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10
“Keira!” Adaira stepped into her room and came across the room to hug her, then spotted the bruises on her neck. She looked at them in horror and put out a hand to touch what looked like the thumb mark, then recoiled as if the mark had burned her. “Did Archie do this?” she asked furiously.
Keira nodded. “He was only trying to scare me, Addie,” she said, trying to sound soothing and failing miserably. “He would never have killed me. I am of too much use to him.” She was not at all sure of that fact, but she needed to be calm in front of the two women who were family to her. She turned away to hide the tears of anger in her eyes, but Adaira had already seen them.
“Forgive me for disagreein’ wi’ ye, mistress,” Moira interjected, her round face flushed with rage, “but If I hadnae been here, I think that is exactly what might have happened. The man is as evil as the devil himself, I tell ye.”
“No, he will not harm me. He needs me,” Keira insisted. “He needs me for one of his schemes. He has paid a large dowry for me to marry an English earl, which he cannot really afford, by the way. The Earl of Champling is bringing goods to trade with local merchants here, but my father is going to keep him captive here and ask for a ransom. No, he was merely overwhelmed by anger, as he often is. He would have come to his senses.”
She glanced at Adaira, whose face was absolutely livid with fury.
“He might have come to his senses after he killed you,” Adaira growled. “Does he not realize he will bring down the wrath of every Englishman for miles around on us? He is not only evil but completely idiotic. Damn, if I was a big man, I would—”
“He will never carry out his stupid plan.” Keira interrupted grimly. “Because we will stop him.”
Adaira’s eyes were wide with horror. “You don’t actually intend to wed the earl?” she asked, her face white with shock. “Is that how you will stop him?”
“I would rather marry Lucifer!” Keira growled. “But he must not know that. Father will not imprison the earl straightaway. He will wine and dine him, and I will be expected to be pleasant and accommodating. At least, that is what my fatherthinkswill happen. I will tell you more later, Addie. Come, we have work to do.”
* * *
“Damn,” Murdoch growled as he entered the great building that was usually full of sacks of seeds, wheat, barley, and rye. “They have already been here.”
The grain stores usually had problems with rodents, which was why there were always hundreds of cats running around, but the place had never been as empty as it was now. It would have taken a plague of mice of biblical proportions to decimate the contents of the barn to this degree.
There were dozens of the little creatures running about on the floor, nibbling on the few grains that had dropped from the sacks, but this was quite clearly the work of human-sized rodents.
“It looks as though we have just missed them,” Murdoch observed as he held the lantern up to see the fresh prints of horses’ hooves in the slightly moist ground. He sighed in frustration. “I wonder where they get their intelligence from? It has to be someone inside the castle, but I have no idea who it could be.”
He remembered what Keira had said that very day. “I am just a pawn in my father’s cynical game.”What had Keira meant by that, and did it have anything to do with what had happened here tonight? It seemed that the rebels were becoming bolder and bolder, their raids more frequent and more efficient. They struck fast, using the element of surprise as their best weapon, and were gone before anyone even realized they had been there. They had to be dealt with and quickly.
Murdoch had a strange feeling about Keira. She was not at all the kind of person he had expected her to be, and he knew that there was far more to her than met the eye. She hated her father to a horrendous degree, but despite her assurances, he did not feel that she possessed the instincts of a killer. However, she might hate him enough to sabotage him in this way.
He thought for a little while, looking around at the scurrying mice among the scattered grain. He almost envied them their simple little lives. They had plenty of food at hand and cozy little nests to burrow into, but of course, there were the cats. He laughed at the thought. No one’s life was without its perils.
Murdoch shook his mind back to the present. He had a suspicion that there was more trouble coming their way that night, and his instincts were rarely wrong.
“Dougie,” he said to his second-in-command, “I have a hunch that the second grain store is in danger too. Something is bothering me, and I do not know what it is.”
He frowned deeply and began to pace up and down the store, running his fingers through his hair in agitation. He watched a few cats sneaking up on the mice and diving on them, seeing a parallel between what they were doing with what the Castle Guard was going to be doing later. Tonight would be the night he brought the rebels in. He felt it in his bones.
“We could camp here an’ wait for them,” Dougie suggested.
“They will see our lights, our fires, and our horses,” Murdoch replied. “We will have to make it look as though we are leaving. Gather the men and tell them to ride them into the middle of the wood, then hobble them and come back and lie in wait for the bandits. There will be no campfires or lanterns, although you can bring your blankets, but it will be a cold and uncomfortable night for all of us.”
“You mean ye didnae bring a feather bed in yer saddlebag?” Dougie asked in disbelief. They laughed together for a moment, then Dougie said, “That is what we are paid for, is it no’, Captain? The life o’ a guard is no’ meant tae be a life o’ ease.”
“Aye, but that thought does not make it any more pleasant!” Murdoch countered. “We will not even be able to dream pleasant dreams tonight but it is the life we chose, as you say.” He sighed, exasperated.
Dougie laughed again. “It is at times like this that I wish I had become a priest,” he sighed. “Just tae get some peace an’ quiet.”
“But your problems would still not be gone,” Murdoch pointed out, laughing. “Because then you would miss other things—if you get my meaning!”
Dougie gave him a playful swipe on his shoulder. “No women, ye mean?” he laughed. “Ye’re right, Murdoch. Nothin’ is worth that!”
* * *
As often happened before he went to sleep, and all through the night, Murdoch was tormented by thoughts of Keira. The ground was hard, damp, and uncomfortable, and he could not sleep even though he was utterly exhausted. Eventually, when he felt her coming to lie down beside him and put her arms around him, he was able to drift into slumber.
