Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (12 page)

Dagda’s brow lifted. “We thought you had gone abovestairs, my lady,” she said, her expression a strange mix of surprise and thoughtful, almost motherly concern.

“And so I did—but I ne’er said what tower I meant to climb,” Amicia blurted, too unnerved by Janet’s stare to bite back the tart response.

“Well met,” the old woman shot back, surprising her. “You have a quick wit—that is something you will have cause to make good use of in this household.”

Amicia nodded, not quite sure what to say.

Closing the short distance between them, Dagda held up her torch and peered closely at Amicia’s face.

“When you were not in your chamber, we fretted you had lost your way in the dark passages,” she said, the concerned tone back again. “This keep is nowise so large as your Baldoon, but it has its hazards,” she added, sliding a glance at Janet.

That one,
all round-eyed and gawking, looked anything but concerned—save mayhap for fear that, in her wild-looking state, Amicia had run full mad and might spring upon her lily-white throat any moment.

Or unsheathe her talons and do serious damage to the rose-petal skin of her oh-so-finely-boned face.

Amicia almost hooted.

Little did the fragile-looking beauty know that her very delicateness struck dread in Amicia’s heart.

Dagda reached to smooth a strand of damp hair from Amicia’s brow. “No one e’er treads this corner of Coldstone . . . none save bats and mice, I’d reckon.” Lowering her voice, she angled closer. “Some, like the old laird, even claim the spirits of restless MacKinnons walk these stairs. Is that what you were about, my lady? Wandering the dark, looking for Coldstone’s ghosts?”

“I—” Amicia began, but shut her mouth again as quickly.

She could not think of a single logical reason for stomping up and down the turnpike stair of the castle’s most remote tower.

Moistening her lips, she glanced around, sought an answer in the shadow-hung stairwell. Had she known Coldstone was thought to be haunted, she would have grasped any ghost—MacKinnon or otherwise—as an excuse.

As was, she had none.

Until she spotted her dear Boiny making his lumbering way down the stone steps, padding ever nearer, his raggedy tail swishing in affectionate greeting.

Upon reaching her, he nudged her side, leaned hard against her. And just the feel of him, his freely given strength and devotion, warmed her through and through.

Enough so to give her the cheek to lie.

“I was looking for Boiny,” she declared, dropping a hand to rub behind his ears. “He was missing from my chamber, so I set off to find him. . . . Obviously, I have.”

Dagda gave the dog a skeptical look. “That old beast scarce leaves the hearthside,” she said, doubt lacing her words. “But he does seem to have taken to you. . . . Mayhap he was seeking
your
company and lost his way?”

Amicia shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

Lifting her chin, she leveled an earnest gaze at the seneschal, asked the question she’d nigh forgotten, flummoxed as she had been until Boiny’s timely appearance.

“What took you to my bedchamber?”

A defiant jut to her own chin, Janet stepped out of the shadows. “No one knows Magnus better than I do—he is a braw man and has many . . .
needs,
” she said, her tone iced politeness. “Since he has decided to keep you, I but sought to assure your chamber is appointed to his tastes.”

“This keep boasts no finer quarters,” Amicia gave right back, for once gladful of her overflowing coffers and the many MacLean luxuries she’d brought with her. “Now I am here, my husband’s comforts and needs shall be tended by my hand, never you worry.”

Emboldened by the way Janet gaped at her, Amicia opened her mouth to embellish her warning, but before she could, the younger woman gathered her skirts, spun on her heel, and fair flew down the curving stone stairs.

Dagda gave a snort of approval. “That one needed a dressing-down. E’er too fond of herself, she is.”

And looking quite taken with
herself,
the old woman gestured to the down-winding stairs. “Be you ready to quit this musty tower so we can retire to your bedchamber?” She cast a dubious glance at Boiny. “With your friend, if it pleases you.”

Amicia blinked.
“We?”

“There you have the rights of it,” Dagda said, already starting down the stairs. “With your lady mother having passed when you were but a bairn, I thought a wee discreet talk might be in your good interest.”

“In my good interest?” Amicia echoed, catching up with her.

Surely the woman didn’t mean what Amicia thought she meant?

But the incongruously dreamy look lighting the seneschal’s face said she did.

Gruff-voiced, stern-gazing old Dagda wanted to speak to her about . . .
that.

The bedding ceremony and what came on its heels.

Amicia swallowed, seeing no way to refuse the offer without giving offense.

Aye, she had no real course save to tag along back to her quarters, settle herself before the hearth fire, and dutifully listen to Dagda’s advice.

So long as she managed to hide what she already knew—the deliciously wicked knowledge she’d used all manner of bribes and threats to pry from her good-sisters’ reluctant lips—all should be well.

Such things were best kept to herself until she chose to reveal them . . . to her husband, one tantalizing gem of wisdom at a time.

If she could scrounge up the nerve.

Chapter Six

A
FTER A LONG TREK THROUGH COLD
and draughty passageways that smelled of mold and worse things Amicia didn’t care to identify, she paused at a heavy oaken door and waited for Boiny’s stiff-legged gait to bring him to her side before setting her hand to the latch and freeing the way into her bedchamber.

Handsome quarters that had once belonged to her husband’s much-sung ancestor, Reginald of the Victories, the builder of Coldstone Castle. A legend in his day and, could prattling tongues be believed, so revered that, after his death, his chamber had stood empty and unused for centuries.

But a faint air of sadness permeated the room, and as she always tried to remember to do, Amicia offered a silent prayer for the good of Reginald’s soul as she stepped across the threshold.

Pale moonlight slanted through tall, arch-topped windows set into shallow recesses along the opposite wall and, as usual, the air in the chamber struck her as colder than it ought to be. The shutters stood open, allowing a breeze to circulate, but even the cold damp of the salt wind could not account for the bone-deep chill that seemed to come more from the tower’s thick walling than the blustery night.

Chiding herself for harboring any such foolhardy notion, Amicia scanned the chamber before moving deeper into its dimly lit depths—a precaution her father, and then her brothers, had e’er drilled into her, claiming what a tempting ransom prize she’d make with her high looks and generous MacLean coffers just waiting to be emptied for her release.

She took a deep breath, the irony of her fate squeezing her heart.

A fate that had her standing disheveled and shivering on the threshold to a room filled with every frippery MacLean coin could procure, bride to a man who wanted neither her wealth nor her supposedly bountiful charms.

A man who had ne’er wanted her despite the many times she’d tried to win his regard and favor in their youth.

And now she knew why.

It was not because their clans had oft been at odds over the years. Nor because her own father supposedly charmed and soiled a MacKinnon beauty only to abandon her to marry Amicia’s long-dead mother—a charge her da had refuted to his dying day.

Nay, her failure to attract Magnus MacKinnon’s eye was because he was a man whose tastes ran toward the dainty.

The delicate and golden-haired, not the dark and well-rounded.

Annoyance pulsing through her, Amicia bit back an epithet she did not want to let loose with Dagda hovering so close at her side. She noted that someone had placed another brick or two of peat on the hearthstone, and her throat thickened at the gesture, her irritation fading.

Her husband’s people, with one notable exception, had welcomed her, allowing her into their hearts and showing her naught but kindness.

Vowing to repay them a thousandfold—and hopefully win her husband’s love in the process—she willed her own heart to stop flipping so foolishly. She rubbed her arms against the cold and stared across the room at the slow-burning turf fire.

Recently tended, the peats glowed a fine deep red and their smoking warmth gentled the worst of night’s chill, while a small charcoal brazier hissing in one corner provided additional comfort.

Intent on seeking his own, Boiny made a low, rumbling sound deep in his chest and nudged past her into the room, heading straight for the hearth, where he circled a few times before settling himself with a well-contented old-dog grunt.

Dagda sniffed.

The noise startled Amicia. She blinked and swung around to face the older woman, remembering with some embarrassment why the seneschal had elected to accompany her to her chamber.

“Did I not tell you that great beast is e’er betaking himself where it’s warm?” Dagda eyed Boiny, her face a mask of light and shadow, uplit by the sputtering rush dip still clutched in her hand.

“Warmth and . . .
softness,
” the seneschal declared, thrusting the torch into an iron wall bracket near the door. “While life is in me, I swear such is all men want save a full belly and an occasional excuse to swing their swords and bellow at each other.”

“You know much of men?” Amicia tried not to appear doubtful.

“Enough to ken that one”—Dagda jerked her chin toward the dog—“will scarce be leaving this room with such fine new trappings to wallow in.”

Amusement playing across her usually stern-set features, the unlikely seneschal used the toe of her black-booted foot to lift the edge of one of the many luxuriously furred skins spread upon the floor—just one of the MacLean luxuries Amicia’s brothers had sent along as part of her bridal baggage.

“No man, four-legged or otherwise, will seek his comforts elsewhere if such succor awaits him at his own hearthside,” Dagda said with another sidelong glance at Boiny.

Her point made, she turned a shrewd eye on Amicia. “A prudent woman will assure that her husband’s needs are well satisfied. In especial, the fleshly ones.”

Amicia gave a quick nod of what she hoped would appear as polite appreciation. “To be sure, I will heed your advice,” she said, fighting the urge to squirm beneath the other’s penetrating stare.

“See that you do, and you will ne’er sleep in a cold bed,” Dagda advised in a brisk tone.

Amicia moistened her lips. “I ken what to expect,” she said, praying her flushed cheeks didn’t reveal just how much, or the
sort
of things, she knew.

But Dagda’s snort allayed any such fears. “Knowing what happens when a man and a woman join has scarce little to do with the satisfying part.”

Shaking her head, she gave Amicia another narrow-eyed stare, then began bustling about, busying herself lighting candles and assuring the hanging cresset lamps held enough sweet-scented oil to burn until the small hours.

“Aye, lassie, there is much I could tell you about a woman’s duties—and how to please a husband above and beyond them,” she said as she fluffed the pillows and bolsters at the head of the great four-poster bed.

She slid a conspiratorial look in Amicia’s direction. “Give me a moment to see that the fire’s been tended with proper care, and then we will have our blether,” she said, anticipation glowing on her face.

Amicia stared at her, watching as she jabbed an iron poker at the smoldering peat. Blessedly, her dreamy expression, however absurd-looking on such an age-furrowed brow, went a long stretch in helping Amicia tamp down her earlier agitation.

Even so, Dagda’s persistent babble about
amorous
concerns
made her stomach flutter and her palms dampen—despite the sound counsel her brothers’ wives had given her regarding such privy matters.

Truth be told, she suspected her belly plagued her
because
of the things they’d shared with her!

Things that, in her heart of hearts, she had to admit warmed and excited her.

In earlier years, Magnus MacKinnon could charm the birds from the trees with one dimpled smile and a toss of his bronze-maned head. Should Magnus-the-man e’er reclaim and make use of such skills, she’d melt all over herself.

Half-afraid her wanton musings and most cherished wishes stood etched on her forehead, she turned aside, hiding her face from the other woman’s sharp perusal. Feeling both wicked and exhilarated at the same time, she hastened to the chamber’s largest table, an elaborately carved affair of blackest oak, and with a slightly trembling hand, she poured herself a measure of fine Rhenish wine—yet another token of her brothers’ largesse.

Her gaze on the windows and the dark, wet night looming beyond them, she lifted her cup in silent toast to her good-sisters’ sage advice.

Bold and thrilling advice.

And now old Dagda with her hawkish stare and the wart on her chin sought to instruct her as well.

Shuddering—or mayhap simply a-shiver from the room’s persistent chill, she tossed down her wine in one throat-burning gulp, not knowing whether to laugh or grimace.

So she opted for something in between and summoned an expression that she hoped would appear neither mocking nor incredulous.

Then she turned around . . . and saw her failure at once.

It stared back at her in the angle of Dagda’s head and the slight narrowing of the older woman’s eyes. Indeed, it crackled in the cold air between them.

“You think it folly for me to speak of men and their needs.”

“I think you . . . mean well.” Amicia spoke the truth, knowing a lie would be pointless.

“Och, but I do, never you doubt it.” The wistful expression back again, Dagda plunged her poker into the peats with renewed vigor, thrusting deep until fine blue wisps of earthy-sweet smoke began curling upward. “There is not a day what begins or ends that does not see me striving to do my best for those I hold dear—even if some will ne’er thank me.”