When Niall returned, he insisted she take the cot. She lay with her back to him while he took his turn washing in the same water. When he was finished, he wrapped himself in his plaid on the floor in front of the door.
She blew out the candle and tried to make herself comfortable in the strange bed.
“Thanks for coming with me, Niall,” she said into the darkness. “I don’t believe I could have gotten here without ye.”
“To tell ye the truth, I’m not sure we should have come at all,” Niall said. “The town is filled with Lowlanders and worse—there are English here, starting with the queen herself. We’ve no notion what we’re getting into. Perhaps we’d best go home and solve your problems there.”
“After coming all this way, I’m going to see the queen,” Sileas said, but she closed her eyes and prayed hard for guidance. Was Niall right? Was coming here a mistake? She had never been this far from Skye. And she felt guilty for bringing Niall with her.
Niall was silent so long that she thought he had fallen asleep, when he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what we saw in the kitchen.”
“And what about that did ye find worth considering?” she asked, her voice coming out sharp.
“Well, what if Ian was just taking a bath, and Dina came in, unexpected?” Niall said, hesitation in his voice. “Ye saw the tub, and Ian dripping water.”
“Ye failed to mention that Dina was naked as well,” Sileas said between her teeth. “And don’t try to tell me ye didn’t notice.”
“I could hardly help that, now could I? And at first I believed the same as you about what they were up to in the kitchen.” From the discomfort in Niall’s voice, she could tell he’d rather be rubbed with stinging nettles than discussing this with her. “But ye see, Dina is the sort of woman to drop her clothes without a man even asking.”
Sileas sat up in the bed and glared down at the dark shape on the floor. “And how would ye know this, Niall MacDonald?”
“Well… Dina did it for me,” he said.
Sileas’s mouth fell open. How dare Dina work her wiles on Niall? He was a boy still—despite being over six feet tall.
And Dina’s tendency to shed her clothes did not explain how the MacDonald Crystal ended up around her neck.
“Are ye expecting me to believe nothing happened in that kitchen?” she snapped. “Is that what happened when Dina took her clothes off for you, Niall? Nothing?”
Niall’s silence confirmed his guilt.
“Your mother would be ashamed of ye.” Sileas lay back down and punched her pillow a few times to fluff it.
“I am not a married man,” Niall said. “And what I do with a willing woman is no concern of my mother’s.”
“Hmmph. I’m disgusted with the lot of ye,” she said, turning her back on him and pulling the blanket up to her ears.
The noise from the tavern below was all that interrupted the long silence between them, until, finally, Niall spoke again.
“If I had a wife like you, Sil, I wouldn’t have taken what Dina offered.” Niall paused. “That’s why I keep thinking that maybe Ian didn’t do anything he shouldn’t have. Maybe ye ought to give him a chance to tell ye what happened.”
Sileas tossed and turned on the narrow cot half the night, slapping at the bugs in the straw mattress and thinking of what Niall had said. She had such an abiding weakness for Ian MacDonald that she could almost believe anything that would absolve him.
When she felt her resolve begin to fade, she made herself remember seeing Ian in all his naked glory, his cock standing at the ready, and Dina right behind him without a stitch on—except for the pouch with Sileas’s crystal hanging between her breasts.
Every time she managed to set aside her thoughts about Ian and Dina, she tossed and turned, worrying about meeting the queen. Was she on a fool’s errand, bringing her problem to the queen? Ach, but she was tired of men deciding what to do with her. A woman was bound to be more concerned with her than with her castle.
Even if the queen chose not to help her, what harm could there be in asking?
When Sileas got tired of slapping at the bugs and chasing her thoughts in endless circles, she got up and lay on the hard floor a little ways from Niall. She was grateful to him for staying with her and respecting her decision, even if what she did seemed foolish to him.
By annulling her marriage to Ian, she would also sever her formal tie with Niall. That was one more loss, and a hard one. She lay listening to him breathing, knowing Niall would always be the brother of her heart. She hoped he felt the same and that she would not lose him as well.
CHAPTER 23
Sileas paced the tiny room above the tavern, regretting with every turn that she had let Niall talk her into waiting here while he delivered her letter to the castle. At the sound of a knock, she picked up her dirk from the bed and put her ear to the door.
“Sileas, let me in.”
It was Niall, so she slid the bolt back. “I was worried half to death. What took ye so long?”
“Don’t ye look fine, now,” Niall said, taking in her gown.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Will the queen see me?”
“The guards laughed at me when I told them I would wait for the queen’s answer,” Niall said, as he dropped
