Perhaps there is a Head-of-House…
It was a logical idea, but if there were a female servant in the towers, Cora would have expected to see her last night.
Cora secured her stockings in place above her knees with the garters. Her boots were nowhere in sight. So she reached for her stays and began to thread the lace through the eyelets to close them. It seemed another little twist of fate, which had seen her wearing simple garments in spite of her position as the laird’s sister. Today she was grateful she could dress herself.
Well, ye’re no’ exactly dressed…
Cora dismissed her thoughts. She needed to be grateful for being alive, not quibbling over having only her underclothing.
Ye spent the night in bed with a man.
The heat teasing her cheeks became a full blush. But she felt something very unexpected as she admitted that she was, in fact, blushing.
She wasn’t ashamed.
Not a bit. If truth be told, she was excited by the memory.
The admission made her curious. But her belly rumbled long and loudly. So, she abandoned her thoughts in favor of finding something to eat. A comb was laid on the tabletop. She spent close to an hour picking the tangles from her hair before she could braid it, then made her way from the chamber.
The door opened to a small landing. Steps rose on one side and descended on the other. Someone had brought her boots up after they had finished drying, and she slipped them on.
Cora headed down the steps, her confidence in her choices strong.
Faolan McKay?
She knew of the McKay. They lived far north. The river had carried her toward the coast.
Cora searched her mind but couldn’t recall hearing of a Faolan McKay. No matter. The man was due her gratitude, and she wasn’t going to be so shallow as to consider his position in life as anything less than her savior. If he was the humblest of crofters, so be it. Fate had brought them together.
She made it to the bottom of the tower. Her overdress was missing. Faolan had mentioned a hearth. Opening the door, she blinked as the bright sunlight greeted her.
Oh yea, she was grateful.
Cora stepped out and lifted her face. Clucking touched her ears from several chickens, who were busy searching for bugs in the yard. The tower itself was constructed of the stone strewn all over the ground. It rose up three stories with the help of mortar. The top of it was open, to serve as a watch post. The second tower was a hundred feet down a slope. Cora ventured toward it and found herself looking over a cliff that had waves crashing at its base. The ocean stretched out forever, and her senses were filled with the salt air.
It was majestic. Awe-inspiring, but there was also a beach below her. One large enough for ships to pull up onto.
The tower was an outpost. One with an important task, for it would keep the McKay from being invaded from the sea.
“Yer wits appear to be unaffected by yer rough journey, Mistress Cora.”
Cora turned, startled by Faolan’s arrival behind her. Heat surfaced in her cheeks as she realized the crash of the waves had masked his approach. She meant to greet him with confidence, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she gained her first real look at the man.
He was larger than she had remembered.
It hadn’t been a trick of the shadows. Her head barely came to his shoulder, and the man was as rough as his tower. There wasn’t a spare bit of flesh on him, and in spite of the wind coming in from the sea, he had his oversleeves tied behind his back and his shirt sleeves rolled up. It granted her a glimpse of his forearms. They were cut with muscle and darkened by exposure to the sun. His hair was black as midnight. He kept a beard that was trimmed close, but the grooming did nothing to lessen how ominous he appeared. His eyes were blue. The same color as the sky, almost as though Fate was hinting at his heart being far lighter, if a person could get past his formidable exterior.
“Yes…I must convey my gratitude to you, sir. Yer assistance was and is most appreciated. Thank ye,” Cora muttered as she realized he was watching her.
He nodded before his gaze swept her from head to toe. His expression didn’t offer her any hint of apology for how frankly he was looking her over. No, Faolan didn’t care one bit for how outrageous it might be considered.
“Gainor,” Faolan spoke in a hard tone. “Ye lost.”
Another man appeared alongside Faolan. His beard was longer, and he was busy twisting the ends of it, his lips were pressed together in frustration. “Aye,” he groused after contemplating her for a moment. “I concede defeat. She’s steady sure enough. No’ even close to fainting.” He cocked his head to one side, and his lips twitched. “Perhaps the lass suffers from bad eyesight and can nae see what an ugly brute ye are.”
Faolan grunted in response. But it was one of those sounds men made among themselves. Cora had spent enough time over the last two years with the Mackenzie Retainers to know the two men were jesting with each other.
At her expense, no less. She narrowed her eyes and fixed them both with a steady gaze.
“Wagering on the strength of my constitution?” Cora asked directly.
They both offered her an unashamed shrug.
“This is no’ place for niceties,” Faolan replied.
“The lasses,” Gainor said, “they prefer the McKay castle to our tower. Still, ye were right glad to see it last night, were ye no’?”
“Indeed, I was,” Cora responded. “I am sincerely grateful.”
“Can ye turn bread?” Gainor wasted no time asking.
Two more burly Retainers were making quick progress toward them. They heard their comrade’s question and hurried to be close enough to hear her response.
“Forget it.” Faolan made a slicing motion with his hand. “She’s Laird Buchanan Mackenzie’s sister. So, she will no’ be wedding any of ye.”
There was disappointed grumbling.
Faolan offered her a shrug. “This is a wee bit remote. The lads got to thinking ye might be inclined to stay. On account of ye being delivered here by the hand of Fate.”
He was a stranger to her. And yet, as Cora stood there in the bright light of day, she felt a connection with him. It grew out of the memory of the moments when she had been in his embrace in the middle of the darkest hours of the night.
Control yerself.
At last, she did feel the stirrings of shame but only because it seemed very poor of her to be thinking about Faolan as anything but the man who had saved her.
“I’m sorry to say, ye will no’ be going anywhere today,” Faolan informed her.
“The snow is early,” Cora agreed. “It shouldn’t last.”
“All the way up here, there is no way to tell,” Gainor said. “Damn poor luck it is, for our kitchen women went down to the McKay castle a day past. The women split the duty here. The ones who were assigned the winter would have turned back when the storm began to brew.”
The two newcomers grunted, clearly less than pleased with the circumstances.
“We’ll manage,” Faolan stated firmly. “The lot of ye sound like newly weaned babes. We’ve work to finish before the sunlight fades. What fare is set on the supper table will mean very little if our enemies arrive to slit our throats because we did nae attend to building the walls.”
Whoever Faolan was, he turned, and the men followed him. Cora watched them as they moved off toward the second tower. A wall was being built alongside it. His rolled-up sleeves made sense as Faolan began to join his men in hefting large stones into position. Several other men were engaged in making mortar. There were over three dozen McKay Retainers working.