Amanda Scott (25 page)

Feeling Michael stiffen beside her, Isobel had sufficient warning so that she did not cry out or otherwise reveal her dismay when Waldron of Edgelaw stepped from the shadows of the fireplace inglenook onto the dais. However, when Fingon Mackinnon, the Green Abbot of Iona, followed him, her mouth dropped open and she turned to Michael to warn him.

But his hand squeezed hers hard, and understanding him, she kept silent.

Chapter 15

P
raying that his generally outspoken bride would continue to hold her tongue, Michael kept a firm grip on her hand as he nodded silently to Waldron.

Then, as his cousin continued toward him, he added coolly, “I own, I did think we might find you here. Am I correct in believing that your companion who offers his blessing is the fabled Green Abbot of Iona?”

Although his blue eyes were alight with laughter, Waldron did not offer to shake hands as he said, “Faith, lad, art still at outs with me? I had thought all such disgruntlement long buried in the past.” Casting an oblique look past Michael at their audience, he added, “He still harbors resentment because I could so easily best him at weaponry when we were youngsters.”

A slight shuffling of feet was the only response, and since Michael did not take his eyes from Waldron, he could not tell if the words had stirred any other reaction among his fellow travelers from the south.

The silence lengthened, but Waldron still looked amused and willing to wait for a reply, so Michael said evenly, “’Tis not I but you who stirs coals from the past, cousin. Moreover, you have not answered my question. Is this man Abbot Mackinnon of the Holy Isle?”

“He is,” Waldron said. “And, as he is a good friend, I’ve brought him to bless the installation of our intrepid prince, and now your marriage, too. You and Henry bring great honor to the St. Clairs, and such acts should be sanctified. It remains only for our Hugo to do something of note, but Macleod has many daughters, has he not?”

Isobel’s hand twitched in Michael’s, and he realized that he had stiffened up again. But he did not need her warning to know that he had to tread lightly. Waldron had also noted his reaction, because the gleam in his eyes revealed as much. Let him smirk, Michael decided, saying, “I believe you’ve met at least two of Macleod’s daughters, cousin, but if you were courting, I doubt they knew as much.”

The gleam vanished, but Michael could scarcely count the hit, because his mother said sharply, “Whatever can you mean by that, Michael? I do not understand you. You should be making your bow to our honored guest, Abbot Mackinnon, and thanking him for his kindness if he does offer you his blessing on this marriage of yours. Mayhap he will bestow it upon you during tomorrow’s High Mass.”

“Indeed, Countess, I should count it a pleasure,” Fingon Mackinnon said, bowing slightly in her direction. “Indeed, I admire Lady Isobel’s good sense.”

Isobel’s fingers tightened until Michael thought she might cut off her own circulation if not his, but she did not rise to the bait.

Knowing it was only a matter of time before one of the two men would goad her into saying something better left unspoken, he said amiably, “You honor us, sir, but I hope you will all forgive us if we beg permission to retire now to our chambers to refresh ourselves. Our journey, as you know, has been long.”

He turned back to Henry then, bowing but holding his brother’s gaze as he did. For all that Henry delighted in playing the fool and idly prating of mythical ventures, he possessed a formidable intelligence, so although he gave no sign of any message passing between them, Michael knew that one had.

With his pleasant smile, Henry said, “Doubtless all of you just arriving at Kirkwall will be glad of such an opportunity. And since I know that my people, and those of his eminence the Bishop of Orkney, have made chambers ready for you either in the palace or in a comfortable hall-house nearby, pray go with them now. We will all take supper here shortly after Vespers.”

As palace servants moved among them, Isabella said, “I would take it as a great favor, Abbot Mackinnon, if we might converse a bit longer. We so rarely see anyone of such importance from the Kirk.”

“Faith, madam, we are currently enjoying the hospitality of his eminence the Bishop of Orkney, and have our own chaplain with us besides,” Henry said. “We are scarcely bereft of spiritual guidance.”

“It is not the same,” Isabella said.

The Green Abbot made her another bow and said, “It will be my pleasure to spend an hour with you, Countess, and I will rejoin you shortly, but I did promise to meet briefly with his eminence before Vespers, and I should do that first.”

Ignoring his mother, the abbot, and Waldron, Michael turned with Isobel to leave the dais. The first thing he noted as he did, however, was how grim a number of his companions were looking.

Isobel had all she could do not to glance back at Waldron as Michael led her away from the dais. She did not want to give Waldron the satisfaction of knowing how much his presence disturbed her, but curiosity warred with wisdom, making it almost impossible not to watch to see what he would do next. He seemed to think he was as welcome at Kirkwall as Michael was, and indeed, if the countess was any measure, he was certainly more welcome there than Michael’s bride.

In the moment before Michael turned to escort her from the dais, Waldron looked right at her, his expression changing slightly to one that she often encountered at court, where young men who had indulged too heavily in brogac, the potent whisky of the Isles, sometimes grew too amorous for their own good. Waldron’s expression resembled those drunken leers but seemed more ominous. He looked hungry and as if he expected to fulfill that hunger.

As she and Michael faced the others, she saw that Hector looked ferocious and Lachlan studiously calm. Mairi had put a hand on Princess Margaret’s arm, and Lady Euphemia looked distressed. Princess Margaret’s two women, middle-aged sisters whom Mairi had always referred to as the Weed and the Rose, fluttered around their mistress, stiffening sharply when the abbot walked past Michael and Isobel, nodded at Princess Margaret, and said, “Madam, I hope we see you well.”

Margaret nodded back without speaking, and the abbot walked on, passing through a doorway near the back of the hall, clearly at ease in the bishop’s palace.

Expecting Waldron to follow him, Isobel glanced back at the dais when he did not. Not seeing him, she said in surprise to Michael, “Where did he go?”

“With my lady mother, I expect,” he said, following her glance. “Doubtless they retired to her chambers, which I’ll wager lie somewhere beyond that door at the back of the dais.” To Hector, he said, “Do you expect my cousin or the abbot to cause trouble here, my lord? I believe they will not. My cousin values my mother’s good opinion and would not willingly relinquish it.”

“I agree that they will behave,” Hector said. “Mayhap they did hope to cause grief to your brother, because from all you say of Waldron of Edgelaw, he covets what the St. Clairs possess. Had he seen his way clear before now to claiming the princedom for himself, I’ll warrant he’d not have hesitated to do so.”

“I was more concerned that he might attempt to harm Henry,” Michael said.

“Too many factors argue against that possibility,” Lachlan said.

All those galleys in the harbor, for one,
Isobel thought, although she did not put herself forward to the point of saying so aloud, knowing that Princess Margaret would disapprove of her entering such a conversation.

However, to her surprise, Lachlan said, “A primary factor is the thousand gold pieces your brother will pay the Norse King at Martinmas. I doubt that your cousin could pay such a price. Even if somehow he could, you would still be Henry’s heir. Therefore, he cannot even try to win the princedom unless he is willing to do away with three people—Henry, you, and Henry’s visibly pregnant wife—an iniquity that would damn him forever in the Norse King’s eyes. Mark you, Waldron may once have thought it possible, but by now he will have realized his error. Not only does Henry have too many protectors, but if Waldron has not already learned the terms of Henry’s agreement with the Norse King, he will do so soon enough.”

“Since he believes God is on his side, he may not care about iniquities,” Michael said. “Moreover, any setback will frustrate and anger him, and when he is angry, he grows even more dangerous.”

“But he will not flaunt his frustrations here,” Lachlan said, extending one arm to Princess Margaret and the other to his lady wife. “Now then, I suggest that we take advantage of Sir Henry’s excellent hospitality to rest before supper.”

Nodding, Michael tucked Isobel’s hand in the crook of his arm and they moved with the rest of their party to follow a pair of palace servants upstairs to their chambers. When Isobel saw Sir Hugo offer his arm to Adela, she glanced at Michael, wondering how he would react. But he paid them no heed, and she was not surprised to see her sister accept Sir Hugo’s escort with a smile.

After seeing Adela safely inside the room she would share with Lady Euphemia, Hugo walked on with Michael and Isobel to theirs. Isobel expected Michael to send him away, but when he did not, she realized that the two men must have communicated in some silent manner before then.

Inside the small, rather barren chamber, Hugo shut the door firmly and moved past the curtained bed to look out the narrow window beyond it. “Is it safe to talk here?” he asked Michael.

“For now,” Michael said. “But I’m thinking the sooner we see the backs of that precious pair, the safer we will be.”

“That won’t be until after Henry’s ceremony,” Hugo said. “And that’s still two days away, is it not?”

“Aye, on Sunday.”

“You’ll take care until then, lad,” Hugo said, his gaze shifting pointedly to Isobel and back as he did.

“Aye,” Michael said, resting his own gaze on her as he added, “Lass, you must be wary, as well, and take special care never to be alone with Waldron. By that I mean you must not wander anywhere alone. Seek escort from me or from Hugo, or from Hector Reaganach or the admiral. If none of us is at hand, send for a gillie or one of Henry’s menservants. You will know them by their tunics. They are gray and bear the black St. Clair cross.”

She would have liked to tell him there and then what she thought of his issuing such orders to her in front of Sir Hugo, but she restrained herself until after that gentleman had departed. The moment the door snapped shut behind him, however, she said tartly, “Do you think me feeble-minded, Michael?”

His thoughts had clearly moved on to something else, because he regarded her blankly for a moment before his eyes focused and he said, “I don’t think anything of the kind. Why would you think so?”

“If you do not think me witless, then why did you feel obliged to act the protective husband in front of Sir Hugo?”

“Because I wanted you to know that he will expect you to request his protection if you need it. I did not want you to think for a moment that by making such a request to him you might somehow be imposing on his good nature.”

“In other words, you did not want to leave me any opportunity to offer that as an excuse for taking my own road, as you once described my tendency to trust my own judgment and make my own decisions.”

“Aye, sure,” he said with a grin, clearly pleased that she understood him so well. “And now that we have come to agreement on that subject, I propose that we explore other agreeable entertainment until we must dress for supper.”

“We are supposed to be refreshing ourselves,” she reminded him. “Changing our clothing or attending to other such necessities before supper.”

“Aye, that’s what I meant,” he said, reaching for her bodice lacing.

She stepped back. “I don’t want to.”

His reaching hand stopped, hovered in midair. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Aye, I did, but I’m your husband, lass. You are my wife.”

“You said you would not bed an unwilling wife.”

He sighed. “I won’t, sweetheart. I know our first coupling hurt you, and that what happened afterward may have put you off coupling for a time, especially since we failed to find other opportunities before now. I can understand, too, that a few doubts may have lingered to fester in your mind, but—”

“It is not a matter of pain or festering, sir, but of trust,” she said flatly.

“Trust?”

“Aye, yours in me. You have asked me again and again to trust you, from the day we first met, when we were finding our way out of that cave and we could not see our hands in front of our eyes. You even asked me to trust that you could not tell me more about what Waldron sought from you.”

“But I could not.”

“That does not matter. My point is that you did ask me each time to trust you. I’m just naming all the occasions, sir.”

He looked down at the floor then, and she thought he was biting his lip. Whether it was to keep himself from roaring or laughing at her, she could not tell, but that did not matter either. She meant to have her say.

“All my life people have told me to use my own judgment and then scolded me when I did, or they simply ignore the fact that I possess any judgment to use,” she said. “The main reason I have hitherto avoided taking a husband is that I did not want another person in my life always telling me what to do and how to act. You said you would not, but you do. You expect me to trust you all in all, but you choose when you will trust me, and I am trying to tell you that for me to give you the complete trust you ask for, I must know that you believe in me, too.”

He drew a deep breath then and looked her straight in the eye as he said, “Isobel, although I feel as if I have known you all my life, I have not, and we still have much to learn about each other. I do trust you. Moreover, you know that I do. I can provide a list, too. I trusted you in the cave whilst you were freeing yourself and when you suggested how we should handle Fin Wylie, that lout of Waldron’s who came to collect us. I trusted Matthias and Ian MacCaig with no more than your word that I might. I trusted your decision that we should cross the Kyle and make for the Isle of Mull to take shelter with a man I scarcely knew, whose reputation is fearsome. And when you told me that I could trust Donald Mòr Gowrie, I trusted him, too. I even trusted your considerable knowledge of boats and the sea.”

“Perhaps, but you did
not
trust me when I explained how I got onto your boat,” she said. “And you did
not
trust me to have sense enough not to dash into a battle to find you,” she added hastily when she remembered exactly what he had said on his boat, and how angry he had been. “Nor did you trust me to be sensible just now, and simply tell me to ask Hugo if I needed an escort.”