Page 16 of Rebellion's Fire

Adam left without a word, an incivility Sigurd barely noticed until later. The young lord was not at all as he’d expected. Maybe his father was right, and he didn’t yet know everything of the world.

*

So long ashe was comfortable, William didn’t care about domestic arrangements. He didn’t object to anything Christian organized that night. Until Alys told him to.

When the household had eaten and Christian began to make her weary way to bed at last, he followed her out of the main hall into the rain.

“Christian. Alys should have a chamber of her own.”

Christian didn’t even slow down. “Why? You have one.”

“Yes, but—” He broke off. Alys couldn’t enter his chamber without stepping over all the sleeping soldiers in the hall to get to him. “Just see to it.”

Christian laughed. “William, if she wants to play at being your wife, let her, but I won’t upset my own comfort any further just to make it easier for her. Let her have the courage of her convictions or sleep somewhere else. If you’ve tired of her whining, send her back to Perth. Or London. Or Rouen. I really don’t care.”

And the truly satisfying thing was, she didn’t.

When she shut the door of the guesthouse, he still stood there staring.

“The alternative is to sendyouback!” he railed through the door.

Christian laughed with derision. Alys couldn’t have organized a drinking contest in a brewery. With her devastating new clarity, Christian knew Alys would make a terrible wife for William. Besides, like most men, he wanted a virtuous lady and that, Alys no longer was—thanks to him, of course, but the injustice of that would escape him along with that of Christian’s own intolerable position over the last three years.

She bolted the door and climbed the ladder to her little loft bed, hurriedly made up but more welcome right now than the finest mattress.

*

As good ashis word, Adam came back before nightfall with four men and a stretcher made of an old sail and two wooden poles.

“I’m not traveling in that,” Donald said weakly.

“Just for tonight,” Adam said. “No one will see, and you’ll be back on horseback by morning. We can’t wait any longer for you to recover.”

Brutal honesty, thought Sigurd, but it silenced Donald’s objections. The men laid him on the stretcher, covered him with a cloak and blanket, and carried him out. Following them, Adam paused at the door and turned.

“The Lady of Tirebeck is back,” he said abruptly.

“So we hear,” Sigurd’s mother said noncommittally.

“Her husband wishes to be Earl of Ross.”

Sigurd’s father snickered. So did Sigurd, though for different reasons.

“It suits us,” Adam said, “to have him here right now. But I need eyes and ears.

I can trust at the hall. I’m sure the lady will want more staff.”

“Sigurd will offer his services,” said his father.

Sigurd stared at him. “I’m a shepherd, not a lackey.”

“Sigurd!” snapped his father.

But a smile flickered across Adam’s face. He didn’t appear to be offended. “I don’t need you to do any actual work, just become a familiar face and report any oddities to Cailean mac Gilleon. This,” he added, reaching out and dragging a young man about Sigurd’s own age back into the hut, “is Cailean mac Gilleon.”

And again, the young lord left without a word.

Sigurd stared at the closed door. “What exactly does he mean by oddities?”

---