“Very well, though I doubt you’ll ken a man’s foolishness. I was looking for a wisp of a girl I once saw bathing in the pool there.”
Color rushed into Niall’s face, turning him bright pink with anger and shame. This man had seen his sister! She would be mortified if she knew. He was in an agony of shame.
“When did you see her?” Niall croaked.
“What?”
“When did you see this girl?”
“In the spring.”
“And did you see her this morning?”
“Nay, the pool was empty.” Jamie leaned forward hopefully. “Do you know the girl? I thought perhaps she was a beggar girl and was long gone.”
“No Fergusson would be foolish enough to bathe in that glen,” Niall lied stiffly. “She’s likely gone, yes.”
“Aye, I didna really believe I would see her again,” Jamie agreed wistfully. “She was just passing through this place. Yet…I did hope otherwise.”
“And what would you have done if you had found her again?”
Jamie grinned. “I dinna think you’re old enough to know the answer to that.”
“You’re the savage my sister says you are, James MacKinnion!” Niall snapped furiously. “I’ll no’ be talking to you again!”
Jamie shrugged. The boy was innocent still. He didn’t have a man’s desires yet, so he couldn’t understand them.
“Suit yourself, lad,” Jamie said shortly. “But you’ll be keeping your word?”
“I’ve given it—I’ll keep it!”
When the trapdoor had closed and the bolt had slid into place, Jamie regretted teasing the boy. He had enjoyed the company and doubted he’d get more very soon.
Niall returned to his room, but he got no sleep. After a while, his anger cooled, and he was able to think about the meeting rationally.
The laird of the MacKinnions was in their dungeon! Niall would be hard-pressed to keep that news to himself. And the fact that The MacKinnion had seen his sister in the altogether? It galled him that any man would have spied on her, let alone their enemy. But what was done was done, and he could do nothing about it except see to it that Sheena never swam naked there again.
And the rest of it? Niall was not so young that he hadn’t understood Jamie perfectly well. The MacKinnion desired his sister and might have ravished her if he had found her at the pool. Niall would have been no defense against a full-grown man. Fortunately it hadn’t come to that. The MacKinnion must have come to the pool only minutes after he and Sheena had left. But the manhadcome looking for her. He must never know that Sheena Fergusson and the girl he lusted after were one and the same.
Chapter 6
Sheena was in the sewing room, dressed in one of her prettiest frocks, a bright yellow gown that contrasted vividly with the dark burnished red of her loose, flowing hair. She was unhappily working on her wedding gown, two of the household servants helping her. The gown was going to be lovely, two shades of blue, in rich velvet and silk, and the darker blue a near match to her eyes. But Sheena felt no pleasure in it. The wearing of that gown would bind her to a stranger and take her away from her home.
The sewing room was as good a place to hide as any, since her sisters were still abed and she need not be bothered by them yet. Even though her marrying was a certainty, their hostility had not lessened. Margaret’s was worst, for she blamed Sheena for making her wait so long to marry Gilbert MacGuire. And all three of her sisters had always resented Sheena’s resembling their father, who wasquite handsome. While not overly large, he had a strong build, and his hair was the same deep red as hers, though he was nearly fifty. Only at his temples was there a little dusting of white. His eyes were as clear and as blue as hers.
Her mother had, in fact, been rather plain, and her sisters all resembled their mother. Elspeth did have their father’s blue eyes and a slight tinge of red in her brown hair, but Margaret and Fiona had their mother’s lackluster pale blue eyes and plain brown hair. Sheena had often wished she looked more like her sisters. Being called a beauty could be a cursed nuisance.
The rift between Sheena and her sisters was deep and very close to hatred. It didn’t bother Sheena terribly, however. She had never been close to them. As the firstborn, she had learned skills at her father’s side that he would not have taught her if Niall had been born sooner. Dugald had taken her fishing and hunting. When Sheena was five, after Fiona was born and Dugald had despaired of having a son, she got her first pony. Her interests did not include her prissy sisters, who flocked about their mother. The breach between them widened as the years passed.
Sheena still could not blame her father for the pain he was putting her through now. The clan came first. She understood that.
She was also in the sewing room because it was the last place William MacAfee would look for her. She still didn’t know exactly what it was about William that she so disliked. He had a decidedlymean look about him, a subtle cruelty in his face that she had noticed even as a child.
His interest in her had started when she was only twelve. He was always pulling her aside to talk to her, scolding her for this or that, interrupting her play with Niall. When she was sixteen he had asked her to marry him. She had been as disgusted and as frightened of him then as she was now.
William held too much influence over her father, that was certain. And once her father made a decision about something, he was seldom swayed. That had worked against William when Dugald decided Sheena would marry The MacDonough. But Dugald’s mind could be changed if the persuasion was powerful enough. Until she was married to Alasdair MacDonough, hateful though that idea was, she would not be safe from her cousin.
William and her father were, even now, below in the hall discussing how to contact the MacKinnions to demand the prisoner’s ransom. She hoped Niall was with them, so that he could tell her what they discussed.
