The Laird's Vow Read online

  Tavish had only ever seen Tower Roscraig from the deck of the Stygian, and when he had, he’d not given it more than a cursory appraisal, as one who briefly admires some rare and costly jewel that they know can never be theirs. And so as he now approached the double-towered keep on horseback for the first time, he wanted more than anything to stop and simply stare.

  Light tan stone turned muddy in the fading light, the tall, round east tower connected to a shorter western turret by a one-story range, which boasted a single door across a bridged moat, as well as a low sweep of battlements between the two keeps that gave Tower Roscraig its name.

  I have a moat, he realized to himself and nearly laughed aloud from excitement and pride.

  Tower Roscraig. It was his. It belonged to Tavish Cameron.

  Laird Tavish Cameron.

  Tavish hadn’t realized how much he’d slowed his mount until the blasting wind threw the first cold raindrops against his warmed face. He blinked and urged his horse on, once more riding alongside Mam and Lucan Montague.

  “Tav,” his mother began again in a worried voice. “The signs—”

  He looked at the edge of the wood where yet more shredded flags snapped taut in the gale and large faded X’s seemed to glow like weak ghosts on the rough bark of the trees. “It’s fine, Mam.”

  “But there are more of them,” she insisted. “What if it’s the plague?”

  “Probably a ruse meant to keep people away, is all. Sir Montague found no record of a lawful claimant residing at Roscraig since Thomas Annesley inherited it. I have faith in his thoroughness.”

  Lucan straightened even further in his saddle. “While I appreciate your confidence, it is improbable such a desirable location would be neglected. At any rate, someone has paid the taxes.”

  “Neighboring lords?” Tavish suggested.

  Montague’s expression was unfathomable. “I suppose it’s possible.”

  Tavish allowed the idea to ride along with him for several moments and then silently decided that he didn’t care if King James himself had taken up residence at Roscraig. He’d been ready for this moment—had been preparing for it in his discontented mind—his entire life.

  “Again, my thanks for accompanying us to Roscraig, Montague,” Tavish said at last. “That you are here to vouch for my claim means a great deal.”

  The knight gave a shrug. “I do doubt the word of an Englishman will carry much weight. But perhaps any occupant can put forth a word or two that I can add to my investigation as I proceed. I still say it would have been preferable for you to have arrived with your captain and hired men.”

  Now it was Tavish’s turn to brush off the comment. “Anyone we might find surely has expected the rightful family to one day claim Roscraig. As it is, we have shared the ever-narrowing road with no other travelers. The settlement appears deserted; the fields are overrun. Where are the villagers?”

  “They’re probably all dead,” Mam muttered, and then she hurriedly crossed herself as they came around the corner of the nearest derelict cottage.

  Indeed not even sheep nor goats roamed the dirt tracks of the town; no colorful banners flapped on the stone walls beneath the battlements of the keep; the torch brackets to either side of the bridge and entry hung void.

  Tower Roscraig seemed to be waiting—empty—for Tavish Cameron.

  They came to the bridge now, so narrow as to allow only one rider across at a time, in single file. Tavish’s mount shied and tried to back away from the suspended passage. He took a moment to quiet the mare and then looked over his shoulder.

  “Mam, wait for me here.” He then nodded to Montague as he passed the knight, urging his horse onto the narrow wooden bridge first.

  A fortress, indeed, he thought as he encouraged the mare across the deep, rocky ditch below. The hoof falls were amplified exponentially, the party announcing itself to the hold as Tavish and the English knight made themselves vulnerable in procession. There wasn’t even room to turn around, and he could feel his mount gathering anxiety beneath him.

  He was very aware of the height of the bridge and its narrowness as he pulled the mare to a stop and slowly, carefully dismounted against the single rickety railing. Montague was doing the same. The beasts were nervous, and every shuffle of hooves sent echoing barks through the moat to ricochet off the thunderheads that were now dropping thin threads of light farther down the beach.

  “Shh.” He reached up to draw the reins over the horse’s head and then led her to the door. A granite boulder of thunder rolled across the rocky sky, causing the horse to roll her eyes and pull up. “Shh. Just a bit of rain.” The beast reluctantly moved forward once more.

  Tavish raised his gloved fist and pounded on the entry. He glanced at Montague and then looked more closely at the door, which appeared to be covered with fresh gouges and deep cuts to the wood. Tavish leaned his ear nearer but could hear no sounds above the wind and the pounding surf around Tower Roscraig.

  Had the place been looted and abandoned?

  “Hello?” he shouted, then pounded on the door again. Tavish stepped back to look up at the tapering walls of the keep, the arrow slits and higher, narrow windows, the battlements. All empty.

  Tavish came into the slight shelter of the stone doorway once more and tried buffeting his shoulder into the wood near the iron handle. Although it appeared that someone had attempted quite recently to hack the thick plate from the door, the handle held firm. He braced himself more firmly and dealt the wood two more firm blows, the give in the frame indicating the door was most likely barred from within.

  He leaned back once more and looked left and right—he could see no postern gate at either side of the keep to indicate an alternate entry past the moat. Unless whoever had barred the door had departed via boat on the Forth, someone must be inside.

  “Hello!” he shouted again. “Master of the hold! Guard!” He sighed in exasperation as he struggled briefly with his horse once more. “Scullery!”

  To his surprise, he heard a scraping of wood, a thud, and then the door creaked open a pair of inches, the telltale rattle of chain drawing taut filling the blackness within from where a woman’s voice also sounded.

  “What do you want, then?”

  Tavish cleared his throat. This woman was perhaps one of his own servants—he wanted to make a good, lairdly impression.

  “Good day,” he said in a grave tone, although the howling wind took away much of the solemnity he sought to convey. “We have traveled from Edinburgh to seek the guardian of Tower Roscraig. Would that you admit us and announce us to him.”

  “There is no guardian. Go away.” The door began to shut.

  Tavish stepped forward and placed his foot into the opening. “No guardian?”

  The blackness within the keep was silent for a pair of heartbeats. “The laird—if that’s who you mean—is not accepting visitors. We’re not buying anything, either. Didn’t you see the signs? There is sickness here. You should leave while you can.” The door squeezed Tavish’s boot for a moment before the woman half growled, “Move your foot.”

  Tavish left his foot where it stood and braced his shoulder against the door again for good measure. “Laird, you say? Laird who?”

  “The laird of Roscraig, imbecile. Move your foot.”

  “Please,” he said, lowering his voice. “I understand our arrival is unannounced. But as you can see if you’ll only open the door”—here, Tavish turned slightly to point down the length of the bridge—“my elderly mother accompanies me, and it’s already started to rain. You must believe that we have come at the behest of the old laird himself—Annesley, he is called.”

  “Och, for certain.” The woman’s eye roll was audible. “That’s why I’ve not heard the name Annesley in the whole of my life. Move your foot, or I’ll cut off your toes.”

  Tavish dug into his doublet for the decree
, even as the downpour increased. “It’s right here—with the royal clerk’s own sigil. Look.” He unrolled the parchment and held it up, not bothering with what part was revealed—it was likely the girl couldn’t read any matter. He only needed inside the keep. “It’s all right here.”

  “I don’t care what it says—it’s mistaken. Iain Douglas is the laird of Roscraig, and always has been. I don’t know this Annesley.”

  “Tavish?” Harriet Cameron called through the roar of the rain in a warbly voice. When he turned to look at his mother, she appeared to be nearly soaked through already.

  He appealed to the blackness again. “Perhaps we are wrong. But, please…my mother. Wait, here…” His hand dived between shirt and doublet again for the loose coins he carried and fished them out, holding them toward her. “For the trouble of sheltering us. Please.”

  After a long moment, a slender, pale hand emerged from the opening, and Tavish readily placed the coins into the palm, worried that such a pittance that he would give to beggars along the road would not be enough to satisfy even a simple servant in a country hold, but he daren’t withdraw from the door to attend to his purse.

  The blackness was quiet again, this time for several moments. “Move your foot,” the unseen woman repeated.

  “I can’t do that, maiden,” Tavish said in a low voice. “The sun will soon set and I—”

  “If you don’t move your damned foot, I can’t loose the chain.”

  Tavish hesitated. She could be tricking him—it was what he would try to do, after all. But he slid his boot free from the narrow opening with some difficulty and stepped back from the door as it slammed.

  The obvious rattle of chain sounded through the thick wood, but Tavish was unsure in that moment if it was being loosed or doubled. A moment later, however, the door began creaking open again, and Tavish gave a silent breath of relief as he turned to hail Mam.

  “My thanks, maid—” he began, but his words fell off abruptly as the woman who had denied him thus far came into view.

  She stood framed by the tall, dark rectangle of the interior, one hand still hidden behind the door, perhaps holding fast to the handle in consideration of yet denying Tavish entry. The fingers of her other hand clutched at the dingy gray shawl knotted across her chest and covering the faded stripes of her kirtle, which at one time might have been colored burgundy and deep green but now held only the worn hues of an autumn leaf still clinging to its twig in the midst of winter’s icy assault. The finest part of her costume was the delicate golden chain around her waist, boasting several keys at its dangling end. Her hair was unveiled, a riot of blond, springy curls parted in the center of her head and falling over one shoulder. Her eyes were narrowed, pale green like a cat’s, appraising Tavish as he stood there staring dumbly at her, the rain now running in a stream from the end of his nose.

  She appeared wild and wary and dangerously beautiful—like the very striations of cliff and wood holding Roscraig poised above the Forth.

  Tavish felt a sharp jab in his back and started, giving the woman a short bow. “I thank you for your kindness, maiden.” He began to step forward but was drawn upright at the sudden appearance of a sword tip from behind the door, pointed in the general direction of his throat.

  It wasn’t the door handle she’d been holding, after all.

  “Your name,” the woman demanded.

  “Tavish Cameron,” he supplied immediately. “Of Edinburgh. I’ve a shop there, and merchant ship, the Stygian.”

  Her cat eyes darted pointedly behind him.

  “Sir Lucan Montague—he’s English; I do hope you’ll forgive him that. My mother, as I’ve already said, Harriet Cameron.”

  The woman met Tavish’s gaze once more, and her eyes narrowed even further, examining him openly. “Are you well?”

  Tavish thought the polite inquiry was delivered with more than a bit of hostility. “We are weary from the road and rather wet at the moment, but aye, I am feeling fit. Kind of you to ask.”

  Her lips thinned. “Have any of you been ill?”

  Tavish paused, thinking of the abandoned village, the fallow fields he’d seen. Was he risking his life in entering this stone hold?

  “I think we run more of a risk of the ague are we to stand about in the rain,” he answered pointedly. If he was going to die, it would be in his own home. A home he had been owed for many years.

  “I’ll give you shelter for the night—naught more than a chamber. But I’ll first have your word that you’ll take your leave at first light, and I don’t care what your decree says.”

  Tavish opened his mouth, but hesitated.

  Lucan Montague came to his aid at just the right moment, stepping forward with a bow and declaring, “Upon my honor, dawn shall witness my departure, mademoiselle.”

  The woman nodded warily and then stepped back into the blackness, swinging the door open with her. Tavish handed the reins of his mount to Montague before dashing halfway across the bridge to hurry Mam’s horse over the moat. The storm chose that moment to release its full fury, ushering the party at last into the safety of Tower Roscraig. Their hostess pushed the door closed against an explosion of thunder as the horses danced and shook and threw water onto the stone floor of the wide entrance passage that appeared to divide the hold in half. A large, square opening at the far end was illumined by the storm, and through the black grid of a half-lowered portcullis Tavish could see a long finger of land disappearing into the deluge, the black shadows crouched at its sides hinting at buildings.

  The maiden did not reengage the chain through the thick brackets set into the mortar of the walls, nor did she drop the hinged bar into place to secure the door. Instead she turned to the group, the weapon that was obviously too large for her still at the ready, and Tavish marveled that a girl so slight could even heft it, much less hold it aloft with one hand.

  “I am Glenna Douglas,” she said at last. “As I’ve already told you, my father isn’t entertaining visitors. You may see to your horses in the stable.” She pointed toward the storm through the far end of the passage. “And then I will show you to a chamber.” Her gaze flitted from one to the other in Tavish’s party. “Again, a chamber and no more—I’ll not feed the lot of you. So take what provisions you would have from your packs.”

  The silence hanging around the woman’s words seemed to grow louder than the fierce storm as the three travelers stared at the blond woman in the wake of her announcement. Her frown increased as the moments crawled by.

  Tavish at last bowed to cover his shock. “As you wish, mai—my lady.”

  If anything, Glenna Douglas’s gaze was still distrustful. “I’ll fetch water while you tend your mounts—our well isn’t tainted. You’ll be staying in the west tower.” Her blond curls inclined toward the doorway behind her, and Tavish recalled that was the shorter, wider of the two turrets. The great hall and the family apartments must be in the taller, east tower. He itched to take off and explore every last corner of the keep.

  The lady stared at them pointedly as they all continued to drip on the stones. “The rain’ll get no drier the longer you wait. If you’re not returned by the time I’ve fetched the water, I’ll have a mind to lower yonder gate and leave you to the stables. You’ll have plenty to drink there.” Glenna Douglas then lifted the hem of her skirt while still wielding her weapon and turned to disappear into the dark doorway of the west tower,

  “My thanks,” Tavish called after her, but his genial air was quickly fading as the reality of the woman’s claims settled around him. He turned to help Harriet dismount. “I should have known she was noble by her spiteful tongue.”

  “Can you blame her? A wee thing like that, minding the door for strangers on her own?” Harriet said. She limped to the doorway, her hand on one rounded hip as she stretched her other arm up to brace it on the doorway. “I’d’ve likely nae had the courage to open
it in the first place. We’ve given her a bit of a surprise, is all.”

  Tavish looked to Lucan Montague, and the two exchanged a silent thought as they each took charge of the horses—Glenna Douglas was in for a much deeper shock than the arrival of unexpected guests.

  He looked back to his mother. “You’ll be all right here, until we return?”

  “Aye, aye—go on,” she said, waving at him briefly. “I’ll loosen up the old joints a bit and follow the lady. She might need my help.”

  “You stay there and rest, Mam,” Tavish ordered. He glanced around the passage and then lowered his voice. “You’re no servant. You don’t fetch water any longer.”

  “There’s nae shame in fetching one’s own water, Tav. Heaven knows I’ve done so all me life, for man and beast. Including you. Go on,” she insisted with another flap of her hand.

  Tavish grinned at his mother’s scolding, and then he and Lucan Montague led the mounts through the wide entrance hall to the rear opening. The men broke into a trot as they ducked beneath the portcullis into the rain once more and dashed toward the stable.

  Tavish’s grin widened even as the lightning flashed around him and the storm bore down on Tower Roscraig.

  My stable.

  * * * *

  Frang Roy waited until the old woman had pulled her girth into the blackness of the west tower doorway and he could hear her breathy exertions descending the stairs before he stepped into the passage, returning his belt to his waist.

  He was angry. Angry that Glenna had opened the door to the travelers. Angry that she had granted them entry. It was careless, even with her childish display of the old man’s derelict sword—it could have been anyone at all come to the tower. At this very moment, he should be putting his terms to Glenna once more, forcefully if need be, and with whatever discomfort necessary for her to accept his will.