Kathleen Harrington (46 page)

“This is all of them?” he asked Fearchar, who nodded glumly.

Rory strode back to where Idoine stood clutching her mother’s arm and studied her. Of average height, the coarse-featured young woman looked to be about nineteen, but she could be younger. Her stubby fingers showed no sign of toil, and the gown she wore was rich, its red-velvet sleeves and ermine trim fit for the wardrobe of a queen.

Beneath his inspection, Idoine broke into a nervous, high-pitched giggle. She clapped both hands over her mouth, and her watery blue eyes glistened with fear.

His hopes sinking, Rory realized that Lady Idoine was the only female in the castle of the right age and rank. And she clearly resembled the Red Wolf of Glencoe.

Yet the obviousness of such a trick made him cautious.

There’d be no righting the erro, should he wed the wrong lady at his own insistence. Once having taken the maiden to bed, he might be obliged to honor the marriage contract, regardless of her true identity. The girl’s real terror would be understandable, considering his anger if he found out later that he’d been deceived.

Rory reached a quick decision. Since his future bride’s kinsmen thought of him as a fiend from hell, he’d act like one. He caught hold of a child about two years of age and dragged him out of his mother’s arms. The woman let out a startled yelp, then covered her mouth to smother her cry, lest she frighten the wean.

Drawing his dirk, Rory brandished it near the innocent head. “If Lady Joanna doesn’t reveal herself at once, the laddie dies,” he told the shocked assemblage. He repeated the threat in English, uncertain if the Maid of Glencoe could understand her native Gaelic after so many years in Cumberland with her Sassenach relatives. Surely, if she were listening from a place of concealment, she’d now give herself up.

Though Fearchar must have been as stunned by Rory’s brutal announcement as the rest of their men, he calmly folded his arms and stared straight ahead of him. From the look of boredom on the giant’s face, with its scars and sinister black patch, it appeared as if the two of them habitually hacked up wee bairns for the sheer pleasure of it.

The other MacLeans held their tongues as well. Rory had purposely chosen a laddie so young he wouldn’t understand what was being said, nor have dreadful memories to haunt him.

An agonized silence descended on the hall, broken only by the muffled sobs of the frightened mother. Motionless, the Macdonalds gaped at him. Every violent tale they’d ever heard about the King’s Avenger must have rattled through their empty brains.

For a long, torturous moment, no one spoke. Then at the back of the hall, a bedraggled serving lad stepped forward from his place beside the priest. His cheeks covered with soot, his deep blue eyes wide with fright, he held out one dirty hand in a pathetic bid for mercy. He opened his mouth to speak, but appeared too terrified to form the words.

“Wait!” Beatrix shrieked. “Wait! I’ll tell you the truth. Don’t harm the baby.”

Rory swung his gaze back to the frantic woman. Beatrix caught her daughter’s arm and dragged the struggling girl to where he stood in the center of the hall. “This is the Lady Joanna,” she declared breathlessly. “My daughter, Idoine, remained at Mingarry Castle with her father.”

Rory handed the child back to its mother and nodded in dismissal.

J
oanna slumped against Father Thomas’s side, her heart beating a painful tattoo against her breastbone. Disguised as a serving lad in a frayed plaid, ragged shirt and torn stockings, with a knit cap pulled down over her ears to cover her hair, she watched The MacLean with morbid fascination. She’d had no idea he’d be so stalwart and virile. But then her tutors had warned her that even Lucifer had been beautiful before his fall.

Well over six feet, MacLean soared above her kinsmen. All of the MacLeans were large and fearsome, but their chief exuded an almost diabolical power. And though fortune had blessed the Sea Dragon with golden hair and piercing green eyes, he was as cunning and ruthless as everyone had warned her.

Joanna had been certain he’d fall for their trick and hurry off to Mingarry Castle in search of the missing heiress. After reading the king’s letter yesterday morning, commanding her to marry the chief of the MacLeans, her shock had quickly turned to indignation.

“You are wondering why I invited you to my chamber this morning,” she’d said, meeting the curious gazes of her loved ones. Holding the missive between the tips of two fingers, as though it were a loathsome insect she’d just removed from the hem of her gown, she shook the vellum, and the sheets rattled portentously. “This is why.”

Seated on a large chest at the end of Joanna’s bed, Beatrix and Idoine had watched her with hands folded neatly in their laps. Father Thomas stood on one side of them, Joanna’s former nurse and present companion, Maude Beaton, on the other.

“This missive is from the king,” Joanna had explained. “The very villain who made me his ward after hanging my grandfather on false charges of murder and treason. James Stewart writes to inform me that he’s chosen my bridegroom.”

“Oh, dear God!” Beatrix cried, wringing her hands. “This can’t be! You’re to marry Andrew, my dear—though it will take time to arrange for permission from Rome.”

“She can’t marry my brother,” Idoine stated with a careless shrug. “Not if the king says otherwise.”

Beatrix shot her daughter a furious look. At eighteen, Idoine resented the fact that, in spite of her advanced age, her parents hadn’t found her a husband before arranging her younger sibling’s marriage.

Joanna’s cousin, Ewen Macdonald, planned to wed the clan’s new chieftain and heiress to his sixteen-year-old son, Andrew. But the future bride and groom were too closely related ,according to canon law, and a papal dispensation had to be obtained before the nuptials could take place.

“I won’t marry as the king decrees,” Joanna had stated. She ripped the pages in half before their astonished eyes, then ripped them again for good measure. “I shall throw myself from the top of the battlements before I do.”

“Whom has the king chosen for your husband, milady?” Father Thomas asked kindly. Like the others at the castle, he’d known Joanna as a small child, before she’d left for Cumberland with her mother at the age of seven. He didn’t seem the least alarmed at either the treasonous gesture or the heroic threat of self-immolation.

Joanna dropped the torn sheets to the floor and ground the pieces under her heel. “According to this letter, I am to marry the vile, wretched, blackhearted, pig-faced lout who captured my innocent grandfather and delivered him to his executioners.”

Beatrix gasped. She jumped up from the chest, her hands clasped to her breast, her face drained of color.

“God’s truth, you’ve the right of it,” Joanna said, somewhat mollified by their looks of horror. “I am betrothed to none other than the vicious, salacious, perverted chief of Clan MacLean.”

“Dear Lord, save us all,” Maude muttered under her breath. She quickly made the sign of the cross, then withdrew the holy medal of St. Maelrubha from under her bodice and kissed it fervently.

Idoine stared at Joanna in stupefaction. Suddenly a sparkle of joy flared in her narrowed eyes, and Joanna knew exactly what her cousin was thinking:
Thank God, it isn’t me
.

Beatrix finally found her voice. “All our plans are ruined!” she wailed.

His thin face creased with concern for Joanna, Father Thomas shook his head. “How could the king betroth you to our ancient foe?”

Joanna snapped her fingers. “As easily as he made me his ward against my wishes.”

“You’ll have a husband with a tail,” Idoine said with a gleeful smirk. She smoothed the velvet on her sleeve, her thick fingers caressing the soft blue material with lingering satisfaction.

“Hush!” Maude told her sharply. “My lady is upset enough. Don’t make matters worse.”

Joanna flung her arms wide in exasperation. “Oh, don’t try to hide the truth from me. What Idoine said is certainly no secret: I know very well what’s hidden beneath that contemptible fiend’s plaid.”

For every Macdonald child had heard the tale of how the MacLeans were once evil sea dragons, who’d changed to human form and come to the coasts of Scotland from the north in long ships with dragon heads at their prows, sacking and pillaging remorselessly. The shocking story was told by firelight that every MacLean chief was born with a dragon’s scaly tail, which was clipped at birth so its stub could be concealed beneath his plaid. It was why, even now, the chief of their wicked clan bore the name of Sea Dragon.

Joanna had paced back and forth, trying desperately to think of a solution. As the heiress of two great families, she’d been taught that she must marry whomever was chosen for her. The chivalrous knights in the English ballads sung by the troubadours were only figments of her imagination.

This was real.

As real as that terrible day last spring when Somerled Macdonald stood on the gallows in Edinburgh. Joanna despised James Stewart. But even more than her grandfather’s murderer, she loathed the hellhound who’d captured him and turned him over for execution.

“What will you do, milady?” Maude asked. She crossed her arms and waited with staid resignation. As always, Joanna’s companion was her usual down-to-earth self, the one rock of stability in her charge’s otherwise unpredictable life.

“Somehow, I must gain time. I must delay my marriage to The MacLean until the dispensation comes from Rome.”

Idoine straightened the silk cap perched on the back of her head, then coyly twined one wiry brown curl around her finger. “To openly defy the king’s orders would be treason,” she reminded her cousin.

“Then I’ll have to do it secretly,” Joanna declared.

“Why not try hiding in the secret staircase?” Beatrix urged. “’Tis cleverly concealed.”

The stairwell had been built by one of Joanna’s ancestors for reasons no one could now explain. Its entrance was a false back in a large service cupboard in the laundry room, and the stairs led to a movable wall of oak paneling in one of the private chambers on the third floor. Joanna and her cousins had played in the staircase as small children, but it’d been many years since anyone had used it.

Joanna considered the idea for a moment, then shook her head. “’Tis possible The MacLean might discover it, and then I’d be trapped.” She stared down at the rug, pondering her limited choices. “But if he thinks I’ve already escaped to Mingarry,” she continued, half to herself, “he’d likely ride off after me on a fool’s errand.” She turned to Father Thomas and clasped his arm. “Ask everyone in the castle to gather in the Great Hall at once.”

The priest frowned. “What are you thinking, my child?”

“I have a plan, Father. But everyone in Kinlochleven, from the youngest bairn to the eldest grandfather, must help to carry it off. If but one soul betrays me, I’m lost. I’ll either be hanged as a traitor for disobeying the king, or I’ll be forced to marry The MacLean.”

“I’d rather be hanged,” Idoine had offered cheerfully.

B
ringing her thoughts back to the present, Joanna stared at the very personification of wickedness now standing in the middle of her hall. The look of dismay on his face as he gazed at Idoine was enough to make a corpse snicker. MacLean clearly believed Joanna’s cousin was his promised bride. And from the grimace contorting his sharp features, the idea must taste like gall on that forked dragon’s tongue of his.

“This is the Lady Joanna,” Beatrix repeated, holding Idoine tight to keep her from bolting. “She is your affianced bride.”

“’Tisn’t true! ’Tisn’t true!” Idoine bawled, nearly hysterical at the thought of being forced to marry the ferocious man. “I’m
not
Joanna.” She tried to pull away, but her mother shoved her toward The MacLean.

Sarah Colson, the bairn’s mama, took the opportunity offered by the commotion to disappear from the hall while MacLean’s eyes were fastened on the sobbing female in front of him.

“Be still, you ungrateful wretch!” Beatrix snapped. “Would you have him murder the wee laddie, just to save yourself from an unwanted marriage?” She pinched Idoine’s earlobe, and the girl howled in pain and humiliation.

Rubbing her injured ear, Idoine looked about the room as her eyes pooled with tears. “T-tell him,” she implored her clansmen. “T-tell him I’m n-not the heiress he seeks. Tell him I’m n-not the M-Maid of Glencoe.”

No one moved.

Not by a twitch of an eyelid did a single Macdonald give away the truth.

But the look of desperation in her cousin’s eyes melted Joanna’s resolve the way The MacLean never could have—even if he tortured her on the rack or chained her in his dungeon with only moldy bread and brackish water to eat for the rest of her woesome days.

Although Beatrix was willing to sacrifice her own daughter to save her niece for Andrew, Joanna couldn’t allow Idoine to suffer the hideous fate that had been meant for her, and her alone.

Still, a shaft of pure terror struck Joanna’s chest at the thought of revealing her true identity. Like St. Agnes and St. Catrìona, she’d rather be a virgin martyr, willingly tied to a stake and riddled with a thousand arrows by her heinous foe rather than marrying him.

Joanna prayed she wouldn’t bring shame on the ancient and honorable name of Macdonald. More than anything, she wanted her father’s clansmen, once mighty Lords of the Isles, to be proud of her.

She was a Macdonald.

She was courageous.

She was invincible.

She was scared to death.

In an agonizing moment of self-revelation, Joanna realized she’d rather be given to Beelzebub himself than surrender to the perfidious, diabolical, dragon-tailed MacLean.

As she started to step forward, Father Thomas caught her hand. “Wait,” he said under his breath. “Let’s see what happens.”

MacLean had the ears of a fox. He caught the hushed sound of the cleric’s voice and turned his head to stare at them thoughtfully. He studied Joanna for what seemed like an eternity, then suddenly a light flared in his eyes. “Priest,” he called, “fetch a holy relic from the chapel and bring it here.”