Her Highland Protector (Iron 0f The Highlands Series Book 2) Read online

  “Perdition take it! Why is this bothering me so much?”

  He had no idea. The horses, hearing him swear, laid back their ears in alarm. He shook his head.

  “Sorry, lads,” he said. He walked up toward the storehouse, and on the way passed Grayswift’s stall. He reached up and stroked a hand down her nose.

  “You’re a lovely lass, aren’t you?” he said softly.

  The horse stood while he stroked her, but he sensed she wasn’t overly keen on humans at this moment. He sighed.

  “He’s taking it out on you, isn’t he, eh?”

  The horse just looked at him with big, dark eyes. He had the sense that she was sad – that she missed Irmengarde too. She must have wondered why she was suddenly being demoted like this, why her mistress never rode her currently.

  “I don’t understand any of this either, eh,” he whispered to the horse. She snorted and he left her alone, giving her a final pat on the nose. He wished he did understand any of this. All he knew was what he had seen – the tension between Irmengarde and Lord DeWarren, and the unfair treatment of her ladyship’s horse.

  He was cleaning reins when he heard the clop of hooves in the yard. He went to the door. It was dark outside already, and the rain was starting. Lord DeWarren rode ahead, his long cloak bulky around his big shoulders. He saw Brogan and raised a hand.

  “There you are. Take my horse. Give him a rub down, eh? And see to it he’s kept warm. Come on!”

  The latter he called over one shoulder, and the peremptory way he shouted it made Brogan go stiff. He didn’t know how he managed to stand still without hitting him.

  “Yes, milord,” Lady Irmengarde said.

  As Brogan went to take the reins so she could dismount, he caught sight of her face – it was ash pale, her eyes ringed with dark circles. Her lips stood out against the pale contrast of her skin.

  “Milady? Are you well?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was a tight whisper. Brogan stood back to let her pass. As he did, she looked down at the ground, clearly avoiding his gaze. She whispered something under her breath, so quietly said that Brogan couldn’t understand it.

  It was only later as he threw the saddles over the rack with unnecessary vehemence, that he realized what it was she’d said: Thank you.

  The words stayed with him as he lay on the straw pallet in the servant’s rooms to sleep.

  Thoughts of her plagued him until he fell into unconsciousness that night.

  DISCUSSION AT A COTTAGE

  The still room was a bright and busy place, the scent of sawdust mingling with that of bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters and pine logs burning in the grate. Bottles clinked in the basket that Irmengarde hung over one arm, ready to take down to the farms.

  “And I’ll need to take syrup of thyme too…” she said.

  “Aye, milady,” her friend in the still room nodded briskly. “You’ll need plenty o’ that. With the wet comes a sore throat. And that’ll clear that up, right as rain.”

  “I know,” Lady Irmengarde nodded. “That’s why I planned to take it.”

  “Och, aye,” the woman chuckled. She turned away to the jars of herbs, and started to fill one with the dried rosemary she was chopping smaller. Irmengarde, glad for the respite from her attentions, slipped away.

  “It’s going to be a brisk walk to the cottages.”

  She drew on a cloak and headed out across the hillside. Checking on their tenants – most of whom supplied the workforce for farming the lands held by the castle – was a self-imposed task, and one Irmengarde truly enjoyed. It was cold outside, though for a few hours at least, there had been some respite from the rain. Sunshine, bright and golden, poured down over the fells.

  As she walked, Irmengarde tried her best to avoid the patches of mud and planned a route through the cottages where their laborers were housed. She would start with Mrs. McNeal’s own family’s homes, and then move on, ending with old Mr. Cammore, who could barely walk now. She needed to spend the most time and energy with him.

  The thing she tried assiduously not to think of was the one thing that sat in the center of her thoughts like a boulder in the river, adjusting the course of all the rest. That thing was her husband.

  If I think of him, I will think of what he said and then I’ll want never to leave the turret room.

  She couldn’t afford to dwell on his insults, his cruelty and his way of making her afraid. Instead, she watched her booted feet cross the slushy pathway and focused on the tasks ahead. Her basket clinked on her arm and a lark – unseasonable, for November – sang overhead.

  “It’s hard to think of wars being waged, when all is so peaceful here.”

  There was no war – not as yet – but there was the threat of one, hanging over the whole land. Since Baliol’s accession, there had been rumbles of dissent throughout the nation. Powerful lords who felt they had an equal claim were ready to contest it. Scotland was simmering on the edge of war. Irmengarde shuddered to think of the fact that, only last week, a plow hand and a pot maker had got into a bloody scrap about who supported whom.

  And, right from laborers up to lords like my husband, most are too power crazed to see that there is a greater challenge right now.

  That challenge was England itself. As a descendant of English nobles, DeWarren was unlikely to notice the threat. However, Irmengarde – listening to conversations about the dinner table – knew it was far more concerning than any question about who sat on the Scottish throne. She was reminded of watching a pack of hounds fighting over scraps in the dining hall. Just like them, the lords were too distracted by the promise of power to notice somebody was watching them tearing into one another.

  Irmengarde stepped into the shelter of the trees, wondering if it was just possible that the foreign king had planned all this already.

  “And lords like my husband are crazed enough to fall for it.”

  She shivered. Power. The desire for it seemed to dwell inside people who had lost the love of all else. As if, where their hearts had once been, there was only some endless well that demanded to be filled with power.

  He is like that.

  Clovis – if he had once possessed a heart – certainly did so no longer. She shuddered, thinking of how he had humiliated her just yesterday, speaking to her so rudely before the stable hands.

  And now even Covell will see me as less than I am.

  That thought rankled.

  “Irmengarde, you’re being silly,” she told herself.

  She stepped up the hill towards the cottages, dismissing the horse trainer from her imagination.

  Like nuts clustered on a tree branch, the cottages clung onto the hillside in a little clump, conical thatched roofs gray against the green slope, some with smoke spilling out of the stone chimneys. The settlement reeked of smoke and the ammonia used to dye wool skeins. She held her breath and climbed up the hill.

  “Brenna!” she called, as she neared the second one in the row.

  The woman, dressed in a linen gown, kerchief tied down over her hair, waved cheerfully. “Ahoy! Milady! There ye are. A grand sight ye are! Welcome!”

  Irmengarde felt herself grin. It was a true wonder to come up here, and be received with fondness and acceptance. In the fortress, she got only contempt and criticism. Here, she felt welcome.

  “I’m pleased to see you well,” she commented. “How are the lads?”

  “Grand! Inside, for once, they are…I will not have them mucking about in the dirt!” She gestured at the dark black mud that oozed down the hillside behind the house.

  Irmengarde grinned warmly. “I can imagine small boys would enjoy that.”

  “Aye, milady!” Brenna grinned back. “But I cannot have them walking it all over the cottage. Come in, do! I’ve been baking – have a sup to eat with us.”

  “Thank you,” Irmengarde said. She held her breath as she crossed the threshold, prepared, as always, for the rank scent of burning peat, the smell of untreated leat
her. As it was, the place was clean and tidy, with only coals blazing in the grate. The walls were rough stone, the ceiling low and made of posts over which the dark thatch had been placed. Bunches of herbs hung from the rafters, and the furniture was roughly carved of wood. A table, four chairs, a cupboard and, somewhere behind the curtain, two beds made up the sum total thereof.

  Irmengarde, looking around the place with interest, wondered how it would be to live life with so few possessions. In some ways, she imagined, it would be liberating.

  “Aye! And my man had a terrible time up at the burne…it’s running over its banks. It knocked him flat on his back, so it did!”

  “He was hurt?” Irmengarde frowned. Brenna’s husband was a woodworker, responsible for maintaining their fences and other structures about the lands. “He should come up to see us at the castle.”

  “Och, no need for that!” Brenna grinned as if the idea was kind, but unnecessary. “It’ll mend on its own. Big daft man.”

  She grinned with fondness, and Irmengarde, watching her pour hot water out of the big copper kettle, found herself wondering what it would be like, to feel that easy fondness for anyone.

  It was never like that for me, with Clovis.

  She had been excited about the prospect of the union between her house and his, until she’d seen him. She recalled the troth plighting ceremony, held in the chapel at her family home. She’d been terrified. Big, remote and frightening, Clovis had an air of menace about him from the first. She’d stood beside him with locked knees, every muscle tensed and alert, as if her whole self was prepared for danger.

  “Milady? You are going around the settlement later?”

  “Um…yes,” Irmengarde blinked, her attention diverted back to the present moment. “I plan to.”

  “Best have a sup tae eat now, then. There’s plenty o’ people out there as needs seeing to.”

  “Thank you, Brenna,” Irmengarde said. She accepted a plate of fresh bread, slathered with cottage butter. She looked at the crude pottery and the little designs painted onto it in orange paint and thought, with a painful realization, that the thing was probably the most precious in the house.

  She finished the bread – it was delicious, and every bit as good as that from the castle kitchen – and gathered her things to leave.

  “Take care, milady,” Brenna called.

  “Thank you,” She said. Again, she felt touched by the woman’s concern.

  As she left, she almost collided with two small boys, pouring in through the entrance. She stepped around them swiftly, then turned at the top of the path and looked back toward the cottages.

  Brenna was outside the cottage, and the two children wrapped their arms about her, small faces lit up, while Brenna ruffled their hair and jostled shoulders and laughed.

  Irmengarde swallowed, blinking back tears. The scene touched her sore heart, and she wished – not for the first time – for the simple affection that seemed to evade her life.

  “Milady?”

  She spun round, heart thudding. As she looked up, she felt her breath catch. Covell was here! With his booted feet planted in the dirt of the pathway, a wool cloak draped about his wide shouldered body, he looked at once calm and strong.

  Irmengarde looked away, knowing that a blush had risen in her face.

  “I ought to ask you why you are here. You ought to be at the stables, tending to the horses.”

  “I was,” he grinned. That voice! It washed through her body like warm oil, soothing and sweet. “But I reckoned I should come up here. I need to speak to a feller about a piece of wood.”

  “What?” Irmengarde looked at him, incredulous.

  Covell grinned. “I had an idea, when I was looking at the stalls in the stable, milady. I need tae find a carver and ask him if he can make me a nice smooth staff.”

  “Well Mr. Drummond does carve,” she said. “See, yonder house.” She pointed up the hillside.

  “I see. Thanks, milady.” He nodded. “Well, I reckon I’ll go thataway, then.”

  “Yes.”

  They looked at each other. When neither of them said anything though, he looked at her with warm interest and Irmengarde felt herself flush.

  He probably thinks I’m a bit odd, after the way Clovis treated me.

  She blinked, recalling her humiliation, and feeling tears well up in her eyes.

  “Excuse me,” she said, gathering her skirts in one hand. “I should get down to the cottagers. They need tending, now that the bad weather is over…many of them are ailing.”

  “You’re a grand baroness,” Mr. Covell said. “Not many of the nobility’s caring as you.”

  Irmengarde heard the words as she hurried down the hill. She felt a lump form in her throat. She wanted to say something, but when she turned back, she knew he was already out of hearing range.

  “You annoying, impudent man,” she whispered.

  Saying it couldn’t take the smile off her face.

  The wind was coming up and she hurried to the cottages, glad to be inside despite the stench of peat and badly cured wool. She stayed longest with Mother Watts, who was very ill and had pain from her joints in the cold season.

  “You look too far ahead,” she called to Irmengarde as she left. “Ye should open your eyes to see what’s under your nose, milady.”

  “Thank you, Mother Watts,” Irmengarde called over her shoulder, stepping down the well-carved stair-stones. She drew her cloak around her shoulders, shivering in the cold outside.

  “What does that mean? I think the poor dear is affected by the fever.”

  She shook her head sadly. It took people that way, sometimes, making them rave and talk of things with little actual sense. It seemed like that was what the older woman did. Or what was it about? What was it she was seeing too far ahead? What was under her nose?

  “It’s all raving, Irmengarde.”

  She couldn’t afford to rack her brains about it. Clutching her cloak against the blustering breezes, she headed down to the last cottage.

  By the end of the afternoon, exhausted, she headed back down the hill. It was starting to rain already – heavy drops falling, one at a time, from a darkening sky. Under the trees, the rain reached her less, and she hurried down the hillside to the tree line.

  “I’ll be lucky if I don’t catch a chill myself,” she muttered. The danger she was putting herself in became clearer as she hurried, and she shook her head, thinking she must be as foolish as everyone suggested.

  “I could die of this fever. And then what?”

  She sniffed. Then what, indeed? It seemed false to believe that anybody would miss her – she knew Clovis would simply hunt about for another heiress to replace her. He had almost said as much, on several occasions.

  Sniffing, her tears mingled with rainfall, she headed into the woods.

  The trees screened her from the worst of the rain, the whole place hushed and silent, brooding and alarming. She trudged along the pathway, the mud dense and sticky underfoot. The rain was worsening.

  “I really am foolish,” she muttered, lifting her skirt out of the way, her boots squelching as she walked. The woods were silent, the only sound coming from the falling rain.

  Suddenly, she heard hoof beats. It was dark in the woodlands, and getting rapidly colder. She turned around, and looked up at the man on horseback.

  “I suggest you pass,” she said, straightening up as Covell approached. He was riding Snowstorm, and he had something strapped to his back, part of it projecting up above his head – a bundle, wrapped in swathing cloths.

  “Milady! I would offer you a ride down to the castle,” he said. “It’s cold enough out here to give a person fever.”

  “I am aware of that.” Her voice was crisp and brittle.

  “Milady…please? I can nae leave you here.”

  As she watched, Covell swung down from the saddle. He stood by the horse’s head, the reins trailing from his hands.

  “I will manage adequately,” she s
aid, turning on the path. Inwardly, she chided herself for foolishness. Why would she not just accept the help? It would make more sense.

  “You need to see to yourself, as well as the cottagers,” he called. “Or how will anybody tend to them?”

  She stiffened, and turned to face him. “You do insist on over exceeding yourself,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Probably. If I knew the word, and what it meant.”

  She bit back a grin. “I mean, you do things out of your station.”

  “Aye. You mean I’m insolent, milady…?”

  He was standing looking at the ground, a reprimanded pose that sat poorly on him. She shook her head.

  “Insolent has many shades, Covell,” she said after a pause. “And, as it happens, I accept. Provided you lead the way.”

  He bowed. She studied his pose, looking for any sign of mockery. She saw none.

  “I am honored, milady.”

  Lady Irmengarde felt a brow raise, and a strange knot of emotions forming in her tummy. However, she swung into the saddle, not letting herself think on it.

  “It’s a good mile and a half, back to the castle,” she said.

  “Aye, milady. We’ve a while to go.”

  He held the bridle and they walked along in silence. Irmengarde studied him as they went. He walked with a good bearing. Clearly a man who believed in himself and his actions. She found a small smile tugging at her lips as she looked at his outlandish dress. He wore a tunic, trews, cloak and boots – the same sort of dress any of their laborers wore – but the long cloth-wrapped package interested her.

  “May I ask, what do you have strapped to your back?”

  He looked up at her, and grinned. “A piece o’ wood.”

  Irmengarde started laughing. “Well, I can’t deny that’s true,” she said. “A piece of wood it is. What did you get it for?”

  He smiled. “That, milady, will remain a secret. I’ll show you if it works.”

  She laughed again. “A wise man,” she said. “To hide failures, and discuss triumph.”

  “Failures teach me more than successes ever could,” he said somberly.