Chapter Ten
“I still say Lord Moreville will be highly displeased with you and me both,” the guardsman Christopher stated, staring helplessly at Gertrude’s back while she ignored him.
From her vantage upon the road, perched atop her palfrey, Gertrude watched the Kilbirnie Fair bustling with people and smiled. Pricilla had said that Teàrlach would be traveling to Barclay land for Latha Bealltainn to pass the day with a lass, the opposite direction from Montgrynan, and she was pleased she’d put her young stepmother up to the task of asking. She had suspicions that wouldn’t be put to rest until she investigated. Little did the bastard MacGregor know, but she often helped her father organize his parchments in his solar and had been on her way there the Friday last when the Highlander had stormed into her father’s solar to demand goods for Lady Madeline Crawford.
“My father will thank me greatly indeed, if I discover to be true what I expect I will,” she finally replied without turning around. “And worry nay. If I do nay find what I’m looking for, neither you nor I need to tell him we came at all.”
“He believes you lie sick abed, milady,” countered her escort. “’Tis the only reason he left you behind when the party rode out this morn.”
Gertrude rolled her eyes. What she might find out today had the potential to put her back in her father’s good graces after Teàrlach MacGregor had dragged her before him like a punished child. Her father esteemed the head guardsman who was swiftly and effectively strengthening Glengarnock’s security weaknesses, and it would be gratifying to knock the man off his throne of superiority.
Handing over their reins to the grooms, she dismissed her escort. “Go and enjoy a diversion or two.”
“None of this sits well with me,” Christopher replied. “I’m already facing the possibility of censure and discipline for escorting you.”
“Then why on earth did you come?” Gertrude scoffed. “I know the way here and could easily have ventured on my own.”
“Oh, and let your father hang me when he discovers I allowed you to travel unattended?”
She huffed and folded her arms. “You could act as if you were unaware I had sneaked away.”
“Milady,” Christopher argued fruitlessly. “Don’t you see? I would then be seen as negligent. Nay. I implore you to return to Glengarnock this moment.”
She shook her head, but smiled at him, allowing her eyes a flirtatious bat. He really was a sweet lad, she thought, and the young ones were always eager abed. This one had been eager to make it up to her ever since he had nearly impaled her in the training yard. She leaned closer to him, walking her fingers up his chest. He froze, staring wide-eyed down at her.
“We’ll meet up later. And if you’re good and help me…” Christopher remained still. But Gertrude knew she was a beauty, her hair dark and pulled back into an intricately woven knot at the base of her head, her chest ample, and her neck exposed for Christopher’s perusal. “Mayhap I can make it worth your while.”
Her fingers climbed to his nose, giving it a tweak, and she left him standing dumbfounded as she was absorbed into the crowd.
The commotion and sounds of vendors was all-encompassing. In spite of it, a roar of laughter rose from the contest fields. She made her way to the spectators. Pushing into the crowd, she came to the rope cordoning off the throngs. Men were lining up, and then to both her shock and amazement, there stood Teàrlach, his shirt removed to boast his gloriously muscled expanse of chest, coming forth to…oh my, ask a favor of a lady. The crowd swooned and Gertrude fought to see Teàrlach’s woman for herself.
It was too crowded.
She watched him compete and taunt the little official. But as the competition finally waned and Teàrlach sought his woman again, she fell into step well behind him in the crowds, gaining a glimpse of the woman’s long blonde hair, her hand upon his arm, watching him lean down toward her to say a word or two. Eventually, she lost them in the fanfare.
It was well into the afternoon when she glimpsed him again, leading his lady onto the hillside with tarts in hand to sit and relax. He stripped off his surcoat, laying it on the ground, clearly the gentleman to his lady, even if he had been an arse to her. Lord, but her father had actually disciplined her! Of course, her father didn’t discipline with a strap or a violent hand, but she had been verbally chastened. Such an occurrence had never happened. Curse the Highland bastard, but she would win the day. As soon as she discovered for certain that he was consorting with Lady Madeline, her soon to be sister-of-marriage… Her eyes widened as the lady he had been courting all day turned unobstructed and gave Gertrude the whole of her fair face.
Her face split into a grin. “I knew it!” she muttered, moving several paces to hide behind a wooden cart piled with fabrics. Teàrlach was observant and would certainly sense someone spying.
After meeting Madeline when she had become her father’s ward, Gertrude had thought her daft. Yet right now, as she ate a tart, giggled, and chatted, Gertrude realized she probably wasn’t daft at all.
“Oh, Papa,” she whispered to herself.
She couldn’t wait to see the look upon her father’s face when she told him. Would he be enraged? Seeing her father angered at the Highlander would give Gertrude much satisfaction. Teàrlach MacGregor was brushing Madeline Crawford’s hair behind her ears. And then their affection bloomed and he was now…kissing her!
“Oh, good Lord!” she said, her hand slapping over her mouth. “Papa, you’ll never believe this.” The scandal, oh, the scandal. A wicked smile turned up her mouth. She had hoped to see him consorting with Madeline, but such boldness, such uninhibited affection left no shadow of doubt that Teàrlach wasn’t just interested in Madeline but was fully involved. No wonder he hadn’t brought his lady friend to the Montgrynan Fair. This was a stolen moment. He thought to keep this outing secret. “Your Highland warrior is debauching your heir’s betrothed right under your nose.”
The MacGregor guardsman would be taking leave every Friday, and she was now willing to bet her father’s entire estates that Teàrlach planned to pass those days at none other than Dungarnock. She looked back and watched the kiss transform, their moment of separation as Madeline ripped apart with embarrassment, watched as Teàrlach flopped on his back in a boyish display of disappointment, watched as he coaxed her onto his lap, then kissed her with such masculine passion Gertrude was actually jealous.
Lord, this was quite the juicy bit of gossip. And the sadness on their faces told her they knew their time together was limited. The man knew what he was doing was wrong. Gertrude could read their emotions like a play act on display. She turned away again, this time thinking, her fingers working her kerchief. Her step quickened. She needed to find Christopher and return home. She needed to be waiting at her father’s bedchamber door the moment he arrived home from his festivities, even if it wasn’t until the wee hours of the next morn.
She had confirmed it: her father had a traitor in his midst. This would indeed be payback for humiliating her in front of the entire castle.
…
Teàrlach knocked on Laird Moreville’s solar door. It was midmorning, and the laird’s summoning was disrupting his regime. No answer. The door was cracked however, and so he pushed inside. He was early.
The door still ajar, Teàrlach came to the seat opposite his desk and began to pull it back to sink his weight into it when the ledgers upon the desk caught his attention. He remembered what the one with unmarked entries looked like: dark leather, cured, and in need of polishing. He didn’t see it in the stack on the laird’s work surface, until he realized that it was the one opened and pushed aside with the quill pen and ink, a stack of parchment falling haphazardly over the corner.
He looked around, listened, not hearing a soul, knowing the door needed to stay open so as to indicate respect and not raise suspicion. The ledger page showed several rows of commodity entries, money coming in, money going out, and there it was, from more than a sennight before, an entry dated to the day the royal messenger arrived in the yard. Twenty pounds, a hefty disbursement.
He cast his eyes at the door once more, shifting closer to the desk, and turned the ledger with the tip of his finger to gain a better look. He flipped the ledger back a few pages, scanned down the parchment, and again, a month prior, the same amounts were marked. A twenty-pound deposit into his coffers, a five-pound payment out to his stores for supplies.
Flipping a page to the next month, he observed the same thing. Turning the page once again, there was another matching transaction for the next month, to December 1190, when Madeline had been placed in Moreville’s charge. He glanced at November. No such amount was received from the king, and no unmarked deposits had been made… It hit him. The bastard was siphoning off most of her disbursement and only giving her a small portion in the form of candles and some cooking ingredients. Rage, red and unchecked, fanned through his blood like a forest fire on a dry, windy day.
He turned the page again, and a different transaction that he had been remiss to notice before met his eyes. He doubled back through the ledger, and sure enough, such a deposit was also regularly recorded. A quick tally told him the accruing amount—fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty, and so-on—was the grand total of another entry, a deposit into a column labeled, “Estate.”
Teàrlach wanted to pick up the ledger and chuck it with ferocity through the glass window pane. Moreville was stealing most of Madeline’s monthly disbursement and saving it for an estate of some sort, instead of using it for her well-being. He needed to get this ledger before the king. King William wouldn’t stand for it. What was Moreville up to? Clearly a scheme was afoot that involved stealing Madeline’s coin without her ever knowing, shifting the money around his accounts to make the trail difficult to see, and marrying the lass to his son.
He shifted the ledger back, took a step back, and sat in the chair, his posture rigid, his muscles bound so tight he was dangerously close to exploding. The man had preyed upon Madeline’s innocence. Teàrlach had to turn the tables on him. One way or another, this ledger was going before the king. He took a calming breath. He needed to play this game with Moreville, keep everything he had just learned to himself, and take the man down quietly without him suspecting a thing. He had always been Harold Crawford’s sleuth at Castle Ayr. He had always been observant and tight-lipped. Protecting Madeline was bringing out the primal beast in him, and he needed to put the beast back into its cage.
He heard footfalls and the clinking of a sword coming closer, down the hall, and knew from the cadence of the step it was Henry de Moreville. He stayed in his seat, knowing nothing on his desk looked disturbed, and turned his head to look at the door as Moreville strode through it.
“Ah, MacGregor,” Moreville began. “I see you’re punctual.”
“You wanted a meeting?” he asked, standing, if anything to not draw scrutiny by being rude.
Moreville smiled and nodded. “Please, take your seat again.”
The man walked around his desk, straightening his tunic and overcoat with a stiff jerk to the hem, then sat. Teàrlach sank back into his seat, leaning back to look casual, feeling anything but.
“How was your May Day yesterday?”
“Fine,” Teàrlach replied.
“Not one for pleasantries, eh?” Moreville quipped, eyeing Teàrlach’s grim expression. “Our festival was quite the affair. You’ll have to come next year, and if you and your lady friend have, shall we say, tied the proverbial knot, you’ll no doubt bring her, too.”
Teàrlach gave his single nod, urging the bastard to get on with saying what he needed to say. He didn’t want to think about who Madeline would have tied the proverbial knot with. Not now, not ever.
“I have a new post for you to consider,” Moreville began. “My son is having a castle refurbished on a parcel of land south of here. When John takes Madeline to wife…” Moreville paused, shifting some papers in front of him, casually, “I’ll want you to take up guard at his new home, train his men, and reside there under his command. I’ll pay you double wages per sennight, a fair price, better than any other offer you’ll find. What say you?”
Teàrlach had no words. His face remained impassive, but he couldn’t spend time thinking on a reply.
“Nay,” he replied. “I like it here. I like the men here. They’re a good lot.”
Moreville gazed at him, said nothing for a second, and for some reason, Teàrlach felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Why, he couldn’t say.
“I’m surprised you won’t take the money,” Moreville said. “It’s quite a monthly sum, what, for a fourth son.”
“I do nay work in obscurity. I train men,” Teàrlach, countered, refusing to let Moreville’s remark sting. “A small fiefdom in the middle of nowhere makes no good use of my expertise.” Hell no, he wasn’t going to live in service to Madeline’s husband, a man younger than himself, watching Madeline every day with no prayer of touching her. Once Madeline married, he planned to go as far from Glengarnock as possible, so as never to see her again. It would break his heart otherwise.
Moreville was still looking at him as if he knew something Teàrlach didn’t. Teàrlach leaned back farther in his chair, relaxing more, though in truth, tensing up.
“You have a reputation as Harold Crawford’s head guardsman, and indeed you have good repute with Lady Madeline,” Moreville pressed. “I think it would serve me well to know someone so concerned with her well-being was guarding her, as well as my son, for although he’s a fine swordsman, he’s no warrior. If you wish to remain employed by me, this will be a fine arrangement. And you can come back and forth between here and there to work, since you like my men here so.”
Teàrlach gave one stout nod, but he had no intention of remaining employed. Maddie would go to John, and he would go away. He sensed a scheme afoot, but what, he couldn’t determine. “Fine. Is that all?”
Moreville sat back, folded his hands, waiting to see if Teàrlach would offer anything. He didn’t. Finally, Laird Moreville smiled.
“Yes. You’re dismissed back to your work.”
Teàrlach gave another single nod and rose, striding to the door. His lungs could expand with air again. There wasn’t a single thing in what Moreville said that was alarming. The man talked freely of John’s marriage and of his need for a trained guard there. And it was pretty obvious to the laird that he was concerned with Madeline’s well-being. After the last time they had discussed her, Teàrlach had parted with his entire pay just to outfit her tower with basic supplies. Still. Something about Moreville was putting him on edge, something more than usual. It hadn’t been Moreville’s words, no… It was the pause in his voice, and the light in his eyes.
He exited the keep, striding into the yard, hoping to find Duncan. Logic dictated that he was sensing something that wasn’t there. It was his guilty conscience punishing him about stealing kisses from Madeline. But he also knew from experience that the voice in the back of his mind was always right.
No. He shook his head.
This time, his guilt was confusing things and making him suspicious and mistrustful where there was no need for concern. He was never dishonest. Dallying with Maddie was weighing on his conscience. He needed to think about what he was doing. His day with Madeline at the fair had been one of the most beautiful days he had ever spent. The sun had been beautiful, the air had been sweet, and the giddy skip to his warrior heart had been a pleasant change of pace. He had spent most of the day wrapped up in nostalgic imagination of a country life and children with Madeline.
But beneath it all was her looming engagement, not to mention their shared despondence about the matter. And he most certainly didn’t want to return to Domhnall Castle and his brothers under such circumstances. His brothers would take him in, give him his old chamber, let him live and work there. It was, after all, his right. But by doing so, he would show he was a failure, that he hadn’t been able to make it on his own, that a little heartache was enough to send him home a broken man. The safety net of Domhnall Castle was always there in the back of his mind as a consolation, but he never wanted to use it as such.
No, even at Domhnall Castle he would be restless, imagining Madeline with John. He would need a fight to keep himself diverted enough until the heartache passed, and times weren’t overly tumultuous, even if Scotland’s relationship with England was tense. But Ireland… Ah, the Normans invaded there, attempting to conquer the Irish people, and the local tribes were giving it their all in a fight of resistance. He could be rid of Scotland and find a fight in Ireland.
He spotted Duncan observing the men, standing with arms crossed so that each hand wedged beneath each bicep. Duncan saw him, lifted his eyebrows, and nodded his head to acknowledge him. Teàrlach maneuvered through the bailey and came up beside him.
“And how was your May Day?” his first-in-command asked, his eyes playful.
“You seem a cheery sod this morn,” Teàrlach replied, deflecting. “Did you get yourself a bonny maid then?”
“Aye, bonny to be sure. A red-haired lass with the prettiest blue eyes you ever saw. Snatched her off to the hillsides, tossed her sweet wee arse onto my saddle, and she rode my stallion until she could nay longer stand. Aye, sweet as hell.” He laughed, his eyes relaxed and his stance lazy. “And she wants to see me again when I travel south in a month, but I might be tempted to find her sooner. What about you? You get lucky?”
Teàrlach smiled but shook his head. He hadn’t been so lucky, and yet, it had been a perfect day. Madeline might still rest a virgin, but that hadn’t stopped him from lying abed upon his return and imagining her naked, running his hands over her skin, watching her dance in slow undulating moves to the flute of the Maypole to entertain him so that her hair fanned around her… God, but he had jerked his stallion off in rough, hard yanks to the thought of her dangerous question. What’s it like, lying with a man?
He had wanted above all heaven and earth to give her a demonstration, thrust himself within her, lay his claim, mark his territory, make her his. He wanted it with such ferocity it scared him. He wanted to marry her.
“Nay. My lady’s innocent still,” Teàrlach replied. “’Twas nice simply to pass the day together in leisure.”
Duncan was shaking his head. “Well, that explains it.”
“Explains what?” Teàrlach grumbled.
Duncan chuckled. “You seem on edge this morn. ’Tis why you keep a mistress on the side, man. Have your sweet moments with the maiden, and visit the harlot to sweat away your edgy mood. Either that or claim the lady, usurp her faither, and elope with her.”
Teàrlach shook his head. “You’re a bastard.” He said the words with no animosity, even if he didn’t smile either. Eloping had merit. It would supersede any betrothal contract, royally sanctioned or nay, and he could take Maddie to the Highlands where the two of them could start a life together. It was a good thing that that was what he wanted. Because if he ever pulled such a stunt, retreating to his brother’s castle was going to be his only option.
“I did nay write the rules, man.” Duncan chuckled. “God gave us cocks and cursed us with needs.”
Teàrlach shook his head. Let Duncan laugh about it. It was what men often did, especially men who lived without women most days of the year. Except, now that he thought about it, it had been a long time since he’d properly bedded any lass. His favored mode was standing in a darkened corner with a wench on her knees. No accidental bairns, no commitment, no need for intimacy, no obligatory cuddling. Just suck, relieve, depart. Nay, he finally admitted. It wasn’t his favored mode. It was the safest mode. It kept his emotions safe, did the job, allowed him to remain focused on work. And as he had admired Madeline from afar those years at Castle Ayr, it had somehow allowed him to keep a pure vision of her.
Not anymore. He had kissed the lass, kissed her hotly. He had crossed the line of innocently admiring Madeline from afar, while a tavern whore’s mouth took care of the dirty work up close. Now he wanted, craved, and couldn’t wait until his leave the following sennight. Despite Moreville’s morning counsel and the warnings it made him feel, prickling his skin, he’d be damned if he didn’t want to get back to Madeline as fast as possible.