Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2)

by Crosby, Tanya Anne

  “’Tis a lovely gown,” her husband bent to whisper over her shoulder. “Is it yours?”

  For some reason, the question struck Lael as odd and she turned to give him a withering look. “Of course. I pulled it out of my boot. I always arrive for a battle with a dress for the victory celebration.”

  She thought she heard him chuckle, but couldn’t be sure, and then she felt his breath at her lobe, and the tenor of his voice this time seemed full of censure. “I only meant… I would thank the lass who lent it to ye.”

  Lael cast him a beleaguered glance. “My guess is ye’ll never have the chance.” She smiled sweetly, bringing the goblet nervously to her lips and taking another sip. “Alas, I hear ye tossed her into the pyre.”

  Beside her, her husband’s rude guest spat whatever was in his mouth. Lael felt the droplets alight upon her arm and turned in time to see it spew over the pate of some man at the lower tables.

  “Cha deoch-slàint, i gun a tràghadh,” she said, toasting to herself. It’s no health if the glass is not emptied. But that was the last time she attempted to speak. She sat quietly beside her husband and felt only relief when the attentions of others were no longer upon the laird’s table. She took her comfort in the mead, a sickly sweet libation that made her teeth ache with every sip. Fortunately, it was nearly as heady as the uisge they made in Dubhtolargg and so she continued drinking and Ailis continued pouring. But instead of making her merry, she brooded in silence, gritting her teeth, angry with herself for expecting aught to be different.

  In truth, she hadn’t even realized how much she’d craved a true wedding until this instant, when it was never more evident how much a farce it was.

  “Imagine my relief to learn that knives are not your only forte,” her husband whispered at her side. She could hear the amusement in his tone. “The meal is quite a lovely surprise.”

  “Because we’re savages?” she asked coyly.

  He seemed dumbstruck by the question. Of course he thought what the rest of Scotia thought—that her kin were naught but backwards mountain folk with little couth and empty heads.

  “Well,” she said, taking the burden from him to answer. “I assure you I am far better with my blades.” And she stabbed a bite of pork with an itty-bitty poniard—the only knife she’d been allowed to touch in days. She held it up before his face. “Shall I show you, my laird husband?”

  Confused by the vehemence in her tone, Jaime frowned at the sight of the eating dagger she turned in her hand. Not that he had expected her to come about so swiftly, but when she’d appeared tonight looking every bit the bride, he’d only dared to hope.

  So what was the purpose of the bonny dress? He wanted to ask her. Did she intend to flaunt in his face everything she would never give?

  Until now, he’d sat beside her, trying in vain to shut Kieran up and spark a conversation with his recalcitrant bride, but it was clear enough that despite the dress, and despite her acquiescence, despite his attempts to show her that he intended to afford her all the respect due her as his wife, she gave him naught but spite. “You’re a moody little dún Scoti,” he offered, his confusion getting the better of him.

  Clever little vixen that she was, she caught the intended barb, for she stood so swiftly that he feared she meant to plunge the eating dagger into his eye. It was all he could do not to flinch. He knew instinctively not to flag beneath her watchful eye. Nor, in truth, did he relish the thought of her undermining his authority over these men who were so new to his rule. But she was clearly distraught and he tempered his anger, exercising patience.

  “I am not a Scot!” she hissed.

  Everyone was watching now. Jaime was fully aware of every gaze trained upon the laird’s table. At his side, he saw Kieran cover his mouth to hide his mirth, but his wife’s cheeks were full of color, and her brows collided fiercely.

  “You are now,” Jaime countered with as much patience as he could muster. “I am a Scot, and as my wife, you will bend the knee to whomever I pledge my allegiance,” he assured her.

  She smiled thinly, her green eyes sparkling furiously. “I wadna like to see ye try to force me.”

  The poniard’s blade gleamed between them, tiny as it was.

  With every fiber of his being, Jaime itched to seize it from her, but he realized that it was precisely what she expected of him.

  He was incensed that she would challenge him before his men—in the hall no less—particularly at such an uncertain time. But some part of him also realized her confusion. He knew if he gave in to his fury he would harden her heart forever, but he could not afford to allow her to gainsay him so rudely before others. He gently seized her by the wrist, pulling her down as though for a lover’s kiss.

  “I will not force you,” he said for her ears alone. “You, my lovely wife, made a vow and I would see you keep it of your own free will.”

  A flicker of unnamed emotion passed over her eyes, then vanished as swiftly as it appeared. “I did not freely take those vows, so why should I freely keep them?”

  “Ah, but you did, my lady wife. You spoke the words and…“ he squeezed her wrist, urging her to drop the poniard into his lap “…no one held a blade to your throat.”

  Lael’s gaze locked with her husband’s, refusing to look away.

  Mayhap in truth he’d raised no blade to her throat, but he had to Broc’s—if not literally, at least by proxy. How quickly he forgot the ultimatum he’d given her only this morn.

  Still holding her firmly by the wrist, he leaned forward, brushing his lips against her cheek. The incredible heat of it seared her flesh. “I will give the due to the drink, and forgive the insult, but if you make me ask you to drop the poniard yet again, I will do so in a fashion you will not relish, my lady.”

  Lael’s gaze flicked downward, at the eating dagger in her hand. Briefly, she considered putting it elsewhere, but knowing that in truth she may not have behaved so rashly without the influence of the mead, she took a deep breath, reminding herself that challenging him here and now would gain her naught.

  At last she dropped the eating dagger, casting a glance at Kieran over her husband’s shoulder. The man was still staring, open-mouthed—and they called her kin woodenheaded. “I bid your leave,” she said sweetly. “We have an equally important guest I must see to in the gaols.”

  “Nay!” her husband barked, releasing her nevertheless.

  Lael placed her hands upon her hips, raising her voice despite that he did not. “Ye said I could!”

  His gaze stabbed her as sharply as any blade, but he lowered his voice yet again. “I said you could send the man a plate. You may not visit him yourself. I have given word to the guards to keep you out of the gaols. Our bargain does not include sharing my wife with a traitor to the crown.”

  Lael glared at him, infuriated and taking refuge in her anger. “As you will, my laird. After all, this is your home. It will never be mine!”

  With that said, she spun on her heels and hurried from the hall, not daring to turn to see who might be watching. She didn’t want anyone to spy her tears—tears she refused to shed, but they stung her eyes nonetheless.

  Cursing her husband to the netherworld, she hurried up the tower steps, ceding to his will, but if he thought she would be waiting for him in his bed, he was sorely mistaken.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Swollen and bruised, Cameron MacKinnon lay sleeping peacefully, though Cailin herself had barely slept at all. After many long hours of sitting by his side, the braided candle was nearly spent. Its flickering light cast unsettling shadows on his face, contorting it hideously. Black and blue though he might be, he no longer seemed to have the pallor of death upon his skin.

  He slept less fitful now that Lìli had given him a draught of white willow bark and valerian. The willow bark would ease his pain, Lìli said, and the valerian would keep him resting whilst his body healed. His ribs were cracked, his right arm broken as well, but much of the blood they’d found upon him and upon h
is clothing and Lael’s horse had come from elsewhere—which boded ill for Lael.

  With grim thoughts of her sister, the entire mood at Dubhtolargg was somber now. Worry etched new lines upon every face, and poor Una, who now sat sleeping intermittently in a nearby chair, hardly needed anymore. Yet such as it was, with snow pummeling the vale, there was not a chance anyone could learn more than whatever news Cameron had yet to tell—as yet not a bloody word, and Cailin sat fretting for her eldest sister. She fretted too for Cameron although she scarcely knew him.

  At long last, her brother had ceased pacing in the hall and had gone to bed along with his wife. But if Lael died, Cailin knew her brother would never forgive himself. Alas, but there was no way to know where she was or how she fared and not even Cailleach herself would have ventured out in this dire weather. One good gust of icy wind could freeze a man to stone and none would chance to find him again until the spring. By then, the wolves would have had their way and picked the bones clean. Cailin knew precisely what they could do after last winter’s snows melted and they’d discovered what was left of Rogan MacLaren up on the hill.

  Alas, the snows came too early this year.

  More than three feet of powdery drifts greeted them outside the crannóg and not even Una dared return to her grotto up on the mount. For the first time in nearly ten years, the old woman slept beneath the crannóg’s roof, keeping vigil at Cailin’s side. She’d fallen asleep merely an hour ago. Cailin refused despite that she was forced to keep her lids pried with her fingers.

  Cameron moaned suddenly, fidgeting restlessly as he had begun to do. “Dinna go,” he said, still asleep, and Cailin moved a little closer to listen.

  She touched his face gently with a hand, feeling the temperature of his cheek. “Cameron,” she whispered when he said naught more. “Cameron MacKinnon.” She patted his face tenderly, bidding him to wake.

  Una snorted awake. “Leave him be!” she demanded, and Cailin started at the sound of her withering voice. “Let the lad rest.”

  “But I heard him speak,” Cailin said in her own defense.

  “Pah!” Una exclaimed. “Ye’ll kill him yet if ye dinna give him peace. ’Tis nay time for ye to be pining over a bonny face.”

  Feeling utterly helpless and guilt ridden—and a tad resentful because Una thought she cared only about Cameron MacKinnon’s face, she sat back to watch him rest whilst the wind whistled overhead and the crannóg moaned like an auld crone with gout in her bones.

  “I hear the bean sìth,” Una whispered low and rose. She scurried from the room more swiftly than any old woman should, and returned momentarily with new candles. She set them all about the room and one upon the bedside table next to Cameron, then lit them all so quickly that Cailin swore she lit them all at once.

  “Gird your loins, child,” Una warned as the room was set aglow. “No matter what Lìli has said, I hear the bean sìth wailing at our door! And before I heard her wail, I spied her in a dream. She sat washing your sister’s cloak in Caoineag’s Pool, where the waters were cast to red.”

  A terrible shiver swept through Cailin, for it did not take a seer to know what that meant:When the bean sìth wept into the howling wind, her mournful shrieks heralded only death. “Cailleach save us,” she whispered softly.

  “Ach, child, she can do no such thing,” Una lamented. “Only the fates may intervene. Now, please, let the laddie rest.”

  Fat snowflakes drifted down from a bruised sky as the last rays of sunlight stabbed through icy clouds. Lael closed the shutters against the rising cold and peered about the stark room.

  Winter so soon has arrived.

  Even if she could find some way to free herself now, there was no way to traverse the mountain path. Until the spring, south was the only way to ride, and naught awaited her there save more Sassenach loving Scots.

  However, for the sake of argument, if they were to take a route south and double back to Chreagach Mhor, where her sister Cat now lived, she might take refuge there until the snows melted come spring. And yet it was pointless to devise such plans because she was stuck here, not for the least of reasons that included her spoken vows. Inasmuch much as she didn’t wish to recall those, she had very little choice. Her brother Aidan would say that a man or woman’s word was law unto itself. The price of breaking it, even once, was the trust of their kin. No man or woman worth his salt would fail to honor his word.

  Crossing the room to the bed, she muttered an oath to herself, vexed still, though she wished not to be.

  Her husband, for all his subtleties, was a despotic cur!

  At least she had one place to find respite from her enemy—meager as it was. Sighing with abandon, she lay back upon the crude little bed and watched a fading sliver of sunlight creep along the gray ceiling.

  She wished she’d kept the poniard for naught more than to toss it at the shadows—but her husband’s nose would be a better target.

  Her head muddled with mead, she lay watching the shadows creep into the room. And then she recalled the box beneath the bed.

  Curious as to what it held, she hopped off the bed and got down upon her knees, peering beneath the bed.

  Intrigued enough to brave the cobwebs, and the spiders and dust balls that were each the size of Una’s keek stane, she shimmied beneath the sagging bed…

  Acutely aware of Lael’s absence from the hall, Jaime took his leave and climbed the stairs, eager to speak with his wife.

  Perhaps the occasion was not precisely to either of their liking, but no matter where the year should leave them, there must be a measure of peace for the sake of everyone involved. It would be a long winter otherwise, and the discord would weary them all.

  Whether by spite, or whether she’d genuinely intended to impress him with her skills as chatelaine, he had a sense she knew how to manage a household well. That was how he intended to cry peace—by giving her a role in his home that she could embrace. And perhaps in time she would soften enough and find a way to embrace her husband as well?

  Grateful that Kieran had arrived to help set the castle to rights, his head nevertheless swam with lists of duties left undone. It was little wonder Lael had been quick to temper for they had all been through a trial here, his beautiful bride none the less. If possible, it seemed the past two days had shaved years off his life.

  He’d given Luc leave to remain in the hall. For all his travails, the lad looked a bit worse for the wear after trailing Lael about all day long, from one corner to the next. In fact, he’d lied when he’d told her he’d warned the guards against allowing her down into the donjon tunnels, but this much was certainly true: He didn’t relish the thought of sharing even an instant of his wife’s time with Broc Ceannfhionn.

  Jaime had never been a jealous man, but there was something about their friendship that gored at his gut like bull’s horns.

  Still, it could be that he owed her an apology… perhaps… and then again, it might be true that any leeway he gave her she would use it to harass him.

  Lovely little vixen.

  As much as his wife was certain to be, ambivalence was his newest bedfellow.

  In his haste to reach her, he leapt over the top two stairs and his heart gave a tentative flip as he opened the door, expecting to find her brooding in the laird’s chamber. After David took his leave from Keppenach, he’d returned here to prepare the chamber for his wedding night, for despite that this was a hurried union, he didn’t intend for their first night to be perfunctory.

  The room was empty.

  Jaime’s first thought was that she had disobeyed him and gone down to the gaols despite his wishes, but that simply wasn’t possible. He’d had his eyes trained upon the stairs, for the most part ignoring every word Kieran uttered, in the hopes of spying his bride returning to the hall. She could not possibly have passed by without Jaime seeing her, of that he was certain.

  He peered around the room just to be sure, his gaze alighting on the bath he’d had drawn for her, the clean s
hift he’d had a maidservant fetch and the empty goblets with the flagon of uisge beside it. Warm and toasty from the fire he’d lit earlier, the room remained dim, barely bright enough to see that not a soul was there.

  His gaze skidded to the window, finding the glass intact and no sign of tampering. He did not think she was foolish enough to climb outside, and neither would it serve any true purpose since, in truth, she could leave at any time… though not without sealing Broc’s fate. She was a prisoner only to her word, even though he had yet to tell her so in quite those terms. He’d set Luc upon her as an escort as much for her own protection, for he did not know these people as yet.

  Suddenly realizing where she must be, he spun to face the next door in the uppermost hall… Did she prefer to spend her first night as his wife alone in the dark and cold simply to avoid him?

  “Spiteful wench,” he muttered beneath his breath and spun toward the door, intending to put his wife precisely where she belonged.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Almost… almost…

  Lael nearly had the box in hand. She stretched her arm as far as it would go, and then her fingers, willing them to grow.

  “Sweet Mother of Winter,” she whispered.

  The room was darker now, full of shadows—likely full of ghouls and brollachans as well. Her fingers swept through webs that stubbornly stuck to her flesh and she tried in vain to brush them away beneath the bed. She cursed softly beneath her breath, but at least her head was somewhat less muddled from the mead.

  The box was naught but a black spot in the far corner, but she knew it was there even if she could scarce see it anymore. It almost certainly had to have been placed here by a child—someone small enough to fit beneath the old warped bed—perhaps even Lìli’s son?