Highland Hellion (Highland Weddings #3)(50)

She didn’t know what it meant, couldn’t form serious thoughts if she had needed to. Her body felt heavy and more satisfied than she’d ever imagined possible. So she didn’t bother to open her eyes, but drifted off into sleep while wrapped in bliss.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to face her circumstances.

*

Gordon land

“He’ll no’ last long.”

Diocail nodded once in response to the healer before the man made his way out of the laird’s chamber on shuffling footsteps.

“Bury that bastard in unhallowed ground,” Colum growled from his bed.

Diocail only sent him a steady stare. Colum tried to rise, but the wound was weakening him too much.

“I am still laird.”

“Aye,” Diocail agreed. “And I’ve served ye dutifully.”

“No’ so well as ye think,” Colum snarled. “I am still dying.”

“Ye’ve lived a long life.”

Two of Colum’s captains eyed Diocail, waiting to see what Colum would make of his words. Their laird looked out from his bed, hate twisting his features. He even sent that same look toward the priest who had come to offer him last rites. Instead, he looked at his secretary and gestured him toward the bedside.

“Diocail is me chosen successor.”

The secretary nodded and pulled a sheet of paper from his small traveling desk. Colum pointed at Diocail. “And ye’ll take the Hay lass as yer wife. Bring me the offer.”

His secretary was off in a moment, going through the opening into the outer chamber and beyond it to where Colum kept his business papers.

“Ye’ll do as I say,” Colum informed Diocail. “I can see ye mean to argue with me, and I will no’ have it.”

“Better to wed the MacPherson girl and put an end to the bad blood between our clans.”

“I…will…no’…have…it!” Colum growled, straining to rise from his bed, but his blood was draining from his body. Tyree’s blade had sunk deep into the man’s belly, and it was a better death to go with his blood than to linger as infection from the wound took him slowly with fever and rot.

So they had not bound the wounds, but laid him in his bed.

“My laird.” The priest ventured closer, recognizing the look of approaching death. “’Tis time to repent, embrace peace, and be welcomed into heaven’s grace.”

Colum had no intention of embracing submission to the Church’s doctrine. His eyes glittered with hatred as he pressed his signet ring into the wax his secretary had poured onto a document.

“The Hay girl…” Colum’s voice was becoming weaker. “Bring me the offer…now…”

More of the Gordon captains filed into the room. Colum tried to lift his hand, but in the end, he couldn’t press his ring into the wax. He slumped back against the bedding as the priest tried to gain a confession from him.

He died with hatred in his eyes.

“Do any of ye mean to challenge me?” Diocail asked the captains. They were men who had earned the respect of the Gordons, and they contemplated him for long moments before one of them shook his head and the others followed.

Diocail obviously hadn’t thought it would be so simple. The most senior of the captains slowly grinned. “Ye’re welcome to the burden. I have enough authority to content me, and ye will have to ride down and give yer vow to Morton. I want none of that, yet whoever takes up the mantle of laird will have to see it done.”

“I will do it,” Diocail declared.

The senior captain nodded before lowering himself to one knee and pulling his dagger. He pressed a kiss of allegiance against the blade before rising.

The other captains slowly made their way over to kneel before Diocail. Colum looked on in death, the priest finally closing his eyes once the last man had knelt.

His mother would have enjoyed the moment.

Diocail felt her spirit rejoicing to see her son, the unwanted whelp, being given Colum’s blessing. She’d taken him into the isles to make sure he survived, and the harsh life had aged her. But he was strong and enough of a man to reclaim what she had always told him was his birthright.

He turned and left the chamber, going to face the first true challenge of his lairdship. It wasn’t coming in the form of feuding clans that he needed to run his land.

No, it was in the form of the Earl of Morton, and Diocail would have been a fool to dismiss how very dangerous the coming meeting was.

*

Katherine’s eyes popped opened the next morning while it was still gray.

“I thought they’d at least wait until dawn,” Rolfe groused as he rolled out of the bed and found his shirt. “Best rise, lass.”

There was a flutter as her chemise came sailing across the bed toward her.

She grabbed it and tugged at the sleeves to pull them right side out, her fingers fumbling as she heard the footfalls coming closer.

“Lord, it sounds as if half the Lindsey clan is coming,” she muttered as she succeeded in getting into her shift.

Not a moment too soon, either. The door burst in without a knock as Katherine held tight to the covers. The chemise was puddled around her waist, and her bare bottom was still beneath the bedding.

“Ye are a dead man.”

Marcus MacPherson stood in the doorway, wearing enough dirt to tell her he’d been riding hard for a long time. His face was coated with it, so when he flashed his teeth at Rolfe, they looked even brighter due to how much grime was on his face.