Morganna (The Brocade Collection, Book 4)

by Jackie Ivie

  “You touch her, and I’ll be carving my initials in your heart,” she said.

  “You are jealous. The girl’s in luck. As are you.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. ’Twas skill. My skill.”

  He shrugged, and folded his arms across his chest to consider her. Since she was still stuck holding up the tent, there wasn’t any place she could go, or any escape she could make, but for once, she controlled every bit of a blush.

  “’Twas a good day, Morgan. Celebrate, rather than stew over it. I’ve earned fealty from more villagers, for who among them would fight the man in possession of his children? And the wench of your dreams has been delivered to you. Just think of it. You describe a nymph to me, and before the day is out, you’ve won her. From the looks of things, she’ll be easy to coax into bed, too.”

  “You touch her, and I’ll—”

  His laughter rang out, interrupting Morgan’s words, and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked over. Morgan still had control over her flush. She was very proud of that.

  Zander lifted his hands in surrender. “She’s all yours. Tame her gently.” Then, he walked away. “You can let go of the roof, too. It’s finished. Has been for some time.”

  Morgan lowered her arms, flexing every finger and then her arms to get the feeling back. Then she swung them back and forth, to loosen her shoulders. It felt good. She hadn’t done any exercising since coming upon Zander, and her muscles were stinging her at the lack. She didn’t realize she was being watched until Zander coughed. She looked up, right into the adoring gaze of the lass, Sheila. That time, Morgan couldn’t control anything, and she knew she was flaming before she averted her gaze.

  Martin had a good stack of wood, the second tent was decreed Zander’s, and the ladies were given the red-striped one. Martin and Morgan were welcome to the floor of Zander’s tent, or they could sleep on the ground outside.

  Morgan chose the ground. She lay, comfortably full of partridge and some sort of dumpling-enhanced gravy they’d made, and covered herself with the drape of her kilt. The fire flickered every so often on both tents and on where she lay. And she didn’t remember sleeping.

  Morgan was awakened this time by having two dirks thrust into the dirt beside her nose. Her eyes flew open a moment before she was on her feet, both dirks in her hands and ready. Zander had already leapt back, expecting it. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the pre-dawn clearing, where fingers of mist were still hanging in the air.

  “We’ve some work to do today. I wanted you awake before the others,” he whispered.

  “Why?” she whispered back.

  He pulled in a breath, filling the chest in front of her. Then, he shrugged. “You’re different,” he said, finally.

  She didn’t reply and waited for him to explain.

  He didn’t. He just blew out his inhaled breath and gestured with his head. “Come with me. I want you to show me how you toss your knives.”

  He already had a target etched on a tree, although she could barely see it. Morgan looked at it in surprise. She hadn’t heard him move. Some guardian of virtue she had turned out to be, she thought.

  “I’ve seen knives tossed, and I’ve seen some hit a spot, but I’ve never seen anyone place them so perfectly, nor from any finger. Show me how you do such.”

  “My knives are perfectly balanced. That’s the first trick.”

  “Balanced?” he asked.

  “Pull your own out.”

  He did.

  “Lay it flat in your hand. Can you feel a difference in weight, one side to the other? Top to bottom?”

  “The hilt is heavier.”

  “Not in the hilt. In the blade. Can you feel it?”

  He shook his head.

  She snorted the frustration. “Hold out your other hand.”

  He did, putting it parallel to the one he had out already.

  “Now, close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me. Use something besides your poor vision. Use touch. Feel the weight. Close your eyes.”

  He did. Morgan lowered one of her prize dirks onto his palm. The instant spark when her fingers touched the pad of his palm frightened and appalled her as she snapped her hand back. So did the frown line across his forehead.

  “What did you do?” he asked. “Make lightning with your blade?”

  He felt it, too? Morgan swallowed the increased moisture in her mouth. It always happened when she was close to him, and it wasn’t pleasant. Well, maybe it was, but it was dangerous.

  “I did naught. It was the blade,” she whispered.

  “Your blade has the touch of a blacksmith’s hammer to it, then. How did you do that?”

  ‘Will you hush, and feel like I’ve asked?”

  “What am I feeling for now?”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “The weight! Feel the difference? My blade is of an exact weight all along the shaft. No end is heavier, no end lighter. You feel it?”

  “The shaft?” His fingers were rolling the blade between them, keeping it flat to avoid slicing, and his voice had lowered.

  Morgan lowered her chin waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, she kept her gaze steady. “Are you finished playing with me?” she asked.

  “Playing?”

  “You turn everything into a discussion of lust, and it’s nothing but play. You need to be serious if you wish to learn this.”

  “Not lust,” he answered, and his voice got so soft, she could barely hear it, “…but love.”

  Morgan picked up the blade before he could gain another breath, spun around and put both knives into the dead center of his target, where they quivered, making a clicking sound of blade against blade. She turned back to him. “I can put all twelve of my dirks any place I want them. I didn’t learn that by playing at lust...or at love.”

  “You make it sound a filthy word.”

  “It is,” she retorted.

  “Who could have hurt you so, Morgan lad?”

  The most horrible thing in the world was happening, and Morgan turned before Zander spotted it. His talk of love brought tears so close to the surface, she was caught up in an agony of stifling them so severe, she could hear the blood pumping through her body. Tears were for women to cry; they certainly weren’t for Morganna KilCreggar. They never had been. She’d lived her entire life, it seemed, just to kill the FitzHugh laird, and then she was ready to die. There wasn’t a speck of room in that plan for anything feminine.

  She walked stiffly over to pull the knives from the tree. “When you’re ready to learn, I’ll teach you,” she replied.

  “Fair enough. I may even gift you with another of your precious, balanced dirks, too. You show the same concentration when you learned stoning?”

  “I taught myself stoning. I found out it was easier to tilt the sling to the side rather than arc it. It probably looks strange, but it’s more accurate.”

  “Do you never take time to play, Morgan? Never?”

  “I’m so deadly with an arrow, no one will challenge me. I can place it in an animal’s eye from almost any distance, any season.”

  “I suppose that’s my answer?” he asked.

  “You asked me once how I was with a hand-ax. I wasn’t truthful. Well, I was truthful, but I wasn’t accurate.”

  “Play, Morgan?” he tried again.

  “I said I rarely held them. That is true. I haven’t much use for them. They’re a difficult tool for hunting. Makes a blood spill second only to a claymore.”

  “Morgan,” he said, in what he probably thought was a threatening tone.

  “I’m deadly with a hand-ax. I’m capable of dueling the English way. They call it fencing, although my swordsmanship is geared more for ending a battle, rather than dancing about and prolonging it, as they seem to wish. Spectacle. That’s all they want. That, and blood.”

  He sighed, and this time it was loud. “I get the message, Morgan. You don’t know how to play. You’ve spent your entire life tur
ning yourself into a killing machine, and that doesn’t leave much room for teasing, taunting or playing. I begin to see why I chose you to be my squire.”

  “You choose many to be your squire, it sounds. I was just the first on this journey. Martin the second. I assume we’ll have more before we return to your structureless home, too.”

  “Didn’t you figure it out, yet?” he asked.

  She snorted. “Of course I did. You earn, take or force the poor crofter’s children to come with you, serve you, become a part of your household and your life, and in so doing, you are gaining supporters throughout the countryside.”

  “Very good,” he replied.

  “Do you ever return them like you promise?”

  “Most of the time, they won’t go. I swear.”

  “They won’t?” she asked.

  “Don’t act so surprised, Morgan. I’m not an ogre. I’m a very lenient master. I’ve a large, warm house with no dearth of foodstuffs and other amenities, like tapestries and furniture. Most of those who serve me find it a comfortable lifestyle, unlike the one they had at their village. I can’t get them to leave. I send messages to their folk to retrieve them, and when they come, they stay too, giving me more servants.”

  “No wonder your mother thinks you need structure. You do.”

  “I think I was needing someone like you, Morgan.”

  Her heart stopped. If the sun had been shedding any amount of light, everything she was forcing herself not to think about was probably written all over her face. She couldn’t even speak.

  “I mean, it just occurred to me. I don’t know why. You’re different, and I can’t fathom it. I know I want you near me, Morgan. I forced you to be with me because I somehow knew I needed you. I felt it the moment you touched me on that battlefield, and I feel it now. Stranger still, I’m not alone. You need me, too, if only to show you a little play.”

  The moisture in her mouth choked her when she tried to swallow. Then, she was coughing it out. He smacked her on the back and almost sent her to her knees with the force of his blows.

  All of which brought the rest of his entourage into the clearing. Morgan responded to Sheila’s barely-clad form with the most male reaction she could manage. She ran from it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Less than two weeks later, Zander’s band had grown by six lasses and nine lads, and Morgan had to use more arrows and consequently, more time to pull down enough meat to feed them and have leftover to barter with. She took four arrows this time, nodded to the grouping of young, sullen-looking men and started out. It gave her pause when one gestured toward her and turned to the others.

  “You’re going to have trouble with that one,” she told Zander since he’d accompanied her, striding loudly enough to alert any game.

  “You see into the future, too?” he asked.

  Morgan slid an eye sideways at him. He was wearing a kilt today, no shawl, and no feile-breacan. His upper body was clothed in thin, woven flax, and with the mounting rain, it was plastered to every bit of his physique. She looked up and caught his eye.

  “He angers at my expertise and the fact that Sheila turned him down last eve.” she replied.

  “She turns everyone down, Morgan. She only has eyes for you. When are you going to do something about it?”

  Morgan stopped and held up her hand. “You gaming or talking? We can’t do both.”

  Zander dropped to a whisper. “Sheila offered herself to me not two nights hence, you ken?”

  Morgan’s eyes flared before she could hide them, and she felt, rather than saw, his amusement. “You dinna’ take her?” she asked.

  “I told her I’d been warned away by you.”

  Morgan frowned. “That explains my sweet cakes,” she said finally.

  “She’s trying an age-old recipe, lad.”

  “Sweet cakes?”

  “Nay, food. No lad your age can resist good cooking. I’m not the only one to notice. You’ve put on a stone of size since we met. It’s improved you, although you fill out in the face much farther, and I’ll not be able to keep the wench, Bonnie, away from you.”

  He was referring to his latest maiden, who had been named in a fit of optimism. Her face resembled a flat pancake with a berry for a nose. Morgan smirked. “Bonnie?” she asked.

  “Aye, Bonnie. All the lasses would welcome you to their beds, and how do you repay their yearnings? Ignore them. Nothing whets the appetite more, lad. Should you unbend your morals enough to take one to your bed, you’ll have a right wild romp, if I doona’ miss my guess.”

  Morgan decided to ignore him. It was easier than bantering about what he called love play. She also perked her ears. There was a sow and two of her yearlings within sighting distance, although if Zander continued his teasing, they’d not root about so calmly, awaiting death.

  She held up her hand.

  “You wish boar or elk today?” she asked quietly.

  He looked at her. “Serious?” he whispered.

  “Pick,” Morgan returned.

  “Both.” He grinned.

  Morgan had four arrows. There was a huge elk behind them and atop the ridge. She’d sensed it more than seen it, by the reaction of the sow. She fitted an arrow, and pointed to the pigs. Zander followed her line of sight, squinting his eyes at it.

  Morgan spun and had the elk before another breath. She had another arrow in place and pulled it on the bigger sow with her return spin. The reaction was immediate, as the pig went down, grunting and squealing, while her yearlings took off in opposite directions. Morgan drew bead and had the farthest first. Beside her Zander was stiffening, and she’d meant him to. She’d left the boar that was intent on charging them for last. And, she didn’t use her arrow. She had the six dirks he’d given back to her in her hands. Methodically, she put them into his snout and eyes, until he came to an abrasively loud, squealing stop less than a body length from Zander.

  Morgan was astride the pig, pulling her dirks and slitting its throat before his hooves finished thrashing. Then, she was after the sow. Death throes had already finished in this one, and Morgan slit its throat, too, to bleed it. Then, she was on the farthest one.

  Her tongue clicked as she saw the broken arrow shaft. She wasn’t that careless, usually. She generally brought all the arrows back to him. She reached to break it off. Zander stopped her by doing it himself. Then he rotated the arrow shaft in his fingers.

  “You broke a shaft,” he said, shaking his head at it.

  “Sloppy aim,” she replied with a shrug.

  “I was beginning to think you perfect, Morgan.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin and she gulped. The slice on this pig’s throat went deeper than she wanted, and she received a spurt of blood to her chest as a result, and more of it pumping onto her boots.

  “’Tis a good thing it’s raining,” Zander commented. “I’d hate to have to force you to bathe again.”

  “Only a fool thinks a burn is wetter than a good Scots day,” she replied. “The rain washes me fine. Besides, I bathed last eve.”

  “I know.”

  “You…know?” Her voice caught and she only hoped he wouldn’t notice it, or if he did, not comment on it. She’d been lax with everything, but it had been a moonless, rain-filled eve, and she could bathe naked, let her hair fan out about her, and pretend to be the nymph he claimed Sheila was. She could also leisurely paddle about the surface, experiencing the change in her breasts as they bobbed in the water, and wonder at why they sensitized with the change in size.

  She could also stiffen with dread when he claimed that he knew about it. Her breathing was so shallow, it was painful.

  ‘‘Everyone knows when you leave, Morgan, although none of us are brave enough to seek you out. I knew why, when you returned with a wet braid.”

  “No one knows anything about me,” she answered, feeling the fear slide out of her spine and leave her trembling.

  He shrugged. “True enough. Tell me something to change that. Tell me yo
ur surname, your clan, your lineage, why you’re so damned good at everything. Anything.”

  “I’ve no hand for cooking,” she replied.

  He laughed. “True enough, but we’ve lasses a-plenty competing at that skill.”

  “They want you to notice them,” Morgan said. She knew very well why. All the new girls mooned at Zander, to the point it was embarrassing. He also knew, if his wearing less and less clothing and making all the lads participate in sports like wrestling was any indication.

  “Nay lad, they want you to notice them.”

  “Me?” she asked.

  “You bested me at push-ups last eve. I dinna’ think a man existed that could do two-hundred-fifty of them, and you probably had more in you. And I called you scrawny.”

  Morgan beamed before she could help it.

  I’ll not live that one down soon. If my brothers find out, I’ll ne’er hear the end of it, either.”

  ‘‘Brothers?” She asked, careful to keep any emotion from her voice. He has more than one brother?

  “Aye, my brothers. A heartier band you’ll be hard-pressed to find, too.”

  “You’ve many of them, do you?”

  “Aye. Five.”

  He has five brothers? Morgan closed her eyes. It was a good thing she hadn’t vowed to kill all the FitzHughs, she decided.

  “Tell me something, lad. How can you have such strength in such slender limbs that you best me?” For demonstration purposes, he rolled up his sleeve, giving her a very good look at well-hardened muscle and sinew. He had strength evident all along him. She looked aside. He had acquitted himself well. Her arms had trembled for hours afterward when he hadn’t ceased until they reached two-hundred, twenty push-ups.

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” she answered in a whisper.

  “I agree there. Take that Sophie lass we picked up not two days ago.”

  “We picked up nothing. I won her. You touch her, and....” She let the threat lie unfinished as she wiped her dirk on the wet grass and stood beside the pig to glare the intent.

  Zander was unrolling his sleeve back into place. His hair was plastered to his head, and his midnight-blue eyes were sparkling like the surface of a starlight-dressed loch. Morgan had to look away.