Chapter 11
Early the next day, James stood near Castle Haven’s stables, wondering why none of the kinsmen he’d encountered since rising hadn’t crossed themselves when he’d strode past them on his way to the bailey. There was surely a mad glint in his eye. His shirt and plaid were rumpled, and his hair snarled into a tangled mess. After a night spent tossing, turning, and pacing his bedchamber, his temper had been too frayed to bother with his usual careful ablutions.
This morn – for the first time in all his days – he’d appeared before his men looking like a bog monster who’d just crawled up from a peat mire.
He also felt like one.
How could he not after what he’d done?
But other than morning greetings, no one paid him any particular heed. The bailey bustled as always. Even the breaking of his fast had proved no different than any other. Catriona had passed the meal in suspiciously good spirits. Over bannocks and watered down wine, she’d accepted Hugh’s moony-eyed praise with smiles and easy banter.
She also looked more enchanting than any female should at such an unholy hour. And – he couldn’t help but notice - she’d accoutered herself as if preparing for battle. James knew whose head she wanted on a pike.
And if she hoped to tempt him, she’d succeeded.
She’d plaited her hair into two shining braids that hung to her waist, even twining silk ribbons into the strands. Her rich green gown fit snugly to the hips and dipped low in the bodice, revealing the creamy swells of her breasts. James couldn’t swear to it, but he was fairly sure that the crests of her nipples peeked above the gown’s edge.
Fierce need gripped him when he’d noticed. His mind leapt from her pert rosy nipples to the swollen bud nestled beneath her soft and fragrant feminine curls. At once, he’d recalled the sleek flesh of her inner thighs, remembering how she’d parted her legs so he could stroke her there. And all that had happened afterwards…
Then he’d sat at his own high table, making converse, while his vitals swelled and tightened so uncomfortably that he’d had to stifle a groan.
And if that wasn’t enough to set him on his ear, her gillyflower perfume wafted around her like a delicately-scented cloud, bewitching every masculine nose within ten paces and making him wonder if she’d soaked the gown in scent after she’d stormed from his bedchamber.
Worse, she’d granted him no more notice than a politely muttered, ‘I bid you good morn.’
She’d treated him like air.
Alasdair proved congenial as ever, not tossing a single narrow-eyed look his way.
And therein lay his problem.
The reason he’d spent a sleepless night. And why he now drew a tight breath and clenched his fists. His men and everyone else filling the bailey must’ve lost their sight. If they hadn’t, they’d see a different man when they looked at him this morn.
He’d breached every code of honor he lived by.
Not just offending a guest beneath his roof, but insulting a woman. A lady. And one who was the well-esteemed sister of a feuding clan chieftain. Worse, he’d forced his kisses on her, however willfully she’d provoked them.
He’d stolen her innocence.
And wedding her to make it right would only unleash a worse calamity on her. She’d already seen the Doom of the Camerons. The specter’s visitation could only mean Catriona was marked for tragedy. If – his gut seized, unpleasantly – he forced nuptials on her.
He’d surely lost his senses.
Tipping back his head, he glowered at the low, gray sky. Praise God the day was dark and overcast. The angry clouds suited his mood. As did the smell of cold, damp stone and the more pungent aroma of the nearby horses, standing patiently as they waited to be mounted.
Now wasn’t the hour for brightness and light, the scent of spring meadows.
Not when he’d sinned so grievously he should be sprouting horns and a tail. And ravishing Catriona was only the beginning of his perfidy. The sad truth was, given the chance, he’d not change his behavior.
The only thing he regretted was his unexpected reaction to tumbling her.
He’d found heaven in the sinuous warmth of her sweet, silken curves. And he could still feel the magnificent rounds of her breasts crushed to his chest, her nipples taut and thrusting against him. His fingers itched to again squeeze her deliciously plump bottom. And he knew he’d never lose the urge to run his hands over her naked flesh. Sinking into her, moving in and out of her tight, molten depths, had shook him with a force of passion more fierce than any he’d ever known.
“Damnation…” He clamped his mouth in a hard, tight line and closed his eyes, willing the torrid thoughts to vanish from his mind.
But rather than fading, another wickedly vivid image of her parted thighs flashed before him. And this time when he recalled her triangle of glossy red curls, he could almost smell the rich tang of her womanhood, taste her muskiness on the back of his tongue…
Your opinion of yourself is grand.
Her taunt rang in his ears, shattering the rousing vision and minding him how much she’d erred.
He didn’t see himself as grand. Not since yestere’en, anyway.
Now he wasn’t wont to consider what he thought of himself. He certainly didn’t wish to ponder how low he’d fallen. Or that she’d claimed to love him. That rode him harder than all else. Feeling wretched, he left his post by the stables and paced to the castle well and back. If anyone noticed his agitation, so be it. His mood was foul for a reason.
It wasn’t every day one of the proudest, most revered chieftains in the Highlands turned into a despicable, lust-crazed beast.
Yet he’d done the inconceivable.
He’d become the devil raging. A blackguard who’d hoisted the skirts of a highborn virgin, taking his pleasure, and aching for her still. The lascivious, heated images were branded on him, whirling across his mind. Furious, he turned to pace again and-
He found himself facing her brother.
“MacDonald.” James jerked a nod, guilt shafting through him. A strange buzzing roared in his ears as the bailey turned unnaturally quiet, as if the world narrowed to just him and Alasdair.
An annoyingly perceptive bugger whose eye he could scarce meet.
James swallowed hard, hoping his gulp wasn’t audible.
Alasdair glanced at the hills beyond the curtain walls, and then took a deep, lung-filling breath, surely enjoying the chill, pine-scented air.
“A fine day, it is.” He returned James’ nod, amiably. His face bore no sign that he knew of James disastrous encounter with his sister.
Even so, James could feel his face reddening.
The tops of his ears burned like fire.
It was a worse kind of shame than he’d felt when, as a young laddie, his father had caught him peering intently betwixt the wide-spread legs of a bonnie kitchen wench, his busy fingers exploring her mysteries.
Curiosity about women had sent him to the kitchens that day.
He cared about Catriona. A horrible voice deep inside him raged that he loved her.
Alasdair stood looking about, unaware of his turmoil.
James cleared his throat. “I trust your quarters were comfortable? My sister, Lady Isobel, gave you our finest rooms. They would have been commandeered by Sir Walter and his worthies, but” – James threw a glance at the tower, a great hulk of wet, glistening stone on the other side of the bailey – “Isobel told them the last visitors to sleep there were lice-ridden mendicants.
“She swore the poor friars scratched all night.” James hooked his thumbs beneath his sword belt, remembering. “The Lowlanders believed her when she claimed the chambers have been infested ever since, wholly uninhabitable.”
“Hah – God save us! Your sister is resourceful.” Alasdair grinned, looking for a moment, as if he were a friend and not a foe.
A good friend, perhaps even one a man would want at his back in battle.
On the thought, James felt another twinge o
f guilt, wishing he hadn’t mentioned sisters. But Alasdair hadn’t blinked, his expression still showing no signs of suspicion.
“You’ve borne our visit well.” Alasdair reached out and clasped James’ arm, gripping tight. “My men and I thank you.” He looked to where his escort already sat their mounts, a dozen sturdy Highland garrons. “I believe my sister has no complaints either.
“Indeed” - he glanced towards the tower, clearly waiting for her to appear – “she’s vowed to show you an even more lavish welcome if e’er you return to Blackshore. As I shall as well, you can be sure.”
Before James could frame an answer, a stir across the courtyard drew their attention. Catriona had just stepped through the hall’s massive oaken door and was crossing the cobbles, head high and hips swaying. She cut a swath through the bustle, making for the little cluster of mounted MacDonald guardsmen.
James’ heart began to pound.
She’d donned a voluminous cloak, its woolen folds hiding her lusciously curved body. But briskly as she walked, a fool could imagine how her breasts must be bouncing with each quick footstep.
James envisioned her naked. He knew how she looked walking towards him unclothed and with her breasts jigging delightfully, her braids undone so that her sun-bright tresses spilled over her shoulders to swirl about her hips with each provocative move she made.
The image made him hard, tightening his loins with an urgency he’d never felt for another woman. Furious, he tugged at his plaid before Alasdair – or anyone – could notice how she affected him.
Unfortunately, she chose that moment to look his way. She stared at him as if she’d sensed the moment his damnable body decided to add more smirch to his tarnished honor.
James glared at her.
She flashed him the most fleeting of smiles, then marched on towards her escort.
But as she went, she flipped one of her braids over her shoulder, and James was sure he caught a tantalizing whiff of gillyflower sail past his nose on the cold morning wind. When she glanced back over her shoulder, her deep blue eyes triumphant, he knew he wasn’t mistaken.
She’d wanted him to scent her.
And he had, by God!
One of the older squires standing near James stared after her, his lips forming a low whistle.
James shot the lad a sharp glance. “She’s a lady, you lackwit. Mind your manners lest I have you scrubbing the cesspit rather than tending horses.”
Alasdair’s lips twitched. “I doubt she noticed him, Cameron. Her gaze was on you.”
“Humph.” James started forward, hot on that wafting drift of gillyflower.
“James, wait! She’ll no’ be thanking you-” Alasdair’s warning was cut off by hoots of laughter from the gawking squires.
Even some of the older men, the patrol guards looking down from the wall-walk, loosed a chorus of their own guffaws and whistles.
James ignored them all.
Especially Alasdair who’d obviously guessed his intent.
Not that James cared.
As her host – she was still within his castle gates – he’d be remiss in his hospitality if he didn’t help her onto her garron. It’d be her fault entirely if, when doing so, he gripped her waist more intimately than if she hadn’t once again provoked him.
“Catriona!” He quickened his strides, not missing that she’d increased her own at his approach. When he reached her, he bent a quick knee. “Let me assist you mount-”
“No need.” She flashed him a blinding smile as she sailed past him, moving so quickly she must’ve fastened wings on her ankles.
Before he could blink – or even lower the arms he’d extended with such a flourish – she hitched her skirts and put her foot in the stirrup, swinging herself into the saddle, sitting astride like a man. As quickly, she tossed her head and then clicked her tongue, sending the horse trotting right through the open castle gates.
This time she didn’t glance back.
Such an air wasn’t necessary with the ramrod straightness of her back showing everyone what she thought of him.
James glared after her, livid.
He felt his face darkening, the hot color spreading under his skin. “Vexatious hell-cat.”
“Aye, she can be.”
James hadn’t noticed Alasdair’s approach, but now whipped around to find him standing at his side.
“It matters no’ a whit to me.” James dusted his plaid, feigning indifference. “I couldn’t know she’d leap onto the horse like a cloud-riding Valkyrie.”
Alasdair shrugged, showing his perceptiveness at last.
When he spoke, his voice didn’t hold a trace of mockery. Even more surprising, his clear blue eyes were sympathetic. “I tried to warn you. Our father taught her to ride before she could walk.
“Truth is” - he glanced after her, his words edged with pride - “she sits a horse better than any of us, though it pains me to admit it.”
“Then let us join her before she rides through the Lowlanders’ encampment on her own.” James started for his own horse.
His concern was real.
In recent days, the number of the pitched tents crowded along the castle sward and beside the newly erected battling ground had swelled to the size of a large village. Some of the makeshift lodgings even encroached into the wood. And the scores of spectators pouring in from the south weren’t all men of the noble class. Several that he’d seen even appeared to be shifty-eyed miscreants, come in the hopes of pinching a few coins, or worse.
Catriona riding alone through their midst was unthinkable.
Her sire might have made her a fine horsewoman, but he intended to know her safe.
Even if the right wasn’t his.
And that was a damnable shame because, after last night, he couldn’t imagine a life without her.
* * *
“Were my cook’s honeyed bannocks no’ enough to fill your belly this morn or do you have a taste for fresh-off-the-griddle oatcakes?” James glanced at Alasdair, riding close beside him as they wound their way through the tents and cooking fires that covered every inch of ground between Castle Haven’s curtain walls the wood beyond.
“I do favor oatcakes.” Alasdair kept his attention on a cook stall where a stout, red-faced woman shouted the tastiness of her griddled oatcakes.
James studied Alasdair’s profile, noting the hard set of his jaw. Alasdair had hardly touched Cook’s oatcakes, surely the finest in the land. A sudden fondness for them struck James as unlikely.
But he was curious.
Alasdair kept glancing at the traders’ carts and food stalls set among the maze of colorful tents. His watchful eyes took in everything they passed. His gaze darted left and right, scanning the clusters of Lowlanders who filled the narrow spaces between the tenting or scurried about, some tending cooking pits, a few huddling near a supply wagon playing dice, while others hawked wares as if at a market fair.
An air of celebration hovered over the makeshift settlement, the jollity offensive, considering they’d gathered to witness men cut each other down.
Yet there was no disguising the festive mood.
And the deeper James and Alasdair led their party into the encampment, the more raucously their eyes, ears, and noses were assaulted by the revelry. The din was unceasing, a cacophony of voices, laughter, and shouting, spiced with the occasional barking of dogs or whinnying and snorts of horses. Smoke from the cook fires hung in the air, bringing the mouthwatering smell of roasting meat, while the steam rising from dozens of simmering cauldrons competed with the equally tempting aroma of well-seasoned stew.
Several tumblers and jugglers had drawn a crowd to their left, their antics reaping cheers. Closer by, a buxom young alewife with a quick laugh and merry eyes served ale from large earthen ewers to a handful of Lowland knights who appeared more interested in her boldly displayed charms than her frothy libations.
And – James noted with interest – all of them earned Alasdair’s assessing stare.
Just now Alasdair slowed his garron to narrow his gaze on the red-cheeked, heavy-set woman flipping oatcakes at her cook stall.
“We can stop if your belly’s rumbling.” James cast a look over his shoulder at the MacDonald men-at-arms riding in a tight column behind them. Catriona was wedged in the middle of them, a precaution insisted upon by her brother and one that – given the fierce glint in her eye – didn’t suit her.
But as soon as she noticed James’ stare, the annoyance vanished from her face and she assumed an air of ladylike calm, though she did lift an eyebrow at him. She did so quickly and subtly, before anyone else could see.
James let his own brows snap together, too irritated to care if she saw.
He saw more than he wished.
In the night, she’d taken his breath and his body. Here, in the open, and beneath the wild, roiling sky, she came near to capturing all of him. The morning breeze riffled her cloak, molding it to her curves. And her braids were beginning to loosen, the gleaming strands tumbling about her shoulders. It was a becoming dishevelment, more lovely than if she’d undone her plaints and arranged the glossy red curls with the sole intent of tempting him.
Almost, he believed she had.
Especially when he tore his gaze from her, only to find Alasdair no longer watching the stout woman at the cook stall, but eyeing him, with sympathy.
James scowled. He didn’t want commiseration from a MacDonald. However much he was secretly coming to like and admire the lout.
So he did the only thing he could do, drawing rein beside his damnably congenial foe as Alasdair had already halted his own steed.
“Thon oatcakes you were eyeing do look good and” – James gestured to another cook stall a few paces beyond the stout woman’s griddle offerings – “those sausages and meat pasties smell equally fine. I am no’ in haste to return to my hall, if you wish to try something. Perhaps your sister will welcome a pause? She might appreciate refreshment before you ride on the Blackshore.”
“You surprise me.” Alasdair’s lips twitched. “I’d think you’ve seen enough of her by now to know she’d sooner eat a bowl of salted peat than take one bite of Lowland food. Leastways” – his voice hardened – “victuals served up by Sir Walter’s camp followers.
Sins of a Highland Devil: Highland Warriors Book 1 Page 17