The Chief Read online

  They pulled alongside the jetty beneath the castle, and Tor jumped off onto the wooden dock into a crowd of guardsmen who’d come down to greet them. Christina tried to make out what they were saying in the short, cryptic phrases shot back and forth, but they seemed to be speaking in some kind of code.

  Mhairi had awakened, and Christina was doing her best to keep her calm. A young guardsman suddenly appeared to help them off the boat. “Don’t worry, my lady,” he said kindly, noticing her horror-struck expression. “You’ll be safe here. No one can take Dunvegan.”

  Gazing up the steep staircase carved into the rock that led to the sea-gate, she could see why. The only entry in the massive curtain wall was through an iron gate in a small arched entry. It was well protected by a small guardhouse box built directly over it and a long curtain wall manned by dozens of arrow slits from every direction. An attempt to charge the steep, slippery stairs that led to the entry would be foolish, more likely to lead to falling to one’s death on the rocks below.

  Despite the harrowing circumstances, a small smile crossed her lips. With those stairs, being carried across the threshold for her wedding night was probably unlikely, though if anyone could do it, it would be her impressive husband.

  She turned to look for him and felt the warmth rush out of her.

  Her chest pinched. Her husband was…leaving. All she could see was a streak of gold blowing in the wind beneath his steel bascinet, and the broad lines of his muscled shoulders and back as the boat pulled away from the jetty.

  Her lips parted, but no sound emerged as she watched him disappear into the black, soupy mist. Disappointment burned in her chest. He hadn’t even said good-bye.

  Not once did he look back.

  It was hard to convince herself that he hadn’t forgotten all about her.

  —

  A man stood on the battlements watching the boats approach and leave again.

  MacLeod was back.

  The chief was too late, but the man shuddered nonetheless. Though he did not fear discovery—yet—betraying a man like the Chief of MacLeod was a terrifying prospect. If he were caught, the best he could hope for was a quick death. More likely the ruthless warrior would rip off his head and feed him to his dogs for a snack.

  His face paled and bile crept up his throat. Despite the cold wind, he dabbed a sheen of sweat from his brow. Dear Lord, he wasn’t cut out for this. What had his uncle been thinking?

  He consoled himself that at least for now, the MacLeod chief was looking in the wrong direction.

  “The Greatest swordsman in the isles,” they called him. MacLeod’s chief’s increasing power in the isles had not gone unnoticed, earning him many enemies. Enemies eager to see him fall. First, however, he had to find proof.

  The first day was the worst. Never had she felt so alone. Abandoned by her new husband at the gate to a castle of clansmen stunned by the news of their chief’s sudden marriage, Christina felt like she’d been dropped on the other side of the world.

  The MacLeods of Skye spoke the same language, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and lived in similar structures as she did, but everything was different. Subtle variations made even the familiar feel strange and new.

  The two days that followed were marginally better, if only because she’d decided to keep herself busy by making the Great Hall feel more welcoming. The Hall wasn’t as primitive as she’d feared on arrival, but neither did it have those additional touches, the small luxuries, that she was used to. Everything about the Great Hall of Dunvegan, the principal building of the castle—its structure, furnishings, and decorations—were basic, practical, and undeniably masculine. It looked like what it was: a shelter for warriors when not on the battlefield.

  Nothing close to the cozy haven she’d imagined.

  At first she feared she would have to sleep communally by the fire, but she was relieved to discover that behind the long wall of the hall were three private partitioned chambers. She was led to the middle of the three—a small room with a bed, a table, a chair, and a small ambry for storing clothes.

  She now stood before the largest of the three chambers. Christina knocked softly on the door to the lord’s—or king’s, as they called it here—solar, entering when bidden. Ri tuath. King of the tribe. That’s what they called her husband. At first she thought she’d heard it wrong, but if there was anything she’d learned since she’d arrived, it was that these people revered their warrior chief. To them, Tor was what he’d been before Skye had been annexed to Scotland: an island king. The fact that he was considered the greatest warrior of the age only added to the clan’s pride. The poems recited by the Sennachie at the meals seemed almost mythic in their lauding of their chief. Surely, her husband couldn’t have defeated a score of men surrounding him by himself?

  Rhuairi, the humorless seneschal, looked up from his seat at the table beside the clerk. The young churchman gave her a welcoming smile, which she returned gratefully. Most of the familiar faces of Tor’s personal guard had sailed with her husband, and the clerk was the sole friendly face in a sea of taciturnity. If Christina had wondered where her husband came by his cold, remote expression, she need look no farther than his clansmen. She feared it was an island trait.

  “Good day, my lady,” the clerk said. “You are up early this morn.”

  She returned his smile. “Aye, Brother John, I’ve quite a few things I would like to attend to today.”

  Though he made no sound, the seneschal appeared to groan.

  Christina tucked her hair behind her ear and squared her shoulders, refusing to be deterred. This was her home now. She was the lady of the keep, and if she wished to make a few changes, it was well within her rights to do so.

  Though she’d been tempted to hide in her chamber and read her book until her husband returned, she was determined to prove that she could be a good wife to him. She knew he thought her young and inexperienced. To him, she was the foolish girl who’d made a mistake and nearly gotten herself ravished, or the coward who’d tricked him into marriage rather than face the wrath of her father.

  But there was more to her than that, and she wanted him to see it. To see her.

  “Of course whatever you need, my lady, will be at your disposal,” the seneschal said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I thought today I might start on the walls.” The previous two days she’d attended to the most pressing matters, including laundering the bed linens she’d found stacked in a trunk (apparently no one had used the room for some time), changing the rushes in the hall, and replacing the lumpy mattress in her chamber—in their chamber, she corrected herself, heat rising to her cheeks.

  The intimate part of her marriage weighed heavily on her mind. Delay in their wedding night had only given her plenty of time to think about it. Would it be different now that she knew what to expect, and now that he knew it was she?

  Both men looked a bit perplexed. “The walls?” the seneschal was the first to ask.

  “Aye.” With only arrow slits in the thick stone and the hole in the center of the wooden ceiling to allow the smoke from the fire to escape, to say the hall was dark and dreary was a prodigious understatement. She’d added a few candelabra to the tables, but it would take a small fortune in candles to truly make a difference. “When cleaning out the ambry, I noticed a stack of old tapestries. I thought we might take them out for dusting and hang them on the walls.” Her brows drew together atop her nose. “Do you know where they came from?”

  The seneschal shook his head. “Nay, my lady. It’s been sometime since anyone has used that chamber. Perhaps they belonged to Lady Flora.”

  Tor’s first wife. Christina had thought as much. She’d been from Ireland, and many of the tapestries appeared to contain Irish motifs and folklore. Christina didn’t want to rouse any painful reminders of his first wife, but her husband hardly seemed prone to sentimentality. No matter the source, the tapestries were too colorful and beautiful to hide in a closet.

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