Page 38 of A Constant Blaze

Slowly, he became aware that everyone was staring at him. He waved his hand to the men before him. “Sit. Eat.” And as they walked away, their shoulders relaxing with relief, he turned to Gormflaith. “It seems I must leave you again, to find your mother.”

Chapter Ten

Mairead jumped toher feet as the key scraped in the bedchamber lock. She’d been sitting in the window seat, ramming at the shutters with Grizel’s laundry pole. They’d clearly been bolted or blocked from the outside. Which was annoying, because there was probably enough ivy growing up the walls to be able to climb down. If there wasn’t, there was always the bedding for backup—if only she could get out of the window.

At the sound of the key, she threw the pole to Grizel, who tossed it back in the corner where she’d found it, and moved to stand beside her mistress. She shook like a leaf. Mairead was touched by the courage of her timid handmaiden.

She’d hoped for a man-at-arms, or even his captain, anyone she had a chance of manipulating. But it was Brian of Kingowan himself who stood revealed in the open doorway, his unctuous secretary, Cardon, at his back.

“Please, come in,” Mairead invited. “Be comfortable, if you can.”

She’d been locked in here for almost a week. Under guard, a maid came once a day and set a tray of barely edible food on the floor before scuttling out again. If she couldn’t batter her way out the window, Mairead was contemplating leaping over the maid and using the guard’s surprise to bolt for the stairs. Or even hitting him over the head with the tray. Her chances of getting out of the house weren’t high, but they were better than going insane in one room without any daylight.

Brian of Kingowan inclined his head ironically. The door was locked behind him. Perhaps she should just hit him with the laundry pole. After all, without him to give orders to the contrary, she could soon bend the household to her own bidding.

Her husband, dressed in a long blue tunic heavily embroidered with purple, no doubt to emphasize his position and authority in the world, walked deliberately across the room and lowered himself into the window seat she’d just vacated.

Mairead waited in silence. She allowed herself to smother a yawn.

“You have not been honest with me,” Brian said at last.

“When?” she challenged at once.

“You tell me you’re going places you never reach. You travel at breakneck speed, and yet you take twice as long to get anywhere than you should. For example, why did it take you more than a week to get here from Glasgow?”

Because I went south first and spent a night in Roxburgh. And then waited in Dundee for my people to turn up.“I went to visit an old friend of my mother’s who was dying.”

“I trust she made a miraculous recovery,” he mocked openly.

Mairead stared at him. “Sadly not. She died. Isobel of Quarter, if your spies wish to check. She was the last of her line.”

Kingowan tutted with impatience. “Stop it. Who is your lover?”

“This isyourstory,” Mairead said with a contemptuous toss of her head. “You tell me.”

“Very well,” he said, staring at her. “Fergus, the Lord of Galloway.”

Mairead laughed with genuine amusement. “He wishes.”

“Then explain why you both went missing at the same time from the king’s hawking expedition from Edinburgh last week.”

“Who said we did? I was bored and went back to our lodgings—where you found me, if you recall! I have no knowledge of Fergus of Galloway’s movements.”

“And yet you visited him in his rooms.”

Mairead gazed at him with a provoking smile. “Did he say that? The man’s less trustworthy than a fox. You told me so yourself. Why should you suddenly start quoting me his lies as truth?”

It was an arrow shot in the dark, but she saw in his face that it had hit its mark. She just couldn’t quite work out yet what reason she could give Fergus for telling such a “lie” to her husband.

“There is, however, a more serious accusation against you.”

“More serious than bedding Fergus of Galloway?” she said flippantly. “Heaven forfend.”

“Treason,” Kingowan barked.

Damn.She kept her gaze steady on her husband. “Nonsense,” she said calmly.

“Then you deny visiting Roxburgh regularly and secretly meeting Malcolm MacHeth in his prison?”

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