by Emma Prince
“That is how I knew what Gwen and the others in the common room would want to hear,” Niall continued. “The war between England and Scotland has gone on longer than anyone can seem to remember. And those in the middle have borne the worst of it. But we all still need hope—hope that not only will the conflict end someday, but that when it does, we will be able to heal from it.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “I suppose that is why they so readily embraced the idea that we were happily wed.”
Mairin chewed on that for a moment. “It seems odd,” she began slowly. “We’ve trained side by side for nigh on four years now, and yet, I ken verra little about ye.”
Niall’s blue eyes flashed with something Mairin couldn’t quite parse, something warm and intense. “Aye, I suspect there is much we could still learn about each other.”
A wave of awareness prickled her skin and sent a warm knot into the pit of her stomach. Blessedly, she was saved from having to untangle her confusing reaction, for a soft rap sounded on the door.
Niall moved first, his body tensing as he eased open the door an inch. But then his shoulders relaxed and he bent to pick something up.
True to her word, Gwen had left a tray of steaming meat pies and bread, along with two mugs of ale, outside the door. Niall set the tray on the table, then retrieved their saddlebags, which the stable lad had already placed there for them as well.
They ate in silence, yet a thought kept tugging in the back of Mairin’s mind. As she swallowed her last bite of bread, she turned to him with a frown.
“But ye are still English.” At his blink of confusion, Mairin silently cursed herself for her bluntness. “What I mean is…there is something I dinnae understand.”
“Aye?”
“Yer home, Trellham Keep, was built on English soil. It was once an English stronghold, but today it is controlled by the Bruce. The land upon which it sits is now Scotland’s.”
He nodded, lifting his coppery brows as he waited for her to continue.
Mairin gnawed on her lower lip for a moment, choosing her words. “But it isnae so easy with people. As ye said, some villagers at Trellham consider themselves English, and some Scottish, and some Borderlanders, no matter who holds the land. And ye…” She cast him a tentative look. “Ye are still English, even though yer home is the Bruce’s now.”
“And I’m still English, even though I’ve dedicated my life to Scotland’s cause, you mean?” he finished, saying the words she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak.
It was wrong of her to question his loyalty like this, she knew. Wrong to make him explain himself just because of his country of origin, yet her deep-seated distrust wouldn’t be easily quelled.
“You are right,” he continued, surprising her. “I am still English, no matter what I do.” His features hardened as he spoke, yet sadness lingered in his eyes. “I cannot change that.”
Mairin suddenly wished she hadn’t brought up the topic, for it obviously pained him.
In many ways, he’d had a harder go of it in the training camp than even she had. Aye, she was the only woman, the youngest and least experienced when it came to fighting. She’d had to overcome the men’s fussing over her, the way they treated her as if she were made of porcelain, or like she was a wee sister to all of them.
But at least she’d been able to show them that she was capable by excelling in her training. Niall had excelled too, yet he could never escape his birth in the eyes of the others. He was always met with a faint air of suspicion, as if naught he did would ever be above question.
And she had been the worst of all of them. She’d been the one to start calling him “English,” as if that were his defining characteristic. She’d been the one to draw lines between them for no other reason than his country of origin.
Now she kicked herself for bringing attention to that fact yet again. For the first time, she’d been learning something deeper about him, but then she’d gone and sullied it by erecting a wall between them once more.
In an attempt to salvage what was left of their delicate conversation, she latched on to something he’d mentioned earlier. “Ye said before that the Bruce coming to Trellham’s aid was only part of the reason ye gave him yer allegiance. What was the rest of it?”
Niall leaned back in his chair, his soft lips set in their usual serious line, but his eyes glittering with fierceness. “The Bruce gave the people of Trellham hope, aye, which was enough to earn my loyalty. But more than that, he gave me hope. I was…” His russet brows drew down in thought. “I was like a bull charging at naught before I joined the cause, full of energy and the will to do right, but with no direction and no skill. I knew what I wanted, but not how to get there. And he gave me a way.”
“And…” Mairin swallowed, riveted by his intensity. “And what did ye want?”
“Not to feel helpless in the face of evil anymore.”
His words hit her so hard that the air rushed from her lungs.
“I ken exactly what ye mean,” she breathed.
His eyes, burning a bright, deep blue, fixed on her. “You do?”
A ripple of warmth washed over her skin. “Aye,” she went on in a rush. “Before, I was filled with anger, with drive, but didnae ken what to do with it. It wasnae until I began learning to defend myself that the powerlessness started to turn into something else—a direction, a purpose.”
Her first few months at the training camp, Mairin had hardly been able to leave the safe familiarity of her small, dark room at the back of the hut she’d shared with Logan. The sounds, light, and sensations of the outside world were terrifyingly overwhelming after spending six long years in the isolation of her own mind.
“Aye,” Niall replied, his voice warming. “I remember when Helena began teaching you.”
Mairin’s head snapped up. He’d noticed that?
When Helena, Logan’s future wife, had arrived unexpectedly at the camp, she’d taught Mairin a few defensive maneuvers to help her overcome her debilitating fear of being captured and imprisoned again. Those techniques had been an anchor in the storm battering Mairin from within. They made her feel strong for the first time in her life. Capable.
After that first taste of power over herself and her surroundings, Mairin had wanted more.
But not even Logan had known what Helena and Mairin had been getting up to at first. And after, when he’d found out, none of them had told the others. Niall must have paid her far more attention than she’d ever realized.
“Ye…ye noticed?”
“Aye, I did,” he replied quietly. “How could I not? It was as if a fire had been lit inside you.”
Heat rose to her face, but not from embarrassment. Nay, this feeling was entirely different.
“Training with the others at camp gave me the direction I needed,” she went on hastily. “A reason no’ to be afraid anymore.”
“It was the same for me,” Niall said. “Until I joined the Corps, I’d been powerless against those who sought to harm me and my family.”
A shadow crossed his eyes as he spoke. Some deeper hurt was buried there, but from the way his mouth flattened, he didn’t wish to speak of it.
It seemed they both had memories and wounds they wished to keep locked away.
Mairin fumbled for a way to lighten the sudden dark cloud hanging over them. “Ye, powerless? A strapping, braw man?”
At her words, his gaze snapped to hers. She could have bitten her tongue. What was she thinking, blurting out such embarrassing things when they were alone, and pretending to be husband and wife, no less?
To her shock, his smoldering eyes lingered on her as he murmured, “You might be surprised at what can bring a grown man to his knees.”
He ripped his gaze away then and stood abruptly. “We ought to turn in for the night. The fresh snow will make tomorrow’s ride difficult.”
Mairin nodded, working to gather her frayed wits. But then her gaze landed on the cot, just big enough for two, and her thoughts scattered onc
e again.
“You can take the bed,” Niall said quickly.
Mairin began to protest, but Niall ignored her. He built up the fire with a few logs, then settled on the floor in front of it, wrapping himself in his cloak.
With naught else to do but follow his lead, she moved to the bed. She stepped out of her boots, but then she cast him a look out of the corner of her eye. He lay on his side facing the fire, giving her his back.
Her cowardice at the prospect of undressing with him so near almost got the better of her. Yet the thought of sleeping in her scratchy wool dress, which she’d already been wearing for several days, convinced her.
She’d only had the opportunity to wash and change once in the last sennight. Her watch had been nearly complete, and Niall was sound asleep, so in the pre-dawn hours, she’d found a swift, frigid stream and had hastily used a rag and a nub of soap to scrub her skin beneath her chemise before scrambling, shivering and goose-fleshed, into fresh clothes.
If she could steal a spare moment of privacy, she’d eagerly use the pitcher and basin on the table to do the same tomorrow morn. But first, she had to overcome her shyness and remove her dress for the night.
With her eyes glued to Niall’s back to assure herself that he couldn’t see her, she tugged at the dress’s laces. When they loosened, she hurriedly shimmied out of the wool and tossed it on the foot of the bed with her cloak. Though Niall hadn’t moved, she dove beneath the bedcovers and yanked them up to her chin.
Even though she still wore her chemise and was buried under the covers, she felt as though she were naked—with Niall only a few feet away.
She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut to chase away the sensation, but the memory of his piercing blue eyes made her skin prickle until at last sleep claimed her.
Chapter Ten
The darkness pulsed thick around her. It was so complete that she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed.
Damp earth encased her, as if she’d been buried alive. The stench of waste clogged her nose. A drip sounded somewhere, matching her hammering heartbeat.
Oh God. Nay! She was back there again. The root cellar. Mayhap she had never left. Mayhap this was to be her eternity, never to escape, never to know aught but this black, cold hell.
Some small, clawed creature scurried across her legs. She screamed and thrashed, kicking it away. It squealed in anger but then fell silent. Had it retreated to whatever hole it had emerged from, or was it coming closer once again?
“Mairin.”
The voice belonged to an Englishman—one of her tormentors.
A moan rose in her throat. What would it be this time? Would they toss a crust of bread or a waterskin into her earthen cage, letting a few blessed rays of light in through the door overhead as they did? Or mayhap it would be a rat they threw inside, chuckling at their sport and watching as she struggled to kill and eat the creature.
Or mayhap there would be no food at all, only their hissed taunts and low-spoken assurances of what they would do to her body if she weren’t a filthy, half-starved Scottish witch.
Nay, she wouldn’t let them touch her. She would fling her own waste at them when they came to torment her, screaming like a mad banshee, even if it meant they’d close the hatch over her prison and take away those blessed slivers of light all the sooner.
Her threats and curses had worked up until now, for they’d never descended into the bowels of the cellar to make good on their vile promises.
But not this time.
An invisible hand closed over her shoulder, squeezing. “Mairin.”
She cried out and tried to twist away, but it felt as though the darkness held her immobile, suffocating her, closing in to swallow her whole.
She clawed blindly, making contact with something solid. Now the grip on her shoulder tightened and gave her a shake.
“Mairin, wake up!”
Mairin jerked upright with a deep gasp, as if she’d just broken the surface of an inky black ocean. She opened her eyes, but she was still adrift in a sea of darkness.
“Nay!”
Hands clamped on her shoulders once more.
“It was only a dream.” It was the same Englishman’s voice that had echoed through her nightmare. But nay, this wasn’t one of her tormentors.
Niall.
Confusion twisted her mind. She wasn’t in the root cellar. Her captors could no longer torture her. She was safe with Niall.
But the darkness…the darkness gripped her like a vise.
A strangled cry squeezed from her throat.
“What is it?” Niall was close, his voice filled with concern. “What do you need?”
“Light,” she managed to croak.
Niall cursed softly. “The fire has gone out. And the candle has burned itself down as well. I should have woken to stoke the fire. I should have—. It doesn’t matter now.”
His hands vanished from her shoulders and he moved off somewhere in the black chamber.
It felt as though the whole world tilted sideways. With naught to gain her bearings and pitch-darkness pressing in, Mairin was anchorless. Her breaths came short and sharp, her heartbeat slamming in her ears.
“Nay, dinnae leave me!” she cried.
Suddenly one of his hands returned, clumsily fumbling for her. He slid down her arm until his hand closed over hers, entwining their fingers tightly.
“I won’t. Not ever.” He gave her hand a squeeze before continuing. “Hold on to me. I’m going to open the shutter to give us a little light.”
Mairin gripped him as if he were a rope and she was drowning. Shame and humiliation whispered at the back of her mind—she was weak, pathetic, naught but a scared bairn. Distantly, she knew she would torture and berate herself later for this wretched display, but for now all she could do was cling onto Niall and listen to the roar of her own pulse.
She heard him fumble with the latch for a moment, and then a slice of silver light slashed through the thick darkness, followed by a blast of cold air.
The wind must have chased away the last of the storm, for the half-moon hung stark white against the clear night sky. Its light reflected off the fresh blanket of snow covering everything outside, making the whole world seem to glow a bluish silver.
Mairin drew in a shuddering breath. The inn room was no longer a shapeless void of black. Now, its contours were once again clear and familiar.
As was Niall. He stood before the open window, his large, lean form frosted in silvery light. His blue eyes were riveted on her and his russet brows were lowered in concern.
She still held his hand, her grip so tight that her knuckles had gone white, yet he did not pull away. Instead, he moved toward her.
He sat on the edge of the bed, carefully adjusting their hands so that he didn’t bend her wrist. “Better?”
Mairin swallowed and forced herself to nod. “Aye.”
“You were having a nightmare. Thrashing and moaning in your sleep.”
Despite the cold air still rushing into the room, heat rose in her cheeks.
“Aye, that…that happens sometimes.”
He kept his tone gentle, but he watched her with keen eyes. “Because of the darkness?”
He knew. He knew she was afraid of the dark, like a silly child.
There had once been a time, in the early months after Logan had freed her from her captivity, that the outside world had inflicted far too many sensations, too much overwhelming noise and color and light. Mairin had retreated into the dark, taking comfort in its numbing embrace. She’d hardly left the dim confines of the hut she’d shared with Logan in those first months.
Eventually she’d gotten stronger. She’d begun learning to defend herself. But as she’d grown accustomed to the outside world once more, the darkness had come to represent everything she feared, everything she’d endured in that black hellhole somewhere in the middle of England. Now, it brought on a nigh-choking terror that left her blubbering and boneless.
And
Niall knew. She had tried to hide her weakness, but in such close quarters, how could she have hoped to keep it from him?
“N-nay, no’ because of the darkness.” The dark merely prompted the memories of her captivity. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that. The tattered remains of her pride demanded that she defend what few secrets she had left.
Slowly, he reached out and swept a lock of hair back from her face. His thumb lingered on her cheek, the barest of touches.
“Whatever was tormenting you, it wasn’t real.”
Mairin closed her eyes, willing back the fresh surge of fright. “Oh aye, it was,” she whispered.
“You’re shaking.”
Belatedly, she realized he was right. Her whole body trembled and gooseflesh had risen on her bare arms.
Niall glanced at the open window with a frown. “You will freeze like this.” He started to rise from the bed, but Mairin yanked on the hand she still held captured in her own.
“Nay, please! Dinnae…”
What? Close the window? Move away? Stop touching her?
She faltered then, her pride warring with her fear. The need for Niall’s nearness won out. “Please, dinnae go.”
His blue eyes locked with hers, steady and fierce. “I won’t,” he repeated. “Not ever. I promise.”
He gently eased her back down onto the bed and pulled the blankets around her shoulders, all the while keeping her hand tucked into his. He sat perched on the edge of the bed, solid and unmoving despite the frosty air swirling through the room.
Mairin fought to escape into the oblivion of slumber, but her muscles remained knotted and her teeth chattered faintly. Whether it was from the cold or the memories, she couldn’t say. Time stretched, yet sleep would not come.
A long while later, she heard Niall let a breath go. Wordlessly, he drew back the blankets and slid into the bed beside her.
She stiffened, but before she could ask what he meant to do, he enfolded her in his arms and hauled her against his chest.