Only For A Knight (20 page)

 

A blazing-eyed delight, every dip and curve of her undoing him—just as this new temptation undid the last threads of his compunction and propelled him forward. And dropping to his knees before it made him feel more like a prying, interfering old woman than he would have believed.

 

For a long moment he stared at the two travel satchels, both looking painfully thin and whiling so innocently beside her suspicious pouch of good Scottish sillers.

 

He carefully opened the first satchel, then the other, holding his breath as his hands plunged and searched. But when his breach of her privacy rendered naught but a few bits of worn and rough-spun garments, he almost snorted a mirthless laugh.

 

His own outraged conscience revolted against such despicably intrusive behavior.

 

Certain he’d never sink any lower, he attempted to restore some semblance of order to her meager possessions.

 

But before he could, something oddly familiar caught his eye and made his heart slam hard against his ribs.

 

Quite sure his eyes were tricking him, he shoved aside a patched kirtle and peered deeper into the first satchel’s depths at the folded plaid every MacKenzie with even a sliver of heart would recognize at once.

 

Moth-bitten, faded, and smelling of age, just looking down at it plunged Robbie back to a long ago day in his boyhood when, at his father’s wedding feast ceremony to Lady Linnet, his thin chest had swelled with pride as he’d proudly recited to her the meaning of the MacKenzie colors.

 

’Tis green for the forest and fields, and blue for the sky and sea, drawn through with white for . . . for—
there he’d faltered, stumbling, until his father had taken heart and supplied the parts he’d forgotten,
white for purity, red for blood and bold warriors . . .

 

. . . and all mean freedom, fairness, honor, and courage,
he’d finished the verse on his own, his youthful heart bursting with hero worship and love for his formidable sire.

 

His heart near burst now, too.

 

How the ancient MacKenzie plaid came to be in her possession was a mystery he’d solve later—so soon as he could breathe again.

 

For the nonce, he decided to examine the plaid, for some elusive trace of poignant nostalgia clung to the brittle-looking cloth, compelling him to lift it from the satchel.

 

Much larger than he’d originally thought, it proved to be a
breacan an fheilidh,
a man’s great belted plaid. And every bit as old as he’d originally assessed. Clearly some lonely relic of her past and his own, its hoary wool smelled of peat smoke, wind and rain, and the good rich earth.

 

And within the center of its worn and aged folds rested something lumpy.

 

Something that was none of his business.

 

At once, Robbie’s conscience rebelled again, smiting him with livid reproach. But even as his chivalry upbraided him, his hands were carefully opening the plaid, the hard thudding of his heart urging him on and speeding his fingers until their questing revealed the treasure within . . . a thick coil of glossy braid plaited of his beauty’s flame-bright hair and someone else’s.

 

Someone’s blue-black hair, shiny as a raven’s wing, and so like Robbie’s own, his stomach dropped and his mouth went ash dry.

 

Pushing to his feet, he went to the window embrasure where he lowered himself onto one of the padded stone benches, his beauty’s keepsakes nestled reverently on his lap.

 

In the gray morning light, the braid’s age became apparent. Someone had woven sprigs of heather throughout the plaited hair and cross-guarded the whole with a fine blue ribbon. But the heather had long withered to brown and near crumbled beneath his fingers.

 

And the unforgiving passage of time had faded the ribbon’s blue to the merest hint of the shade.

 

More intriguing still, closer inspection showed the sunfire strands were not quite as bright as his beauty’s.

 

The flame-bright half of the braid was not hers.

 

Lovely it was, to be sure. Even with the same coppery gleam, but a
softer
shade somehow, and indefinably . . . different.

 

His brow furrowing, Robbie touched a reluctant finger to the black strands. Something about them chilled his blood and tightened his innards. Uneasy, he blinked, tried to clear wits that, of a sudden, seemed muddled and slow.

 

The plaid and the braid held the answers he sought . . . the key to her identity.

 

Yet now that such riches rested in his hands, he could scarce think beyond the miasma in his head.

 

But then, having enough, he got to his feet and placed the braid atop the table as gently as his mood allowed. He draped the plaid over his arm with equal reverence.

 

Setting his jaw, he strove to ignore the ill ease sweeping through him, told himself he was needlessly seeing shadows where there were none. His skittish nerves and queasy gut were surely of no more sinister origin than his earlier battling with his father. Mayhap, too, from having not properly filled his belly because of that less than affable encounter.

 

He cast a glance at the table, shook his head at his foolhardiness.

 

The braid was old and clearly not clipped from his beauty’s tresses.

 

The plaid was older still.

 

Ancient.

 

Many were the ways it could have happened into her hands. No matter how deep in the heather she’d made her home.

 

For, like it or no, hard cold brutality went along with the wonder and magic of Highland life. Just as so much more colored a seannachie’s fireside tales than the inimitable beauty of soft mist and purple moors.

 

Since time immemorial, as much blood as tradition had soaked into the soil of these hills, and though peaceable enough now, more than a few MacKenzies had enjoyed their day of looting and rampaging up and down the glens.

 

Such was e’er the way of the Gael, and his beauty’s moth-eaten MacKenzie plaid was surely a remnant of marauding, cattle-thieving times—mayhap snatched by her father or grandsire, a trophy of a skirmish won.

 

Certain that would be the way of it, Robbie exited the bedchamber and hastened back down the winding turnpike stairs, his thoughts on naught but finding his flame-haired beauty and probing her secrets.

 

And not just the sort that had to do with locks of ribbon-and-heather-twined hair and tatty old lengths of plaid.

 

 

Over the hills and far away, across the cold swells of the northern seas, Kenneth MacKenzie sat counting his coin in the common room of The Golden Puffin, a dimly-lit tavern in the Orcadian seaport of Stromness.

 

A stiff wind, cold and rife with the smell of the sea, blew in through the window shuttering, guttering candles and riffling the edges of the blue-and-green plaid casually slung over Kenneth’s wide-set shoulders.

 

The MacKenzie plaid . . . his only reminder of the man who’d sired him and, generously some would say, allowed his mother to give him the name—even though the reputed womanizer saw no need to diminish her shame by wedding her.

 

At the thought, the hard line of Kenneth’s mouth grew even more uncompromising and a nervous twitch began just beneath his left eye. From long habit, he reached up and smoothed the plaid’s woolen folds, silently vowing to banish the cares from his mother’s brow.

 

And if undoing her burdens cost him his last breath, it was an accomplishment he was certain he’d soon achieve.

 

So soon as he could hie himself off this cold isle of wind and stone at the veriest end of the world.

 

Already he’d spent so many long weeks trapped in Stromness, the Orcades’s most important port, he half believed he’d disgrace himself by swooning the first time he encountered anyone who greeted him with the gently lilting burr of the West Highlands.

 

Not that his time in the Orcades had been ill spent.

 

And ’twas well he knew there were worse places.

 

Years at sea, chasing the dreams of wealthier men, had shown him that truth. And, too often as well, he’d risked his life being lowered on ropes down perilous sea cliffs alive with nesting sea fowl—for the greed of other men, braving icy white spray thrown high on the razor-sharp rocks of the stacs to gather
bird oil.

 

A much-prized commodity for the Hansa traders and merchants of the Baltic seaboard.

 

Such traders dealt with wealthy churchmen, men who demanded an endless supply of the oil for their church lamps and anointing practices. They also coveted the precious oil because of its purported medicinal properties.

 

He shuddered, not quite able to close his mind to the memory of the birds’ angry screeching. Shrill, ear-piercing cries nigh loud enough to drown the roar of the crashing swells.

 

His gut clenching, Kenneth tightened his fingers on his ale cup. Indeed, he had seen the best and worst of men . . . and of the world.

 

But his own coffers were now well filled—thanks to the hunger and cupidity of those other men, good and bad.

 

Now running a finger around the edge of the cup, he forced himself to recall the beauty of the delicate sea thrift blossoms, sweet rose-colored glimpses of sanity that e’er bloomed in the niches and crevices of the dark, wet-gleaming cliffs.

 

Then, drawing a deep breath of the tavern’s smoky-moist fug, he lifted the ale cup to his lips, took a long swallow, and counted his blessings as well as his coin.

 

Aye, the Orcades had treated him fine.

 

Stromness, in particular.

 

A veritable labyrinth of gray stone houses, taverns, and warehouses pressing against the steep hillside overlooking Hamnavoe Bay, the bustling harbor town made its fame by being the first port of call for any sailing vessel leaving mainland Scotland and bound for the north.

 

Or, as he so greatly wished it, the
last
port of call before sailing into the waters of home.

 

And Kenneth MacKenzie wanted naught under the heavens more than to return home.

 

It was his most fervent wish.

 

His heart’s only desire.

 

To go back to Kintail, the wildest, most stunning country in all Scotland. In especial, the place that gripped him most, the quiet peace of Glenelg where he’d been born.

 

Just the name let soul-searing images flood Kenneth’s mind . . . sweet glimpses of a hard but well-loved life in the narrow, sheltered glen where even the emptiest hour held some redeeming beauty to cheer the heart and where little more than deer, boar, and wildfowl kept a man company.

 

And, above all, where he hoped, with the riches spread across the tavern table, he’d soon be able to carve out a modest holding. A better, more substantial home for himself and those who depended on him.

 

His heart swelling at the notion, he scooped up a handful of siller from the pile on the table, let the coins spill like sand through his fingers—and thought not of the monetary value but of how much he’d relish living quiet by day and by night, counting his wealth not in coin and plundered seabird nests, but in the richness of the blue darkness sliding down the braes each e’en.

 

A bliss that seemed distant as the stars in this loud, full-to-the-lintels tavern, clogged with choking, eye-stinging cook smoke, ale fumes, and the sweetly-sharp tang of too many unwashed ladies of dubious virtue.

 

Bold-eyed bawds who, despite the repeated offering of their full-breasted, sway-hipped wares, left him colder than Saint Columba’s grave.

 

Determined to repel the gap-toothed blond one sashaying his way again, he was spared the trouble when the door burst open and a great, burly bear of a man strode in, a blast of chill, rain-laden wind with him.

 

“Ho! There you are, MacKenzie! Good fortune is yours—if you are still wont to call it so!” the man boomed, spotting Kenneth at once.

 

He came forward, swiping raindrops from his bristling blond beard, a self-pleased grin splitting his broad, Nordic face.
Orkney Will,
he went by, claiming the name as good as any, and boasting that not only did he have the blood of Norse kings running in his veins, he could also procure the starlight from the heavens.

 

If the price were to his liking.

 

Kenneth cared naught for the stars or even less for the moon—he only wanted passage to Glenelg Bay and home.

 

And he’d gladly give the man the entirety of his savings to get there—did he not need the coin to help his mother and to fund the rebuilding of his own life in their peaceful glen.

 

His dreams close in his heart, he reached for a small pouch of siller, an almost gnawing hunger spreading through him as the burly giant took a seat on the opposite trestle.

 

Kenneth met the man’s startling blue gaze. “Good fortune, aye—for you, my friend, if you’ve located a south-bound galley willing to take on an extra hand,” he said, nodding thanks when, unasked, the ale-wife plunked down a fresh ewer.

 

“My own endeavors have availed naught,” he admitted, his fingers kneading the soft leather of the well-filled money purse.

 

“I told you it would not be a roll in the spring grass—finding favors without you being an Orkneyman. But let us be at it.” Orkney Will settled his bulk on the trestle, poured himself a brimming cup of ale. “
The Nordic Maid
sets sail at first light, bound south, clear down to the Isle of Mann, ’twas claimed,” he added, and quaffed his ale.

 

Kenneth’s chest tightened on the words, a thousand images, long-seared on his heart, breaking free to thicken his tongue and scald the backs of his eyes. “They ken I must be . . . need to . . .”

 

Saints!

 

He could not speak past the burning lump in his throat. Frowning, he snatched up his ale cup, draining its contents—and hoping the blond-bearded Orcadian didn’t notice that his fool hand trembled.

 

Merciful saints, in the name of God’s holy breakfast, it wasn’t just hands—his entire body shook.