Captured Hearts and Stolen Kisses

by Ceci Giltenan et al.

  When Megan returned with the wine, her mistress drank it slowly, willing its warmth into her chilled veins, but it could not touch the cold fear around her heart. She peered at the weave of the nearly completed Loch Awe tapestry, hoping to lose herself in the color and patterns she had created. She plied the shuttle to and fro, to and fro, lacing the strands together, building a meshwork of vivid blue and pale peach, but this time the colors changing beneath her skilled hands were not enough to make her forget. The hours stretched out, hushed and endless, with only the rhythmic sound of the loom to break the uneasy silence.

  Then, as darkness settled beyond the windows and the torches flared to life, the sound of cheering rose from the courtyard.

  Muriella's hands ceased their movement. She met Elizabeth's gaze in apprehension. No doubt the Campbells had won their battle at last. But at what cost? Now, when she needed it most, when she craved the knowledge the Sight could give her, the power had left her.

  For the second time, Megan flung the door open and came into the room, her face flushed with triumph. "The Macleans have fled!" she cried. "Sir John and his men reclaimed the gate and outer wall, forcing them into the loch. The currents were cruel tonight, and the Macleans blind to the danger of the cold black water. Our men have started comin' in, but Duncan says 'twill be a while before the ones from outside will make their way back."

  Muriella forced herself to ask calmly, "Ye have no word of Sir John?"

  "No, m'lady," Megan told her with regret. "But Duncan says he's better with a sword than any man. No doubt he's safe enough."

  "No doubt," her mistress repeated, but she did not believe it. She stared at her nearly finished tapestry. As it undulated in the yellow glare of the torches, she leaned forward, holding her breath. The red-haired woman knelt on the shore, gazing into the water, but the face below her was not pale and lovely, with the blond, flowing hair of the woman of the loch. The face reflected in the gently shifting water was darkly handsome, bearded and sun-browned, with eyes as blue as the winter sky. Muriella cried out once, then buried her face in the bright, colored fabric.

  Chapter 37

  When the men began to return to the hall, Elizabeth stood waiting to greet them one by one. She had explained to her new husband that she must help with the wounded and he had agreed.

  "Go," Archibald Campbell had told his wife gently. "Mayhap we can begin again tomorrow."

  Now, with Duncan beside her, Elizabeth tended those she could help, doled out food to those who could eat, and learned the names of those who were dead. No one could tell her about her brother. Apparently most of the men had lost sight of him just after the Macleans scattered and fled.

  The men had been arriving for nearly an hour when David Campbell staggered into the hall, clutching his shoulder where an arrow had pierced it. While Elizabeth tore his shirt away and bathed the wound, he told her what he could.

  "After they ran, Sir John thought we'd best follow for a way to see they really meant to return to Mull. He was afraid they'd circle back and surprise the keep. We hadn't gone far when some of the Macleans took it into their heads to turn and fight. That's when I got my wound." He pointed to his shoulder with pride. "'Twas a long skirmish. Seemed more kept coming, despite the number we killed outright. By the time the last Maclean had gone or died, not a single one of us still had a horse. I never saw Sir John, though I looked among the closest corpses. Then my wound started in bleeding, and I thought I'd best come back again."

  Elizabeth knew twenty-five men had left Kilchurn Castle with her brother. It was just past midnight, and she had accounted for twenty-two who were either safe within the keep or dead. Half an hour later, she looked up to see John and another man huddled in the doorway, carrying a third between them. In an instant she was beside them, searching their faces anxiously. Somehow, in the last hours of tending to the wounded, the weight of her self-imposed numbness had left her. For the first time in weeks, she knew she was alive, because the fear was with her again.

  "Elizabeth," her brother said, "aren't ye in bed? Or has yer groom been wounded?"

  John was covered in blood, but his sister could not tell if it was his own. She recognized the second man as Richard Campbell. Leaning down, she examined the third, who was badly wounded. As they dragged him into the light, she saw Andrew Campbell's flaming red hair. His freckles stood out darkly against his pale skin.

  "Elizabeth, come away," John said as he took her arm.

  "There are others to care for him."

  She allowed her brother to draw her toward the fire. "Are ye hurt?" she asked at last.

  "Och, no! Though the Macleans did their best to see that I was. I've been so long because Andrew yonder fell right next to me. Richard and I thought he wouldn't make it back, so we tried to tend to him there as best we could. We stopped the bleeding, at least, and removed the shaft, but I wouldn't care to guess about his chances."

  As he spoke, the exhilaration she had noticed when he first came in seemed to drain from his face. She could see by his furrowed brow that he was tired.

  John felt her questioning gaze and frowned. "Tell me, what do ye here? Ye should be asleep."

  "I was waiting for ye."

  He drew back so he could see her face more clearly. She had not sought him out since his return from Edinburgh, and he could not understand what had brought her to him now. "Why?"

  She glanced around to make certain no one was near. "Johnnie," she murmured, "how weary are ye?"

  "If ye're asking could I fall asleep on the floor with the stones for a pillow, aye, I'm that weary."

  "I think—" she paused, searching for words— "I think ye should go to yer wife."

  John eyed his sister warily. "I don't think she would welcome me in this state." He indicated his clothing, which was crusted with blood. "What makes ye think she would want to see me anyway?"

  "I was with her all evening. She was worried about ye. I know she won't sleep till she's seen ye. Please, just go to her."

  There was a strange expression on Elizabeth's face that John did not entirely like, but he could see no harm in stopping to say good night to Muriella. "All right then," he agreed, "if ye say so. After I wash the blood away. Will that satisfy ye?"

  Elizabeth nodded. She smiled as he started up the stairs. He would find his wife waiting, and tonight she would welcome him, because her defenses had been half destroyed by fear. By morning her brother would be bound inexorably by his love for Muriella; his sister had seen it in his eyes. Just now that was all Elizabeth desired.

  ~ * ~

  Muriella sat in her chamber, gazing out the window. She could see nothing beyond the faint glimmer of stars shrouded with gathering clouds, but she did not mind. The night air cooled her burning cheeks and the cry of the rising wind overshadowed the sound of her own ragged breathing.

  Megan sat behind her mistress, sewing in the lamplight. She was listening intently and heard the footsteps in the hall long before Muriella did. When her mistress finally looked up, her gaze met Megan's and held it. Perhaps those steps meant news of John.

  As the door swung open, Muriella turned, her heart pounding, to find her husband standing on the threshold in a long saffron shirt and trews. His hair clung damply to his head, and his cheeks were pink, as if he had just scrubbed them. She could see some drops of water clinging to his beard; they caught the light, glimmering as he turned his head. Muriella sank back against the stone with a sigh. He was safe.

  Megan rose, looking from her mistress to John and back again. Muriella did not move while her husband stood silent in the doorway, watching her. At last he nodded at Megan and she slipped past him, closing the door behind her.

  John listened until the servant's footsteps had disappeared. He thought he had forgotten how to breathe. Muriella sat by the window, dressed only in a pale gown with a robe draped over her shoulders. In the lamplight, he could see the curve of her breasts against the gossamer-thin fabric. Her hair, usually tightly braided, fell about
her shoulders and down to the floor. With difficulty, he focused on her eyes and the dark shadows underneath. Elizabeth had been right after all; Muriella had not yet slept.

  He stood unmoving, waiting to see if she would shrink from his gaze, but she did not. Instead, she rose to stand facing him, her nightrail undulating about her body like a wisp of transparent smoke.

  "Holy Mother of God," she whispered. "We didn't hear of ye for so long that I thought ye were dead." "Did ye really mind so much?" he asked.

  When she looked for her fear of him, she found it had been washed away in the wake of an even greater fear—that she might have lost him. "Aye," she said simply.

  He took a step forward. "Muriella, I made ye a promise—" Before he could finish, she grasped his hands in hers and kissed them each on the palm.

  He felt the heat of her lips all through his body, and with a deep breath, drew her into his arms. For a long time he merely held her, kissing the top of her head, stroking her hair with his fingertips.

  Muriella was beyond thought or reason. The evidence of her eyes was not enough; she wanted to see with her hands and her lips that the battle had not taken her husband from her after all. Without hesitation, she put her arms around his neck and stood on her toes, raising her lips to his.

  John groaned, then pulled her closer, circling the edge of her mouth with his tongue. The robe slid from her shoulders as he began to caress her back in ever-widening circles, drawing her gown up as he did so. He trembled at the touch of her fingers on his neck, at the way she teased the still-damp strands of his hair, winding her fingers in the dark curls. With one swift gesture, he drew her nightrail over her head and stood gazing at her naked body. He caught his breath in admiration.

  Though her face was touched with sun from her rides across the moors, the skin of her body was pure, startling white. She tossed her hair over her shoulders, revealing the soft lines of her breasts and stomach, hips and thighs. His pulse quickened when he saw the little short breaths she took to calm her excited nerves.

  He wanted to pull her to him roughly, to satisfy at once the hunger she had fueled in him for so long. But he knew he must wait a little longer, until he could hold her in the safety of the darkness. His heartbeat slow and labored, he lifted his wife in his arms, smiling when she twined her arms around his neck and nestled closer. As he carried her across the room, he buried his face in the hair at her neck and traced the line of her throat with his tongue.

  Muriella shivered, amazed that such a little thing could bring her such pleasure. In that moment, she closed her mind to thought and doubt and fear. When John placed her on the bed and tried to pull away, she clung to him, unwilling to lose the heat of his body even for a moment.

  "Wait," he murmured.

  She released him and he moved to the foot of the bed, putting out the lamp as he passed. When she heard him remove his clothes, she held her breath until she felt his weight on the bed, then rolled to the center to meet him.

  John stretched out and held her, not moving, barely breathing, while her racing heartbeat slowed and she became used to the feel of his body on hers. He was heavy and warm and she responded slowly, circling him with her arms, touching his naked skin for the first time of her own free will.

  When she turned her head to meet his lips with hers, John withdrew from her a little. Leisurely, gently, he took her hands to guide them along his shoulders, down over the thick hair of his chest to his hips and beyond. While he kissed her hair and eyes and mouth, he showed her the strength and the softness of his body through her seeking fingertips. Sometimes he shuddered when her hand strayed to a sensitive spot. When her shyness had begun to pass, she sought those places out, delighting in her power to rouse him with a single touch.

  Finally he caught her in his arms, and began to know her body as she had known his. He brushed the hair away from her breasts and ran his fingers over the flesh, which he could see in his memory, though the darkness hid it now. Circling, always circling, he moved his hands over her skin, delighting in its supple warmth and the shivers of pleasure that answered his touch.

  He drew her close, nibbling her ear, tracing the lobe with his warm tongue. She could feel every part of him against her sensitive skin. When he found her breast with his lips, she ceased breathing for fear he would stop. With hands and lips and tongue, he caressed her until she trembled, wanting something more, though she did not know what.

  "Muriella?" John whispered into the throbbing pulse at the hollow of her throat. "Are ye frightened?"

  "No," she answered, surprised at the way the single word vibrated through his body. The blood was pulsing madly in her head, her legs, her chest. The weight of his hands on her body was a pleasure so intense that it left her without breath or words. Now that her eyes had become accustomed to the light, she could see the outline of his face, the fall of his hair across his cheek, the glow of his eyes in the darkness. She felt the water hissing around her, swirling at her shoulders, threatening to pull her under, and knew she should turn away before it was too late. Then John touched her hair, her flushed cheek with his fingertips, and the choice was taken from her.

  "Muriella?"

  She reached up to draw him close—so close that she could hear the pounding of his heart.

  John heard her answer in the movement of her body. His breath escaped in a rush as slowly, his hands cupping her warm flesh, he entered her. She gasped, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, shuddered at the sudden pain, then clung more tightly as he began to move within her.

  Her vision blurred while the colors whirled and clashed and melded in her head. She knew she could not bear it; she could not. In her wonder, she held him closer and closer still, his heart beating into hers, his breath soft against her ear. Then he cried out once. With her lips pressed to his, she swallowed the sound of his passion and answered it with her own. "Johnnie," she breathed.

  When at last they lay side by side, John held her while she trembled, trying to breathe in the stillness that had descended upon them, until the colors settled into familiar patterns, then faded in the darkness. She reached for his hand to grasp it tight, welcoming the heat of his fingers as they twined with hers. "Hold me," she whispered. "Don't go."

  His arms closed around her, caught up in the long, damp tangles of her hair. "I won't leave ye," he murmured. She rubbed her cheek across his chest, then rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He said no more, because, just then, there was nothing more to say.

  Chapter 38

  When John awoke, gray morning was spilling through the open shutters. Tossing aside the furs, he reached out to draw his wife near. With his arm around her shoulders, he looked into her sleep-misted eyes and saw she was smiling. There were no shadows to come between them now.

  Muriella moved closer as he brushed the hair off her shoulder to caress the bare skin. She considered the curves and hollows of his face, made stronger by the morning light, and tears burned behind her eyes. Always before when he came to her bed, he had left her long before dawn, but this time he had stayed. She trembled at the rush of joy that shook her as their lips met and clung. His kiss was warm, insistent, tender. She closed her eyes when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. In that moment, as her body met his, a quiver of fear pierced her happiness and she clung to him more fiercely, her need a wild keening cry inside.

  When John drew away, Muriella moved her hands hungrily over his chest, as if to forge with her open palms a bond between them that could not be broken. She had never before seen his body in light untouched by shadows. She wanted to come to know by sight what she had already learned by touch. Raising herself on one arm, she explored the pattern of dark hair that almost concealed skin toughened by years of sun and battle but still strangely soft beneath her circling fingertips. She traced the jagged line of an old scar, intrigued by the number of these reminders of past violence on his body. Her own half-finger, her only visible scar, touched a puckered line of whitened skin curving over his r
ibs, and she felt an odd disturbing sense of kinship she could not explain.

  "'Tis wonderful hands ye've got, lassie," John murmured, his arm tightening around her shoulders, "but I'm thinking 'tis time I left ye for a while. There's much to be done after yesterday's battle."

  The flame of fear burned brighter. Muriella cupped his face in her hands, tangling her fingers in his beard. I must let him go, she thought, but she whispered, "Stay a little."

  There was nothing her husband would have liked more. The movement of her hands across his chest, the feather-light touch of her fingers in his hair were stirring his need to life once more. But from the light pouring through the half-open shutter, he knew they had already slept too long. "Ah, lass, ye tempt me greatly, but 'tis late. Before the morning's over we have to bury the dead and see to the wounded. But I'll see ye at breakfast, little one."

  Before he rose, he took her in his arms to kiss her one last time. Muriella locked her arms around his neck and her mouth opened under his, drawing a groan of frustration from his parted lips. Then he pulled away and swung his legs over the side of the bed. For a moment he was poised there, frozen in time, the muscles along his back taut with his suppressed desire. Finally, he bent down to scoop his clothes from the floor.

  Muriella watched, heart pounding, while he threw on his shirt and stepped into his trews. His body was fine and strong and supple, and she wanted to feel it beneath her hands, but she knew a single touch would not satisfy the craving within her. "Good-bye, lass," John called as he reached the door. "till later."

  "Aye."

  When he was gone, Muriella closed her eyes, praying for the rapid beating of her heart to ease. She slipped from the bed and found her robe, discarded carelessly the night before. Tossing it over her shoulders, she knelt before the window and looked out at the garden below. It was late spring; long ago the wild roses had taken over the tangled bracken and heather carpeting the ground, but the profusion of bright flowers could not soften the stark, terrible beauty of the scene. In the distance the mountains rose, jagged, black and menacing, outlined against the cloud-filled sky by the shimmering silver sunlight. There would be a storm before the day was out; she could smell the threat of violence in the air, hear it in the rising wind through the brooding pines. Below her, hawthorn and heather and bracken, roses and wild myrtle undulated in the sudden onslaught of cold, wet wind. Only Loch Awe lay still and untouched, an island of peace in the center of the coming storm.