The Niece of His Highland Enemy by Alisa Adams
11
Dessert consisted of cakes so dry and hard that Fergus nearly choked on them and milk that had formed a yellowed skin on its surface. Fergus made every effort not to grimace as he sipped from the cup, and he was deeply relieved when the servants took the plates away.
“Moire knows the way to her room,” Ronald said, rising from the table. “So Laird Fergus, I shall escort you to your chambers, and I do hope they meet with your approval.”
“I am certain that they will,” Fergus replied, though in truth, he felt anything but certain.
Moire stood before him awkwardly, and for a brief moment, he thought she would embrace him; everything about her posture and expression indicated that she wanted to. And naturally, he ached for her to do so.
But with her uncle watching, all she felt she could comfortably manage was a small curtsy. “Until tomorrow, Laird Fergus,” she said timidly before withdrawing from the room.
Ronald tilted his head at Fergus quizzically. “I shall not ask whether you have kept your dealings with my niece appropriate,” he said gruffly, “for I believe that you are an honorable man, else you would have ransomed her before returning her. However, I would be blind not to notice that there appears to be a certain...comfortable familiarity between the two of you?”
“I am pleased to say that we have quite enjoyed each other’s company these past days,” Fergus answered carefully. “I would be delighted to find occasion to see her again in the future. In truth, sir, I had offered to help her rejoin her siblings. With your blessing, of course.”
An enigmatic smile played at the corners of Ronald’s lips, and his eyes twinkled mischievously. “Aye. We will revisit that notion tomorrow, I promise you. Until then, you must rest.”
Fergus followed Ronald up the slablike stone steps to one of the towers. The stone blocks were so loose, their mortar so eroded, that Fergus wondered whether a stiff breeze might send the structure tumbling down in the night. He saw vermin twitch and skitter in the shadows at the edge of the flickering light from Ronald’s torch.
At last, they reached a wooden door that was pitted with rot and blackened with soot. Ronald pushed the door open and handed the torch to Fergus. “Sleep well tonight, lad. Perhaps it is merely an old fool’s fancy, but I feel that the hidden hand of destiny has guided us both to this moment, that we might make the most of it together. We shall converse further in the morning, and I very much look forward to it.”
“As do I,” Fergus replied with a frown. “But…do you not require this torch to descend safely?”
Ronald laughed. “Not at all! I have lived here all my life and could find my way with my eyes scratched out.”
The old laird’s chuckling echoed through the stairway as he sank into the shadows, leaving Fergus with that rather gruesome mental image.
Fergus set the torch into the wall mount and surveyed the room. The ceiling was draped with spiderwebs, and he could see the tiny silk-wrapped corpses of beetles and moths hanging in the corners.
Those pitiful creatures had spent their final moments trapped and wriggling helplessly in this mold-ridden castle. Would that same fate take him as well?
Fergus did not sleepwell that night. He kept imagining that he felt things crawling over him, and he could not stop scratching at his arms and hair in a vain effort to dislodge them. When he saw the light of sunrise in his window, he practically leaped out of bed and darted over to the morning glow, frantically inspecting his flesh for insects. As he beat at his own clothes, a centipede fell out of his tunic, and he stepped on it quickly with a shudder.
He fervently hoped that whatever accord he might reach with Ronald would be negotiated swiftly, that he would not be forced to spend another night in such a wretched place.
As he sat on the windowsill, he happened to look into a window in the tower across from his, and there he saw Moire, still sleeping in her bed, the pale sunlight catching her wavy brown hair as it framed her perfectly beautiful face. He forced himself to stop gazing upon her, certain that if she awoke and caught him at it, it would make her immensely uncomfortable.
But when he pulled his eyes away from her, he spied something else, and he turned his full attention to it. At first, he could not quite believe what he was seeing.
There were workers toiling in the fields below, despite the fact that the sun had barely begun to rise. They swung scythes and sickles, tore weeds and roots from the stony soil with their bare hands, and pulled heavy plows. Their labors were overseen by palace guards.
And many were small children. The youngest among them appeared to be no older than five.
What time had these people been roused from their beds and forced to work? This was the way slaves were treated, not servants—and certainly not children.
Perplexed, Fergus’s eye fell upon Moire’s room again, and he saw that she was awake.
She was also no longer alone.
Ronald was with her, and the two of them appeared to be having a fairly intense conversation. Whatever they were speaking of, it seemed to make Moire anxious and unhappy.
Then her eyes momentarily flickered away from her uncle’s and met Fergus’s before he had a chance to look away and pretend he had not been watching.
Moire’s eyes immediately returned to Ronald. Obviously, she did not want to alert him to the fact that they were being watched by Fergus.
So apparently, she is keeping secrets from me with her uncle, Fergus mused, stepping away from the window, and now she is keeping a secret from her uncle with me. What on Earth is transpiring here? Am I still at odds with Ronald, and if so, whose side might she be on?
The more he tried to speculate about whether he could trust her, the more his head hurt.
It reminded him of an old adage his father used to tell when Fergus was just a wee lad. A king discovered that his queen had been seeing another man. The king had the man captured and gave him a sporting chance to live: He would invite the entire kingdom to the Great Court, where the offender would be given a choice between two doors. Behind one door was a beautiful woman who would be his wife. Behind the other is a tiger that would rend him limb from limb.
As the man prepared to make his choice, he saw that the queen was covertly gesturing for him to choose the door to his right. But was she giving him a hint that would allow him to live because she loved him? Or was she indicating the door with the tiger since her love for him would not allow her to see him with another woman?
“In short,” Fergus’s father always concluded with a knowing wink, “which is behind the door on the right, lad…the lady, or the tiger?”
Fergus had never come up with an answer back then, and he had no answer now.
Even if he could not trust Moire, what could he do about it? Flee? Destroy all hope of coming to a truce or treaty with the Campbells, without even having encountered any proof that they meant him harm? What would he say to Edmund and the other leaders of the clan? That he ran off and abandoned his own plan because he “suddenly had a bad feeling about the whole thing?”
And what then? Open war? More kinsmen crippled and slain in battle after battle? Campbell’s resources were at least equal to the Brodies’, and there was no guarantee that even the Brodies’ staunchest allies would follow such a young and untested laird into conflict.
Especially a laird who hadn’t stood his ground in a situation such as this one.
He left his chamber gladly and made his way through the narrow and winding corridors of the castle until he located the steps that led to the tower opposite his own. When he knocked on Moire’s door, she bade him enter.
Fergus stepped in and saw her brushing her hair by the window. He briefly considered asking about her exchange with her uncle, then thought better of it. Best not to put her on the defensive right away, especially since he had so little information to challenge her with.
“It appears as though you survived the night,” she commented dryly.
“Most of me did, aye,” he affirmed. “The spiders ate the rest. May I ask about the workers in the fields outside our windows?”
“What of them?” she replied. “Surely your clan has farms and people who are tasked with tending them.”
“Indeed we do. However, those people tend not to be forced into labor before daybreak. They are not watched over by armed guardsmen. And they are most certainly not small children.”
Moire looked at him with sympathy and understanding. “I confess, when I was first sent here, I felt much the same based on what I had seen elsewhere. But soon, my uncle persuaded me to open my mind and heart to the way things are done here so that I might better understand. You see, Fergus, all work toward the common good in this place. Men, women, children—all share equally in the labors, which make our clan great. We work longer and harder than the farmers and artisans of the other clans. Our unity is our strength.”
“Is that spirit of ‘unity’ the reason there are guards posted in those fields?” Fergus challenged.
“Their presence is largely meant to be ceremonial,” she insisted. “The sight of them, armed and dressed in our clan’s colors, reminds us of what we are working so hard in service of. It inspires us to double and triple our efforts where others might shirk.”
“And those who are not sufficiently ‘inspired’ are struck down by the swords and axes those guards carry, is that it?”
Fergus felt himself growing increasingly furious at the thought of how the people below were being treated. He knew that he should maintain calm and tolerance—the better to negotiate successfully with Ronald—but in that moment, he could not bring himself to care about that. What he was witnessing was plainly wrong, and the fact that Moire refused to acknowledge it frustrated him all the more.
“You are being ridiculous,” she retorted hotly. “They only resort to violence with those of us who are clearly not pulling their own weight, and that is rarely the case.”
Suddenly, his eyes widened in dawning realization. “Wait a moment. You keep saying ‘we’ and ‘us.’ Do you mean to tell me that he has put you to work down there as well?”
Her face became flushed, and her tone was defensive. “Yes, and why not? Because I am of noble birth, I am to hold myself above the others of my clan? Are we not taught that all are equal in the eyes of the Lord?”
The more she spoke up to defend these practices, though, the more Fergus was certain that he heard some lingering doubt and uncertainty hovering in her voice. He wondered if it was because she had briefly been away from this setting. Maybe the reminder of how her life had been before had momentarily shaken the pernicious hold that Ronald and his twisted philosophy had upon her mind.
“Will you take me down to the fields, then?” Fergus asked. “I wish to have a closer look and confirm that the people there are being treated as fairly as you say they are.”
The red in Moire’s cheeks deepened, this time in anger instead of simply shame. “First, you refuse to believe me when I tell you that you will be safe here, and then you accuse me of lying about the conditions under which my countrymen work? You must have quite the low opinion of me!”
“Nothing of the sort,” Fergus assured her. “You say that this system is a benign and effective one? So be it. I wish to see it firsthand. If I find that the practice is sound, perhaps I shall implement it for my own clan. Where is the harm in that if it is as efficient as you claim?”
“Oh, you are an impossible man!” she huffed, putting her hands on her hips obstinately. “Very well, if it will satisfy you, I will take you down there, right now!”
As Moire led Fergus down the steps of the tower, she maintained a stony silence. Fergus wondered whether she would be as able to defend this way of doing things once she was in the fields herself again, face-to-face with those who were so clearly being oppressed and forced to toil at swordpoint.
Sure enough, when they approached the areas of harvest, the eyes of the workers seemed dulled and forlorn—glassy and bovine and devoid of all will and sense, like cows resigned to their own slaughter. When they recognized Moire, they nodded to her, looking pathetically relieved.
But none of them abandoned their positions or put down their tools.
None among them dared.
Fergus searched Moire’s face and saw that she was visibly conflicted by what she was seeing and experiencing again. Would she truly return to such a life if offered an alternative?
And if so, what alternative was Fergus prepared to provide?
Marriage, perhaps?
Before he had a chance to consider this further, Fergus heard a child’s voice call out from across the field: “Sister! Dear sister! How happy I am to see you once more!”
Moire turned in the direction of the voice, startled. Her eyes widened, and her jaw fell.
“Freya?!” she gasped. “Can it really be you?!”
