At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle 3)

She lost her balance on the stairs carrying a tray to the laird’s rooms. Then she was lost in some sort of delirium, the pupils of her eyes wide and fearful as she murmured seeing the ghost of the legendary MacBeth.

“Brenna!” I cried, snapping fingers before her eyes to bring her back to the present. “Can you hear me?”

“Heather,” she said, tenderly touching my cheek, her eyes deep dark pools as if she were seeing into a waking dream, rambling nonsense. “Sweet heather. Every man loves heather honey on his biscuit…”

It was good that she was a tiny thing, and I was able to get her below stairs myself, to the makeshift infirmary, where my sister and I could tend her. But then others fell prey to the strange illness, too.

A shepherd’s boy was brought to the physicker with a rash, flushed and barely of coherent speech. Ten more were ill before the end of the day.

“My God, is it plague?” I asked my sister, wishing Arabella would don a mask as she nursed the sick.

“The Physiker doesn’t think so,” Arabella told me, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm. “He thinks it’s poison.”

My heart beat faster at the thought. Glancing over the prone bodies of the sick, I whispered, “Who would poison a maid and a shepherd’s boy?”

“I think it’s in the well-water,” Arabella said, grimly. “It’s the last thing your friend did before falling ill. Brenna went to fetch water for the cook. She may have only sipped a little and she’s lucky. I think she’ll recover.”

I was glad for that, but disturbed beyond measure that someone could have poisoned our well. I’d been too miserable to drink much of anything. But how many others had slaked their thirst? “It must have been the attacker; when he slipped over the wall to murder the laird, he must have poisoned the well, too.”

“Then why are we only seeing signs of it now?” Arabella hissed through her teeth. “There is a traitor amongst us. Either way, without an easy water supply, we are in the greatest peril—and it would have never happened if Davy…” Arabella trailed off, miserably. Terrified, too. “He’s been gone for weeks!”

Had it been that long since her betrothed had disappeared? My days and nights were such a fog of grief and loneliness, I had scarcely kept count. Every cold miserable day without my laird blended into the next, and every hollow night in Ian’s bed was just as uneventful.

“Davy’s come to harm,” Arabella said, choking back furious tears. “He wouldn’t stay so long from us otherwise. What could the laird have asked of Davy that would keep him gone for so long?”

I didn’t know. And though I’d promised to ask the laird about it, he’d given me no opportunity to speak with him since making a gift of me to Ian Macrae. I had no right to approach the laird’s bedchambers any longer and I never saw him but at mealtime, when our rations were carefully doled out.

For myself, I had no appetite at all.

Especially now that our porridge could only be made with rain water and melted snow or water that we hauled up from the loch and boiled. It meant more labor, more exhaustion—a blow to the already crumbling morale within the castle.

And it meant that everyone began to suspect one another.

When the February snows began to fall in earnest, I came upon my sister shouting at the crofter she’d been betrothed to before she met Davy and Malcolm. “Is it you, Connal?” she demanded to know. “Have you turned traitor on Clan Macrae? If you’re the reason I go down to the sea gate each morning to search for Davy’s body floating in the loch, I’ll kill you myself. I’ll kill you myself!”

Malcolm and I had to pull her back from the bewildered farm boy, who protested his innocence. And though Arabella didn’t believe him, I did. What, after all, did he stand to gain from helping the Donalds? And how would he have any contact with them?

He had no power or position or connection to those who, like Ian Macrae, were permitted to carry messages back and forth from the enemy. But Lady Fiona did. And while I no longer suspected Ian of anything more than too upright and uptight a bearing, I began to suspect that his mother wanted more for him than to be merely the heir of the laird…

Fiona must have known that I suspected her. Must have sensed my eyes on her in the Grand Hall where our rations were dispensed. Because she sought me out one day in the corner where I’d settled myself in the shadows. “Heather, is it? You must eat your salt-beef. Here. Take my rations, too.”

She shoved her bowl into my hands, but I was wary as a cat. “Thank you, but others are needier. I’m not hungry at all.”

“You must eat anyway. Your pallor is unhealthy.”

I was sure she was right. In my sadness and heartbreak, I felt miserably unwell. I hadn’t dared go to Arabella complaining of the way my stomach tossed and heaved. Not when so many were poisoned. It would worry her even more, and she was already facing the terrible prospect of having lost one of the men she loved. I was merely facing a stomach that heaved at the smell of my rations. I would just have to endure it. “I thank you, Lady Fiona, but surely someone else is in need of your charity.”

“It isn’t charity,” Lady Fiona sniffed. “You’re likely with child. And though it’s supremely distasteful for me to take notice of my son’s infatuation with you, it occurs to me that the bairn in your belly might be my grandchild.”

I nearly dropped the bowl in my shock.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Lady Fiona snapped. “This can’t be a surprise to you.”

But it was a surprise. A very great surprise. Even though the laird had, himself, said that I might be with child, I’d been too sad and miserable to think of my late courses, not to mention, quite certain it would be too early to tell. There was a bit of puffiness at my ankles and wrists, but also under my eyes because of all the weeping I’d been doing. And while I’d been sick most mornings as of late, it had seemed only my misery to blame.

Had Ian told his mother of this? I doubted very much that Ian had any sort of infatuation with me. I wanted to tell her that if I had got with child, it couldn’t be Ian’s. That though I slept in his bed, that was all we did there…

…and yet, that hadn’t been all. There had been the once when the laird shared me with him. I remembered how Ian had been ready to finish in my mouth when the laird had suggested he take me between my legs.