‘You seem very close to Lord Lachlan.’ The younger knight pinned her with his narrow gaze, snapping a long twig between his fingers. He threw the ends on to the fire. ‘I suppose you hope to seduce him into letting you go.’
‘I think nothing of the sort!’ Cecily protested, cheeks flaming. Did Lachlan think the same? She had attempted to offer him her body, after all. A feeble, half-hearted attempt. Warmth blossomed in her chest with the shameful memory.
‘We’ve seen you, mistress, with your simpering ways,’ the other knight chipped in. ‘Pretending to fall off your horse so you could ride with him—’ He stopped speaking abruptly as Lachlan came back into the barn, carrying the blanket.
‘Do you want to sit by the fire?’
‘No,’ Cecily answered, her voice low and miserable. ‘I only want to sleep.’
He caught the look of distress on her face, the way her eyes slid away from his, steadfastly refusing to meet his gaze. The uneasy tension in the air. Had one of the knights said something to her? ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ Cecily clawed at the ties of her cloak, her throat tight with tears as she fumbled uselessly with the knot below her neck. Her fingers refused to co-operate, refused to execute the fine movements.
‘Let me.’ Tucking the blanket under his arm, Lachlan brushed her hands away, working swiftly at the tight knot that held the edges of the cloak together. Cecily flushed, conscious of the other soldiers’ close scrutiny.
His knuckles bumped against her chin, grazed her jaw.
Sensation lanced through her, a lightning streak of excitement. She drew in a short, sharp breath, a whisper of desire.
‘Oh, please, will you leave me alone?’ Desperation etched Cecily’s voice. She knocked his fingers away, annoyed with herself, annoyed with him for being so attentive. Why couldn’t he treat her badly, make her stand outside in the rain or walk barefoot along a stony track? Anything to stop her feeling so attracted towards him. ‘Let me sleep, will you?’ Grabbing the blanket from him, she stalked off into the opposite corner of the barn.
Throwing herself on to a loose pile of straw, she rolled herself into the blanket, back facing rigidly towards the fire. Why could she not hate this man? It would certainly make life a lot easier. But even now, as she lay here, fighting to control the uneven race of her heart, the liquid puddle of her emotions, she realised it was not possible. Despite the situation, he made her feel cared for, protected, in a way that she had never known before.
* * *
Cecily’s eyes opened; she blinked, licking her lips. Her throat was sore, scratchy from lack of water. She needed a drink, but her limbs were idle, so reluctant to move. Wrapped in both her cloak and Lachlan’s blanket, a delicious warmth slowly started to envelop her, her body pillowed by the dense pile of dry hay smelling sweet. Tentatively, she stretched her legs out, wriggling her toes, enjoying the easy pull of her muscles. The wonderful sensation after so many cold, arduous hours of riding was sublime.
A deep rumble filled her ears. Cecily turned her head on her makeshift pillow of hay, slowly, not making a sound. She had no wish to wake anyone. Tucked up against the opposite wall, two figures were rolled into blankets. Both knights, snoring loudly. And sitting cross-legged by the fire, awake, was Lachlan.
The fiery glow bathed his face in a golden light, flickering over the rugged contours, the hard slash of his cheekbones. He rested his arm on one knee, twisting a stick between his fingers. He stared at the piece of wood, his eyes holding a strange, haunting glimmer. A look of deep and utter sadness.
Her breath snared, tangled in her chest.
She must have made a small sound. Lachlan’s head jerked up, a muscle in his jaw tensing, then releasing, when he realised she was awake. He snapped the twig decisively between his fingers and threw both ends into the fire. The flames crackled, sparks flying up.
Cecily sat up abruptly, yanking the blanket around her shoulders. Her plaits tumbled down, over her chest. Pulling the bag towards her, she rummaged inside the soft leather for her circlet and veil, extracting the hairpins. She began to wind her plaits into a loose bun at the back of her head, jabbing the long pins in to secure her hair. She reached for her veil.
‘You needn’t bother with that.’ Lachlan’s mouth quirked at her sense of propriety.
‘Oh, but...’ She glanced over at the knights in the corner.
‘You’ve spent the whole day with your hair loose in plaits, Cecily. Why worry about it now?’
She flushed at his perception. ‘My hair has been covered by a hood all day. But now...’
His long eyelashes flickered upwards. ‘They don’t care about you, Cecily. They are in the employ of Lord Simon and they do as I say. You’re a single woman, sleeping alone with three men. It matters not whether your head is covered or not.’
Cecily stood up, moved over to the fire. She knelt down opposite him, shuddering in the waves of heat thrown off by the flames. ‘You make it sound as though I should be worried.’
‘They won’t touch you if I’m here.’
‘They wouldn’t touch me if you weren’t!’ Cecily flashed back at him. Her cheeks flushed pink. What was he saying? That if he hadn’t accompanied her, they would have raped her?
His eyes narrowed suddenly, pinpricks of light. ‘Are you completely naive, Cecily? What do you think happens to most female prisoners? They have no protection, no rights. There is no one to look after them. They are completely at the mercy of their guards.’
Cecily gripped the edges of the blanket, chastened by his words, wanting to weep at her powerlessness. ‘What’s going to happen to me after you have delivered me to the King? You won’t be there then, will you?’
No, he thought suddenly. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. No, I won’t. A chill wrapped around his heart. How could he leave her there, at the mercy of the King’s guards?
The silence between them grew, broken only by the crackle of the burning wood.
‘Let me go, Lachlan,’ she whispered, her fingers playing with the lattice of straw on the ground, picking up wisps and laying them in a criss-cross pattern. ‘Can’t you say that I slipped away in the night, when everyone was asleep?’
‘Everyone would know that was not the truth.’
‘Why not?’
He pressed his lips together, a mock grimace. ‘Because that would never happen to someone like me. And everybody knows it.’
The arrogance of the man! ‘How lovely that you should have such a high opinion of yourself.’ Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.
He shrugged one shoulder, staring into the flames, then lifted his chin to meet her scornful gaze. His eyes sparkled blue, perceptive, incisive, drilling into her very soul. ‘I am sorry, but it’s true. Lord Simon would know that I’d let you go.’
‘Oh, my God, you are impossible!’ Balling her hands into fists, she resisted the urge to thump down on the hard-packed earth floor. ‘I cannot believe that you have never blundered or made an error in your life. Maybe you could make a little one now. Everyone makes mistakes.’
‘You’re right,’ he replied slowly, with supreme effort. ‘Everyone makes mistakes.’
‘But not you, obviously.’
‘Yes, I made a mistake.’
‘What...only one?’ Cecily scoffed.
‘It was a very...’ He sighed, sticking his hand into his hair and pushing it back. ‘It was a very big mistake.’ His eyes darkened, reduced to a glittering sadness.
‘There you go, then,’ Cecily replied lightly, her voice adopting a persuasive lilt. ‘You are just as fallible as the rest of us. If Lord Simon knows of this big mistake, then surely he would not think it suspicious that I managed to escape your clutches?’
The air in the barn shifted, tightened. The flow of conversation dropped like a stone, plummeted to the ground.
Oh, Christ, what had she
said?
His eyelashes dipped fractionally at the impact of her words. As if she had hit him across the face or cuffed his ear. Checking that the soldiers still slept, Lachlan rose to his feet, abruptly, in a rush of honed muscle. He towered over her, his shadow thrown huge and monstrous on the wall behind him. ‘You need to stop talking, Cecily. You need to stop talking, right now.’
His steely tone, though hushed, hit her with the brute force of an axe. Her chest twisted in fear. Hugging her knees, she curled her upper body over them tightly. A defence against whatever onslaught was about to come.
Lachlan strode to the open archway, planting his fist high on the roughly hewn oak of the frame. His breath puffed out into the cold night air, white billows of warmth. He waited for the memories to come bouncing back, the vivid images to sear painfully behind his eyes, but all he saw and heard was a more muted version, an echo.
Someone touched his arm. Cecily. Her fingers curled gently around his sleeve, pressing against his forearm. The fine bones of her knuckles shone out white. She stood at his side, her neat head on a level with his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I have said something to upset you, but I’ve no idea what it is.’ Her voice was soft, heavy with chagrin.
The sweetness of her apology wrapped around him like a soothing balm. Did she really care that much about how he felt? ‘It’s nothing,’ he replied gruffly. ‘Something that happened a long time ago.’
‘What was it?’ Her upper arm nudged against his.
He watched the slanting snow, the flakes heavier now, settling on the trees, the coarse bleached grass in front of the barn. Had anyone ever asked him that question before? Maybe once, a long time ago, when he had been a snotty-nosed, blethering youngster, his emotions floundering, incapable of dealing with the loss of his parents, his sister. Not since then. But now? Now it seemed the most natural thing in the world for this maid, for Cecily, to ask such a question. And for him to tell her.
Her hair brushed against his shoulder. ‘Tell me.’
‘It was my family. My whole family died.’
She clutched at his sleeve. ‘I am so sorry.’ Shock reverberated in her voice. ‘Don’t speak of it, if it makes you sad. You don’t need to say any more.’
But I must, he thought. Cecily had offered him a lifeline without realising it. Dragging him out from the murky depths of his guilt-ridden past and lifting him up, up into the light, to a place where he could breathe again.
‘I must speak of it,’ he ground out. A muscle flexed tightly in his jaw. Already he could feel the difference in his body, the lightening of his muscles as the burden of guilt, the guilt that he had carried for years and years, began to dissipate.
He sighed, leaning his head against his raised forearm. ‘My father’s family originally came from Denmark: they were Vikings who settled in the Orkney Isles. My father travelled south and fell in love with a Scottish maid. It was his undoing. Her family, the Macdonald clan, did not approve; they hated us and swore that they would do anything to get rid of us. My father had enough loyal men to keep us safe, to protect us from their continual onslaughts, until one day...’ his jawline was rigid ‘...one day, he didn’t.’
Her hand moved from his sleeve to clutch the fingers of his left hand, hanging by his side. She held her breath, not wanting to speak, or to interrupt the flow of his speech.
He clasped her hand with both of his, searching her face. His expression was bleak, raw. ‘They killed my family and set the castle alight. Razed everything to the ground until there was nothing left. And I could have stopped it. I could have saved them. Yet I did nothing. And that was my big mistake.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Cecily whispered.
‘It’s true.’ His voice was ragged, low, so as not to wake the men sleeping on the other side of the barn. ‘I was eight at the time, out on the hills with my dog. High up, above the castle. I saw the men coming, I saw them on the brow of the hill. I should have run then, run to raise the alarm, but I couldn’t move; it was as if I was frozen.’
‘You were frightened, Lachlan.’
He closed his eyes. The rigid sinew of his fingers wrapped around hers, squeezing painfully. ‘I could have saved them.’
‘You were eight, Lachlan. Eight years old. Just a baby.’
‘It’s no excuse.’ A few snowflakes had landed on his hair and he brushed them off.
‘Lachlan,’ she whispered, ‘you have to stop blaming yourself. Otherwise you will go mad.’ Without thinking, led only by an instinct to comfort him, she slid her arms around his waist and hugged him close.
As her slim frame knocked into his, against his chest, his stomach, Lachlan took a sharp intake of breath. His senses jolted, igniting, his long eyelashes dipping with the sweet sensation, savouring the warmth of her fingers against his chill skin. ‘There’s only one thing left to do now,’ he said, trapping her hand beneath his. His voice trembled with rough emotion.
‘What is it?’
‘I need to go back up to Scotland and find the people that did this to my family. They need to pay for what they did.’ Since his family had perished, he had fought harder and better than anyone else, to be strong and brave and courageous. To never know fear like that again. But his actions had failed to drive the memories away, memories that plagued his every waking moment. He needed to do more.
‘You seek revenge.’
‘I do.’
‘Do you think it will make you feel any better?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘How can I let them get away with it?’ He searched for the anger within that had driven him forward for all those years, but could only find the fleeting dregs of it. What had happened to him? Had Cecily weakened his resolve and made him forget his purpose?
He frowned, stepping back suddenly. Her hand dropped away.
‘It won’t bring your family back, Lachlan, will it? It won’t bring you any peace if you don’t stop blaming yourself for their deaths.’
He gaped at her, stunned by her speech. ‘You are too bold with your words, Cecily. You forget your place.’
She scowled at him, narrowing her bright eyes. ‘Oh, yes. I do apologise.’ Her response was mocking. ‘A prisoner...offering advice to a lord. What was I thinking?’
‘Get some sleep,’ he growled at her. ‘We’ve a long ride tomorrow.’
Cecily flounced away, hurt, chastened, throwing herself down on her makeshift bed and pulling the blanket around her shoulders. Her words chivvied at him, sending a spiral of doubt deep into his chest. Why had he told her? Because she had asked? But many others had asked him what had happened all those years ago and he had shut their questions down as fast as they had arisen.
He hunkered down where he had stood, folding his legs beneath him in the open archway, the cool breeze chipping at his cheek. He kneaded the wound in his leg, more from habit now than from any actual pain. The result of Cecily’s quiet questioning astonished him: the guilt that clogged his heart seemed eased and his mind felt lighter, somehow. Yet he had punished her for making him feel better, throwing her wise words back in her face, dulling those bright eyes. He had taken her sympathy and then discarded her.
Rising slowly, he stepped carefully over to where she slept, his eyes tracing the rigid, hostile line of her back angled towards him. He crouched down, balancing on the balls of his feet, curling his hand around her shoulder. ‘Cecily? I know you’re not asleep.’
‘Go away,’ she mumbled, staring fixedly at the cob wall in front of her. The mud and straw mixture was old and had fallen away in patches, exposing the old straw poking out.
‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’ Lachlan’s voice was gentle.
She rolled over, facing him, her eyes sparkling truculently. ‘As you say, I overstepped the mark.’
‘I reacted badly,’ he admitted, throwing her a wry smile. Tryi
ng to make peace. ‘No one has ever spoken to me about what happened before.’
‘I’m sorry if my questions caused you pain.’ Her voice was timid, careful.
‘On the contrary.’ Lachlan’s gaze drifted over her lightly. A wayward strand of hair had become detached from one of Cecily’s braids, straggling across her cheek. He took the fine tendril between his fingers and tucked it back behind her ear.
She sucked in her breath.
‘Thank you.’ Lachlan leaned down, brushed his lips against her cheek. ‘Thank you for listening to me.’
Shock waves pulsed through her. As his firm lips grazed her skin, her innards melted, reducing her body to a puddle of intense longing. Her breath punched out, a great, gusting sigh of release, of desire.
‘Please. Don’t.’ Her hands sprang up, her fingers digging into his hair to push him away.
But he had heard her. Heard the intense sigh of longing. Beneath his mouth her skin was like silk. His lips slid down to claim her mouth. To roam along those soft lips, to explore.
Cecily wrenched her mouth away, gasping. ‘Please... Lachlan. The guards...they think I’m trying to seduce you...so that you will let me go,’ she whispered hurriedly, praying they hadn’t woken up to witness what had happened.
‘Aren’t you?’ He lifted his head, the tendrils of his hair spiralling out like a gilded halo, touched gold by the fire. Sat back on his haunches.
‘Absolutely not! It’s you.’
He stood up. ‘It’s both of us, Cecily. We are both to blame for this.’
But he managed to walk away from her.
Chapter Ten
‘Time to break your fast,’ a gruff voice announced. A wave of warm, foetid breath brushed her ear. The younger knight bent over Cecily. Pincering her shoulder with his big meaty hand, he shook her roughly. Eyelids dry and scratchy, she levered herself into a sitting position. The cob wall of the barn blurred before her; she scrubbed hurriedly at her eyes to clear them of the last vestiges of sleep. After the late-night conversation with Lachlan, her body trembling as he wrenched himself away from her, she had thought sleep would elude her, yet she had fallen almost immediately into a deep, dreamless slumber.
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