Heat Of The Knight. Jackie Ivie

it’s worth, then,” Aunt Matilda said quietly. “I hear that’s what he does. He doesn’t understand the value of his gold. He treats it like it’s wheat chaff, and worth as much. The man’s a fool.”

      “I won’t let him get the better of me. Never you fear. I’m a MacHugh, aren’t I?” Lisle asked.

      They all chorused that she was, making her feel very welcome and very needed. The emotion carried her into the sleepless night lying beside Nadine and her full sister, Elizabeth, in the ancestral bed that she should have been sharing with Ellwood MacHugh, and not his fatherless daughters.

      The weather held. That was a good sign. Lisle had two things left from her trousseau: one was a traveling ensemble, made of velvet-trimmed, sky-blue satin that matched her eyes, and the other was her own wedding gown. She’d had the traveling one designed in the French fashion, the material snug across her bodice, although it was much tighter now than it had been when she’d last worn it, on the lengthy day she’d arrived and become a MacHugh, and then a widow.

      Her waist had also gotten longer; it had to have. Lisle was an expert needlecrafter. The stitches were so tiny and meticulous that they were difficult to spot, and the fit had been exact when it had been made. Now the waist was an inch or more above where hers was, and consequently the hem was barely reaching the tops of her boots.

      She grimaced down at them as she waited at the crossroads near Old Leanach Cottage for any type of conveyance that would save her what promised to be a very lengthy, hot walk. The cottage still stood, mutely testifying to the horrors that had taken place in the barn. Lisle shivered in the predawn light. Everyone knew what had happened there; how the Sassenach had found the wounded clansmen and chieftains hiding there after the defeat at Culloden, and how they’d bolted everyone inside and then they’d torched it. Lisle swallowed and told her own imagination to hush, although she said it softly. Ghosts didn’t take well to loud voices.

      She focused on her boots. That was better than imagining that she heard screams and groans. She’d shined the best pair she had left, using a paste of water and soot, which was all that was left of Monteith’s missives, and still her boots looked like what they were: well worn, old, and tired. There were even three tiny buttons missing from the top of the left one. She wondered how that had happened, and also if she’d be better served hunching down a bit when she finally reached the Monteith stronghold, in order for her skirt to cover it over.

      She heard the creak of wagon wheels before she saw it, and started waving as the farm cart came into view. It was the miller, and the bed of his cart was loaded with sacks bulging with flour, the like of which the MacHughs would be salivating over. Her mouth filled with moisture she had to swallow around in order to beg a ride.

      It was going to be a gloriously sunny day, and her luck was holding as the miller took her nearly to Inverness itself. She didn’t tell him she was going to Monteith Hall. She didn’t want anyone to know. She was thinking that kind of knowledge wouldn’t get her any kind of assistance with anything.

      He only asked her once where she was heading in such a fine dress. She lied and told him that she was checking in Inverness for employment deserving of a lady of quality, like herself. That had stopped his chatter briefly, but he wasn’t able to stay silent long, and soon was regaling her with all sorts of tales from his farm, his animals, his missus, and the seven lads he’d sired that helped him with all of it.

      Lisle had ceased listening, and was nearly dozing, when he stopped, letting her off near an overhang of cliff that lined one side of the inlet known as Moray Firth. Lisle waved until he was out of sight, then turned back the way he’d taken her. The road turning into Monteith property had been passed some time earlier. The farmer had pointed it out to her, with a tone of envy in his voice. It should have been obvious. He’d told her that the Monteith laird didn’t know the value of gold. Lisle decided that he obviously didn’t have the sense to keep it hidden, either, for there were four stone pillars on either side of his property, a lion statue at their tops, and a gleaming iron gate between the closest two.

      The gateposts were attached on either side, to a wall of stone that had looked to be chest high from the wagon. Now that she was walking along it, she realized it was actually over her head. He must think everyone wanted what he had, to fence himself in like this, she thought.

      It was stupid. Nobody wanted anything to do with him. He didn’t need to build a fence the size of a castle wall in order to keep anyone or anything out. She pushed on the gate and it swung open easily and with a well-oiled efficiency that either proved its newness, or the amount of maintenance he was willing to expend on it.

      It was both. She had the answer to it as she walked up his road, which was covered with perfectly fitted and aligned stones. It wasn’t possible to twist an ankle with the fit of the stones. It would probably feel like flying, if one were riding on horseback, or being driven in a coach.

      The amount of funds he had to have expended on it was jaw-dropping. As was the army of groundskeepers it looked like he employed, all of them studiously applying themselves to grooming a tree, or a shrub, or doing anything other than watching her walk by.

      The landscape bordering his drive was in a condition resembling a woolen carpet of green, and about as thickly woven. Monteith was leaving the woods beyond the road in pristine condition, though, and there wasn’t much sunlight penetrating through them. It was unnerving. There could be any number of watchers and guards posted, and no one would ever be the wiser. It was also impossible to see how large this fenced-in property of his was.

      It was a longer span before Monteith Hall came into view. Lisle stopped. His castle was supposed to be black and craggy like the rocks overlooking the Moray Firth, and bleak enough to contain a clan in league with the devil. It was the exact opposite. Sunlight was touching the light yellow stone of which it was constructed, making it look like it belonged in the sky rather than attached to a small hill in the center of the valley it was nestled in.

      Lisle selected one of the stone benches at the side of his drive and sat for a moment, to rest the blisters forming on the backs of her heels, and also to absorb the beauty and dimension of Monteith’s home. It looked to be ten times the size of the MacHugh ruin, and probably four times the one she’d been raised in.

      A flag flew from the flagpole, fluttering with what breeze there was. She knew it was green, and would contain a lion passant at the center, the heraldic beast that was a lion in profile. It would have two crossed swords in its hind claws, and would be colored in solid, vivid gold. Looking at what she was, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find he’d paid to have actual gold thread put into every embroidered stitch.

      There appeared to be four ways to enter the walls, although she could only see three of them. One had a drawbridge. She knew that because it lowered, and she watched a coach leave with a sort of detachment that had little to do with the lump of nervousness still there, like a stone in her belly. She stood and waited. She didn’t question that it was being sent for her. She knew it was.

      “You’ve got…a visitor.” Etheridge huffed between the words, his frame holding the post upright while it was lashed into place.

      “What?” Langston took a moment to answer. He hadn’t been paying attention. He was being driven mad by visions of sky-blue eyes, alight with something his imagination told him he’d glimpsed, and that he wanted so badly his hands shook on the rope pulley before he could stop it.

      “I said…you’ve got…a visitor.”

      The man’s words came with a curse, since water was still seeping through the wall behind the post. He was being pessimistic. At least it wasn’t flooding anymore. Langston stepped back, pulling on the rope as he went. It was going well. They had one more log to set, and the wall would hold. It hadn’t been a design flaw, either. It was an engineering problem, and a misread of his plans.

      “I dinna’ hear the pipes.”

      “There’s nae way to hear anything down here. This place would swallow the sound of an entire band of pipers.”

      Langston grinned. The others stopped and stared.