Heart of Ashes (Hearts of the Highlands Book 1)

by Paula Quinn

  “I can protect myself,” Aleysia reminded him stiffly. She glared up at him as he stepped around her. He smelled of the forest.

  “And who would have protected Matilda?” he asked before he fell into his chair, “the priest or the lad?”

  “Perhaps, if you had been here instead of—why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Ye have recovered nicely,” he murmured, flicking his gaze over the pearls in her hair.

  She caught Father Timothy’s eye and remembered their plan. “I am feeling much better.” She took her seat and turned her most radiant smile on her guests.

  “Who among these handsome gentlemen would care to speak to me first?” she called out.

  Even with all the men rising to their feet together, she could feel Cainnech’s eyes on her. Hot, dreadful, burning eyes, which she successfully ignored for the next hour.

  An hour. He let it go one for an hour. She could have killed him. Aye, he could barely sit still and his mumbling was beginning to frighten the suitors. He had many opinions about them, none of which should have been spoken out loud, but were. His challenging, murderous glare stopped any from replying. But he hated them because they were English, not because they were here to take her from him forever. If so, he would have stopped this. They were all wrong. He didn’t care for her. Even after his smoldering kisses, his curious touch, she meant nothing to him. He cared only for fighting, evidenced in his eagerness to kill every man who stepped forward.

  “Sir John de Granville of Avranches,” the next guest called out, moving forward. He wasn’t as tall as some of the lankier men there, but beneath his quilted doublet, snug hose and shiny boots, he appeared nicely fashioned. He wore no hood, wrapped or otherwise, on his golden head.

  “Welcome to Lismoor, my lord.” Aleysia graced him with a perfect smile as he reached for her hand to kiss it. The flat of Cainnech’s sword stopped the Norman knight when he held it between Sir John’s lips and her knuckles.

  Was he jealous? All the men had flattered her, but none had been so bold as to reach for her hand. Aleysia turned to look at him, the first time she had in an hour. She shouldn’t have. Her heart immediately warmed toward him. He was so masterfully made, coiled and ready to spring into action. Oh, but she didn’t want anyone but him. She wanted him.

  “Get on with what ye intend to say before I lose what is left of my patience,” he warned in an icy tone. His lightning-streaked eyes never left Sir John’s.

  “Pardon me, Commander,” the Norman said, straightening and turning his full attention on him. “I should have made my intentions clearer to you. I am not here by invitation from your king, like these men.”

  “I do not understand,” Aleysia said with a sinking feeling in her belly.

  “You will.” Sir John’s smile on her was more like a sneer, turning his handsome face into a homely one.

  He put his hand into his doublet and Cainnech leaped to his feet. His sword was first against Sir John’s neck. William and Father Timothy had swords pointing to his throat before anyone blinked.

  “Easy, my friends,” the knight held up his hands and laughed. “’Tis just a letter I wish to present.”

  Cainnech reached into the doublet and pulled out the letter. He opened it, read it, and then threw it in Sir John’s stunned face. “I dinna give a damn what her cousin demands. He is not gettin’ Lismoor, nor are ye. Get oot! All of ye, get oot before I start cuttin’ ye to pieces!” With the hilt of his claymore clutched in his hand, he turned his dark, deadly eyes on her. “She is mine.”

  When no one remained but Father Timothy and the others, he told them to leave as well.

  Finally alone, he turned on her. “What d’ye mean by lookin’ the way ye do and smilin’ at that cocky Norman bastard?”

  “Why should I not look pleasing or smile to find a husband?” she countered.

  “Is that what ye want now, a husband? This morn, ye tried to scare them away and now ye want a husband?”

  “I cannot abandon my friends,” she told him. “If becoming the wife of one of these noblemen is the only way to keep Lismoor, then aye, I will marry. Who is there to stop me?”

  “Me,” he told her, rushing forward and taking her in his arms. “There is me.”

  Cain covered her mouth with his and drew her slim body closer to him. He kissed her with merciless desperation and longing, lifting her feet off the floor in a crushing, yet tender embrace.

  Whatever he felt for her, whatever he tried to deny, followed him wherever he went. He’d tried to outrun it, terrified to open himself to love again. But he no longer wanted to run. He’d never met anyone like her. No woman had ever made him feel what she did. So what if it scared the hell out of him? He’d kicked fear in its teeth before. He’d do it again. He’d do it for her.

  When she coiled her arms around his neck and let him have his way, he teased her with his tongue and ran his hands over her dips and curves. She felt good in his arms, as if she belonged there, fitting perfectly against him and making him whole.

  “Fergive me fer bein’ a fool,” he broke their kiss to tell her. “I will face anythin’ fer ye. I canna let ye go, lass.”

  “I do not want you to let me go,” she whispered.

  He loved the sound of her, the scent of her, the memory of her laughter leading him through the wild strawberries to the glade.

  Should he tell her about the demons he fought? The ones he wouldn’t let out? They were fighting for release even now. He held fast.

  “I came back and found ye lookin’…hell, beautiful and all yer suitors pantin’ at the bit. ’Twas difficult not to kill them.”

  “You were jealous?” she asked, slanting her glance at him.

  “Aye, I was jealous.”

  When he lowered his head to kiss her again, she pressed her palms against his chest and pushed away. “Just so we are clear. You have been known to run from me. I will know what this means.”

  He smiled and dipped his mouth to hers. “Ye mean this?” he asked and planted a series of soft, sultry kisses on her mouth.

  “Aye,” she said breathlessly. “This.” She let him kiss her again.

  “Stay right here,” he told her and stepped away. He was going to do this. He couldn’t run any longer. He was going to lose her forever if he did. And that frightened him even more than loving her did. He’d taken away her home and claimed it from under her. He was going to make right the things he had done wrong to her.

  Finally, his belly stopped aching.

  He had no idea what he would tell the king. He’d fallen in love with the lady of Lismoor. He almost didn’t believe it. He hadn’t been sure it was love until the threat of losing her to someone else stirred up the darkest parts of him.

  If anyone was going to marry her, it was going to be him.

  When he reached the entryway, he called out for Amish. His second, Rauf, and William appeared almost instantly, apparently listening by the door.

  “Gather the men,” he told them. “Bring them here.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked him with laughter in her voice when he asked her to sit in her chair.

  “Showin’ ye what this means.” He went to stand by the tables at the far end of the hall, alone but for her watching him.

  The men began filing in, following his instruction. They sat on their benches and waited, whispering under their breaths, curious why they had been called in.

  Finally, Cain quieted them with a look and strode forward.

  “I am Cainnech MacPherson, second commander of the elite Highland warriors under Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots.” He reached her chair in a few strides and bent before her. “I come seekin’ yer hand in marriage.”

  Everyone behind him went utterly still. The collective silence of their stunned disbelief was proof that he’d truly just asked her to marry him. Her smile was resplendent, or mayhap she glowed like a beacon of light only to him.

  He moved his hand to her face and swiped his thumb over
a tear on her cheek. “Ye have met many suitors, fair lass. Which one of us d’ye choose?”

  “I choose you,” she replied without hesitation. Her voice was a silken melody to his ears. Her face, the most breathtaking face he’d ever beheld. His heart thundered against his léine.

  The men cheered and demanded that she offer him her hand. She did, and he took it in his rough, callused one and brought it to his lips. His touch, his kiss was his promise made before God and his priest, who rushed forward and pronounced a blessing. But he pulled her into his arms anyway and kissed her.

  “Come away with me to the glade,” he groaned at her ear. “I wish to be alone with ye.”

  “Aye,” she agreed, nervous about what exactly would happen between them.

  “But first, Cainnech,” she leaned in to whisper to him. “there is something you must know that cannot wait. Send the men away. All but William and Father Timothy.”

  He did as she bid him, sending the men away with wine and a warning to stay out of trouble.

  “’Tis already too late fer that, I’d say,” the priest remarked when they were alone.

  “I dinna care,” Cain told him. “If someone wants to contest our betrothal, let him fight me on the field.”

  “’Tis Normandy,” his old friend reminded him, lowering his voice. “King Robert is in secret talks with the Normans. Did ye ferget? He wants them on our side.”

  No he hadn’t forgotten. He didn’t care. He hadn’t agreed to her being married off, put on display like some prized chattel. Now was not the time to argue. She waited for them with William at her side.

  Cain was glad she was friends with William and had gotten him to open up more. She had a way about her, a fearlessness to step right into one’s hell and kick up some ashes.

  Something to do with love.

  To wake him up, to breathe new, cleansing life into him. If he didn’t run.

  His eyes gleamed on her. He could feel the fire rising in him. Fire he hadn’t felt in years, save when it came to killing.

  “Cainnech,” she started as she held out her hand and put him in front of his chair. “Why do you not sit?” she suggested and then pushed him down.

  “What is goin’ on?” He laughed and looked at William and Father Timothy. They remained silent.

  “Cainnech,” Aleysia began and sat beside him. “Father Timothy and I discovered some things about William.”

  Cain smiled at the lad and then back at her. “Good things, judgin’ by yer excitement.”

  “Aye, they are good things,” she agreed.

  What did good things about William have to do with him? “Well, tell me what they are, woman. Ye keep me waitin’.”

  “We found out that he was born in Invergarry a two and twenty years ago.”

  Cain slanted his gaze at the lad again. Two and twenty years ago? He appeared younger.

  “He was two when—” She stopped and looked at William. “Why do you not tell him?”

  Cain’s heart beat a steady hard drumbeat against his ribs. Two. He was two when…

  “I was two when I was sold to Governor Feathers,” William finished. “For a stone.” He paused when Cain’s face drained of color and he sat up in his chair.

  Cain thought he might be dreaming. But no, in his dreams, Nicholas didn’t have a face. Was this Nicholas standing before him now? His brother was alive? He’d never dared hope. The ghostly echoes of a crying babe filled his thoughts. He looked away—toward the door—from the terrible pain of that day. He ran his hands down his face and left his chair.

  Unexpectedly, Aleysia reached out her hand and fit in into his, lending her strength, keeping him still.

  He looked at the lad again, this time with glassy eyes. He didn’t ask more questions of him. They didn’t have many facts save for the ones the lad matched. Could it be that he had his brother back? In William? Hell, he liked the lad. He closed his eyes as if doing it would keep his heart from reaching out, and going back.

  “I think you are my brother, Cainnech,” William told him, his eyes holding the same startling potency as Cain’s.

  “Nicholas,” he said, choking on the word. It was too much to ask for, to hope for, so he never had. “Nicky.” They moved together into a long, tight embrace.

  “Here,” Cain held his brother’s face in his hands, “Let me have a good look at ye.”

  Aye, he saw traces of their resemblance, with hints of deep-rooted anger within the quietness of his servitude. “I would kill Feathers if he was alive today,” Cain told him, remembering the condition in which they’d found him.

  “’Twould not fix things,” his brother said. “Knowing who I am—knowing you, will.”

  “Aye,” Cain agreed, drawing him in again and holding on to him as if he’d been waiting twenty years to do it. Hell, he had been. How would Cain help him discover who he was when he had no idea about himself?

  “Tell me, Brother,” he said, pushing off and then pulling him in under his arm again. “What should we call ye? William or Nicholas?”

  “Brother sounds nice,” the lad said, grinning. Aye, he looked happier than Cain had ever seen him. “But I choose Nicholas. My whole life I knew my name was not William Stone. I often wondered if I had been born with a name. Now I know that I was, and I know what ’tis.” He stopped for a moment to wipe his eyes with the backs of his hands. “I never want to be called Stone again, for it always reminded me what I was worth.”

  Cain pulled him close again and rested his forehead against his brother’s. “Ye are a MacPherson, worth more than any sum, worth more than any sufferin’. Havin’ ye back feels like a part of me has been reborn.”

  He felt another arm coming around him and turned to see Father Timothy between him and Nicholas when they withdrew.

  “God is good,” his friend said with a joyous smile.

  “Aye, God is good,” he agreed.

  He turned to look at Aleysia, sitting in her chair with her hands to her mouth. He smiled and went to her. “Thank ye, lass.”

  “Thank me in the glade.”

  She heated his blood and tightened his muscles.

  “Tonight we will celebrate!” he announced to the others. “Father, see to the details. Nicholas, I will see ye tonight, Brother.”

  He turned to Aleysia again and took her hand, content for the first time in twenty years.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Late morning sunshine formed glistening columns throughout the forest, lighting their way. This time, it was Cainnech who led Aleysia past the strawberries and around the bend to the narrow opening in the thick bramble.

  He waited while she stepped into the glade first. She’d changed her clothes quickly back at the castle. She wore her léine, bodice, breeches, and boots, but still, she felt his eyes on her when she passed him as if she wore her thinnest chemise. It made her blood go warm and her skin feel too tight for her body.

  She looked before her and let her eyes bask in the splendor of a colorful palette that made her heart rejoice.

  She turned to watch Cainnech enter, then went to him and fell into his arms. His arms molded her supple warmth to his body until she could feel every inch of his strength.

  “Are you happy about William?”

  “’Tis the best gift anyone has ever given me.”

  She heard his heart beating fast within the deep rumble of his chest when he spoke.

  Something was troubling him. “But?”

  “There is no but,” he assured her with a smile and ran his thumb across her bottom lip.

  “But you do not remember him,” she reminded him, loath to take his mind off kissing her. When his muscles stiffened beneath her fingers, she knew she might have gone too far. She patted and petted his chest and then pressed her cheek against it. “I want you to be happy, my love.”

  He stopped breathing for a moment and then cupped her face in his big hands and tilted her face up to meet his. “D’ye love me, lass?”

  She smiled at his handso
me face. “Aye, Commander, I love you.”

  He looked a bit stunned, but how would he know if she loved him or not? He had nothing with which to compare it. He didn’t question it though. Instead, he scooped her up off the ground and cradled her against him. “What have I done to deserve a heart like yers, lass?”

  He kissed the answer from her mouth and carried her to the plushest part of the glade.

  She felt weightless in his strong arms, lost in his passionate kiss. When he set her down in the bluebells, she clung to him, not willing to let him go.

  He sat beside her and they laughed as they continued kissing. He took her lip between his teeth and gently pulled. She felt something burn below her belly and fought not to blush. Except for her experience with Cain, she hadn’t been kissed in years. There hadn’t been time. She knew nothing of intimacy and, yet, instinctively, she knew the way to angle her head and kiss him more deeply, until he groaned. She knew that if she tugged on his léine, he would remove it. She was correct.

  She could have gazed at him all day, lost in his raw, rugged, male beauty. His dark hair fell over his sun-kissed shoulders, drawing her gaze there…and lower, to his belly, tightly knitted with sinew.

  He caught her admiring him and smiled. “My scars dinna offend ye?”

  “Offend me?” She ran her fingers along his chest. “They are signs of your courage.” She looked up and touched the small scar over his cheekbone. The scar she had put there. She had almost killed him the day he arrived at Lismoor. The thought of it turned her blood cold. “I would prefer it if you never got so close to a weapon again. Just because I did not kill you, does not mean someone else will not.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers with a paralyzing sweetness that drew the breath from her trembling body. His deep voice resonated in her veins, setting fire to her blood. “I will live, Aleysia.”

  How had this happened? She wondered about that, tilting her head to press her mouth to his. How had she fallen in love with a man she was supposed to hate? Every moment she was with him or away from him, her need of him grew. She loved watching him move, tasting his desire, touching him.