Page 39 of A Constant Blaze

He shouldn’t have given her the warning. Since he had, she was ready for the name and was even able to smile with amusement.

“Malcolm MacHeth? How in God’s name am I meant to have done that? And why? Even the king has released him!”

But she was worried now, for this was clearly the true reason for her arrest. The question about Fergus was Brian looking for any motive for him to lie. Which at least gave her the source of his information.

More worryingly, she wondered if the king knew. If he was about to renege on his pardoning of Malcolm and accuse her of aiding in Donald’s escape. The Lady of Ross’s whole plan could be crumbling. But at least Malcolm and his sons must be safely home in Ross by now.

Oh, dear God, what if they’re not? What if they’ve been taken?

“It has been alleged,” her husband said carefully, “that you are in league with Somerled of the Isles and with the MacHeths, to overthrow His Grace the king.”

Mairead laughed. “Oh, who has alleged such a piece of nonsense? Fergus again? Can’t you see the man is trying to make trouble between us? And succeeding!”

“And why, pray, would he trouble?” Brian of Kingowan asked with heavy sarcasm.

“Probably because I refused his advances in Edinburgh,” Mairead said dryly. “That is the real reason I left the hawking early. To avoid him.”

Her husband’s face was unreadable. It was Cardon, the secretary, who spoke. “If I may, what would the Lord of Galloway gain from such a petty revenge?”

Mairead shrugged. “Not so petty. He’s been courting the King of Scots quite assiduously all year. The Lord of Kingowan’s fall could only help him gain position.”

“But the Lord of Kingowan wouldn’t fall,” Cardon said gently. “Only the Lady of Kingowan.”

“If you believe that, you’re an imbecile,” Mairead said with a curl of her lip. “A husband is always tainted by a wife’s treason. And the other way around. And even you must see that the Lord of Kingowan has already damaged his position by attacking and arresting his own wife. Even without any talk of treason, what king would trust a man who thus admitted to the weakness of cuckoldry and betrayal in his own home?” She turned away and walked to the bed, where she sat and modestly smoothed her skirts before raising her gaze to her husband’s face. “You’re doing Fergus’s work for him.”

Her husband rose without a word and swept from the room, leaving Cardon to scuttle after him.

“Close the door,” Mairead said provokingly. “Make it easy for Fergus to rule all of Scotland.”

The key scraped in the lock once more, and footsteps faded along the passage. Mairead stared at the door, deep in thought before she became aware of her maid’s anxious gaze.

“He’ll be back,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “He won’t keep us here much longer.” Unless, that is, he had actual evidence of what she’d done in Roxburgh.

*

When the sliversof daylight around the edges of the shutters turned to blackness, Mairead and Grizel prepared for bed.

Mairead was disappointed that her husband hadn’t returned to release her. Even if she hadn’t convinced him of her innocence, surely the smart thing to do was toappearto release her and brush the incident off as a marital quarrel that had got out of hand.

Mairead climbed between the sheets. “Blow out the lamp, Grizel,” she said with a sigh, then froze in the act of punching her pillow.

The sweet strains of harp strings drifted past her ears. Mairead glanced at Grizel who, by the lamp, was gazing at her wide-eyed. A moment later, a male voice lifted, deep and true and curiously beautiful, joining the melody of the strings. He sang in Gaelic, not a song Mairead knew, but when she heard her own name, she sat up. The singer praised her famed beauty, claiming that the fierce Somerled himself had wept when forced to send her across the sea to be a bride to another.

Mairead, who doubted that Somerled had ever wept for a woman in his life, let alone one sworn to promote his interests in her new life, sprang out of bed with curiosity and padded across to the window. Kneeling on the seat, she leaned forward, her head against the shutter to peer through the tiny gap which was all her worrying with the laundry pole had managed to achieve.

“Who is it?” Grizel asked. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know yet. I can’t see anything. Wait.” She changed position and peered in the other direction.

There wasn’t a great deal of moonlight, but a darker shadow stood in the road, less than fifty yards from where Adam MacHeth had once demanded that Brian of Kingowan hand over the King of Scots. But it wasn’t Adam’s voice she heard. Nor did the shadow look to be John-shaped. Besides, the figure held a small harp to his shoulder. She could make out the movements as he plucked it and sang with the kind of voice that would melt a woman who didn’t have quite so many other things on her mind.

“Who the devil are you?” she wondered, although secretly touched that someone cared enough to try to raise her spirits in this way.

Grizel knelt beside her, peering through a crack in the other shutter.

One of the guards called from the castle ramparts, rudely advising the harpist where to stick his instrument. If anything, the harp got louder, the voice even more plaintive. It was almost funny, especially since it seemed to enrage the sentries.

“Be off with you!” one yelled.

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