The Warrior Bride (34 page)

“‘Tis because we sin against nature,” he hissed. ”The devil has come.”

Irvette laughed aloud. “There is no devil, you whimpering-”

“Who struck the child?” Rhona snarled.

“No one. She abuses herself,” whined the marquis, but Rhona swept her sword forward, slicing through the coverlet between them. Feathers littered the air like wind-tossed snowflakes. “‘Twas my sister! She did it!”

“Damn your cowardice!” Irvette swore and leaping to her feet, tore a sword from the wall above the bed. Silver flashed in the moonlight. Pain ripped across Rhona’s arm. She jumped back, blade in hand.

“Who are you?” snarled the baroness, and lunged again. Rhona leapt away, but Irvette came on, blade held high. She slashed out, but at the same moment, Rhona slammed her arm across the other’s hand. The sword clattered to the floor, and Rhona pressed her blade to the woman’s ribs.

“Did you strike the girl?”

“She is nothing! The bitch’s foul seed and better off dead. ‘Twill be myself that gives him an heir.”

“Hear me!” Rhona warned. “And hear me good, for I’ll not say it twice. If ever again you lay a hand to the wee ones, it was cost you dear.”

Irvette strangled a laugh and drew herself straighter.

“I am Lady Norval, Baroness of Hanstone, and there is no devil, just as there is no God.”

“Aye, there is a devil and you are his handmaiden, but you’ve tortured the girl for the last time.”

“Now!” Irvette shrieked, and in that instant Rhona sensed a movement behind her. She spun about, but Lord Robert was already striking. His sword gleamed in the firelight, and then, like a falling demon, he crumbled to the floor. MacGowan loomed dark and hooded behind him. Rhona spun back toward Irvette, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her up against the wall.

“Leave on the morrow and I will spare you.”

The baroness clawed desperately at the warrior’s hands, but through the gauntlets, Rhona felt not the slightest twinge. Indeed, she smiled as she squeezed harder.

“But if you stay, I swear by all that is holy, you will die bloody, and naught but hell awaits you.”

Irvette’s eyes widened as she gasped for breath.

Against the wall her face shown a pale blue. Perhaps it was naught but a trick of the moon.

“What say you? Do you go or do you die?”

“I go!” The words were rasped and painful.

“And you’ll not touch the lassies again. Not so long as your soul walks this earth.”

“Damn you-” she swore, but it was so simple now to tighten the pressure. She rasped for breath and struggled weakly. “Nay! Never.”

It almost hurt to loosen her grip. In fact, Rhona held it a while longer. The baroness’s legs jerked, then went still.

Rhona backed away, letting the body fall limply to the floor.

“Irvette,” the marquis groaned from the floor.

Rhona spun about. “‘Tis your fault as well!” she hissed.

“Nay!”

“Aye,” she said and, drawing her dirk, sent it quivering across his ear and into the floor beneath. Next time ‘twill be through your worthless skull!” she warned.

A flash of white shifted her attention. Catherine stood in the doorway, her face was pale and her one good eye was wide with terror.

The marquis twitched but did not rise. From a distant hallway, shouts were heard.

“Go,” Lachlan ordered, but Rhona was caught in the girl’s stare. Footfalls rushed nearer.

“Go!” Lachlan gritted again and grabbing her by the arm, pushed her toward the door. With one more glance at the girl, Rhona dashed down the hallway away from the footsteps. MacGowan followed, her cape billowing like a dark cloud around his giant shoulders.

A shout sounded from ahead. She turned wildly, searching for an escape route, but Lachlan grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into her own chamber.

“Take off your clothes,” he ordered.

Blood pumped like alcohol through Rhona s veins.

Wrapping her hand about the back of his neck, she kissed him with hot passion.

He dragged her closer still, crushing her lips with his before drawing abruptly back. “‘I’d gladly be your bloody spoils of war,” he growled, “but either you hide your warrior garb or your damned mission will fail.”

She came back to reality with a jolt and realized the marquis was yelling. Footsteps were running in all directions. Doors slammed open and closed.

She froze, listening intently, but his hands were already busy, snatching off her helmet, tearing off her tunic. She unlaced her hose and shoved them downwards.

Lachlan grabbed her discarded night rail and whipped it over her head, pinning her arms to her sides before pivoting away. Her cape billowed about him.

“What- ”

“Shut up!” he ordered and bundling up her garments, tossed them out the window.

Voices clambered in the hall. Lachlan leapt for the window, jumped to the sill and nodded.

The plan burst in Rhona’s head and she screamed as she pushed her arms into her sleeves. Her door slammed open, and in that moment MacGowan soared from sight.

Servants armed with candles and cutlery were pushed, quaking, into the room.

“Where is he?” someone sputtered.

“There! There!” she said and pointed shakily toward the window.

One intrepid servant hurried forward. The rest hung back, barely guarding the marquis.

”There he goes!” rasped the brave one, and then others streamed forward with the marquis behind.

“Seize him!” he shrieked.

The servants milled and gasped and finally bustled from the room. The place fell silent.

“What happened here?” rasped Lord Robert.

“I was asleep, then I was awakened,” Rhona babbled and glanced shakily toward the window and away. “Big as a mountain he was, with black teeth and-”

Irvette stumbled into the doorway. Her face was gray and a lovely red bruise stretched like a rope bum across her neck.

“My dear Lord!” Rhona rasped and made the sign of the cross against her breast. “What happened?”

“’Twas Satan!” The words were little more than a croak from the lady’s alabaster throat.

”The devil!” Rhona stumbled back, clutching her neck. “Whatever did he want with you?” she shrieked, but the baroness was already stumbling away and the marquis went with her, shouting for every door to be barred and every window secured.

Rhona stood in silence, breathing hard and willing away the tension. All in all it had gone quite well.

She flexed her wounded arm, turned toward her bed and stopped in her tracks.

Catherine stood in the doorway.

The silence was broken only by the marquis’s distant shouts.

The child’s gaze never faltered, then, “Do you want it back?” she murmured.

Rhona scrunched her gown to her bosom as if terrified beyond all reason. “What are you talking about, child?”

”The knife,” she said and bringing her hand from behind her, hefted the blade she’d found stabbed into the floor. The blade that had skimmed past her father’s ear just moments before. “‘Tis yours.”

Silence descended, accented by distant shouts and the sounds of a hurried exodus.

“No,” Rhona said, and held the child’s gaze as she did so. “‘Tis my gift to you.”

Dawn had not yet arrived when Lady Irvette’s carriage rattled away from Claronfell. There were few explanations, perhaps because it was impossible for her to speak.

As for the marquis, he did not appear for the morning meal, but remained closeted away.

In fact, the stools around the table remained absolutely empty. Thus Rhona wandered from the dining hall to the nursery. Catherine’s bed was empty loo, so she hurried down the passageway to Edwina’s room. The door was ajar, and from the hallway, she could hear two tiny voices whispering from within.

“There were noises in the night… Frightful noises.”

Edwina’s voice was the tiniest scratch of sound.

“Aye.” Catherine’s was barely louder. “But you needn’t fear. ‘Tis past now. Go back to sleep.”

“‘Twas the devil, wasn’t it?”

“Nay.”

“He will come again,” Edwina’s voice was rising to a low panic. “He will come and eat my liver just as Lady Irvette-”

“Nay,” argued Catherine. “I will keep you safe.”

“But Catty, your face!” she said, and began to cry softly. “He has already beaten you.”

‘Twas then that Rhona stepped into the room. The girls jumped like frightened hares, huddling together beneath the blankets, their fingers gripping each other like tiny birds’ claws. She stopped where she was, her throat constricted.

“The devil is gone,” she said simply.

They stared at her in silence. She shrugged. “He left.” Still no response. “Forever,” she added.

Silence again, then Edwina spoke very softly, as though her voice might stir the dead from their restless hiding place. “But Lady Irvette said he would come if I was disobedient like Catty. He would beat me, just as he did her.”

“She is gone too,” said Rhona, and carefully quieted her anger.

The girls glanced at each other then back at her. Their grip in each other’s sleeves tightened slightly.

“She’ll return…” began Catherine, her tone not daring to hope. “After the nooning?”

“She’ll not be back,” Rhona corrected.

“Perhaps the devil ate her,” Edwina whispered. There was the whisper of hope in her tone.

Rhona stepped closer, her mind spinning. She knew nothing about easing a young girl’s fears.

“You needn’t worry, lass,” she said. “God is watching-”

But in that moment a noise sounded from the doorway. She turned, expecting trouble, but it was only MacGowan who shadowed the door.

“The devil did na want’ er,” he said.

The wide eyes had turned to him. He smiled, and with that simple expression the room seemed to lighten somehow.

“He did not want her?” Edwina whispered. “Nay. She was that bitter, she was.”

“How do you know?”

“I spoke to ‘im.” He entered the room with easy casualness, his stride long and relaxed. “Afore’ e left.”

“You spoke… to the devil?”

“Aye. I told him that an angel of the Lord guards these lassies and that there is no room for his evil here.”

“But Catty’s face,” murmured Edwina. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her knuckles white against the coverlet.

A muscle twitched in Lachlan ‘s cheek and Rhona threw herself into the breech.

“‘Twas not the devil who struck your sister, wee Edwina,” she said, “but one of his minions, a person of flesh and bone. A person just likes one of us, but evil.”

Catherine seemed to have drawn into herself, but she spoke finally, her voice little louder than the silence. “She warned me not to tell. Said Edwina would suffer for it.”

For a moment no one spoke. Rhona noticed that Lachlan ‘s fingers tightened upon the hilt of his dirk, but finally he cleared his throat and loosened his grip. “Aye well, she be gone now,” he said. There was a forced cheeriness to his tone, but his face was hard. “And the archangel’ as vowed to keep it so.”

“Will he eat her gizzard?”

He laughed a little now. “Sooner than let ‘ er return, lass. But enough of this talk. I have been sent to fetch you down to break the fast.”

And so the day began. The girls ate their fill while Lachlan looked on, and then, because the marquis was reported to have injured his leg in his “valiant defense of his home,” Rhona suggested that they venture outside.

Edwina shook her small head vehemently. Catherine pursed her lips.

“You’ve no fondness for the out of doors?” Rhona asked.

Catherine’s scowl deepened. Edwina spoke in a whisper.

“It rained,” she said.

Rhona stared in bemusement and Catherine explained. “We might sully our gowns.”

“Sully your gowns! Well, I should hope so,” she said, and laughed.

“Filth is the devil’s garden,” Edwina quoted.

“But the earth is the divine Lord’s playground,” Rhona said.

Finally, dressed in their ugliest rags, they tripped through the endless gardens to the bum that babbled over its rocky bed toward the sea. Once there, they followed its wending course, their toes slithering in the mud as they went, and when they found a particularly lovely spot of muck, Rhona turned them loose to play.

Instead, they looked at her with eyes wide and faces wary.

“Play,” she repeated, but Lachlan shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “These two wee ones are not the sort to waste their hours such. They’ ave been taught to work, have you not, lassies?” They were still clinging together like tiny spider monkeys. “So ‘tis best to simply let ‘em, ave at it.” Rhona stared at him, and he shrugged. “I am ‘ungry, me wee lassies. Perhaps you could bake me a pie.”

Edwina’s little mouth circled. Catherine frowned before she spoke. “But we have no meat.”

“Ahh, well, mayhap you’d best use mud, then.”

“Mud?” Edwina whispered.

“Or twigs or grasses or whatever lies close t’ ‘and.”

“You cannot eat twigs.”

“You think not?”

Edwina shook her head. Catherine only stared. “Then you have not yet been to Dun Ard.”

No one spoke.

“‘Tis me father’s…” He paused, seemingly remembering he was to be naught but a servant here. “‘Tis the castle where I used to labor before I came to serve Lady Rhona.”

“They eat twigs there?”

“‘Tis like this, you see,” he said. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned closer as if he were sharing some wondrous truth. “The lady of the keep is a great ‘ orse mistress, greater than all the lords of Christendom. ‘er steeds eat like kings, but ‘ er subjects…” He shrugged. “Sometimes we ‘ad to make do.”

Catherine studied him as if he were some strange new creature, but Edwina spoke again, repeating the question that haunted her. “You ate twigs?”