Shana Abe (12 page)

T
he next morning they both mounted up and began the ride as if the night had been just another like the rest. Avalon sat in front of him on his stallion in stoic silence, watching the landscape change, the mountains growing taller, the trees growing thicker and more piney.

Marcus would periodically take his arm from around her waist, switching hands on the reins. He would then settle the other one around her with complete familiarity, as if it were something he had done all his life. And wasn’t it odd how it felt that way to her, as well.

They would reach Sauveur Castle within days, Avalon guessed. She wasn’t quite certain, since she had never been to the castle that belong to the laird of the clan. Hanoch had not trusted the circumstances enough to take her there. He had known the Picts were bought, Avalon realized. He must have known all along. It would explain so much.

It would explain why, for example, he had lived half his time in that forsaken little village with her and a few of his most trusted people, taking a cottage when he could have had a castle all the time. The village had always belonged to the Kincardines, but it was an out-skirt town, and the neighboring lands had belonged to their sworn ally. In case of attack, there had been a place to run.

Hanoch had never been unaware of danger. He would go back and forth to Sauveur, maintaining the facade of his regular life, but she had always remained in that village. How she had dreaded his visits.

Yet his scheme had served to hide her well, she supposed. It had taken six years before news of her survival leaked south to England, and another year for the English king to get her away from Hanoch. She had been presumed dead in the raid that killed her father and so many others. Her body was thought to have been burned in the castle, and Avalon had not known any of this until after she came back to England.

She had always assumed that everyone knew she lived in the little village in the Highlands, and that it was fine with them. Hanoch had let her believe this. But all along it had been only the Kincardines who knew she was still alive.

How furious Hanoch had been when the English demanded her return. He had not planned to release her, not until after she was wed to his son. And by then, of course, she would be bound to both of them forever.

“Your father must be gratified to have you home,” Avalon said into the silence of the forest, wondering what it would be like to see him again.

“I have no idea,” Marcus replied after a while. “He died eleven months ago.”

“Eleven months?” No one had told her. She couldn’t believe no one would have told her.

“Aye.” He let the thought settle between them before adding, “I’m told his last words were of you.”

She let out a caustic laugh. “Something to the effect of, ‘Don’t forget to abduct the heiress,’ I suppose.”

“Something like that,” he said.

It had been nothing at all like that, from what Marcus had heard. Hanoch had taken to bed and died quickly, a fever or the ague or who knew what. There had been no time for a doctor. One of Hanoch’s elderly cronies had sent Marcus a letter stating that his father had died, and bade him to come home from the holy wars, to abandon the pilgrimage he had been on and come back to lead the clan.

And when Marcus had, the same old man told him the rest over a late night of whiskey and haggis. Told him that right before he died Hanoch had spoken of Lady Avalon and called her his lass as if she had been in the room with him, had told her that she was going to be fine, that she had learned well what she needed to know. Hanoch hadn’t quite said he was sorry for all that had
happened to her, the man reported. But he thought that the old laird might have been, anyway.

“I think he was quite fond of you,” Marcus said to his future wife, and felt her stiffen against him.

“A strange fondness,” she said, scathing. “To hit and demean and mock that which you like.”

If Hanoch had not been sorry, then Marcus was, sharply so. He could not imagine anyone striking this lovely girl, even though he knew for a fact she could hit back. It left him mute, this image of her abuse, mute and filled with a pointless anger at his father. But it was too late to despise Hanoch. The old man would have laughed in his face, anyway. He had been forged of some material Marcus could never fully grasp, sword and steel and not an ounce of tenderness. As a boy he had feared him, as a man he had tried to forget him. But this girl had not been given such a choice.

He remembered the first—and until now, the last—time he had seen the Lady Avalon. He had been twelve and she had been two. Just two, a chubby toddler with an angel’s face already, a crop of white-blonde hair and a happy smile. His father had taken him down to Trayleigh to see the bride. Hanoch had wanted to confirm her appearance personally, not trusting the stories he was hearing.

But she had been all that he expected, Marcus supposed, and the agreement that had already tentatively existed between the old allies and kinsmen, Hanoch and Geoffrey, was retoasted that night and irrevocably sealed.

They had sat her on Marcus’s knee for a while, that baby girl, and the awkward youth he had been didn’t
know what to do with her, her incoherent burbles, her constant squirming. After a brief, uncomfortable moment he had given her back to her nurse and everyone went on toasting.

That was all he remembered of Avalon, the girl who was to be the bride. Just another baby, albeit a cheerful one.

“He would knock me down and yell until I got back up.” The woman she was now kept her voice low. Marcus had to bend his head to catch the words, spoken down to the hands clenched in her lap. “He would go at me until I could not fight anymore, and then he would tell me I was unworthy of the clan.”

“Interesting,” Marcus said. “He would do the same to me.”

“He was a monster,” she said.

Marcus couldn’t deny it. When he turned thirteen it had been the greatest day of his life, because that was the day he was to be sent off to the household of Sir Trygve to become a squire. He had escaped his father. But Avalon, younger and far less skilled than Marcus at dealing with him, had taken his place.

Lost in Trygve’s crusade, Marcus had had no real idea of what happened at Trayleigh. There had been only one short mention of Lady Avalon in a letter from home, and her name had never actually been written. It had been his father’s code, something about how the sire had perished in a raid but the girl was well taken care of. In time he forgot about even this; Marcus had plenty of other things to think about in Jerusalem, and later Damascus.

In all the years he was away he received only five letters
from Scotland, the fifth one just that simple note telling him to come back. And that had been the second greatest day of his life, when he read that letter and knew at last he could go home.

“I’m not going to marry you,” Avalon said tersely, interrupting his thoughts. “I will not deceive you. You may try to beat me or starve me, but I will not do it.”

“I would not beat you,” he said quickly, appalled.

Her silence was skeptical.

“Nor will I starve you, my lady. I would not treat a woman such.”

Still she said nothing.

“I would not,” he repeated. “I will not.”

He took the hand he’d kept around her waist and brought it up to her face, hesitant, giving in to the ache of wanting to touch her. He stroked her cheek, rubbed his thumb over the smoothness of it. She sat perfectly still as he did it, and he couldn’t gauge her reaction. His own was a mix of things, mostly wonder and bewilderment at himself. It was imperative that she believe him incapable of his father’s barbarism. He had to convince her, but that urgency was becoming intertwined with something else, the desire for her welling up once more, filling him.

“I would not,” he said again, breathing it into her hair.

He wanted to bury his head in her neck and kiss her there, he wanted to hold her to him not as a prisoner but as a man would hold a woman, he wanted to taste her again so badly.…

Her lips had parted slightly as these sensations raced through him. He thought maybe her heartbeat had quickened, coming closer to the pace of his own. He
moved his fingers slightly lower and traced the outline of her lips, mesmerized as he looked down at her, following the rose color, the lush lines. Her eyelids drifted closed, displaying the sweeping curves of sable lashes against pearly skin.

“You will wed me,” he said, husky, and then knew immediately that he had blundered.

Avalon pulled his hand away, turned her head from him.

“Nay, I will not.”

Marcus let her have her denial, focusing now on calming himself. She was as wine to him, making him think of things that hindered his focus, delightful as they were. But it would be as he said. No matter what she thought now, she would be his bride. He had a legend on his side.

T
wo days later they reached Kincardine lands. One day more and they were at Sauveur Castle itself.

It had been a difficult end to the trip, with the early autumn rain promised before now finally beginning to lash at them, and winds so strong they could tear a man from his mount were he not careful. But Marcus would not stop for shelter, nor did any of his men want him to. Everyone was eager to return home and be done with this task.

Avalon’s mood grew to match the weather. He sheltered her as best he could but she was as rain-soaked as the rest of them. The tip of her nose turned pink with cold, her hair clung in long tangles to them both.

In the early dawn hours before they reached the castle they had to wallow through a ferocious storm, much worse than even the rain before. After a meeting with his men Marcus decided to press on in spite of the tempest, because to camp this close to Sauveur seemed bitter to them all.

Avalon had not quite felt the same way.

“You are a fool,” she cursed at him, disbelieving when he ordered them to mount up in the midst of the squall. The wind was taking her hair and making it dance behind her in drenched tendrils. Rain dripped off her chin. “It is madness to travel tonight! They will not be chasing you this far into Scotland. You know it. I know it. Yet you push us on.”

His only response was a shrug, knowing it would infuriate her but unable to help himself.

He did know d’Farouche would not dare follow this far. They had already passed through the territories of four other clans, all of them on mostly friendly terms with his own. But they would not be so generous with trespassing Englishmen. Not unless they brought an army with them.

And neither the baron nor his brother would be able to muster an army so quickly. That would come later. By then it would be too late to take her back.

Moving on in the face of the storm was not about avoiding d’Farouche. It was about returning to Sauveur.

Avalon wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as everyone got ready. Even the tartan was not much help in this weather. Marcus wanted to go to her and hold her. He wanted to spark a heat between them that would burn away the rain and the wind, burn away her rancor.

But he had noticed whenever these thoughts took him that she retreated further into herself, brooding, no longer responding to anything he said. So instead he put her atop his stallion as before and then climbed up behind her.

The storm grew fiercer; he only vaguely remembered weather like this from his boyhood. Men and beasts alike kept their heads down, water sheeting off them all, the wind bruising them.

Thunder began to rumble over the howling, making the horses toss their heads nervously. Now and again lightning arced across the sky, distant at first, but slowly growing closer.

Avalon didn’t want to but she kept her head behind the wall of tartan Marcus held over her. Any pride she had felt at shunning his aid had disappeared hours ago. Now she was just sore and wet and completely wretched. The tartan over her face was as drenched as everything else, but at least it kept the stinging lash of the storm off her head. She imagined it was not easy for him to keep his arm up like that to shield her, and she wanted to be glad that he was taking the brunt of the weather, in retaliation for his foolhardy order to make them go on. But it wasn’t true. She was too tired to entertain spite right now. All she wanted was for this insufferable journey to be finished.