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Authors: Welfonder Sue-Ellen

Only For A Knight (28 page)

BOOK: Only For A Knight
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The Vespers bell still echoing in his ears, Robbie paused near his old tower’s stair foot and observed the approach of a harried-looking kitchen lass. He made a silent note to light a candle and say a prayer of thanks to the saints for yet another small blessing.

 

Later. At the moment, he chose to only smile and savor his unexpected fortuity.

 

His timing could not have been more propitious.

 

Indeed, bolstered by the most expansive mood to seize him in some time, he looked on as the maid darted past him, swift as the wind, a large dinner tray balanced against the curve of her hip.

 

A tray well-dressed with a generously-piled trencher, a good-sized wine flagon, and not one but
two
surprisingly fine silver-gilt goblets.

 

But of even more interest, the maid’s hurrying feet were carrying her toward the same turnpike stair he’d been about to ascend.

 

The little-used stair whose tight-winding stone steps led directly to Robbie’s boyhood bedchamber . . . quarters now occupied by his betrothed.

 

His soon-to-be
un
betrothed if, as he so dearly wished, he’d managed to acquire even the barest touch of a silver tongue in his years away.

 

A wee trace of knightly . . . charm and persuasion.

 

And if not—well, there were alternatives. . . .

 

More than eager to begin testing his abilities, he strode forward, closing the distance between himself and the scurrying kitchen lass in quick, long-striking strides.

 

“Ho, maid!” he called, catching up with her on the stairwell’s first landing, relieving her of the tray before she could even think to splutter him a fine
good e’en
.

 

Feeling a jab of guilt for startling her, he flashed his best smile. “I see you are taking the lady Euphemia her dinner? Or”—he aimed a glance at the two wine chalices—“are these viands meant for elsewhere since there are two goblets?”

 

Two
strange
goblets, for although Eilean Creag possessed enough such fancily-worked drink-ware to line the shores of Loch Duich once, mayhap even twice round the sea loch’s impressive circumference, most within the castle’s walls, including the Black Stag hisself, favored simple ale or wine cups save on the most festive occasions.

 

Stranger still was the furiously bright flush staining the kitchen maid’s cheeks and her seeming difficulty in meeting Robbie’s eye.

 

“Ach . . . ’tis your lady’s supper to be sure and it is,” she stammered, blinking furiously. “If my lord will excuse me, I will just be a-taking it to her.” She bobbed a wobbly, off-balance curtsy and held out her hands for the tray. “Please, sir, the lady has a temp— . . . I mean, she will be much displeased if she must wait.”

 

“Then mayhap the surprise of having me deliver the tray will sweeten its tardy arrival?” Robbie suggested, ignoring the maid’s outstretched hands.

 

His curiosity piqued, he eyed the mound of steaming meats and oversize portion of honeyed almond cakes.

 

“The lady appears to have a man-sized appetite,” he said, lifting a brow. “And . . . two goblets? Are you certain you did not snatch the wrong tray . . . in your haste?”

 

Looking miserable, the lass gulped audibly and shook her head. “Nay, sir,” she admitted, “the lady Euphemia e’er eats so well . . . her appetite astounds us all.”

 

“And the two goblets?” Robbie lifted one, held it up to the fading evening light falling through a narrow window slit above where they stood.

 

“’Tis her own goblets they be, sir,” the lass revealed, the color in her cheeks deepening. “She brought them with her from Castle Uisdean. Part o’ her dowry, just like the guardsmen what came along with her. She—”

 

“I do not care whose goblet she drinks from, nor whence such a piece of frippery came,” Robbie said, returning the goblet to the tray. “But I will swing from the next crescent moon if I can fathom why she requires
two

 

“By your leave, sir, but the lady says . . . she claims her wine becomes her better if she drinks each measure from a fresh goblet.”

 

“I see,” Robbie said, nodding as if he did, but not seeing at all.

 

Save that the MacLeod lass now struck him as more odd-minded than he’d realized.

 

A notion that accompanied him up the remainder of the spiraling stairs, troubling him more with each mounted step—until his winding ascent was arrested by a huge, low-slinking shadow.

 

A shaggy-haired shadow, yellow-eyed, dark as a winter’s night, loped right at him, ready to pounce, its fast-moving bulk chased by two screaming
beanshiths,
the first banshee wreathed in fire, the other cloaked in blackness.

 

Or so he thought until Roag, his father’s favorite mongrel spotted and leapt at him, the great rough-coated beast flattening him against the dank, cold-stoned wall. Before Robbie could do aught to prevent it, the lady Euphemia’s dinner tray sailed into the air and clattered down the curving stairs.

 

Roasted meats, honeyed almond cakes, two silver-gilt wine goblets and all.

 

Only the shattered ewer of wine remained where it’d fallen on the landing, its spilled contents forming a blood-red pool across the stone flags . . . the rich Gascon wine blessedly proving a greater temptation to Roag’s select taste buds than Robbie’s startled, well-licked face.

 

Blinking, he used a fold of his plaid to wipe away the remains of the dog’s sloppy-wet
enthusiasm,
regaining his wits as quickly as the encounter with Roag had plunged him into momentary madness.

 

He stared at the dog, deeming the beast much more agile than he would have believed—and noting at once that the two wailing banshees trailing in Roag’s wake were not dread
beanshiths
at all, but his two younger sisters.

 

They stood panting before him, their unbound hair in a tangle from running, their faces flushed with excitement, and their night-rending cries not screams of doom but . . .
teeters.

 

Nay, worse than teeters.

 

The two young lasses were nigh convulsing with ringing, rib-splitting laughter.

 

And not, Robbie was certain, because he’d been set upon by a huge, hairy beast of a dog, the wind nigh knocked out of him, only to be smothered with over-affectionate canine kisses.

 

Nor even because he’d let loose of Euphemia MacLeod’s well-laden dinner tray.

 

Nay, whate’er cause for amusement sent rivers of tears coursing down Gelis’s and Arabella’s cheeks had naught to do with him—and mayhap everything to do with his
not
-soon-to-be bride.

 

Of that he was fairly certain.

 

“So-o-o,” he said, pushing away from the clammy wall and straightening his plaid with the stoutest dignity he could muster. “What have you to say for yourselves?”

 

The two girls exchanged glances.

 

Arabella blushed and dashed the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her fingers.

 

Gelis, looking nigh to bursting with jollity, bit down hard on her lower lip and wrapped her arms round her ribs, then leaned forward as if only so she could suppress the peals of laughter welling in her belly.

 

Roag ignored them all and simply kept lapping at the pool of fine Gascon wine.

 

Seeing no other way around the matter, Robbie positioned himself so that the sheer mass of his body blocked the downward-spiraling stairs. That move accomplished, he drew himself up to his full height, spread his powerful legs, and planted his hands on his hips.

 

His two squirm-footed, wriggly-hipped sisters would not endure more than a few minutes trapped thus on the dark, dank-smelling landing—especially once he’d fixed them with his most thunderous, censorious stare.

 

“So-o-o,” he began again, drawing himself up yet another half inch and laying as much authority onto the word as he dared without risking sending them into further gales of out-of-control feminine ribaldry.

 

“I can scarce think what it might be, but I vow you do have a good explanation for careening down these stairs hallooing and screeching like two witless hens?”

 

Silence, and more giggles rewarded his attempt at gently impressing an answer from them.

 

Robbie frowned.

 

A more drastic approach was needed.

 

“Gelis—I have heard whispers that a certain soft-eyed squire sings you Gaelic love songs of especial yearning at table every e’en—and sometimes in darkened window embrasures,” he declared, curling his hands round his sword belt and rocking back on his heels.

 

“And, you, Arabella . . . I am told there is a young newly-dubbed knight amongst our Uncle Marmaduke’s men who e’er requests your singular attentions whene’er he visits and the courtesy of a warm bath is offered him?”

 

He took a step toward them and let his brow darken a bit. “Is this so, my sisters?”

 

The girls did not deny it.

 

But neither did they meet his eye . . . or completely stop sniggering.

 

“Then, since your blushing faces and laughter say as much as any words,” Robbie informed them, “I shall assure that neither of you venture forth from your bedchamber for a full sennight lest you loosen your tongues—and tell me, too, if you were skulking about in this tower’s secret passage again?”

 

Gelis straightened at once. “We were not . . . skulking.”

 

“But you were
in
the passage?” Robbie pounced on her slip of tongue.

 

Gelis clamped her lips demonstratively tight . . . her elder sister sketched a noncommittal, wholly unconvincing shrug.

 

“And if you were sneaking about in the secret way—I vow you also crept into the squint above my old bedchamber? Again?” He narrowed his eyes at them, already well aware of what they’d been up to whether they chose to speak true or nay.

 

Lifting a hand, he pretended to examine his fingernails. “Admit your foolery and you shall only be sequestered in your room for seven days—continue to deny your mummery, and I shall increase your penance to a fortnight.”

 

“Bah . . . Robbie!” Gelis protested with a toss of her flame-bright head. “Aye, we had good reason to be a-flying down the stairs,” she admitted, her eyes still streaming. “Though I canna say why we’re a-laughing—truth tell, what we saw was frightful enough to scare the devil into drawing in his horns!”

 

She whirled on her sister, grabbed the other girl’s arm, shaking it. “Tell him, Arabella,” she pleaded, “I-canna-speak-for-the-stitch-in-my-ribs . . .”

 

“God’s blood, think you I can speak of it?” Arabella wailed, her cry half a laugh and half a sob. “My very tongue would fall out if I tried,” she added, her blush flaming brighter as she swept a loose-spilling swath of raven hair over one shoulder, using the gesture to glance up the stairwell behind her.

 

Almost as if she expected someone to come winding their way down out of the torch-lit gloom.

 

But when the shadows failed to stir and no sound save Roag’s slurp-slurping of the spilled wine came to their ears, she turned back round, glancing up at Robbie through wet, spiky lashes, her pretty face as sore-stricken as her younger sister’s bloomed with mirth.

 

“I am sorry, Robbie—I fear . . . ’tis only . . . you have ridden hard and far to return to us, and—” she faltered, looked down to fiddle with a loose thread on her
arisaid
.

 

An
arisaid
whose soft, woolen folds were more disheveled and askew than Robbie had e’er seen on the most-times fastidious Arabella. Unlike her carefree younger sister, the giddy-eyed, fiery-topped Gelis, Arabella ne’er greeted the day without first assuring she was impeccably clad, her every hair sleeked into place and nary a speck of dust clinging to her skirts or even her calfskin boots.

 

“And?” Robbie prodded, rubbing his chin. “What if I have . . . ridden hard and far?”

 

“Then,” Arabella said, clearly breaking at last, “unless your purpose was to merely see us and walk Kintail’s heather slopes again, Gelis and I fear you have returned to wed a madwoman.”

 

“A madwoman?”

 

“Crazed as a loon!” Gelis answered for her sister. “She was prancing about her chamber again—naked as a newborn bird.”

 

“And talking up a blue wind about Fladda Chuan . . . just like she was last time we watched her from the squint,” Arabella exclaimed with a shudder. “Mind you, she—”

 

“The last time you
spied
on her,” Robbie intoned, his chivalry insisting he correct the term even if he was half a mind to do some spying himself—not to ogle the lady’s doubtful charms, but to judge his sisters’ troubling concern about the maid’s wits.

 

Or lack of them.

 

Even so, fairness made him defend her one more time.

 

“See you, lasses, as you have already heard from more experienced lips than mine, simply moving about one’s privy quarters unclothed does not make a person crazy-mad,” he said, wishing he could put more conviction into his voice.

 

“And many have been the days I’ve happened on the two of you reciting bardic epics or love verses while working at your stitching,” he added, watching them closely. “Speaking to oneself does not always mean someone’s brain has gone to mush.”

 

“And playing with oneself?”

 

Robbie’s eyes flew wide.

 

Surely Gelis meant something entirely different from the image that leapt into his mind.

 

“What do you mean . . .
playing with oneself

 

Arabella clapped a hand to her mouth, wheeled away from them both, her shoulders shaking.

 

Gelis thrust out her chin, her eyes flashing challenge. “I believe the vulgar term is diddle,” she said, plain as day, her meaning unmistakable. “She was sitting spread-legged on a stool and . . . diddling herself.”

 

“Di—” Robbie broke off, unable to say the word.

 

Not in the presence of his sisters.

 

“You saw her doing this?” he asked instead.

 

“We did,” they answered in unison.

 

“If you hurry to the squint,” Gelis suggested, “you might catch her doing it still . . . she did not appear in any hurry.”
BOOK: Only For A Knight
9.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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