“I know. I’ve made sure of the opposite. I’ve made myself appear as vain and self-centered as I could.” Cairstine couldn’t understand why she divulged this to Eoin, but something about him seemed solid and trustworthy. This was ridiculous, as she was well-informed of his reputation.
“So the young lady we all know isn’t really you,” Eoin said flatly. He detested liars, and while he had found Cairstine spoiled and often hurtful to the other ladies, he never imagined she was one to tell falsehoods.
“I don’t want to marry. What mon wants a harpy with a barbed tongue and an empty head? None, and so I have no prospects here.”
“Why don’t you want to marry? Every woman short of those called to be a nun wants to marry.”
Cairstine’s mien was the sympathetic expression offered to a simpleton. “You can’t possibly believe every woman wants to marry. Your own sister-by-marriage ran away to avoid marriage.”
“She ran to avoid marrying my brother. She was never averse to the institution of marriage, only the mon she feared the king and her father intended to force her to enter it with.”
“Well, I have an aversion to marriage. And I don’t care which mon my father places before me. I don’t want to marry.”
“Are you called to be a nun?” Eoin couldn’t imagine a woman less suited to being a nun. Between Cairstine’s vanity and how judgmental she could be, she didn’t strike him as a woman queueing to take holy orders. Besides that, she’d not hesitated to kiss him, and she kissed with experience. While he was certain she was still a maiden, she didn’t seem very innocent.
“I will be if that’s what I must do to avoid being sold to a mon who only wants to rut and breed me like a broodmare.”
“And you believe every mon is like this? That’s what you believed of Kieran MacLeod? Of Ewan? Of me? That all we want is to force ourselves upon unwilling brides for the sake of siring heirs?”
“Kieran and Ewan fell in love with the women they married, though why Kieran chose a dowdy one like Maude Sutherland is beyond me. Who knows aboot you? You aren’t wed.” She snapped her mouth shut, realizing old habits die hard when it came to being snide.
As Eoin listened, he deduced that someone had damaged Cairstine’s faith in marriage and, even worse, in men. He wanted to tread lightly, but he was also curious to discover what caused her deep-seated opposition. “Is that how your father treats your mother? Or how your brother treats his wife?”
“Hardly. My father acts as though my brother was born to my mother’s first husband by immaculate conception, just as my sister and I were by him. He’s a very…” she shook her head. “Very pious mon. Rigidly pious. My brother is kind to his wife. I won’t go so far as to say that he loves her, but he’s fond of her and treats her well.”
“Then why do you rebel against being married? What makes you convinced all men are pigs when those you’ve seen seem to be honorable?”
“I have my reasons, Eoin. Please don’t press me. Suffice it to say, I don’t want to return home to discover my father is ready to betroth me.”
Eoin sensed Cairstine was withdrawing, and rather than pressing for more, he squeezed her hands once again. “Shall we return to the Great Hall before anyone wonders where we are?”
“Aye, but I appreciate that you’ve stood in the light to ensure no one suspects we’re trysting. Thank you.” Cairstine took the arm Eoin offered, and they returned to the dancing. They went their separate ways, each finding other partners until the night grew late.
Chapter Three
Cairstine drew a deep breath of the scents of an early summer morning. The air still held a chill, but it helped wake her as she mounted her horse. She hadn’t slept well, and she appreciated the bracing air to help revive her. Cairstine wasn’t looking forward to the next five days spent riding and sleeping outdoors. She loved to ride and was an accomplished horsewoman, but she hated trekking through the Cairngorm Mountains. She wasn’t a fan of heights or the narrow trails that often chipped away under the weight of a party of riders. She had a dozen guards accompanying her, which made her feel safe from attack but not from falling down a mountain face. She checked the girth of her saddle once more and ensured she’d securely fastened her satchel to her saddle before mounting. She glanced once at Stirling Castle before she and the Grant guardsmen rode out of the castle’s bailey and out of the city of Stirling.
The summer rain began during the afternoon of their second day on the road. Her maid, who served more as a chaperone than a servant while she traveled with a company of men, complained incessantly about the drizzle throughout the afternoon and into the evening and sobbed when it poured for the entire third day. Cairstine was grateful the woman’s father and brother were among the men accompanying them, and between comforting her and scolding her, they finally made her cease crying when they made camp the third night. Cairstine was wet and cold, and it had stretched her patience almost to the point of snapping. She wrapped herself in her Grant plaid as she leaned against her saddle.
She had slept no better on the road than she did the night before departing Stirling. Fatigue had threatened to overcome her by the time they stopped for the night, and it had been sheer willpower that forced her to remain awake in the saddle lest she fall and her horse trample her. As she lay gazing at the stars, once again sleep eluded her. She focused on what fate awaited her when she arrived at Freuchie Castle, home to Clan Grant. She missed the z-shaped tower castle. It had been her home until two years earlier when her parents sent her to serve Queen Elizabeth after the queen’s return to the royal court. She’d grown to like the queen, a religious woman who preferred more time spent in prayer than Cairstine’s knees enjoyed. She admired the queen’s fortitude and grace after being imprisoned for eight years by her husband’s enemy. The hatred between the Robert the Bruce Edward Longshanks of England hadn’t dissipated despite the queen’s freedom.
Cairstine was eager to see her mother and younger sister Fenella. They were only two years apart, while she was ten years her brother’s junior. She didn’t have many childhood memories of her brother, Erskine, since he left to foster while she was a toddler and hadn’t come home often. He was the product of her mother’s first marriage, before she was widowed. They didn’t see one another often because he remained with his foster family, the MacGregors, after marrying a woman from that clan. She commended Erskine for being a doting father; her own father, Laird Edward Grant, had wished to become a monk. He’d been a fourth son with plans to enter a monastery, but when his three older brothers died fighting on behalf of King Robert, the lairdship fell to him.
“Canna sleep, ma lady?” asked Bram, a guardsman she’d known since she was a babe. Bram was one of the few Grant men assigned to remain with her when she was in residence at Stirling Castle. His Highland burr was a reassuring reminder of life before court. “Did ye have enough to eat?”
“Aye, thank you, Bram. Do you ken why my father sent for me?” Cairstine kept her voice low. She didn’t trust the other men not to rush to her father to report the conversation.
“Nay, ma lady. I learned of yer travels when ye informed me. I’ve been at court with ye and nae heard from anyone else.”
“Did none of the men who arrived with the missive tell you why?”
Bram shifted his gaze, observing the men on watch, virtually invisible among the trees. He shook his head before answering. “They suspect it’s for a betrothal, but they arenae sure. They said several men have visited yer father in the past four moons, and the rumors are they are potential suitors.”
“Do you ken who any of these men are?”
“They mentioned the MacGregor’s nephew, but I dinna recall his given name. Bryson Mackintosh was another name mentioned, but he—”
“Bluidy hell. I will not live among those heathens. They and the Camerons are intent upon exterminating one another, and I’m not eager to die young,” Cairstine announced.
