The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,2

is no place for a babe.”

Wordlessly, Kirk settled himself back onto the hearthstones, sitting cross-legged before the fire. He pulled the small whittling knife from inside his tattered boot, running the tip of the blade over the reddened skin on his thumb. He began to work the splinter until it protruded out of the skin and blood trickled from the cut, dribbling down his thumb into the crease of his palm. Ignoring Mclnnes’ tapping, Kirk worked the splinter free and wiped the blade clean on his pant leg before returning the knife to his boot.

“Is this what you do every day? You eat? You whittle? You wait for the babe to wake?” Geoffrey struggled to contain his impatience. “For God’s sake, man,” he said, a lock of dark blonde hair falling into his eyes, “you can’t keep her here.”

“And why not?”

“Take another look at this place!” Geoffrey jerked his arm out, gesturing about the primitive cottage. “How is she to survive here?”

“It’s not as if there is any danger.”

“You’ll do to her as you did to Lady Anne!”

Kirk’s hands stilled on his knees, the wide strong hands spread flat against the press of kneecap. For a long moment, he didn’t look up, didn’t speak. Instead, he sat brooding, more like a bitter old man than one who was twenty-four.

This is why Geoffrey was angry.

This was the issue.

The Macleod page had been Kirk’s friend for years, but before befriending Kirk, Geoffrey had been the childhood playmate of Lady Anne, the middle girl of the three Macleod daughters. Ah, Geoffrey, did you fancy her, too?

Kirk passed one hand over his eyes as if wiping away the memory of the buff-colored stones of Angus Castle and the sound of voices, like the tremulous cry of the Macleod sisters as they rushed down the stairs. They were always like that in his memory. The three of them together.

“I ought not to have said that.” The page adjusted his collar and then the hem of his oversized jupon, the blue and burgundy coat cut from fine fabric, as if acutely aware of Buchanan’s ragged jupon and threadbare leggings, of the old boots barely patched together. “The infant is what? One?”

“Fourteen months.”

“That’s right, it was about this time last year when his lordship, the Duke Macleod, received word of the child’s birth.” Geoffrey remembered that he had been the one to give the Macleod word of the birth. The page had ridden hard most of the night, traveling east beneath a full moon from the rugged Highlands to the frost-glittering meadows of Aberdeen. He arrived cold and breathless, his pale skin blotched with red. “I have come with news from Ben Nevis, my lord,” he had said timidly, hesitant to interrupt.

“What news can there be from Ben Nevis?”

“Her lady has given birth. It was a girl.”

“Was?” Macleod managed the word with difficulty, his voice sounding impossibly tired, even small.

“The infant is eight weeks old but sickly, and not expected to survive.”

Macleod’s heavy head wagged, locks of thick white hair hanging across his forehead, half hiding one eye. His words were nearly incoherent. “Does the Macleod womb know no other sex?”

The page waited, counting to himself, counting imaginary stones and sticks, counting plump wenches, counting and counting to contain his own eagerness, not to mention, impatience. He was becoming adept at waiting. His lordship had not been himself for nearly a year. Too many tragedies had befallen him. Ever valiant in battle, the great John Macleod broke fragile in his castle. His strength had been his heart and his heart had been his daughters. Now, with Lady Charlotte bedridden in Derbyshire, Lady Mary dead, and Lady Anne banished, there was no strength left in the old Duke. Geoffrey hesitated a moment. “Shall I arrange to have gifts sent, my lord?” He remembered sending mountains of fine things to the eldest Macleod daughter, Lady Charlotte, on each of her births. Presents for young Lord Philip and Lady Elisabeth.

Macleod hunched silent, huddled in his mind.

“My lord?”

McInnes imagined sending great carts to the remote Highland cottage, a cottage battered by drifts of snow and frigid gusting winds. He imagined lovely Lady Anne rushing to the door, her hands trembling with the latch. He would overwhelm her with treasures, wagons mounded with sides of beef, venison, boar. Partridges strung on sticks. Smoked salmon and salted eel. Loaves of sweet bread, jars of clotted cream, and rich, thick, sticky berry jam. He would send spices, herbs, dried seasonings in small pliable pouches.