Margaret Mallory - The Guardian

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, little one,” he said. “Ye can’t go off on your own. It’s a long way to the next house, and it’s near dark.”

“I’m no going back to the castle,” she said.

“I suppose if I take ye back, you’ll just sneak out the secret passageway again?”

“I will,” she said.

Ian sighed and turned his horse. “Then we’d best move fast. But if I’m hung for kidnapping, it’ll be on your head.”

Ian stopped to make camp when it grew too dark to see. If he didn’t have Sìleas with him, he’d be tempted to continue. But his family’s home was a fair distance yet, and it was risky to ride in the black of night.

He handed Sìleas half of his oatcakes and cheese, and they ate in silence. There would be hell to pay for this, all because she let that imagination of hers run wild again.

He glanced sideways at her. Poor Sìl. Her beautiful name, pronounced with a soft “Shh,” like a whisper in the ear, mocked her. She was a pathetic, scrawny thing with teeth too big for her and unruly red hair so bright it hurt the eyes. Even once she had breasts, no man was going to wed her for her looks.

At least she’d washed the mud off her face.

Ian rolled out his blanket and gave her a warning look. “Lie down and don’t say a word.”

“ ’Tis no my fault—”

“It is,” he said, “though ye know verra well no one is going to blame you.”

Sìleas scrunched herself into a ball on one side of the blanket and tucked her feet under her cloak.

Ian lay down with his back to her and wrapped his plaid around himself. It had been a long day of travel, and he was tired.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, Sìleas shook his shoulder. “I hear something.”

Ian grabbed his claymore and sat up to listen.

“I think it’s a wild boar,” she whispered. “Or a verra large bear.”

Ian flopped back down with a groan. “ ’Tis only the wind blowing the trees. Have ye not tortured me enough for one day?”

He couldn’t go back to sleep with the wee lass shivering beside him. She had no meat on her bones to keep her warm.

“Sìl, are ye cold?” he asked.

“I am near death with it,” she said in a weak, mournful voice.

With a sigh, he rolled onto his back and spread his plaid over both of them.

Now he was wide awake. After staring at the tree branches whipping in the wind above him for a long while, he whispered, “Sìl, are ye awake?”

“Aye.”

“I’m going to be married soon,” he said, and couldn’t help grinning to himself. “I met her at court in Stirling. I’ve come home to tell my parents.”

He felt Sìleas stiffen beside him.

“I’m as surprised as you,” he said. “I didn’t plan to wed for a few years yet, but when a man meets the right woman… Ah, Sìl, she is everything I want.”

Sìleas was quiet for a long time, then she asked in that funny, hoarse voice of hers, “What makes ye know she is right for ye?”

“Philippa is a rare beauty, I tell ye. She’s got sparkling eyes and silky, fair hair—and curves to make a man forget to breathe.”

“Hmmph. Is there nothing but her looks ye can say about this Philippa?”

“She’s as graceful as a faerie queen,” he said. “And she has a lovely, tinkling laugh.”

“And that is why ye want to marry her?”

Ian chuckled at Sìleas’s skeptical tone. “I shouldn’t tell ye this, little one. But there are women a man can have without marriage, and women he cannot. This one is of the second kind, and I want her verra, verra badly.”

He dropped an arm across Sìleas’s shoulder and drifted toward sleep with a smile on his face.

He must have slept like the dead, for he remembered nothing until he awoke to the sound of horses. In an instant, he threw off his plaid and stood with his claymore in his hands as three horsemen rode into their camp and began circling them. Though Ian recognized them as his clansmen, he did not lower his sword.

He glanced over his shoulder at Sìleas to be sure she was all right. She was sitting up with his plaid pulled over her head and was peering out at them from a peephole she had made in it.

“Could this be our own young Ian, back from fighting on the border?” one of the horsemen said.

“Why, so it is! We hear you had great success fighting the English,” another said, as the three continued circling. “It must be that the English sleep verra late.”

“I hear they wait politely for ye to choose the time and place to fight,” said the third. “For how else could a man sleep so soundly he doesn’t hear horses before they ride through his camp?”

Ian gritted his teeth as the men continued enjoying themselves at his expense.

“The English fight like women, so what can ye expect?” the first one said, as three more riders crowded into their camp.

“Speaking of women, who is the brave wench who is no afraid to share a bed with our fierce warrior?” another man called out.

“Your mother will murder ye for bringing a whore home,” another said, causing a round of laughter.

“I want to be there when she finds out,” the first one said. “Come, Ian, let us have a look at her.”

“I’ve no woman with me,” Ian said, flipping back the plaid to reveal the girl. “It is only Sìleas.”

Sìleas yanked the plaid back over herself and glared at all of them.

The horsemen went quiet. Following their gazes, Ian looked over his shoulder. His father and his uncle, who was the chieftain of their clan, had drawn their horses up at the edge of the camp.

There was no sound now, except for the horses’ snorting, as his father’s eyes moved from Ian to Sìleas, then back to Ian with a grim fury.

“Return home now, lads,” his uncle ordered the others. “We’ll follow shortly.”

His father dismounted but waited to speak until the other men were out of earshot.

“Explain yourself, Ian MacDonald,” his father said in a tone that used to signal that Ian was in for a rare beating.

“I don’t know how I could sleep through the approach of your horses, da. I—”

“Don’t play the fool with me,” his father shouted. “Ye know verra well I’m asking why ye are traveling alone with Sìleas—and why we find ye sharing a bed with her.”

“But I am not, da. Well, I suppose I am traveling with her, though I didn’t intend to,” Ian fumbled. “But we are no sharing a bed!”

His father’s face went from red to purple. “Don’t tell me I’m no seeing what’s plain as day before my eyes. There can be but one explanation for this. You’d best tell me the two of ye have run off and married in secret.”

“Of course we’ve not married.”

All the way home, Ian had imagined how his father’s eyes would fill with pride when he heard of Ian’s exploits fighting the English on the border. Instead, his father was speaking to him as if he were a lad guilty of a dangerous prank.

“We were no sharing a bed in the sense ye are suggesting, da,” Ian said, trying and failing to stay calm. “That would be disgusting. How could ye think it?”

“So why is the lass here with ye?” his father asked.

“Sìleas got it into her head that her step-da intends to wed her to one of the MacKinnons. I swear, she was going to run off alone if I didn’t bring her with me.”

His father squatted down next to Sìleas. “Are ye all right, lass?”

“I am, thank ye.” She looked pathetic, her skin pale against her tousled red hair and huddling like a small bird under his plaid.

His father gently took her hand between his huge ones. “Can you tell me what happened, lass?”

This was too much. His father was speaking to Sìleas as if she were the innocent in all of this.