The Firebrand (34 page)

“We will have a group of our most seasoned warriors accompany Wyntoun’s men back to Oban.” The earl of Athol moved to his desk and picked up an open letter. “Something in the letter from Wyntoun, however, concerns me greatly.”

He handed the letter to Catherine, and Laura moved to stand at her sister’s back.

“What is it, John?” his wife asked.

“Wyntoun knew Benedict from the Knights of the Veil,” he said, repeating the information in the letter.

“That surprises me, as well,” Laura agreed, frowning over her sister’s shoulder. “Sir Wyntoun’s words, however, do not fill me with confidence about the monk.”

William Ross nodded. “Considering that Benedict was the one who saved Tiberius from the fire, I can see why the trust of the Brotherhood would have been extended to him.”

Athol strode to the door and looked out into the corridor. Closing it, he turned back to the others. “Wyntoun’s letter is clearly a warning about the man. Even though he says that he himself is not totally certain of the motives behind the monk’s actions, he clearly wants us to be wary of him.”

“Benedict wanted the Treasure of Tiberius for himself enough to try to buy the Blade of Barra’s services in secret,” William Ross asserted angrily. “That is good enough reason for me to distrust him.”

“But he knows what the treasure is, William. What would one man want with such a thing?”

William faced his wife. “This same man has witnessed the power that it wields. He has had a lifetime to plan how to use it.”

“How did Sir Wyntoun know Benedict was here?” Catherine asked.

“I do not think he does…or at least, he was not totally certain of it,” Athol answered. “But if the two last met in the crypts of Ironcross Castle, it stands to reason that the monk would come to Balvenie Castle with Laura and Catherine both here.”

“We should question Benedict. There might be a simple explanation to all of this.” Catherine’s voice reflected her hopefulness, but the faces around her were grim.

“I sent for him before while you and Laura were discussing the proposal from your sister. But I do not know why…” Athol yanked open the door again, revealing a fierce looking warrior standing poised to knock.

“Well, Tosh?” Athol asked. “Did you find him?”

“Nay, m’lord. We searched everywhere, but the ground appears to have opened up and swallowed the rogue whole. The monk is gone!”

***

The horse, tired from the day’s travel, balked at the edge of the cliff. Below, the sea pounded the rocky shore, throwing up spray and foam in a wild display of nature’s power. Adrianne knew that she would never be able to coerce the animal over the edge of the bluff, and in truth she doubted the steed was surefooted enough to manage what was left of the icy and washed out path leading down. The sleety rain, driven by the gusting wind, was now mixed with huge flakes of wet snow that clung to both horse and rider for an instant before melting away.

A stone’s throw inland from the cliff Adrianne found a shelter from the storm for the animal. In a spot where two large boulders had provided a slight windbreak, a thicket of twisted pines to take hold, and she tied her horse there. Returning to the cliff, she stared down at the top of the deserted hut for a moment before starting the treacherous descent along the icy rockface.

When she neared the bottom, she was surprised to see a more passable track leading along the shoreline at the base of the cliff. How curious, she thought, that Canny had forgotten to mention a word about it. Clearly, the tanner used that one far more frequently in his coming and going.

Adrianne was soaked to the skin, but excited as she made her way toward the door of the leatherworker’s hut. She had spoken to Bess, the seamstress, days earlier about her plan. Bess had told her she would have no trouble stitching up whatever the young mistress wanted for the lad. The woman had worked with leather before and assured Adrianne that she had the necessary awls and needles. All that was left was for Adrianne herself to provide the leather, and that task appeared to be all but accomplished.

There was no sign of smoke escaping the hole in the roof of the hut. A tanner’s fleshing log sat on an angle by the open door of the hut. As a blast of wind stung her face, Adrianne pulled the hood of her cloak forward. All she had to do was walk in there, choose what she needed, and be on her way. From the hunger gnawing at her stomach, she knew it was growing late in the day, and she wanted to get back to Duart Castle and her husband before night had descended completely.

Coming to an abrupt stop, Adrianne swallowed hard at the sight of Wyntoun standing silently, accusingly in the doorway.

She would have preferred that he shout at her, that he scream at her. The silent, angry, look was far more threatening, far more damaging, sending a chill through her that was colder than the winter wind.

He looked as if he might break an icicle off the hut and drive it through her heart. The look in his green eyes cried murder.

“Wyntoun,” she managed to get out, glancing toward the cliffs she’d just descended.

“I’ll come up those rocks faster than you can climb.”

Her eyes flicked at him in surprise before turning toward the furious sea.

“You’ll have less chance there.”

Guiltily gnawing a chapped lip, she turned to him and held out a hand to him.

“And don’t try that, either. I won’t believe you.”

It was terrifying how well he was getting to know her. Adrianne lifted her head slightly and decided to face the storm straight on.

“Once again, I am guilty,” she called out to him. “I set out to do what I thought would be of some good, and instead made an error in judgment.”

She wondered if he planned to stay there in the doorway and let her die in the storm.

“I should have told you where I was going. I should have asked someone to accompany me.” She looked about her, trying to think how else he might find fault with her coming. “I should have waited for a better day to travel?”

She was running out of ideas.

“You believe I was reckless. You believe I reacted to my heart’s whim rather than using my head. Very well, I admit it.”

She shivered where she stood, this time daring to meet his angry gaze as her own temper flared. Before they had consummated their marriage, it had been easy to face him in a situation like this. She’d always simply attacked before he could start, reminding him that he had no power over her. Their marriage was in name only, after all.

That tactic would no longer work. Things were quite different, now, and she felt the change.

“Come inside!”

Like a sheep to slaughter, she thought, imagining the hides hanging in the tanner’s hut.

He turned and disappeared into the darkness of the cottage, and for one insane moment she considered making a run for it. But her courage and her intelligence prevailed and she followed him.

When Adrianne entered the hut, Wyntoun was standing at the far wall, his back to the single shuttered window. A half dozen heavy tubs of varying sizes sat around the ashes of a firepit in the center of the one room. More tubs stacked up along the walls, and stained large wooden frames used for stretching and working the hides stood with them. She pushed the hood of her cloak back and scanned the dark interior for any sign of the promised hides.

“Do you know what I would do to you if you were one of my men?”

Her eyes snapped up to his. “Let me follow my own path? Wished me a good riddance…with the hope, of course, of at least getting your horse back?”

“I would tie you to the back of that horse,” he snapped, “and drag your arse back to Duart Castle! And then I would leave you in one of the dungeons to rot…if I didn’t hang you, first.”

“You mean you’d hang me first…and
then
put me in the dungeons to rot?”

“Do not attempt to rile me any further than you have already, Adrianne.”

“If that is what you would do,” she said as casually as she could muster, “then ‘tis a shame I am your loving wife. Think of the entertainment you’re giving up.”

She had to force herself to stand still as he closed the distance between them with a few long strides. He took hold of her shoulders with both hands, and his powerful grip hurt, but she willed herself to show nothing of what she was feeling.

“Could you be so completely unaware of the trouble you cause? The danger you put yourself in!” He shook her once, releasing her and stepping back. “And what a fool I was to think that, by taking you to my bed, you would change! No one ever changes. Everyone knows that. We die as we are born. We cannot change our nature.”

Adrianne stared at him. Never had she seen him like this. Never had she heard him express his frustrations so passionately.

“You are wrong,” she said quietly. “People do change. Gillie has. You have.”

“Nay, we are the same people. Our nature has not changed. We only choose to close our eyes now and not see your flaws. We choose to tolerate you as you are.”

“Tolerate…?”

Wyntoun’s hard words hurt her far more than she could ever have imagined. A knot rose in her throat, and she fought back the tears burning her eyes. She took a step back. Disappointment was etched on every line of his handsome face.

Tolerate
. You tolerate a nuisance—a thorn or a pebble or a smoky fire. She had no more meaning to him than that. So this is the point they had come to.

Adrianne felt the strength to fight draining out of her, but forced herself to face him before she shamed herself completely.

“We made a mistake,” she managed to say. “Nay, that is not correct.
I
made a mistake. I lured you—tricked you into marrying me—and then later I convinced you to consummate a lie.”

His face was a mask, and he started to speak, but she raised a hand.

“Let me finish.” She took in a shaky breath. “You say I am the same as the day I was born. You think I am the same creature that terrorized my people in Yorkshire. That I am the same wild thing that your aunt delivered to you in Barra.”

She turned abruptly toward the open door and dashed away a tear.

“Despite what you believe, Wyntoun MacLean, I am
not
the same. I am not the same person who left my home so long ago. I am not the same person who escaped an abbey in Yorkshire in the dark of night. Nay, since I had to leave my home, had to leave behind the love and the acceptance of my family, I have had to reach out to people and beg for them to accept me. I tried that in Barra, and for naught. Every good thing I tried to do there was construed as wickedness, and every attempt to help someone called disruption. So I changed, and perhaps not for the better. But then…but then something else happened.”

Adrianne turned to him. The wind was no longer battering the hut, and the silence in the dimly lit dwelling hung like a wall between them until she broke it.

“In coming to Duart Castle, in becoming your wife, I thought I no longer needed to beg for acceptance. For the first time since my father was dragged from our home, I felt secure here among your people. More than that, I felt a new purpose in my life. Here, Alexander and Mara and…and so many others did not constantly feel the need to remind me of my flaws. They accepted me. So I have tried to grow with the changes happening within me. I wanted to help people just for the sake of making their lives better. I’ve had no expectations of any reward for this. In some ways, I’ve found that I could be more like the woman that Auld Jean is. A healer. A giver. And yet, now you tell me so eloquently that I still have failed. I am tolerated, you tell me.”

Her hands shook as she wiped away at the tears.

“But I am not weak. I have found a home and a purpose… right here.” She touched her heart. “So I
have
changed. I am far different than the person I was in Yorkshire…or even in Barra. And if you cannot see that—if you cannot recognize this new me—then I have wronged you more than anyone else in my life.”

She turned away again and hugged the wet cloak against her arms. “We will just go on as if this marriage was never consummated. We will end it as you had originally wished—just as you had planned. ‘Twas foolishness…aye, recklessness and pride on my part to think I could be a wife to the great Blade of Barra. ‘Twas wrong of me to assume that you’d ever see me with...”

Momentarily choked by the knot that had formed in her throat, she pulled the cloak over her head and glanced toward the door. “I found my way here; I’ll find my way back. And when this is over, I will leave Duart Castle, and your life will once again be your own.”

As Nichola unhooked and pulled open the wooden shutters, the winter wind swept into the chamber like a conquering hero.

She closed her eyes at the brightness of the sun, drawing the air deeply into her lungs. The cold wind felt good on her burning skin, but did little to calm her distraught mind. But there would be no relief in the wind, and she already knew it.

Marriage! Intimacy! The pleasure of skin against skin. Of a man’s body, hard and demanding…and yet so giving, too! She had not forgotten the pleasure of the marriage bed, the feel of a man within her. By the saints, she had never expected her life to travel this path. Guilt and pleasure so inextricable bound together, intertwined like the branches of a thistle and a rose.

She moved away from the open window and stared at the damask-canopied bed. For two weeks now they’d shared that bed. And for a fortnight Henry had honored her wish, not demanding intimacy. Throughout this time, he’d been the most courteous of knights, the most agreeable of companions, the most generous of men, showering her with gifts she had neither expected nor sought. During these two weeks, he’d become once again the friend to her that she had once known.

But something had happened last night. A moment of weakness. A yearning she couldn’t turn her back on. A fire—kindled by some unknown force—had flared up between them. A desire so strong that she had not been able to keep him away.

She had not wanted to keep him away.

Nichola stared at the empty bed, and sensual images flashed back into her mind. Henry slowly peeling away her clothing. She blushed even now at the shock of seeing his arousal, so potent and alive for her. And yet his actions, so gentle and coaxing. Henry had succeeded in peeling away her restraint, as well.