“Well?” Duncan drew out the word.
“No request Lady Linnet should ask of me is too great,” Marmaduke vowed. Turning to her, he made her a slight bow. “How may I serve you, my lady?”
Rather than answer him, Linnet cast her gaze downward and began scuffing her toe against the stone flagging of the chapel floor.
Ignoring his friend’s ill-concealed amusement, Marmaduke lifted her chin, encouraging her to look at him. “Name your desire and it is yours.”
She met his gaze, but kept her silence. After a moment she moistened her lips and said, “Now that I stand before you, I fear it is too much to ask.”
“How so?” Marmaduke shot a glance at Duncan then immediately wished he hadn’t. His handsome friend now wore a bold smile.
A too bold smile.
Somewhere in Marmaduke’s gut, a tiny shard of unease broke loose, a jagged-edged shard that jabbed his innards and grew more unpleasant by the moment.
The smile on Duncan MacKenzie’s face grew as well and the gleam in the Highlander’s eyes bode ill for Marmaduke,
He turned back to Linnet. “Lady, I cannot help you if you will not tell me what it is you wish me to do.”
“I cannot,” she said, shaking her head.
“And you?” He glanced at Duncan, alarmed to see that his friend’s smile had now turned to a silly grin. “Will you divulge this great secret?”
“With pleasure,” Duncan said, the mirth in his voice undeniable. “My lady wife’s sister is in need of a champion.”
Marmaduke lifted a brow. “I see nothing amusing about a lady in need.”
“Then you will go to her aid?” Linnet asked, the tremor of hope in her voice going straight to Marmaduke’s heart.
Iron control hid the mounting tension swirling in his chest, the dull thudding of a heart filled with other plans than riding off to slay some unknown gentlewoman’s dragons.
“Think you I am the man to champion her?” his valor asked before his heart could stay his tongue.
“We know of no one better suited,” Duncan answered for his wife. “Lady Caterine is newly widowed and plagued by a persistent Sassunach earl who would press her to marry him. Her holding, Dunlaidir Castle in the east, is sorely failing. Without help, she will lose both the peace she craves and the home she holds dear.”
Duncan laid his arm around Linnet’s shoulders and drew her close. “Nor is it in our best interest in these troubled times to see as strategic a stronghold as Dunlaidir fall into English hands.”
Marmaduke rubbed the back of his neck. “Why not send a party of able men to assist her? Many are the warriors you could choose from.”
“Name one whose sword arm is mightier than yours.” Duncan’s fingers kneaded the woolen folds of his wife’s cloak. “Who better than you, a Sassunach of noble blood, to challenge an English earl? You, with your martial skills and smooth tongue, are more suited to the task than a score of fighting Gaels.”
Unconvinced, Marmaduke shook his head. “A full retinue would serve her better than a single man.”
“Dunlaidir has a stout garrison. They only need direction. A firm hand and clear-headed man to lead them. Nor can I spare more than a few men with Balkenzie nearing completion. Nae, Strongbow, the task falls to you.” His smile gone, Duncan aimed a penetrating stare at Marmaduke. “Or would you deny my lady’s sister of your skill?”
“You know I cannot. It is only-” Marmaduke broke off, near stumbling over his usually quick tongue. He ran a finger under the neckline of his tunic. The chapel’s somewhat stale, incense-laden air closed in on him with such pressure he almost gagged. “I’d planned to take occupancy of Balkenzie soon.”
A poor excuse, to be sure, but he’d so hoped to hoist his own banner before Samhain.
“I’d planned to see the castle well-garrisoned and secure, secure foryou, before the onset of winter,” Marmaduke said, his words casting down the gauntlet of his hesitation.
“And so you shall.” Duncan’s flashing smile reappeared. “Upon your return.”
Marmaduke opened his mouth to argue, but Duncan silenced him with a raised hand. “You shall be settled within your own keep’s walls by Yuletide at latest,” his liege declared. “Then we shall all gather at Balkenzie’s hearth and drink to my lady’s health.”
“And to our bairn’s,” Linnet added, the conviction in her voice and the look in her eyes doing more to dismantle Marmaduke’s resistance than all her husband’s bold words combined.
As if he sensed his friend’s crumbling will, Duncan clamped a firm hand on Marmaduke’s shoulder. “It will not take long for a strong-armed warrior such as yourself to have done with one odious Englishman?”
