Corinne tried to quell her rising fear as she followed Gellis into the great hall. The hall was aflurry with activity, due no doubt to their Laird’s arrival and impending marriage. The rushes on the ground were being hastily cleared away for new ones, and the trestle tables and benches were being arranged for the evening meal.
“The kitchens are just there,” Gellis said, pointing toward the back of the great hall. “We have room enough within the castle walls for an herb and flower garden, plus a few fruit trees, but many supplies come from the village.”
Realizing this might be her only guided orientation to the castle, Corinne hastened her steps until she was nearly on Gellis’s heels, else she might miss a word.
“There are four storeys above this one,” Gellis said as they crossed the great hall, “though the top floor is the garrison for the guards’ weapons.”
“And the others?” Corinne asked.
Gellis mounted a flight of spiraling stairs, lifting her skirts efficiently. “The first floor holds the Laird’s chambers—his sleeping chamber and his solar.” As they passed a landing, Gellis gestured to first one door and then another. “The second floor houses servants and supplies.”
Several doors sat closed on the next landing, indicating that the chambers must have been divided into much smaller portions than Reid’s quarters.
“And the third floor is much the same as the second,” Gellis said, halting on another landing. “It is mainly a few guest chambers in addition to more servants’ quarters and storage rooms.”
Gellis opened the first door on the far left of the landing, motioning Corinne inside.
Corinne glanced around. The room was dark and cold, likely because it was infrequently used. A hearth sat empty along one wall. Opposite it, a narrow slit in the stone served as a window. A medium-sized bed rested with the curtains drawn back from its posters. Besides a trunk at the foot of the bed and a dressing table and chair, the room was empty.
“I hope ye’ll find this adequate for the night, milady,” Gellis said.
“Of course,” Corinne said hastily, realizing that her silence might be mistaken for snobbish disdain.
Gellis turned to her and looked at her fully for the first time. Her gaze traced down over Corinne’s soiled dress to her muddy boots, then back up to her face. But when their eyes met, Corinne didn’t find disgust or animosity there, only curiosity.
“I imagine ye’ll be wanting a bath before the evening meal, milady.”
“Yes, please,” Corinne breathed.
Gellis poked her head out the door and called for a bath.
As a wooden tub was rolled into the chamber and servants began bringing water in buckets, Gellis worked on the laces down Corinne’s back.
“I have other clean dresses,” Corinne said, embarrassment warming her face. “And soap. They are with the men who…escorted me here.”
Gellis nodded matter-of-factly and turned to one of the chamber maids who’d just emptied her bucket into the tub. “Find Alain and see that Lady Corinne’s things are gathered and brought here.”
The chamber maid ducked into a swift curtsy and hurried to do Gellis’s bidding.
“Leave it to a MacRae to forget that a woman would want her personal effects and a clean gown after a long journey,” Gellis murmured as she helped Corinne peel away her soiled dress.
Corinne’s hands halted for a moment. “Alain isn’t a Mackenzie?”
Gellis looked up, her brown eyes inquisitive. “Nay. Didnae he tell ye?”
“We didn’t…exchange many pleasantries on the journey,” Corinne replied. The men had been largely uninterested in her when they’d been en route to the Bruce, and afterward, they’d seemed so absorbed in their sour silence that Corinne still didn’t know some of their names.
“And the Laird didnae explain?” Gellis asked, her brows lowering. At Corinne’s mute shake of the head, Gellis frowned. “I suppose ye dinnae ken much about the Mackenzie clan—or clans in general—do ye?”
“I know Reid is the Laird, the leader. I know his heir will be the next Laird…”
Corinne faltered. She was edging into dangerous territory. Firstly, the thought of Reid’s successor reminded her that she would be the one to produce an heir, which tangled her insides into a ball of nervousness, trepidation, and some unidentified warmth she didn’t wish to dwell on.
What was more, though, she was approaching mentioning Reid’s family and birth. Though Reid had said it was no great secret among the clan that he was bastard-born, Corinne had only been here a few minutes. As an English outsider who was being forced on the Mackenzies as their lady, she doubted they’d appreciate her first few words among them being in reference to their Laird’s illegitimacy.
She cleared her throat. “I admit I have much to learn.” And she had to start somewhere, for unless a miracle happened, this would be her new home. “I had assumed that everyone here was a Mackenzie, but Alain is from the MacRae clan?”
“Oh, aye,” Gellis responded, busying herself with folding Corinne’s discarded dress. “There are quite a few MacRaes here at Eilean Donan. They are the Mackenzies’ neighbors to the south, ye ken. Many of the castle guards are MacRaes—in fact, they have come to be called the Mackenzies’ shirt of mail for the protection they provide.”
So the Mackenzies controlled not only Eilean Donan, which boasted the thickest stone walls and most elaborate defensive planning of any keep Corinne had ever seen, but they also had the loyalty of warriors from a neighboring clan? It spoke to the Mackenzies’ strength—and Reid’s determination to protect his people.
“Are there people from other clans here as well?” Corinne asked, eager to understand more about this seemingly impenetrable place—and her equally impermeable future husband.
“I myself am a MacDonnell,” Gellis commented, testing the water in the now-full tub with a finger. Nodding, she motioned Corinne forward.
Though the last of the chamber maids had departed, closing the door behind them, Corinne still blushed at disrobing completely. “I can see to myself,” she said, hesitating at the tub’s edge.
“The Laird asked me to look after ye,” Gellis said evenly.
Swallowing her pride, Corinne slipped off her gloves, then pulled her chemise over her head and hurriedly eased into the water.
“Ye’re a skinny thing, arenae ye,” Gellis said as she approached. Then the older woman seemed to remember herself. “Forgive me, milady.”
A soft rap on the door saved Corinne from responding. One of the chamber maids slipped in with her arms full of Corinne’s other dresses and the few possessions that had been salvaged from the wagon. As the chamber maid ducked back out, Gellis took up the lemon-scented soap Corinne loved so dearly and began working a lather into her hands.
Corinne dunked her head underwater quickly. Though the warm temperature coaxed her to linger, she got the sense from Gellis that she should not dally. The lady’s maid had been polite enough—except for commenting on Corinne’s figure, about which she was already self-conscious—but Corinne got the impression that Gellis was watching her, waiting for her to slip up and prove that she shouldn’t be here.
As Gellis began working the soap into Corinne’s scalp, the older woman tsked softly. “What happened to yer hair?”
Corinne wished she could sink all the way underwater and not come out again. “I cut it.”
“Oh? And why would ye do that, milady?”
It was time for Corinne to make a decision. She was either going to cower, blush, and wither away with discomfort here at this Highland castle, or she was going to find her spine. She glanced down at her hands, which rested on top of her knees where they poked out of the water. The marks were almost completely healed. She hadn’t let her father cow her, and she wasn’t going to let the Mackenzies—or the MacRaes or the MacDonnells, or anyone else—do so either.
“I was planning on entering a convent,” Corinne said, willing her voice to be strong and steady. “I was meant to marry a detestable man, but I wished to become a scribe at a nunnery instead. So I plotted an escape. That was just before your Laird kidnapped me, and your King saw fit to order us to wed.”
Gellis’s hands froze in Corinne’s hair. Corinne held her breath, her fingers sinking into her knees.
After a long moment, Gellis made a noise that was half-cough, half-snort. “I havenae heard aught as… bold as that in quite a while, milady.”
Corinne released her breath slowly at the sound of surprise and grudging amusement in Gellis’s voice.
They completed the bath in silence, and when the last of the lemon suds had been washed away, Gellis extended a length of drying linen to her. Once she’d dried herself, Gellis slipped a clean chemise over her head.
As Gellis shuffled through the small stack of clean gowns, Corinne remembered something that Reid had said earlier.
“The Laird mentioned that you would find serving me as a lady’s maid difficult,” she began, chewing on her lower lip. “Is that…is it because I am English?”
Gellis looked up, a wool gown dyed crimson in her hands. She blinked, her big brown eyes considering. “I willnae lie to ye, there will be many in the clan who willnae take easily to the idea of an English mistress.”
Just when she felt that she was making progress, gaining Gellis’s respect and finding her spine, a stone of discouragement sank in Corinne’s stomach.
“I havenae met many English,” Gellis went on, “but of course we have all suffered in this long war. We’ve lost good men, and struggled to keep ourselves warm and fed when the war effort requires so much.” The woman shook out the crimson dress and appraised it. “I dinnae think that was what the Laird meant when he assigned me to ye, though, milady.”
Corinne hesitated. “Oh?”
“Nay. I think he was more referring to the fact that I was the last mistress’s lady’s maid.”
That was strange. Though Gellis was at least a dozen years older than Corinne, her brown hair wasn’t laced with gray. Surely she couldn’t be old enough to have served Reid’s mother, for Reid had said Brinda had died several years ago.
“You attended Lady Brinda, Reid’s mother?” she asked cautiously.
“Nay, milady,” Gellis said, staring at her evenly. “I served Lady Euna, Reid’s first wife.”
It was as if Gellis had dumped a bucket of cold water over Corinne’s head.
Reid had a wife? A first wife?
What had happened to the woman? When had they been wed?
And why in God’s name hadn’t he mentioned her to Corinne?
Euna. She’d overheard him mention that name when she’d been listening outside the Bruce’s tent. Corinne wracked her brain for any sliver of information she could recall other than the name, but she came up empty.
A sudden, hot wave of anger crashed through her. Reid had told her all about his childhood, the struggles his family had endured, and his ascension to the Lairdship, yet he’d failed to mention—to his future wife—that he’d been married before.
Why was it left to her to listen outside tents and overhear from servants that he’d had another wife? Was this to be what their marriage would be like? Him withholding and silent, and her bitter and isolated?
A stinging memory suddenly hit her—of her father, casually informing his captain of the guard that the marriage arrangement between Corinne and Halbert de Perroy had been finalized. He hadn’t even told her. Instead, he’d merely allowed her to overhear him make arrangements with the captain to transport her.
That had been right before he’d taken the switch to her hands.
She could not live like that again. Even if Reid was telling the truth that he wasn’t the sort of man to raise a hand against a woman, she was still at his mercy. Did he expect her to happily play the part of a pawn, silently sipping up what trickle of information he deemed her worthy of knowing?
“Where is the Laird?” she demanded through clenched teeth.
Gellis’s brows lifted. “He’s likely refreshing himself in his chambers before the evening meal, milady, but—”
Without thinking, Corinne stormed toward the door.
“Milady, yer gown!”
Corinne didn’t slow as she wound her way down the spiral stairs. Bare feet, chemise, and dripping hair be damned. She needed answers from Reid—now.