Lord of Dunkeathe. Margaret Moore
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speak to him right away,” Riona replied. Delaying wasn’t going to make her task any easier.
Through their unguarded gate came their ancient nag pulling a cart with tufts of wool clinging to the rickety sides. Uncle Fergus was perched on the seat, his feileadh belted low beneath his ample stomach, his linen shirt half-untucked. Wisps of his shoulder-length iron-gray hair had escaped from the leather thong he used to tie it back. He looked disheveled enough that Riona might have suspected he’d been drinking, except that Uncle Fergus rarely imbibed to excess, and never in the village.
“And I brought her hooooome from Killama-groooo!” he finished with a flourish before beaming down on his son and niece like a triumphant general home from a long and tough campaign.
“Ah, here you are and both together!” he cried, tossing aside the reins and rising. He spread his arms as if he wanted to embrace the whole of the small fortress, walls, stone buildings and all. “Riona, my beauty, I have such news for you!”
In spite of what she had to tell him and her fear about the price he’d gotten for the wool, Riona couldn’t help smiling. She was beautiful only in her uncle’s loving eyes, but his epithet always made her feel as if she might be a little beautiful.
“Such news—and I might have missed it if I’d waited,” he said with a wry look at his son. He turned and started to climb down, almost catching the fabric of his feileadh on the edge of the seat.
With a soft and mild curse, he tugged the fabric down so that it again covered his bare knee.
“Is your back troubling you?” Riona asked anxiously, as both she and Kenneth hurried forward to lend him a hand. “You didn’t help unload the wool, did you?”
“No, no, my beauty,” he assured her. “I let those young lads of Mac Heath do all the work.”
Kenneth shot Riona a disgruntled look. Mac Heath was not known for honest dealings and Riona didn’t doubt that if Kenneth had his way, they’d never speak to Mac Heath, let alone sell any wool to him.
“Why Mac Heath?” Kenneth asked.
“Because he gave me the best price.”
Riona and Kenneth exchanged another glance, only this time, Uncle Fergus intercepted it.
“Now, children,” he chided, although even his criticism was jovial, too. “There’s no need for such looks. I did as you suggested, Kenneth, and asked more than one how much he’d pay. Mac Heath gave the most.”
Riona guessed Mac Heath had done that because his scales were weighted. Before they could say anything more about that, though, Uncle Fergus threw his arms about their shoulders and gave them another expansive smile as he steered them toward the hall.
“Now let me tell you what I heard. It’s wonderful, something that’s going to make all the difference in the world to you, Riona,” he finished with a nod in her direction.
She had no idea what that could possibly be, unless he’d heard of a way to feed a small household for free.
Uncle Fergus dropped his arms as they reached the hall, a low rectangular stone building ten feet by twenty.
“You know of Sir Nicholas of Dunkeathe? The Norman fellow King Alexander gave that huge estate to, the one south of here, as a reward for his service?” Uncle Fergus asked as he led the way over the rush-covered floor to the central hearth where a peat fire burned, even on this relatively mild June day.
“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” Riona replied warily, wondering what on earth that Norman mercenary could have to do with her.
“So have I,” Kenneth said. “He’s as arrogant as they come—which is saying a lot, since he’s a Norman.”
“He’s got some right to be arrogant, if what they say about him is true,” Uncle Fergus replied. “It’s not every man who can start with almost nothing and make his way so far in the world. Aye, and he’s handsome as well as rich, and a friend of the king to boot.”
“So what has he to do with Riona, or she with him?” his son asked with a puzzlement that matched Riona’s.
“She’s going to have a lot to do with him,” Uncle Fergus replied as he threw himself into the one and only chair to grace the interior of the hall. “Word’s gone out that he’s looking for a wife. Any and all who meet the requirements are welcome to attend him at his castle and he’s going to pick a bride from among them. We’re to be there by noon on the day of the feast of St. John the Baptist—Midsummer’s Day. Sir Nicholas wants to make his choice by Lammas.”
“From the twenty-third of June to the first day of August isn’t very long,” Kenneth noted. “Why is Sir Nicholas in such a hurry?”
“Anxious to have a wife to help him run his castle, I don’t doubt. And who better to be his bride than our Riona, eh?”
Riona stared at him, completely dumbfounded. Uncle Fergus thought she ought to marry a Norman? He thought a Norman nobleman would want to marry her? Maybe he had been drinking.
Kenneth looked just as shocked. “You think Riona should marry a Norman?”
“That one, aye, if she can. A woman could do a lot worse.”
Riona found that hard to believe, and so, obviously, did Kenneth. “Even if Riona wanted him,” he said, darting her a look that showed how unlikely that would be, “what about these requirements you mentioned?”
“Oh, they’re not important,” Uncle Fergus declared, waving his hand dismissively. “What’s important is that this rich fellow needs a wife, and Riona deserves a fine husband.”
“Surely he won’t want me,” Riona protested.
Uncle Fergus looked at her as if she’d uttered blasphemy. “Why not?”
She picked the reason that would hurt him, and herself, the least. “He’ll want a Norman bride.”
“Well, he was born a Norman, I grant you,” Uncle Fergus reflected as he rubbed his bearded chin. “But he’s a Scots lord now. Dunkeathe was his reward from Alexander—our king, not the English one. King Alexander’s taken two Norman wives, too, so why shouldn’t a Norman wed a Scot? And didn’t Sir Nicholas change the name of his estate back to Dunkeathe from that ridiculous Norman name, Beauxville or Beauxview or whatever it was?”
“But he was a mercenary, a hardened killer for hire.”
“Aye, he was a fighter, and poor, as well,” Uncle Fergus said. “I can respect a man like that, who’s made something of himself.”
“He’ll no doubt want a wealthy bride.”
“Aye, and we’ve no money for a dowry,” Kenneth added.
Although it was true that they had almost nothing in the way of gold or silver, Riona cringed when she saw the stunned disbelief in her uncle’s blue eyes. “What, there’s nothing?”
“Not much,” Kenneth replied, his resolve slipping into prevarication. “I’ve been trying to warn you—”
“Aye, aye, so you have,” Uncle Fergus said, his brow furrowing. “I didn’t think it was as bad as all that.”
Riona had rarely seen her uncle look so worried, and she hated being a cause of distress to him now. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t—”
“Aye, what does the money or lack of it matter in the end?” Uncle Fergus declared, smiling once again as he interrupted her. “If it was some other woman, it might, but you’re the prize, my beauty, not a bag of coins.”
She tried another reason. “Uncle, I don’t know anything about running a Norman’s household.”
“What’s to know? You’ve been running mine since you were twelve. Besides, from what I hear about Norman women, they’re a poor lot. Spend all their