Teresa Medeiros by Whisper of Roses Page B

MacDonnell court. She suspected most of their justice would be meted out by the honed blade of an ax. Her heartbeat quickened. Was her papa about to condemn Morgan to some fate even more terrible than imprisonment?
    “Don’t forget the time the rascal poured honey in all of your slippers,” she reminded her worried reflection. “Hanging would be no better than he deserved.”
    She jerked out a sprinkling of saucy tendrils before sailing from the room with Pugsley huffing and puffing at her satin-clad heels.
    After leaving Pugsley in the kitchen to gum a saucer of gruel, Sabrina entered the hall to find its face transformed yet again. Her mother’s graceful furniture had been shoved aside to make room for rows of crude benches and a raised dais crowned with a single carved chair. The hall was thronged with the elders of the clan and several ancient villagers. In their dour, wrinkled visages she read memories of other Cameron courts and judgments. Sabrina wondered if her father was breaking the English laws by daring to convene a court that boldly placed his authority as laird of Clan Cameron over the king’s.
    One of Sabrina’s uncles twisted around to give her a fond wink as she slid onto a bench next to Enid. “Have I missed anything?” she whispered.
    Enid shook her head, her face flushed with excitement. “Not a word. It’s as if they’ve been waiting for something.”
    Sabrina had no further opportunity to question her cousin. At her father’s signal, the main door was flung open.
    Sabrina’s heart fluttered like the fragile wings of one of her mother’s finches. Morgan stood in the doorway, proud and free, his plaid draped in folds across hismighty shoulders like the mantle of a king. The morning sunlight slanted behind him, wreathing his hair in gold and sheening the blade of the ax hanging from his belt to dull copper.
    Enid leaned over to whisper, “From what I can gather, Uncle Dougal freed him at dawn and commanded he appear before the court with his kin. There was a terrible row when your brothers tried to convince your papa the MacDonnell would take his clansmen and flee to the mountains for reinforcements.”
    No, Sabrina thought. Morgan was one MacDonnell who would run from nothing. And she was the only Cameron who knew that there were no reinforcements waiting in the mountains.
    Morgan’s clansmen clustered in a protective knot around him, their hands resting on the hilts and butts of their weapons. Some were obviously still suffering ill effects from the night’s revelry. One pale lad stumbled over the stoop and would have fallen flat had his nearest companion not righted and cuffed him in the same clumsy motion.
    Morgan stepped forward. Sabrina had never seen a man surrounded by so many look so alone. She squelched a pang of empathy.
    For an elusive instant before he spoke, Sabrina would have sworn she felt her father’s gaze brush her. Then his lilting burr filled the hall, unwittingly echoing the words she had spoken to Morgan twelve years earlier. “Welcome to Cameron, Morgan MacDonnell.”
    The greeting was given as if the man hadn’t spent the previous week imprisoned beneath this very hall. There was a long pause, then an audible sigh of relief from the benches when Morgan curtly inclined his head in acceptance. Brian and Alex stepped forward from the crowd to escort him to the dais. Escort or guard? Sabrina wondered, noting the way Morgan dwarfed her lean brothers. The crowd gave way like water before their path. Morgan’s gaze passed over her without so much as a flicker of recognition.
    Sabrina squirmed on the bench, ignoring Enid’spuzzled look. Morgan was obviously going to be judged for daring to accost the laird’s daughter.
    How could she allow Morgan to march so stoically to his fate without speaking even a word in his defense? Perhaps if her father knew the true circumstances of his surrender, he might soften his judgment. As Morgan had so unkindly but truthfully pointed