But that posed a question, too, for the old man could scarce move about without the aid of his crummock.
Frowning yet again, Jamie reached down to retrieve the thing, his relief great upon seeing the crummock wasn’t the one Hughie favored, but newly whittled.
A fine hazel walking stick, clearly carved by Hughie’s hand and, it would seem, dropped unnoticed as the old man shuffled about.
Not quite certain that would have been the way of it, but not knowing what else to think, Jamie carried the crummock back to the cottage and leaned it against the door.
And it wasn’t until a short while later when he and Aveline rode into Bride’s moonlit glade that he realized why the crummock had bothered him.
It wasn’t the crummock at all.
Not truly.
The thing had been a fine walking stick, perfectly made and smooth and pleasing beneath the fingers.
And everyone knew Hughie carved himself a new one whene’er the need arose. But this crummock could not have been made for Hughie.
Not bent and gnarled as he was, his slight frame barely coming to Jamie’s shoulder.
The fine hazel walking stick Jamie had propped against the cottage door had been carved for a much larger man.
One nigh as tall as Jamie.
Chapter Fourteen
Jamie forgot all about Hughie’s newly whittled crummock as soon as he and Aveline rode out of the sheltering wood and emerged into the secluded, moonlit clearing of St. Bride’s holy well.
They dismounted a few paces from the venerable Celtic site, an innocent-seeming tumble of smooth, lichen-flecked boulders and an ancient altar slab, cracked now but delicately incised with serpent-like creatures and intricate scrollwork. These framed a small stone basin into which the spring’s clear, gurgling waters flowed and gathered before disappearing again into the hidden depths of the glade’s sacred earth.
Dark, pungent earth filled with long forgotten memories.
Distant hurts that rushed Jamie, called forth just from breathing in the mysterious scent of the holy place. A wild place, it stirred the soul with its blend of wet stone, rich black peat, clean water, and lush, rain-spangled grass.
Inhaling deeply, he could almost feel the years spiraling backward, making him young again.
A wide-eyed and vulnerable lad, ready to believe anything.
But he was a man grown now, so he stood tall and adjusted his plaid against the chill night wind. Not that such measures did much good. Certain powers couldn’t be denied. Especially those older than time. Besides, the well’s endless array of votive offerings had already caught his eye, beckoning.
The objects, mostly metal, glinted in the moonlight, each one bespeaking some hopeful soul’s deepest wish or need. A mad jumble of pins, elaborately carved wire, coins, and even colorful threads and small polished stones, the offerings winked from every imaginable crevice or narrow ledge of the outcropping.
Other votos, coins especially, had been thrust into the living trunk of a nearby holly tree.
Including an ancient Roman coin he’d put there himself.
Jamie ran a hand through his hair, remembering the day as if it were but an hour ago. One of his father’s friends had given him the coin when he’d been a lad. The very next morning he’d slipped away from Morag’s watchful eye and run all the way to the clearing to kneel at the well and ask St. Bride for his da’s favor.
Then he’d pressed the precious coin deep into the wild holly tree that grew up out of the boulders, certain his father would look on him with affection from that moment forward.
But, of course, he hadn’t.
Not long thereafter, Munro had turned him out, claiming he should return to the heather that had given him his name.
And so Jamie had gone.
Leaving kith, kin, and the only hearth he’d ever known, he’d set out, making his way south and eventually calling at Eilean Creag Castle where, thankfully, he soon found himself squire to Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail.
He blew out a breath and frowned, the venerableness of the place clearly getting to him.
“I have not been here for years,” he finally said, the winking votives and old memories vanishing when his bride began unbraiding her hair.
An auspicious sign and enough to make his blood quicken with desire.
He took a step closer, his fingers itching to help her. But watching her pleased him, too. Especially when she finished and the pale shimmering strands spilled down past her hips, silky and gleaming.
“You know when I was last here.” She looked at him through her lashes, her dimple flashing—“I saw you there, through the trees,” she added, gesturing across the clearing to where he’d sat his garron, staring at her.
Slack-jawed and smitten, quite convinced he was seeing a Sithe princess riding moonbeams through the glade.
She angled her head, her sapphire gaze flicking over him. “I thought I’d ne’er seen a more splendid-looking man.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you are.”
“Splendid?” Jamie didn’t think so at all, but the thought warmed him.
“More than splendid.” Her lovely gold-tipped lashes dipped again and she settled her gaze just there where it caused the most havoc. “You are magnificent,” she said, the look coming into her eyes heating him.
Stealing his ability to form a single coherent word.
She tilted her head, her bright hair reflecting the moonlight, rippling and tempting him. “Aye, full magnificent—everywhere.”
Jamie’s breath stopped, his everywhere suddenly rock-hard and aching.
Hot all over, despite the cold wind and the night’s misty damp.
Even the wet grass beneath the soles of his booted feet felt warm.
Almost alive.
Pulsating with the same hot thrumming warmth coursing all through him.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, almost dizzy from the sweeping force of his need. The fierceness of his passion and the odd sensation that the earth and air around them was altering, that the very ground, grass and trees, even the stars, were beginning to vibrate in rhythm with the wild rushing of his blood.
His mounting desire for Aveline.
He opened his mouth to tell her that he was on fire for her. That he burned to strip the clothes from her and from himself and then, full-bared and mother-naked, love her until the world stopped spinning or the stars went out, whiche’er came first.
Or perhaps something more romantic like his brother Hamish might have said. That she was the light of his life, his heart’s desire, or maybe that he’d love her all their days, even use his last breath to call out her name.
But the words froze on his tongue, held fast by the strange way the air crackled and shimmered. The low, muted humming he’d swear pulsed somewhere deep beneath the glade.
She didn’t seem to notice.
Or perhaps she did and just didn’t care because she only smiled, then flipped her hair over her shoulder as she turned aside, rummaging in her saddlebags until she withdrew a folded plaid.
“Aye, you are a bonnie man,” she declared, flicking out the plaid. “But bonnie or no, you’ve scarce eaten all day. I heard your stomach growling in the chapel and at Hughie Mac’s.”
Making for a particularly lovely patch of moon-washed grass not far from the well, she sent him a decidedly bold glance. Cheeky and flirtatious. “’Tis time we do something about your hunger.”
Jamie almost choked.
She certainly had the rights of it. He hadn’t yet eaten, but it wasn’t bread and ale he craved.
O-o-oh, nay.
He ached to pull her against him, lowering his head to nip at the tender flesh beneath her ear, then nibble his way down the smooth arch of her neck, his teeth just grazing her lightly, his tongue lingering.
Lingering and tasting. Savoring and relishing every sweet inch of her, then moving ever lower to explore and claim each dip and curve, worshiping her gl
eaming moon-silvered flesh until he lost himself in her darker, shadowy places.
Aye, he was especially interested in those dark and shadowy places. Biting back a groan, he reached down to adjust the fall of his plaid.
Seemingly unaware of his discomfort, she was beaming at him again, her eyes alight with promising mischief.
“See, I’ve brought refreshment,” she announced, spreading the plaid on the ground with a flourish. “A feast to strengthen and sustain you for the long hard ride back to Baldreagan.”
Jamie’s brows shot upward, another rush of hot need tearing through him. He clenched his hands at his sides, wondering at the sudden savageness of his lust. Saints, he could scarce breathe for the near overpowering urge to grab her, lift her high into the air, her skirts flying, then lower her to his mouth, devouring those shadowy parts until he was so sated he collapsed to his knees, trembling, his great hunger for her assuaged.
He looked at her, his entire body so hot and tight, he didn’t trust himself to move. Her words were making him crazy.
A long hard ride, indeed.
He narrowed his eyes on her, already tasting her, imagining her hot, wet sleekness on his tongue. How her musky female scent would drench his senses until his every indrawn breath delighted and intoxicated him.
The thought nearly made him spill.
Steeling himself lest he join the ranks of those lesser men unable to control their urges, he studied her in the moonlight, admiring its silvery gleam on her hair, his blood heating to think what such soft, luminous light would do to her naked body, all warm, and pliant beneath him.
Or on top of him.
He smiled.
A wolfish smile, he knew, but he didn’t care. Ever since swinging down off his garron, he felt wolfish. Consumed with a hot, blazing passion he wasn’t sure he’d e’er be able to quench. And maybe he didn’t even want to.
He only knew that he had to have her, and badly. Here in the glade, beside St. Bride’s Well and beneath the streaming moon.
And back at Baldreagan, in Kendrick’s large, fur-covered bed. Truth be told, if the mood so took him, he might even ravish her in the stair tower on the way up to Kendrick’s room. Not even on a landing, but right on the tight, winding stairs with a brisk chill wind blowing in through the slit windows to cool their heated bodies, their only witness a hissing, smoking wall torch.
Och, aye, he needed her.
Just now, though, she’d gone back to the horses and was busying herself unfastening the wicker basket she’d secured to the back of her saddle.
A basket he’d thought only contained the extra candles and flint she’d taken to St. Maelrubha’s.
“Our feast,” she declared, coming back to kneel on the plaid. Smiling at him, she opened the basket’s lid, revealing the treasures inside.
Wondering if he guessed that, to her, he was the greatest treasure.
A prize she’d ne’er dreamed would be hers.
“A flagon of your da’s finest Gascon wine,” she informed him, hoping to please. “To toast our first meeting,” she added, her gaze going again to the other side of the little glade.
There, where he claimed he’d lost his heart.
Aveline swallowed, the notion melting her.
“I shall ne’er be able to pass that spot or this clearing again without remembering,” she went on, pulling savories from the basket. A round of cheese, two cold meat pasties, a spiced capon, several freshly baked bannocks, a small jar of butter and another of bilberry jam, sugared almonds, and honey cakes.
After arranging them on the plaid, she looked at him, certain her deepest feelings must be writ all over her.
She gestured to the victuals. “A feast—did I not tell you?”
“O-o-oh, aye, and fit for a king’s palate,” he agreed, dropping down beside her, then reaching to place one treat after another back into the wicker basket.
Aveline blinked, not missing how his smile turned more wicked, nay, more devilish, with every item of food he cleared from the plaid.
So devilish he almost looked capable of teaching Kendrick a thing or two about rogueing.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but a suspicion was already beginning to curl through her.
A deliciously stirring one.
He had to be famished. And she’d taken care to wheedle all his best-loved foods from Baldreagan’s cook.
She looked at him, her suspicion strengthening when he returned the honey cakes without even a flicker of an eyelash.
The cook had sworn he loved honey cakes above all else.
The sugared almonds disappeared as quickly and then he sprang to his feet. He began jerking on his sword belt, the look in his eyes warming her and making the special place between her legs tingle.
Not that she minded the tingles.
Or even the long liquid pulls working such wondrous magic deep in her belly. A beautiful, fiery heat pooling low by her thighs and so exquisite her breath was already hitching with fine kindling passion.
Och, nay, she didn’t mind.
Seducing him in the glade was her plan, after all.
The whole reason she’d bedeviled him into stopping at the well.
But she’d envisioned a slow and leisurely seduction. A candlelit supper on a plaid beneath the moon, the exchange of long hot-burning gazes and love words as they sipped wine and served each other bits of honey cake.
A tender wooing.
She knew, after all, that he had skilled and tender hands.
Gentle hands.
But there was nothing gentle in the way those hands were now tugging at the latch of his sword belt.
“Are you not hungry?” She glanced at the wicker basket. “Do you not want to eat?”
He whipped off his belt and tossed it aside. “Och, aye, I am fair starving,” he said, his boots following the belt and sword. “And you can be sure I intend to dine.”
Aveline moistened her lips, everything her sister Maili had e’er told her about her husband ravishing her, flashing in bold and bawdy detail through her mind.
Bold and exciting detail.
But she still had difficulty imagining such a thing. Even though she’d seen the act painted quite unmistakably on Kendrick’s window shutters.
Her heart began to thump. The very idea thrilled her. Already her breasts were tightening in anticipation and it was all she could do not to lift her arms and pull him down to her, beg him to fulfill the erotic wish that had been burning inside her ever since he’d first kissed her and she’d wondered what it would be like to have his lips touch her there.
And if Maili had spoken true, maybe even his tongue.
She shivered at the deliciousness of that possibility, but before she could encourage him, he stopped flashing his wicked-eyed smile and frowned.
“You are cold,” he said, clearly misinterpreting her shiver.
“Nay, I am fine.” She lifted her chin, trying to appear as un-cold as possible.
Looking unconvinced, he dropped down beside her and slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. “I won’t have you uncomfortable,” he said, stroking her hair. “We can ride on to Baldreagan now, going straight to Kendrick’s chamber when we return. Though …”
He let the words tail off and glanced over at the well and its tumbled outcropping, the stones gleaming white against the black pine wood rising so darkly behind them.
Even the ancient pagan altar stone, cracked, slanting, and half-covered with moss, shimmered bright in the moon glow.
“Though?” She followed his gaze, for one fleeting moment looking as if she, too, were not seeing just the stones and the well, but peering into a distant past.
A long ago time when the old Celtic gods would have called this glade their own.
At the thought, gooseflesh rose on Jamie’s arms and the tiny hairs on his nape lifted. His senses alert, he raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, his gaze scanning the dark edge of the encircling trees.
Trees
he could well imagine dressed in Druid mist—or bearing silent witness to the mysterious rites of the ancients.
Truth was, he almost believed they still held sway here.
That they’d only slipped away for a few hours and would soon return, their fair voices in the music of the wind, their cautious, watching presence hidden in the soft blue haze that e’er cloaked the hills.
“Though you would rather stay here?” Aveline persisted, watching him closely, almost as if she felt it, too.
“To be sure, I meant to stay here … a while,” Jamie admitted, reaching to touch her hair again. “But I’ll no’ risk you catching a chill. See you, I—” He broke off again, shaking his head to clear it of nonsense.
But even after a few good head shakes and manly denial, the damp grass beneath the plaid still felt warmer than it possibly could and he’d wager all his meals for a year if he honestly couldn’t detect a distinct humming deep in the ground beneath them.
He frowned.
His faery was smiling.
“Ach, lass,” he blurted, rushing the words, “there is something strange here. A warmth and shimmering in the ground that canna be, but is. I’d hope whate’er it is would warm you as well, that it would keep us from noticing the night’s cold if we—” He paused and blew out a frustrated breath. “But I saw you shiver—”
“I shivered because I want those things, too,” she said, leaning into him, lighting kisses along his jaw, down his neck. “And I do feel the warmth. As a Highlander, ’tis only natural that you noticed it, too.”
She pulled back then, looking over at the well. “’Tis Bride’s blessing, see you. Hers and the sun’s.”
“The sun’s?” Jamie’s brows arched.
She nodded and a vague memory stirred. Some fireside tale he’d heard as a lad, sung by Hughie Mac or maybe even Morag, he couldn’t recall.
“You’ve heard the tradition but have forgotten,” she said, glancing at him. “Shall I retell it for you?”
Jamie shrugged, interested indeed but not wishing to appear overeager to hear what he was sure could only be blether and nonsense.
Clearly thinking otherwise, she nodded solemnly and began. “Far back in time, some might even say farther back than forever, the Old Ones believed the sun disappeared beneath the waters of a night,” she said, her voice softening as she settled against him. “They thought the sun needed its rest, you see. But while the sun slept, the waters absorbed the sun’s healing power and strength, its warmth and beneficence.”
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