Only For A Knight (21 page)

 

“Ho! Never you worry,” Orkney Will assured him, his shrewd gaze measuring, “they know well enough where you wish to go—though they think you a fool for turning your back on a trade so rich in compensation. ’Tis no secret in these waters that all Christendom prizes bird oil,” he added, his expression declaring beyond doubt that he, too, held Kenneth for a loon.

 

But then he slammed a meaty fist on the table and a triumphant twinkle lit his sky-blue eyes. “I have it on good word that unless the Blue Men of the Minch rise up from the depths and cause havoc with the tides, the shipmaster is willing to sail east round Skye and Raasay, setting you ashore at Kyle of Lochalsh.”

 

“You are certain?” Kenneth’s brows shot heavenward. He could scarce believe his good fortune—Kyle of Lochalsh was far closer than he’d dared to hope.

 

Looking mightily pleased with himself, the Orcadian slid an appreciative glance at a toothsome tavern wench whiling nearby, artfully displaying her debatable charms for any who cared to gawk at her.

 

And, grinning as he now was, Orkney Will appeared more than eager to gawk. “Be that my wages?” he asked suddenly, cocking a brow at the bag of coins still clutched in Kenneth’s hand. “If it is, I’d have a coin of it now—for the lady.”

 

Biting back any comment about the
lady,
Kenneth gave the man a curt nod and slid the money bag across the table. He looked on as the Orcadian giant opened the bag’s drawstring and, retrieving a coin, wagged it in the whore’s direction.

 

Catching the glint of silver, she obliged at once, deftly tugging down her bodice just enough to expose her heavily-rouged nipples. Though relaxed and quite puffy as they popped into view, they began tightening immediately, the unusually large rounds of her aureole becoming exceptionally crinkly under the appreciative stares and encouraging hoots of the tavern patrons.

 

“Tush! Do you see those sweet teats, lads?” A bald-pated man roared at the next table, dropping his hand to his crotch in obvious intent. “Gods o’ thunder, save me before my tarse snaps off!”

 

“’Tis how fine and pinky-red another
crinkly
part of her looks is what I be a-wanting to see,” another cried, hand pressed on his heart.

 

“’Tis how that part of her
tastes
is what interests me,” someone else yelled from the lower end of the common room, his cheek earning bursts of guffaws from all around.

 

Even Orkney Will shifted on the trestle. Grinning, he reached down to hitch his sword belt a bit upward, a certain not-to-be-overlooked bulge at his groin making clear the need for the adjustment.

 

Only Kenneth did not smile, did not feel any grip of the letch whatsoever.

 

Though he did
look.

 

With the same fascination one might watch two adders mating if one e’er happened to chance upon the snakes engaged in their repulsive yet hotly-sensual coupling dance.

 

“Another coin if you squeeze ’em,” a new voice rose above the ruckus, and the light-skirt complied again, taking her now thrusting nipples between thumb and middle finger and giving the hardened peaks a fast pinch—much to the pleasure of her tongue-lolling audience.

 

Not to be bested, Orkney Will thrust his fingers into the coin purse again. “I’ll up my offing to
two
sillers if you rub ’em nice and easy,” he called out, slapping the coins on the end of the table. “And a third coin if you pluck and pull on ’em a bit—but s-l-o-w-l-y, if you will!”

 

“As you wish,” the whore purred, easing down her bodice until her full breasts sprang completely free. Her sultry-eyed gaze fixed on the Orcadian, she sauntered over to their table and retrieved the coins, slipping them into a small money pouch tied to her low-sitting belt of red braid.

 

“Here,” Orkney Will said, his voice thick with rut. “Rub those teats here,” he added, perspiration beginning to glisten on his brow. “Pull on those sweet nipples for me—here, where I can see and smell you.”

 

“Nay,
there,
where I cannot,” Kenneth amended, jerking his head toward the corner where she’d performed earlier. The muscle beneath his eye leaping beyond containment, he scooped up a loose handful of coins and thrust them at her. “Do what you will to entertain my friend, but hie yourself back into the shadows if you’d please me.”

 

The whore pouted lips rouged as deep a red as her nipples, and shrugged—but she did take the coins and disappear.

 

“You are passing strange, MacKenzie,” the Orcadian said the moment the light-skirt melted into the shadows. He mopped his damp brow with his sleeve. “What harm is there in watching a buxom wench a-toying with her teats?”

 

“No harm at all so long as they keep their taint from me,” Kenneth said, regretting the harsh coldness of the words the moment they’d passed his lips.

 

Too private were his reasons for not being able to abide whores—but the bawd’s actions had somehow reached deep inside him, ripping open the place where he kept his anger over his long-dead sire’s passion for a wanton-hearted woman.

 

A licentious obsession that had set his own mother’s life on a turbulent slide to destruction.

 

“Forget my words,” he said, and rubbed a hand down over his face. “I am weary and tired, naught else.”

 

Orkney Will shook his shaggy-maned head, took a long swill of ale. “Then you have me even more befuddled than before,” he said, clearly puzzled indeed. “I’ faith, a lusty tumble with the wench or one of her like would’ve eased your taut . . .
nerves.
Mayhap even helped you sleep tonight—long as you’ve been a-waiting—”

 

“There are other succors to lend a man ease,” Kenneth said, well aware the blond giant would mishear him, would not realize he spoke of the solace found in such simple pleasures as breathing air that smelled of soft Highland mist, damp earth, and gorse.

 

Misunderstanding indeed, Orkney Will leaned forward and stared penetratingly at the three vertical scars marring Kenneth’s left cheek. Glancing round, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

 

“Ah-h-h, so you’ve not gone monk, after all? Now I see. ’Twas a fiery-blooded minx who marked your face and she is the true reason you’ve no taste for whores, eh, MacKenzie?” He cocked a bushy blond brow. “I’ll wager the urge to sink yourself into that one’s fine warmth is why you burn to have done with the bird-oil trade and get yourself back to your precious
Hielands,
am I right?”

 

Nay, you could not be more off course.

 

The words itched to spring off Kenneth’s tongue, but he kept them to himself. He’d already said more than he’d wished. So he simply gave a noncommittal grunt and plucked a nonexistent piece of lint off his plaid.

 

Truth be told, the bristly-bearded knave sitting opposite him was partly right.

 

He did have a blaze inside him to get back to the Highlands and there
was
a hot-blooded vixen awaiting him.

 

And, to be sure, he ached to see her, wanted especially to gather her in his arms, hold her close, and know her safe and well.

 

But the fiery minx he ached to see again was his sister, not his paramour.

 

And she’d had naught whatsoever to do with the three scars lining the left side of his face.

 

No lass had caused his scars—even if they did look as if they’d been slashed down his cheek by a furious woman’s raking talons.

 

He’d simply earned the scars when he’d lost his footing on a narrow rock ledge and plunged down the perpendicular sea cliffs of Hirta, St. Girta’s Isle. The most favored harvesting ground for the petrels, fulmars, and other seafowl whose innocent young provided the richest source of bird oil to be gleaned in all the Hebridean Isles.

 

A moment’s concentration lost whilst clinging to the rope lowering him down the treacherous cliff side, the whole of him surrounded by screaming, swooping seabirds, and he’d near lost his life.

 

Or should have.

 

But the jagged rock face had only sliced open his left cheek, leaving three perfectly vertical scars—an almost eerily fitting tribute to Hirta’s stac-like cliffs and a trade he’d grown to revile more vehemently each time he’d joined such a bird oil gathering expedition.

 

Aye, he wanted naught more to do with it.

 

Already his sleep was plagued with dreams of teeming clouds of angry, screeching seabirds, gliding and wheeling above and all around him, diving in to scold and attack him—as well they should challenge any danger about to plunge thieving hands into their great nests of seaweed, filled with frightened, squawking chicks.

 

Swallowing the hot bile rising in his throat, Kenneth abandoned the disturbing images to the dark place inside his mind where he preferred to keep such terrors. Then he blinked hard and reached for his ale cup, draining it.

 

An overwhelming wish to be gone from Stromness surging through him, he looked hard at the giant of an Orkneyman who still watched him as if he’d grown the devil’s own horns.

 

“You are certain the shipmaster of
The Nordic Maid
has agreed to set me onshore at Kyle of Lochalsh?” He had to know. His heart needed the surety. “And can you take me to the ship now . . . this very e’en?”

 

At last Orkney Will’s face cracked in another smile.

 

A broad one.

 

“To be sure, and I can,” he declared, hooting a laugh before he leaned across the table, coming close.

 

“See you, MacKenzie,” he said, grinning again, “here is a surprise for you. Do not tell him I told you, but the shipmaster even implied he might see you clear through to your own Glenelg Bay—if you weight his palm with an extra coin or two.”

 

“Saints of mercy! You tell me this only now?” Kenneth jumped up so quickly, he knocked over the trestle bench. “Come, man! Let us be on our way.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Aye, now,” Kenneth said, feeling very much as if the heart and soul that had been lost to him was about to be restored. “The shipmaster can have all the coin he requires—anything to get me home again.”

 

 

Home.

 

Juliana’s heart lurched on the word, molten intensity swirling into her breast, squeezing the breath from her. At once, she stopped sifting through the herbs and oddities scattered across the herbarium’s sturdy worktable, recognizing the pangs for the homesickness and frustration they were and knowing she could do naught until the moment passed.

 

She touched a finger to the little stoneware jar of healing ointment she’d been rubbing on her forehead earlier, wondered if her increasingly sharp-cut images of home could somehow be linked to the unguent.

 

Just one of the many medicinal goods sent to Eilean Creag by Doon’s famed wisewoman, Devorgilla. But for that reason, Juliana suspected a connection.

 

Indeed, suspicion tingled all through her, increasing the longer she held her fingers to the jar’s smooth-wood stopper, almost as if the container itself held . . . magic.

 

But if so, the magic hadn’t been intended for her.

 

Unable to hold back a twinge of resentment, she took her hand from the jar and reached up to rub the nape of her neck. Like her shoulders and back, her neck ached from long hours of work—desired tasks or nay.

 

The ladies Linnet and Caterine had given her a supply of the ointment, supposedly a cure-all intended for her knight’s lady betrothed.

 

That one, she’d heard, had refused the offering.

 

Juliana knew better than to dare.

 

Besides, the two ladies of the castle had insisted frequent application of the unguent would help heal her forehead. And, to be sure, the dull aching pain had all but vanished and the gash at her hairline no longer appeared even the least swollen or reddened.

 

Yet, the healing salve also seemed to shine clarity and light into the darkness clouding her mind, and at the least anticipated moments.

 

Wishing she knew why, Juliana went to the herbarium’s one small window and drew a deep breath of the chill, damp air.

 

Faith, even that simple act, breathing in the soft, moist air, brought echoes—faint and distant. Some frightening, some . . . incredibly alluring.

 

She shivered, drew her borrowed
arisaid
closer around her shoulders, welcoming the warmth of its soft woolen folds. She glanced at Mungo, took strength in watching him circle the herbarium on his stubby little legs, snuffling dust motes and fallen bits of dried herbs on the hard-packed earthen floor.

 

Leaving him to his explorations, she strove to ignore the tight knot forming in her throat. If only the shadows of her past that swirled round her each time she used the ointment were happily innocent images, she’d be far less unsettled, might even reach for the little jar with smiling anticipation.

 

But the emotion crashing through her came from more than the unguent.

 

It was the herbarium, too.

 

Not that she could say why the little stone building nestled against Eilean Creag’s seaward wall so reminded her of home—where’er that might be.

 

But it did.

 

Each time she stepped into the low-ceilinged workshop with its age-and-smoke-blackened rafters, soothing warmth slid round her, precious and intimate, and for whate’er space of time she worked there, the rarest peace was hers.

 

Until that elusive something else gilded the pungent air and her sweet haven would suddenly seem crowded with unseen whispers and rustlings.

 

Fragmented images.

 

Deep memories trying to surface—the waves and ripples of her life, all that had e’er touched her in joy and laughter, pain and grief.

 

Like knowing her mother had been someone’s leman.

 

A fate she would not endure—and for all her foolish yearning!

 

She looked down, brushed at the wee bits of dried herbs clinging to her skirts. Faith, a rush of longing for her knight seized her even now. Wantonness she’d perhaps carried in her blood since birth, ignited to flame by simply
thinking