Page 50 of Rebellion's Fire

“Gilbert is not your heir,” the Lady of Ross pointed out.

“But Uhtred is already married. I suppose,” Fergus said thoughtfully, “that if we chose that road, we could set aside his present wife. I doubt he’d object.”

Then I wouldn’t marry him for a crown,Gormflaith thought, appalled by such hateful disloyalty. Although it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence that wives were set aside for new alliances. Women were merely pawns in the games of men. Wise women played the game well and made the best of it. Gormflaith had long understood that she was not a wise woman. She wondered how her father regarded her mother. After more than twenty years apart, years during which the lady had brought up his children alone and worked tirelessly for his release, would he set her aside, say, for the chance of freedom and marriage to Fergus’s daughter?

Unlikely, since that would offend Somerled. Would he care that it offended the mother of his children? Gormflaith hoped so. But she’d never even met her father. He’d been imprisoned before she was born.

“Talking of wives,” Fergus said, sitting back and reaching for his cup. “What is this I hear about your installing some Norman’s wife on your doorstep? On valuable land, by all accounts.”

Adam’s distant eyes flickered upward, but he didn’t answer. He looked to be miles away. He might have been.

Donald said, “The girl is the rightful heir.”

“And brings an uncomfortable military enemy into your heartland. Seems to me the girl should be a widow.”

Adam was very still. He’d taken the girl, exchanged her for Donald, and installed her at Tirebeck as if it was always what he’d intended. Gormflaith understood that the Norman presence there kept the king’s army out of Ross in the short term. But for the first time, she began to wonder if there were other reasons. Was it the wife or the husband who was important?

And why had Fergus even mentioned her?

*

“You are ahealer,” Eua observed.

It was dark, and, with a silent soldier behind them, they were walking home from the fishermen’s huts that lined the shore. The wife of one of the young fishermen had given birth a couple of days ago and was struggling with a fever. Christian had taken her an infusion that morning and returned with Eua in the evening to see how she did and found her well enough to inspire Eua’s statement, which almost sounded like an accusation.

“No more than most women,” Christian returned. “I’ve just spent a good deal of time around fevers.” She gave a deprecating shrug. “In any case, it’s quite possible she’d have got better without my intervention.”

Christian swerved a little. The path they’d come up meant the old Pictish standing stone she remembered from childhood was clearly visible in the moonlight, and Christian elected to walk to it before heading along the side of the enclosure to the gate.

Eua’s gaze fixed on Christian’s face. “You’re good at this,” she said with apparent reluctance.

“I’ve lived much of my life among soldiers, who were always contracting fevers from battle wounds and marsh sickness. My stepfather—”

Eua interrupted with an impatient flap of her hand. “I don’t just mean sickness. I mean…being the lady. Youwereborn to this.”

Christian, warmed if a trifle uncomfortable at the praise, said, “I will make mistakes. I thought I’d make more, but looking after one’s people seems to be much the same wherever your location.”

“Your stepfather,” Eua repeated, returning unexpectedly to the part of the conversation she’d interrupted. “You traveled with Ranulf?”

“Some of the time. Before my marriage.” She stared through the darkness at Eua’s averted face. “YouknowRanulf?”

“I knowofhim. From when he was here.”

Christian trailed her fingers along the ancient stone and kept walking in silence, which she struggled not to break. It was odd, but the longer she was here, the more questions she seemed to think of.

Chapter Fourteen

Still and straighton the back of his big, restive gray horse, Adam mac Malcolm gazed from the shepherd’s hut to the top of the hill and the sky beyond. “No one suspected you played any part in our escape?” he asked at last.

Sigurd shook his head. “Too many others to blame for not recognizing you in the first place. Besides, I played a good drunk.” In fact, the soldiers on watch had come in for all the reproach. No one seemed to ascribe any importance to a native drunk. Sigurd began to explain it, but Adam, clearly had moved on.

“Fergus of Galloway is here in secret, at my mother’s hall,” he interrupted. “He has our safe conduct out of Ross.”

Sigurd nodded, unsure why he was being told. In another man, he might have assumed mere small talk or passing on of news. But he’d discovered that Adam rarely said anything, however odd, without a purpose. Once you knew the purpose, his words didn’t seem odd at all.

“He has no reason to pass this way,” Adam observed, dragging his gaze from the darkening sky down to Sigurd. “His plan is to head south to Inverness, and then west through the Great Glen to where his own ships await him.”

And yet if he wasn’t coming here, why did Adam bring the subject up? Because Fergus of Galloway hadn’t lived so long by necessarily doing what he told the world he was doing. He was a creature of cunning, by all accounts. And Adam mac Malcolm clearly didn’t trust him.

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