Page 6 of Beyond Dreams

He expected that he’d wind up with a wife similar to his father’s, since Ceri MacHeth was, by all recent accounts, celebrated for her beauty. As with any bonny woman he’d ever known, an exquisite face was usually attached to a dark and mean heart. But he would not live as his father had, cowed and craven, at the mercy of his wife who would withhold from him the very thing that had predicated the marriage, time in her bed. God damn him to hell if ever there came a day when he allowed himself to be led by his cock as his father had so effortlessly been for a while. Nae, he would begin as he meant to proceed, he as laird and master, unaccountable and unanswerable to his bride. His bride would manage his house as Doirin had never properly done and she would bear him sons, another failing of his father’s second wife. Outside of the bedchamber, he would have little use of a wife, and then much less once his sons were birthed.

And in doing so, taking a MacHeth bride, he would be able to put to rest the long-standing feud with the MacHeths that had, while he’d been gone to war over the winter, escalated once again. With the war ongoing, and other issues that had plagued Thallane in the last year, Duncan hadn’t time for engaging with the enduring squabble whose origins no one alive could name. The MacHeths were not so powerful or well-connected that he feared a larger battle here in the Highlands if nothing were done, but they were annoying and distracting enough that Duncan was pleased to wed—as he should have done by now at any rate—and lay the entire ancient quarrel into its grave.

“I would nae miss it for the world,” Doirin said, her face alight now with some exceptional hilarity, which she did little to hide. “The mighty Duncan MacQuillan,” she crowed, “held fast by the MacHeth, tethered each by a woman between them. This, I canna wait to see.”

Duncan allowed her to crow her glee, dismissing her with a wave of his hand as he returned to what she’d disturbed moments ago, his perusal of the accounts’ ledger.

He barely registered the figures on the parchment, Doirin having roused his ire.

The matter was not so readily dismissed as was Doirin. Still, he would include both Doirin and Moire with the party traveling to Hewgill House for his marriage. The MacHeths would welcome them easier with women among them, as Duncan himself would any party coming to Thallane. He had no plans to gainsay the contract and avoid the wedding, had not some scheme to smite the MacHeths in their own house, but riding in only men on horseback might give some the impression that this was indeed his intention. The presence of the carriage with his stepmother and half-sister inside would lend credibility to their true intent, to join the clans by marriage and prevent the acrimony between them from growing.

Duncan slapped closed the ledger, knowing he would get nowhere with those figures today. Riled to anger, he took a long swallow from the cup of ale in front of him. Aye, he was angry yet. But then he was always angry, and to his mind, with plenty of reason. The last year had been vexing, one bluidy calamity and catastrophe after another. War was bad enough and took so much of his time and resources—seventeen men of the MacQuillan army lost just this year; twice as many last year—but then he’d had to contend with the MacHeth’s thieving of cattle and ewes, and the harsh winter and the wet spring, and now the likelihood of a lean crop year and an inability to feed his people when winter came again. Thus, despite the sorrowful necessity of a bride and that day drawing nearer, he was, all things considered, rather looking forward to the nuptials and removing the MacHeths from that list of things causing him grief.

***

She wasn’t sure whathad woken her but her immediate realization that she did not recognize her surroundings caused her heart to race almost instantly. That fright of not knowing where she was paled swiftly though, surpassed by a new dread as she perused her surroundings. Recalling fairly quickly what last she remembered—all that strange business at the broch she’d been visiting—for a moment Holly had some absurd thought that she was actually inside one of those ancient roundhouses. But no, that couldn’t be. Those structures had been ruins, open to the sky, without a fireplace or any furnishings.

Curling her fingers into something soft at her side, she understood even as this room was barely lit that she was in a bed, covered up to her chest with a wool blanket. On her back with a lumpy pillow beneath her head, Holly was completely motionless except for her eyes, which scanned the room, peering into all the dark corners. This room had a ceiling, vaulted and timber lined, and there was a fireplace at the far side of the room, which had been lit but was only glowing coals now. There was a tall armoire-looking piece of furniture against an outer wall, between two long and narrow windows; a dry sink, complete with basin and ewer sat next to the cupboard, under one of the windows. A small table sat directly beside her and the bed, with a stubby, unlit candle and what looked like a mortar and pestle. Dried crumbs of herbs were scattered around it and a very crude wooden cup sat there as well.

Holly gulped, swallowing the panic that wanted to come. She lifted her hand and scrunched the fabric at her neck, a habit of hers for years now that only heightened her alarm. Her fingers should have encountered either the nylon of the lightweight windbreaker she’d worn or the soft cotton of her thin, boatneck sweater. She glanced down to where her hand held what looked and felt like a linen shirtfront. Horrified, believing someone would have had to undress her, Holly slid her hand downward, under the wool blanket, finding only more of that linen. Even at her waist, where she should have met with the denim of her ankle jeans, there was only more linen. Shakily, she lifted the blanket and peered down at her body, finding that all of her was dressed in that linen, a one-piece, sleeveless nightgown. She squeaked out more horror as she slapped her hand onto her breast, finding no evidence that she still wore her bra.

What the—

The door, an arched thick wood thing, opened and Holly, too afraid to see what came, automatically snapped her eyes shut. Only belatedly did she think to unclench her fist. A sleeping person would not be so tense.

At least two people entered the room, she realized by the whispering, which was just quiet enough that she could distinguish female voices but not what they said. She thought they were, or at least one of them was, doing something at the fireplace. A thud was heard, followed by a hiss and crackle of flames. Holly didn’t dare peek, since she couldn’t precisely account for both of them, and feared one might have approached the bed.

It was possibly the hardest thing she’d ever done, remaining utterly still when she knew for certain that both women—or were there three now?—did indeed stand beside the bed. She focused on not moving her eyes behind her lids, imagining that moving eyelids might be taken as a sure sign that she was not sleeping.

They began speaking again and were close enough that everything they said was clear, but they were definitely not speaking English and Holly had no idea what was being said about her. One of them rearranged the blankets she herself had disturbed. Holly almost gave up her pretense of sleep when her hand was lifted and tucked inside the blankets. Somehow, she managed to let the appendage flop as if she were dead while she fought against swallowing the nervous saliva gathering in her mouth.

And in the next moment while those women hovered and spoke around her as if she truly were sleeping, the door banged open and Holly could not prevent the jerking of her body so that she was forced to give up the sleeping game, her eyes snapping open at the loud crash of the door, which was followed by a man’s gruff barking.

He, too, spoke something that was not English, marching straight across the room to the bed.

She couldn’t have spoken even if she had known what any of them were saying. She was too busy gawking at the four people standing around the bed. Nervously, she shrank into the thin mattress, pulling the blanket up to her neck.

All of them were dressed strangely, two women in long dresses of sullen brown, with aprons covering one from the waist down. The younger one, who might have been about thirty, had a long face and wore a weird cap of white with pointed ends. She did not wear an apron, which revealed how shapeless was the gown, and which Holly briefly and quite honestly decided made her look like she had just popped in from some medieval tournament.

Two men had come, the anxious and first to arrive a thickset man of at least forty years, maybe many more. His hair was gray and brown, and Holly grimaced when she saw that the same could be said about his teeth. He was still talking—to her, she realized with a shrug of her shoulders and an increasing wince.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said, her voice quavering a bit, her words causing a huge shock and obvious displeasure to overcome his features.

He turned and hollered something at the younger man, who might have been his son, since he was possibly half his age, closer to Holly’s and because his hairline was identical to the older man’s, looking like a W high on the front of his head. The old guy flapped his hand toward the door while he barked, and the younger guy nodded tensely before sprinting out of the room.

The capped woman bent at the waist and leaned forward, saying something to Holly.

Feeling incredibly vulnerable in her supine position, Holly struggled to sit up, waving off hands that wanted to help. Recalling that she wore no bra, she clutched the blanket to her chest and addressed the woman speaking to her.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said, and she was. “You can raise your voice and speak really slow like that, but I still don’t know what you’re saying. English?” She asked, though with little hope.

The man now stood at the foot of the bed, his hands on his hips, his fingers rather lost in the folds of his muffin top and his long, belted shirt. Holly schooled her features, trying to hide her confusion and misery from his suddenly probing gaze.

He lifted a hand and lightly smacked it against the older woman’s arm to gain her attention. Sharply, he asked a question of her, his brows shooting up in to his forehead while he waited her answer. He asked the same thing again and Holly began to recognize the sounds of Scots Gaelic, which she’d heard only a little and mostly in the Highlands. She’d not studied it at all, even as she loved Scotland so much, and couldn’t possibly even hope to repeat what he’d just said let alone understand it.

The woman did though, turning now toward Holly and subjecting her to another sharp perusal. She tilted her head and twisted her lips, her gaze roaming over Holly’s surely messy hair and her likely bloodless face.

A shrug was her answer to whatever the man had asked, which displeased him. He barked something else, to which the woman grumbled something in return—Holly clearly heard the wordEnglish—before the man shoved her out of the way, taking her spot at the side of the bed now. She couldn’t help it that she shrank back even more, her chest heaving while once again he examined her pretty critically, as if he’d never seen anything like her before.

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