Chapter 17
Although Àdham got home as often as he could, for a day or two, July was nearly over before he was home long enough to relax any longer than that. Wanting time alone with Fiona and certain she would welcome it, he took her near the top of the shorter, southeastern crag, high enough above the castle on that cloudless, clear day to see a long stretch of the river Nairn, flowing north to the Moray coast.
In the distant southwest, snow-capped crags much higher than theirs were visible. Fiona stared at them, her jaw agape. She seemed to have stopped breathing.
Understanding her reaction, Àdham said quietly, “Beautiful, aye?”
She just nodded, still staring at the spectacular view. “We have nothing like that in the Borders. I have never seen . . .” She paused, shaking her head.
“The Cairngorms, miles behind us eastward, are similar. But those yonder are higher. Fin says they stand sixty miles from here. But afoot, due to rough terrain, ’tis nearer a hundred. The tallest one, Ben Nevis, is the highest peak in Scotland.”
They sat quietly on a pair of boulders for a time before she looked around and said, “Raitt Castle lies somewhere beyond that higher hilltop yonder, aye?”
“On the northeast slope of a hill below that tor. But we’re safe here, lass.”
She looked at him. “I’m not as fearful as I was before. I’ve been out walking almost every day with Catriona and the twins, and even on my own, with the dogs.”
“Art learning to speak the Gaelic yet?”
“Tha, beagan,” she said, still staring at the distant mountains.
“Aye, a little,” he said, nodding. “What else can you say?”
“Is mise Fiona.”
He chuckled. “I know your name is Fiona. What more?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said with a grimace. “I am beginning to understand much more than I know how to say. Everyone is helping me learn, especially Rory and the twins, but I cannot form sensible sentences longer than three words.”
“You will learn,” he said confidently.
“I will,” she agreed. “But how did so many at Finlagh and Rothiemurchus come to speak Scots?”
“Fin and Ivor learned at St. Andrews as students of the bishop, and Ivor’s Marsi spoke both languages from birth, because her parents owned land in Perth and the Highlands. The twins and their brothers learned from Fin and Catriona, and others here learn from hearing phrases repeated at table and elsewhere.”
Putting an arm around her shoulders, he urged her back the way they had come. “I know some other things you can learn when we get home, mo bhilis.”
“What does ‘ma villus’ mean?”
Realizing that the phrase had slipped out because he habitually used the term of endearment with the twins, he felt heat surge to his cheeks. “’Tis just a friendly endearment, akin to calling you a sweet lass.”
“Oh.”
“Shall we go?” he said, getting to his feet.
Fiona knew that mo meant “my,” and suspected from his tone that the phrase was more personal than he had admitted. But when he suggested going back, she felt wary of asking if it meant “my sweet,” lest she learn that it meant only “my wife.” The way he’d said it had given her a warm feeling. The thought that he might call her merely “my wife” did not.
She had yet to spend much time with him, for she had learned that the Clan Chattan Confederation contained not only Mackintoshes but numerous other clans, some of which were themselves divided and distant from each other. When he was home, he usually spent his days with the men, ate meals with the family, coupled with her, and went right to sleep. Then, he rose early the next day without waking her, either to repeat that pattern or to leave again and continue his travels for James.
Despite her initial shyness, she had found their first few couplings interesting and mostly pleasant, even stimulating. Àdham had seemed to enjoy teaching her and revealing her body’s secret sensitivities. After their first days at Castle Finlagh, however, she had scarcely seen him, let alone talked at any length with him.
Their walk today was a welcome exception, but the intimacy she had shared with him at Blackfriars and at Fin’s pool was gone. He seemed distracted. He also seemed to assume that Fin, Catriona, and the twins had eased all of her fears about living in the Highlands. But thanks to the rumors of increasing enmity and possible renewal of war, with Islesmen threatening to reclaim territory the imprisoned Lord of the Isles apparently now insisted was an inheritance from his mother, she was not fully comfortable yet in her new home.
A twinge of guilt stirred, because she could almost hear her brother Davy saying, “Poor Fee, and what have you said or done to let him know how you feel?” Because that was Davy’s way, and she suspected he would be right.
In truth, Àdham’s casual belief that her fears had gone troubled her less than the proof she had recently received that her fear was reasonable.
Drawing a breath, she said, “Did Catriona or Fin tell you that we received a message at last from my father?”
“Nae, and neither did you until now. What was his message?”
“That he will likely not visit us for months yet,” she said, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat that threatened to smother anything else she tried to say.
“Did his messenger relay his cause for the delay?”
“Aye,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Good sakes, sir, because travel in the Highlands has become too dangerous! Many insist that we will soon be at war. Is that not the very reason that you have traveled hither and yon these past many weeks on his grace’s behalf?”
“I have been doing so to ensure that if trouble does come, men will be ready to meet and defeat it. Moreover, if the Islesmen attack, they will do so nearly eighty miles southwest of here, at the lower end of Glen Mòr. And, if they do, the Earl of Mar will settle it from the royal castle of Inverlochy, which guards that end of the Glen. Trouble there should deter no one in the Lowlands from visiting Finlagh.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “My father is no feardie. Yet he and Lady Rosalie have not even set a date for their wedding, because they hope to arrange matters so that we can attend. If he believes the Highlands are too dangerous to travel, it must be so. Perhaps he also thinks men might attack Tantallon to free Alexander.”
“If men try that, they will fail,” he said. “In any event, your father can surely arrange protection of his own for himself and his lady. I’d liefer be here when they do come, but things happen as they happen, Fiona. In any event, you said that you are not so fearful yourself, and you don’t hesitate to walk out with only the dogs.”
“I do that, aye,” she said, wondering if he meant to take exception to those walks. “I have learned to trust Argus and Eos to keep me safe.”
“They are worthy of such trust,” he said. “Just take care not to go too far from the castle and to stay well south and southwest of it. I would dislike it if you heedlessly walked into danger by trying to get a closer look at Raitt Castle.”
“I would not do such a foolish thing,” she said flatly. In truth, she had long been curious about the place, but she was not such a dafty.
Although relieved that he had not forbidden her solitary walks, she would have liked to discuss further the possibility of war. But when they reached Finlagh, he left her with the women and talked only with Fin and MacNab at supper.
Later, when he joined her in bed and moved at once to couple with her, Fiona’s temper flashed, and she surprised herself as much as she did him by pulling away and saying sharply, “No, Àdham! I don’t want to. Not tonight.”
Àdham could see that she was irked, because despite the hour, the shutters were open and the sky was still dusky. But he couldn’t imagine why she should be.
He said quietly, “Art ill or in your courses, Fiona?”
“No, I am well. I . . . I just don’t want to, not now.”
“It is a wife’s duty to couple with her husband,” he reminded her.
She was silent, glowering. Her back was right against the wall.
“I may have to leave again as soon as tomorrow,” he added.
She looked away toward the window.
“Fiona, what’s wrong?”
“I told you. I don’t feel like coupling tonight.”
“But I do.”
“And that is all that matters?” Before he could think of what to say to that, she added, “Despite our walk today, I feel as if you’ve abandoned me to the women here. You scarcely heed my presence unless you want to couple. And then you heed only your own wishes as if it does not matter a whit what woman is in your bed.”
Stunned, Àdham’s first reaction was fury, but he knew instinctively that he’d be wise to clamp a lid on that before things got out of hand. He wanted her, and she had vowed to obey him, but he wanted her to come to him willingly.
Although she had initially been shy about coupling, he had learned that she was avidly physical and reacted eagerly and sensitively to sex. Unconsciously, even innocently, she radiated sensuality in the very way she breathed. He liked to watch her, and when she submitted to him, she created an aura of mystery that fascinated him . . . not, he realized, that he had enjoyed that reaction for some time.
Perhaps he had been too hasty of late in their couplings.
She had looked away again, so he waited silently for her to look at him, forcing himself to be patient. At last, she turned and met his gaze . . . directly.
His body reacted with a near jolt, as if she were daring him to take her.
He knew she was doing nothing of the sort, but it felt like a challenge. He reached toward her. When she made no move to evade his touch and her lips parted softly, invitingly, he murmured, “Come to me, mo bhilis. We need do naught that you choose not to do. I did say this afternoon, though, that I would teach you more, and it occurs to me that I have not yet fulfilled my promise.”
Fiona’s breath caught as desire surged through her. Her earlier sense of isolation, even abandonment, vanished when her gaze collided with his. Moreover, his quiet words reminded her that he had spent the whole afternoon with her.
Perhaps she had been unfair.
When his fingertips touched her cheek, the expression of cool yet gentle impassiveness on Àdham’s face fired responses throughout her body. She had sensed from the first time she’d seen that look that it was a mask concealing his deeper feelings. That she understood that about him without their ever speaking of such stirred something new in her, a sense of concern and compassion.
Why had she been so angry with him?
That mask was his true secret, not one she would boast of knowing to anyone, even Àdham himself. She could delight in her private knowledge, though, aware that his physical response to her was often equal to what she felt for him.
Good sakes, but the heat of his touch and the memories it stirred had banished that anger—nae, fury—that had erupted from the very core of her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked softly as his knuckles brushed her cheek, sending new waves of pleasure through her.
Since she did not want to tell him the truth, she continued to hold his gaze as she murmured, “I am thinking that I do want to learn more from you, much more.”
“You were thinking something other than that,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “But that will do.”
When he smiled, she smiled back but held her breath again when his hand moved from her cheek to her left shoulder and then to her left breast.
His fingertips gently brushed its nipple. Then, before she quite knew the manner of it, she was in his arms, his lips claiming hers, and his deft hands and fingers began inciting her to passion in ways he had not yet shown her.
By the time she had submitted utterly to him, she was hoping that he would not have to leave her again for weeks.
However, the next day, a running gillie arrived from Malcolm, summoning Àdham to Moigh to report all that he had learned in his travels.
Reluctant though Àdham was to leave Fiona so soon after their dispute, he knew that Malcolm would not accept a desire to spend another night or two with his bride as excuse for delay. Moreover, he suspected that if he did stay, he would find it harder to leave her the next morning.
It had never occurred to him that she might object to his lack of attention. After all, she understood that he was following royal orders, clearly a more important duty than dallying with his lady wife. He had an obligation to her, too, to be sure, but he had seen to that dutifully, nightly, whenever he was at home.
The truth was that he knew little about women in general. Before meeting Fiona, he had several times coupled with willing tavern wenches, rarely if ever with the same one twice. But he had no experience with ladies in such matters, let alone with lady wives, and Fiona’s complaints had stirred conflicting emotions.
On one hand, her objections to his casual ways rather pleased, even flattered him. On the other, they had stirred his anger and a guilty awareness that he had left her to the care of others, while he saw to his more important duties.
Since he had no choice now but to leave, he lingered just long enough to bid her farewell.
He took only MacNab along for the two-day trek over rugged but well-protected Mackintosh country, so they were able to cover more than half the distance through the mountainous terrain southwest of Finlagh before dusk. When night began to fall, they found a grassy bank by a tumbling stream and ate their supper before true darkness came. Then, wrapped in their plaids, they slept until dawn light woke them, and despite steeper, more perilous terrain, reached Loch Moigh by midafternoon.
The castle on its island gleamed golden in the sunlight. Malcolm had set men to watch for them, so oarsmen rowed a boat out from the island to the timber landing on the southwest shore, arriving just as Àdham and MacNab reached it.
Malcolm led them into the great hall, where a fire crackled on the hearth.
“Gilli Roy be the only other one here, save my Mora,” he said. “So choose any bedchamber. I’ll want you to set out again at dawn, for I’m thinking that Mar must ken gey more of what Balloch be up to than we do. But I’ve heard nowt from the man. Ye’ll also talk wi’ our chieftains betwixt here and Glen Mòr, aye?”
“Aye, sir,” Àdham said. “Should we then return here?”
“Aye, or send word wi’ MacNab or someone else ye trust if ye must go elsewhere. Listen tae what anyone has heard from the west,” Malcolm added. “If Balloch be raising as great an army as recent rumors say he is, ye’ll have a better ear for what men may say than Gillichallum would. Nor would our Gilli be as much use to anyone if there be trouble afoot.”
Realizing then that the likelihood of seeing his lady wife again in less than a fortnight was small, Àdham suppressed his disappointment and began to discuss other information that he had gleaned in his journeys.
Forcing herself to keep busy after Àdham’s departure, Fiona tried to keep her mind on her chores but could not help feeling abandoned again.
The night before, she had been furious with him without truly understanding why. So, when he had pressed for a reason, she’d blurted out exactly what she had felt at that moment. Surely, if they had talked more . . . Though their activities had been most pleasurable. But he had fallen asleep directly afterward, as usual, so they had resolved nothing between them. And now he was gone again.
Recalling her angry words to him, Fiona felt heat rush to her cheeks. “I should not have spoken so to him,” she muttered as she entered the scullery with a basket of fresh herbs she’d helped Clydia gather from the kitchen garden.
“You should not have spoken so to whom?” Catriona asked, putting her head around the wall of the nearby alcove containing the castle’s bake-oven.
Startled, Fiona would have dropped her basket had Catriona not reached out to steady it. Drawing a breath, Fiona said, “’Twas naught, madam. I was thinking and must have spoken my thoughts aloud.”
“’Twas something then,” Catriona said with a smile. “So, I’ll just give your herb basket to Cook and ask our Rory to keep the oven warm whilst you and I take a walk,” she added in a tone that brooked no argument.
Moments later, the two of them were outside the wall, walking downhill alongside the largest and southernmost of the two burns while Argus and Eos ranged back and forth ahead on the well-worn path. Fiona inhaled deeply, exhaled, and felt herself relax. Until then, she had not realized she was tense.
“Art happy here with us, dearling?”
Surprised by the question, she looked at Catriona and said sincerely, “Everyone has been so kind that I should have to be daft to be unhappy.”
“Then I’m gey curious to hear what has distressed you,” Catriona said. “I ken fine that it was naught that our Clydia did.”
“Oh, no,” Fiona said, feeling wretched to have stirred such a thought. “She and Katy both behave as if they were my sisters. Faith,” she added with a chuckle, “they are both much more pleasant company than my own sister has ever been.”
“Then Àdham must be the one to whom you should not have spoken so,” Catriona said. “Now, do not look at me like that, for whatever you said to him must remain betwixt the two of you. But I will tell you that when I was your age, I was terrified that I’d have to marry a man who would take me to live with his family, far away from mine own. I was certain I’d be miserable.”
“But Fin did not take you far from Rothiemurchus.”
“He could have, but I doubt that it would have been as dreadful as I’d thought. If you do have aught that you’d like to talk over with me, I’ll keep your confidences and advise you as well as I can. Sithee, mothers do that for their daughters, or they should. Àdham is as much our son as our other two lads be, so I do feel like your good-mother. I mean to be a grand one, too.”
Fiona’s throat ached, but she managed to say, “Thank you, Cat. That means much to me. Àdham is lucky to have you. Did he realize that when he was a child?”
Cat rolled her eyes upward. “He was an imp, nae, a wee devil.” Matter-of-factly, she added, “You lost your mam as a bairn, too, so you may understand something of what troubled him. Not knowing just what he’s told you . . .”
“That his father married again,” Fiona said, “and his stepmother did not want him. So Ewan Cameron sent him to live with you and Fin. I think that was a horrid thing to do. My father never considered remarrying . . . not until recently.”
“And you don’t like it much now, I think,” Cat said with a warm smile.
“Not at first,” Fiona admitted. “But I knew I was being selfish. I do understand what you are telling me, though, about Àdham. I felt my mother’s loss most when we visited kinsmen. For years, I felt out of place amongst them, because everyone except me seemed to have a mother. It is one reason I loved being with Joanna, I think. She treated all of us as if we were family. We had rules, of course, and duties. And one of her chief ladies could be unkind, but never horribly or in her presence. Surely, Àdham came to feel at home here. He certainly feels so now.”
“Aye, because our sons were three and four years older and were kind to him. Also, Fin and Ivor began to teach him the skills of a warrior straightaway.”
“When he was only nine?” Fiona was stunned.
“Aye, sure. When I was nine, my da taught me to use a bow,” Catriona said, grinning. “So Ivor was willing to teach Àdham. And Fin is one of Scotland’s finest swordsmen. Between them, they trained him well. Then the twins came along. He has doted on them since they were tiny, and is gey protective of them. But he is a bit mistrustful of women until he knows them. One cannot blame him for that, I think.”
Fiona agreed. “I was furious with Mam for dying, furious with my father and brothers for letting her die. If Father had remarried then, I’d have wanted to murder her and him. Poor wee Àdham must have felt abandoned by both of his parents and utterly betrayed by his father for submitting to that dreadful woman’s wishes.”
“Aye, you do understand,” Cat said, putting an arm around her and giving her a hug. “I’m thinking that your own mam likely looks down on you with great pride in the woman you’ve become, wishing she were in my place right now.”
Unable to speak just then, Fiona returned Catriona’s warm hug silently.
“Will ye look at that now!” Dae Comyn muttered. “We could ha’ the two o’ them straightaway back tae Raitt, were it no for them beastly dogs o’ theirs.”
He and his cousin Hew were north of the two crags and near the top of the ridge separating Finlagh’s hilly lands from Raitt’s. Lying concealed in shrubbery, they could see Castle Finlagh and the hillside below it.
“Ye’re daft,” Hew said, giving him a clout. “D’ye think them women would just let us snatch them up? They’d screech like banshees, and them guards on the ramparts can see them. If we was tae run down there, they’d see us, too.”
“We could wait until the women get farther away and shoot the dogs.”
“Neither one of us could hit one from here, even if them on the ramparts fail tae see us,” Hew said. “If we get any closer, the dogs will smell us and then—”
“But Atholl and your da will be wroth wi’ us for losing Atholl’s men, so what can we do? And why d’ye want tae watch them if we canna capture the lass?”
“Ha’ patience,” Hew said. “Any lass that crept out o’ Blackfriars Monastery tae swim in the Tay be one as defies orders. We’ll just give her time tae decide that she’s safe tae wander where she likes. Then we’ll teach her why she should not.”
By the end of the first week of their journey, Àdham and MacNab had learned little more than that the few travelers they met were heading for areas far from Glen Mòr. With a day and a half’s walk to go, they topped a ridge above the Glen. Seeing five men coming up the hill toward them, Àdham called a halt.
“Those look like local tenants rather than fighting men,” he said.
“Aye, but ye canna always tell a chap’s business by his appearance,” MacNab said, raising his eyebrows.
“We are merely mild, weary travelers seeking news of the area.”
“And if they turn fractious, they are only five men.”
Àdham agreed, so when the group drew near enough to hear him, he said in the Gaelic, “What news have ye had from Glen Mòr?”
“None save more rumors, sir,” the leader replied. “Alexander’s cousin Balloch be raising an army. But none do say just what he means tae do with it.”
“God willing, the Earl of Mar will discourage him from entering Glen Mòr, so he will keep it in the Isles,” Àdham said, standing and offering his hand.
“Sakes, sir, Mar has moved his headquarters to his grace’s Castle Urquhart.”
Dismayed, Àdham said, “How long ago did he leave Inverlochy?”
Looking upward, as if a drifting cloud might bellow the answer to that question, the spokesman said, “Must be nigh onto a fortnight now, methinks.”
Thanking him, Àdham looked at MacNab.
“Sakes, sir,” MacNab exclaimed in Scots, “whereabouts is Castle Urquhart?”
“On the west shore of Loch Ness three to four days from here,” Àdham said grimly. “But it lies only a half-day south of Inverness, so we’ll be much nearer home when we get there. Sithee, I served with the Mackintosh at Inverness Castle when Malcolm took over there as constable, so I do know how to get there.”
“But instead of a day and a half, we have four to walk afore we find Mar.”
“Aye, and when we do, I may put another Stewart on his backside. Why the devil did Mar move his headquarters without warning Malcolm? Unless he’s left a strong force at Inverlochy, under a skilled commander, he’s left the gateway from the sea into Glen Mòr wide open, just inviting Balloch and his Islesmen to return.”