Devil in a Kilt by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

Chapter 40

“Can you hear me, laddie?”

Duncan opened his eyes a crack and glowered at his old goat of a seneschal. “Of course, I can hear you,” he groaned. “The way you’ve been blaring in my ear, a stone would hear you.”

That said, he shut his eyes again.

There wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t ache. His head throbbed as if he’d downed Eilean Creag’s entire store of spirits.

Nae, he did not want to be disturbed.

Not by Fergus, not by anyone – not even his sweet lady wife.

The way he felt, he wouldn’t even stir for the blessed St. Columba should the highly revered holy brother care to pay him a visit.

“Be you still awake, laddie?” Fergus shouted into his ear, bellowing as if he sought to rouse the dead.

Duncan’s hands curled into fists, and his eyes shot wide open. “If I was not, I am now, you pest! Can you not let a man sleep?”

“Someone’s come to see you,” Fergus, still leaned low over the trestle table, bellowed into Duncan’s ear.

“If it is not God the Father Himself, send him on his way,” Duncan ground out, each word, each movement of his lips, an agony.

He tried to close his eyes again, but Fergus, the persistent wretch, started rattling Duncan’s uninjured arm. “You cannae keep sleeping. ’Tis nigh evening, you’ve slept the day through and your visitor brings us grim tidings.”

With a great effort, Duncan pushed himself up on his elbows and tried to focus his hurting eyes. They burned as if someone had poured sand into them. “What tidings? Has my bastard half brother marched into the hall and laid claim to the high table?”

“It is grave news, sir.” This from Fergus’s lady, and Duncan did not care for her tone.

Following her voice, he squinted up at her. The expression on her face was worse than her tone. Her nose glowed bright red, and her eyelids were puffy. The woman had been crying.

Sobbing, from the look of her.

As he peered at her, she gasped, clapped her hands over her mouth, and wheeled away from him, her rounded shoulders heaving.

Duncan forgot his wounds and sat straight up. “What madness has befallen us while I’ve slumbered?” he wheezed, fire shards of pain shooting through him. “Tell me at once.”

But the kinsmen gathered around the trestle table avoided his gaze, each one suddenly shuffling about as if their feet were afire or plucking at their clothes as if they’d been beset by a horde of man-eating fleas.

Even Fergus. The grizzled he-goat stood half-turned away from Duncan, scratching furiously at his elbow.

“What goes on here?” Duncan boomed, now fully awake and furious himself. “Speak, someone!”

“‘Tis your lady, Laird MacKenzie,” a great hulk of a stranger said from the foot of the table. “Your brother has her.”

“You lie!” Duncan made to leap off the table but white-hot pain knifed through him. Black rage nigh blinding him and sheer terror squeezing the very air from his lungs, he doubled over in agony, tightly clutching his middle.

Fergus, his gnarled hands firm and strong, eased Duncan gently backward until he was once more in a prone position on the table. “Becalm yourself, laddie. We dinnae ken aught for certain. Not yet. Marmaduke’s gone abovestairs. We’ll soon hear if any harm has come to your lady or the wee lad.”

“The boy, too?” Duncan scowled, his head splitting. “That cannae be.”

“We hope not.” Fergus nodded toward the stranger. “He be Murdo, of the MacLeod clan. Says he was on his way here with a message from his laird. The MacLeod would bid us to send men. They need help rebuilding their hall after a fire.” Fergus paused to rest an arm around his weeping lady’s shoulders. “On the way here, he came across some of Kenneth’s men. They boasted the whoreson had your lady and Robbie and meant to ransom them.”

For a long moment Duncan said nothing. He couldn’t for terror constricted his lungs, and each one of Fergus’s words had been like a nail hammered into his heart.

Lifting his head as best he could, he narrowed his eyes at the stranger. Something about the man struck him in a bad way, and it wasn’t just the grim tidings he brought. “I know John MacLeod well. His men, too, but I don’t recall ever meeting you.”

Murdo nodded, then withdrew a gleaming golden brooch from a leather pouch suspended from his belt. With grimy fingers, he held out the finely wrought piece of jewelry for Duncan’s inspection. A large red gemstone in its middle winked and sparkled in the light of a nearby wall torch.

’Twas a choice gem and a brooch of rare beauty.

Duncan knew it well – he’d seen it often as the MacLeod laird wasn’t wont to go about without the brooch fastened to his cloak.

A charmed piece, John had sworn.

One he always wore.

Murdo must’ve seen the recognition in Duncan’s eyes, for he dropped the brooch back into his pouch and gave Duncan a broad smile.

Duncan didn’t return the smile. “I cannae believe John would part with that brooch.”

The stranger’s smile dimmed, but only for a moment. “Oh, aye,” Murdo disagreed, bobbing his shaggy, unkempt head. “He knew you wouldn’t know me and sent along the brooch to assure you of my identity.”

“I see.” Duncan didn’t believe a word of the man’s story. He slanted a glance at Fergus, but the bristly old fool was still scratching his elbow.

Looking back at the stranger, Duncan hissed out a sharp breath before he opened his mouth to say more. Saints alive, just turning his neck sent sizzling bolts of pain shooting down his spine. Wincing, he forced his lips to move. “What of a fire? How many men does John need?”

“So many as you can spare. All but the bare stone walls are ash and soot. Oh, aye, ’twas a fierce fire,” Murdo said, rocking back on his heels. “You’ll be wanting to send a party after your lady first, though. My lord willnae begrudge you looking after your own afore you send help.”

Apprehension, cold and disturbing, slithered over Duncan’s skin as the man spoke, but his thinking was too fogged from pain to place what bothered him.

“And you will tell us where to look?” Alexander, one of Duncan’s men, spoke up. Duncan glanced sharply at him. His brow was furrowed, and he stood rubbing his chin, peering suspiciously at the tall man called Murdo.

“Aye, I can. Way I done heard, Laird MacKenzie’s brother means to head by galley to one of the northern isles.” Murdo’s barrel-like chest swelled with importance. “As I’m here, I can ride north with you. I have some kin on the coast and can help secure a boat.”

Despite his aching bones and suffering, Duncan pushed himself up on his elbows. “I think not,” he wheezed. “My men will ride out if my lady and the child have been taken, but you will not go with them. You and John’s brooch shall remain here. In my safekeeping, if you will.”

Murdo’s face turned a deep red. “You cannae keep me prisoner here.”

Duncan only lifted a brow.

“’Tis a breach o’ hospitality!” Murdo sputtered. “My lord is a trusted ally of-”

“If John is your lord, he will understand,” Duncan cut into the man’s speech, then snapped his own mouth shut at the sound of pounding footsteps. He turned toward the noise just in time to see Sir Marmaduke burst into the hall from the tower stairs.

The Sassunach plowed his way through the men standing about, not stopping until he reached Duncan’s side. “Mother of God preserve us, ’tis true,” he panted. “Lady Linnet and Robbie are gone.”

A loud roar sounded in Duncan’s ears, increasing in volume until he could scarce hear aught else. “Nae! It cannae be.” His words were barely audible, drowned out by the noise he now recognized as the rush of his own blood coursing through him.

The sound of his world crashing down around him.

“It cannae be,” he repeated. “Thomas wouldn’t have left his post.”

“He didn’t. The door was bolted from within, we had to break it down,” Marmaduke said, dashing Duncan’s last hope. “They were taken by stealth.” His gaze flickered briefly over Murdo. “I do not know how the deed was done, but they are gone.”

Duncan pushed himself to a sitting position, easing his legs off the table and clutching its edge for support. He didn’t know what whirled faster, the sickening dread spinning through him, or the hall itself. Both spun madly, out of control. And through it all, he kept hearing the Sassunach’s terrible words.

They are gone, they are gone…

And Duncan knew how they’d been taken.

Aye, he knew.

Damnation but he’d been a fool. He should have known. Kenneth was clever. He would’ve known he could ne’er have taken Eilean Creag, was well aware its walls couldn’t be breached.

His attack had been a ruse.

A clever stratagem so his men could clear the rocks blocking the entrance to the sea cave. Somehow the bastard had discovered the secret Duncan thought only he knew. And once they’d gained access to the hidden passage, they’d stolen his lady and Robbie.

Darkness closed in on him in dizzying waves, washing over him, pulling at him from the outside, while his insides twisted in unspeakable agony.

As if from a great distance, he heard a woman’s high-pitched wail, then Fergus grousing at him to lie back down. Other voices, shouts and murmurs, merged with theirs until his aching head was filled with naught but confusion.

Someone – Marmaduke? – pushed him down, pinning him onto the trestle table with hands as unyielding as steel. He struggled to break free, but couldn’t. He was too weak. The pain, his anguish, his rage, was nigh onto unbearable.

It shattered him, was too formidable an opponent to fight.

And naught hurt as fiercely as the gaping, bleeding wound Kenneth’s evildoing had left in his chest.

For along with his lady and the lad, they’d stolen that which he hadn’t truly believed he possessed till now.

His heart.

They’d ripped it, bleeding and raw, from his breast, leaving him bereft – empty.

Clarity dawned even as blackness claimed him, the weight of its truth almost crushing him, pressing the life from him, robbing him of his very breath.

They’d taken his lady and his son, for suddenly it mattered naught whether the lad was truly his son or nae.

All that mattered was their safe return.

He had to get them back.

Both of them.

He’d never be whole again until he did.