Taming a Wild Scot: A Claimed by the Highlander Novel by Rowan Keats Page A

is it?”
    About to apply ink to parchment, the priest paused. He waited for the table to cease wobbling, then scripted a word with strong sure strokes. When his ink ran dry, he looked up. “I am.” His cool gaze ran from Niall’s unshaven face to his scuffed boots, a frown rising to his brow. “And you are?”
    Niall offered a grimy hand. “Robbie Bisset, husband of Ana Bisset.”
    “Ah, that explains the unfamiliar face.” The friar hesitated briefly, then met him palm to palm. “Welcome to Duthes, goodman. How can I assist you?”
    “I’ve come to discuss my wife.”
    “Oh?”
    “She says she was here last eve, praying in the kirk.”
    The friar stared at him for a long moment. “Do you have cause to doubt her?”
    Niall snorted. “I’ve been absent from her bed nigh on eight months, and whilst I was gone, she received word I was dead. The better question might be: Do I have reason to trust her?”
    “You fear she may have found another in your absence?”
    Niall straightened his shoulders and drew in a full chest of air. “Aye. Though it best not be true.”
    Even in the face of Niall’s bristling might, the friar did not sit back. A confidence born of his important position held him steady. No one would dare attack the village friar. “I cannot speak for the entirety of her time, but I
can
attest to her presence in the kirk last night. She prayed here for some time.”
    “She also swears you demanded she bend the knee every spare moment.”
    “I did.”
    Niall shook his head. “I’m a great believer in the sanctity of prayer, Brother Colban, but I cannot permit that.”
    A heavy frown settled on the friar’s brow. “Her soul is at risk, goodman.”
    “That may be so,” Niall said. “But a man must be the master of his own house. Whilst my wife is here praying, there’s no food on the table, no mending of my clothes, no chores done about the bothy.”
    “Surely you would make a small sacrifice to save her soul?”
    “Nay. Not the now. My house is in shambles. Ana has been without the guidance of a husband for too long, and she’s inappropriately willful. I must curb her wayward spirit or face the rest of my days with a brazen chit.” Not all of that was a lie.
Willful
was scarcely a strong enough word to describe Ana. “The Lord values a submissive wife, does he not?”
    Friar Colban nodded. “Indeed, he does.
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord
.”
    “Well, then—”
    The wide beam of sunlight cast through the open door flickered, and a sweaty, soot-covered lad ran into the chapel. “
Fire!
There’s a fire in the kitchens, Friar!”
    So unexpected was the interruption, that the friar simply stood there for a moment, stunned.
    Niall stepped into the breach. Dunstoras had once been gutted by fire. It had occurred long before Niall’s birth, but sooty reminders of the devastation remained on the granite stones to this day—and nine lives had been lost. If Duthes Manor was to escape a similar fate, every hand and every bucket would be needed. “Ring the bell backward,” he ordered the holy man.
    The friar jumped up from his stool and raced for the bell tower steps.
    To the young lad, Niall said, “Off to the garrison with you. Round up every able body.”
    The boy left the kirk at a run, and Niall followed, dashing for the well. In the courtyard, fat plumes of dark gray smoke oozed from the rectangular kitchen entrance, but as yet no flames were visible.
    “Find every bucket you can, lads!” he yelled to the gawking stable hands. “Hurry now.”
    As he reached the well, the kirk bell began to toll out the chimes—in reverse order—sounding the alarm. Niall grabbed the wooden handle and swiftly cranked the bucket up from the depths of the well. He poured the water into a pail held by one of the stable boys and immediately dropped the well bucket back down the hole. The first lad ran off toward the kitchen, replaced by another. As more men arrived to help,