Keeper of my Heart (14 page)

“Thank you, milord,” she managed to say, pulling back her hand. She felt as if she’d been burned by his touch.

Roderick turned toward Iain. “By the saints, Iain. You canna imagine the hell we’ve been through. We all thought you were dead.”

“I know. I should have been, but Màiri thought differently. She would na let me die.”

Roderick looked her in the eyes. “I will forever be in your debt. It is plain to see by the celebration tonight how grateful the MacAlisters are to have their laird back with them.”

Iain placed his arm around her shoulder and held her close. “I owe Màiri more than just my life. She has given us peace between the MacBrides and the MacAlisters.”

An icy chill filled the room. No one noticed but her. She tried to ignore it.

“’Tis much we owe you,” Roderick answered, the smile on his face warm enough to melt butter. “Not only do we have our laird back alive and well, but a beautiful mistress to grace our keep.”

Somehow she managed to smile, even though the sensations engulfing her held more evils and wrongs than she could understand.

“Sit down beside us, Roderick, and tell me everything that has happened while I was gone. It has been so long since I have seen you. Have you had any more trouble with the Cochrans? Is there a chance we can achieve peace between us without a show of force?”

Roderick sat down in the chair across from Iain and told him what had happened since he’d left. Màiri barely listened. Too many emotions collided within her. She wanted to shut out her gift and the things it told her, but she could not. Its warnings were too important to be ignored.

Màiri gripped the side of the trestle table. Her gift saw through Roderick’s falsehoods, warning her of a danger she could not believe could be true. Iain loved and trusted his brother. Iain had talked of nothing other than Roderick’s loyalty, and how much Iain depended on him. How was it possible for Roderick to feel so differently? Surely her gift was betraying her.

But her gift had never before told her wrong.

Màiri leaned back into the corner of the window seat in their chamber and pulled the plaid tartan tighter around her shoulders. Iain was still below, listening to Roderick rejoice because his brother had returned alive and well. Why did her gift give her such a severe warning about Roderick? When she could no longer listen to his lies and the declarations of a friendship she knew were false, she’d excused herself and had come upstairs. Iain bade her farewell with a kiss and the promise he would be up soon.

Màiri propped her chin on her knees and stared up at the stars twinkling in the sky. She knew when Iain came to her, it would be to discuss an heir. She’d heard enough comments throughout the night to know that is what was expected of her.

Although she understood little of what went on between a husband and a wife, she knew they must do something special if they wanted to have a babe. Perhaps she should have asked Janet. She obviously knew what had to be done.

She breathed a deep sigh and decided not to dwell on that puzzlement. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that difficult because she’d noticed a number of MacAlister women who were also carrying babes.

She suddenly considered what it would mean to have a child of her own. Màiri closed her eyes and prayed that if God blessed her with a babe, He would also protect and care for the child. Especially if the babe were a girl.

Her thoughts returned to Iain. Deep inside there was a need to have him here with her. It was difficult to forget the long days she’d cared for him after she’d first found him and not realize how comfortable she’d become around him. It was impossible to remember the kisses they’d shared and not want him to kiss her again.

Even though she knew she would always have to guard her feelings so she would never love him as deeply as her mother had loved her father in the beginning, she already realized how important he was to her. She wanted all that being his wife meant, the security, the acceptance, the love.

Yet, how could she be a wife to him, knowing that Roderick presented a threat?

She pounded a fist against the window ledge and silently cursed her powers. Why couldn’t she be like everyone else? Why couldn’t she accept Roderick’s false good-wishes with the same innocence as Iain and the rest of the MacAlisters?

The waning moon cast her in a soft glow, the muted darkness a comforting cover to surround her. She was not disturbed by the lack of light. Much of her life had been spent in the darkness. From the time she’d been small, her whole world had consisted of four shadowy rooms high in the tower where her father had locked her away with her mother.

Màiri thought of the way she’d been accepted by the MacAlisters. Such freedom was beyond belief. Now that she had experienced what could be hers, she could never go back. She wouldn’t let anyone ever lock her away again.

The sound of his heavy boots pounded against the stone floor outside her door. No matter what it took, she would be the kind of wife Iain wanted. She didn’t care what tragedies her gift foretold, she vowed she would ignore them.

The latch lifted and the door opened. Iain stopped in the doorway and smiled. Her heart skipped a beat. A strange warmth swirled low in the pit of her stomach that left her aching for something she didn’t quite understand. Something she knew only Iain could give her.

She waited for him to come nearer. She refused to lose such happiness after she’d just found it. She held her breath and silently vowed she would be everything he wanted in a wife.

He crossed the room and she held out her hand to him. A powerful jolt raced through her body when he touched her.

He entwined his fingers through hers and sat down on the seat beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to him. The feeling was magical. She belonged here, with him, with his people. A warmth unlike anything she’d ever imagined engulfed her, totally consumed her.

She remembered the first time he’d held her and kissed her. She never thought such a life was possible, but now she knew it was. Happiness and contentment were within her grasp and she did not want to let it go.

She breathed a contented sigh and when he placed his thumb and forefinger on the sides of her chin and turned her face toward him, a swirling whirlpool spun in the pit of her stomach. His eyes glistened with unreadable emotion before he lowered his head and gently kissed her.

A thousand bolts of lightning struck her at the same time. She prayed he would never stop kissing her. When he did, she moaned softly and reached for him. He touched his forehead to hers and smiled. His smile lit the room like a candle in the darkness.

“Did you enjoy your welcoming celebration tonight?”

“Aye,” she said, noticing the warmth in his eyes. “Your clan has made me feel very welcome.”

“Is it so different here than in your father’s keep?”

The breath caught in her throat. “Aye,” she answered, not wanting to think of the life she’d left behind.

He leaned back into the corner between the wall and the large arrow-slit window and pulled her against him. She sat between his legs with her back pressed against his muscled chest. The heat that surged through her body when he wrapped his arms around her middle ignited a raging fire in the pit of her stomach.

“Will you tell me now what happened between you and your father to make you want to flee to a convent?” he asked, resting his chin against the top of her head.

“It is not important,” she answered, praying he would not move his hands. Didn’t he realize how close his fingers were to her breasts and how thin her nightdress was? It wasn’t at all proper.

“Whatever drove you to make such a decision must have had some importance. You were prepared to live the rest of your life behind those walls. I would like to know what it was.”

A picture of the dying babe she’d held in her arms came back to haunt her, the hatred in her father’s eyes. With a shiver that threatened to knock the air from her body, she pulled out of his arms and sat forward on the bench. “It was nothing,” she answered, her voice sounding strange even to her own ears.

“Do na fear, lass,” he whispered in the shadows, pulling her back against him. “When the time is right, you will tell me. Until then, it can remain your secret.”

Màiri relaxed against him and let his flesh warm her body. “Have you and Roderick always been so close?” she asked, then wished she had not mentioned Iain’s brother.

“Aye. As close as two brothers can be. Although there was a time when I doubted Roderick would ever be close to anyone again. Even me.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. There was a sadness in his eyes. “Why do you say that?”

“Last year at this time Roderick was happily wed. He had a beautiful wife with raven-black hair and laughing green eyes. Her ruby lips held a smile that never faded, and her laughter rang out wherever she went. Oh, how Roderick loved her. When he lost her, something inside him changed. I did na think he would ever be the same.”

The hooded expression on his face hardened, his eyes turning as dark as a starless sky. She didn’t want to ask but she had to know. “What happened?”

“She died.”

“How?”

“I do na know how or why, but I know that the witch Yseult was involved in her death.”

His voice turned hard, the bitterness as lethal as a swing of his powerful broadsword. Her heart pounded in her breast. “But Janet said she was a healer.”

“She is a witch! I do na know what deadly potion she gave Adele or her reason for doing so, but within hours of leaving Yseult’s cottage, Adele was dead.”

Màiri did not move for a long while. “Is that why she stood off to the side today?” she said when she could find her voice. “Is she na longer welcome here?”

“She will never be welcome here. If I could, I would banish her and forbid my people to go anywhere near her, but I canna. I canna prove she killed Adele and she is the only healer in the clan. Many MacAlisters still swear by her powers. Some even call it a gift.”

The blood ran cold in her veins. “But you do na?”

He laughed, the deep sound hollow and forbidding. Frightening. “There is na such thing as a gift. Powers like hers are a curse and she is as vile and evil as if the devil himself lived within her.”

Màiri tried to move out of his grasp. The man she’d married was as superstitious as her father. As unwilling to accept what he could not understand.

“I do na want to hear anything more about the woman,” he whispered, pulling her back into his embrace.

She cuddled against him. The clean smell of leather and the outdoors still lingered on him. She knew he’d bathed before coming to her. “Neither do I,” she answered.

He kissed the top of her head, then tilted her chin until she looked up at him. “We will only talk of you and me and the life we will share.” He pressed his lips against her forehead and kissed her softly. “We will hold each other, and touch each other, and kiss each other.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then each cheek just below her eyes.

“We will love each other and make this a night neither of us will ever forget.” He slowly lowered his head and kissed her lips.

His touch was soft and gentle, filled with a passionate strength Màiri had sensed in him from the beginning. She wrapped her arms around his neck to be closer to him. She needed the safety of his touch. She needed to belong to him, to strengthen the bond connecting them so he would never want to let her go.

He deepened his kisses, drinking more deeply, demanding more than he’d ever asked of her before. She was willing to take what he offered to ensure a place in his life.

“How much do you know of what goes on between a man and a woman?” he whispered in her ear.

His mouth moved over the sensitive spot on her neck just below her ear. She opened her mouth to speak but could not. It was as if his kisses had stolen the air she needed to form the words. “I … I know …”

His lips touched hers.

She gasped for air. What did he want to know? “I know …”

All thought fled. When he lifted his mouth, she looked into his eyes. They were so dark she thought they’d turned black. There was a strangeness on his face she did not understand, an intensity that consumed her. “Is this what will give us a babe?” she asked, struggling to gather the air she needed to breathe.

He ran the back of his fingers down her cheeks. “It is the beginning.”

Màiri awoke from her idyllic sleep with a smile on her face and the sweet ache of contentment stirring deep within her. So this is what it was like between a man and a woman. No wonder her mother had warned her to never give herself so completely.

She looked at the empty side of the bed and placed her hand where he’d lain. The bedding was no longer warm from his body. He’d been gone too long now. The rays of the sun had barely risen above the stone ledge beneath the window when he’d left her to go out to train with his warriors.

Although it hadn’t been that terribly long ago, the emptiness left when he pulled away from her still remained. The bed had shifted when he rose, and before he left, he cupped her cheek in his palm. The tender roughness of his callused fingers when he touched her face warmed her and she’d fought the urge to pull him back to her.