Chapter Five
Mairi jumped, peering into the dense shadows, a hand to her chest. Her heart thumped against it. “God’s ballocks, MacNeil, ye nearly scared the life out of me. And then what would ye have to bargain with? A dead woman.”
He came to the bars, his hand wrapping around the thick iron. “Ye have a bloody bedroom set up in my dungeon.” The volume of his voice had grown to fill the rock-enclosed space.
Her hands slid down to perch on her hips. “When left alone, I’m more resourceful than ye anticipated.” He’d figure out soon enough that Weylyn and Cinnia had been helping his prisoner, but Mairi wouldn’t throw them to the wolf, even if he was their father.
“Unless ye are a witch and conjured the contents of one of Kisimul’s better bedchambers, ye’ve had help.”
Mairi sat down on the edge of her swinging bed to scratch the dog’s head. “Daisy’s fetched everything I need.”
“Daisy? What the hell does that name symbolize?”
“That she’s sweet like a pretty flower.”
“Artemis is sweet?” His words came with numb incredulity, and she noticed that the knuckles of his hand had turned white with his grip.
“Nay, Daisy is sweet,” she said, scratching the happy dog’s back.
Alec shook his head and grabbed the iron bars as if he could wrestle them apart. “Ye had more help than a little dog. How the hell did ye get all of this through these bars?”
She smiled, her lips tight, and continued to pet Daisy. He couldn’t force her to talk, and as long as he stayed outside the damn bars, she was safe from his anger.
With a huff of disgust Alec yanked his hands off the bars, stretching them to clasp behind his head as he pivoted and paced two steps away, only to return, his face hard. “The children helped ye, didn’t they?”
Her smile dimmed to a frown. She hadn’t considered all the repercussions when she bargained with them for her comfort. “Don’t ye touch them,” she seethed, sliding off the bed to stand. “’Tis your fault for leaving them unattended.” Daisy jumped off the bed, circling Mairi as she traipsed across the space to stand directly in front of him. She grabbed the bars. “Cinnia could have been burned in that fire, killed. While ye spend your days God only knows where, leaving one dimwitted soldier to watch two creative, intelligent, energetic children.” His angry face matched her own, but she continued without pause.
“They came to me, filthy, with dirty, ripped clothes and tangled hair. A girl desperate to please her father with her cooking but not given any direction. A little boy wanting to become a warrior without anyone to give him practice and instruction. Left to themselves, it’s no fault of theirs if they sought out help from the only source left open to them.”
They stared into each other’s faces for several heartbeats, Mairi fighting the urge to grab the man by the shirt to shake him. She noticed a slight twitch in one of his eyes. He opened his lips, those damnable lips that drew her in.
“Ye taught Cinnia to cook? The stew. The tarts tonight. From down here?”
“She’s determined to be an asset to ye here in this prison ye call a castle. I used that and tricked her into bringing me things. Same with Weylyn. Do not blame them.” She squinted her eyes at him. “I’m wily, MacNeil. They didn’t stand a chance unguarded around me.”
“If they had followed my orders to leave ye be, they’d not have allowed ye to sway them toward treason.”
Treason? The word twisted Mairi’s stomach. Could the man who’d kissed her so gently in Kilchoan, locking her up without delivering a single bruise to her skin, be so cruel as to treat his own children like traitors? “Do not harm them,” she said. “’Tis completely your fault for leaving them uncared for. Do ye have so little love for your own offspring? Giving what feeling ye have to beasts instead?” She pressed her cheeks against the cool iron bars. “Not a nurse or their mother to care for them.”
His face came closer. “Their mother was murdered, her throat slit for no reason save that she was the wife of The MacNeil of Barra Isle. In a bloody attempt to prove Kisimul is not impenetrable.”
Mairi’s breath wrapped into a boulder, making her unable to swallow or speak as she watched Alec’s face harden into barely controlled fury. She knew that the children’s mother was dead, but hadn’t wanted to press them for details on the matter.
“They came to the castle to kill her?” she whispered.
“Nay. She went to the village, without my permission, and your husband took the opportunity.”
She stepped back, a hand to her heart. “Fergus MacInnes killed your wife.”
The look on his face was answer enough. Mairi had known Fergus was a bastard, leaving her with his lecherous son despite her telling him Normond was stalking her. But to kill an innocent woman…
“I…” She forced herself to breathe past the tightness in her chest. “Am very sorry. He was a cruel man, without common decency.”
Alec didn’t move, but something softened in his glare. “Ye hold no loyalty to your husband?”
“Not when he deserves none,” she answered.
She watched Alec’s nostrils flare on an inhale. “Did he harm ye?”
Mairi blinked. Memories, which she’d stomped down inside, fought to surface. “Most of the time he ignored me. It was his son who left his mark.” She tipped her head to the side. “And how about Alec MacNeil? Do ye harm women and children?” She let the side of her lips turn up at the corner at the ridiculousness of her question. “Ah wait, ye do harm women. By locking them up. Do ye harm children then?”
“Do my children act beaten?” Alec asked. “Terrorized with the idea of disobeying me? Remaining silent and hiding in shadows?”
Since children didn’t usually disobey so completely as to furnish a bedroom for a prisoner, without past transgressions, Mairi guessed that they’d gotten away with much in the past. “No,” she said. “But they need someone to guide them, more than a warrior who would rather be riding and hunting with his chief than remaining behind to care for them.”
“Wed me, and they will be yours to guide,” he said.
Her smile soured. He wouldn’t beat Cinnia and Weylyn, but he’d use them to bargain with. “Let me out of here, and I will act as the children’s nursemaid here at Kisimul.” He stared silently at her. “I will teach Cinnia to cook, mend their clothes, keep them clean and out of trouble while ye are gone. I can teach Weylyn to care for the animals penned here.”
“Ye would stay?” he asked.
She huffed. “From what I know of this castle, if ye don’t take me away, I have no choice but to stay until ye decide I can go.” She stepped up to the bars, wrapping her fingers around them. “What are ye going to do with me?”
“My plan has not changed,” he said low and inhaled a full breath.
“I will not wed ye, Alec MacNeil,” she said just as low. “I’ve offered ye a compromise, and I suggest ye take it. And when my clan tracks me down, ye will give me back.”
“So ye can wed another MacInnes?”
Mairi’s stomach twisted into nausea, but she tipped her chin higher. “Whatever I do will be because I wish it, not because some man decrees it.”
She waited, but Alec revealed nothing of his thoughts. Without another word, he turned and traipsed up the cobblestone ramp out of the dungeon. Mairi opened her mouth but didn’t call out. Would he forbid the children from coming down? Would he halt her food until she conceded?
She swallowed and bent to pick up Daisy. Would Alec take the dog away? Mairi felt the first stirrings of panic since she’d been locked in there a week ago. She kissed the dog’s head as she turned out the lamp and felt her way to their bed. It might be their last night to warm each other. She blinked against the ache of tears and pulled Daisy into her under the blankets. Bloody Alec MacNeil. Even without violence, he could absolutely harm her.
…
Alec strode through the great hall, his boots cracking on the flat stone. He signaled to his wolfhounds to stay and ignored Ian as he pushed out through the front doors of the keep to the courtyard. A bloody bedroom. In his dungeon!
Anger and frustration balled up inside him, making him yearn to battle something. He drew his sword, and, since there was no one but Ian and Kenneth to witness his lack of discipline, he swung it before him at the shadows, in practiced arcs and thrusts. The moon beamed just over the edge of the wall into the bailey, giving him light. His boots crunched in the pebbled dirt, loud in the silence of night. His muscles flexed and bunched, growing warm with the effort. He welcomed the familiar heat to bleed off his anger.
Ian stood in the doorway. A shadow near the kitchen sharpened into Kenneth as he walked out. “Lo there,” he called. “I take it she didn’t say she’d marry ye.”
Alec sliced his steel through the cool night air, making a whistle in the wind. His cousin skirted the bailey to join Ian by the door to the main hall.
A bloody bedroom, luxurious enough for a princess. This whole week wasted. Swing. Thrust. A whole week of staying away from her, depriving her of comfort when she was up to the top of her silky head in comfort. No exile to sway her. No wishes for a private privy.
He walked up to a sack stuffed with straw that they often used for training. He stabbed the end of his blade into it, twisting to yank it back out. Groomed, clean, and sweet smelling. Damn roses.
“Did ye not take down the tart?” Kenneth asked.
“Shut up,” Ian warned. “When was the last time ye saw Alec lose his reason?”
Alec held his sword, the tip pointed to the stars. Had Mairi MacInnes taken his reason? Bloody damned hell!
He should have checked on Mairi earlier, should have sent his men down to feed her, not Cinnia. He should have convinced a nursemaid to remain at Kisimul to watch the children after Joyce was killed. Everyone leaves Kisimul.
“Mo chreach,” he cursed and lowered his sword, shunting it back into the scabbard at his side. What should he do now? Remove all the luxurious trappings and feed her slop? Forbid the children to talk to her? He slammed his hand against a row of buckets hanging against the wall of the horse barn and looked up at the stars overhead. He breathed in through his nose until his chest felt like it could burst on the fresh air. How many times had he stood here alone, staring up at the stars, asking God what he should do now? More than he could count. And besides, he doubted God would force a woman to wed him.
Alec released a gust of breath. Ian and Kenneth parted to let him pass as he trudged back into the keep. Should he turn into the ruffian Mairi thought him to be? Kiss her again. The thought filtered up through the crush of possible schemes. Och, but she’d certainly despise him then.
Alec grabbed his ale cup off the long table. It was nearly empty. Damnation. He didn’t even have a kitchen maid or housekeeper to see to simple things like provisions while he rode the land around the village, seeing to his people, protecting them with his reputation and his sword.
Ian and Kenneth watched him in silence. Alec threw himself into a chair by the cold hearth and looked around the sparse hall with its few lit sconces. It was the same hall he’d seen his whole life, first as a child, then as a young chief, ruled by his mother and then left to rule on his own. Untried and untaught. Had he committed the same crime with his own children? Without Millie helping him as a lad, he might have set the kitchen on fire, too. Although he wouldn’t have carried a whole bloody bedroom down to a prisoner.
His gaze roamed the tan plaster that coated the granite of the walls. Cold and hard, the stone made the castle unaffected by arrow shot and even cannon from passing ships. Kisimul was an impenetrable shell in a warring world. It was built to protect and repel the enemy. Why then was it practically abandoned?
Kenneth leaned into Ian’s ear and whispered something, but Alec ignored them to study his home. Dirt marred the stone floor, webs among the rafters, and spots on the glass window panes. Currently, his dungeon looked in better shape. The only decoration in the great hall was one tapestry covering the far wall, its threads weaving the shaggy coat of a wolf, a lone wolf who stared outward, challenging him to care about something other than revenge.
Ian walked over to lean into the wall opposite him. “Are ye going to tell us what happened down there?”
“Or is it too horrible to utter?” Kenneth asked in a tone that bordered between jest and true worry that his cousin had gone insane and massacred the lass.
Alec snorted, driving his hand into his pocket to fish out the iron key to Mairi’s cell. He tossed it to Kenneth, who caught it out of the air. “Unlock her cell in the morning.”
“Ye’re letting her go?” Ian asked, his brows shooting up.
Alec met his friend’s gaze. “From her cell, aye, but not from Kisimul.”