Parris Afton Bonds (24 page)

Ranald tossed onto the table the message brought by the merlin. “From me contact at Islay." He glanced from face to face. Which of the men assembled for the council was his betrayer?

Ian picked up the folded scrap of paper and scanned it. "So, Murdock knows we are holed up here at Lochaber. Well, ye expected him to learn sooner or later."

"Hell be at the pass come spring thaw," one- eyed Robert said.

"Does
Murdock know you have his bride, Ranald?" Jamie asked.

Ranald studied his cousin
’s bland expression. Could this man whom he had known all his life, who had fished and fought and fared with him, betray him?

No, Ranald decided, Jamie might be in love with E
nya, but he would not betray the Camerons. It was not in the man.

Colin, who had picked up the message, fingered his wild beard. "God help our laird."

"What—what does it sa-say?” stuttered Patric.

Colin passed him the message. He peered at it. A blush suff
used his peach-fuzzed face.

Ranald enlightened the other men at the table who had not seen the message. "It seems that Murdock threatens to not only take from me his wife but to also take me nutmeg, something he failed to do the last time his men had me be
neath the knife.”

At the knock on the door everyone at the table tensed, then relaxed when Annie entered with a tray bearing a cheap tin teapot and cups.

If Ranald hadn’t been staring at the girl's face, wondering what was different about it, he would have missed the look that passed between her and Jamie.

Dia
’s Muire
! It wasn’t Enya, but Annie, whom Jamie was courting!

Whatever affinity and trust that might have developed between himself and Enya had been obliterated by that awful morning in the kitchen wh
en he found her talking with Jamie.

Regardless of the estrangement between them, it had not affected the volatile passion that took place between them in his bed or, for that matter, in the stables, a corn crib, or the forest.

Ranald felt like a fool. But how to remedy his error?

After the council meeting was over he asked Jamie to wait. His cousin eyed him warily. When Jamie and he were alone in the doorway he said, "I
’ve been
glaikit
. I ask your forgiveness, Jamie.”

Jamie eyed him dourly. "Stupid isn
’t half of it. How about blind, as well?"

Ranald grinned. "Did Annie do something to her hair?”
He fluttered his hand about his own head. "Like comb it or something?"

Jamie slapped him on his back. "Enya
’s work, my cousin. It would appear she has been working on you, as well."

That was exactly what he feared. Mayhap what he feared most.

Memories danced to a Scottish ballad as Ranald played the pipes. But the fiery-haired young woman who tapped her foot to his music
was not Ruthven. Enya had yet to betray him. At some point both he and Enya had to start believing in each other. If there was no trust between two people, there was nothing.

He finished the tune, one of magic rowan trees and monster sea hags, and put down
the pipes.

“
Port na bpucai
," Ian said, clapping his contorted hands. "Fairy music. By the best of the pipers. Me headache is all but gone.”

Ranald still had his own headache to vanquish: his pride.

Now was as good a time as ever to do it. He signaled Patric to take up the fiddle. The young man’s bow played a haunting strain that was like the soft sighing of night wind.

Feeling like a lumbering draft horse, Ranald crossed the great hall. Enya sat on a bench with Elspeth. Both women eyed him balefully. Pluck
ing up his courage, he ensconced himself on the bench beside Enya. Hands clasped between his spread knees, he said, "Legend says the tune is the funeral song of fairy spirits gone to bury one of their own."

She said nothing.

Mentally sweating, he tried again. "Ye see, fairies are not immortal, but weep and mourn and die as we humans do.”

Without taking her gaze off Patric, Enya said, "I believe and trust in what I can see."

Her expression was so unyielding, he doubted his apology would be accepted. It was just as well he didn’t apologize. He should never have sought her out in the first place. Not with all eyes upon them.

He started to rise and thought better of it. He wouldn't run like some befuddled boy. "Teach me to dance, mistress,”
he blurted.

Real dism
ay showed in the expression she turned on him. "You’ve never learned to dance?”

He shook his head. He fastened his gaze on his clasped hands. "Nae. Me feet are like boats.”

The ends of her mouth curved upward. A delightful mouth. "My own feet are nae wee things, but 'tis not a difficult thing to learn, this dancing.”

"Weel, will ye? Teach me?”

She rose and held out her hands. "Come along, my laird.” A sly smile dimpled one cheek. "You’ve put yourself in good hands.”

With everyone in the great hall watching
, he sincerely hoped so.

In the middle of the room, cleared of tables and benches, she positioned his arm around her waist, his hand at the center of her back. "Hold me firmly.”

"I’m beginning to like this already.”

“
Pay attention!" she rapped.

He tried. H
e felt like a clumsy oaf. He glanced up from his disobedient feet to see that Annie had selected Jamie as a partner. His cousin was dancing with the grace of a born courtier. And Cyril the Salter had summoned his courage to select Enya’s maidservant, the Lowland girl Mary Laurie.

So Highlander and Lowlander could mingle!

Soon his own feet seemed to gain a musical inclination. His body followed next. A slow smile eased his strained expression.

"Before you know it," she said, “
you will be performing the Highland fling with the grace of a gamboling deer."

He drew her closer. “
Me thinks that dancing was difficult because I had wee women for partners. All the while, what 1 was needing was a woman to match me size. An Amazon of a woman.”

She eyed him quizzically.
"You are more educated than you would allow."

"Ye are more of a woman than I had allowed.”

At once he could see that his intended gallantry had hurt her feelings, but it was too late to make reparation. The tune had ended, and she left him standing alone in the cleared floor.

By God, had she gone and done it? Had she made him fall in love with her?

Nae. She was a mere Lowlander. She had not the power of the Auld Folk.

Did she?

The man was lazy. Unreliable. Without ambition.
Undependable.

Mhorag lifted her skirts and picked her way across the bailey
’s muddy yard. At least the snow had given way to drizzle. Spring couldn’t be too far away, not with March only a fortnight off. Another two months and the sun would have melted away the snow.

Another two months and Ranald would be moving the reivers down from the winter camp of Lochaber. The idyllic months of peace would be past.

The peace in the castle bailey was presently disrupted by a steady thudding. So, the oaf was just now getting around to taking the cabinet hinge to be repaired. The double doors to the ironforger’s shop were open. Heated air beckoned her enter. The smell of bare earth and rusty iron tickled her nostrils.

Battle axes and claymores and swords and steel tipped
arrows, all awaiting repair, lay in random piles, as well as domestic items like waffle irons and tea caddies and bed warmers. A pitchfork with a broken tine waited its turn for repair.

The heavyset ironmonger was not in sight. Instead, at the anvil Duncan
, naked to the waist, wielded a hammer. A leather apron was tied over his faded breeches. The reflection of the forge’s blaze danced across his torso. The flames’ red light mingled with the red lash stripes that snaked around his rib cage.

Bemused, she sto
od in the doorway’s shadows as he repaired the hinge. A swath of sweat-dampened, butter-yellow hair fell across his forehead. Sweat sheened his skin and ran down the channels where his tendons and ligaments and muscles came together, then separated with each lithe movement of his chest and arms. Until he had need to strain, to apply power and pressure, his slender build cunningly concealed its sinewy muscle.

The blast of heat sapped her energy. She pushed back her woolen jacket
’s lapels. Still, the heat entered her body. Ran through her veins like molten lead. Her heart seemed to pound in tempo with the thud of the hammer against the red-hot metal hinge. Inside, deep inside her belly, another throbbing began.

He lifted his forearm to swipe it across his swea
ty forehead and stopped midway. His warm brown eyes locked with hers. Embarrassment flooded her. Surely he could not help but notice her awestruck countenance. He laid aside the hammer and hinge and wiped his soot-smudged hands on the leather apron. During this time, his gaze never wavered from hers.

When, at last, he ambled toward her, she was able to collect her scattered wits. Too many more dangerous male adversaries she had faced to let this country bumpkin beguile her. "Ye tarry overly long. When I giv
e an order I want it carried out at once.”

“
The ironmonger has taken ill. I—”

"I dinna want excuses."

Deliberately, he let his gaze move insolently from her frosty-blue eyes down past her sullenly set lips to her man’s shirt. The sweat-dampened linen clung to one pouting nipple peaking around the fold of her jacket. "What do ye want, Mhorag? What do ye really want?”

Her hand crept up to the shirt
’s topmost button. Her tongue stole out to lick her heat-dry lips. “Nothing.” Realizing the word had come out a barely audible whisper, she said it again, this time louder. "Nothing. Nothing from a man."

That easy smile displayed his crooked teeth. "Now while I was working, I was thinking all the while how I would like to fashion a girdle of mailed gold for ye. It wo
uld be of this thickness.” He took her hand from where it lay between her breasts and measured off the first joint of her small finger.

"Half an inch?”
she murmured.

"Aye. And this long." He slipped his hands beneath her jacket and spanned her tiny waist w
ith his long, slender fingers.

She didn
’t move. Her breath had stalled in her throat. Perspiration trickled between her breasts. Soaked her inner thighs. Her lips parted. Her breasts heaved. Had the forge’s blaze consumed all the shop’s air?

“
I would set stones in the girdle,” he went on. "Stones the color of your eyes. Aquamarine.” He inclined his head closer. Too close. "No, turquoise is nearer the color.”

Her lids fluttered shut. His lips kissed one lid, then the other. The kisses had been s
ofter than a down feather. Light. Lingering. Was that her sigh?

His hands, encompassing her waist, drew her slowly against him so that they were aligned from knee to chest. “
Me thoughts turned to how I would like the honor of buckling the girdle around your waist. The girdle only. Set off by your fair skin."

“
Aye,” she gasped. Weak with this inexplicable wanting, her hands clung to his shoulders for support.

"Aye what, Mhorag?”

"Take me. Oh, God, do it now before the fear—” Her hands tore at her shirt, popping loose one button, before his hands captured hers.

"No. Not that way. I must love ye so the fear canna ever come again to torment ye.”

Unaccountably, tears flooded her eyes. "Oh, Duncan, ’tis such a dark, flame-breathing, air-sucking dragon, this fear of mine."

His fingers gentled her trembling lips. "Sssh. Dinna speak like that. Tis not your fear. Ye dinna own it. It dinna own you.”

Her shallow, rapid breathing gradually slowed. She lowered her eyes. “I feel foolish.”

“
I'm the dunce. Duncan the dunce. Seeking above his station, I am. Falling in love with the bonniest of lasses."

She glanced up at him to see if he were making fun of her. "Bonny? Me?”

His brow knit. “Ye dinna ken?”

She shook her head.

"Aye, that and more, me love." His fingers drew close the gaping shirt. “Why, Mhorag, ye are the sweetest-tempered—”

“
Ohh! Ye swine!” She pushed him from her and began cursing all the Gaelic oaths she had ever heard.

"Yer hinge,”
he said, grinning and backing away. “Tis ready for yer cabinet door."

“
Come back here!” she sputtered. “Did ye hear me, Duncan?"

He grabbed up the hinge and his shirt and started for the doorway.

Furious beyond words, she snatched up the pitchfork and hurled it at his departing back. She missed. The pitchfork struck the wooden door, stuck, vibrated, then thudded on the ground. "Ye—ye—oh, ye!"