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“And you suspect Malcolm?” The laird narrowed his eyes in surprise, disbelieving. The dark, scarred, unsmiling Malcolm was his best swordsman and loyal as a hound. And if Malcolm ever was to turn against his oath to the laird, he’d come at him with a blade, not poison.
“Och, no I don’t suspect him,” Davy said, eyes wide as if mortally offended by the suggestion. “Malcolm’s loyal as a hound. A mean, surly, hound. He’s not the sort for tricks, and that’s why I make a better warden for the larder, because he’s not the kind to suspect tricks either.”
“But you are,” the laird said, remembering that as a boy, Davy had once talked himself out of losing a hand for thieving. Davy was as slippery and clever a warrior as the laird had under his command. Which is why he needed him for something else. “Malcolm will have to keep the larder stocked and well-guarded down to the last onion skin, because I’ve a different mission for you…”
When the laird had finished explaining himself, Davy broke into a sunny grin. “The situation must be desperate, I see. Otherwise, you’d never give me such blanket permission to get up to mischief.”
“Aye, it is,” the laird admitted. On account of Davy’s strange capacity to laugh in the midst of a sword-fight, he was often dismissed by others, but the laird saw in him a great potential, and now was his time to prove it. “Can you do it?”
Davy’s eyes danced a bit in defiance of the danger the laird was setting him up for. “Well, it’s foolhardy. Which is my speciality. I s’pose that if I can’t do it, no one can and we’ll all be dead men anyway.”
The laird clapped him on the back, letting the gesture convey not only his gratitude, but his pride. “Good man.”
Davy slanted him a glance. “Of course, now is probably the time to ask a boon of you, isn’t it?”
John stopped, let out a long breath, and eyed the red-haired warrior. What did he want? Land grants? Gold? “I s’pose it is.”
“I want your permission to marry,” the warrior said.
“The enemy is flinging dead animals over our walls and you’re thinking of the lasses!” The rage came upon the laird at once, but what a hypocrite he was. Still, he couldn’t help but be shocked by the request. And coming from Davy, no less—a great whoremonger who had never before shown the least desire to take a wife.
But Davy seemed unchastened by his laird’s outburst. “Seems to me that a siege is exactly the time that a man can’t help but think of the women that are important to him and the life he’d like to lead if he lives through it.”
Bloody Hell, the laird thought. If that wasn’t the truth of it. The war, the danger, it all made one long for the comforts of love and peace. No wonder he hadn’t been able to keep Heather from his own mind. Perhaps he ought not be so hard on Davy. “Well, then, who is the lass you want to take to wed?”
Davy squared his shoulders, and steeled himself, which gave the laird a peculiar sense that he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Her name is Arabella; she’s—”
“I know who she is,” the laird groused, agitated. Arabella was Heather’s little sister—a trouble-making, gossip-inspiring little coquette who liked to wear men’s clothes and possibly dabbled in witchcraft. Arabella had worked his men into such a fever of desire for her, that the laird would have put her out of the castle entirely if he hadn’t known it would break Heather’s heart. Instead, he’d had to hide Arabella away by offering her work in the physicker’s laboratory.
Clearly he hadn’t hidden her well enough.
The laird cleared his throat. “You want to marry her? But she’s a…”
The laird was going to say whore, but the look of warning in the russet-haired warrior’s eyes spoke of trouble he didn’t need. Besides, John didn’t like to disparage the younger sister of the woman he adored. So he tried for a more diplomatic approach. “Davy, you must know that you won’t be the first man to have Arabella.”
Davy smiled with amusement. “I took her maidenhead, my laird.” Well. That changed everything, of course. Still, the laird fumbled, trying to decide if he should be angry or congratulatory about this revelation. Davy must have sensed his confusion, because he added, “She offered it, willingly, of course.”
But that is no sort of woman to take to wed, John thought. Or at least that is what he’d always been taught. A wife guarded her virtue until a union was sanctioned. A wife was meant to bring a dowry and provide bairns for a man’s hearth.
The laird scratched the back of his neck. “What can Arabella give you in marriage that you can’t have from her already?”
“Love and commitment for all her days,” Davy replied, then, perhaps sensing he sounded altogether too sentimental for a man at war, he added, “I’m not an ambitious man, laird. You must give thought to things like alliances and the like. You
must worry for your wife’s reputation, for her holdings, and so on. I realize that even as we speak, you may be thinking of taking a bride from a rival clan in order to negotiate your way out of this siege. But I’m not the clan chieftain. I can marry for love. It’s the advantage of being one of the little people.”
It was one of the advantages, and it irritated the laird as it had never irritated him before. “You can marry if and when I say you can marry, Davy of Clan Macrae.”
Davy smiled wryly. “Which is why I’m asking.”
There was a part of the laird that wondered why he was arguing. What was it to him if one of his warriors wed an unsuitable girl? But John felt as if a battle raged inside him that depended somehow upon his answer. “Davy, it will reflect poorly upon your honor if you marry her. Those who do not think young Arabella is a witch believe she’s a harlot.”
“She’s neither,” Davy insisted.
The laird believed otherwise and it gave him no joy to be the one to say so. “She was betrothed to another man a mere month ago. Since then, I heard from the squeaky little maid that she’s been seen with her skirts up around her waist and a man swiving her in the hallway. She was seen being carried up the stairs by a lover for a tryst. And beyond these indiscretions, I’m told she’s lain with Malcolm, too. Malcolm, your own bosom companion.”
Davy’s wry smile didn’t leave his face, but a tightness at his eyes showed he was annoyed. Very annoyed. “And to think, laird, some people say you’re a cold and unfeeling man! Little do they know how you take such an interest in the small lives of your people. Why, even though you’ve a whole castle to defend against a siege, you take the time to listen to the gossip of squeaky little maids so that you know exactly which of your men is dallying with which crofter’s lass!”
The laird felt these words like a cold bucket of water to the face.
