Warrior’s Redemption

by Melissa Mayhue

Danielle. Vision was hardly a strong enough word. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders like a golden waterfall of curls, framing her face. She lifted her chin, and he could almost swear he felt her determination as her gaze swept the room, stopping when her eyes met his.

  For an instant it was as if his heart beat against his chest in a wild attempt to escape his body before the connection was broken and they both looked away.

  One deep, shaky breath brought the self-control he had briefly lost and, with it, the ability to rationalize his response to his guest.

  More likely the discomfort he felt could be directly attributed to the Faerie at Dani’s side. He wouldn’t put it past Elesyria to try casting some sort of Faerie Magic over him. But he wouldn’t so easily fall prey to any such attack from her.

  “Colm?”

  Patrick’s hand on his shoulder brought him fully back.

  “I go now to see to Eric and hear what word the MacKilyn has sent. You make sure Dermid disna follow me, aye? And keep watch over what passes between our brother and my . . . intended.”

  He shared a grin with Patrick over their subterfuge and made his way quickly from the hall.

  It took longer going the back way, but there was no help to be had for it. The direct path would have led him past Dermid and into the questions he wished to avoid.

  A few twists and turns through the dark hallways into the kitchens and then he was out, into the night. Once there, with no need to keep up appearances, his measured steps broke into a run, carrying him swiftly to the stables.

  One of the guardsmen who’d accompanied Eric sat on the ground at the doorway, head down, looking as if he napped to any but a trained eye.

  Malcolm knew better. Eric had set a guard to make sure there were no interruptions when he delivered his report. He would have expected no less from his trusted friend.

  Stepping through the door, Malcolm wasted no time getting to the heart of his business.

  “You bring word from the MacKilyn?”

  “Aye, Malcolm. The MacKilyn stands ready to send men to aid in our cause at yer request.”

  Hearing the words was a gift, loosening the grip of anxiety that had fettered him for so long. It was as he’d hoped. MacKilyn would send the men he needed to enable him to confront Torquil and demand his sister’s release.

  “You’ve done well, Eric.”

  “Thank you, my laird. The MacKilyn did ask that I convey to you his intent to seek a boon from you as repayment for his allegiance.”

  Malcolm nodded his understanding. He expected no less.

  “Go now. Make sure yer men are tended to. And yerself as well. You’ve earned a good night’s rest in a soft bed.”

  “A soft bed and a full tankard, aye? What more could a warrior ask for?” Eric passed him with a grin, headed toward the castle and likely to find the tankard he’d mentioned.

  Malcolm waited, not wanting to set tongues wagging by entering with Eric. When he did step out into the night a few minutes later, the beginnings of his campaign to free Christiana were already taking shape in his mind.

  HOW HAD HE disappeared so quickly?

  Dani swiveled her head, scanning the room, certain she must be missing him somewhere.

  But no. Malcolm was gone.

  She followed Elesyria to the head table, refusing to accept the disappointment welling at the back of her throat. So what if he’d chosen to leave after seeing her arrive? It didn’t matter. After all, she was only an actress, allowing his younger brother to believe that she might be important to Malcolm. It was her only useful job here. Pretending to be something she wasn’t.

  Considering she’d spent her whole life doing that, it should be an easy enough task.

  “This way, my lady.”

  Patrick held out a chair for her and she sat, grateful that Elesyria was seated next to her. More grateful that their places hadn’t been switched when she realized Dermid sat on the other side of Elesyria.

  Not that the young man bothered her so much. It was the older man who shadowed his every move that made her uncomfortable, standing there behind Dermid’s chair, as he did now. Watching everything, his eyes darting around the room as if he were soaking up everything with a single look.

  “Creeps me out,” she muttered under her breath, earning an imperious look from her dining companion.

  Unlike her, the Faerie had no problem addressing the issue to Dermid.

  “How am I to eat with your man hanging over me like some bird of prey? Must he do that?”

  “Rauf is my groomsman. It is his responsibility to guard my person. What else would you expect of him, good woman?”

  Though Dermid seemed a tad offended by the complaint, Rauf’s expression remained unchanged, as if he neither heard nor cared what transpired in the conversation at the table.

  “I expect him to guard you from his own seat, young man. Are you incapable of defending yourself against an unarmed woman?”

  Dani swallowed hard, hoping to avoid spitting the drink she’d just sipped back into her cup. Unarmed woman, indeed. Unarmed Faerie, more like it. And who knew if even the “unarmed” part was true.

  Though, to her surprise, it seemed to work on Dermid.

  “You may leave me, Rauf. Take yer spot at the table there.” He pointed to one of the tables in front of them. “You can reach me soon enough if I have need of you.”

  “As you will it, good sir.” Rauf dipped his head respectfully and made his way around the long table and off the dais, taking a seat at the table in front of them.

  Dani wasn’t sure the change was much of an improvement. Standing over the top of them or staring directly at them from a distance, the man still creeped her out.

  “Well, I’ve done all I can,” Elesyria whispered as she lifted her cup in acknowledgment to the man. “You’ll simply have to deal, my dear.”

  Dani set her own cup back on the table, unsure whether the guard’s stare or the Faerie’s apparent ability to read her mind unnerved her more.

  “Begging yer pardon, miss.”

  Dani shifted in her seat to allow a young girl to set a large wooden tray in front of her. On it was the big bread bowl she’d come to expect, filled with a dark, thick, meaty stew.

  She watched as the girl—child, really—hurried away from the table and another young girl placed a similar tray in between Elesyria and Dermid. Other children carried similar trays in between all the tables stretching out in the great hall in front of her.

  Little wonder Malcolm had rejected her offer to wait tables by telling her she was too old for the job. She doubted any of those girls was a day past twelve.

  “Perhaps Danielle would be better suited to answer that question, wouldn’t you, dear?”

  Dani jumped at hearing her name and turned to find both Dermid and Elesyria staring at her expectantly.

  “I’m sorry, I was distracted. What question is it you think I can answer?”

  “Dermid here is wondering whether you don’t find it a tad bit uncomfortable to have the mother of your betrothed’s deceased wife serving as your companion?”

  “I never said that,” Dermid attempted to deny, but Elesyria was having none of it.

  “Perhaps not those very words, but that was your question, was it not, young man?”

  “The mother of my betrothed’s deceased—” Dani stopped midway through the tongue-twister, buying time to think of an appropriate response by dipping a small chunk of bread into her stew. “I find it—”

  “She finds it as annoying as I do to have you badgering my guests, little brother.”

  Malcolm!

  Rarely had Dani been so glad to be interrupted by someone.

  “I’m no badgering, Colm. Only asking a logical question of the woman who is to be my sister.”

  “And what makes you think that’s the case? Have I told you as much? No. Have I done anything to make you think it’s so? No.”

  As he finished speaking, Malcolm grasped Dani’s hand and brought it to his
mouth, capturing the morsel of food she held between her thumb and forefinger, even as his eyes captured and held hers.

  His lips were soft against her fingers and his breath was warm where it feathered over her skin. Warm enough as he lingered over the bite that her own temperature spiked a degree or two. Or ten. Warm enough that she felt the excess heat flood her face.

  Her stomach flip-flopped like a novice launching off the high-dive board, landing somewhere close to her ovaries, if the resulting shimmer that felt suspiciously like need was any guide.

  “There! You see?” Dermid slammed his tankard to the table like he’d discovered a new planet. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “I’ve no idea what yer talking about,” Malcolm replied with a grin, gently releasing the hand he’d held before turning to engage Patrick in a quiet discussion as if nothing at all had just passed between them.

  Maybe nothing had.

  Dani glanced to her hand, slowly lowering it to the table, feeling as if it were a foreign object. Only when she noticed the obvious tremble did she quickly draw her fingers into a tight fist and move the offending appendage into her lap.

  Maybe it was only her.

  Damn it! There was no reason for that kind of reaction. Not at all. She didn’t respond to men in that way. Ever. And it certainly wasn’t as if she’d never had guys flirt with her before. They did. All the time. It was a fact of life. And yet, for some strange reason, this one particular man seemed to have the ability to get under her skin like no other.

  “You should eat what’s put in front of you, lass. Starving yerself is no way to keep up yer strength.”

  Once again she stared up into those intense blue eyes, unable to look away.

  Fine. She had no choice but to accept the fact that maybe she couldn’t control how her body reacted to the overbearing Scot. But there was no way in the world she was giving him the satisfaction of knowing she felt that way.

  “Perhaps if I had something other than my fingers to eat with,” she grumbled, searching for something, anything, other than his touch as the culprit in her inability to eat.

  “You’ve a knife, aye? As we all do. What more could you want?”

  “What about a fork?” she answered, warming to her deception. “Like any civilized person would use.”

  “A fork,” he repeated, one eyebrow rising. “As you wish, my lady.”

  He raised a hand, summoning a young girl to his side. After a short conversation in which, presumably, he instructed the child to fetch a fork, she hurried from the great hall. But not before casting a confused look over her shoulder in Dani’s direction.

  Within moments, the girl returned, bringing with her what, at first glance, Dani would have sworn was a long stick. She handed the object to Malcolm, who turned to Dani, placing it on the table between them.

  “As you requested, my lady. Perhaps now you will finish yer meal.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  The two-pronged monstrosity, carved of wood, must have been nearly two feet in length.

  Malcolm’s brow wrinkled in obvious irritation, but he held his thoughts private while he tore a small chunk of bread from their shared loaf and dipped it into the stew.

  “I dinna question whether or no you were serious in yer desire to have a cook’s tool at the table, did I? No. You asked for a fork and I had one brought to you.”

  “I meant that I wanted a dinner fork.” At his questioning frown, she continued. “A miniature version of this. Perhaps the length of your hand. It’s what polite society uses to feed themselves where I come from.”

  He nodded as if he considered her argument, then took her breath away by leaning in close enough to whisper in her ear.

  “And then you wipe yer mouths upon the parchment, aye? Polite society, my arse. That’s no how we do it here.”

  She shivered at the proximity of his lips to her ear, his warm breath trailing down her neck as if his fingers traced across her skin, raising chill bumps in their wake.

  Her lungs felt as if they might explode from lack of oxygen and she opened her mouth for a deep shaky inhale.

  Immediately, Malcolm popped the bite he held between her open lips.

  “Now eat yer food and dinna force me to feed it to you as if you were a wee bairn.”

  Her face heated, as much from Elesyria’s quiet laughter behind her as anything. Embarrassment, surely, though her hands still shook, even tightly fisted as they were in her lap.

  If she hadn’t accepted it before, she’d certainly received quite the lesson in the last few moments.

  Malcolm MacDowylt, laird of the MacGahans, was one powerfully dangerous man.

  Sixteen

  HE’D DREAMED OF her again last night. No misty, shrouded portents of things to come, these. No. Full-on dreams, filled with Dani dressed in the thin, frilly shift she’d worn the first time he’d laid eyes on her.

  Dressed in it until it slipped off her shoulders and floated to her feet.

  Malcolm leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the table in front of him, allowing the woman of his dreams to fill his waking thoughts while he waited for Patrick to join him in his solar.

  By Freya, but the woman made him smile.

  “Care to share what’s put that grin on yer face?” Patrick leaned against the open doorway.

  Share? No, Malcolm thought not. Not this. Better to steer his brother on to the business at hand. “What did you want to see me about?”

  “After I left our strategy session last night, I bumped into the Elf. She asked what yer plans for Danielle are once this business with Torquil is finished.”

  He’d not thought that far ahead, concentrating his energy instead on the task at hand—leading an army to march on his half brother to demand his sister’s freedom.

  “None, eh?” Patrick shook his head. “I told the Elf as much, though it dinna please her to hear it in the least.”

  “Aye, well, Elf or no, we’ve more important worries than keeping my mother-in-law happy.”

  Patrick shrugged but did not appear to be satisfied with Malcolm’s response as he moved into the room, shutting the door behind him. “She asked that I deliver a message to you. A warning, if you will.”

  Now there’s what he needed. Though, in truth, Patrick as messenger was better than a visit from Elesyria herself.

  “And that would be?”

  “She says to warn you that the woman was sent to you by the Goddess herself.”

  As if he hadn’t figured that out already. “So it would seem. As a test, no doubt. To see if I fail in protecting her as I failed Isabella.”

  His brother’s jaw tightened. “I’ve said my piece on that, Colm, and we’ll no argue the point now, but no. No as a test. As a gift, she says.”

  A gift? Not likely. Not unless it was as a gift meant to test. To punish his failures. He knew the stories of the Magical Folk all too well to believe anything else.

  “Consider yer message delivered.” Malcolm lifted his feet from his table, placing them firmly on the floor. Where they belonged. “Make sure I’m notified when MacKilyn’s men approach.”

  Patrick nodded, heading toward the door again. “I’ll see to it that all is in readiness. We will be prepared to leave as soon as our allies have a good night’s rest.”

  Before Patrick reached the exit, the door burst open and Dermid presented himself, the ubiquitous Rauf close at his heels.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Their youngest brother was persistent, if nothing else.

  “Now that you’ve returned from yer”—Dermid slid a knowing glance from Patrick to Malcolm—“personal business, I’m assuming yer ready to deal with our brother’s demands. I’m offering myself as messenger to carry the tribute demanded back to Torquil.”

  “We’re no going to—” Patrick began, but Malcolm held up a hand, stopping him midsentence.

  He had no intention of disclosing to Dermid the fact that there would
be no tribute, especially not in front of Rauf. There was something about the groomsman he simply didn’t trust.

  “We’re no going to allow you to return to Tordenet Castle. Yer here with us, safe and sound now, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  As he’d expected, Dermid bristled.

  “There’s no risk to me in returning to Tordenet. Torquil trusts me. And it only makes sense to send me as I’m the one who kens his movements and his thoughts like no other you have here.”

  That Dermid could ever think he had their half brother’s trust proved more than anything else his youthful lack of judgment.

  “We’ve enough to worry over with finding a way to convince Torquil to release Christiana into our hands. I’ll no allow him to hold you hostage as well.”

  “All the more reason to send me. I could convince him to release our sister.”

  “No.” Malcolm rose to his feet, hoping the lad would accept the finality of his decision. “My decision is made, Dermid. We’ll do this my way.”

  Though his brother might not understand the danger he would be in if he were to return to Tordenet Castle, Malcolm had no illusions about it. Torquil was possessed of all that was most evil in their bloodline. He cared for naught but power and wealth, and Malcolm would not expose his youngest brother to that risk again, no matter that Dermid was older than he had been on his first campaign. Dermid was still his youngest brother.

  He moved across the room and into the doorway, deciding as he did that he would be the decoy to throw Dermid off the scent of their true plans.

  “And where do you think yer off to now?” the lad demanded, obviously not yet satisfied with the way things would be.

  Since they’d gone to all the trouble to convince Dermid that Dani was here as his intended, he might as well make use of their duplicity. Keeping the lad busy spying on him would free up Patrick to see to all the arrangements necessary to ready their men to prepare for battle against Tordenet Castle.

  “I’m off to see to some of that personal business.” With a grin and a wink he walked out, closing the door behind him.

  He decided not to put too much thought into why the idea of finding Dani and spending the day with her kept the grin he wore for Dermid’s benefit from fading.