Chapter 6

6

" D amn!" Murdoch growled as he pulled on his boots on a damp Friday morning. "I would rather be standing on top of the highest turret in a thunderstorm than listen to this old fool enjoying the sound of his own voice for an hour!"

"Aye." Dougie Prentice stood up, scowling grimly as he fastened his kilt. "I never met a fellow who talked sae much an' said sae little—or made sae little sense!"

He shook his head and thrust his chest out, then squared his shoulders, looking for all the world as though he was going into battle. He felt as though he was. He considered himself a reasonably intelligent man, but compared to Archie McTavish, he was a genius!

They waited outside the laird's study for ten minutes, wondering why he was taking so long to appear.

"Likely making sure he combs his hair over his bald patch," Malcolm Stewart, one of the laird's more irreverent advisors, commented. "Have you seen him if he forgets? It will not be long before he looks like a boiled egg. And he likely has a headache as well. Emptied most of a bottle last night, so I heard." He nodded sagely.

"Who told ye that?" Dougie asked, laughing.

Malcolm tapped his nose and narrowed his eyes. "I never reveal my sources."

The men laughed then turned their heads as Adaira and Keira made their way to the stables, dressed in riding habits. They nodded to the advisors, but Keira caught Murdoch's eye for a moment, and as an arc of attraction passed between them, she blushed fiercely.

Fortunately, none of the men had noticed, for which Murdoch was infinitely thankful. If they had been a crowd of women, it would have been a different story! He had seen women's intuition in action and had great respect for it.

"Fine women," Dougie observed.

"Aye," Peter Boyle, another one of the laird's closest advisors, observed. "And that wee wife of his has a lot to put up with. I don't know how she does it."

"Women are much stronger than we are," Murdoch observed.

His mind was on the matter at hand, but his body had gone somewhere else. He shifted uncomfortably. Even the thought of Keira McTavish made him stiffen with desire. His dreams the previous night had been full of her, and she had not been clothed.

"Here comes His Majesty!" Dougie remarked sarcastically. He lowered his voice and whispered to Murdoch, "A' right? Ye don't look sae well." He looked concerned.

"I am fine," Murdoch replied, smiling grimly. He stood up to greet the laird, who unlocked the door and preceded them all inside. "I really would like all this to be over, though."

"Aye, you an' me both," Dougie said grimly.

When Laird McTavish entered the plush, overdecorated room, he sat down behind his desk and looked around at the six men who had sat down in front of him, feeling very proud of himself. They all reported to him, and he could dismiss them on a whim if it pleased him. It gave him an enormous sense of power. He might not have a son, but he had a beautiful daughter and, better still, a beautiful wife. However, if this one failed to give him a boy child, he might once again be forced to become a widower, and that was becoming tedious.

He jerked his mind back to the matter at hand, leaning back in his chair while sipping a glass of whiskey. None of the other men had been offered a drink, and this had been deliberate, another way the laird had of showing his power. Keeping them waiting had been another, as had making them all fetch their own chairs, which had been positioned haphazardly when they entered.

Murdoch felt like sighing with boredom. He knew he would have to fight to stay awake during one of McTavish's long-winded monologues, and he wanted to yawn just thinking about it. However, this time the subject proved not just interesting but terrifying, although it began in the usual way.

"As you know," the laird drawled, "my daughter Keira is going to be married soon to the Earl of Champling. This means that she will be Keira Wentworth, the Countess of Champling. It would create an alliance with the Wentworth family that would be very useful, especially since the earl's family is very wealthy. However, as soon as the earl arrives here, he will be wined, dined, and imprisoned."

He took a sip of whiskey, then paused for dramatic effect as the men around the table exchanged glances in obvious confusion. No one said anything for a moment, but everyone was thinking the same thing: Did the laird lose his mind?

However, they waited in patient silence while Archie McTavish milked the moment for all it was worth. At last, he spoke.

"I want what he is carrying in those wagons."

"But surely, M'Laird, he would have given those to you anyway," Murdoch said. He was truly mystified.

The laird shook his head. "No," he replied. "Those are trade goods, and the earl was going to sell them to competitors of mine in the Glenmar Valley. He is bringing silverware, silk, and many other luxury goods that are simply impossible to lay your hands on in this part of Scotland. They are worth a fortune, and I want them, but I do not want my daughter married to a Sassenach. That was just a ruse to get him to come here. Besides, he wanted a dowry far higher than any that I could pay. So we will keep him here for a while."

"But he will have guards, M'Laird," Tam Laing pointed out.

"So do we." The laird indicated Murdoch and Dougie. "The moment they see the earl with a knife to his throat, they will back down, and you can do as you wish with them. Do not worry; the earl's life is in no danger."

"So you are not going to hold him for ransom?" Murdoch asked, still confused.

"Yes, I am," the laird replied irritably. "What I mean is that I have no intention of killing him because I know that his family is very wealthy and can pay the ransom ten times over."

The men around the table fidgeted and looked around the room, outside the window, and at each other—anywhere but at the laird's face.

This is bloody madness, Murdoch thought, and had just opened his mouth to say so when Dougal McColl, one of the laird's advisors, voiced the thought for him.

"M'Laird," he said cautiously, "I mean no disrespect, but have you thought of the consequences of this? There are still plenty of Englishmen around these parts, and more can be sent from the earl's estate in Northumberland and Yorkshire. Hundreds of men can be mustered against us in a very short time."

The laird's face turned purple with rage, and he stood up and walked around the table to confront the man. McColl was a big man, taller than the laird by three inches, but he was unprepared for the blow on his cheekbone that sent him toppling off his chair onto the floor.

"Now perhaps that will remind you to know your place!" McTavish snarled. "Get up and sit down. Do not speak again, or I will do worse to you next time!"

McColl got to his feet, rubbing his face, but his blue eyes were dark with embarrassment and rage.

When the laird struck McColl, Murdoch had instinctively begun to rise to defend him, but Dougie had pulled him back, shaking his head frantically.

"No!" he hissed. "Leave him."

Now McTavish sat down, and the others maintained yet another tense silence.

"Needless to say," the laird went on, "anyone who breathes a word of this outside this room will be dealt with very severely, and I mean that, so keep your mouths shut. The operation will take place a week from now, and I trust you will take that time to prepare your men. I will accept no excuses for your absence that night except death. Do you understand?"

There was a mumble of affirmation from around the table before everyone stood up to leave.

The laird poured himself another whiskey and put his head in his hands, wondering if he should go see his wife. Lately, making love to her had stopped being a pleasure and had started to become a chore. She lay on her back and closed her eyes so that she did not have to look at him, then opened her legs and lay passive until he had done what he had to do, then she left. He always summoned her to his chamber instead of going to hers as a way of making her obey him, but he had tired of that novelty now.

Should he send her away? Find some excuse to have the marriage annulled? Or should he dispose of her the same way he had done with the first two? At least a quick dip in the moat had rendered his first wife unmarked, and the second had been declared an accident.

He decided to wait for a while, perhaps until the New Year, and redouble his attentions to his wife. He had managed to conceive a child before with Marion, so it was not as though he was infertile. With that thought, he swallowed the rest of his whiskey and went to seek his wife. He did not care if she found their coupling tedious or painful; she would do her duty as she always did. That was all that was required of her.

Dougie and Murdoch began to walk back to their quarters without speaking for a while. Dougie knew Murdoch well, and he had learned to recognize the signs that his friend was ready to explode with rage and that it was better to leave him to cool down of his own accord.

However, instead of making for the keep where Murdoch, as Captain of the Guard, had a little room of his own, they began to climb the stairs to the topmost turret where only a few guards were stationed. Murdoch ordered them to go downstairs to the next level down and then stood looking out at the countryside below them for a while.

It was a beautiful patchwork of plowed fields, hedgerows, and dry stone walls, where crops of barley, rye, and wheat were just beginning to poke their spring shoots above the earth. Stands of spruce and pine trees gave way to new growths of gorse bushes, whose flowers would soon color the hillsides a bright lemon yellow. Scottish Blackface sheep grazed on the emerald- green patches of grass between the bushes, sharing the field with Highland cattle with their shaggy orange coats and terrifying curved horns.

The sky was beginning to clear, and a weak show of sunlight washed the sky. Murdoch felt his anger cool a little, although it had by no means disappeared.

"Why do we work for him, Dougie?" he asked at last, dragging a hand back through his tangled hair in agitation.

Dougie looked at his friend and sighed. He possessed a much calmer disposition, and one of the things Murdoch valued most about his friend was his ability to soothe him.

"Because we need the money an' a place to live," Dougie replied flatly. "We are common people, although ye were lucky tae get a wee bit o learnin' at school. But even ye cannae pick an' choose, an' we are lucky tae have the little we have. Many people are no' sae fortunate, my friend." He patted Murdoch's back. "Come, let us eat and then get back tae work! We can worry about that eejit later."