Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03]

by Wedding for a Knight

  And as if he sensed she’d glimpsed it, the last of the strain vanished from his handsome face and he gave her a wan smile—if the slight uptilt at one corner of his mouth could be counted as a smile.

  “It is not my wish to frighten you,” he said, still peering deep into her eyes. “Just do as I ask and I promise to do my best not to plague you with such an outburst again.”

  A loud snort came from behind them, near the table, quickly followed by the glug-glugging noise of wine being poured. Dagda appeared at their sides a moment later, offering two brimming cups of the potent Rhenish wine.

  The instant her hands were free, she planted them on her black-skirted hips and turned on Magnus, her dark eyes flashing. “And if you don’t mean to be a-scaring the life out of your womenfolk, mayhap you ought not stomp around this pile o’ stones on dark and windy nights a-warning of dangers what don’t exist?”

  Magnus cocked a russet brow, took a hearty gulp of wine. “And what were you doing a-stomping round this tower so late of a night? Keeping Lady Amicia from her night’s rest on a . . . dark and windy night?”

  “Mayhap there would not have been a cause for my visit if you would be busy about your duty keeping her warm on such nights.” The mischievous glint in Dagda’s eye took the sting from her tart reply.

  Hitching up her skirts, she swished to the door. But she paused on the threshold, raised a forefinger. “Be sure to bolt the drawbar,” she warned. “You wouldn’t want old Reginald or his lady to come looking to see who’s in their bed!”

  And then with a knowing wink and whirl of black linen, she was gone, slipping away into the corridor’s gloom without so much as a further glance or fare-thee-well.

  Magnus stared after her, his brow darkening again. “That one e’er walks on the precipice,” he said, swirling the wine in his cup. “May the saints be kind if e’er she takes a false step.”

  “I vow she has her reasons for being as she is,” Amicia said, feeling a need to defend the old woman.

  “To be sure,” Magnus responded with equal speed.

  But his eyes narrowed and he looked anything but charitable as he brought the wine cup to his lips and downed its contents in one long swallow.

  He set down the empty cup with an overloud clack, and regarded her with sharp, measuring eyes. “Like as not, we all have justification for our actions—if only to our own good selves.”

  “And what are yours?” Amicia put down her own cup, the wine untouched.

  She took a heavy linen napkin from the table, ran its embroidered edges through her fingers as she looked at him, waiting. Their gazes locked, and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “Why are you here, my lord? Now, this night, before propriety deems you join me?”

  At his silence, she lowered her gaze to the battle-ax he still clutched so fiercely. And the ax was by no means his only weapon. The bulk of his broadsword, its hilt and scabbard, loomed ominously apparent beneath his plaiding. She’d also counted at least two dirks thrust beneath his belt.

  “I would know the truth, Magnus.” She used his given name for the first time—the sound of it on her tongue both strange and thrilling.

  “I simply wish to know you safe.”

  “Know me safe?” she echoed, sensing more behind his actions than his words revealed.

  He nodded, and a nervous-twitching muscle in his jaw confirmed her suspicions.

  “If I cannot greet our marriage with overweening gladness, the very least I can do is assure no harm comes to you.”

  She crumpled the napkin, let it drop back onto the table. “I have been looking out for myself for many years. Despite my brothers’ brawn and concern.”

  Disillusionment and a frightening sense of hopelessness filling her chest, she struggled to keep from blowing out a breath of pure frustration. His indifference in their youth had lacerated her heart and now he would rub salt in the wound by vowing to protect her whilst he grieved her soul.

  She appreciated his protection, but she wanted his love.

  “There are more grave hurts than physical ones, my lord,” she said, challenging him. “Would you help me to allay those as well?”

  He touched her cheek, toyed with a strand of her hair. “It would be better for you if we do not go down that road, my lady.”

  “And if I am already more than halfway along it?”

  He pressed his lips together and just looked at her.

  Then he took his hand from her face and the loss of his touch, however innocent and fleeting, sluiced through her like ice water, leaving an empty, unquenchable void.

  Amicia curled her own hands to fists, resisted the urge to grab and shake him. He was beginning to remind her of her brother Donall the Bold at his vaunting best.

  Or worst!

  Aye, save for the bright gleam of his rich auburn hair, so lustrous in the flickering candlelight, he looked exactly like Donall in one of his I-am-the-laird and no-one-ought-question-him moods.

  Beneath her skirts, one foot began to tap furiously—thanks to the thick layer of furred skins spread on the floor, no telltale tap-tappings sounded to reveal her agitation.

  He would know her safe.

  Old Dagda would see her pleasuring him.

  Amicia’s chest heaved, the longings unleashed by his simple touch tearing her heart. She just wanted a home . . . a husband to love, and love her, a hearthside to call her own, and a bairn or two to bounce on her knee within the cozy circle of its warmth.

  Instead, she’d won the leal affection of a doddering old man and his equally aged dog, a fierce-eyed female seneschal with the heart of a bawd, and a husband who’d rather skulk about encased in mail and suspicion than climb into her bed, wearing naught but his fine dimpled smile and the desire to make her his own.

  Determined to claim that smile and the pleasure any way she must, she indicated the battle-ax, which, to his credit, he’d rather sheepishly laid upon the table when she’d turned a disapproving stare on the weapon.

  “From whom would you keep me safe, good sir? The fierce Norsemen of old have not threatened these waters in centuries and we are at peace with all our nearest neighbors.” She reached to trail one finger along his mailed sleeve, gave him the best little smile she could muster. “Or do you wish to protect me from the ghosts of the fabled Reginald and his lady? They are the ones of the curse, are they not?”

  The quick snapping together of his brows told her they were.

  “I have yet to hear their tale,” she went on, hoping the recitation of the legend might prod him out of his tight-lipped silence . . . urge him to open up to her. “Will you tell me of them? Dagda—”

  “Is that why she was in here? Filling your head with her crazed tales of ice-cold stones and lost love?” he jerked, staring at her. “Heed not a word of her prattle. And that is all the great MacKinnon curse is, I promise you—foolish prattle,” he vowed, his deep voice vehement. “A fireside tale for a long and dark winter night, naught more. The day centuries-old sorrows and walking ghosts harm a hair on any living soul’s head is the day a cow will fly to the moon.”

  “But there is something amiss. You would not have stormed in here tonight, girded for battle, were that not so.” Amicia folded her arms, lifted her chin. “I would know what that something is. A nameless foe cannot be fought.”

  “Think you I do not know that?”

  “I am sure you know much, my lord. And of things I would enjoin you to share with me,” she said, leveling her gaze at him.

  His gaze slid downward. Following it, her heart leapt to her throat, for her crossed arms had lifted and plumped her already generous breasts and the clinging linen of her gown drew especial emphasis to their welling fullness.

  Worst of all, the upper rim of her dusky right nipple peeked above the dip of her low-cut bodice. Nay, truth be told, fully half of her good-sized areola showed! One deep breath and the whole nipple would pop into view.

  Uncrossing her arms at once, she tugged the gown int
o place. “As you can see, sir, I am not a wee and delicate flower afraid of a bit of wind and rain. You needn’t shield me. I will not melt if you tell me what troubles you.”

  He lifted his gaze from her breasts at once. Faith, his face glowed brighter than the brazier! And Amicia had a sneaking suspicion she knew why.

  The thought sent a riptide of sparkling pleasure shooting through her, even warming her there in the sweetest, most secret part of her lower belly, but she’d test the notion and its possibilities later—in a more auspicious moment.

  For the nonce, she contented herself with tilting her head to the side and studying him through carefully lowered lashes. “I ask you again—why are you here?”

  He cleared his throat. “Unexpected tidings brought me here, my lady,” he said, his flushed cheeks proving just as unsettling as his frown.

  “What tidings?”

  The scowl returned. “Sakes, but you are a persistent wench,” he said, ramming a hand through his hair. “’Twas the privy seat if you must know.”

  “The privy seat? The one that collapsed beneath your da?”

  Magnus nodded. “Aye, the very one.”

  She opened her mouth to ask him what the broken privy seat had to do with his skulking about of a night, armed to the teeth, but before she could, he swung about.

  Crossing to the door in three long strides, he closed it and slid home the greased drawbar in one smooth movement.

  Her wide-eyed gaze not leaving him, Amicia snatched her arisaid off the back of a chair and swirled its soft woolen folds around her shoulders, shielding her dishevelment and, above all, any wayward-inclined nipples from view.

  But when he wheeled back around, he wore an expression so bitter earnest she doubted he would have noticed if both of her nipples sprang free to wink at him.

  Mayhap not even if they spoke up and said him a fine and merry good-e’en.

  Indeed, he drew a deep breath and stared at an undefined spot somewhere across the firelit chamber, his gaze strangely inward-looking.

  He patted the hilt of his sword, then lifted the silver-linked hem of his mailed hauberk. “You would know why I burst in here garbed for battle, and so I will tell you,” he said, his face granite-set. “My father’s plunge into the latrine chute was no accident. See you, I sent a few lads to retrieve the privy seat. I just had an uneasy feeling. A hunch. If you prefer, call it a cold prickling along the back of my neck.”

  He paused, drew a long breath. “The cesspit was long overdue for a good scouring, so it would not have been a waste of anyone’s time. Either way, the lads brought the seat to me a short while ago.”

  Now he turned to her at last, his gaze steady and penetrating. “The seat had been sawed in two,” he said. “And very neatly.”

  “Sawed in two?” The suggestion stole Amicia’s breath. “As in a-purpose?”

  He nodded.

  “That will have been the way of it, aye. Someone wanted Da, or whoe’er happened to use the garderobe, to drown in the cesspit.”

  Chapter Seven

  AMICIA STARED AT HIM, not quite certain she’d heard aright.

  Regrettably, the tension hanging thick in the air about him and the hard, firm set of his jaw said she had.

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be sure.

  “Are you saying someone deliberately cut through the privy seat?” She pressed the words past lips gone dry with shock. “A-purpose?”

  He’d been standing before the table, staring down at his discarded battle-ax, but now he turned. “So I have said,” he confirmed, his expression like granite. “Would that it were not so.”

  Amicia blinked, even though his answer did not surprise her. Neither his words nor her own body’s reaction to having his looming so tall before her.

  So near and imposing.

  Soft light from a suspended cresset lamp spilled across his head and shoulders, glinting in the rich chestnut strands of his hair and gilding the silvery rivets of his mailed shirt. The gold-flickering glow also illuminated the disquiet marring his handsome brow.

  Her pulse quickening, she studied him through lowered lashes. His proximity and even the simple act of breathing in the same air undid her. The heady masculine scent of him, an appealing mix of clean linen, leather, and polished steel, sent long, liquid pulls through the deepest part of her stomach and watered her knees.

  Warmth began pulsing through her and everything around them seemed to fade away while her focus on him sharpened to brilliance. Just looking at him branded possession. Even without the dimpled grin and merry eyes of his youth, he made a compelling presence. Strength and irresistible vitality thrummed through him, tantalizing and drawing her despite his dark frown.

  Mayhap even because of it.

  Truth be told, in his discomfited state, he exuded a smoldering appeal that caught at her heart, filled her with a welter of emotion and unleashed an overwhelming urge to skim her fingertips along the tight-set contours of his face. To smooth away each line of hardness with the gentlest caress.

  But nagging memories of reaching out to him in the distant past, and being rebuffed, slid through her, shading and curbing any such compulsion. So she simply smoothed her skirts and contented herself with her determination to claim such liberties soon.

  With the good saints on her side, and a wee bit of MacLean daring, mayhap even sooner than she’d dared hope.

  Her heart lifting at the possibility, she cast a glance between him and the bolted door. “What you are saying would mean treachery within these walls, my lord.”

  “Aye, like as not that is the way of it.” He sounded as if his very soul quailed at the thought. “Try as I might, I can think of no other explanation.” He squeezed shut his eyes for a moment, tunneled his fingers through his hair. “We have a devil supping amongst us, lass. But who?”

  Amicia held back for a moment of maddening indecision. She had a very good idea of who could be the instigator behind such vindictive doings. But now was not the time to voice her suspicion—unless she wished to mark herself a jealous shrew.

  So she swallowed the accusation and prayed he would not see it in her eyes. “You truly believe so?”

  “Och, but I do—regrettably.” He glanced down, trailed a finger along the handle of his battle-ax. “I will tell you, too, that I do not believe in curses or ghosts,” he said, pinching the wick of a guttering candle before returning his gaze to her.

  “It would take an arm almost as strong as my own to saw through well-seasoned oak—an arm attached to a living and breathing person. Someone who is bold, foolhardy, or comfortable enough to move about these walls at their will and leisure.”

  The implications of his words beat through her but did not lessen her distrust of his cousin. The wee snippet could have cajoled any besotted fool from the garrison to do her will.

  Almost certain of it, Amicia cleared her throat, blinked against the smoke rising from the snuffed candle.

  “Can the wood not have cracked of its own? A natural fault . . . mayhap rotten inside?” She clutched at other possibilities, however remote. “Once, at Baldoon and in the midst of the Yuletide carousing, a trestle board split clean in two. Could not—”

  “Nay, lass, there can be no doubt.” He shook his head. “The cut edges bore the marks of the saw’s fury. The knave who did this was not only stout-armed, but driven by white-hot rage.”

  His face grim-set, he went to the window embrasure where he ignored the twin-facing benches, newly adorned with plump, finely embroidered cushions. He stood with his back to her, staring out at the swirls of eddying mist drifting past the window arch.

  The night breeze, heavy with the smell of rain, riffled his hair. Firelight from a nearby torch picked out the brightest strands of gold, and Amicia’s fingers itched to test the silkiness of those bronze-gleaming highlights. A near all-consuming urge stoked through countless nights of youthful longings.

  Shaking off the spell of him, she clasped her hands together and drew a great breath b
efore she spoke. “If this is someone of such a twisted heart, I pray you discover his identity with all haste. For the good of us all.”

  “Never you worry, I shall,” he said without glancing round. “The dastard will soon find himself clapped into Coldstone’s deepest pit and regretting the day of his birth. Or mayhap I shall put him to the cliff—let him plunge headlong into the sea as he’d hoped to see one of us hurtle into the cesspit.” His hands clenched to tight fists. “On my soul, Amicia, I swear I will let no harm come to you.”

  Amicia’s heart dipped at his use of her name without the formalizing lady prefix. A first, and a triumph she seized with gladness. Sweetest pleasure spiraled through her, too, at the fervor in his voice as he’d vowed to protect her.

  “I have fullest faith in your ability to safeguard me,” she said, melting, a flood tide of preciously guarded images whispering across her heart. “Mayhap I should not tell you, but the truth is, I have long admired your strength and skill, Magnus MacKinnon.”

  Now he did look over his shoulder. “I—thank you for that,” he said, an odd thickness to his voice.

  The glow from the brazier revealed a faint tinge of pink stealing onto his cheeks. Perhaps an indication of how uncomfortable her compliments made him—or mayhap how much they pleased him.

  And that second notion pleased her.

  Inordinately so.

  Her sapphire ring seemed to warm on her finger as she looked at him. The possibility, real or imagined, made her heart smile. “See you, I remember from early on, how you e’er won the day at the competitions of strength our clans participated in,” she minded him, encouraged.

  She circled her thumb over the ring as she waited for his reaction, drew courage—and boldness—from the stone’s satiny, almost pulsing warmth. “I vow you e’er left the field as champion.”

  “Och, nay, lass. There you mistake,” he said, turning back to the window, the darkness of the mist-hung night. “I once lost an archery contest by badly overshooting the target. But that was many long years ago and no longer of import.” An odd touch of melancholy threaded the softly spoken words.