Love Above All (7 page)

“Braedon reports the skies have cleared,”
Quentin said as he reached past her to open the bedchamber door for
her. “We will take advantage of the fair weather by leaving just
before dawn. We’ll ride hard tomorrow and the day after, for we are
overdue at Wortham Castle and I hope to make up some of the time we
lost while in Scotland.”

“I am sorry I delayed you,” Fionna said a bit
tartly. “If you would prefer to leave me here at Carlisle—”

“No, I would not,” he interrupted her,
speaking with a sharpness to equal hers. “I’ll not leave you
behind. I was only warning you about the long days ahead.”

“Did I slow you today?” she demanded. “Did I
ask for special care?”

“You’d ask no quarter if you were dying,” he
responded, and lifted a hand as if to stroke her cheek.

Fionna moved backward a step and found
herself pressed against the door frame. Smokey light from a torch
set into a wall sconce a short distance away illuminated the stone
walls of the narrow corridor. Arrow slits at precisely spaced
intervals admitted cold draughts that made the torch flames waver
and dance, sending alternating light and shadow across the lifeless
stone and the two human figures, the man who pressed ever nearer,
and the woman who was trying to retreat from him. The footsteps of
a sentry echoed from around a nearby corner and the murmur of
hushed, late-evening voices rose from the lower levels of the
hall-keep. They were surrounded by the busy life of the castle, yet
Fionna and Quentin stood isolated within the shelter of the
doorway.

In the uncertain light Fionna could not read
Quentin’s expression. She could see the look in his eyes, though,
and she thought she recognized the emotion revealed there. Tense
and wary, he regarded her as a hunter watches its prey, waiting for
the right moment to pounce. Fionna longed to flee from him, but
there was no place to go, no safety apart from Quentin. No safety
with him, either. She was sure he could hear the terrified beating
of her heart. She shook her head, wishing she could think clearly,
wishing his mere presence did not affect her so severely.

Quentin’s hand rose, and from the intensity
of his grey gaze Fionna wondered if he intended to tear off the
ribbon at the end of her long braid and unweave the hair. But he
did not step any nearer, nor did he touch her. The tips of his
fingers merely skimmed over her hair, then moved slowly downward in
a caress that never actually made contact with her temple, cheek,
or throat.

Fionna recalled the feel of his skin against
hers and the memory brought heat to her face. Somewhere deep inside
her, a painful knot began to unravel. With an unexpected urgency
that terrified her, she wanted Quentin to touch her, wanted the
hard clasp of his hands on her shoulders. She ached to know his
calloused palms cupping her cheeks.

They stood far enough apart that a slender
child could have wedged his way between them, and Quentin’s fingers
did not touch her, yet he was caressing her, teaching her to accept
his gentle form of possession.

She did not know how to react to what he was
doing, so she merely stood with her back hard against the stone of
the door frame, holding her breath and staring at him, her cheeks
burning, while Quentin consumed her with his untouching
caresses.

Then, at last, he did touch her. He slid his
fingers around her trembling hand and drew it toward his mouth. His
lips lingered on the narrow, still-red line at her wrist, where her
brother’s leather thong had bitten into her soft flesh. When
Quentin’s tongue flicked across the mark, Fionna almost screamed
aloud. Her blood ran suddenly hot through her veins, and she
wondered if she would faint from the sheer sensual pleasure of his
moist, warm flesh on hers.

Quentin turned her hand over, pried open the
clenched fingers of her fist, and placed his mouth in the center of
her palm.

Fionna’s knees buckled. If not for the solid
stone at her back she would have slipped to the floor, to lie there
in a boneless puddle of longing.

“Good night, my lady,” Quentin said, smiling
as if he understood her confusion. “Sleep well. I will expect to
see you in the hall before dawn.”

He pushed the door open wider, leaving Fionna
no option but to enter the room. He pulled the door shut behind her
and Fionna leaned against it, still quivering with a need she did
not fully understand.

What had Quentin just done to her? Why had
she found such heart-pounding, breathtaking pleasure in it?

She knew well enough what men usually did to
women. In the stable at Dungalash she had once come upon a groom
and a maidservant tumbling in the hay, both of them naked and
nothing left to the imagination of any onlooker. She was painfully
aware of how her sister-in-law feared the nights when Murdoch left
off drinking ale with his men and went to his wife’s bedchamber,
instead. Fionna had often noted the poor woman’s swollen lips and
the tear streaks on her unwashed cheeks the next morning. From far
back in her childhood she recalled her mother’s patient acceptance
of her husband’s unthinking brutality.

But Quentin hadn’t been brutal. He had been
gentle, his not-quite-caresses evoking a yearning in Fionna that
she could not comprehend. Nothing in her youthful experience
explained why a man would treat a woman thus.

To her shame, she wanted more of Quentin’s
gentle treatment. If he had stepped into her room at that moment,
she would have thrown herself into his arms without hesitation, and
begged him to continue...thus, surely, losing her ability to
separate herself from him when the time was right. For, having once
known the pleasure of Quentin’s arms enfolding her, she was certain
she’d never be able to leave him.

Was that the purpose behind the delicate
lures he had cast at her? Was he trying to bind her to him so she’d
go willingly to England and cause him no trouble along the way? Did
he hope she would forget about her sister, and the danger Janet was
facing?

Well, he was wrong! Melting warmth turned in
an instant to chilling certainty. If Quentin imagined he could
seduce Fionna of Dungalash into obeying his will, he was greatly
mistaken. His wicked Norman scheme had gone so badly awry that she
was now determined to escape from him at her first opportunity. No
matter that she had barely enough food for a single day hidden in
the folds of her blanket. She had gone hungry a few times in the
past, during years when the harvest was scanty; she could do so
again, and gladly, for Janet’s sake.

She was going to rescue her sister, and
Quentin of Alney, with his seductive wiles and his haunting grey
eyes, was not going to prevent her.

Lady Agnes insisted Fionna must keep the
green silk gown. Early in the morning she appeared in Fionna’s
bedchamber to tell her so.

“I am embarrassed to own so large a
wardrobe,” Lady Agnes said. “My dear Walter spoils me most
dreadfully. I am certain the next time we attend the royal court he
will order the seamstresses there to make still more gowns for me.
It’s unfair for me to have so much, while you are reduced to a
single, badly worn dress. Please, I beg you, accept the gift. I’ll
have one of the maids locate an extra saddlebag that you can use to
carry the dress, and the shoes and shift.”

“You are much too kind to me,” Fionna
declared, but she did not protest any further, for Lady Agnes in
her goodness and generosity was unknowingly offering a place in
which Fionna could hide as much bread as she could manage to steal.
A saddlebag was a perfect repository for anything she did not want
Quentin to see.

“I trust we will meet again,” said Lady
Agnes. “Perhaps at court, or possibly Quentin will bring you back
to Carlisle.”

“I hope we do meet,” Fionna responded,
blinking away tears. When Lady Agnes embraced her,

she returned the gesture, feeling as if she
had found a friend. Unfortunately, she soon realized that once Lady
Agnes learned how she escaped from Quentin’s protection in order to
ride northward to Janet, there would be no chance of friendship
between the elegant Norman lady and the incorrigible daughter of a
minor Scottish laird.

Telling herself that blood ties counted for
more than new acquaintances, Fionna went down to the hall with Lady
Agnes’s arm about her waist, and tried not to feel like an
ungrateful liar.

An hour later, having broken the night’s fast
with all the eagerness of a starving person, Fionna was back in her
bedchamber. After making sure the door was securely latched, she
pulled out of the pouches in her old wool gown the chunks of fresh
bread she had stollen from the high table. Quickly, fearing she’d
be interrupted before she was finished, she stuffed the pieces into
the saddlebag the maid had left for her, cramming the bread under
the folds of green silk and adding to her store the previously
stolen bread hidden in her blanket.

Upon adding up the pieces she decided she had
accumulated enough food to last for several days if she rationed it
carefully. Once at Abercorn, she was sure the nuns would give Janet
supplies for their journey away from the abbey. Where that next
journey would lead, Fionna did not pause to consider. With shaking
hands she tied the thongs that closed the saddlebag, then snatched
up the now-empty blanket.

Quentin was waiting for her in the bailey. He
took the saddlebag from her and slung it over her horse’s back,
fastening it with deft fingers.

“It’s heavy, if it’s holding only a silk
gown,” he said, frowning.

“Lady Agnes provided the matching shoes and
the stockings and shift, too, as well as a comb, a jar of soap, and
a towel,” Fionna explained. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze,
preferring to look at his firm chin rather than into his eyes. To
divert his attention from the saddlebag she asked, “Have I rolled
the blanket tightly enough?”

“It’s fine, though you must have dropped
bread crumbs on it while you ate at midday yesterday. Odd that they
didn’t fall off when you carried the blanket to your room last
night.”

“I never noticed,” Fionna said, her gaze now
fixed on the blanket. She brushed at it nervously. Did Quentin know
she was hoarding food? If so, did he guess her plan? She provided
an explanation with a hurried rush of words. “Perhaps the crumbs
are from this morning. I broke my fast quickly and wasn’t
especially tidy. I could have carried a few bits of bread back to
my room afterward, on my gown or my hands.”

“No matter.” Quentin secured the blanket
behind the saddle. “Will you be annoyed if I offer you a hand
up?”

“Thank you.” She was too frightened to argue
with his suggestion.

She placed her foot into his cupped hands –
and then made the mistake of glancing directly into his eyes. The
spark she saw in those grey depths shattered her composure. Was he
laughing to himself about her foolish desire to ride to Abercorn?
Or was his overly bright gaze the result of the same strange
tension they had shared last night at her chamber door? Fionna
couldn’t tell, couldn’t read Quentin’s feelings or his intentions.
He was as alien to her as his fellow Normans were to the Scottish
lowlands.

“Ready?”

Quentin’s question reminded Fionna of her
position, standing next to her horse with a hand on the saddle and
Quentin holding her foot.

“Yes.” She could say no more. The single word
sounded to her like a desperate gasp. At her nod Quentin boosted
her upward until she sat astride.

From the entry of the hall-keep Lady Agnes
called farewell and Lord Walter waved a hand. Quentin reached
across the space between his horse and Fionna’s mount, to rest his
chainmail-gloved fingers over her hand.

“I think you are sorry to leave them,” he
murmured.

“I am.” Let him believe her odd behavior was
the result of sadness. She kept her head bowed, fearing if Quentin
looked at her, he’d see the treachery in her mind. He had given his
word to help her, yet she did not trust his promise. Her brothers
made promises all the time, after which they did whatever they
pleased. She had learned from them not to depend on any man’s
word.

Thus, Fionna planned to defy Quentin’s
repeatedly stated good intentions the moment the chance presented
itself, for even if he eventually kept his word she was absolutely
certain that good intentions were not going to be enough to save
Janet from marriage to Colum. In addition, Fionna was irritated
with Quentin because he was forcing a delay that she was finding
more intolerable with every passing hour. She was impatient to be
on the road north, racing to her sister’s aid rather than riding
meekly beside a Norman lord who thought his own business was more
important than an innocent young girl’s future.

They traveled fast, as Quentin had warned
they would, the horses’ pounding hooves eating up distance, taking
them farther and farther from Abercorn and Janet. And the farther
away they were, the more relaxed Quentin became.

“Pressed for time though we are,” he said to
Fionna, “still, we are riding into safety. If this good weather
holds, we’ll reach Wortham in another five or six days.”

She did not respond. She refused to speak to
him at all and a short while later he left her riding once more
between Cadwallon and Braedon, while he moved ahead to lead his
troop of men, with the man-at-arms, Giles, at his side.

As the sun dipped low they approached a
barren hill surrounded by a wood palisade. On top of the hill sat a
crude wooden building.

“What is that?” Fionna asked of
Cadwallon.

“It’s Brougham Castle,” he answered. Seeing
the disbelieving look she cast upon the structure Cadwallon added,
“It’s the original motte and bailey, not yet rebuilt in stone.”

“I would not call it a castle,” Fionna
responded distainfully.