Ignoring the little voices that called her a fool, she pushed to her feet and carried the heavy wooden bowl to the nearest cresset lamp. Caught in the night breeze, the bronze lamp swayed on its chain, but its flame burned true, and cast a healthy enough glow for her to examine the stone.
If she dared.
“Oh, by all the ancients,” she muttered, angry at herself for hauling out the fool piece of granite, angrier still at her hesitancy to peer at it.
“Och, come,” she scolded herself.
Then, with enough passion in her blood to make the boldest heart proud, she stiffened her spine and yanked the cloth off the stone.
It was dry.
Nary a droplet of moisture glistened on its quartz-speckled surface or misted the smooth grain of its wooden bowl.
Stunned by the punch of her disappointment, she stared at the much-revered Laird’s Stone, and wanted to weep herself.
For being a fool.
And most especially, for imagining, even for a moment, that a cold lump of stone might cry.
* * *
At the same small hour,but two levels lower, the cold stone walls of the Keith family chapel offered an excellent trysting place for Sir Marmaduke and a few select men.
His own.
The four MacKenzie Highlanders of Kintail.
Also present was Dunlaidir’s aging Father Tomas, included out of necessity and respect.
The men huddled together near the rood screen, each one aware of the gathering’s furtive nature. For that reason, they spoke in low tones, quietly ignoring the bone-deep cold seeping through the soles of their shoes and chilling the tops of their ears.
Resisting an urge to stamp his feet against the bite of the frigid air, Marmaduke rubbed his hands together and stared up at the wheel-shapedCorona lucissuspended high above their heads, his gaze drawn by its score of burning tapers.
The fine wax candles cast weird shadows on the men’s earnest faces and sent shifting patterns of pale light weaving across the chapel’s mural-painted walls.
Nothing else moved in the stillness, an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere thick with the heavy weight of age and the cloying scents of dust, old stone, and stale incense.
“I beg you to reconsider, my lord,” Father Tomas addressed Marmaduke. “The danger is too great,” he added, wringing his hands. “I will pray, but Sir Hugh is cunning.”
“It is because de la Hogue will know our every move that I would take such a risk,” Marmaduke said, knowing nothing he said would soothe the worried priest.
The aged holy man hadn’t stopped fretting since Marmaduke declared his intentions to marry in the village church rather than within the safety of Dunlaidir’s curtain walls.
Worse, that he planned to do so with every able-bodied man within Keith territory in attendance, and armed with the surplus mail and weapons now gathering dust in the stronghold’s undercroft.
“My friends, nothing is so certain as that Sir Hugh will make some move the day of the wedding.” He glanced at the hand-wringing priest. “Father Tomas tells us the man has vowed to be present. Whether he is or nay, there is no doubt his men will slip into the crowd.”
“Then why provoke a stir by using the village kirk?”
All eyes turned on Sir Lachlan, his question hanging in the incense-laden air. “I’m with Father Tomas,” he said, nodding to the priest. Still a bit pale from his wounding, the young knight leaned against a stone pillar. “I cannae see the sense of it.”
Sir Alec snorted. “If you had more experience at warfare, you’d know why.”
“I’m no’ a bairn,” Lachlan tossed back, the knuckles of his fisted hands gleaming in the candlelight. “I’ve seen my share of battle.”
“Highland skirmishes.” Sir Ross chuckled, a good-natured wink taking the sting out of his quip.
“Ah, well, as I mind it,” Alec hurtled on, “a village wedding will lead those miscreants right into our hands, which is exactly where we want them. One false move, and they’re raven fodder.”
