“Free to do what? Get lost in the wood? To roam around like an unhobbled beast?”
Duncan was perched in his saddle leaning with his forearms crossed over his horse’s neck, fresh faced and eager to listen to Tearloch’s every humiliation. But Tearloch had had enough. The others would join them soon and he wanted Duncan respectful again.
“If ye don’t wipe that grin from yer face, auld mon, she’ll be riding the entire way to Lochahearn with ye.”
It worked. Duncan straightened.
“Serious, now son. Why does she fluster ye so?”
Tearloch glanced behind him before replying. “I’ve known two kinds of women, Duncan Keith. I’ve known the unapproachable ladies of Malcolm’s court, and I’ve knownwhores. I did little speaking with either. And this one falls into the middle somewhere. I didna ken what to say.”
“So ye treated her like a whore?”
“Nay.”
“Ye treated her like a queen? Oh, shite, Tearloch. There will be no abidin’ her now.”
Tearloch enjoyed his friend’s unease while he climbed into his saddle, much calmer now. “Nay, my friend. I did the only thing I could think of. I treated her like a prisoner. I know how to handle prisoners.”
Duncan did not look relieved.
“And right now yer prisoner is...?”
“Comin’ along with Big Rabbie.”
Duncan looked past Tearloch and frowned. “Oh? I see Rabbie, but he looks to be alone.”
CHAPTER SIX
Fort Carlisle, afternoon
“I am sent by King Malcolm to execute Lady Carlisle.”
The voice tore cleanly through the door of Agatha’s chamber, but she was not surprised. She knew it would come to this as soon as the king’s man had shown up that morning searching for that cursed girl. It was nearly worth her life to be able to tell the man he was too late. Too bad Malcolm had not come along so she could have seen his reaction. Better yet, to have watched him die with her own knife in his belly.
She had tried to fall back upon her old story—that the girl had died from a fever twenty years past—but they had discovered a witness who saw the girl at Fort Carlisle just ten years ago. That’s when it had truly gone sour. When that bastard from the English courts, Gair Balloch, had stumbled upon her so-called niece. And a year ago, when Malcolm became king, she knew she had to get rid of the evidence, had to get rid of the sister before Balloch opened his mouth.
Gowry’s offer had come just in time.
The chamber door opened smoothly, and to Agatha’s surprise, Gair Balloch, the devil himself, stood on the threshold.Dripping in red from the scarlet feather on his cap to the tips of his pointed velvet boots, his courtly trappings were a sight. He smiled and winked, his back to the guards.
“Lady Carlisle, I have come to hear your confession before your life is forfeit.”
Enchanted by the flashes of gold toggles and white teeth, she struggled to hide her recognition. She could play along. Satan appeared to have a plan.
Yesterday she had bid farewell to her self-imposed confinement where she kept Kenna from ever learning she was the daughter of the dead King Duncan. Then she had fluttered about her home, making plans, changing plans, as giddy as a child at Michealmas, feeling half of her 45 years. Then the King’s man had come and confined here in her own chambers, no longer by choice, and she’d felt a hundred.
Her fortune may just change again, if Balloch’s smile was any indication. And she would use her rusty wiles to make sure it did.
Recognizing a depravity in Balloch’s eyes, she cocked her head and purred. “Oh, my lord. Surely ye don’t have that kind of time.”
He grinned wider, stepped forward, and shut the door behind him.
Balloch was quite handsome, but she remembered that when they’d first met, his white teeth sometimes showed sharp points. When he smiled, as he did now, those points were hidden behind the plumpness of his lower lip. She waited for the man to speak again, to verify those dangerous teeth were not just a fanciful memory.
“Agatha, you clever old witch. What did you tell MacPherson?” His hushed tones made her heart leap. He did have a plan.
“I’m not so old…Sir Gair, isn’t it?” She pulled tight the corners of her mouth, smoothing out the wrinkles in her lipswith a devious smile. Since the girl’s departure, she had worn her best gown, disdaining the simple garb she’d worn for so long. The dark green she wore now was aged but flattering and thankfully, the man seemed to respond to her flirting.
