by The Captive
Regardless of the estrangement between them, it had not affected the volatile passion that took place between them in his bed or, for that matter, in the stables, a corn crib, or the forest.
Ranald felt like a fool. But how to remedy his error?
After the council meeting was over he asked Jamie to wait. His cousin eyed him warily. When Jamie and he were alone in the doorway he said, "I’ve been glaikit. I ask your forgiveness, Jamie.”
Jamie eyed him dourly. "Stupid isn’t half of it. How about blind, as well?"
Ranald grinned. "Did Annie do something to her hair?” He fluttered his hand about his own head. "Like comb it or something?"
Jamie slapped him on his back. "Enya’s work, my cousin. It would appear she has been working on you, as well."
That was exactly what he feared. Mayhap what he feared most.
Memories danced to a Scottish ballad as Ranald played the pipes. But the fiery-haired young woman who tapped her foot to his music was not Ruthven. Enya had yet to betray him. At some point both he and Enya had to start believing in each other. If there was no trust between two people, there was nothing.
He finished the tune, one of magic rowan trees and monster sea hags, and put down the pipes.
“Port na bpucai," Ian said, clapping his contorted hands. "Fairy music. By the best of the pipers. Me headache is all but gone.”
Ranald still had his own headache to vanquish: his pride.
Now was as good a time as ever to do it. He signaled Patric to take up the fiddle. The young man’s bow played a haunting strain that was like the soft sighing of night wind.
Feeling like a lumbering draft horse, Ranald crossed the great hall. Enya sat on a bench with Elspeth. Both women eyed him balefully. Plucking up his courage, he ensconced himself on the bench beside Enya. Hands clasped between his spread knees, he said, "Legend says the tune is the funeral song of fairy spirits gone to bury one of their own."
She said nothing.
Mentally sweating, he tried again. "Ye see, fairies are not immortal, but weep and mourn and die as we humans do.”
Without taking her gaze off Patric, Enya said, "I believe and trust in what I can see."
Her expression was so unyielding, he doubted his apology would be accepted. It was just as well he didn’t apologize. He should never have sought her out in the first place. Not with all eyes upon them.
He started to rise and thought better of it. He wouldn't run like some befuddled boy. "Teach me to dance, mistress,” he blurted.
Real dismay showed in the expression she turned on him. "You’ve never learned to dance?”
He shook his head. He fastened his gaze on his clasped hands. "Nae. Me feet are like boats.”
The ends of her mouth curved upward. A delightful mouth. "My own feet are nae wee things, but 'tis not a difficult thing to learn, this dancing.”
"Weel, will ye? Teach me?”
She rose and held out her hands. "Come along, my laird.” A sly smile dimpled one cheek. "You’ve put yourself in good hands.”
With everyone in the great hall watching, he sincerely hoped so.
In the middle of the room, cleared of tables and benches, she positioned his arm around her waist, his hand at the center of her back. "Hold me firmly.”
"I’m beginning to like this already.”
“Pay attention!" she rapped.
He tried. He felt like a clumsy oaf. He glanced up from his disobedient feet to see that Annie had selected Jamie as a partner. His cousin was dancing with the grace of a born courtier. And Cyril the Salter had summoned his courage to select Enya’s maidservant, the Lowland girl Mary Laurie.
So Highlander and Lowlander could mingle!
Soon his own feet seemed to gain a musical inclination. His body followed next. A slow smile eased his strained expression.
"Before you know it," she said, “you will be performing the Highland fling with the grace of a gamboling deer."
He drew her closer. “Me thinks that dancing was difficult because I had wee women for partners. All the while, what 1 was needing was a woman to match me size. An Amazon of a woman.”
She eyed him quizzically. "You are more educated than you would allow."
"Ye are more of a woman than I had allowed.”
At once he could see that his intended gallantry had hurt her feelings, but it was too late to make reparation. The tune had ended, and she left him standing alone in the cleared floor.
By God, had she gone and done it? Had she made him fall in love with her?
Nae. She was a mere Lowlander. She had not the power of the Auld Folk.
Did she?
The man was lazy. Unreliable. Without ambition. Undependable.
Mhorag lifted her skirts and picked her way across the bailey’s muddy yard. At least the snow had given way to drizzle. Spring couldn’t be too far away, not with March only a fortnight off. Another two months and the sun would have melted away the snow.
Another two months and Ranald would be moving the reivers down from the winter camp of Lochaber. The idyllic months of peace would be past.
The peace in the castle bailey was presently disrupted by a steady thudding. So, the oaf was just now getting around to taking the cabinet hinge to be repaired. The double doors to the ironforger’s shop were open. Heated air beckoned her enter. The smell of bare earth and rusty iron tickled her nostrils.
Battle axes and claymores and swords and steel tipped arrows, all awaiting repair, lay in random piles, as well as domestic items like waffle irons and tea caddies and bed warmers. A pitchfork with a broken tine waited its turn for repair.
The heavyset ironmonger was not in sight. Instead, at the anvil Duncan, naked to the waist, wielded a hammer. A leather apron was tied over his faded breeches. The reflection of the forge’s blaze danced across his torso. The flames’ red light mingled with the red lash stripes that snaked around his rib cage.
Bemused, she stood in the doorway’s shadows as he repaired the hinge. A swath of sweat-dampened, butter-yellow hair fell across his forehead. Sweat sheened his skin and ran down the channels where his tendons and ligaments and muscles came together, then separated with each lithe movement of his chest and arms. Until he had need to strain, to apply power and pressure, his slender build cunningly concealed its sinewy muscle.
The blast of heat sapped her energy. She pushed back her woolen jacket’s lapels. Still, the heat entered her body. Ran through her veins like molten lead. Her heart seemed to pound in tempo with the thud of the hammer against the red-hot metal hinge. Inside, deep inside her belly, another throbbing began.
He lifted his forearm to swipe it across his sweaty forehead and stopped midway. His warm brown eyes locked with hers. Embarrassment flooded her. Surely he could not help but notice her awestruck countenance. He laid aside the hammer and hinge and wiped his soot-smudged hands on the leather apron. During this time, his gaze never wavered from hers.
When, at last, he ambled toward her, she was able to collect her scattered wits. Too many more dangerous male adversaries she had faced to let this country bumpkin beguile her. "Ye tarry overly long. When I give an order I want it carried out at once.”
“The ironmonger has taken ill. I—”
"I dinna want excuses."
Deliberately, he let his gaze move insolently from her frosty-blue eyes down past her sullenly set lips to her man’s shirt. The sweat-dampened linen clung to one pouting nipple peaking around the fold of her jacket. "What do ye want, Mhorag? What do ye really want?”
Her hand crept up to the shirt’s topmost button. Her tongue stole out to lick her heat-dry lips. “Nothing.” Realizing the word had come out a barely audible whisper, she said it again, this time louder. "Nothing. Nothing from a man."
That easy smile displayed his crooked teeth. "Now while I was working, I was thinking all the while how I would like to fashion a girdle of mailed gold for ye. It would be of this thickness.” He took her hand from where it lay between her breasts a
nd measured off the first joint of her small finger.
"Half an inch?” she murmured.
"Aye. And this long." He slipped his hands beneath her jacket and spanned her tiny waist with his long, slender fingers.
She didn’t move. Her breath had stalled in her throat. Perspiration trickled between her breasts. Soaked her inner thighs. Her lips parted. Her breasts heaved. Had the forge’s blaze consumed all the shop’s air?
“I would set stones in the girdle,” he went on. "Stones the color of your eyes. Aquamarine.” He inclined his head closer. Too close. "No, turquoise is nearer the color.”
Her lids fluttered shut. His lips kissed one lid, then the other. The kisses had been softer than a down feather. Light. Lingering. Was that her sigh?
His hands, encompassing her waist, drew her slowly against him so that they were aligned from knee to chest. “Me thoughts turned to how I would like the honor of buckling the girdle around your waist. The girdle only. Set off by your fair skin."
“Aye,” she gasped. Weak with this inexplicable wanting, her hands clung to his shoulders for support.
"Aye what, Mhorag?”
"Take me. Oh, God, do it now before the fear—” Her hands tore at her shirt, popping loose one button, before his hands captured hers.
"No. Not that way. I must love ye so the fear canna ever come again to torment ye.”
Unaccountably, tears flooded her eyes. "Oh, Duncan, ’tis such a dark, flame-breathing, air-sucking dragon, this fear of mine."
His fingers gentled her trembling lips. "Sssh. Dinna speak like that. Tis not your fear. Ye dinna own it. It dinna own you.”
Her shallow, rapid breathing gradually slowed. She lowered her eyes. “I feel foolish.”
“I'm the dunce. Duncan the dunce. Seeking above his station, I am. Falling in love with the bonniest of lasses."
She glanced up at him to see if he were making fun of her. "Bonny? Me?”
His brow knit. “Ye dinna ken?”
She shook her head.
"Aye, that and more, me love." His fingers drew close the gaping shirt. “Why, Mhorag, ye are the sweetest-tempered—”
“Ohh! Ye swine!” She pushed him from her and began cursing all the Gaelic oaths she had ever heard.
"Yer hinge,” he said, grinning and backing away. “Tis ready for yer cabinet door."
“Come back here!” she sputtered. “Did ye hear me, Duncan?"
He grabbed up the hinge and his shirt and started for the doorway.
Furious beyond words, she snatched up the pitchfork and hurled it at his departing back. She missed. The pitchfork struck the wooden door, stuck, vibrated, then thudded on the ground. "Ye—ye—oh, ye!"
As the weeks moved into March, life for Enya had fallen into an almost peaceful pattern of rising early to kindle the kitchen fires. After cooking and cleaning, the afternoons were hers to fritter away as she chose—usually embroidering with her mother or engaging in philosophical discussions with Arch, whom she was coming to know on different terms.
Jamie she avoided for fear of the retribution Ranald would visit upon his cousin.
Duncan she should have avoided.
Regrettably, she didn’t that morning.
The day began with sunlight that was brilliant that high in the mountains. Just a few patches of snow skirted the outer bailey. Townspeople streamed under the castle’s iron-grated portcullis to partake in the first Highland games of the new year.
These games, the Wappinschaw, provided the opportunity to mingle, to demonstrate a swain’s prowess, and to dissipate the winter’s accumulation of lethargy, tension, and restlessness.
The Wappinschaw consisted of foot races, dancing, shinty, bagpipe competitions, and tossing the caber. The caber was a long log that weighed as much as a hefty yew trunk. The kilted contestants vied to see who could heave it the straightest, so that it landed in a precise way determined by the judge.
In this case the villagers selected Jamie as rightful judge. Not only was he a Cameron, but he was not athletic by nature. Ranald would have abstained, but the other men prodded him, albeit respectfully, to compete. Every male wanted the honor of being the one to defeat the mighty chief.
Many of the women found diversion in folk dances. Their partners were the men who did not compete in the games. Enya watched the beginning of the games. Their early stages revealed that the reluctant Ranald would be an outright winner, especially in the tossing of the caber. His brawn, his prowess, had no match.
Rather than watch them fawn over their laird at that final moment of his triumph, she forsook the sidelines to observe the dancing. Wooden clogs clapping against the hard-packed earth marked the staccato rhythm of the morris dance. Bagpipes skirled and skirts swirled. Even old Dame Margaret, clapping her hands in time to the music, managed a smile.
As Mhorag’s bondservant, Duncan did not dare approach the chief’s sister for a dance. Instead, he danced with first one maid and then another.
Enya delighted in seeing her childhood friend enjoying himself. With Duncan, one laughed at life. The woman who took Duncan to husband would be a lucky one, she mused. He might not be a valiant warrior, a skilled huntsman, or a towering intellect. But he valued people. He would make a woman feel treasured.
When he sauntered over to her and bowed with all the elegance of a court dandy she couldn’t help but laugh and dip a curtsy.
That silly grin curved his lips. His eyes glinted with merriment. "Dance, m’lady?”
Her eyes reflected her buoyant feelings. "Aye, m’lord.”
The steps weren’t that difficult to master. After every round partners were circulated, until the original partner was regained. Several rapid rounds were enough to leave a dancer breathless.
Her auburn hair tumbling loose from its crown, Enya sashayed away from her last partner, a portly man whose stomach shook in time with the music, and fell into Duncan’s arms.
Laughter gurgled on her lips. "Ah, but that was a grand time, me lad!" Without thinking, she bussed him on the cheek.
She was feeling marvelous. The dancing, she reasoned, was a reminder that she could not have changed, no matter how much her situation had. Alas, duty called her back to the kitchen, along with Flora and Annie. A hungry mass would clamor to be fed come mealtime.
Bridie-cakes, lamb’s sweetbreads, tatties, venison pasties, and steak and kidney pudding would tease the palate. Whiskey, ale, beer, and hot tea would quench the thirst.
When Enya went below to the oak-beamed buttery, as was her practice before helping with the cooking, the entryway candle was missing from its sconce. In the dark, she felt her way along the cold, damp stone walls. As if blind, she let her feet carefully pick out each step.
She almost gained the mid-landing and the next candle sconce. Then her footing slipped on a step sweating with a thin coating of moisture that had iced over. She plummeted. At the same time her hand flailed for the rickety banister. Splinters gouged her palms and fingers. Her feet dangled over the dark abyss.
Her grip was slipping. The banister rung wobbled. She screamed again. Slivers of wood slid beneath her nails. The image of the twisted heap of barrel staves and cooper’s bands mounded below her renewed her screams.
Above her a shaft of light penetrated the cold gloom. Someone had opened the door! "Help!"
A figure leaned over the balustrade. Tangled, tawny hair draped around a tortured countenance. Just as quickly, the light receded and was eclipsed with the shutting of the door.
Paralyzing fear robbed her blood and robbed her of coherent thought. Her fall was surely an accident, but then why hadn’t—
With a crack, the rung to which she clung tilted outward.
From somewhere she drew upon a last burst of energy. With a tremendous gathering of strength, she released her hold on the one banister railing and lunged for the next. It quivered—but didn’t break off.
She didn’t have the muscle to lever herself up, but she could lower herself, rung by rung ... if she
could ration her remaining stamina.
Her hands were slippery with sweat and blood. With each passing second her skirts weighed more heavily. She swung to another rung. Clung. Swung again to the next. Clutched it—for one brief instant—slipped—and plunged into the chasm of darkness and pain and, finally, oblivion.
"Mmmnnnhh.”
"M’bairn? Ye are mending?"
Enya turned her gaze toward the voice and looked at Elspeth. It was as if peering through gauze. She blinked. Her cloudy vision coalesced.
"Ye got a braw egg-size lump on yer head, ye do." The old woman slipped her gnarled hand under her charge’s head and held a pewter cup to her lips. "Here, drink this, we’an. Twill rid ye of yer drouthy tongue.”
She swallowed the viscous green liquid. "Aggh! That is awful."
"Dinna be carnaptious, me bairn. Ye are lucky to be alive."
"Two days. Twas the laird who went looking for ye and found ye. For the past few minutes ye been talking dowfie-like. Sad moanings. I ken then ye were comin’ round. Sent for yer mother. She’s been glaikit with worry.’’
Glancing around, Enya realized she was in Ranald’s room. "Did he—Ranald—sleep ... here with me?"
Elspeth’s hooked nose wrinkled. "Had he wanted to, do ye think I would ha’ let him? Nae, he slept on yon rug.” She nodded at the bearskin stretched before the fireplace. "If ye call ain eye on ye sleepin’.’’
The door opened, and Kathryn entered. "Enya! You are awake!”
"It appears that you and I are taking turns convalescing, Mother."
Her mother dropped a testing kiss on her forehead. "No fever." She straightened. Relief was reflected in her velvet-brown eyes. "You have visitors outside. Do you feel like seeing them?"
She nodded and managed a smile. Even that effort hurt. “Aye. Send them in."
Before the afternoon was over a steady stream of well-wishers had paraded through Ranald’s room: Duncan, Arch, Annie, Mary Laurie, Jamie, Flora, Patric, and even Dame Margaret.