“Laird,” Dubhán said quietly from behind him. “Roscraig has been without a strong leader for many years. Frang has kept his own counsel in that time, and it’s he who ensures the fields are planted.”
“Roscraig’s fields have been mismanaged for years, just as everything else in the hold. Gather your things, and get out,” Tavish Cameron repeated. “I care not if you go on to Dunfermline, but you’ll not stay here.”
“I’m nae going anywhere,” Frang scoffed. “You’ve nae right to—”
The laird drew his sword. “This afternoon. The next time I see you on my lands you’re a dead man.”
“My gracious, all this fuss over an ugly old chair?” a melodic voice called out, and Miss Keane entered the room from the corridor. “What did he do, set it on the bedstead? He didn’t seem very clever, I admit. I wondered to myself if he would get lost on the way.”
Frang wove his way through the crowd, jostling both Tavish Cameron and Friar Dubhán on his way out. “You’ll get what’s comin’ to you,” he growled.
The chamber was filled with awkward silence for a moment, and then Audrey Keane broke in. “I hope it wasn’t something I said.”
John Muir gave the woman a short bow. “‘He may answer, and say this and that; I care not, for I speak right as I mean.’ I’m certain your words held naught but the truth, Miss Keane.”
She gave the sea captain a grateful smile. “You flatter me with Chaucer, Captain Muir.” Her face held a pretty flush when she looked back to Tavish Cameron. “Laird, the guests are beginning to arrive.”
Tavish sheathed his sword. “Thank you, Miss Keane.”
She stood there a moment longer, her eyes darting to the blond woman whose head drooped, and then she fastened a bright smile to her face. “Shall I help you ready?”
“Nay,” Tavish said. “I have assistance, should I require it.”
Her smile faltered a bit. “I shall meet you in the hall, then. Good day, Captain. I do very much hope your schedule allows you to join us. ‘You’re so merry and jocund, that at a revel when I see you dance, it is a salve for my every wound.’”
She curtsied to Muir’s bow, then left the room.
“Miss Douglas,” Tavish began. “Were you harmed?”
“Nay.”
“Very good. You shall attend the feast, as well.”
She raised her head and looked at him, and her eyes were wild even as her chin lifted proudly. “Am I to serve you?”
“You are to entertain. I excuse you to ready yourself elsewhere. I have need to conduct some business in my chamber.”
“Does this business involve Roscraig?”
“That is none of your concern.”
They stared at each other for a moment and then Glenna lifted her chin and turned from him. “Good day, Dubhán; Captain Muir, I must apologize that we have not yet been properly introduced. I wish you farewell until we meet again.”
The two men murmured courtesies to her but would not meet her gaze as Tavish held the door open. As soon as Glenna had passed into the corridor, the merchant closed the door firmly behind her.
She heard the bolt slide home.
Chapter 9
After Tavish Cameron had evicted her from her own chamber while he conducted his secret business, Glenna had ascended to her father’s chamber, where she had managed to find a faded blue kirtle she’d not worn since she was ten and two in the bottom of a trunk. She’d grabbed up her sewing basket with its few precious supplies, but found no place inside the keep with good enough light where she felt she would not be stared at or be in danger of encountering Audrey Keane. So Glenna spent the afternoon in the courtyard behind the stone kitchen, sitting on a low, splintery stool with an old gown on her lap and a needle in her hand.
The garment was shorter than she’d guessed it would be; the bodice and hips too narrow. It was stained near the waist and frayed at the yoke, evidence of a frock worn by a more carefree and rambunctious girl. Glenna spent the next several hours carefully separating sections of seam and undoing the hem, painstakingly rejoining them at the very limits of their boundaries. She embroidered tiny crosses over the frayed edges, scrubbed at the stain with salt. When she was finished, it looked little better than a large rag, the expanded seams clearly showing a darker stripe of color where it had been protected for so many years.
But, like everything else in her life now, Glenna had little choice but to wear it.
She sat with the finished kirtle in her lap, resting her aching back against the warm stones of the kitchen while the breeze off the firth lifted her hair from her neck. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the ghostly sounds of laughter and conversation coming from the mouth of the entry hall. So many voices and sounds—animals and servants; the muffled rattles and chopping from the building that hid her. It seemed over loud to her now, after so many years of tight-spiraling quiet.
Glenna stood up with a sigh and folded the kirtle into a tidy package. She spent only a moment in the kitchen, ducking in to retrieve the slickstone from a shelf and place it in the lined basket to carry with her. She kept her head down and walked swiftly through the entry hall and up the stairs, flattening herself against the stones as strangers came and went through her home, heedless to the fact that they passed the lady of Roscraig. The great hall was already milling with people—guests, she reminded herself—their raucous conversations spilling out and assaulting her as she dashed past.
