The Nellis Woman
Isabel drifted awake in the comfortable chamber she’d always loved, but the colorful tapestries and warm rugs brought no solace. She was vaguely aware Blue had stirred and trotted off to greet someone.
Coira’s round face loomed out of the darkness, illuminated by the flame of the candle she carried. “Yer stepmother told me not to bother ye,” her maid whispered, “but I was thinking ye’d need some help with yon gown.”
“Aye,” Isabel replied wearily, struggling to sit up, “and then ye can burn it.”
Coira used her candle to light the others in the chamber. “’Tis a shame. Ye looked bonnie in it.”
Memories of preening in front of the looking glass before catastrophe struck intensified Isabel’s headache. She stood at the side of the bed while the woman who’d been her late mother’s servant helped her remove the wedding dress. Blue licked his chops, eyes fixed on a tray of food on the bedside table.
“I brought a few chunks o’ cheese and some crusty bread,” Coira explained. “Ye must be famished. Best eat before yon blue devil gets it. I ne’er saw such a color on a dog.”
It was probably the hundredth time her maid had remarked on Blue’s unusual coat, but she was grateful nevertheless for the loyal servant’s thoughtfulness. She reached for a piece of bread and nibbled the end, but had difficulty swallowing. “Perhaps later,” she said, giving the rest of the bread to the patient boarhound who quickly devoured the treat.
The maid shooed her mistress to the boudoir, where she washed her face, scrubbed the brown stains off her hands and combed out her hair.
“I dinna ken why I’m so upset,” Isabel confessed, resenting the insistent compulsion to sob, but relieved to have the tangles out of her hair. “I should be glad I’m nay marrying Darroch MacKeegan.”
“’Tis only natural,” Coira replied sternly. “The mon’s a fool to renege on his promise. And now she’s taking advantage and causing more trouble.”
Isabel didn’t need to ask who she was. The servant had nothing but disdain for the woman who’d married the widowed Rory MacRain. Isabel preferred not to think on the events that had led to their hasty marriage.
“Yer poor mother,” her maid sighed. “Filling her with a bairn at her age. What was the mon thinking?”
Coira had never gotten over Eileen MacRain’s death.
Isabel preferred not to think on those dark days. “In his grief, my father claimed the babe who’d killed his wife couldn’t be his.”
“Rubbish,” her maid retorted. “Yer ma ne’er looked at another mon. She loved the idiot.”
Guilt constricted Isabel’s throat. “Perhaps if I’d been a better sister to my baby brother…”
Coira took her hand. “I’ve told ye many a time, ye were too young, and ye’d just lost yer mam. Then, into the midst of all the misery she arrives from who kens where and insinuates yer da is right. Yer Uncle Boyd did the right thing spiriting wee Ian away to Beaton House. He was suspicious of Ghalla’s motives from the first.”
Isabel recognized the truth of it, and had journeyed to her uncle’s estate to visit her baby brother every year since his birth. It was of some consolation that the toddler was flourishing under Auntie Siobhan’s care, but she always returned home consumed by guilt. She’d abandoned her flesh and blood. However, he was safer with the Beatons than at Dungavin.
Coira never referred to Isabel’s stepmother as Lady Ghalla, or the chief’s wife. The interloper was always she, or yer stepmother, or the Nellis woman, or the brat’s mother. She made no effort to conceal her hatred of the pock-faced Tremaine Nellis and Isabel suspected the youth bullied servants at every opportunity.
She was exhausted, but acknowledged the importance of keeping abreast of whatever discussions were going on, since they would inevitably affect her. And Coira could be relied upon to convey with unerring accuracy what she’d overheard.
Clad in a clean linen nightgown and tucked up in bed with Blue sprawled next to her, Isabel felt a little better. The dog’s nose twitched when she reached for a piece of cheese. “Tell me.”
Coira took a deep breath. Evidently, the tale would be a long one.
“Yer father and yer uncle are locked in a bitter argument.”
Once firm friends, her late mother’s brother and her father had been at odds since Ghalla’s arrival. Another wedge driven into the heart of the family. “That’s nothing new,” she replied, feeding Blue a bit of cheese.
“Aye, but now the Nellis woman is pushing for ye to wed the brat. She has yer father nigh on convinced nobody else’ll have ye after the jilting. Yer uncle’s furious. Says yer poor mother must be turning in her grave.”
A snake writhed in Isabel’s belly. Furious didn’t begin to describe her feelings about marrying Tremaine Nellis. “He’s a child,” she retorted, her blood running cold at the memory of Ghalla’s then fourteen-year-old son pulling the wings off butterflies and gleefully hurling a newborn kitten down the well the day he arrived.
“Weel,” Coira continued, hands on broad hips, “’tis clear to me why she wants her son to marry the chief’s daughter.”
It was a suspicion that had lurked in the back of Isabel’s mind for four years. “She schemes to make him laird.”
Dread replaced fury. Her father’s life was at risk and Ian would be deprived of his birthright if Ghalla’s plans succeeded. In the long run, Clan MacRain would falter under a cruel and incompetent leader. “’Tis enough to make a lass wish Darroch MacKeegan had shown up.”
*
Conversation among the auld men gathered around the table ceased the moment Darroch walked into the council room at Dun Scaith. It reminded him of the day seven years before when Kyla came into the world kicking and screaming and her mother slipped away in eerie silence. Nobody had known what to say to him.
Then he’d been torn apart by grief and joy, and his clansmen had rallied to support him. Now he was a man humiliated by a woman and they avoided his eye. He was no longer one of them. Isabel MacRain had made a fool of him and isolated him from his clan.
“Sit ye down,” his grey-haired father commanded. “We’ve a plan.”
He should have known better than to expect commiseration from Stewart MacKeegan. His father had never been an affectionate man; age and widowerhood had rendered him sullen and bitter.
“I’ll stand,” he retorted, folding his arms across his chest.
“As ye wish. We’re of a mind that the insult to the clan must be avenged.”
Do ye even care about yer granddaughter’s disappointment or my own humiliation?
He bit back the bitter words, resolved to focus his fury on the MacRains as his father droned on. “We might curse the day King James sought to rule the Isles by dividing the clans. So impressed he was with the boasting o’ Chief Alasdair MacRain he decided to grant that ungodly clan land that had been ours for generations.”
“Aye,” several muttered in agreement.
The chief raised a clenched fist. “He even had the gall to name the hills MacRain’s Tables and loves to flaunt his wealth. Without land, a clan canna raise cattle and sow crops. A clan that has nay land has nay wealth.”
Darroch had heard this same diatribe many times since boyhood. “King James is long since dead. What’s the plan now?” he asked gruffly.
“We discussed raiding Dungavin.”
Darroch snorted. “’Tisna the first time such a daft proposal has been contemplated.”
Silence greeted his pronouncement, so he carried on. “MacKeegans have thirsted for years to snatch the MacRain stronghold, but such a siege would require months of preparation. Dungavin sits on a promontory which is nigh on impregnable and many lives would be sacrificed in a losing battle to take it. It commands a view of the water that leaves no possibility of an attack from the sea.
“Not to mention the Cuillin Hills represent a formidable barrier between us in the south and MacRains in the north.”
His father spat on the floor. “If ye’d come sooner instead o’ moping in yer chamber, ye’d have heard those self-same arguments already expressed.”
Darroch leaned forward, knuckles pressed into the rough wood of the table, and glared at his father. “I apologize for my tardy arrival, but I needed to speak to a more important person than ye.”
His meaning wasn’t lost on the elders who all seemed intent on studying the rafters, but his scowling father’s steely gaze didn’t falter. The man had never acknowledged Kyla’s existence, except to call her the mute bastard.
“We’ve settled on Harris,” one of the councilors finally declared.
Darroch had to concede that laying waste to holdings on the MacRains’ ancestral island of Harris would be a blow to their pride. The settlements were sparse, and not heavily defended; livestock was plentiful, well fed on the western plain. The MacRains boasted of the wealth and status their cattle and sheep afforded them—always food aplenty for every clan member. They wouldn’t take kindly to having livestock stolen and crops trodden underfoot.
They could use MacKeegan lands on the neighboring island of Ywst as a base. The tactic would necessitate a voyage in often treacherous seas. The blood of Darroch’s Viking ancestors surged in his veins. “I concur,” he declared, bringing the first hint of a smile to his father’s wizened face.