THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

art well-dowered, why doth ye wear the gowns of the laird’s third wife?”
    Did she just say third wife? The wad of bread Beth had been chewing suddenly clotted her throat. How the hell many wives has Duncan had? She’d read about only one. Is this woman—now looking down her perfect little nose at her—implying she was number four? And where the hell is Rachael and the water? A body could die of thirst around here.  
    “Ye must ken ye uncle, the Duke of Albany well.”
    “No...nay, I’ve never met him.” Beth missed whatever the woman said next as she continued to ruminate over Duncan’s other wives. Did they divorce during this time? She didn’t think so.
    Flora tapped Beth’s arm to get her attention. “Why, then, dost Albany find ye digne to wed The MacDougall?”
    Beth shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him, Flora. I haven’t a clue.”
    “Clue?”
    Beth didn’t get a chance to explain her American slang. Rachael, looking quite pleased, had arrived with a large pan of hot water, toweling, and a small mirror.
    “Ye water and glass, madame .”
    As the fourth Lady MacDougall groaned, Flora curtsied and backed away. She wove her way back through the cluttered hall and resumed her place in the far corner. She picked up her needlework and pretended to embroider as she studied Blackstone’s newest mistress through lowered lashes.
    So this is the next wife Duncan the Black gets to torment. The new Lady MacDougall was certainly nothing to look at and as addled, poor thing, as rumor accounts. So how will he dispose of this one? Twill, no doubt, be the easiest to eliminate yet. For kill her he will, just as he killed her beloved sister. And if he dinna, she’d tend to it herself.
    # # #
     
    Duncan ran an agitated hand through his hair as he stood in the bailey and studied the shafts of papers Isaac Silverstein had compiled.
    “Have we enough to finish the kirk and get through the winter?”
    Isaac rolled a shoulder, “ Oui , but only if ye dinna have the brass effigy made. Simply carve Mary’s name into the stone, and forego the elaborate woodwork.”
    No effigy . As he buried her, he’d promised Mary she’d be memorialized in bronze. His second and third wives he’d made no such promise to, but Mary had been a good woman and deserved the honor. Too, her sister Flora and her father, the Campbell, would expect it.
    He looked about the bailey, his gaze settling on the blacksmith pounding out hinges for doors he’d yet to find enough wood to make. Perhaps he’d been foolish in not taking up the Duke of Albany’s offer. ‘Twas not too late. He could don his armor and once again sell his soul and arm, becoming a mercenary fighting in Normandy for the French King against Henry IV of England. The thought of maiming and killing men he held no personal grudge against yet again he found distressing. As much as leaving Blackstone unfinished and in the hands of untried warriors, for he knew Angus and Douglas would insist on following him. But if it has to be done. . .
    Damn his hapless sire.
    “Halt fashing, Duncan,” Isaac murmured. ‘Tis making ye ill. We must simply be prudent. All will be well.”
    “We lost half of our wee kine in that late snowstorm, Isaac. Ye ken we must now barter or buy meat if we don’t want to butcher our breeders.”
    “True, but the fishing is going well, non ? The women are drying flakes in salt as we speak, and the crops look promising, so we willna starve.”
    “Looking promising and being harvested are not the same thing.”
    “Duncan, do ye not trust me?”
    He looked at his advisor, the man who not ten years ago had been sentenced by the villagers of Ballimoor to cumburenda—-burning at the stake—and sighed. “Aye, I trust ye. Ye’ve kept me afloat with ye wee trading all these years with naught but a few marks of silver.”
    “And will continue to do so. Here.” He handed Duncan an invitation bearing the King’s seal. “The tournament is to be held in honor of His Majesty’s birthday in two months time. No man can beat ye at the lists or at jousting, so yer fears are for naught, mon ami .” Isaac gave him a slap on the shoulder as he walked away.
    Duncan hissed as his back muscles knotted like the tarred shrouds on a ship. Pain radiated down his spine and left arm. “Merciful mother of God, why will I not heal?”
    He felt a tap on his good arm.
    “We need to talk.” His wode new ladywife stood at his side with her hands on her hips.
    He frowned