Only For A Knight (27 page)

scratchings,
only to frown all the deeper when her gaze lit upon the glistening bronze hairs of his chest. Saints, but he distracted her! She swallowed, did her best to tamp down another persistent cough.

 

Her control slipping fast, she glanced around the bleak little bedchamber, her vexation rising.

 

“I will not go back to Uisdean—my place is here,” she said, tight-voiced. “My plans and all that we have arranged, everything that has transpired, was done with Sir Robert’s ruin in mind—as I thought you knew?”

 

“Och, I knew,” Big Red acceded, now leisurely rubbing his ballocks, “and I suppose ’tis well enough I ken why you despise him, but I thought certain circumstances of late might have colored your . . . wishes?”

 

“Naught has changed—not yet for surety,” she said, her blood now stirring with an entirely different kind of heat. “But I am disturbed by this . . . this slattern of a byre-maid Sir Robert brought home with him.”

 

“The maid Juliana?”

 

“Whate’er her name is—I scarce believe she is a maid!” Euphemia’s voice rose high and indignant. “She has a bold eye and is bonnie in a common, blowsy fashion. I have watched her from the secret passages and—”

 

“Hah!” Big Red hooted, lifting his heavy ballocks with one hand to scratch vigorously beneath them with the other, “just as old Out-with-the-Sword’s daughter can outdevil the devil, so, too, can she do as she would with a mere rival—”

 

“She is too far beneath me to merit more than passing concern.” Euphemia glared at him, wished he’d stop rubbing round at his male parts . . . even riled and vexatious, watching him touch himself roused her too much for her to think clearly.

 

“If you believe her too lowborn to earn your consideration, then why does she bother you?” Big Red countered, taking his still-flaccid shaft in his hand and letting his thumb glide back and forth over its limp thickness with a studied slowness surely designed to drive her from her wits. “Let him keep her as his lust-mate if she pleases him . . . as you have me to see to your own needs and desires.”

 

Euphemia flushed.

 

’Twas well she knew neither Sir Robert nor any other man could e’er come close to slaking her
unusual
pleasures so roundly as did Big Red MacAlister . . . one-time leader of the band of broken clansmen and other assorted miscreants who dwelled deep within the thickly-wooded reaches of the Isle of Pabay, not far from her own Castle Uisdean.

 

Her
man now, Big Red satisfied her darkest cravings.

 

Blessed with notable patience and stamina, he’d remain poised in place for hours if it pleased her, untiring, and keeping his tarse wholly relaxed for her so that if she positioned herself beneath him, the long, thick shaft and his good-sized ballocks simply dangled loosely above her face as so excited her.

 

And he ne’er once complained when she’d repeatedly flick a finger at the swinging weight of his musky-scented male parts, her light touches setting the free-hanging shaft into motion so that it would delight her by swaying to and fro . . . again and again and again.

 

Nor did he balk at her blacker requirements, her less pleasurable requests . . . tending without questions or a raised eyebrow to any deed she asked of him.

 

Until recent days.

 

Of late, he’d been countering her plans . . . constantly voicing concerns and objections and, most annoying of all, pressing her to break her betrothal and become
his bride.

 

Another shift in her life she attributed, if indirectly, to the arrival of the voluptuous, flame-haired whore who had every man between eight summers and eighty years either addlepated or running full-stretch at the merest glimpse of her.

 

“Dinna fret so o’er the lass—I will keep you too occupied to think on her.” Big Red’s deep voice penetrated the red haze of her hot-whirling ire. “What harm can she—”

 

“The wench cannot harm me at all—and I care naught who sniffs betwixt her fat thighs or occupies their time making moon eyes at her,” Euphemia snipped, well aware her eyes flashed meanness and jealousy yet unable to quell her perturbation. “’Tis only how her very presence can lessen the jolt of my plan that vexes me.”

 

Her heart racing, she snatched up the little pot of skin-smoothing cream and thrust her fingers into its depths, retrieving a generous scoop of the icy-cold ointment.

 

It was time to push Big Red MacAlister beyond his endurance.

 

Her purpose set, she flopped down onto the stool, spread her legs, and slapped the cream onto the quivering flesh of her womanhood.

 

“’Tis overdue for Sir Robert to learn that I am not some soppy milk-and-water maid to be trifled with. We must send him crawling on his belly through the darkling hills—and, anon . . . before his lusty-looking whore becomes such a comfit that he cares about naught else,” she said, hovering her fingers just close enough to the gleaming dollop of cream to make perspiration bead Big Red’s brow.

 

He moistened his lips, his breath coming fast and hard as he nodded in mute agreement, his light blue eyes nigh glazed with letch.

 

Her own breath catching, Euphemia wriggled her fingers—just enough to make Big Red groan and squirm.

 

“The MacLeods’ Girt of Strength must be lowered again,” she said, pleased when her voice came smooth and firm, unmarred by her usual wheeze.

 

“The Girt . . . again?” Big Red blinked, the words a dry whisper.

 

Euphemia nodded.

 

“If we cannot persuade Clan MacKenzie’s allies to change their allegiances through the coin we’ve already spent, then another MacKenzie friend must lose a vessel. And more than one!” she declared, her temper heating her blood.

 

“Let a full score of outraged allies come in complaint to this castle gate, demanding recompense and protection lest they disavow their loyalties,” she ranted on, drifting her fingers just a teensy bit closer to the cream. “I want Sir Robert and his father vexed . . . and we need the coin we can glean through another wrecking to fund the expedition to Fladda Chuan.”

 

To pillage that sacred isle’s treasures and use them to hammer the final, laming blow to Sir Robert MacKenzie.

 

Sir Robert, his black-hearted sire, and her own drink-taken fool of a father . . . the three men she hated most in the world.

 

Men she was determined to teach the meaning of vengeance.

 

As she would Big Red MacAlister as well if he did not stop looking as if he were about to naysay her.

 

Or, just as irritating, wasn’t paying attention to her words at all.

 

His open features working, his hand pumping steadily on his finally-hardened shaft, he kept his gaze centered on the dollop of cream—and said nothing.

 

“Did you not hear me, MacAlister?” Euphemia swirled the tip of one finger in the dollop of cream, careful to touch only the cream and not herself. “I have not come on this long road not to prove that I am a foe who strikes first and talks thereafter! The chain must be lowered again—and at the soonest.”

 

“Och, I heard you right enough,” the Highlander responded at last, stroking rhythmically now. Faster, and harder. “But I vow my ears must have wax in ’em—mayhap I’ll hear better if you start rubbing in that cream?”

 

On his words, a surge of sheer female elation shot through Euphemia, the raggedness of his lust-hazed breath and the heat in his gaze exciting her and increasing her own arousal, but then his underlying belligerence seeped through her own tingling needs, and she frowned, the heat flowing out of her until she felt cold as a slimy, fresh-caught herring.

 

Gritting her teeth, she lowered her hand and used a deliberate slow circling of her fingers to begin spreading and rubbing the cream into her throbbing flesh.

 

But, unlike most times, her base ministrations left her unfulfilled—throbbing, aye, but only with the burning desire for revenge.

 

“You, too, will benefit from my felicity if a successful journey can be made to Fladda Chuan,” she said, applying the cream with the greatest of care, but speaking with the kind of chilly menace that served her best when all else failed.

 

Narrowing her eyes, she let her high blood show in a calculated stare of gentle-born hauteur. “God curse the lot of any who refuse you aid in setting sail on this venture.”

 

To her annoyance, Big Red did not appear impressed.

 

Far from it, he even ceased stroking his tarse and, reaching for the wine flagon on the bedside table, poured himself a generous measure, and drank, sipping leisurely.

 

“I ought tell you,” he finally said, setting down the emptied wine goblet, “the reach of my influence amongst the men of Castle Uisdean and even my good friends on the Isle of Pabay is fading . . . lest you procure more coin to sweeten their willingness to dirty their hands for you.”

 

“More coin?”
Euphemia’s fingers stilled, heat suffusing her face. “Have you run mad, MacAlister?”

 

The last vestiges of her letch spinning away, she sprang to her feet and stalked across the bare-wood floor to her largest strongbox, the one that had brimmed with treasures and ample monies upon her arrival at Eilean Creag.

 

Funds drained away to secure assistance and silence in keeping her dim-witted sire so deep in his cups and . . . otherwise occupied that he scarce noted the rising and setting of the sun, much less the lowering of the MacLeods’ chain, the exacting of tolls, or the wrecking of those galleys whose shipmasters refused to pay them.

 

“My coffers are nigh empty—all of them!” she railed, shaking the iron-bound chest with a surprising burst of strength, gall rising in her at the pathetic rattle of the few coins and bits of bejeweled gewgaws that remained within. “Why do you think we need to sail to Fladda Chuan?”

 

She let go of the strongbox, thrust balled fists against her slim hips. “That fabled isle’s riches will enable us to lure away even the staunchest MacKenzie sympathizers. We must—”

 

“We?”
Big Red sat up, stretching his well-muscled arms high above his shaggy-maned head before lowering them to briskly rub his broad, hair-roughened chest.

 

“I have no need to journey to Fladda Chuan,” he said, as if dismissing the notion, “even if the isle is the purported Tir-nan-Og of Celtic fame. ’Tis well content I’d be to spend the rest of my days with you on a small holding far from here where no one kens who we are or whence we came.”

 

Euphemia made a sharp, dismissive gesture with her hand. “And I say that if the famed Weeping Stone can be recovered from Saint Columba’s ruined chapel on Fladda Chuan, untold riches will be ours,” she contended, ignoring his own fool suggestion. “The stone can perform wonders. All know it. We must get there . . .”

 

Even if the saint’s sacred Weeping Stone could not be found, the fabled isle surely held enough other riches to wrap a stranglehold round Kintail and crush Sir Robert and his ilk for all time and eternity.

 

Stifling a cough, she drew herself as high as her diminutive stature would allow and, heedless of her nakedness, crossed the small room to the hearth where she prodded the fire with an iron poker until sparks flew and new flames curled up around the peats.

 

Hot words and losing her temper would avail nothing with Big Red MacAlister.

 

He required other forms of persuasion.

 

“You err if you believe I desire to leave here,” she said, setting aside the poker, furious to hear the wheeze back in her voice. “I thought you understood my sole wish is to
stay
here . . . not ever to return to Castle Uisdean?”

 

“Aye, well.” Big Red shot a glance toward the door, his open face a bit wary as if he’d heard something on the draughty stair landing beyond. “I thought you only sought Robbie MacKenzie’s ruination . . . not chatelainely duties of his devil-damned house?”

 

“Heaven grant that I achieve both, for I desire nothing less,” Euphemia said, her resolve stiffening on each word. “Only so will fullest revenge be mine.”

 

She paused to look up at the ceiling, her brow knitting at a sudden sound that could only be rats scooting about inside the tower’s wretchedly damp walling.

 

“Heed my words, MacAlister, I live to be the bane of Sir Robert’s existence—if he were wise and sagacious, he would have sensed my wrath and ne’er returned.”

 

Then, with a sharp twisting at the heart that rose up and seized her from the deepest, darkest pit of her past, she moved to the window so the wall sconce flickering there might better illuminate her nakedness and so that the evening’s chill, though bad for her lungs, might tighten and perk her tiny dark-colored nipples.

 

And, in especial, so that the night breeze could speed away the annoying remnants of the innocent lass she’d once been and whose life had been so thoroughly shattered when, against all her protestations, she’d been given in betrothal to the MacKenzie heir.

 

“You revile him that much?” Big Red’s deep voice came from years and years away.

 

“More than there are sands on the shore,” Euphemia said through tightly clenched teeth as she looked out through the opened shutters, some long-withered part of her wrenching at the softness of the evening light on land and sea, the beauty of the spent day rising gently to the quiet sky.

 

Kintail
was
beautiful.

 

But its splendor had naught to do with her refusal to leave. Nor her steadfast determination to become Sir Robert’s bride.

 

She wanted to ruin him, aye.

 

To humiliate and shame him so deeply that he’d ne’er be able to stride o’er the heather again without knowing any and all who saw him pass were twittering behind their hands, laughing, and calling him for a fool.

 

Aye, such were her reasons.

 

But above all, she wanted to wrest from him that which he held most dear, his land, and then use that loss to teach him how it feels to have one’s hopes and dreams ripped from one’s heart and be plunged into darkness unending, without any hope of resurrection.