“For truth!” Rhona yanked back the bed hangings to peer at Sir Marmaduke’s still form. “He sleeps. He is not dead and everyone beneath this roof has assured you he is nowise near dying.”
Caterine pressed her lips together.
Rhona blew out a breath. “If James hadn’t been able to find him, and free his cloak from the underwater branch it’d caught on, he may well have died,” she owned, “but he did not and isn’t going to.”
“I shall stay here all the same.” Caterine placed her husband’s hands atop the covers and looked at Rhona, intending to send her away with some peppered comment, but the words froze on her tongue when she noted the dark shadows under her friend’s eyes.
Rhona’s face appeared as haunted as she knew hers must be.
“For one so confident he’ll live, you appear mightily distressed,” she said, hoping Rhona would deny it.
Not disappointing her, Rhona seized her hand and pulled her off the three-legged stool where she’s spent the last two days – and nights – tending her husband as he’d drifted in and out of a fitful rest.
A deep slumber the castle healer insisted he needed.
“It serves no purpose for you to exhaust yourself, bending over him like an angel of death,” Rhona chided, dragging her from the chamber. “I vow he senses your fretting and cannot rest fully for worrying about you.”
Holding her arm in an iron grip, Rhona herded her into the dimly lit passage outside her bedchamber. “Were you not so blinded by guilt or whate’er fool notions are plaguing you, you’d see by his steady breathing and fine color that he will be up and about before long.”
Caterine wasn’t so certain.
No one had directly told her, but from snippets of gossip floating about, and dire murmurings she suspected she wasn’t meant to hear, she knew the Laird’s Stone still cried.
And some castle folk believed its doing so meant her husband’s death, and not James’ acceptance as new lord.
But she let Rhona usher her along the corridor, and guide her down the winding turnpike stair to the hall. She was exhausted, and hadn’t eaten in days.
Sensing her capitulation, Rhona flashed her a smile.
“It will do you good to spend some time below,” she crooned. “Everyone is praising James for rescuing your husband.” Pausing, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “My lady, I vow this means they have accepted him.”
Caterine nodded, too weary to speak.
“After you’ve eaten, you can rest in my…inJames’chamber, sleep away the whole day if you desire,” Rhona rushed on.
Desire.
The word brought a fresh rush of tears to Caterine’s eyes, but she blinked them away and walked with Rhona to the high table, the turmoil whirling inside her keeping her from paying too much heed to the absence of the Highlanders.
“All will be well,” Rhona promised as she pulled back Caterine’s chair. “You will see, my lady.”
But all wasn’t well.
And the overly loud hush that greeted her when, hours later, she finally returned to her bedchamber, only underscored how veryun-well things were.
Her great four-poster loomed accusingly quiet, its mound of silk and furred coverings flung back to reveal…nothing.
Her champion was gone.
* * *
About the same time,in the frost-gleaming uplands a good distance from Dunlaidir, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow drew rein so swiftly, his horse near reared up on his hind legs.
The beast did voice loud protest.
Marmaduke’s men laughed. Great choking bouts of glee. The purest of know-it-all vaunting.
“Guidsakes, but that took you a while,” Ross egged him, already turning his mount.
