Sue-Ellen Welfonder

by Master of the Highlands

  And Iain MacLean had coin a-plenty.

  So he gritted his teeth and kicked his garron’s sides, spurring toward the little village and what he hoped would be the most pleasant night he’d spent in ages.

  Accepting, too, that his surreptitious machinations marked him for the kind of lout he could no longer deny he’d become.

  A self-serving blackguard.

  And a greater one than his clan or any who knew him would e’er believe.

  Chapter Nine

  DEEPENING TWILIGHT, GUSTY WIND, and a thin drizzle of slanting rain accompanied Iain through the sleepy hamlet. The rapidly worsening weather and empty, straw-mired streets soundly cloaked any appeal the village might have held on a bonnier, less storm-plagued night, while low rumbles of distant thunder underscored the futility of seeking shelter elsewhere.

  A self-inflicted complication he sorely regretted the instant his garron clattered beneath the arched gateway of the village’s sole hostelry and he spied the ale-stake, a long, horizontal pole projecting from above the door.

  Its unwieldy length adorned with bundles of leafy, green branches, the fool contraption bobbed dangerously in the ever-increasing wind… and marked his chosen lodging as an alehouse rather than the more commodious and hospitable inn he’d hoped to find.

  Dread stalking him, he drew rein beside a towering pile of cut peat not far from the stables. He expelled an irritated breath and glanced around, his gaze flickering over the tavern’s muddied foreyard.

  Squawking chickens pecked at the soiled straw scattered across the mushy ground and pigs grunted in ankle-deep muck. The noisome beasties edged ever nearer to snuffle at his garron’s shaggy fetlocks. Iain frowned, convinced he’d left his wits somewhere on the road behind him.

  Right about where he’d spotted the monastery tucked away in a dark wood… and ridden on. His hand fisted around the reins, guilt tweaking him.

  A goatherd would have known better.

  The lowliest sower of grain.

  He had, too, truth be told, but he’d so wanted a kiss. Or rather quarters for the night that would have proven conducive to stealing one.

  Instead, he’d found a wee scrap of an alehouse. A dubious-looking establishment he doubted could procure a ewer and basin of warmed water and soap, much less a private, vermin-free bed.

  A shudder snaked down his spine, and he slanted another frustrated glance at the weaving ale-stake. His every instinct shouted at him to wheel about, spur his garron, and be gone. Ride away before she awakened, journeying the whole night through if need be.

  Windy mizzle, empty belly, or nay.

  But the buttery yellow pools of torchlight spilling from the establishment’s half-shuttered windows beckoned and the rain-chased air, misty and damp in the close confines of the inn yard, held the distinct aroma of deliciously roasted meats.

  His stomach clenched and growled, and he imagined Madeline’s did, too, even though, from the relaxed, pliant feel of her, she still dozed quite soundly.

  He looked at her, something inside him softening at the way she leaned so trustingly against him, at how the soft weight of her warmed more than his physical body. She’d pulled Amicia’s arisaid—a MacLean plaid—over her head, using its woolen folds to shield her from the mizzling rain and that, too, touched him.

  Made her seem needful of him, a thought that took his breath away.

  Iain MacLean, scourge of his clan, needed.

  He swallowed roughly, for one moment of fanciful indulgence allowing his heart to thump harder, to climb just a few wee inches up his throat.

  The lass made him feel alive again.

  And heated, despite the night’s chill winds and persistent, misting rain.

  He drew a long breath, let the scent of her fill his senses. Sweet as an angel’s breath, its clean, heathery lightness chased the dark from his soul and sent hair-thin cracks spreading every which way across the vitrified casing of his heart.

  Iain blinked, tried to rid himself of such fool romantic musings. But the more he sought to banish them, the worse they became.

  The wilder, more bold, and far too hurtful to allow.

  Tightening his jaw, he frowned up at the darkening sky, his resentment at the foul weather nigh as great as his scorn for himself, for the heavy, pewter gray clouds marred how wonderfully right it felt to have his arm wrapped about her slender waist.

  And the thin smirr of sideways rain tainted his pleasure in how temptingly the full, bottom swells of her breasts brushed against the top of his forearm.

  This time of year, the night should have been limpid, pure, and awash with finest luminosity until the wee hours.

  And had the fates been kind, kissed with enough magic to spare him a dollop or two.

  But the gods preferred to vex him by ladling a goodly dose of raucous laughter and coarse, upraised voices onto the lashing wind, and upping the ear-splitting screech of the ale-stake as it swung on its rusty hinges.

  His conscience hounded him, too. It banded together with the scattered remnants of his chivalry to catch him unawares the instant the tavern’s thick-planked door swung open and its errant ale-draper stepped outside, a slop pail clutched in his meaty hands.

  She awakened, too, jerking upright with a startled gasp even as the dark-frowning shadow of his conscience watched his every move from a murk-filled recess near the arched doorway.

  Twisting around, she blinked at him, her lovely eyes hazy with sleep. “W-where are we?” she asked, her honeyed voice equally slumber-drugged.

  And so maddeningly alluring Iain’s fingers itched to whip out his steel and slice his glowering conscience to ribboned shreds.

  The ruddy-complexioned tavern-keeper, too, if he dared come betwixt such a fine, almost intimate moment.

  But he did, of course… much to Iain’s perturbation.

  With a well-practiced flick of his wrist, the portly ale-draper flung the contents of his slop pail onto the muddy ground. He tossed aside the empty bucket and strode forward. “Ho, good sir!” he called, wiping his hands on a grimy cloth hanging from a wide leather belt slung low beneath his considerable girth.

  “Lady.” He dipped his head to Madeline, his greeting amiable if a mite ingratiating. “Welcome to the Shepherd’s Rest,” he greeted them, a decidedly speculative gleam in his eyes. “How may I serve you?”

  Iain dismounted, then reached for Madeline. He eased her off the garron’s back, but kept her in his arms, holding her high against his chest so her dangling feet remained well above the mired ground.

  “My wife and I require good victuals, your best ale, and quarters for the night,” he said, crossing the inn yard. “Private quarters.”

  The tavern-keeper bristled. “Meals here are praised for miles around, and some claim I brew the finest heather ale in the land,” he spluttered, holding wide the door as Iain swept past him into the common room. “But I’m full up for the night… lest you wish a pallet on the floor?”

  Iain paused just inside the threshold, surveyed the alehouse’s crowded interior. Smoky blue haze from a low-burning peat fire hung thick in the air, its pleasant tang well laced with the earthier smell of ale-soaked floor rushes.

  He turned to the tavern-keeper, arched a brow. “Have you naught better than the floor?”

  “’Tis a busy night, sir,” the man said with shrug and a sidelong glance at his roistering patrons. Flush-cheeked and loud, they filled all but one of the rough-hewn oaken tables… a smaller one near the door and full in the draught of the cold, damp air pouring through the shutter slats.

  Iain frowned, shoved an agitated hand through his hair.

  Even the settles flanking the cavernous stone hearth proved occupied. And those were most often left unheeded, the stifling heat thrown off by the peat fire making the hard-backed settles less desirable seating than the bench-lined trestle tables.

  “Good sir, we have had a day of long and hard riding. My wife is sore tired,” Iain said with an eloquent glance at the black-raft
ered ceiling. “Are you sure you haven’t a wee niche of room hidden away abovestairs?”

  The ale-draper gave another apologetic shrug. “Most folks hereabouts make do with sleeping space on one of the common beds in the back room, but even those are spoken for this night.” He spread his hands. “Four to a bed.”

  “Pray let us ride on,” she breathed into his ear. “I do not like it here.”

  Something in her tone made the hairs on Iain’s nape lift, but he lowered her onto the bench of the only empty table and patted her shoulder in what he hoped she’d perceive as a gesture of reassurance. “The heavens just cracked open above us, lass,” he said, and a furious clap of thunder lent truth to his observation.

  She jumped, stared up at him with rounded eyes. “But—”

  “Sweet lass, we’d be soaked to the bone before we even left the inn yard.” Iain leaned close, smoothed a damp curl from her brow. “I will not see you catch ill,” he added, raising his voice above the pelting rain and wind. “Do you not hear the storm?”

  Before she could answer or worse, reveal their deception, he turned back to the ale-draper. Squaring his shoulders, he assumed his best brother-of-the-laird posture. “Even the humblest establishments are wont to keep quarters for those wishing privacy.”

  As he’d suspected would happen, a glimmer of interest flickered across the other’s face. Encouraged, Iain discreetly lifted a fold of his plaid to reveal the bulging leather purse hanging from his waist belt. “It would be propitious for you if you can procure such a chamber.”

  “There is one room.…” the tavern-keeper owned, eyeing the coin pouch.

  Iain let his plaid fall back in place. “Is it clean?”

  The man hesitated, moistened his lips. He slid a glance at a harried-looking serving maid replenishing burned-out candles on the tables. “My daughter can change the bed linens. But the room is dear…” He let his words trail off, toyed with the end of his drying cloth.

  Taking the cue, Iain fished a few coins from his purse. “I’ll double your profit if you send up a bath and triple it if you make haste.”

  The tavern-keeper bobbed his head. “I shall see to it myself as you sup, milord,” he crooned, accepting the coins. “You shall bathe in rose water and sleep on swan down.”

  “See you only that it is private and clean,” Iain said, taking a seat across from Madeline.

  He reached for her hand, tried to tell himself his conscience wasn’t glaring at him from over her bonnie shoulder… and that the talk of bathing wasn’t the reason for her sudden pallor.

  “We need heated water to make the sphagnum tincture,” he said, rubbing gentle circles across her palm with his thumb. “And a bath will soothe your aches.”

  She pulled away her hand, looked aside.

  “Mind you, lass, I am a man and a hungry one,” Iain blurted before he could think of a less clumsy formulation.

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, he heaved a sigh and tried again.

  “It has been overlong since I have… since I—” he broke off when the tavern-keeper’s daughter plunked a brown-glazed jug of well-frothed heather ale and two wooden cups on the table. An older woman, perhaps her mother, set down a platter heaped with brown bread, cheese, and half a roasted capon.

  Iain nodded thanks, but knew greater relief to see them hasten away.

  “Since you what, sir?”

  Her sweet voice caught his ear, the intimation behind the words enough to have set his face to flaming had he not long ago learned to school his features and mask his emotions.

  But then he met her green-gold gaze and nearly forgot the technique.

  God’s eyes, had he truly been about to admit how long it’d been since he’d lain with a woman? That—as he now knew—he’d only ever slaked the burning in his loins, but ne’er come close to quelling his deeper needs? The needs of his heart?

  Not even with his own late wife?

  Stifling a pained grimace, Iain unsheathed his dirk and placed it beside the platter of victuals.

  He inhaled deeply of the night air streaming through the window shutters, let the chill damp fill his lungs. He looked at her, watched her across the table, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  She undid him beyond all belief.

  He had indeed been about to look her full square in the eye and announce that only she amongst all women could banish the hunger inside him, heal the ache in his heart and make him whole.

  A pronouncement that would have surely sent her bolting from the Shepherd’s Rest and into the storm-chased night, never to be seen again.

  Truth to tell, were he the gallant she’d styled him, he’d warn her to run miles from Iain MacLean, hot-tempered scourge of the Isles and killer of innocent wives.

  Disappointment to all who trusted him.

  “Sir?” This time she reached across the table to lightly tap his arm.

  He near jumped from his skin. The simple touch sent a jolting current of intense sensation shooting through him, unleashing a raging need for more. Clamping his jaw, Iain struggled against a scarce containable desire to seize her hand and drag her bonnie fingers o’er every inch of his flesh.

  Frowning darkly, he shifted on the hard bench, every fiber of his being crackling with the urgent need to share intimate touches with her. He burned to press the flat of her hand firmly over his heart so she could feel its thunder and know she stirred more than his baser needs.

  Much more.

  But for now she was peering at him, round-eyed and dewy-lipped, and making him ache simply to hear her call him by his name.

  And to learn hers.

  Her full and true appellation.

  “I told you my name is Iain,” he reminded her, lifting the ale jug to pour two cups of the thickish brew. “Not sir or lord, simply Iain… even if you have given me a very fine style.”

  He slid one of the cups across the table toward her. “It would please me if you used my name.”

  “Iain then,” she said, but not easily, for her fingers tensed visibly on the wooden cup. Watching him, she took a careful sip of the heather ale. “You haven’t told me what you meant a moment ago, sir… Iain.”

  “Simply that while I am by no measure a frocked priest, neither am I as the stags roaring on the hillside in season,” Iain declared, and instantly wished he could cut out his tongue.

  Her eyes flew wide, her shock like a dirk thrusting into his breast.

  Swallowing a curse, he set to slicing the brown bread. “Forgive my crudeness, I pray you,” he got out, his gaze on his task. “I am not known for being glib-tongued.”

  He looked up, offered her a thick slice of the crusty, still-warm bread. “That you needn’t fear sharing a chamber with me is what I am trying to say.” He waited for her to accept the bread, then added, “I am not a brute-beast. I will not fall upon you when you disrobe to bathe… if such a worry has distressed you.”

  “You’re mistaken.” The denial came so swiftly it surprised and heartened him. “That isn’t my concern. I have seen and trusted your gallantry,” she said, her averted gaze on a far corner near the hearth. “But whether you are chivalrous or otherwise, it is not… seemly for us to share a room.”

  “Then we shall make it as much so as we can,” Iain offered, and imagined his conscience nodding in sanctimonious approval.

  “I swear to you, I shall not look the entire time you bathe,” he promised, and washed down the regrettable vow with a great gulp of heather ale.

  “You won’t?”

  Iain near choked.

  Had her voice held a trace of wistful regret?

  Disappointment?

  Or was he indeed losing his wits as swiftly as his control?

  Setting down his ale cup, he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, and looked sharply at her. But she was still staring across the crowded common room.

  “You have my word on it,” he managed at last, hoping to assure her of her modesty… and bind himself to his pride.
>
  Keeping his word was about all he had left of it.

  “I will do naught in that chamber save tend your abraded wrists and ankles, and keep you from harm.” He stared at her, at a loss to ease whate’er plagued her. “I do not renege on promises given.”

  A quick shake of her head was her only response. That, and to wash down a healthy bite of capon with a formidable gulp of ale.

  “I do not doubt your word,” she said, low-voiced, the trembling fingers wrapped round her ale cup disproving her.

  Iain pried her fingers from around the wooden cup and took her cold hand between his two. Thick tension rolled off her, and while her hand shook, there was a rigid stiffness about the rest of her that tore at his heart.

  She feared him.

  There could be no other explanation.

  And no way to allay her concerns other than to humiliate himself.

  Taking a long breath, he began caressing her palm with his thumb again. Slowly and gently. To soothe her, and to let the smooth silk of her skin settle him.

  “I told you I was doing penance,” he pushed out the words, each one heavy sludge dredged from the darkest, nether regions of his soul. “My sin is but my temper,” he confessed. “Naught more sinister than the quick-tindered bursts of an ill humor I cannot always contain.”

  She bit her lower lip and slid another glance at the far corner, kept her gaze there.

  And looked more fraught than before.

  Beginning to feel helpless, Iain released her hand and sliced off another choice portion of roasted capon for her. He placed it on her side of the trencher, and he watched her take it, a different but equally fierce ache twisting his gut at the sight.

  In addition to her more obvious discomfort, the lass clearly hadn’t had a good meal in ages. She’d devoured most of what they’d been served well before he’d taken but a few bites.

  Not that he cared.

  Not beyond knowing a black fury at whate’er circumstances had made her so needy.