The next low stone building was warmer inside, and as his eyes adjusted, Tavish noted the tiny red glow of a banked fire in a hearth so big he’d at first taken it for nothing more than an exterior wall. He looked around more closely now at the dusty, empty shelves lining the walls—there were a couple of overturned, rodent-chewed baskets, an empty cloth sack dangling forlornly from a peg. A table in the center of the room was laid with a small, dingy cloth and closer inspection revealed what was perhaps a crumb of gray crust—or a pebble. A wine jug stood at the edge of the cloth, and when Tavish picked it up by its neck and shook it he was rewarded with a watery rattle. He uncorked it with his teeth and sniffed the contents before turning it up and taking the two healthy swallows of wine eagerly. He returned the empty bottle to the tabletop and looked around again with a sigh.
Could this dismal place be the kitchen? Where were the leftover winter stores? The last of the gourds, the dried beans? Where were the barrels of now-weevily oats? The last scraps of a dried, carved haunch? Where was the ale?
His frown deepened as he left the bleak structure and moved back toward the shadow of the tower.
He lowered and secured the portcullis as silently as he’d raised it and moved to the bottom of the stairs of the east tower, his foot resting on the bottom tread for several moments. It was possible that he would encounter a servant, or even Lady Glenna or Laird Douglas themselves were Tavish to breach the sanctity of the family quarters.
But he didn’t think he would meet with anyone.
In fact, the idea that Tower Roscraig was all but empty began to grow bigger in his mind with each step Tavish ascended. And when he came to what could only be Tower Roscraig’s great hall—its empty length and breadth punctuated by the long, open windows flanking another enormous hearth at the far end—Tavish felt certain his instincts were correct. He crossed the bare floorboards to the gaping hearth and held forth the hand not gripping the sputtering torch.
The stones were blackened, but icy cold—as though the grand opening hadn’t seen a hearty blaze in years. Tavish turned to the left, then to the right—the ragged cloths meant to cover the two openings to either side of the stone chimney flapped in long strips into the frigid room along with the wind and the misty rain—the shutters were also missing. He turned once more to look back toward the entrance; no trestle dominated the wide-planked floor, no rich tapestries warmed the walls. Instead, water ran down the stones and dripped from the corners.
No villagers. No servants. No soldiers.
There is sickness here…
From the evidence before Tavish’s eyes—even in the shadows of night that were perhaps kinder than the harsh light of day, even before the mysterious illness that supposedly beset the town—it was obvious that Roscraig had not prospered in years.
Tavish turned back to the window and looked out over the lashing black waves roiling beneath the high lightning beyond the shore and realized that, for all the lady’s dire threats upon his arrival, there was nothing to prevent Tavish’s acquisition of Tower Roscraig, after all.
He’d had to fight all his life to gain and keep everything he had ever called his own, and so when he’d set out from Edinburgh, he’d been prepared to do battle. But in reality, all that would likely be required to take possession of his home was to set the woman and her father—if there was indeed such a person—on the road beyond the moat.
His moat.
Perhaps Glenna Douglas was nothing more than a very convincing imposter. Perhaps she was even quite mad, fancying herself the lady of Roscraig. She had, after all, readily taken the pittance he’d offered her. Tavish’s mind went to the other chambers in the west tower, and he wondered in his eagerness who currently occupied his rooms. Perhaps even now, Glenna Douglas was resting her wild blond curls upon his pillow, her willowy body atop his bed.
He recalled the sensual tilt of her eyes, her long, slender waist encircled by a fine chain, and he wondered if she would refuse him if he sought her in the dark…
He shook himself from the fantasy. Let her have her last night of false nobility in peace. Tavish was full of his mother’s warm cooking, a nightcap of decent wine, and on the brink of launching his own dynasty.
Or was he merely continuing Thomas Annesley’s?
The intrusive thought gave him pause, and his eyes went instinctively to the stones of the chimney. In the torch’s dying glow, Tavish fancied he could see a faint outline where perhaps a portrait had once hung.
Chapter 4
Glenna came awake with a start, raising her head from her folded arms and blinking in the pale gray light of dawn. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her wrist and sat up fully in the chair, her stiff, shaking hands moving instinctively up the thick furs and stopping over the slight hump. She held her breath, felt nothing; closed her eyes and concentrated.
There it was, at last—the slight rise of an inhalation.
Glenna opened her eyes and finally dared look upon the face of her father. He was so pale, his skin so translucent, that Glenna could see the network of thin, twisty veins in sharp, blue-green relief. His eyelids were deep lilac, his nostrils and mouth gaping holes. The last of his white hair had fallen out. He’d not eaten in five days. He’d not woken in four.
And still, he lived.
Glenna stood with a hiss as her stiff muscles protested her uncomfortable vigil. She moved to the head of the bed and picked up the rag folded near the wooden bowl, dunking it in the icy water she’d brought last night and mixed with half of the remaining wine in all of Roscraig. She wrung it lightly and then gently wiped the insides of Iain Douglas’s lips and cheeks, the roof of his mouth. The liquid seemed to disappear at once, and his throat made no motion of swallowing. She’d hoped to try once more squeezing a few drops of the mixture into his parched mouth, but when she’d done that two days ago, he’d wheezed so weakly and for so long that she thought she had likely killed him.
She folded the rag in half and replaced it near the bowl once more and then leaned over the bed to place a soft kiss on her father’s forehead.
“I’ll return in a bit, Da,” she whispered. “Seeing our guests off.”
Glenna left her father’s chamber, closing the door silently after her. Once she was free of the room, her stride was swift, her icy feet inside her worn slippers flitting over the familiar depressions of the stairs. She came to her own chamber and quickly washed her face and combed and twisted her hair into tight confinement and then looked down at her dress. Her sense of pride—what little she felt she had left—protested the idea of the strangers seeing her in the same worn gown as they had at their arrival.
Especially Tavish Cameron. She would not have a common merchant looking down upon her so.
Glenna quickly untied her shawl and chain, then slipped out of the striped kirtle, replacing it with the dark gray wool she pulled from the tall wardrobe. It was coarse; a bit too short for her at the hem, much too loose at the waist and bust. But it would have to do. She shook the creases from her shawl before draping and retying it about her shoulders and chest so as best to hide the widening holes in the weave. She once more donned the fine chain.
She had done all that she could with her appearance now, having lost her veil the day before and so, after a quick glance at the brightening window, she quit her room and once more gained the stairwell, feeling as she went for the keys at her waist.
