Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 01]

by Knight in My Bed

  One of the men, she suspected him, gave a snort of derision.

  “Some things need not be seen to ken they are there,” he spoke up. “The weight of their influence alerts us to their presence, or in some cases, their . . . smell alerts us.”

  Isolde blinked at the double meaning of his oh-so-smoothly spoken words.

  He’d noticed the potion and wanted her to know.

  “Gracious lady,” Gavin MacFie intervened, “I vow we would have looked out the window were we not manacled to your wall.” A trace of mirth took the sting out of words that could have been ill understood if not spoken with such courtly grace.

  A tiny smile curved Isolde’s lips. Gavin MacFie was a gallant, and she was beginning to understand why Evelina thought so highly of him.

  “Our chains are too short to permit us to enjoy whatever view so engages you,” he added, and Isolde could almost hear the smile in his words.

  She turned around. “The view is not one I favor, milord,” she said, purposely keeping her gaze on Sir Gavin. “Nor is it one I can avoid. It greets me every morn.”

  “I vow you speak of the same view visible from your sea dungeon?” he drawled. “MacKinnons’ Isle?”

  Isolde nodded, the bitterness in his tone making her risk a glance at him.

  Light from the resin torch played over his glossy, black hair and highlighted the width of his shoulders. “Upon my word,” he said, his dark eyes intense, “you could not broach a topic that vexes me more.”

  “You wished to speak about Iain?” Sir Gavin cut in, obviously trying to ease the tension crackling between her and the MacLean.

  She glanced at Gavin, half amazed at his sunny, indefatigable charm of manner. Almost as tall and well built as him, a cheery sparkle lit his hazel eyes, while a spray of freckles and his easy, lopsided smile made him seem years younger than Donall even though they had to be of similar ages.

  Isolde found herself smiling at him.

  And trusting him.

  “What would you know of Iain?” he asked.

  Isolde drew a breath to speak, but before she could, he shifted noisily on his pallet. “She has already been told all she needs to know about him,” he said, a warning tone in his deep voice. “Iain is innocent.”

  She risked another peek at him, and the sight of him, reposed so casually on the pallet, stole her breath. He’d folded his arms behind his head, and stared at her from eyes dark and smoldering. “Can you swear your brother’s hands are not stained with my sister’s blood?” she challenged him.

  As she had before.

  And, as before, he pressed his lips together and simply looked at her with those compelling, deep brown eyes.

  Knowing eyes.

  As if he knew she’d spent sleepless nights reliving his kiss, craving more, and yearning for other things as well.

  The sort of things she’d learned about from Evelina.

  “Why ask me when you came to council with Sir Gavin?” he returned, irritation humming in his voice.

  Something in his tone sent a little thrill tripping through Isolde’s heart. He sounded miffed in a wholly different way from the other times she’d questioned him about his brother. Could he be perturbed by her desiring to speak to his friend?

  Jealous mayhap?

  For some inexplicable reason, the notion pleased her.

  “Aye, I came to speak with Sir Gavin . . . not you.” She studied him as she said the words. The tight set of his jaw grew a bit more stubborn, his artfully casual pose on the pallet, a mite too contrived.

  He was jealous.

  Before her smile could spread from her heart to her face, she turned to Gavin. “Good sir, can you tell me if the rumors I’ve heard are true? Is Iain MacLean possessed of an uncontrollable temper?”

  A hint of ill ease passed over Gavin’s boyish features. He opened his mouth to reply, but Isolde spoke first. “So it is true,” she said, her heart sinking.

  “Aye, ’tis true!” He shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. “All MacLean men have tempers, but they do not murder their wives.”

  Isolde flinched beneath his black fury. “And the MacLean who started our feud?” she pressed. “The one who drowned his MacInnes bride on the Lady Rock?”

  “May the wrath of God sink that accursed islet beneath the sea!” Donall threw back his head and stared at the ceiling. When he looked back at her, a cold mask had settled over his handsome face. “That happened so many centuries ago there is scarce a MacLean or a MacInnes who recalls the names of that ill-fated pair.”

  “But we know the names of Iain and Lileas,” a wee demon inside made her say.

  Donall spun away from her. His great shoulders tensed with agitation, and when he dragged both hands through his hair, Isolde would’ve sworn his fingers shook. “My brother loved his wife,” he swore, wheeling back to face her.

  “MacLean men are strong-passioned,” he vowed, his tone daring her to deny it. “When a MacLean loves a woman, he loves her. With every breath he takes, he gives her all of himself, protects her with his life. She becomes his life.”

  Isolde took a step backward, almost reeling from the sheer power of his outburst. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gavin start toward her. “You’re frightening her, Donall, have don—” he began, but Donall the Bold shot his arm out and clamped his fingers around his friend’s elbow, halting him in midstride.

  And midsentence.

  “I am not scaring her.” He glowered at Gavin. “She is a bold-hearted lass with more steel in her back than her two fool guardsmen have combined. I am telling her what she wants to know: the truth!”

  Isolde gulped, her heart galloping in her chest. She didn’t want to admit, even to her own self, that, indeed, his braw show of ferocity—of passion—excited more than frightened her.

  His calling her a “bold-hearted lass” sent warmth spooling through her while the look on his face as he’d said the words laid claim to her heart as soundly as his strong arms and knight’s kisses had claimed her passion.

  Keeping his gaze on her, he released Sir Gavin’s elbow and folded his arms across his chest. “You did come to hear the truth, did you not?”

  Isolde glanced at Gavin. Like her, he stared at Donall, his jollity replaced by a queer look she couldn’t quite place. He appeared as spellbound by the MacLean’s dark temper and bold words as she.

  Donall arched a brow at her. “Well?”

  “By the Rood, Donall, cease trying to intimidate her with your glowers,” Sir Gavin said. “ ’Tis plain to see she came for honest answers.”

  Donall the Bold flashed one of his glares at his friend. “She has heard the truth often enough, but refuses to listen,” he said, stepping in front of her.

  Isolde’s heart stocked. The pulsing male power streaming from him kept her as firmly in place as his chain held him.

  Cupping her chin, he lifted her face to his. “Do you seek the truth, Isolde of Dunmuir? Will you listen if I tell you?”

  She could only stare at him.

  He smoothed the side of his thumb along her jawline. “Will you?”

  Her pulse pounding in her ears, she nodded.

  His fierce countenance softened immediately, but the heated flare of male triumph in his eyes was near as unsettling as his glower.

  Mayhap more so.

  He lowered his head slightly and her heart slammed against her ribs . . . he was going to kiss her! But he merely inclined his head in a succinct acknowledgment of her surrender. To her disappointment, he took his hand from her chin and stepped back from her.

  Returning to his pallet, he stood beside it, one massive shoulder resting against the wall. “For a MacLean to kill his lady would mean killing himself as well,” he said, his voice low, smooth, and sure.

  The smoldering in his dark brown eyes became a full-fledged burn. “That, Isolde of Dunmuir, is the truth. My brother did not murder your sister. He loved her.”

  To Isolde’s utter amazement, she believed him.

&nbs
p; Or wanted to.

  But Lileas’s sweet face loomed before her, pale lips moving, trying desperately to tell her something, but the image spiraled away, shattered by the hammering of Isolde’s own heart.

  She expelled a gusty sigh. She knew what Lileas wanted—she sought to warn Isolde not to fall for the perfidy of a lying tongue.

  Regardless of how bonnie.

  One undeniable obstacle kept her from accepting what Donall the Bold would have her believe. And it rode the far horizon.

  Cold and silent as Lileas’s body in its grave.

  Donall MacLean stared at her, his eyes demanding an answer. At her growing silence, his confidence began to visibly fade. The hurt lurking in the depths of his eyes stung her as mightily as the red-hot needles jabbing into the backs of her own.

  “I want to believe you,” she finally said. “I truly do.”

  “I would know what keeps you from seeing the truth?”

  Isolde glanced at the small window. “That which I did not see, my lord.”

  “That which you did not see?” He lifted a brow higher than she’d have thought possible.

  “Leave be, Donall,” Gavin interceded. “She will believe Iain’s innocence and the MacKinnons’ guilt when she is ready, not before.”

  “She speaks in riddles.” Donall’s mask of indifference slipped enough to reveal his frustration. “She will not see because of what she did not see!” He dragged a hand down over his face. “ ’Tis utter nonsense.”

  Blinking back the moisture she refused to let become tears, Isolde returned to the window. The gloaming had almost fully claimed MacKinnons’ Isle, but her gaze found it . . . as always.

  “I do not speak riddles or nonsense.” She clutched the rough edge of the window. “What I did not see were Mac-Kinnon galleys passing through our waters. Were they guilty, as you’d have me believe, my lookouts would have seen them sail past on their way to your end of Doon.”

  She heaved a great sigh. “That simple fact, sirrah, is the reason I cannot believe your brother is innocent. No one else could have done the deed.”

  Both men inhaled sharply, and she could feel the MacLean’s stare boring holes into her, but she kept her back to them, her stance rigid.

  Facing them might mean capitulation.

  So very much did she wish to believe him.

  A rustling noise and the clank of a chain broke the silence, only to be quickly followed by a hefty oath.

  Him.

  He’d tried to come to her, and her heart turned over at the implication.

  “I am loath to ask, but must,” he said then, his voice gruff, rife with undertones she didn’t want to understand. “What exactly are you intimating?”

  “I am intimating naught.” She pressed her fingers harder against the cold stone of the window ledge, clinging fast to its solidity, vainly trying to tap its strength.

  The mere act of putting her suspicions into words had torn away a vital strand of her fortitude.

  Left her weakened.

  Shone glaring light on a fragility she did not want exposed.

  “All I have done is but give you the truth you will not see,” she said. “The MacKinnons have ne’er been our friends, but they did not drown my sister on the Lady Rock.”

  “Neither did my brother,” came his fervent reply.

  “Then who did?” she asked, hating the way her voice cracked. “Please tell me, for I sorely need to know.”

  Heavy, black silence answered her.

  And she didn’t like the sound of it at all.

  Several mornings later, Iain MacLean and all the MacLean fighting men who’d been able to fit onboard the newly repaired galley stood upon the sandy beach of Mac-Kinnons’ Isle and . . . gaped.

  Of the massed might of the renowned MacKinnon warriors, nary a hair was to be seen, much less a well-muscled sword arm swinging a finely honed blade.

  Of their formidable sea-going fleet was much to be seen.

  And all of it in ruin.

  The once-proud vessels, from the most impressive galley to the lowliest skin-covered coracle, lay in wrack. Broken and sea-blistered, their smooth lines now twisted, jagged, and draped with dried seaweed.

  Some of the wreckage had already been half claimed by the shifting sands.

  Sad flotsam, tragic remnants of a foundered fleet, made all the more pathetic by the day’s brilliant sunshine and cloudless sky.

  A day gripped in the talons of freezing winds and a dense, black fog would have better suited the grotesqueness littering the wide stretch of curved shoreline.

  Better suited Iain’s dark mood upon glimpsing the devastation.

  “Begging your humble pardon, sir, but it appears something is amiss.” Gerbert, Baldoon Castle’s doughty seneschal, nudged a low mound of barnacle-encrusted oak clinker strakes. He scratched his bristly chin. “Aye, sorely amiss.”

  “God’s wounds!” Iain whipped out his sword and thrust it into the sand. “Think you I am blind? All is amiss.” His face dark with rage, he glowered at Gerbert, the only man along whose purpose wasn’t the skill of his sword arm.

  And at the moment, Iain didn’t know what his purpose was.

  Save to needle him.

  As he’d known the meddlesome seneschal would do even before he’d wheedled his way onboard. But as the only MacLean to have e’er set foot on MacKinnons’ Isle, Iain had been hard-pressed to deny the old goat.

  Iain scooped up a handful of sand, then jabbed his clenched fist at the air over his head. “The MacKinnon scourges will not slip through our . . .”

  He broke off, and lowered his hand. Opening his fingers, he frowned at the rusted nails lying on his palm. With a curse, he hurled them into the surf.

  Then he sank to his knees and buried his dark head in his hands. His men, and even old Gerbert, kept a respectful distance, standing where they could amongst the wreckage. After a long while, he pushed to his feet. The shadows beneath his eyes appeared a shade darker; his eyes, to have lost their spark.

  No one spoke.

  Without exception, each man kept his gaze averted. Anywhere was safer to look than at Iain MacLean during one of his moods. He didn’t look at them either, much to their relief.

  He stared at his galley.

  A fine vessel, sleek of line with high stem and stern posts, its mast straight and proud, a furled sail, and the row of oar ports staring blankly back at him.

  Staring accusingly back at him.

  And with reason.

  The war-galley could ply the seaways with great speed at sail, and maneuvered well under the balled might of stout rowing arms if the wind died. She’d borne them to MacKinnons’ Isle with a swiftness Iain had not dared hope for, and now . . .

  Now, she rocked in the surf, moving in gentle time with the incoming tide, and their whole journey, the arduous days spent repairing the storm-damaged hull, might prove to have been in vain.

  A foolhardy mission, as Amicia had repeatedly harangued him.

  Iain stared heavenward. The glare of the sun hurt his eyes, but he welcomed the discomfort. Gulls circled and screamed high above, and the sight sent another piercing shard of pain into his heart . . . had there ever been a time when he’d been so free of cares as the wheeling seabirds?

  He started when one of his men sidled up beside him. “Good sir—” The man’s voice was hesitant. “What are we to do now?”

  Ignoring him, Iain yanked his sword from the sand and held it up to the light, catching the bright rays of the sun in the gleaming steel of its blade.

  “We do what we came to do,” Iain said, his voice as cold as the day was warm.

  “But—”

  “But?” The look on Iain’s face was enough to silence the other man.

  Iain swept the circle of men with a penetrating stare, his sword still held to sun. When no one challenged him, he sheathed his blade.

  “One MacKinnon for each year of my lady wife’s life, and all the rest of them for the grief they’ve wrought,” he
vowed, raising his voice above the rising wind. “We’ve tolerated their antics for years. This time they went too far. Now they shall pay.”

  But rather than drawing forth their weapons and roaring their support as they’d done in Baldoon’s great hall, Iain’s men turned into women. They shifted restlessly, shuffled their feet in the sand, and looked everywhere but at him.

  They seemed to have lost their tongues as well.

  Iain snarled. A deep, roiling rumble wrested from the blackest corner of his soul. And then he hollered for the one man whose knowledge he needed.

  Gerbert.

  Unlike his younger kinsmen, he wasn’t afraid to meet Iain’s eye. Iain peered hard at him, too, hoping what he saw in the old man’s face was a mere trick of the light, and not what it appeared to be.

  But it wasn’t the light.

  Gerbert’s watery blue eyes swam with pity.

  “Still think you can lead us to the MacKinnon stronghold?” Iain asked him, his voice gruff, his heart choosing to ignore the look on Gerbert’s face.

  “Well?” he prodded when the old man remained silent. “Can you?”

  Gerbert hesitated but a moment. “Aye, but I’d rather not, now we’re here.”

  “And why not?” Iain asked curtly, his balled, white-knuckled hands giving proof of his mounting anger.

  His increasing dread.

  For deep inside, he knew why Gerbert didn’t want to seek out the MacKinnons after they’d journeyed so far.

  “Why not?” Iain repeated, the words caught by the wind and whisked away as swiftly as God the Father had snatched Lileas’s life from her sweet lips. “Why not?”

  To his horror, the old man’s eyes welled with sympathy. “It would not be wise to disturb them, I’m a-thinking,” Gerbert said, his voice laden with compassion. “Now we’re here, ’tis clear we’ve accused them falsely.”

  “No!” Iain lifted his hands before him as if doing so would ward off what he knew Gerbert was about to say.

  What he didn’t want to be true.