Well,Nora thought bitterly.That’s a wonderful start.
CHAPTER 3
With Creighton gone,swallowed up in the crowd of milling MacColl men and women, Nora was alone.
Not literally alone, of course. A small group of MacColl women, all dressed in maids’ garb, inched warily down the steps toward her.
“Me Lady?” one ventured. “If ye follow us, we shall take ye to yer chambers. They are all prepared.”
Nora swallowed hard, tearing her eyes away from the crowd around her. The maids all stared at her with cold, dark eyes, faces blank. Behind them, the entrance to MacColl castle loomed, and she couldn’t help thinking of it as a mouth once again. Someone had led her horse away, effectively cutting off her escape.
Forcing a smile, she met the eyes of the maid who’d spoken, hoping for a smile in return. She didn’t get one.
“Follow me, me Lady,” the woman repeated briskly, then turned on her heel, scuttling back up the steps. The other maids moved as a pack with her, and Nora was left to follow as best she could.
Up the steps they went, and into the castle. Their steps echoed again and again in the cavernous hall, the uneven stone floors cold beneath her boots.
“This is the Great Hall,” explained the maid, not bothering to turn and look at Nora. “It’s the largest room in the Keep. We daenae use it for much. There’s a Feast Room, a council room—although nobody is to go in there without an express invitation—and others. Somebody will give ye a tour.”
Nora noticed that the maid did notofferto give her a tour.
“Me name is Nora,” she ventured, hurrying to keep up. “What is yer name?”
Nobody answered. She wondered briefly if they couldn’t hear. Or perhaps they just had no intention of sharing their names.
This is goin’ to be a long year.
They trotted across the Hall, passing sentries stationed to guard doorways, servants on their own errands, and other people who seemed to be just drifting around. They all cast long, curious looks at Nora. She did her best to hold her head high and look straight ahead.
“Ye’re the Bryden lass?” called one brave man, but fell silent when one of the maids scowled at him.
“Aye,” Nora called back anyway. “I am. It’s a fine Keep ye have here.”
The man beamed at that, nodding at her. The maids seemed to increase their pace.
It took a lifetime to cross the hall, but at last they reached a large, circular crossroads with at least a dozen doors and halls branching off. The sheer number of choices made her heart sink, but the maids never hesitated. They chose a hallway and trotted down it. This corridor was narrower, almost oppressively so after the vastness of the Great Hall.
“This is yer room,” one of the maids announced, coming to an abrupt halt in front of a narrow door with an arched frame. “Go on in, then.”
They pulled back, eyeing her expectantly, and Nora realized that she was going to have to step in first. That was fine. She could do that. Breathing out, she pushed open the door, and forced herself to step over the threshold. After all, she’d already gone past the point of no return, hadn’t she?
The room inside was a far cry from her modest chambers back at Bryden Keep. The ceiling was not high, but the room was so wide that she couldn’t take it all in with one glance. Furniture, a fireplace that seemed half the size of her room at home, tapestries, wall hangings, carpets—there was just so much tolook at. More doors were set deep into the walls. Where didtheylead?
The silence grew oppressive, and Nora realized uneasily that the maids were waiting for her to speak, to saysomething.
“Who needs a bed that large?” she managed at last, nodding at the vast four-poster bed in the corner, with its velvet curtains and piles of blankets.
The maids exchanged looks but did not speak. One of them, the woman who’d spoken to Nora to begin with, made a quick hand gesture. There was a smothered sigh fromsomeone, and then two maids slid forward into the room, heading to one of the doors. When it opened, Nora glimpsed a washroom, of all things, beyond. There was a tub, another fireplace, and drying sheets hanging everywhere. The rest of the maids scuttled off along the hall.
“They are goin’ to fetch water for yer bath, Lady Nora,” the maid explained, not quite meeting her eye.
“I… I daenae need a bath,” Nora stammered. “And when I do take a bath, I’m more than capable of fetchin’ me own water.”
The maid stared at her as if she were slow. “Laird MacColl ordered that ye should have one. It’ll be ready as soon as we can manage.”
Nora bit her lip. She knew exactly how long it took to heat up enough water for a bath, especially a huge copper tub like the one in her washroom. The maids would be working for the best part of an hour, probably resenting every step. In the meantime, what should she do?
Casting her eye around the room, Nora pointed at a small door beside the washroom. “Where does that lead?”
