Yet the Elliott, laird of an ancient clan of noble lineage, had decided to overlook it all (for two manors and a fair amount of coin) and a match had been promised. Now Drustan merely had to hide his unusual abilities long enough to make Anya Elliott care for him, or at least long enough to get a few bairn. He knew better than to hope for love. Time had taught him that well.
Love, he mused. What would it be like to have a woman look at him with admiration? Appreciate who he was? Each time he’d begun to believe a woman might care about him, she’d seen or heard something that had frightened her witless and abandoned him, crying, Pagan! Sorcerer!
Bah. He was a perfectly respectable Christian. He just happened to be a Druid too, but he suffered no conflicts of faith. God was in everything. As He’d granted His beauty to mighty oaks and crystal lochs, He’d also brushed the stones and the stars with it. Absorbed in the simple perfection of an equation, Drustan’s faith deepened, not weakened. Recently, he’d begun regularly attending mass again, intrigued with the intelligent young priest who’d taken over the services at the castle. Endowed with a gentle manner, a quick wit, an addled mother for whom he couldn’t be blamed, and an open-mindedness rare in men of the Kirk, Nevin Alexander didn’t condemn the MacKeltars for being different. He saw past the rumors to the honorable men within. Mayhap in part because his own mother practiced a few pagan rites.
Drustan was pleased the young priest would be performing the wedding ceremony. Work restoring the lovely chapel in the castle had been accelerated, to have all in readiness.
In anticipation of his future wife’s arrival at Castle Keltar, he’d taken precautions. Not only had he warned Silvan and Dageus about unusual displays of talent and mind-boggling conversations, but he’d had the “heretical” tomes removed from the library and toted up for secure storage in Silvan’s tower chamber. God willing, she’d be so busy with her aunts and maids who were to accompany her that she wouldn’t notice anything odd about any of them. He would not make the same mistakes with Anya Elliott as he’d made with his first three betrotheds. Surely his family could present their best boots forward for only a fortnight!
He would not fail this time, he vowed optimistically.
Unfortunately, no one else in the castle seemed optimistic this morn.
Upon awakening, hungry, and unable to a find a single kitchen lass about, he’d wandered down the corridor to the kitchens, calling for Nell, until she’d finally poked her head out of the buttery to see what he wanted.
What did any man want in the morning, he’d teased, besides an energetic tussle between the sheets? Food.
She hadn’t smiled and teased back. Casting him sidewise and oddly scathing glances, Nell had complied, following him back to the Greathall and slapping down crusty, week-old bread, flat ale, and a pork pie that he’d begun to suspect contained parts of a pig he’d prefer not to think about.
Where were his treasured kippers and tatties, fried crispy golden? Since when had he, Nell’s favorite, rated such meager fare in the morning? On occasion Dageus had been treated in such a poor fashion—usually when he’d done something Nell hadn’t appreciated, involving a lass—but not Drustan.
So now he sat alone, wishing someone, anyone, even young Tristan, the bright lad they were training in basic Druidry, might saunter in with a hullo or a smile. He was not a man given to dark moods, yet this morning his entire world felt off-balance, and he couldn’t shake a niggling sense of foreboding that it was about to get worse.
“So?” Silvan said, popping his head into the Greathall, skewering him with his intense gaze. “Where were you last night?” The rest of him followed at a more leisurely pace. Drustan smiled faintly. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never get used to his father’s gait. Headfirst, the rest of him trailing behind, as if he tolerated his body only because it was necessary to tote his head about from place to place.
He took a swill of flat ale and said dryly, “Good morning to you too, Da.” Was everyone out of sorts this morn? Silvan hadn’t even bothered with a greeting. Just a question that had sounded much like an accusation and had made him feel like a lad again, caught slipping back in from a nocturnal dalliance with a serving wench.
The elderly Keltar paused inside the doorway, leaned back against the stone column, and folded his arms across his chest. Too busy pondering the mysteries of the universe and scribbling in his journals to indulge in training or swordplay, Silvan was nearly as tall as Drustan, but much narrower of frame.
Drustan forced himself to swallow a mouthful of what he was becoming convinced was pig-tail pie. Crunch-crunch. By Amergin, what had Nell put in the thing? he wondered, trying not to look at the filling overmuch. Did she bake horrid things in advance to ply upon whomever upset her in some fashion?