11
CHRISTMAS CAME and went. But Eoin was hopeful he’d be able to leave the Isle of Skye, where he’d been training with the other elite warriors recruited for Bruce’s secret guard, and return to Margaret for a few days in January.
When he’d ridden away from her all those weeks ago, he’d had his anger to hold on to. For two days he’d tried to explain to her that this was what he did. He was a warrior. He went where and when his chief told him to. But she refused to listen to any explanations. When it became clear that he would not delay or change his plans—or explain them—she’d turned as cold as ice and would barely even look at him.
He’d expected tears and pleading, but maybe he should have known better. Margaret MacDowell might not be as refined and sophisticated as the noblewomen he knew, but she had the steel in her spine and iron in her blood of royal ancestors and generations of the proud Celtic chiefs who’d come before her.
Frustration at the situation, and her reaction, had turned to anger. But over the long weeks of training, including almost two weeks of hell that had been aptly named “Perdition,” that anger turned to guilt. The hurt in her eyes—the look of betrayal—haunted him. He couldn’t escape the feeling that each day they were apart, he was losing her more and more.
And then there were the tortured dreams of her turning to another man in his absence—Fin, his brothers, even the infamous Tristan MacCan whom he’d never met. She’d only let MacCan kiss her, damn it . . . hadn’t she? It got so bad he didn’t even want to close his eyes to sleep.
He’d heard nothing from his wife since the day he left. He’d written to her, but either she’d refused to avail herself of his father’s clerk or had decided to ignore him. Only the occasional mention in the missives from his father or mother did he have word of her. “Margaret traveled to Oban again on Monday—borrowing your father’s skiff without permission.” He could hear his mother’s disapproval all the way to Skye. It grew worse with, “Mathilda follows her all over the Isle.” His sixteen-year-old sister was something of an imp; he supposed it wasn’t surprising that she’d taken a liking to her new sister-in-law. It also wasn’t surprising that his mother didn’t approve.
No communication coupled with the frequent mention of trips to Oban to help the nuns at the convent (Margaret?) played on every doubt and fear he had in his head. But that was where he kept it.
Some of the other guardsmen, especially Erik MacSorley (whose personality reminded him quite a bit of Margaret’s) and Eoin’s partner, Ewen Lamont, were curious about his wife. But other than the fact that she was a MacDowell, from which they probably drew their own conclusions, he refused to speak of her. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to give them a reason not to trust him—Bruce’s caution around him was difficult enough—but how the hell could Eoin explain how a marriage could work between them, when he didn’t even know himself?
By the end of Hogmanay, he was chomping at the bit to go home. But everything changed when Christina MacLeod was captured by the English and Tor MacLeod, the leader of the secret guard, launched an attack on the English garrison at Dumfries Castle to get her back.
It was Eoin’s first opportunity to prove his place among the elite warriors, and his plan had been a resounding success.
It had also set off a chain of events no one could have seen coming. Within a month of freeing Christina MacLeod and taking the castle, John “The Red” Comyn, the Lord of Badenoch, was dead at Bruce’s hand, and his kinsman had launched a bid for the throne.
After weeks of gathering support, and putting down skirmishes with Comyn supporters, by early March—March, damn it!—preparations were under way for Bruce’s coronation in Scone. Edward of England had already ordered the arrest of Bruce for the slaying of Comyn, but every one of Bruce’s men knew that the coronation would be an act of rebellion that would bring Edward and his army to their doorstep once more.
War was coming, and Eoin knew that if he didn’t go home now, it could be months before he had another chance.
The problem was Bruce was refusing to give him leave. Eoin could not be spared this close to the coronation. And if the MacDougalls had noted his absence and suspected his involvement with Bruce, a trip to Kerrera in Lorn could be dangerous as well.
Eoin broke his silence where his wife was concerned and took his case to the one man who might be able to change Bruce’s mind.
There weren’t many men who gave Eoin pause, but Tor MacLeod was one of them. Known as the greatest swordsman in Scotland—and probably the fiercest—he was as tall as Eoin with six years of added muscle on him, every pound of it earned on the battlefield.
If there was anyone more difficult to read than Eoin, it was MacLeod. As Eoin stood across the table from the proud island chief and presented his case, it was impossible to know what the other man was thinking.
“We did not part on the best of terms,” Eoin explained. “My wife is young—only eighteen—and we’d been married less than three weeks before I left. A week is all I am asking. I will return before we leave for Scone.”
“Do you intend to fly? It would take at least four or five days of hard riding to reach Oban from here.”
They’d been at Bruce’s Lochmaben Castle since the rescue of Christina MacLeod from Dumfries Castle.
“I’ll find a ship.”
“You’ll also find the English navy,” MacLeod said bluntly. “They are patrolling up and down the coast to Ayr.”
Eoin’s mouth clenched. “I’m an Islander—I’ll manage.”
MacLeod eyed him carefully. “This is that important to you?”
“It is.” She is.
MacLeod seemed to understand—maybe better than he’d realized. Chief, too, had a young wife himself whom he’d nearly lost.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Margaret’s stomach dropped with dread as her small skiff drew closer to shore, and she made out the familiar form of the man waiting for her. After lowering the sail, she let the current take her safely into the dock, but she wished she could turn around.
While a couple of lads helped her with the moorings, Fin stood at the foot of the rocky path that led up to the castle watching. She couldn’t avoid him, and her heart beat with not a small amount of trepidation as she walked toward him.
She had no reason to be frightened of him, and yet she couldn’t deny that for the first time in her life a man made her uncomfortable, and yes, a little scared. She’d tried—truly she had—but in the five months since Eoin had abandoned her on this miserable rock, she could not force herself to like Fin MacFinnon.
He’d done nothing specific she could point to—maybe it would be easier if he had—but there was something in his eyes when he looked at her that made her skin crawl. Something that made her feel that he was just biding his time . . . waiting. For what she didn’t know. She couldn’t tell whether he hated her or lusted for her—maybe both.
He seemed to be always there, lurking in the shadows of the corridors, dark corners of the stables or outbuildings, and now, it seemed, by rocky cliff sides. She knew it was no accident that he stood in the perfect place to block her path, where she could not get around him without risking a fall down the rocks.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
Despite the trepidation thumping in her chest, she refused to let him intimidate her. He wouldn’t dare to hurt her physically. She hoped. “It’s none of your business.”
He took her by the arm and drew her toward him. To anyone watching it would look like he was preparing to guide her up the path by the rocks. But his fingers gripped her just a little too hard, and he pulled her in just a little too close.
“I’m making it my business. Do you expect me to believe you really help the nuns at the convent?”
His gaze fell to her breasts as if their size somehow explained his reasoning.
Her heart was thumping in her throat now. “I don’t care what you believe, it’s the truth.” Mostly. It was actually the nuns who were helping her. “How dare you touch me. Let go of me or . . .”
She looked to the men at the dock, but they were busy with the boat and turned in the other direction. As she was sure Fin knew. He wouldn’t have touched her otherwise. Not that the men would come to her rescue. The entire isle seemed to look on her with suspicion and distrust.
She didn’t belong here. She would never belong here. It was nothing like home. Everything she did was met with censure. She couldn’t ride, sail, or walk anywhere without someone wondering where she was going or why she wasn’t accompanied. There were no more challenges, no more whisky (apparently a man’s drink), and no more bawdy jests with her brothers. What she wore, how she ate, even how she prayed—or rather how often she prayed—were all up for scrutiny.
God, how she hated it.
“Or what?” Fin sneered, but at least he dropped her arm. “Who are you going to run to? Lady Rignach? The laird? I think they’ll be more interested in where you went after the convent, and what is in the purse at your waist.”
She gaped at him in shock. “You were spying on me!”
He smiled. “I’m only doing my duty. You are my responsibility. Eoin left you to me.”
Margaret suspected the wording was intentional, and it made her heart beat even faster.
Of all the grievances she had with her husband—and there were many—perhaps that was the worst. He’d made Fin swear to watch over her and protect her with his life. In other words, he’d put Fin in the position to torment her.
“I wonder what he’d make of his wife gallivanting all over town with another man, and then disappearing for hours together into a building.”
Margaret’s teeth were gritted together so hard with outrage she could barely get the words out. “With a man of the cloth into the rectory!”
The young priest had been kind enough to let her use his paints.
Fin gave a harsh laugh. “It would hardly be the first time a priest didn’t hold to his vows.”
Margaret had had enough. “I owe you no explanation. If my husband has questions when he returns he can ask me himself.”
“After five months, I think it’s safe to say your husband has found more important things to keep him busy.”
The words were cruel and hurtful—especially because they were true—but something in Fin’s voice told her that she wasn’t the only one feeling the sting. Fin, too, was in the dark about Eoin’s activities, and on that one point maybe they could commiserate.
Five months. How could Eoin have left her for five months with barely a word? The two short notes she’d received from him, which the nuns had been kind enough to read to her, had offered no explanation or excuse, only vague words of regret for how “soon they’d had to part,” and even more vague promises that he would return to her “as soon as he could.” Until then he hoped she would “make an effort” to “fit in” around Gylen with his mother’s help.
Obviously Lady Rignach had been voicing her complaints.
Maybe if Margaret could have done so on her own, she would have responded. Maybe she would have poured out her misery, her anger, and her broken heart in dark blotches of ink all over that wretched piece of parchment.
But she would not ask the nuns to write about how much she hated it here. How she would never “fit in.” How everyone treated her like a pariah so she had to escape to Oban to find someone to help her. How she had hoped to keep busy as she had at Garthland by helping with the household, but how his mother had made it very clear that her help was not needed or wanted.
Margaret still felt a pang at that disappointment. She might not know how to read or write, or how to dress or act like a noblewoman, but she knew how to run a castle, and she’d wanted him to see that. To know that he hadn’t married an unaccomplished, backward barbarian, but a wife of whom he could be proud.
She’d tell him how she’d never felt so useless in her life. How the only thing that made his mother and Marjory’s disdain about her “uncouth” upbringing and the endless comparisons to the saintly Lady Barbara bearable was Tilda. His youngest sister was the only person on the isle who didn’t think he’d made a mistake—including her.
And that’s what she would tell him last. How she feared she’d made a mistake. How all the happiness and love she’d felt for him in that cottage seemed very far away. How she looked around and wondered how she’d come to be here and how she could escape. How desperately she missed her home and being around people who actually liked her and weren’t ashamed of her. How she didn’t want to be a mistake anymore.
To say anything else to him would have been a lie.
So as the nuns patiently worked with her on her lettering, every so often asking if she wanted to try to respond to her husband’s missive, Margaret declined. The rudimentary reading and writing skills she’d painstakingly acquired in the past few months—she wouldn’t embarrass him with her lack of education—were no match for the maelstrom of emotion waiting to be unleashed when—if—he ever returned.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said to Fin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to change before the evening meal.”
God knows, Lady Rignach would not approve of her simple wool kirtle. But Margaret hadn’t wanted to risk paint getting on one of her new gowns.
She shouldn’t have been surprised when the day after Eoin left his mother had the dressmaker from Oban measuring her for new chemises, cottes, surcoats, cloaks—and veils, lots of them. Lady Rignach must have given instructions to Eoin’s father as well, because when the MacLean chief arrived at Gylen Castle with Eoin’s two brothers a few weeks after Eoin had left, his father was laden down with even finer cloth, fur trims, and embroidery from Edinburgh.
Fin let her pass with only a mocking bow but followed closely after her. At first she attributed the strange buzz that ran down her neck as they entered the bailey to him. But it was a different kind of awareness. One that she hadn’t experienced in so long, she’d forgotten it.
She noticed a crowd of people standing near the gate. That was when Tilda saw her. The girl was the only bright spot in these past months. She was sweet and kind and didn’t care that Margaret was a “wild” MacDowell.
“Oh, Maggie, there you are. I was looking for you everywhere, look who’s . . .”
Margaret didn’t hear the rest of her words, for at that moment a man stepped out of the crowd, and she froze.
He was dusty, grimy, more grizzled than she’d ever seen him, with a jaw thick with whiskers and hair down to his shoulders, and he seemed to have put on a good stone of muscle, but when those intense blue eyes riveted on hers, she knew him in an instant.
All the emotion, all the pain, all the misery of the past five months caught up with her in one lost heartbeat. Her chest squeezed. Her throat tightened. Her eyes swelled with heat. She made a sound that was a cry of half-pain, half-relief, and ran.
The next moment she was in his arms. Eoin was holding her, burying his face in her veil, murmuring soothing words against her ear, and then his mouth was on hers.
Eoin would never forget the fear and uncertainty of the moment when his wife had first seen him and seemed to turn to stone. Nor would he forget the relief and happiness he’d felt when she launched herself into his arms an agonizing few moments later.
He wished he could forget what came next. How he’d started kissing her right there in the courtyard—heedless of the crowd around them, which included his mother and sisters, damn it!—and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, how he’d lifted her up and carried her to their bedchamber in the middle of the damned day.
No one in that bailey had seen what had come next, but he was sure every one of them had guessed. He’d barely taken time to remove his weapons and armor before he’d followed her down on the bed and made love to her with five months of built-up passion.
It hadn’t been pretty. It had been hurried and frenzied and over far too quickly—although he had made sure she found her pleasure first. But it had been every bit as powerful as he remembered.
And maybe it had been just what they’d needed. A moment of physical connection before the questions and recriminations that his return would inevitably bring started to fly.
She’d collapsed in a heap on his chest and had remained quiet since. Her cheek rested against his shirt, but her face was turned away from him, and all he could see were the silky plaits of long red hair coiled neatly at the top of her head. She’d been wearing a veil when he’d first seen her, and it had taken him a moment to recognize her without the wild waves of vivid red that had tumbled over her shoulders like a silken cloud.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, she lifted off his chest and out of his embrace to a sitting position where she could look down at him. Too late he remembered the words of their last conversation.
“No, Eoin, I’m not ‘all right.’ I haven’t been all right since the day you left.” Her golden eyes held his steadily. He’d forgotten the sensual tilt and catlike brilliance. How just the feel of those eyes on him could make his skin heat and blood race through his veins. “But if you are referring to the pleasure you just gave my body, then yes, I think I shall recover.”
There wasn’t one note of teasing in her voice, one wicked twinkle in her eye, or one naughty curve of her beautiful red mouth.
He hadn’t expected to be greeted by the smiling, lighthearted, mischievous girl who’d stormed into the Great Hall of Stirling Castle—and into his life—five months ago, taking it over like a marauding pirate. But neither had he expected this serious, subdued young woman.
What had he done to her?
“I’m not sure I will,” he said wryly. He took her hand, amazed at how soft and delicate it looked in his, and brought it to his mouth. “It’s been too long.”
“Has it?”
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged, looking away. “I don’t know. Something felt different.”
Eoin swore inwardly, glad she couldn’t see the guilt on his face. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until he pulled out at the last second. He couldn’t believe he’d actually had the presence of mind to do so. But he knew it was the right thing. As much as he would like to leave her with his child, he knew it wouldn’t be fair to her, knowing he might not survive to see it born.
But he knew that wasn’t what she was alluding to. He reached up to cup her chin and turn her face to his. “I haven’t looked at another woman since the day I met you, Maggie. There is, and has been, only you.”
She held his gaze and must have been satisfied by what she saw there because she switched the subject. “You look different.”
Unconsciously, he rubbed his jaw which hadn’t seen a razor in weeks. He knew he looked like hell—he’d been through it to get to her. “I didn’t exactly have time to wash up after I saw you.”
The girl he’d first met wouldn’t have been able to resist teasing him about his eagerness and uncharacteristic public display, but she ignored it. “How did you arrive? I didn’t see a boat down by the dock.”
He hadn’t wanted to draw that much attention to his presence. The ship and men who’d sailed with him were waiting in an inlet on the west side of Kerrera. MacLeod had come through for him, all right: he’d arranged to have the best seafarer in Scotland bring Eoin home. Without MacSorley’s skills, Eoin would probably be dead—either from the English who’d chased them halfway around Ireland or from the storm that at first almost capsized them, and then forced them to take shelter on a small island for nearly two days until it passed.
The few days that he’d hoped for had been whittled down to less than twenty-four hours. How was he going to make her understand in under a day?
“I came in on the other side of the isle.” Hoping to cut off more questions, he asked, “Is that where you were? Down at the dock? My mother said you go to Oban a few times a week to help the nuns at the convent?”
She stared at him as if trying to gauge whether there was something behind the question. There wasn’t—except maybe curiosity.
“If you want to know what I’ve been doing for five months, Eoin—five months—just ask me. Because that is exactly what I want to know from you.”
Eoin swore. Damn Bruce to hell for making him agree to that vow!
He would tell her what he could. She would learn part of the truth soon enough, when news of the coronation spread. “I will do my best to answer your questions, and I know we have much to talk about, but let me bathe and eat something first.”
He also knew that his father, brothers, and Fin would be anxious for a report. When the call to battle came from Bruce, they would answer.
He could tell she wanted to argue, but she took pity on him. He must look more beaten up by the past few days than he realized. “Now that you are home, I suppose there is time. But I will expect answers.”
He didn’t know what he was looking forward to less: telling her he was leaving again or telling her why.