John winced. Both because Ian’s shout exploded more pain behind his eyelids and also because it he’d been sure Heather would’ve been wise enough not to tell Ian the command she’d been given.
It had destroyed John every night since he parted with her. He thought it might actually kill him when he heard her call to him outside his door, only to be turned away. A necessity, he knew. But an agony of the spirit unlike any he’d ever known. “I sent her to you for safekeeping and as a gift for you, Ian. Don’t tell me she’s not to your liking. I sent her to find happiness with you. And you with her. You ought to thank me.”
“Aye, right,” Ian said with a snort. “She’s the least happy woman I have ever seen since you sent her away. She’s in love with you, you shallow-hearted lout. Or didn’t you know it?”
John hadn’t known it. Hadn’t been sure. She’d said that she loved him, but then he had broken her heart. She couldn’t still love him, could she? Not after more than a month in another man’s bed…
“I am not shallow-hearted,” the laird said, not liking the quaver in his voice.
“Entirely empty-hearted then, is it?”
It was too much to bear that Ian could say such a thing to him. “It’ll never be enough for you, Ian, will it? You want my clan. You want my woman. Well, when I’m dead, you’ll have them both—”
“Don’t play the martyr with me. Just marry the bloody Donald girl! For the love of God, John. Agree to their terms, surrender the castle, and save your neck, damn you.”
John had made an oath to the Mackenzies. He’d made an oath to Heather, too. He couldn’t see the point in breaking either, just to save his neck. “Is that what you’ll do, when you’re chieftain, Ian? Break your oaths?”
“I’m not saying your choice is easy. But you have a choice. You can negotiate or you can fight, and we’ll be beside you either way. We’ll die with you to the last man. But not if you give up. Not if you sit up here in your tower, trying to control matters after your death, babbling about how I’m going to be chieftain.”
“You are,” John said. “Once you let the enemy into the castle.”
Ian went red, and his fists clenched at his side. “You—you think I’m the traitor?”
John let his eyes lock on his kinsman’s. “I think you’re a wise man and you know there’s a deal to be made. You aren’t the one with an oath of alliance to the Mackenzies, after all. I am. When it is all said and done, and my head is on a pike, you can deny letting them in the walls. You can let them take you prisoner for show, if you must, until the clan is appeased. I’m sure overtures of this sort have been made to you already…either through your mother or directly to you when I sent you out to speak with the enemy.”
Now Ian went from red to purple. “What if such overtures had been made? You actually think I’d entertain them. After all the years I called you not only my kinsman, but my friend. After all we’ve shared. You think I’ll betray you?”
“I know you will,” John said, feeling the tightness in his chest as he said it. “Because I’m commanding you to do it.”
Ian was a big, brawny warrior. A man who could stand at his post for hours without tiring. He had an endurance about him and a singleminded purpose that John had often envied. But at these words, his kinsman’s knees went a bit wobbly, and he seemed to lose all place of himself in the world. “What?”
“It’s the only way for me to both keep my honor and protect Clan Macrae,” John explained, as calmly as a man could explain his own demise. “Accept whatever offer has already been made to
you. And if one hasn’t been made, then I’ll send you out for another parley and you can offer to betray me. Barter for the lives of the villagers. For whichever holdings of mine they’ll let you keep. They might even make you constable of this castle, to hold it in allegiance to them, though that might be too much to ask. What I ask is that you watch after Heather. Do that, and my clan and my woman are both yours.”
The laird never saw the blow coming.
One moment, he was giving the painful order and the next Ian’s fist was connecting with his face. The crack was shattering—knuckles against jaw. The pain of it nearly blinded him. And he could taste the iron tang of blood in his mouth. A moment later they were grappling, grabbing one another by the collars of the shirt, shoving and straining.
“You dare to strike your laird?” John shouted, true rage coursing through his veins that he hadn’t let himself feel before now. The laird returned the punch, delivering a solid blow that snapped Ian’s head back, and spouted a fountain of blood from his nose. “I could have you killed for it!”
“Do it if you can,” Ian cried, tears in his eyes as he readied his fist for another swing. “Because you’re right. I want your clan. I want your woman too. But I would never have taken either from you. And I’ll be damned if I let you give them to me. You can find someone else to be your Judas.”
~~~
HEATHER
Not long after I watched Ian storm off in a rage to confront the laird, Brenna hovered in the doorway. “Will you need help dressing?” Brenna asked, her skin still pale from the poisoned well-water, and her lower lip a bit quivery, lending her speech a bit of a slur.
“You shouldn’t be up and about!” I cried, rushing to usher her into a chair.
“There’s no point in laying about feeling poorly if you can be useful while feeling poorly,” she said, adjusting her cap with exactly the sentiment I’d come to expect from her.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I said, mournfully, for the shepherd’s boy didn’t make it and several others emerged with such weak thumps of the heart, it was as if they’d never recover. “In any case, you need not worry about dressing me anymore. I’m not the laird’s lady any longer, and as you can see, I’ve managed to dress myself.”
Brenna’s eyes darted to the unmade bed, then to me, then away as if she couldn’t bear to think of how low I’d fallen. “I’ve been saving something for you. Now is as good a time to give it to you as any.” With that, she drew from a pocket in her apron two biscuits and a little pot of heather-laced honey. “The biscuits are hard enough to chip your teeth, but I remembered how much you liked the honey. And it’s the last we have in the castle.”
“Oh,” I said, my mouth watering for it, even as my stomach tossed. “But tell me you didn’t steal it from the larder…”