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Aulay took that in as they entered, and then started to lead her to the tables, but Jetta drew him to a stop.
"Mayhap I should go above stairs and do something with my hair before I break my fast," she suggested, self-consciously feeling the back of her head. While the hair in front and on the sides was long and still a little damp, the short hair that had managed to grow in on the back was pretty much dry. She imagined it looked strange, though, and was eager to fix it with one of the cauls the women had given her.
Aulay nodded easily, handed the basket and plaid he carried to one of the men, and sc
ooped her up into his arms.
"I can walk," Jetta protested as he turned toward the stairs, although not very vigorously. She was actually growing tired.
"I like carryin' ye," he said easily, and then added gently, "and ye're starting to drag yer feet, love. I keep forgetting that ye're still healing. I should ha'e dismounted at the keep doors and had one o' the men take the horses to the paddock rather than make ye walk all that way."
"Thank you," Jetta said, rather than argue further. Between the swimming, riding and walking she was knackered and grateful for his coddling.
Alick was coming out of his room, yawning and scratching the back of his head, when they reached the upper landing. Jetta spotted him as Aulay turned toward their room, and he obviously spotted them too. The younger man froze when he saw them, mouth open and arm raised, and gaped at them briefly. Although it seemed to Jetta he was gaping mostly at her, and then he gave his head a shake and let his arm drop, muttering, "It must ha'e been a dream."
"What must ha'e been a dream?" Aulay asked with amusement as they approached him, headed for their room.
"Oh." He smiled wryly. "I was thinking last night as I drifted off to sleep that ye'd ha'e to show Jetta the--"
"Show her what?" Aulay asked when he paused abruptly.
Rather than answer, Alick grimaced and let his gaze drift toward the soldiers behind them.
Understanding that whatever he was talking about was not something he wished to share with the men, Aulay said, "Come to our chamber with us."
When Alick fell into step with them, Aulay said, "Cullen, ha'e one o' the men go fetch Mavis, please."
"Aye, m'laird," Cullen said quietly, and then nodded to one of the soldiers, a strapping young ginger-haired man, who promptly turned to hurry back the way they'd come.
"I'll be out in just a minute," Aulay murmured as he carried Jetta into their bedchamber with Alick on his heels. Leaving Alick to close the door, he set Jetta down on the bed and then walked over to the table by the fireplace and turned to raise his eyebrows in question.
Alick hesitated and then joined him by the fire, and the two began to talk quietly enough that the men in the hall wouldn't hear. But Jetta could and listened unabashedly as she found her brush and began to pull it through her drying hair.
"So what were ye thinking I should show Jetta?" Aulay asked, dropping to sit in one of the chairs.
"The passages," Alick said in a low voice she barely caught.
"It must ha'e troubled ye greatly if ye were dreaming on it?" Aulay commented.
Alick grimaced. "Aye. The fire bothered me. Made me think she should ken about the passages so she could escape if anything o' the like happened in the keep. I mean, 'twould be just as easy to start a fire at a bedchamber door. 'Twould prevent anyone from rescuing her and prevent her escaping by the door as well."
"Aye, brother. Good thinking," Aulay said solemnly.
Alick nodded. "In me dream, I showed her the passage in me room and this room, told her how to open, close and lock them. I showed her the entrance to the stairs, and told her how to open the one at the bottom of the stairs that led into the tunnels as well, but just told her about the ones in the other rooms because people were sleeping in them." Smiling wryly, he added, "It all seemed real at the time, but me head was fuzzy, everything kept movin' on me, and Jetta had all her hair." Grimacing, he added, "I was glad to wake up this morn to find the room had stopped swaying and me stomach had settled. I felt quite sick during the dream."
"Well, ye can stop frettin'. I'll show Jetta how to open the passage to this room right now, and then show her the others when everyone is up and about," Aulay said, standing and walking Alick to the door. "Why do ye no' go down and break yer fast? We'll be along as soon as Mavis--Ah, here she is," Aulay said wryly. He'd opened the door to reveal Mavis on the other side with her hand raised. Stepping back and pulling Alick with him, they let Mavis enter and then Aulay urged his brother out the door, saying, "We'll be down shortly."
"You do not have to wait for me, husband," Jetta said, smiling at Mavis as the woman hurried to her side and took the hairbrush. "Two of the men can wait to escort me and you can take two of the men with you below."
"They are yer guards, wife. No' mine," he said moving over to sit on the end of the bed and watch Mavis work on her hair. "Besides, I want to see how Mavis puts the caul in. Then I can help ye with it the next time we ride out early."
Jetta couldn't hide her surprise at those words. He was willing to help her with her hair? Truly, he was a rare find.
"Do no' look so surprised, lass," Mavis said with amusement. "O' course he wants to learn how to fix yer hair. Aulay was always a smart lad. He kens ye'll be less likely to ride off with him fer some houghmagandie by the loch if ye're always returning with yer hair in the state it is now."
Eyes widening in alarm, Jetta pulled away from Mavis's ministrations and rushed to the mirror. Her jaw dropped in horror when she saw herself. The wind on the ride back had only half dried it, but it had left it in a flyaway mess.
Chuckling at her expression, Mavis walked up behind her and began brushing her hair again. "'Tis fine. I'll fix it. It'll no' take a minute."
"I'm sorry, Aulay. It did no' e'en occur to me to pull dresses out o' the chests or press down on them," Niels said for probably the sixth time since he'd come below some fifteen minutes ago.
Niels and Edith had been the last of their party to wake up and come down to the trestle tables this morn. By the time the pair had come below, everyone else had broken their fast and Jetta had returned to their bedchamber to lie down for a nap. He'd suggested it after she'd yawned for the tenth time. The ease with which she'd agreed told him just how tired she was. He shouldn't have woken her so early, Aulay supposed. But he'd known she'd want a bath this morning and he had wanted to show her the loch. He'd thought to kill two birds with one stone by taking her along for his morning swim.
"I should ha'e driven me sword into the bundles o' gowns," Niels muttered angrily, and then repeated, "I'm really sorry, brother."
"I ken. I'm no' angry with ye o'er it," Aulay said patiently, also for the sixth time.
"Aye, but if I'd just thought to do that, we'd already ha'e the culprit. The stables ne'er would ha'e burned, and--"
"Niels," Aulay interrupted, finally losing some of his patience. "Ye've naught to be sorry fer. I doubt I would ha'e thought to remove dresses or press on the material in each chest either. I probably would ha'e just opened each to be sure they were still full o' dresses and then moved on to the next. Stop apologizing. What's done is done."
"Aye," Niels mumbled. "I guess we should just be glad that is where they were hiding and no' the pass--elsewhere," he ended in a dull voice, remembering at the very last second not to mention the passages at the tables where anyone might hear. Aulay frowned at the man's sallow complexion and the way he kept slurring his words. "Ye're almost in worse shape than Alick this morn. What the devil did the two o' ye get up to last night?"
Niels grimaced. "Alick challenged me to a drinking game. I won."
Aulay smiled with amusement at the glum words. "Bored, were ye?"
Niels shrugged. "More like frustrated. The women had told us about the ballock dagger in the chest and their suspicions when we returned to the keep after the fire. We all discussed it, but wanted to talk to ye about it and see what ye thought, but ye did no' come below that night or the next, or--"
"Aye," Aulay interrupted. He had barely left his bedchamber since carrying Jetta up there. He'd slipped out a time or two, but only to talk to Cullen to find out if there was anything amiss. Cullen had passed on any grievances or issues that had cropped up with the normal running of Buchanan, but hadn't known about the knife and what his family members were fretting over. So Aulay had given the man orders on what to do about the issues he did know about and had slipped back to rejoin Jetta. Never once during that time had Aulay asked how Katie was doing, and it had been a conscious decision on his part. He'd wa
nted just to spend time with Jetta for a day or two and enjoy the fact that she was now his by law before rejoining the real world and addressing the waiting issues of murder attempts and whatnot.
That vacation from real life was over now, though, and he was neck-deep in theories and worries about the attacker who was plaguing them. If he weren't laird, Aulay would march right back upstairs now, climb into bed with Jetta and forget all of this by losing himself in her body. Despite being laird the idea was a tempting one, and he briefly considered doing just that, but then pushed the tempting thought away. He had responsibilities here.
"How long do ye think 'twill take Alick and Conran to find out which ship lost its mast?"
Aulay glanced up with a grimace at that question from Cam. After the first run of discussion about the ballock dagger, Aulay had sent Alick and Conran out again to travel to the various ports along the coast and ask around about the ship. This time, though, they would be looking for information on one that had lost its mast, rather than one that had sunk. The hope was that they would learn who might have been traveling on it, if not the name of the woman who had been strapped to it.
The pair had been leaving as Niels had come below little more than fifteen minutes ago, and since that was the only thing any of them could think to do at the moment, it would be a waiting game until they returned. Hopefully, one of them would gain the information they needed. Although Aulay wasn't sure what he would do with it once he had it. Tell Jetta her full name, that of the ship she was on, and where she was sailing to in hopes it would bring on the rest of her memories and shed some light on who might be behind the attacks? Or ride out to confront her family and this man they wanted her to marry to tell them she was a Buchanan now and would be protected, in hopes that would bring an end to the attacks?
The problem was, he needed more than just for the attacks to stop. While he and Jetta had survived the attacks on them, Katie still might not survive her own injury, and deserved justice.
"It depends on whether they get lucky, or no'," Aulay said finally. "If the boat launched from one o' the nearer ports and returned there as well, they may be back in a day or so. If it launched from further away, or limped into port further away, it could be as much as a week or week and a half."
