Again, no reaction.
“Hardly a usurper,” Father Aiken says tonelessly, “as the king’s closest relative.”
Though no fan of the king’s, Cettina defends him now. “Their laws are the same as ours. The successor is chosen.”
But the priest does not seem to care.
“I came to tell you of the attack. And I’ve done so.” He bows to Cettina, surprising me. “I will take my leave.”
Pulling up his hood, Father Aiken turns to leave. But I have too many unanswered questions to let him do so. Following him, I fall in step beside him as he makes his way toward the exit. Since the hall has been cleared, not even a single servant remaining, we each pull open one of the two massive doors at its entrance, startling Cettina’s guards.
“Why do you warn us?” I ask as we slip back into the darkness, the corridor leading outside as good a place as any for such a private discussion away from the guards.
“My reasons are my own,” he says.
So I try again. “You are a Shadow Warrior.”
Father Aiken does not deny it.
“Sworn to protect and defend the Prima. A man who attempts to overthrow a king, killing innocents to accomplish such a thing. What has Lord Hinton promised him?”
Nothing.
“How did you find us?” Before he refuses to respond, I add, “I would know if our position is already compromised.”
The faintest hint of a frown is his only reaction.
“It is not,” he says finally.
Then, just like the day in the woods, he stalks off silently, the quiet left behind him the only reason I can hear his muttered words.
“My loyalty is to the church. Not the Prima.”
Then he is gone. And we’ve a battle, or an ambush, to prepare for. But my instincts, which I’ve doubted since the Hilla affair and must learn to trust again, tell me it is the former we are walking into, not the latter.
For his own reasons, this priest, this trained assassin, has chosen to help us once again. And though it seems Rawlins may have slipped through our fingers for the time being, Lord Whitley will not. He will pay for his role in Saitford. For his cruelty toward Lady Hilla.
For his treason against my queen.
30
Reyne
My eyes close against their will.
Erik told me not to wait for him, that the new information delivered by Father Aiken would require them to plan well into the night. The last of the scouts arrived just after supper, marking an early end to our meal.
As I drift into sleep, I imagine Erik and the others, including Cettina, gathered in the solar down below, and am proud not to feel even a twinge of jealousy. Though she is the same woman I met that first day, I have changed. That moment by the river transformed me, and now I feel nothing but gratitude for the queen’s friendship and love for my husband.
Perhaps tomorrow . . .
As darkness descends, I dream of the first night we slept in the same tent. I dream he is lying next to me, his hand resting on my hip, his thumb tracing circles there before gliding from my hip toward the hem of my shift. Then up, inside, simultaneously parting my legs and finding that most intimate part of me. But his hand doesn’t remain still for long. As they did at the lake, Erik’s clever fingers glide inside of me.
With his palm still cupped on me, he begins to move, and I pray this dream doesn’t end.
Only . . . is this a dream? His kiss on my neck feels so real. As does what he’s doing with his hands.
I open my eyes. Mostly darkness greets me. Darkness, a single lit candle, and . . .
I try to turn around, and as I do, his hand pulls away. I’ve no time to mourn its loss as Erik lifts my shift upward. By the time it’s discarded, he’s above me. Completely nude, his glorious body on full display.
I look down and have little time to react, or to become worried about how precisely this will happen without a considerable amount of pain based on what I just saw, because Erik wraps his hand around himself at the same time as he nudges my legs open.
“This isn’t a dream.” My voice is thick and hardly audible.
“For me it is, aye.”
He positions himself as I brace for the pain I know will accompany this first time.
“Are you awake now, Reyne?”
His gruff voice is my undoing. I’ve waited for so long, I forget to be afraid. I squeeze my buttocks together in anticipation and lift my hips to meet him.
With a pained groan, Erik guides himself into me and stops when he reaches my barrier. I squeeze my eyes shut, anticipating the pain, and Erik thrusts forward. I buck from the bed, but the stinging is not so bad as I expected. When I open my eyes, the concern I see in his gaze has me reaching for him. When I pull my husband closer, he begins to move.
“Does it hurt still?” With one arm propping his body up, Erik waits for me to respond.
“Nay.” I push my hips toward him again.
As if releasing his own restraint, Erik moves with more purpose then. The fullness of him inside me, the knowledge that we are indeed, finally, man and wife . . .
“You watch me,” I manage just before he descends. His kiss is swift, and all-consuming. I kiss my husband back, our tongues swirling as our bodies move in the same rhythm.
When he circles his hips, I grip his shoulders. But they are too wide for me to hang on to them. His arms, not much better. I must grip something.
The coverlet will do.
He breaks away then and responds to a question I’d forgotten about.
“Aye, I watch you. Your eyes, so full of expression.”
Circling and thrusting, he is relentless.
“Your lips—” he reaches up, “—your hair, so like the fire inside you. All of it, Reyne. All of it, all of you, is now mine.”
I cannot hold on much longer.
“As I am yours,” he continues. “Let yourself go.”
And so I do. He captures the sound I’d have made with his mouth as my buttocks clench and my core throbs in pleasure. When he grunts against my mouth, the vibrations of it not unlike those between us, I know he has found pleasure in me as well.
Collapsing atop me and then rolling us over, still joined, Erik buries his head into my neck. I cannot hold him tightly enough. Knowing what I do now, I want to ask how he could have waited so long. And I want to ask when he will leave me. I want to ask so much, but instead, I say nothing, not willing to let this dream end just yet.
31
Erik
The battle was won too quickly to even be called a battle. We waited all night in the thicket across the bridge, on Merian soil, and the traitors arrived just before sunrise. Part of me was astonished the Elderman had not betrayed us. Another part of me was not surprised at all.
My instincts, on this at least, did not mislead me.
When they crossed the bridge, Lord Scott and I led two groups of men in opposite directions, waiting for all of the men to cross before we acted. The moment they did, we emerged from the trees and flanked the bastards on both sides. Not a single sword was raised. They had nowhere to run, for a third group of men already blocked the bridge from behind.
Unfortunately, as the men toss their weapons to the ground, I can see neither Rawlins nor Whitley were among them. While we went into this knowing Rawlins had already scurried home, Cettina and I had hoped Whitley might appear.
The highest-ranking man among them, and the only noble, now stands across from me with Scott and Gille as witnesses. Although Scott outranks me, he has deferred to me as the one who uncovered the plot.
“You have one chance here, MacKinnish,” I say. “Tell us who else planned the attack with you, and your family will retain their lands.”
The Highlander has a wife and four children, a fact I’d made sure to learn after I saw him at the meeting in Ledenhill.
“Either way, you die a traitor.” I don’t say anything the man doesn’t already know.
He remains silent.
My sword is out so quickly, pressing against the base of his chin, he doesn’t have an opportunity to stumble out of its way. His hands tied behind his back, MacKinnish stares defiantly down the tip of the sword.
“She is a fool,” he says in response. Assuming he means the queen, I press a bit harder until a drop of blood appears. “They attempt an attack with over two hundred men, and she does nothing?” He heaves a bitter laugh. “Her father may have been mad, but he at least knew how to lead men.”
From the way he emphasizes the last word, his meaning is clear. He is the sort who would never follow a woman.
McGreghere makes a sound of contempt. “You are no man. A man doesn’t kill women and children.”
MacKinnish looks only at me.
“You will die for your insolence,” I say. “Your ignorance shall go to the grave with you. One last chance, MacKinnish.”
Blood continues to drip down his chin, but still he doesn’t speak. So I bait him with our knowledge of the plot.
“Your ill-fated meeting at Ledenhill gave us everything we need to know.”
The glint in his eyes says my barb has hit its mark. I press him by adding, “We know Rawlins is involved, and Whitley too.”
He is surprised, but I have another surprise for him as well.
“You call the queen a fool. But did you think the Prima’s help wouldn’t come at a price? Once a power-hungry man like Hinton is king of Meria, do you truly think he will respect the borders?” I wave to the river behind us. “You kill innocents to start a war without thinking ahead to Silvester’s final plans. What do you think he wants?”
It is clear MacKinnish never once considered it.
“He wants all of it. The Isle, under his control. First he took Avalon from King Galfrid.”
“The king gave it to him,” MacKinnish counters, defensive.
“An act even King Malcom knew was foolish. Trusting Silvester has been one of Galfrid’s biggest mistakes. But he knows that now. He’s shunned him these past years, much as Queen Cettina has done, and so the Prima is retaliating by backing Hinton. A cruel, weak man, as well you know. He will easily control him as he thinks to control the queen by recruiting fools like you to do his bidding. To start a war so that he may take advantage.”
A look of horror dawns in his eyes, and I know he finally understands what he has done.
“You have been played, MacKinnish. And where are the Shadow Warriors who were to help you slaughter innocent Merians this day? Not dumb enough to have been caught, like you.”
Though he says nothing, his eyes reveal the truth. That I guessed correctly and the Prima’s men are out there somewhere, with or without Father Aiken.
MacKinnish will reveal nothing else. It seems Lord Whitley has slipped through our net, and Cettina will not be pleased.
“Take him,” I say to Gille, turning back toward the others.
It is then MacKinnish stops me. “He is already there, in the village. Look in the blacksmith’s shop.”
Not at all where I’d have looked for him. I turn. “If your words are true, your family will be spared the indignity of losing their home.”
I look to McGreghere. “Fancy a visit to Firley Dinch’s forge?”
32
Reyne
The bed sags under me, and this time, I am immediately awakened. Spinning toward him, I throw my arms around my husband. My heart thuds so loudly, surely he must hear it.
“I’ve been so worried,” I confess against his shoulder.
Moving the hair at my neck, he kisses my flesh, murmuring something. The vestiges of sleep are still with me, but as we embrace, I am beginning to become more aware. He smells of fresh water. Indeed, his hair is still damp.
Erik is wearing absolutely nothing, a fact I realize as he tightens his arms around me and pulls me closer. When the others arrived just before supper, Erik not among them, I nearly dropped to my knees in despair. Searching every face, I struggled to breathe as Cettina approached me.
“He is unhurt,” she said, reaching for my shoulder as if to steady me. “Erik will be back soon.”
“Did you find him?” I ask now, pulling back slightly.
“Aye,” he says. “’Twas as MacKinnish said. He was hiding, coward that he is, in the back of the blacksmith’s shop. He refuses to confess to his part as one of the organizers of the attack.
The queen’s brother-in-law currently slumbers in Carwell’s dungeons.”
“And Lady Hilla?”
He frowns then, and I realize something is wrong.
“She will be discovered soon.”
“Discovered? I do not understand.”
Erik appears dismayed, with good reason it seems.
“She was spotted with him in Craighcebor but seems to have vanished.”
“Vanished?” My chest tightens. “Cettina must be so worried.”
“Worried? Nay, she is incensed. A search party has been sent out, and we will likely remain here until she’s found. Whitley was known to have kept her close, but the idea she accompanied him into Craighcebor . . .”
My jaw drops. “You don’t think . . . I mean to say, people do not think she was complicit in this?”
His eyes reveal that, aye, some think that very thing.
“Those who know her do not. But as you can imagine, the villagers were not very happy to learn of what almost happened there. Nor is the Merian constable, whose authority it falls under, so eager to exonerate her. And there is the matter of Whitley claiming he did it in his wife’s name, to place her on the throne. At her request.”
I gasp. That cannot be so.
“But surely, since you stopped the attack. And the queen loves her sister. Would she . . .” I know not what else to say. These are Merians we discuss. Edingham’s enemies. They already suffered one brutal attack, and a second was only narrowly averted. Will they so easily forgive a woman they thought may have been in league with her husband? Even if that woman is the queen’s sister?
“We will find her,” he says, smiling. The corners of Erik’s eyes crinkle as he looks down at me.
“I am here now. Lady Hilla will be found, and her husband tried for treason. All will be well.”
“I was so scared,” I admit.
When he kisses me, I can almost forget. But the throbbing in my temples reminds me of the stresses of this past day. I’m surprised I had even fallen asleep.
“Headache?”
I nod.
Releasing me, Erik lowers me back onto the pillow and presses his thumbs to my temples.
“Close your eyes.”
I comply.
As he circles his thumbs, I remember the last time my head hurt this much.
Erik chuckles as if he sees the memory floating through my mind.
“I still must show you how to start a fire,” he says, his body propped up next to me, partially covering mine. I smile, my eyes still closed.
“I was just thinking of that,” I confess.
He stops rubbing, so my eyes fly open.
“There is another remedy I failed to mention that day.”
When he leans down, his lips coaxing mine open, I think I know which remedy he refers to.
“I had not heard of lovemaking as a remedy for a headache before, but I’m willing to see if it might work.”
“Are you now? And how do you know that’s the remedy I refer to, my saucy wife?”
Smiling, I pull my husband back down atop me.
“Was it not?”
His smile contents my heart, and then he kisses me, and the worry I’ve felt all day is replaced with love and hope. For us, for Cettina . . .
And for Edingham.
Epilogue
Erik
When I walk into the hall, having been told on my way abovestairs Reyne could be found there despite the late hour, I’m unprepared for the sight before me. Laughing at something the lord of Carwell says, her head tipped back and hands covering her face, my wife is the epitome of a Highland
bride.
That the ladies at court consider reservation in temperament a desirable quality has always been off-putting to me. A Highland woman cares little for hiding her emotions, very much like her male counterparts. There are exceptions, of course, but I’m glad Reyne isn’t one of them.
I pause at the threshold, leaning against the wall, content to watch her game of chess with the elderly lord. A friend to the crown, as tough a Borderer as they come, he is well respected and clearly enamored with my wife. Again he says something to make her laugh, and I cannot help but smile at the sight.
“My lord?”
A young servant pauses beside me, and I put my finger to my lips.
“I’d not disturb them. It seems my wife is enjoying your lord’s company quite well.”
The young man nods. “They’ve been there since supper ended. She beat him once already, lord, and I fear he’ll not let her leave until he is avenged.”
“Hmmm,” I murmur as the boy walks away. It seems if I do not disturb their game, I might be standing here well into the night.
And after the day I’ve had, there are other things I would much prefer to be doing with my wife. Considering them, I walk forward, and my presence in the otherwise empty hall is finally noticed.
The smile on Reyne’s face lifts my mood, something that shouldn’t be possible. But apparently it doesn’t soften my expression, because Carwell takes one look at me and asks, “Does your husband always look so grim?”
Reyne reaches her hand up to me as I get close. I take it and stand beside her.
“Nay, the very opposite,” she says, continuing to hold my hand. “The news is not good?” she guesses.
“It is not.”
She and Carwell look up at me expectantly. I squeeze her hand gently.
“She has simply vanished,” I say of Lady Hilla. While the queen returned to the capital with our captives, I stayed on, at Cettina’s request, to continue the search for her sister. “We found the traveler and his son who claimed to have seen her on a road just outside of Craighcebor. They recognized her only because the father met her once at court. A mercenary, apparently.”
My Highland Bride: Kingdoms of Meria Book 2 Page 16