He snorted. “King, is it? And princess? There is but one king to my understanding, and he is busy interfering wi’ our lives.”
Father, seeming taken aback, said nothing.
MacNabh made a rough gesture. “I suppose ye had better come in. A hard journey, was it?”
“A wet one,” Father replied, and gave a look to his men that said,Some of you with me, and look lively.
Three Caledonians came, including Urfet, their hands at their weapons.
MacNabh led them across an elevated entry to a second gate that opened to the keep proper. Curious faces stared from every hand. Only steps within, the hall opened up. A tall, chilly room full of wood smoke and containing still more people, who stared.
Darlei shivered with foreboding. She would not be happy here. How could she be happy here?
All happiness lay behind her.
But she’d experienced it once, she reminded herself. She’d had him more than once. At least she’d not be sent here first to…
Suffer and perish. If her body did not, her spirit would.
“Come,” MacNabh said. “This is my mother. And my mistress.”
That put a check in Father’s step. He parted his lips but did not speak.
The old woman, MacNabh’s mother, was a crone. Clad in layers of rusty, dark clothing, she had a mouth devoid of teeth and scarcely any hair. Hardly the woman’s fault, Darlei reminded herself. She could not help the changes brought by age.
But what of the disdain in her eyes? Might she help that? She was a far cry from gentle Mistress MacMurtray.
And the mistress—did that mean what Darlei thought?
As if to answer the question, MacNabh squeezed the woman’s thigh as he passed her. “Roisin warms my bed.”
The woman, surely two score years of age, directed at Darlei a look of sheer hate.
“These are Caledonians?” the old woman screeched. “Let us see. Are they blue?”
MacNabh waved a hand at her. “That died out long since, Mother.”
To be sure, Caledonian men still carried tattoos. Designs that denoted their tribe, acquired when they pledged their fealty.
Darlei felt the men at her back stiffen, at least those who understood the Gaelic tongue.
“Ye are to marry that…lass?” Roisin sounded as if she’d wanted to select a different word for Darlei but had not quite dared.
“Aye, so I ha’ told ye and told ye again. The king’s orders.”
“I did no’ expect her to be so young.”
“I can hear you, and understand your words,” Darlei said in Gaelic.
MacNabh stepped up to her. His heavy features did not lighten and his pale eyes glared into hers. “Ye will speak when spoken to, miss.”
Father’s arm stiffened beneath Darlei’s. She experienced her own surge of anger. Good. Mayhap anger would come to her rescue, make it possible to go on breathing.
Anger was easier to bear than grief.
Father said, “Chief MacNabh, I apprehend you are not in favor of this union.”
“I am no’. I tell ye fairly, King Caerdoc, I had matters here arranged to my satisfaction already. My scold of a wife died last year—”
