Heart of Stone

by Quinn, Paula

  Julianna hated that the earl’s unwarranted dislike for her pricked her so sharply. “Good. You told me.” She waited while Molly ran into the house to get Walter and their horse.

  “What are you called?” she asked Scarface when she sat behind him on his horse. He hadn’t had a choice but to allow her to mount. She was up before he could protest.

  “Rauf,” he said, trying to sound angry and failing. “He is goin’ to skin my arse fer bringin’ ye. Ye better help the boy.”

  Her heart raced while Walter helped Molly gain her saddle then tied the horse to Rauf’s. “Why does the earl hate me?” she asked softly behind him.

  “I dinna know.”

  But Rauf didn’t deny it. The earl hated her. She had to know why. “Do I know him?”

  When he remained silent while Water finished tying the horses together, she thought about any viscounts or earls from her past…or from Phillip’s who might hate her. There were many on Phillip’s side, she was sure.

  But no one from her past was a Scot. No one but one.

  Had William discovered his family and changed his name? Of course. Why wouldn’t he? Berengaria had given him the name William and she’d left him and Berwick one night while they slept and never returned. And why would he want to be called Stone, a name given to remind him of his worth?

  Had he married Aleysia d’Argentan’s servant? Did he love her so much that losing her caused him to go mad and become that…hairy ogre his son was terrified of? No. Her heart refused to let go of him, though it broke today more than any other day. Did he have a child and leave it?

  “Is he William? William Stone?” she begged on a sigh along his ear. She didn’t need to say anything more than that. If the earl was William, Rauf would know who she meant.

  “Lass…I canna say,” he croaked.

  Oh, no! No! Julianna thought about leaping from the horse but Walter finished tying his, and Rauf flicked his reins.

  No! Her belly knotted and almost doubled her over as they took off. She wasn’t prepared for this! The earl was not William. He was Nicholas, a frightening brute with cold, steel hatred in his eyes. Hatred for her. No! She wanted to slink to the ground and disappear into the soil. How could it be? She was wrong.

  “But how does he have a brother?” she managed when they rode up to the curtain wall of the castle.

  “They found him, lass. First, Cain, and then Torin.”

  They found him. Then, it truly was William. Her William. But he wasn’t hers anymore.

  Julianna’s skin felt clammy. He’d forgotten her and had a child with someone else. She supposed he’d had a right, since she turned him away when last they’d seen each other. She felt even worse remembering how she had stormed at his door and berated him about being a coward, just as a noble would have done. That wasn’t her. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have heard the name Lismoor and forgotten it just as quickly—as the abbess had told her to do about William. But she couldn’t. She hadn’t forgotten him in four years.

  “The path of his life was no fault of his own. If this is where it left him…” Rauf looked up at the towering keep and battlement walls. His chest swelled. “Dinna let it be that ye are unhappy that life was finally good to him.”

  Her eyes filled with tears that burned. There hadn’t been any in so long. Nothing shed for a past she hated. Everything but William.

  “He did not have a terrible life with Berengaria…or me in it.”

  Rauf shrugged his broad shoulders. “Tell it to him, lass. My priority right now is his son. Nicky canna lose another, aye?”

  Nicky. She breathed. “Aye.”

  She dismounted in the inner yard. She followed Rauf and Molly up the stairs to the great hall and then out of it again and down the long corridor to the babe’s chamber.

  Julianna neared the door, left partially open by the last one out. She heard soft whining and heavy breathing. Both sounds came from different people. Her mouth went dry and her knees grew weak. Was she about to see William? Her feet didn’t want to move. But she’d come all this way, spent almost all her coin to find him.

  Molly pushed the door open and plunged inside. Rauf went next, but Julianna was afraid to go. Afraid to find out if he truly hated her and if so, why?

  She’d lost many as well. She didn’t want to lose him.

  Perhaps it wasn’t William. Perhaps she was just a fool hoping for her past to—

  “Julianna!” Molly’s urgent voice shattered her thoughts and set her feet to moving—

  —even as she heard his breathing change before he ground out, “No. No one else!”

  Julianna pushed on the door and stepped inside, despite his command. She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t and still think straight. She went directly to the babe and touched his skin. He was burning up. They needed to get the fever down.

  “Luke warm rags,” Molly ordered and Rauf went running.

  “And bring me coriander and mint if you have it,” Julianna called out to any who were left.

  The earl. She turned slightly to have a look at him. Afraid. What if…

  It was him. William. Her knees nearly folded. Every moment she’d ever spent with him came flooding back in an instant. He’d shaved his face and cut off most of his hair, save for the tuft of waves falling over his dark brows and stormy gray eyes.

  How should she react to seeing him? She wanted to run, but which way, from him or to him? “My lord,” she managed.

  He didn’t reply but stood against the wall like a carved statue of a cold warrior king of old. Tall and lean, dressed in snug pants of deep brown-dyed wool over his long, muscular legs and a léine tucked beneath a belt hanging low on his hips.

  Beautiful William. He was frightened for his son. She could see the worry in his eyes…and something else. When he looked at her, his gaze was sparked with lightning. He hated her.

  She took a step back. She almost fainted right there in Molly’s arms at the force of his gaze, the strength of his emotion for her. But his son needed help. The earl of Rothbury could hate her later.

  “Or tell me where the items are and allow me to fetch them myself.” She closed her eyes at the quaver in her voice, then opened them again and challenged him with a determined stare. She wouldn’t fall to pieces before him. “I would like him to have my mixture sooner rather than later if we can.”

  He swallowed and cut his gaze away, then left the room without a word.

  Julianna put away her thoughts of him for the rest of the afternoon and helped Molly attend to Elias. She soothed him while she cooled his soft, pale skin and fed him her tea. Thankfully, he managed to keep some down. She prayed for him also, with Molly, on her knees.

  William never left the room after fetching what was needed. He sat alone at a nearby table by the hearth. He did not sit up straight, but hunched over the table, resting his arms on the surface and his head atop one bicep. He didn’t say a word. When he tore his stricken gaze from his son and looked at her, Julianna’s heart broke at the worry and fear and guilt she saw in him. But then it all faded and left silver shards ready to fly directly at her.

  She wasn’t afraid of him. Though she’d never seen him so angry. She knew William. He would never put a hand to her. He was nothing like Phillip. But he could put her out of his mind, never think of or mention her again, and pretend she had never existed. As he had with Berengaria.

  When everything they could do for Elias had been done, they waited. It gave Julianna a few moments to take in who this man was sitting alone by the hearth.

  William.

  She wanted to shout it at him, force him to say something, tell her what she had done. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and beg forgiveness for turning him away because of what he was. That was it, wasn’t it? That was why his perfectly sculpted, dimpled chin, now easily seen, was dead-set against her? She hadn’t recognized his eyes before because they were so filled with repugnance for her. William had never looked at her with anything but love
in his gaze.

  But this was no longer William. He was Nicholas MacPherson now, the Earl of Rothbury, a widower who had abandoned his son at birth.

  It made her angry. The way he looked at her made her angry, too. She tried to settle the fire rising up inside, but she knew no one else was going to tell him so she turned to him and folded her arms across her chest. “You left him in the hands of others…” She had no idea why the sudden urge to weep struck her. She did her best to fight it. “…including a wet-nurse whom he came to love as his mother. Who then abandoned him. One would think you would have known better.”

  She didn’t know what to expect from this new William, but it wasn’t a glowering, menacing tower rising from his chair. She almost regretted not wearing her jewelry. But would she poison Nicholas? She doubted it.

  She held her position even as he advanced, even as her heart faltered in her chest. She wasn’t leaving this room no matter what tactics he used. She dug her heels in and gave herself a subtle shake—just enough to make her long loose hair sway in the hearth’s light. She had faced Phillip at his drunken worst, when he didn’t even recognize who she was. She’d learned to cower so as not to invoke his wrath. She’d promised herself that she would never let it happen again.

  “I would have a word with you outside,” he said on a low snarl. “Walk or I shall carry you.”

  She remained where she was. “I’m not leaving until he is well.”

  His expression softened just the tiniest bit. “We will only be outside the door.”

  She walked, managing a reassuring look she didn’t feel to Molly.

  When they stepped outside, he shut the door behind them. “I will make this brief, Lady—”

  “Miss Feathers. Julianna,” she corrected in a softer tone. He was the love of her life. She couldn’t deny it. She’d dreamed of him so often. Sleep had become her escape from Phillip before she had truly run.

  “I do not want to see you every day,” he said, putting his sword through her heart. “What are you even doing here, trying to be a governess? Do you have no title? No land?”

  “None. William, I—”

  “Never call me that again,” he warned. “My name is Nicholas. I’m a Scot.”

  “I am overjoyed for you,” she told him sincerely. “I would love to hear about your brothers one day. But that does not give you the right to leave Elias.”

  “What do you know of it, Julianna?” he charged, standing over her, his voice fathomlessly deep and his gaze as hard as diamonds. “Have you ever left someone you loved?”

  “Aye, I have.” She met his gaze head on. She wanted to reach out her hand and touch him. Were her desires real or just the residue of memories of a better time in her life? A time of freedom and laughter, of stolen kisses with him and only him. She was tempted to close her eyes and remember how his lips felt on hers that night. “But he left me first.”

  His eyes pinned her to her spot. She tried to read them, but there was nothing to see. They were spellbinding in their chilling detachment. “You are not speaking of me.”

  “I am!” She squared her shoulders and readied herself for a fight. “You left me after promising me you never would!”

  “I did not leave you!” he grounded out through his clenched jaw. “I would never have left you, Julianna! Never. It sickens me that I must defend it. So I will not.”

  What? What was he saying? That the gossip was true? Her father had beaten him? “But you rode with the Scots after that.”

  The door opened and Molly appeared on the other side. “I think he is waking up.”

  William rushed back inside, to the bed, with Julianna on his heels.

  “Elias?” His rich voice filled her ears.

  William had a son. With someone else.

  He had the audacity to be angry with her? And what would he do when he found out to whom she had been married?

  “He does not respond!” he cried out, lifting his hands to his head.

  Julianna pushed past him and leaned over the bed to feel the babe’s face. He was cool. His fever had broken.

  “I knew it,” Nicholas lamented under his breath and moved away.

  What had Nicholas known? What made those words tear away from his heart as if bringing to completion its destruction?

  She looked down and found Elias’ beautiful blue-gray eyes on her. She held her breath, afraid to move lest he begin to cry. His huge gaze took in the sight of her hair falling down the side of her face and onto the bed—like a red waterfall. He smiled and sealed her heart to his. William’s child.

  “Say good morn to your papa, Elias.” She moved out of the way, swishing her hair over the babe’s face and making his smile grow into a soft giggle.

  She looked up in time to catch the flash of gratitude in Nicholas’ eyes when he turned and saw his son awake.

  The babe looked at him without screeching. “Lyahs’ tummy want food.”

  Julianna laughed. “This tummy?” she asked and tickled his belly gently, since he was just recovering.

  He squealed with laughter, even as his father left the room.

  “What was all that with you and the earl about?” Molly drooled for information.

  “I knew him once,” Julianna told her and also Rauf, who stood behind, listening, “before he was an earl. I had not recognized him under all his hair. But when I saw him, clean-shaven, I knew who he was.”

  “Now do you remember why he would have reason not to like you?” Molly asked, hoping for a bit more spice.

  “He is angry with me for not following my heart,” she told the woman. “My life took a very different turn than it would if I had.” She looked down at Elias. Color was returning to his cheeks. Goodness, he was a heart-wrenchingly beautiful little boy.

  She glanced at the door and wondered what his father’s words had meant. He knew it. Did he think Elias was dead? That he’d lost him? Had such certainty torn from his heart the last shred of humanity he had left?

  Life had been hard on her dearest, most beloved friend. She wanted to make it easier.

  She prayed William…Nicholas would let her stay to take care of his son. And of him. She wasn’t sure anything could make her leave now that the child had smiled at her. Now that she knew that, like his father, he hadn’t had anyone to comfort him in weeks—or who knows how long, really? If Avice could leave him just because of his big, hairy father then she didn’t truly love him.

  That was about to change and anyone who tried to get in her way would get a needle to the arse.

  Chapter Five

  Nicholas walked along the battlement wall with Rauf later that night. Inside, the castle was quiet. Elias had eaten supper with Julianna and then they ran around the courtyard until the sun went down. He’d watched them from up here.

  He shouldn’t have.

  He realized when he thought he might lose Elias that he, indeed, did love him. That scared the hell out of him. The fear of losing someone he loved came flooding back, making him panic, making him run.

  But the babe had stopped crying. He’d even laughed. Nicholas could so easily lose himself to the memories of his son smiling and then laughing.

  Everything seemed more peaceful. But inside Nicholas’ head was a chaotic hum of alarms. They told him to run, to be strong and throw her out before her enormous eyes called to him—or he thought they did—before her laughter lured him like a siren song and smashed his body against the cliffs.

  He couldn’t sit still. Pacing didn’t help.

  “I do not want her here,” he said, looking over the shallow strath while the last shards of sunlight clung to the earth. “Even if I agree to this, she will not stay and Elias will suffer all over again.”

  Rauf followed him around the wall. “Not if ye are here, Nicky.”

  Nicholas stopped and turned around to look at him.

  Rauf took a step back.

  “This is my fault. I know,” Nicholas grieved. He wanted to ask Rauf what he could have done. But he
already knew the answer. He could have stayed and raised his son. But he wanted to give in, give up, die. He hated everything that reminded him of what he’d lost, including his son. Selfish or not, he wouldn’t have been a good father and he hadn’t wanted to ask his brothers and the mothers of their children to help raise one more.

  But that was two years ago when all his hurts and doubts were fresh. That was before he’d left Lismoor and traveled to places that were not designed for anyone’s protection, including his, places where people lost their entire families to rivaling tribes or natural catastrophes. Before he’d gone to Berwick and faced what haunted him.

  Or so he thought.

  There was no time for regrets now. He’d come back for Elias, not a ghost he thought he’d exorcized. He had to decide what to do about Julianna. His son had been quiet for over four hours for the first time since Nicholas had been home. The babe seemed to be fond of her. She still had to go. He’d find someone else. Elias wouldn’t care. He needed a motherly type. There had to be someone who could do it. He would go out and scavenge the village for someone tomorrow.

  “Let her stay the night,” he told his commander. “I will not send her out into the dark. But she must leave in the morning.”

  “Nicky, ’twill be harder fer the lad if she goes now. Let her help ease him into it. ’Twill give us time to find someone else.”

  Nicholas thought about it and shook his head. “I cannot, Rauf. You were there. You heard her rejection. She called me what I had always been to her. A servant. A childish—”

  “In truth,” Rauf corrected, “I didna hear her say a thing aboot that. I was carryin’ yer brother the hell away from that mad abbess. Her, I remember!”

  “Then you do remember Julianna,” Nicholas stared him in the eye. “And still you invited her here?”

  “I remember her now, after ye have reminded me,” Rauf told him defensively. “All right, then, Nicky. She called ye a servant. So now the winds have changed and ye are the noble.” He tossed up his hands and his shoulders along with them. “I canna say I believe she is here fer any other purpose than to care fer Elias. She didna know ye were ye until this morn after she had heard me tell Molly aboot the babe and landed in my saddle before I even knew she was behind me. I didna invite her here. I had no say in the matter.”