Jilted
Sleat Peninsula, South Skye, Inner Hebrides, 1601AD
Perhaps his bride’s horse had gone lame.
Or the MacRains had been ambushed en route from Dungavin and now lay stone-cold dead in some ditch.
Or they’d come by boat to avoid the rugged Cuillin Hills and gone aground…or foundered.
Fuming over these and other possible reasons for the tardy arrival of his betrothed, Darroch MacKeegan stood in the open doorway of the musty kirk with his legs braced and arms folded. For more than two hours, there’d been no sign of riders on the dusty track that wound its way to the north. Indeed, the only person in sight was his round-shouldered father pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.
Nothing for it but to wander over to the altar and revisit the unlikely excuses with the sweating priest.
“The terrain can be tricky for even the most sure-footed horse,” he said.
The elderly cleric swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Aye, ’tis for sure the reason.”
Darroch raised an eyebrow. “This marriage alliance was meant to end the bitter feud between the MacKeegans and the MacRains, so an ambush is unlikely.”
The priest smiled weakly, nodding like an imbecile. “Aye. Very unlikely.”
“The waters are calm for once, the weather fair. A shipwreck would have caused an alarm to be raised before now by the sentinels posted on the cliffs.”
The cleric swallowed hard. “Aye.”
Darroch hadn’t wanted to marry Isabel MacRain, but anger tightened his gut as he grappled with the inevitable truth. He’d been…
“She’s jilted ye,” his red-faced father declared, filling the narrow doorway with his glowering presence. “Away. We’ll nay wait any longer.”
The priest scurried off like a rat deserting a sinking ship.
Darroch had affixed a sprig of juniper to his clan badge as a token of respect for his unwanted bride. He ripped it from the pin and crumpled it in his fist. The juice from the berries stained his palm. “So too will run the blood o’ the MacRains for this insult,” he swore.
He left the kirk, threw down the mangled shrub and ground it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. Jaw clenched, he strode through the silent gauntlet of his fellow clansmen, already mounted and ready to leave. They’d come to congratulate a newly-married chief’s son, but now knew him as a man who’d been snubbed by a MacRain.
His humiliation would be the talk of the Isles. No doubt, they’d snigger about it in crofts as far away as the MacRain strongholds of Harris and Lewis.
He mounted Barra, dug his heels into the gelding’s flanks harder than was necessary and galloped back to Dun Scaith Castle, not caring a whit that the riders behind him were obliged to eat his dust.
*
Dungavin Castle, North Skye, Inner Hebrides
Isabel gripped the worn arms of the upholstered chair when her stepmother entered her chamber without knocking. The woman put her on edge at the best of times. She’d hoped her father would come to commiserate. “Any sign of them yet?” she asked, already knowing the answer and hating the desperation in her voice.
“Nay,” Ghalla MacRain replied with a weary sigh, patting her immaculately-braided jet-black hair. Isabel suspected her aging stepmother used some concoction to produce a color more suited to a younger woman, but she constantly boasted ’twas natural.
“Yer father’s fit to be tied,” Ghalla droned on, her voice dripping censure. “The hall’s full o’ kin waiting to move to the chapel for the nuptials. It’s been three hours, the whisky’s all gone and they’re getting restless. Many are whispering ye’ve been jilted.”
Isabel got to her feet and paced awkwardly in the heavy red gown she planned to burn at the earliest opportunity. Clutching at a straw, she gave voice to the unlikely possibilities she’d considered. “Perhaps his horse has gone lame, or his boat run aground if they came by sea to avoid the mountains.”
Her stepmother sat heavily in the chair she’d vacated and studied her fingernails. “They reckon there’s been no ships sighted at all and the sea’s as calm as a pond. Yer father’s seething with humiliation.”
Isabel came to an abrupt halt. “He’s humiliated? How does he think I feel?”
Ghalla picked invisible lint off her grey skirts. “Weel, cook keeps pestering him about what to do with the copious amounts o’ food prepared for the wedding banquet later, and yer father reckons if ye hadna made such a fuss about not wanting to wed Darroch MacKeegan…”
“He blames me for this?” Isabel exclaimed, suspecting her scheming stepmother had likely planted the notion in her father’s head.
“Wheest, everyone from Skye to Lewis kens yer low opinion o’ the mon. Mayhap, he’s decided he doesna wish to marry a lass with a waspish tongue.”
Isabel clenched her jaw, infuriated by Ghalla’s insinuation. It was true she’d complained loud and long about being betrothed to a man she’d never met, but many a chief’s daughter faced the same fate. She’d only repeated what many said of Darroch MacKeegan; that he was a pirate who raided ships plying their trade up and down the Minch and that he’d swived every lass from the Isle of Mull to the Shetlands.
“A laird’s son doesna renege on a marriage alliance arranged to settle a long-standing feud—unless he wants to perpetuate the conflict,” she muttered.
“Weel, goes to show ye canna trust a MacKeegan,” Ghalla gloated.
“He’s nay much of a mon if a few brickbats from a mere lass can upset him,” she replied spitefully.
Ghalla heaved her broad behind out of the upholstered chair. “I’d best go see what I can do to calm yer father—and the cook.”
Isabel glared at the heavy oaken door as it closed behind her stepmother. What Rory MacRain saw in the woman and her sniveling son, she’d never understand. Isabel could well imagine her mean-spirited stepbrother eagerly spreading the rumor she’d been jilted. A shiver stole up her spine every time she glimpsed a glint of something evil that lurked in Tremaine’s dark eyes.
“Ye’re more concerned with the cook than ye are with my broken heart,” she muttered.