Instead, she tore off a chunk of coarse dark bread –peasants’ bread- but found herself tearing it to bits rather than eating it as she’d intended.
“I hear much worth is placed on manners in the halls of English nobility,” she allowed, feeling petty but unable to stay her tongue. “’Tis only when they are away, across borders and far from home, that they show their true selves.”
Rhona smiled, took a deep sip of wine. “There you have it. He cannot get much farther away from England than Duncan MacKenzie’s Kintail lands. Even here, he’s a good distance from the border. And so his manners are genuine.”
Caterine frowned and popped a good-sized chunk of bread into her mouth rather than comment.
How foolish to have painted herself into such a corner.
Seizing opportunity, Rhona pounced. “Nor did he or his men rumple their noses at the salt herring and cabbage soup Eoghann set before them,” she continued her gushing praise. “They surely received finer fare at Eilean Creag. I vow your sister’s alms baskets are better filled than-”
“Have done, please.” Caterine reached across the table and lifted Rhona’s hand away from her wine. “And stop running your finger around the rim of your chalice. It’s annoying.”
“Oh?” As if to rile her even more, Rhona snatched the chalice, and, twisting around, lifted her glass at the English knight and his men. When they raised theirs in return, she flashed Caterine a triumphant smile.
“Aye, most gallant,” she declared, plunking down the chalice.
“He is English.” The objection sounded peevish even to Caterine’s own ears. “A Sassunach.”
“A man.” Rhona leaned forward. “One who went down on bended knee to offer his services to you. A Sassunach, aye, but with four stout-armed Highlanders standing beside him. They do not seem to mind his English blood.”
Smiling benignly, Rhona trailed a finger along a particularly deep scar in the tabletop. “You should enjoy such a brave man’s attentions.”
“I do not want any man’s attentions.”
“Most ladies would swoon to have a champion knight pledge to her.”
So I did, Caterine’s heart admitted.
His mere touch had warmed her in places she’d thought forever cold, until she’d heard his voice.
“Stop praising him. He is not a paragon.”
“No?” Rhona lifted a brow, sipped more wine. “I vow he’s quite famed in Kintail. Perhaps as much a Highland legend as Duncan MacKenzie himself. You should be honored.”
“He is here because my sister and her husband sent him. Likewise the knights with him.” Caterine stiffened, bracing herself against the disturbing sensation she was teetering on the edge of a bottomless chasm and about to lose her balance. “Not all at Dunlaidir are as enamored of our visitors as you and Eoghann,” she said, tossing a glance at the empty laird’s chair.
The seat of honor usually occupied by her grown stepson, James Keith.
“Or have you seen James since their arrival?” Caterine glanced at the darkened stair tower, then turned again to her friend. “He’s abovestairs, in his bed. He said his leg pains him, but I suspect the real reason for his absence is because he, too, isn’t pleased my sister sent a Sassunach to help us restore Dunlaidir’s fortunes.”
“Pah!” Rhona reached for a bannock, began buttering it. “Would he exercise his leg more, he’d have no need to resent the arrival of men more able to defend his home.”
“You are too hard on him. It is not his fault that he is lame.”
“He is not lame, he was kicked by a horse.”
“The result is the same,” Caterine returned, spreading honey on an oatcake.
Rhona blew out an impatient breath. “Naught would ail him at all if he’d stop pitying himself.”
Pausing, she cast a meaningful glance at the scar-faced champion. “Thereis one who manages quite well, and with a more daunting impairment than an achy leg.”
Caterine, too, peered across the hall, irritation making her bold. She stared hard, her open gaze searching every inch of the man’s strapping build, looking for faults and finding none. Worse, she couldn’t deny the ease with which he spoke with Eoghann, one of the household’s most loyal retainers.
Even more telling, the slump-shouldered seneschal stood straighter the longer he listened to whatever the Sassunach knight was saying to him. Bobbing his head in apparent agreement, Eoghann talked profusely and gestured about the dimly lit hall.
Like her sister and Rhona, the castle steward had clearly fallen under the Sassunach’s spell.
