Devil in a Kilt by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

Chapter 14

“So we agree he didn’t kill her.”

Linnet stopped pacing before the three kitchen fires and turned again to face Elspeth. “Even so, the bitterness in his soul is no reason to treat a new wife so poorly.”

“Mercy me!” Elspeth’s eyebrows rose. “Are you saying he handled you roughly?”

“Nae.” Linnet shook her head. “He didn’t touch me at all,” she admitted, ashamed, angry, and relieved at the same time. “I mean, I do not know if he…” She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head, unable to voice the conflicting emotions tearing her apart. “I cannot remember all that happened.”

“My poor bairn,” Elspeth cooed, drawing Linnet into her arms. “I should have explained to you about what happens between a man and his lady wife. Some gentleborn women are too delicate to withstand their husband’s needs. I am so sorry if he hurt you.”

“You don’t understand.” Linnet extracted herself from the motherly embrace. “I don’t know if he hurt me or not. As best I remember, he slept most of the night and didn’t come to me at all. It’s impossible to recall what did or didn’t happen.”

She paused, leaving out mention of the disturbing visitation. She also held back the little she could remember of what happened after the vision. The brassy taste of blood in her mouth and watching the swollen fullness of her husband’s manhood buck and lengthen beneath her curious gaze.

Even now, just the thought of such a wonder sent a pulsing hunger curling through the lowest part of her belly. The most womanly part of her grew heavy and warm even as her agitation bubbled and boiled inside her.

Her ire over her husband not wanting her overpowered and dispersed the fragile beginnings of her long-awaited introduction to passion.

“All I remember is waking up in bed, unclothed, and with blood on my hands,” she said, annoyance and hurt lending an edge to her voice.

Elspeth’s brows lifted. “Blood on your hands?”

“Aye, and on the bedsheets as well. I-”

“Bless the saints, lass, ‘tis mystery no longer,” the old woman cut her off, a glimmer of relief crossing her face. “Or do you suffer your woman’s time?”

“Nae. It’s been a full sennight since I last bled.”

“Seven days.” Elspeth smiled. “Then it is as I hoped. Laird MacKenzie duly consummated your marriage.”

“But I cannae-”

“It matters naught if you’ve pushed the memory from your mind. The first time is ne’er pleasant,” Elspeth assured her. “Many years have passed since my Angus died, but it is well I recall the early days of our marriage. The pain will lessen, dinnae worry. Then you’ll see what a wondrous thing the love between a man and woman can be.”

Linnet’s face flamed. She’d wondered about the dried blood on her hands and the bedcoverings, but had assumed it’d come from biting her lip. Still, could a wee cut on the inside of her lip cause so much blood? She doubted it, but how else could the reddish smears have gotten on the bedsheets – unless they’d mated?

The possibility seemed more than remote, but she couldn’t deny the blood.

She was gifted with the sight, but she wasn’t a spellcaster, capable of conjuring physical manifestations. It was beyond her talents to create blood where there was none.

Whether she liked the implications or not, it was likely the Black Stag had indeed come upon her while she was still dazed from the vision.

The saints knew she’d seen the might of his arousal.

“There’s no reason to blush,” Elspeth crooned. “Shame doesn’t suit a new bride. In a few days, it will be happiness, not embarrassment, coloring your cheeks.”

Grasping any excuse to change the subject, Linnet picked up Elspeth’s ladle off the floor and handed it to her. “You haven’t told me what brought you to the kitchens? Eilean Creag has a goodly number of servants. It isn’t necessary for you to tend the cookpots. Who sent you here?”

“No one, it was my own meddling,” Elspeth said, the concern in her eyes replaced by a twinkle. “Fergus, the seneschal, was ordering the preparation of alms baskets for the abbey, and I offered to help. He’s a most able man, dinnae misunderstand, but after a wedding feast, there is much to do. I’m glad to make myself useful.”

Linnet heard only half of what Elspeth said. Certain comments caught her attention, joining those uttered by Fergus.

A most able man.

A fine woman.

The significance behind the simply spoken words burned brighter than a beacon, leaping out at her and dimming all else either of them had said.

The notion struck her as wildly absurd, but even without the giveaway words, the piercing stare Fergus had fixed her with and the girlish gleam in Elspeth’s eyes told their own tale.

“… I asked if you want to ride along to the abbey?” Elspeth broke into Linnet’s musing. “Fergus tells me it’s a pleasant journey. One of the monks is said to be an unrivaled herbalist. Fergus claims the monk, Brother Baldric, visited the Holy Land and brought back many unusual plants. Perhaps he’ll show you his garden?”

Linnet smiled. Elspeth always knew how to entice her. “For sure, I’d enjoy seeing the abbey garden, and a ride would suit me well. Perhaps Robbie would like to join us.” She paused to glance at the assortment of foodstuffs set upon the table, ready to go. “Why aren’t the alms distributed here? Even Da’s almoner handed out Dondonnell’s meager offerings from the castle gate.”

Rather than respond to Linnet’s question, Elspeth made a great show of cleaning her wooden ladle. Then, after a few swipes with a drying cloth, she held it up, inspecting it as if searching for an overlooked speck of dirt.

Recognizing the familiar ploy, Linnet prodded for an answer, “Why do the poor not come to Eilean Creag to collect food? That is usual way, all over the land.”

“Fergus said there is no need to employ an almoner.”

Without failing to notice Elspeth not only ignored her question but also once again started a sentence with ‘Fergus said…’ Linnet tried again. “And why not? Did the all-knowing Fergus say?”

“Aye,” Elspeth conceded, her expression inscrutable.

“So what is the reason?”

“The poor willnae come here. Not since the death of your husband’s first wife has any villager dared cross the bridge. ’Tis said they fear the laird.”

“I see.” Linnet squared her shoulders, surprised by her indignation over needy villagers accepting her husband’s charity but shunning him with their refusal to collect such goods from his door.

Her own feelings aside, it was becoming clear to see why the man was so embittered.

“All the more reason for me to go to the abbey.” Linnet skimmed her fingertips along the top of the kitchen table. “I shall inform the villagers there shall always be alms aplenty, but henceforth they must collect such offerings here, as is custom.”

Elspeth looked aghast. “Your lord husband may not care for your intrusion into the matter.”

“I doubt Duncan MacKenzie knows what he should or shouldn’t care about.”

But perhaps she’d be able to show him. An ember of hope sparking within her, the demons of the night banished for now, she left the kitchens to retrieve her herb satchel and fetch Robbie. A sense of calm and purpose settled over her as she went. If her husband could learn to care again, perhaps he’d find the heart his vision-likeness seemed so desperate to have returned.

For a brief moment, the wee spark of hope inside her flared brightly as a small voice, one that had naught to do with her gift, told her his heart wasn’t missing – it was just buried too deep for him to recover it alone.

* * *

Bracinghimself against the bright daylight beyond the shadowy confines of his castle walls, Duncan stepped outside and headed straight for the lists.

“Cease pandering about like a woman!” a deep voice commanded from the training ground. “If you wish to earn your spurs, have at me like a man!”

Duncan quickened his pace upon hearing Marmaduke shouting commands at the young squires he was instructing in how to handle a sword.

Not that he wouldn’t have known where to locate his brother-in-law.

He’d have found him even if the brisk sea wind did not carry his booming English voice across the bailey. The scar-faced Sassunach spent nigh onto his every waking moment training in the lists. Some of Duncan’s men swore they’d even glimpsed him there in the wee hours, sparring against moonbeams. Duncan didn’t doubt it either.

Martial skills such as Sir Marmaduke Strongbow possessed were only gained by years of long hours spent at practice. Few men could claim his prowess as a warrior, and fewer still could defeat him.

Duncan’s late father, of a certainty, when in his prime. Duncan himself, when the saints chose to grant him such favor. But never did he know beforehand the outcome of a good round of swordplay with his best champion. Only one had ever taken the Sassunach down – the debased whoreson who’d carved out Marmaduke’s eye and left his handsome face a twisted mask.

The selfsame miscreant who’d wrought untold misery in Duncan’s own life, his half brother Kenneth MacKenzie.

Just the thought of him made Duncan scowl.

Aye, no one understood better than Duncan what drove Marmaduke to hone his skills.

Duncan, too, was driven by bitterness.

But not for revenge. He cared nothing about retribution. He only wanted to be left alone.

The ring of steel against steel and a barrage of heartily uttered oaths brought his mind back to the present. Entering the lists, he suppressed the admiration that always rose in him upon seeing his brother-in-law at training and strode forward, determined to settle the issue at hand: the Sassunach’s undoubted role in locking him in his wife’s bedchamber yestereve, unclothed and befuddled from too much hippocras.

“Strongbow!” he bellowed, pulling up a safe distance behind the sword-wielding Englishman. “Order a pause, for I’d have a word with you, you scheming heap of trouble.”

“Merciful saints,” Marmaduke exclaimed, wheeling around. “You know better than to come up on a man’s back when he’s at swording. I could have sliced your squire in two.”

“You are the one who will be rent in two if you dinnae explain yourself – now!”

“As you wish.” Marmaduke cast his blade aside, then dragged his arm across his dripping brow. With a nod, and a fearsome glance from his good eye, he sent the circle of young men scattering.

Turning back to Duncan, he said, “What demon has crawled under your skin this fair morn, my good friend?”

“If good friends e’er go against a man’s wishes and conspire to thrust him into the arms of a maid he has no intention of bedding, then I dinnae need enemies, do I?”

Marmaduke made to speak, but Duncan stayed him by raising his hand. “What did you seek to accomplish? Have you forgotten I’ve sworn not to touch my lady wife?”

“No, I have not forgotten, little that I care for the notion.” Marmaduke paused to wipe more sweat from his brow. “But ‘tis not your vow that concerns me, ‘tis your happiness.”

“And you thought to secure my marital bliss by locking me in Lady Linnet’s bedchamber?”

Marmaduke’s ravaged lips twisted in an attempt to smile. “The ploy bore success.”

Duncan’s brows shot upward. “What do you mean, success?”

“You bedded her, did you not?” Marmaduke stepped forward and slapped Duncan on the shoulder. “Ah… it was good to see your men so pleased when her blood-smeared gown was passed around the hall this morn. You should have heard them cheer.”

“I didn’t touch her, I swear. It’s no’ possible. I-”

A loud commotion behind them cut off his protest as a lone man on a heavily winded horse entered the lists from the bailey. He rode forward, reining in before Duncan and Marmaduke.

Duncan recognized him as Red James, one of the guardsmen who watched and protected the MacKenzie boundaries.

“Sir, I bring grim tidings.” Red James said, swinging down from his saddle. “We found one of the outlying cottages torched. Nothing remains. Soot and ash, smoke on the wind.”

“Which family? Were they all killed?” Duncan’s level tone belied the anger roiling through his veins.

“The Murchinsons. Some escaped into the wood when they saw the raiders approaching, but most of them, God rest their souls, were slaughtered.”

Rage, hot and fierce, ripped through Duncan, and a sickening feeling churned deep in his gut. A ghastly possibility cast an ugly shadow on the day, but he didn’t want to accept it. For years, his wife’s ragtag band of brothers had harried his borders, but ne’er had they pillaged and murdered.

The MacDonnells were simple cattle thieves, and not well skilled at that. Still, he had to know.

“Did any of the survivors recognize who did this? Were they MacDonnells?”

“Nae, sir, they weren’t MacDonnells. ’Twas far worse.”

“Worse?”

“’Twas him,” Red James said, clearly uncomfortable. “Your half brother Kenneth and his men.”