Highland Warrior (Campbell Trilogy #1)(73)
She clasped his arm, feeling the tension coiling under her fingertips. “What is it?”
His face was hard and unyielding, a mask of fierce control. It was the fierce expression of a man going into battle. He looked every inch the leader, every inch the feared enforcer of a king.
“I must leave,” he said without preamble. “Immediately.”
Her heart sank. “But why? Where are you going? Who has sent for you?” All of a sudden she had a terrible thought, one that could explain his reaction. “Is it your sister? Has something happened to Elizabeth?”
He shook his head. “It’s not Lizzie. The missive was from my cousin.”
Argyll. Her heart sank a little deeper. “Oh.”
“I’m afraid I cannot delay. I must go right away.”
“But you are not fully recovered.”
“I’m well enough. This cannot wait.” He wasn’t even looking at her. His mind was already on whatever was taking him away from her. She’d never seen him like this—distracted, impatient . . . remote. She hated Argyll, but never more than now. She hated that he could take Jamie away from her to do his bidding at a moment’s notice.
“Won’t you tell me what—”
“When I return.”
His impatience stung. The intimacy they’d shared was seemingly forgotten. She took a step back from him. “Then I will not delay you any longer.”
Perhaps sensing her hurt at his curt dismissal, he bent and kissed her forehead—just as her father used to do. Never had she so resented it. “I will return soon and explain everything.”
But Caitrina was not so easily pacified, no longer content to be kept in the dark. Danger and death lurked in ignorance. He’d started to turn away, but she clutched his arm. “You won’t be in any danger?”
One side of his mouth lifted in an enigmatic grin. “I ride to Dunoon, Caitrina. That is all.”
It wasn’t until after he’d left the hall that she realized he hadn’t really answered her question.
Once she’d recovered from the shock of Jamie’s sudden departure, anger took over. Dirt and mud sprayed her skirt as she stomped along the path to Ascog, but she paid it no mind. It would serve him right to have her go around in mud-spattered “rags.”
As if departing without explanation weren’t enough, she’d been informed when she’d tried to leave this morning that he’d confined her to the castle for the duration of his absence. She was not even permitted to walk the short path to Ascog to watch the progress of rebuilding.
It had taken her precisely a quarter of an hour to disobey his orders—long enough to find a plaid to cover her head and a group of servants to join as they passed through the castle gate. She’d picked up a bucket and acted as if she were one of the women on her way to work at Ascog. Apparently, it had never occurred to him that she would defy his bidding, because no one was paying close attention to the maidservants leaving the castle.
Not trusting herself to control her anger at her husband, she’d fallen back from the other servants as they walked.
Jamie Campbell was going to face a severe tongue-lashing when he returned. If he thought she would be a complacent wife who meekly followed the bidding of her “lord and master,” a wife who waved good-bye with a handkerchief in her hand and welcomed him back with open arms and a smile, he was in for one rude awakening. If he cared for her, he would show her the respect due his wife, his partner. Partner. Yes, she liked the sound of that. She wanted to know everything and refused to be kept in the dark again. When she thought of how he’d kissed her on the head . . . of all the overbearing, patronizing, loutish—
“It’s good to hear you come to your senses, lass.”
The voice from behind startled her. It took Caitrina a moment to realize it was Seamus.
Apparently, she’d been speaking her thoughts aloud. Not pleased by the interruption, she said sharply, “Senses? What do you mean?”
“We feared we’d lost you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“To Argyll’s Henchman.”
She stiffened at the sobriquet, but as she was in no mood to argue her husband’s finer points, she didn’t jump to his defense—an exercise in futility with her father’s old guardsman as it was. Instead she asked, “Did you wish to see me about something, Seamus?”
“Aye. That I do, mistress. I’ve been trying to tell you for some time, but the Henchman never lets you out of his sight.” He looked around, as if someone might jump out from behind a tree. “Even the castle has ears.”
Caitrina gave her father’s old guardsman a measured look. “It is the laird’s duty to keep himself apprised of all that is going on in the castle. Perhaps caution on his part is warranted given the accident that nearly took both our lives.”
She’d yet to speak with Seamus about what had happened, but Jamie had done so first thing this morning. Her father’s old guardsman claimed that while he’d been hoisting one of the large beams into position, a rope had slipped, knocking another piece of wood off the platform. The knocking was the sound that had alerted Jamie to danger and saved their lives. To a one, her clansmen swore that it had been an accident. Unfortunately, Jamie’s men had not been in position to prove otherwise.