was that sometimes it was wise to hold back his true thoughts. “But there are those who take advantage of your good heart.”

She hung her head. “Ye only believe my heart’s good because ye dinna ken
why
I give alms.”

She stopped straining against his arms and was still for a moment. William drew in a deep lungful of her scent, a sweet breath of spices and evergreens, and then let all the tension in his body flow out along with his exhalation. It was restful to hold her like this, as if they had stepped outside of time while the rest of the world went on without them for a bit.

He lived for such moments—quiet, tender times when he could simply hold the woman he loved. Pity they were so few and far between.

“Sometimes,” she said in a small voice, “I imagine if only I could do enough for others, if only my deeds were balanced against my sins and found to outweigh them, then maybe my dearest wish would be granted.”

He didn’t have the courage to ask what that wish might be. He already knew. Hearing her voice it would break something inside him.

Her head came to rest on his shoulder. “So ye see, Will, if I do acts of kindness only because I hope to gain, my heart isna all that good.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” William slid a finger under her chin and tipped her face up to him. Her eyes were enormous with the light of the fire sparking in them. But the unspoken burden behind them was even bigger.

He bent and covered her mouth with his, wishing he could take her sorrow on himself. But if he couldn’t bear to hear her speak it, how could he lift it from her?

So instead he poured his love for her into his kiss.

She opened to him, answering his tongue with hers, and the world went wet and soft and welcoming.

In their fifteen hundred days or so of wedded life, Will had kissed this woman countless times and, contrary to his friends’ predictions, it was always new to him. How could it not be when he was never sure what was rolling around in Kat’s head while their mouths made love?

Perhaps it was all right not to know. Perhaps they were better together if only their bodies did the talking. He brushed her breast through her soft gown. She made a small noise, a soft coo like a nesting dove, into his mouth. That sound never failed to go straight to his groin, though it had been some months since he’d heard it.

William stood, with her still in his arms, and carried her to the bed. Angus scrambled up to hide under one of the pillows. Will decided he’d deal with that little furball later, after he laid his wife out and covered her sweet body with his.

But when he lay down atop her, she pressed both palms on his chest. “No, Will, I canna.”

“Och, love, dinna be cruel.” He planted a string of baby kisses along her jaw and neck. She seemed to melt under them. “Not to a man who rode through a blizzard to come to your bed.”

When he suckled her earlobe, she shivered and he figured he was halfway to heaven. But when he made to kiss her mouth again, she turned her face aside.

“’Tis not that I dinna want ye. I do. More than ye know.” Her voice broke. “My courses are upon me.”

Her words were a punch to his gut. William rolled off her and lay flat on his back beside her, staring up at the underside of the tower thatching.

She’d lost another one. By his reckoning, she’d been more than three months gone with child, but he couldn’t be sure since she’d not shared her hopes with him this time. Still, he could count. She ought to have known he was waiting for her to tell him, to reveal her secret so they could rejoice together.

Now all he could share with his wife was the bitter end of yet another failure. Another loss.

The words died on his tongue. He’d said them before. Many times. She never seemed to hear them. He’d give half his holding if someone would tell him what to do, what to say, to ease his Katherine’s pain.

He started to reach for her, to draw her into his arms, but she rolled onto her side facing away from him. She didn’t say anything, but in the dimness, her shoulders shook.

She wept without a sound.

Even in her grief, she shut him out.

Wee Angus crept out from under the pillow and nestled against the small of her back. She didn’t push him away.