and her daughter Fenella to cook. The village women came in to clean. Norval said there was an army of them.”
Aidan stared at him, barely comprehending his words, and when meaning did sink in, he frowned. “Of course she didn’t do this all herself.”
“You knew it?”
“She couldn’t have. Think, Deacon, my stables were cleaner than this house. She couldn’t have done it all in one day.”
His brows came together. “You aren’t angry to find out she cheated?”
Aidan silently begged for patience. “It wasn’t a game, Deacon. There was no cheating.”
“I thought you were hoping she’d grow so frustrated with the task, she’d leave.”
“I was.”
“But?”
Aidan sliced the air with his hand. “But nothing. I set up the task. She performed it.”
“She hired a cook! Did she ask you? What sort of wife hires servants without permission from her husband?”
“A sensible one,” he snapped, and then growled in frustration at his defense of Anne. “I don’t consider her my wife,” he said more for himself than Deacon. He drew a deep breath. “I am not displeased she hired Mrs. MacEwan to cook. I’ve been meaning to do something about Roy for ages. Anne has taken a load off my mind—”
“But the Danes—”
“I know,” he said, cutting Deacon off. He shot a warning glance toward his bedroom door. They must be careful of every word. Deacon, like his brother Robbie, often let his temper overrule his good sense.
Deacon lowered his voice. “Their signal could come at any time.” Shepherds and village men kept watch nightly in Kelwin’s left tower for the Danes’ signal, a green and red light raised and lowered at the same time.
Aidan didn’t know Anne well enough to trust her. “I will have to be harder on her tomorrow,” he said. “She’ll leave…eventually.”
“What if the Danes come tonight?”
“If they send the signal tonight, she’ll not know a thing. She’s so tired she might as well be dead.”
“Now that could be a solution.”
“Deacon!”
“I was joking,” his friend said.
Aidan wasn’t so certain. “I’ll have no harm coming to her. If it does, you answer to me.”
“A joke, a wee joke,” Deacon reiterated.
“Yes, like your talk of a rebellion. That’s the way it started, you and Robbie playing ‘what if.’ Now Fang’s sons are among those involved.”
“And all your neighbors.”
“Not all. I can’t imagine Argyll and Sutherland anxious for such a thing.”
“They are some of those we are revolting against.” But he understood Aidan’s point and changed the subject. “So what are you going to have her do tomorrow? Build chicken coops? Patch the cracks in the walls? The keep itself is immaculate right now.”
Aidan smiled thinly. “Coops aren’t a bad idea, but I’m ready for my bed.”
“Your bed? Where she is?” Deacon asked cynically.
“Relax. I’m sleeping in the guest room. She will leave. A plan will come to me before morning. By the way, when you go back downstairs, tell Norval to put the dogs back in the stables.”
Deacon shifted uncomfortably before admitting, “You said they’d cleaned all the rooms up here. I thought perhaps I’d claim one for myself.”
“It’s nice to have clean sheets, hmmm?”
Deacon shrugged, then confided, “Norval says they smell of fresh air.”
“You are welcome to a room, Deacon. Pleasant dreams.” He went to the guest room.
Tomorrow, a plan to scare her off would come to him before tomorrow…but his last thought before drifting to sleep was that the sheets did smell of the sweet highland air they’d dried in.
Anne sat up and stretched. Every muscle in her body ached. Outside, the sun was just rising over the North Sea. For a moment, the beauty of the brightening sky captured her attention and then she glanced around the room. The tub and towel were where she’d had Norval place them last night.
Had Aidan not come home?
She’d assumed he would wake her. For no other reason than to tell her to get out of his bed, she mused. But she had wanted to see the expression on his face when he first walked into the great hall.
She put her legs over the edge of the bed and frowned at the wrinkles in her dress. Why did she fall asleep in it?
She had plans for this day, finishing touches she wanted to add. There was no time for pressing a dress. She knew better than to ask Norval to do it. The man should be pensioned off and given a cottage of his own. He was too old to work so hard, and yet yesterday he had gamely kept up with