“Can we afford a feast, father? Are we not still planning for winter shortage?”
“You have a lot to learn about politics, my boy. We must show them our stores are bulging.”
“But they aren’t.”
“No but when MacKay goes home, he can tell his clan we are struggling and might be easy to conquer. Or he can go back and say he ate a feast fit for kings and they should accept we are the better clan.”
“Why can we not just share out the food with those who are hungry? I passed many struggling villages on the way home, father. They would be glad of what we have to spare.”
“Did you not hear me? It is not spare. It is to impress MacKay. Now go to the infirmary and wait.”
Callum crossed the courtyard on a path of rushes, the mud crunching underneath as the last of the morning frost melted away in the weak sunlight. Inside the infirmary was dark, the smell pungent, mint and lavender perfuming the air. The beds were empty which was fortunate.
The laird might be happy bathing with the sound of the dying around him but Callum could never enjoy cleaning his body with the sick just feet away. He wanted to tend to them, not indulge himself. He could never distance himself from his people in the same way his father could.
They were different in many ways. He would never dream of marrying a MacKay if it were up to him. Not after what they did to Lachlan.
What was it his father told him? He had a lot to learn about politics.
The bath was sunken into the floor in the infirmary warming room. Tiled and beside the enormous fireplace, it was modeled on the bath found in the model of a Norman bishop his grandfather had visited once many decades earlier.
It was four feet deep, the tiles glazed and colored to match the MacCleod tartan. The jugs were sitting by the fire warming slowly. He picked up the first one, ignoring the heat that scorched his fingers. Pouring it into the bath, he watched it pool at the bottom, steam rising slowly.
“We will do that for you,” a voice said behind him. That was another difference between him and his father. He didn’t want servants doing everything for him. He wanted to fill his own bath.
Nonetheless, he let them do it. He was tired of arguing. He was tired of everything. He sat sweating by the fireside as the servants filed out carrying the empty jugs with them.
Stripping out of his clothes, he sank into the hot water and ducked underneath it, letting it soak into his pores. Coming up for air a few moments later, he pushed his hair back from his forehead, leaning back against the tiles, rubbing the dirt from his skin.
He refused to think about Kerry anymore but she invaded his feelings anyway, a more insistent warrior than any he had ever fought, overcoming his defenses effortlessly and whispering to him in a voice he could not hear.
What was she saying to him? He did not know but he cursed under his breath, telling himself to put her from his mind.
He needed to think about the future and she wasn’t it. Nessa was his future. She might have looked as if she wanted to kill him when she first saw him but that wasn’t so bad. It would make it easier when he told her he had no intention of ever sleeping with her.
The water remained heated by the enormous fireplace. He needed only to climb out when he was done and that wouldn’t be any time soon. In here, he was alone, or so he thought.
“Callum,” a voice called out.
“Bathing,” he shouted back. “Leave me be.”
Fenella appeared a moment later. “I heard you were back.”
“Aye but you apparently didnae hear me say leave me be.”
“Good to see you too. I come all the way here to see you and that’s how you greet me. You might want to cover that by the way.”
Callum glanced down at the water, placing his hands over his lap as he realized. “Why are you here, Fenella?”
“I came to ask where your woman might be found.”
“In the keep.”
“Not Nessa. Your woman.” Fenella held her hands to the fire to warm them. “It is bitter out there,” she added.
“She lied to me, Fenella.”
“What about?”
