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The men around the table fidgeted and looked around the room, outside the window, and at each other—anywhere but at the laird’s face.
This is bloody madness,Murdoch thought, and had just opened his mouth to say so when Dougal McColl, one of the laird’s advisors, voiced the thought for him.
“M’Laird,” he said cautiously, “I mean no disrespect, but have you thought of the consequences of this? There are still plenty of Englishmen around these parts, and more can be sent from the earl’s estate in Northumberland and Yorkshire. Hundreds of men can be mustered against us in a very short time.”
The laird’s face turned purple with rage, and he stood up and walked around the table to confront the man. McColl was a big man, taller than the laird by three inches, but he was unprepared for the blow on his cheekbone that sent him toppling off his chair onto the floor.
“Now perhaps that will remind you to know your place!” McTavish snarled. “Get up and sit down. Do not speak again, or I will do worse to you next time!”
McColl got to his feet, rubbing his face, but his blue eyes were dark with embarrassment and rage.
When the laird struck McColl, Murdoch had instinctively begun to rise to defend him, but Dougie had pulled him back, shaking his head frantically.
“No!” he hissed. “Leave him.”
Now McTavish sat down, and the others maintained yet another tense silence.
“Needless to say,” the laird went on, “anyone who breathes a word of this outside this room will be dealt withveryseverely, and I mean that, so keep your mouths shut. The operation will take place a week from now, and I trust you will take that time to prepare your men. I will accept no excuses for your absence that night except death. Do you understand?”
There was a mumble of affirmation from around the table before everyone stood up to leave.
The laird poured himself another whiskey and put his head in his hands, wondering if he should go see his wife. Lately, making love to her had stopped being a pleasure and had started to become a chore. She lay on her back and closed her eyes so that she did not have to look at him, then opened her legs and lay passive until he had done what he had to do, then she left. He always summoned her to his chamber instead of going to hers as a way of making her obey him, but he had tired of that novelty now.
Should he send her away? Find some excuse to have the marriage annulled? Or should he dispose of her the same way he had done with the first two? At least a quick dip in the moat had rendered his first wife unmarked, and the second had been declared an accident.
He decided to wait for a while, perhaps until the New Year, and redouble his attentions to his wife. He had managed to conceive a child before with Marion, so it was not as though he was infertile. With that thought, he swallowed the rest of his whiskey and went to seek his wife. He did not care if she found their coupling tedious or painful; she would do her duty as she always did. That was all that was required of her.
* * *
Dougie and Murdoch began to walk back to their quarters without speaking for a while. Dougie knew Murdoch well, and he had learned to recognize the signs that his friend was ready to explode with rage and that it was better to leave him to cool down of his own accord.
However, instead of making for the keep where Murdoch, as Captain of the Guard, had a little room of his own, they began to climb the stairs to the topmost turret where only a few guards were stationed. Murdoch ordered them to go downstairs to the next level down and then stood looking out at the countryside below them for a while.
It was a beautiful patchwork of plowed fields, hedgerows, and dry stone walls, where crops of barley, rye, and wheat were just beginning to poke their spring shoots above the earth. Stands of spruce and pine trees gave way to new growths of gorse bushes, whose flowers would soon color the hillsides a bright lemon yellow. Scottish Blackface sheep grazed on the emerald-green patches of grass between the bushes, sharing the field with Highland cattle with their shaggy orange coats and terrifying curved horns.
The sky was beginning to clear, and a weak show of sunlight washed the sky. Murdoch felt his anger cool a little, although it had by no means disappeared.
“Why do we work for him, Dougie?” he asked at last, dragging a hand back through his tangled hair in agitation.
Dougie looked at his friend and sighed. He possessed a much calmer disposition, and one of the things Murdoch valued most about his friend was his ability to soothe him.
“Because we need the money an’ a place to live,” Dougie replied flatly. “We are common people, although ye were lucky tae get a wee bit o learnin’ at school. But even ye cannae pick an’ choose, an’ we are lucky tae have the little we have. Many people are no’ sae fortunate, my friend.” He patted Murdoch’s back. “Come, let us eat and then get back tae work! We can worry about that eejit later.”
