Shellfish and seaware.
Food for the poor.
Caterine pushed back her hair, annoyance making her head ache.
Whether it pleased her or nay, such shameful victuals would soon be the mainstay offerings at a marriage feast she’d only this day learned would take place.
Worse, the second celebration presented even more absurdities, but of a wholly different nature.
All manner of distressing thoughts filling her mind, she tossed another handful of wet, dripping sea tangle into one of the dozen or so creels scattered along the narrow shoreline where Dunlaidir’s cliffs met the sea.
She breathed deeply of the cold, salt-laden air, pressed chill-numbed fingers against the small of her back, wishing herself anywhere but here, on the one tiny sliver of beach accessible to the stronghold’s residents.
Reached by a precarious path carved centuries ago into the living stone of the mainland’s cliff-face, the hidden cove’s tidal pools and shallows provided a rich harvesting ground for a variety of seaweed and other gifts of the briny deep.
Welcome sustenance she and the most trusted members of the household had been gathering for hours.
Now, gloaming would soon be upon them, ending a day spent in toil and labor.
And the hatching of secret plans.
Closing her eyes, she turned her face into the cold, blustery wind and wondered at the wisdom of grown men sneaking about disguised as oxen.
A fool notion to her, a brilliant plan to those who meant to act it out.
Especially her champion, who’d sprung the idea on them, claiming the late King Robert Bruce had once used the same trickery – the tossing of oxhides over men’s crouched bodies, then using the stealth of darkness to merge with a cattle herd and so near a watching garrison undetected.
Caterine scoffed at the very idea. She’d never heard of Scotland’s hero king sneaking anywhere.
And if he had, he’d certainly not done so disguised as a cow.
“There are advantages to this day’s smelly chores,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.
“Gah!” Caterine jumped.
“Gah, indeed,” Rhona chuckled.
Caterine wheeled about to face her friend. “I know that look on you,” she said. “You were collecting limpets from the rock pools on the other side of the cove. Whatadvantagesdrove you over here to startle me out of my wits?”
“You wound me.” Rhona whipped a bulging sack of the conical shells from behind her back. “This is the sixth one I’ve filled. As for the advantages…”
She cast a sidelong glance at the straining muscles of Sir Alec’s bared back as he hefted a full creel of glistening dulse onto his shoulder for the climb up the cliff path.
“Come now,” Rhona gushed, “have you e’er seen so much glorious male flesh in one place?”
“I do not go about eyeing men, as well you know,” Caterine returned.
“Perhaps you should?”
“I think not.”
“Hah!” Rhona laughed.
And Caterine found herself turning toward the sea, looking out to where the MacKenzie men and a few of Dunlaidir’s best waded through the shallows, their seaweed-filled nets floating behind them.
To a man, they’d discarded their tunics. Some had even removed their hose, opting to brave the cold waters in naught but their braies.
They may well have been naked.
