A reluctant smile relaxed Duncan’s face. “Ask Effie to raise the portcullis, Marsali. I am not accustomed to standing around in a piece of wool with my private parts exposed.”
“Very well.
”
She brushed around him, cupping her hands, pistol and all, to her face to shout, “Raise the portcullis,
Effie!”
“It’s laundry day, Marsali!” the thin-faced woman yelled down with an apologetic shrug.
“Aye, I realize that, but this man is not accustomed to standing around in a piece of wool with his privy parts exposed, and he’s demanding to be let in!”
Effie dropped her hunting horn to fish a pair of cracked spectacles from her apron pocket. Leaning precariously over the watch turret, she looked Duncan up and down for several critical moments. “I canna see anything exposed, Marsali, but the man is built like a war horse! My God, he has a chest on him. Where did ye find him then
?”
“On the moor,” Marsali shouted back. “He’s claiming to be our new chieftain, but we tossed his clothes into the tarn, and he had to borrow a plaid.”
“Ye dinna say. Well then, I’ll fetch my sister from the barrelhouse and have her give me a hand. ’Twill take a few minutes, ye ken, to raise the damned thing up. Ooh, look at his hindquarters, Marsali. All that lovely muscular haunch.”
“You should have seen him running about for his life on the moor, Effie, bare as a boiled egg right down to his—”
“Excuse me.” Duncan clamped his hand down, hard, on Marsali’s shoulder. “There is a crowd gathering on the battlements, and I would appreciate it if you did not discuss my various body parts as you would a stallion’s for sale at a fair.”
Marsali stood unmoving, immobilized not so much by his painful grasp as by her reaction to it. Wonderful flurries of sensation washed through her, warm and thoroughly wicked; her reeling senses still hadn’t recovered from the pleasant shock of lying beneath him in the dirt. She turned woodenly to face him. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said with a sheepish grin. “I didn’t hear a word you said.”
“I’m not surprised, with all the shouting about my anatomy going on.”
He lifted his hand from her shoulder, frowning at the imprint on his fingers underlaid with the talon marks of the hawk. The pretty young pagan spoke in a cultured voice at
odds with her station in life. The embroidered girdle around her waist where she had casually stuck the pistol had cost a pretty penny. Obviously someone had taken the trouble to educate and arm her. But why, and who? The mystery of her deepened.
Th
e portcullis began its creaking ascent, the muffled sound of women swearing from behind the double doors breaking Duncan’s concentration. He backed away from Marsali, mounting the mare with a satisfied nod. He’d gotten his way; that was what counted.
Marsali stood in silence, watching as he passed beneath the portcullis, laundry dropping onto his elegant head. He looked proud of himself, as if he had scored a major coup by having the portcullis raised. Actually, considering the fact that today was laundry day, he
had
done quite well for himself.
But Marsali knew that the self-satisfied look he wore would shortly erode into horror. She knew that the worst was yet to come. For her own part she usually avoided the castle and its environs except in an extreme emergency. Clansmen had been known to enter and never be seen again.
She hefted the chieftain’s clothes back against her chest and hurried after him. He was probably going to need her protection. There was no telling what he might encounter. After all, he had countermanded Cook’s orders, and nobody in Marsali’s memory had dared such an offense and lived to tell of it.
C
h
apter
4
C
ook slowly lowered the spyglass, her oblong face going ash-gray with the shock of what she had just witnessed. “Dear God in Heaven, it’s that wee bastard Duncan MacElgin, and his horse is trampling all over my clean laundry.” The three people standing beside her on the battlements—her spinster daughter, Suisan, the ancient head groom, Angus, and Johnnie, Kenneth MacElgin’s former lieutenant-at-arms—all reached to wrest the spyglass from her plump, age-speckled hands at the same time.
Johnnie snared it first. He was a middle-aged man with a leonine mane of grizzled brown hair that came to his shoulders. Narrowing his eye, he peered down at the horseman entering the middle bailey. “By damn,” he said, a whistle escaping his cracked front teeth. “The prodigal son’s come home.”
“But I thought he was dead,” Suisan exclaimed, wrenching the spyglass from Johnnie’s hands to see for herself. “Why do ye suppose—Oooh, he’s wearin’ naught but a plaid like one of the old Highlanders. The laddie is all grown up, Ma. He’s no a wee bastard anymore.”
She scowled in disappointment as Angus confiscated the glass, giving a deep throaty chuckle at the sight of the laird
d
raped in the castle’s laundry. “
Duncan MacElgin. Aye, there’ll be trouble in spades now. About time too.”
“What do you suppose it means?” Cook asked worriedly, wringing her hands.
“No tellin’.” Johnnie’s pleasant face puckered into a frown. “Someone should have warned us to expect him, though.”
Suisan giggled softly. “He doesna look dead, does he?”
“He’ll find out about Abercrombie now,” Angus said, with another ominous chuckle at the prospect.
“Abercrombie,” the three others whispered in horrified unison.
Cook heaved an enormous sigh. “And here I was set to enjoy a long peaceful summer. Look at the man, the size of him, letting his horse stomp my clean laundry into the ground. Laird or no, I willna have it.”
Johnnie snatched the spyglass back from the old groom’s hand and leveled it on the middle bailey. “Aye, and ye can give up yer hope of a peaceful summer, old woman. The MacElgin’s brought Marsali Hay along wi’ him.”
“Our Marsali?” Cook said, her features lighting up in relief. “Aye, weel. That’s a good sign then.”
“She’s carryin’ the MacElgin’s clothes and his sword, by the look of it,” Johnnie murmured. “She’s no exactly laughing with pleasure either.”
Cook’s face fell like one of her egg souffles. “That’s a bad sign then.”
“He’s ridin’ her horse too,” Johnnie added, clucking his tongue.
“That’s the worst sign,” Cook said grimly. “It can only mean the wee bastard is every bit as wicked as the day his puir papa sent him off to the wars. A lion canna change his stripes, I always say.”
“He doesna look at all like a good-natured man,” Johnnie was forced to agree, handing the spyglass back to Suisan, who was fairly dancing with impatience for another look at the MacElgin. “To think he hasn’t seen the worst of it yet. He’ll no be pleased.”
A
knife-throwing contest was well under way by the time Duncan penetrated the middle bailey. In the confusion—the drinking, the cheering, the furious betting—no one paid much attention to the lone horseman who approached, his face a dark mask of displeasure at the evidence of total disorder.
A buxom blonde serving wench, blindfolded and with an apple on her head, stood flattened against the dog-kennel door, knives whizzing toward her with a careless accuracy that chilled Duncan’s blood. Before he could interrupt the sport, a band of scruffy-looking boys and girls came charging at him from the direction of the dovecote.
He grinned unwillingly at the innocence of their play, the toy crossbows and arrows they aimed straight
at his heart. Then from the corn
er of his eye, he saw Marsali streak past him as if running for her life, his clothes and sword clutched like a shield to her chest. An arrow sailed over his head. That was when he realized that the little buggers charging at him with Indian war whoops were armed to the teeth with real weapons. He spurred the horse into a canter toward the safety of the stables, reaching Marsali’s side and swooping her up across his lap. She landed rump first on his massive thighs. He caught her in a crushing grip and rode with his arm clamped around her ribcage as if their lives depended on it. Which they possibly did.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, wriggling to wedge a position for herself between his legs. Duncan’s body stiffened at the not unpleasant intrusion of her bottom squashed against his groin. “Children will play their games, won’t they?”
“Those aren’t children, Marsali,” he said tersely. “They’re undersized monsters with murder in their ugly wee hearts.”
She dared to lean back against his chest, feeling protected by his strength as another arrow whizzed over their heads. “Everything is going to change now that you’re here, isn’t it?” she called up in a hopeful voice.
“Yes,” he said, and he frowned at the flicker of doubt that entered his mind.
He slowed the mare to enter the stables, surprised that it at least appeared to receive regular attention. A startled undergroom tumbled out of his bed loft to take the horse.
Duncan nudged Marsali off his lap, watching her drop to the ground as agile as a cat.
“How did the ambush go, Marsali?” the young boy asked excitedly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Did ye humiliate the bastard?”
Marsali cleared her throat, trying to avoid Duncan’s sharp gaze as he dismounted. “Well, we tried our best, Martin. But sometimes the best of plans go awry. The worst ones apparently do too.”
His red hair sticking up in tufts at various angles from his head, Martin looked over shrewdly at Duncan. “So I see,” he said, his voice low and curious. “Is this the bas—is
he
the captain, Marsali?”
“This is Duncan MacElgin, Martin,” she explained solemnly, lowering her awkward bundle to the floor. “He is our new laird and chieftain. I humiliated him on the moor, and now he’s going to make an example of me.”
The raw-boned boy, a few years younger than Marsali, stared at Duncan in suspicious silence as if she had just introduced him to the Devil. It was clear he’d made the association in his mind, probably long ago. Apparently Duncan had become a legend in his own time, and not a nice one either.
He frowned, curbing his irritation. “See to the horse, would you, lad, while I walk ahead to the castle. I can only hope it’s as well kept as your ba
rn
s.”
The boy said nothing, refusing to acknowledge the compliment. Duncan shrugged and finally turned away, his face more reflective than angry as he walked back outside. For all he knew the lad had reason to fear him. For all he knew he had roughed up the boy’s siblings in his own hell-raising youth.
“Do they still hate me that much?” he asked quietly, sensing Marsali walking up behind him.
She hesitated. She could not see his face, but she could hear the pain and confusion in the deep timbre of his voice. He would probably be furious with her if he realized he’d revealed such emotional weakness, being the famous warrior to the rest of the world that he was. But Marsali took this as a good sign. There was some feeling in him after all. Part of him could be hurt by a lowly stableboy’s opinion.
“Why do you care what they think, my lord?” she replied. “You are their chieftain. They need only obey you. What they feel for you in their hearts is insignificant.”
He turned to stare down into her piquant face, expecting mockery, finding instead an understanding beyond her years. Perhaps he had grown too accustomed to sophisticated females. Perhaps he had grown disenchanted with the painted, perfumed noblewomen who had enticed him into their anonymous beds, who had satisfied his body and left his soul aching for something more.
His betrothed would be on her way to Scotland at the end of the month. And yet to his surprise he felt an unwilling kinship with this strange moppet who saw more deeply into his character than he would like. Even his intimate friends were not privy to his past. And this girl seemed to know too much. Was there more substance to her than he’d realized?
He forced a smile. “And what grim tales have
you
heard about me, Marsali? Did they tell you I tortured the servants in the castle dungeon for sport?”
She met his gaze, honest and unflinching. “No, they didn’t. They told me you had gotten drunk and blown up the clan’s barley mill out of spite.”
His throat tightened. Her words sickened him more than he could show. “Go on.”
“Well.” Her voice faltered a little as she recounted the ugly snippets of gossip. “They said that a man died as a result of your wickedness and that another was disfigured. They said that the cottars went hungry that summer from the loss of income. But we both know how they exaggerate such things.”
“Is that all they say?”
Marsali gazed past him, her voice almost inaudible. “No, there are the rumors about your mother and her husband
…
and something about a doctor’s wife.”
A cold chill passed through Duncan. What an ass he’d been, to hope he would convince these people that he was no longer that hell-bent youth. Or was he really all that different? Had the old demons within ever died or only gone dormant, dozing until the right opportunity to ruin him came along? This girl, he was sure, would not stare so guilelessly into his eyes if she guessed he was entertaining
the idea of luring her to his bed to show her he could master her in more ways than one. That dark thought alone proved he hadn’t changed. He had traded reckless destruction for selfish desire and cold ambition.
“You are right, Marsali,” he said at last, his voice weary. “No one has to like me, but I will be obeyed. Now take me to the keep. I intend to know w
hy Abercrombie has allowed the c
astle to fall into such disgrace.”
W
ithin twenty minutes of entering the keep, Duncan had tripped over the pair of piglets running down the stairwell; fended off the advances of a well-endowed woman who’d popped out of an empty herring barrel, mistaking him for a clansman named Georgie; and had come face to face with an old portrait of himself as a child that hung in the gallery above the great hall.
He was amazed at first, considering his history and subsequent banishment, that the portrait had remained all these years alongside the other honorable MacElgins. Warriors and chieftains who had not shamed their ancestors with tales of adolescent evils.
Only on closer inspection did he see the Devil’s horns and pitchfork penned over the original portrait, the cloven hoofs protruding from his best knee breeches. Even now he could feel the anger and resentment that blazed from the eyes of the wild boy he had been, the bewilderment of being dragged from the scene of a double murder and discovering his true identity in an unforgettable night with the Beltane bonfires blazing in the background.
He remembered the morning that the portrait had been painted. Only three days had passed since he’d learned that the abusive drunk named Fergus who had raised him was not his natural father, that the clan’s laird and chieftain, the Marquess of Portmuir, Kenneth MacElgin, had waited until the man’s death to claim Duncan as his heir and only child. On the day of the portrait-painting, Kenneth had stood guard at the door with a broadsword to make sure Duncan did not escape. If Kenneth was determined that the world would pay homage to his precious son, Duncan was just as determined to prove he was not worthy of such homage if it killed them both.
Duncan smiled grimly. No, Fortune had not been at all kind to the old MacElgin. For thirteen years Kenneth had kept his long-ago association with Duncan’s mother, Janet, a secret. He had pretended ignorance of the son that had come as a result of their brief illicit union, a trophy of Kenneth’s manhood that he had not dared acknowledge for Janet’s sake, out of respect for her deep religious conviction and the shame of an adulterous affair that had borne fruit.
But when Janet and her cruel common-law husband had been found mysteriously murdered in their cot one Beltane night, Kenneth MacElgin and his tacksman had swooped down like avenging angels to save Janet’s two orphans— Duncan and his older half-sister, Judith. For if Kenneth had appeared to turn a blind eye to Duncan’s existence, he had coveted him in his heart and had waited for the day he could claim him.
At last Kenneth could announce to the clan that he had produced an heir, a feat of virility he had not accomplished with the two legitimate wives he had outlived. Duncan, sullen and belligerent, immediately tried to escape the parade of tutors and tailors, of fencing lessons and servants that now shadowed his every move. He rebelled against the love his natural father tried to shower on him, not trusting it. He rebelled against his heritage, seething inwardly that his father had not intervened before, when Janet was alive.
Fergus may not have sired Duncan from his own seed, but he had left his mark all the same. The constant beatings, the verbal belittlement, had shaped Duncan’s character in devious channels as powerful as the laws of heredity.
And when the inevitable whisperings began that Duncan had murdered his own parents, he had not bothered to deny them. He had behaved like an impostor in his father’s castle, fueling the suspicions. His clansmen gossiped behind his back, recalling the small cruelties he’d inflicted on them in his youth.