“Marsaili, we must away,” came Donald’s voice from the other side of the door.
“I’ll see ye in the great hall at supper, I suppose, if nae sooner,” Marsaili said. She was gone a moment later.
Lena was left with her own thoughts, which turned immediately to what she had just learned from Broch and how best to broach the matter with Alex. She concluded rather quickly that there would be no good way to approach him about Thomas and Euphemia. She feared he would still shut her out, and if he did, the repercussions could be disastrous.
Seventeen
“Kneel,” the Steward commanded as he moved off the dais in the great hall to come stand before Alex.
Alex debated what to do. The Steward obviously wanted a show of obedience to prove trustworthiness, yet he suspected the man would not trust or respect any laird who would so easily bend to the commands of another, even one he professed to want to serve. So Alex stood unmoving.
Thomas, who was beside Alex, drew his sword and brought the point to Alex’s throat. “On yer knees, MacLean.”
Alex’s fingers twitched for his sword, which had been taken from him by the Steward’s guards before they’d allowed him to enter the great hall.
“I dunnae kneel before any man,” Alex bit out, eyeing first Thomas and then the Steward.
The Steward stood so close to Alex that he could smell the stench of sweat and mead on the man. The king’s nephew shoved his red hair off his forehead and narrowed his sharp, blue eyes upon Alex. “Ye have come here to pledge yer fealty to me, but ye will nae kneel?”
“Ye are nae my king yet, Robert,” Alex replied, choosing to use the man’s given name as a purposeful show that he considered them matched in status. “The moment ye are declared so, I will kneel before ye. But I come to ye now as an equal. Both of us,allof us—” he motioned to Marsaili’s father, the Campbell laird, who was sitting at the dais, and then to Thomas, the only other person in the room “—are equals in our discontent of David.”
“Ye mean King David,” the Campbell snarled.
“Nay,” Alex replied. “I dunnae consider him my king any longer. He gives power to commoners and takes it and land from us nobles, whose clans have long supported him. He dunnae have respect for me, and he forced a marriage on me that I did nae want.” The lies made his gut twist, but they were necessary.
“Why would ye nae wish to wed Lena MacLeod?” the Steward asked.
“Lena Campbell,” the Campbell laird bellowed.
Alex had to clench his teeth not to contradict the devil.
“She belonged to the Campbell clan.” The Campbell slammed his fist against the table.
Belonged?Alex’s head throbbed with rage. Lena was not a possession but a woman. He wanted to pummel the Campbell.
“The king forced ye to marry her simply to thwart me,” the Campbell continued. “I ken it, in spite of what lies he tried to shove down my throat.” The Campbell jerked to his feet. “She was my family’s to have and use as we saw fit, to hurt and degrade in order to strike back at Iain MacLeod for all the blows he and his brothers have struck upon us.”
Alex was a breath away from damning the mission, grasping the blade of the sword still pointed at his throat, and using it to kill the Campbell, but the Steward said, “Enough. All this complaining dunnae change the fact that she now belongs to the MacLean clan. So tell me,” the Steward demanded as he stared at Alex. “Why would ye nae wish to be married to such a beguiling creature?”
Before Alex could answer, Marsaili was ushered into the room, looking as uneasy and fearful as a rabbit being hunted. She hovered at the door, sweeping her gaze over Alex, Thomas, the Steward, and finally, her father. “Da,” she said and offered an awkward curtsy to him and then the rest of them.
The Campbell gave his daughter a dispassionate look. “Still nae a bonny lass, I see.”
Marsaili’s cheeks reddened, and pity gripped Alex. He’d been angry with Marsaili when he’d learned she was the traitor, but when he’d read of her son and how her father was hiding the child from her, he had understood what she’d done. He did not condone it, but he understood it. Watching her shift from foot to foot and bite nervously on her lip, he was glad that she did not know the truth about him and the mission King David had tasked him with. Marsaili would have given the truth away, not out of spite but out of fear. And while he may now be in possession of one of the traitors’ names—Laird Fraser—he still needed the other.
“Ye are just in time to hear why the MacLean laird did nae care to marry yer half sister,” the Campbell said. “Surprising, is it nae, given her beauty? That dunnae bode well for ye, Marsaili, given yer lack of it. If one as bonny as Lena kinnae sway a man, what hope do ye have?”
“Nae verra much, Da,” she answered in a meek voice that was so unlike the woman Alex had glimpsed at Dunvegan. Gone was any boldness and zest for life in the face of her father.
“So, MacLean?” the Steward pressed.
Alex racked his mind for what to say that would seem believable. Several things came to him, but it made him ache to even think of uttering such insults about Lena. Still, he had to. He could feel Marsaili staring at him, and he could imagine that the woman would want to gouge his eyes out after he spoke. “It was well kenned that she feared men, which concerned me in regard to how she would be in the joining.”
“And how was she?” the Campbell demanded, a leer on his face.
Alex arched his eyebrows. “As I expected. Fearful. Cold. Nae the sort of lass to rouse a man to passion.”
Marsaili gasped and her face mottled red, but she held her tongue.
