The Laird (25 page)

“Duncan, just do whatever it is you need to do in record time and get your butt up those stairs.”

When he wiggled a brow, she just rolled her eyes and hurried toward the solar.

She kicked off her ridiculous long-toed slippers as she rushed into their room. Dropping to her knees, she routed under the bed and pulled out Duncan’s heavy claymour. In the process she heard metal clanging to the floor and found a jeweled, ceremonial dirk. Great. Heaving them onto the bed, she wondered how her husband managed to swing the huge sword with one hand for minutes on end. It had taken both of hers just to lift the damn thing.

Satisfied with her defenses, Beth lifted the window’s woolen drape and studied the guards on the walls. Seeing none slept, she heaved a sigh and scratched at the skin around her ring.

Damn. Between all the cleaning she’d been doing and being nervous all night, she’d developed another rash. With no hydrocortisone ointment on hand, she’d likely claw herself raw by morning. Within a day, thanks to her unconscious but relentless nighttime scratching, the inflammation and swelling would spread across the entire back of her hand. She twisted the ring.

She had little doubt removing a wedding band had to be some kind of sacrilege, but she didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t get air to the area beneath the band, her entire hand could be swollen and stiff within days.

She carefully twisted the ancient gold and ruby treasure over her knuckle to examine the flesh beneath and felt a flash of stinging cold. Before she could draw her next breath, her skin, inexplicably, became luminescent. Heart pounding, she turned her hands and examined her now glowing palms. Her breath caught; her heart stopped, then kicked hard against her ribs as she stared through her diaphanous hands and saw the floor.

B
eth’s scream rent the midnight stillness of the bailey then rolled like thunder off its walls. It caused the hairs on Duncan’s neck and arms to stand. He spun from the guard he’d been questioning.

“Please, God, dinna let me find her bleeding, or worse yet dead by a Bruce blade.” He charged into the keep.

Racing across the hall, he ignored the startled expressions and questions of those who’d also heard Beth’s cry. He took the stairs to the solar two and three at a time.  The heavy pounding of many footsteps followed him.

Whoever, he swore silently, dared cause his lady to scream in such a fashion now breathed on borrowed time. He would slit the man from ear to ear as soon as he could lay hands on him.

Heart beating a frantic tattoo he forgot the latch and threw his weight against the solar door. It crashed against the wall as he came to a sudden halt and stared at the ghastly visage of his wife.

“Duncan!”

Tears coursed down her cheeks as she held out her arms to him. He scanned the room for the intruder as his long strides ate up the distance between them. Thankful she was quite alive, he snatched his claymour from the bed. It would better serve him than the sgian dubh in his hand.

She fell into his arms. She felt as cold as the stones beneath the keep and shook like the shutters during a gale. “God’s teeth, woman!”

He ran quick hands over her. Discovering her whole and unscathed, he clutched her to his chest. “What hath wrought such angst that ye screamed to stop a man’s heart?”

“I pulled off my—-” She glanced behind him as men piled into the room. “I...I...saw a rat,” she flung out her arms to the breadth of his shoulders, “this big.”

He gaped at her while his heart struggled to catch a steady rhythm. “Ye nearly killed me over spying a rat?” How one could survive around the prowling lymers and cats he hadna a notion, but she adamantly nodded and pointed to a far corner.

The Bruce’s laugh caused him to look to the crowded doorway. Short steel flashed in every hand. So much for the stowing of arms.

As the fifty-year-old Bruce gasped for air, he slapped Angus on the back. “Yer laird certainly can pick ‘em.”

Glaring at the crowd, Duncan bellowed, “Out! All of ye!”

Beth jumped, and he tightened his hold at her waist. Angus stepped aside so the Bruce could take leave, and Rachael slid into his place.

“
Madame
, are ye all right?”

“Yes, Rachael.” Beth’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

“Shall I chase it down, my lord?” Angus bent to peek under the bed. “Nay. The poor beasty has nay doubt escaped if he hasna already expired from fright.” He waved Angus out.

He patted Beth’s back until she released the death grip she had on his tunic. “I swear, Beth, ye will be the death of me.” He tipped up her face. “Dinna rats abide in the new York?”

She went wild-eyed again scanning the room. “Are you telling me there
are
rats in the keep?”

Scowling, he forced her to arms’ length. “What the hell are ye then so frighten of, if nay rats?”

She blanched and started biting her lower lip. “I couldn’t tell you while they were here.” She waved at the door. “Please lock it. I have something to show you.”

The door secured, she paced the middle of the room twisting her wedding band. “Duncan, I don’t really expect you to understand this, because I sure as hell don’t. But one minute I was itching and as solid as you and the next I’m glowing and turning into some sort of wavering gas...” She started to weep. “Oh, just watch. Then tell me if I’m losing my mind or if what I’m feeling truly happens.”

She twisted his ring from her middle finger and slipped it forward, keeping it poised at the tip.

To his utter amazement and horror, she started to shimmer from head to toe like the undulating lights that occasionally lit the northern sky in winter. When the air in the room began to vibrate, to shift, he backed away, a hand before his face. As she slowly faded before his disbelieving eyes, becoming so transparent he could see the window at her back through her, he saw her usually calm visage reflected the awe and fear he felt.

“Holy Mother! What doth...”

Words eluded him.

Then, just as suddenly, she became as solid as the floor beneath his feet, or as it had once been, though now he’d not have sworn it so.

He’d listened to her tales of Lady Kathy and one hundred story sky scrapes, but what sane man would have believed it all? Yet, just now she nearly vanished before his eyes!

Pure instinct brought his broadsword to her heart.

Her teeth chattered as she held out her left hand. “Duncan, it’s your ring. The ring brought me here and can take me away.”

Heart bounding, he shook his head still not believing.

She stepped to within an inch of his blade and whispered, “Duncan, please. Put down your sword.”

“Hold!” The claymore’s tip vibrated with his fear and he had to grasp it with two hands to stay it.

God’s teeth! What kind of specter ‘tis Beth that she can come and go thus? And what did she want? Was she a fairy? Had she come to charm him, to take his seed as fairies were want to do whenever they wanted a human bairn, and God help him, he’d obliged? Or, God forbid, had she come from some other place to claim his soul?

“Duncan, please...” She held out her hands in supplication. “It’s the ring.”

“BACK WITH YE! I dinna ken ye or why ye be here, but
leave
!”

Fear he understood and routinely dealt with in battle, but the terror now surging through his blood and causing his muscles to quake and his breath to catch felt altogether foreign. As foreign as his ladywife’s ability to disappear then reappear at will.

Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. “I don’t understand this anymore than you do. But I’m still me, just plain ol’ Katherine Elizabeth MacDougall Pudding who belongs in New York with her roaches and Chinese take-out, and I’m as frightened by this as you are.” She wrung her hands. “Actually, I’m way past frightened, Duncan, I’m truly terrified.” She reached out.

“Nay!” He used the claymore to keep her at a safe distance, and then circled the tip at her heart for good measure.

To his utter surprise she leaned into it, piercing the tender flesh over her breastbone. Before he could think--to either press his advantage or wonder why she did it--she uttered a wee cry and backed off the gleaming steel.

Shaking and pale, she looked down at the wee scarlet burn that flowed down her chest. “See, I’m just flesh and blood.”

Dumbfounded, he growled and raised his shaking blade over his shoulder.

She searched his face for only a moment before collapsing at his feet like a dropped puppet. Her shoulders shook as she buried her face in her hands. She started to sob. As she rocked on her knees, her arms now clutching her middle, his blade hovered above the fair skin of her long exposed neck.

Self-preservation caused him to inhale deeply, his body readying to wield his sword.

His heart jolted when she keened, “
Why God?
Why,
when all I ever asked out of life was for someone to love?”

A
gust of air swished past her cheek and the claymore dropped with an ungodly clang to the floor.

“Ah, Christ’s blood, Beth.”

Slowly she raised her face to look into Duncan’s eyes. Not seeing death staring back, she released her breath. He kicked the broadsword away and settled on his haunches before her as she dashed her tears away with the heels of her hands. He reached for her, but then pulled back.

“Be ye alright?” His face was still flushed and dotted by sweat. “The cut, lass.” He pointed to the spot where his blade had pierced her chest. She looked not at her wound but to the sword. “Yes.”

Heart still thudding, she reluctantly shifted her gaze from the gleaming harbinger of death now lying impotent on the floor to her bloodied bodice. The once white crewelwork was now a rusty burgundy and probably ruined beyond all hope. Rachael had told her it had taken a master tailor and his three apprentice six months to make the gown. “Did you spare me so Rachael could now take my head?”

“Ack, lass.” To her surprise, he reached out tentatively, first to brush the hair from her cheek and then to trace the path of her tears to her jaw. He examined his fingers. “‘Tis soot. Did yer unholy light burn ye?”

Soot? She’d only felt a bone-fracturing cold when she started to disappear and still felt chilled. She hadn’t felt any heat, no burning. She sniffed and hiccuped again as she examined his fingertips more closely. Suddenly she wanted to laugh, and would have, had she had the energy. Her homemade mascara had cascaded south with her tears. It was too much to hope that she only had raccoon eyes. More likely she resembled a chimney sweep. Could she do nothing right in this world?

“Duncan, I wasn’t burned. It’s just lamp black—-lamp sable.”

Obviously confused, he frowned but only said, “Ah.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I wanted to be pretty, so I used the soot...” She heaved a sigh. “Hell, you wouldn’t understand.”

While she struggled to her feet, surprised she wasn’t nauseous from fright, he sheathed his short blade to his calf. Not looking at her but toward the window, he quietly asked, “Will ye be leaving?”

She shrugged.

Yes, she wanted to return to her old life where threatening steel meant only a racing taxi, where she could speak normally and be understood, where she had friends, coffee and real make-up. But then again, no. For
home
would also be bereft of hope, for love or for children. She’d have her ghost but not the real Duncan. She took a deep breath and confessed, “Not right now, unless you want me to go.”

Not wanting to watch as he made his decision, she walked to the window. Her head and heart continued to ache as she studied the movement along the battlements in the light of oil torches whipping like horsetails in the errant wind.

The burning in her throat defeated her effort to sound matter of fact as she confided, “I never expected to wear a wedding ring, much less be married to a man such as you. To discover the ring—-something I’d hoped would hold such promise--could terrify me so...”

She heard him come to his feet. “I dinna suppose any woman should expect it.”

“Three wives wore this ring before me. Have you ever been in love?” Why had she asked? What difference could his ability or willingness to love her matter now?

She placed a hand on her stomach. Did a new life already hide in the deep recesses of her womb? That possibility--not whether he could love her--would have to be the deciding factor in her staying or leaving.

He took a long time in answering. “I grieved for Mary.”

Yes, he had written of his guilt, that he hadn’t loved her, but had he lied to himself about loving her? Why else would he be so obsessed with the chapel?

And what, if anything, would he write of her, Beth, should she decide to slip the ring off for good? Would he grieve? And for what? The loss of a potential heir, a good meal, or just an efficiently run keep? One or all of the above? In any event, it certainly wouldn’t be for her. He’d never mentioned the word love. And knowing that certainly shouldn’t cause the burning at the back of her eyes and throat, much less the fissures now spreading across her heart. She was, after all, plain-as- pudding Pudding.

When she’d sent her silent plea to God for an honest answer, Duncan had been so close to cleaving her head from her shoulders she’d seen her life pass before her. What staid his hand she might never know, but she thanked God all the same. At twenty-four, she tearfully acknowledged, she’d yet to earn the right to die.

Duncan studied his wife’s straight back as she stared into the night and tried to gather his wits.

He’d never been so unnerved in his life. Aye, her turning specter before his very eyes had nearly stopped his heart, but that dinna compare to the last.

The verra worst occurred when--kenning his fear and possible intent--she’d pleaded
not
for God’s mercy nor for his, but had used what could have been her last breath to demand an explanation from God for what she truly believed to be His betrayal.