Until the Knight Comes (16 page)

“And if I do not wish to wed?”

If I have even an ounce of MacKenzie blood in me, you will wish it long before the first thaw touches the hills,
his determination answered.

“All women wish to wed. ’Tis the way of things,” he
said.
“You ought know—as a widow. I did not think the thought of another husband would distress you so greatly.”

“Then you erred,” she countered, something flaring in her eyes.

A flash of torment or anger, quickly replaced by a shimmering brightness he hoped wasn’t tears.

“Not all women who wish are fortunate enough to see their hopes and dreams fulfilled,” she said, swiping a hand across her cheek. “Did you not know that? Or that some women believe they’ve won their dreams—only to be betrayed? Or left branded as a fallen woman, when all they’d desired was a man’s undying love? His heart . . . and given solely to her?”

Kenneth stiffened, something dark and cold shifting in the deepest, most private corner of his heart, something that pinched and prodded, relentless in its efforts to mind him of its existence . . . the dangers.

The past.

He cleared his throat, wished the passion pouring off her could flow into him, banish the chill and hurt inside him.

His doubts and fears of ne’er being good enough.

Not measuring up to the name he carried, the new title he bore with such pride.

But she only peered at him, her eyes large and stormy.

He frowned. “Ach, lass, I know the pain of loving unwisely,” he admitted, his mood darkening. “Dinna think I know naught of such things. I do, and my hope for you is that, in time, you will be pleased with the . . . arrangements I can make for you, maybe even find love again.”

“Love?” She looked at him, the cynicism on her face surprising him.

Turning away, she went to the pile of wine casks and poured herself a generous helping of his
uisge-beatha,
downing the spirits more swiftly than he could blink.

She coughed, her back to him, and a great tremor shook her, the fire of the potent Highland drink rippling the length of her.

But when she faced him again, she was every inch the warrior laird’s daughter.

In truth, the beautiful and proud daughter of
hundreds
of warrior lairds, the bold legacy of each one inscribed on every golden inch of her.

So much so, he could almost see the steel gleaming in her backbone.

He
knew
he could taste her, feel the subtle welling of her iron will, the unbending pride of generations of pure, unadulterated Highland blood.

Finest Highland blood, borne of chieftains who wore their tartans and feathers with arrogance and pride, men extravagantly brave who feared nothing, but whose hearts could weep at the beauty of a Highland sunset.

The poignancy of deep blue shadows edging across a Highland loch on a winter afternoon.

Such great men had molded her and he should have admitted himself lost the first moment he glimpsed her silhouetted so boldly in the tower window.

The saints knew he’d felt it.

As he felt something now.

An unmistakable stirring, a crackling tension that pulsed with such intensity he could feel its currents swirling around them, stealing the chill from the air and even drawing the shadows from the corners, filling each one with shivery, trembling light.

And hope.

Clarity.

His heart began to pound.

She shook out her skirts and dusted her hands.

“The man I loved is dead,” she said, the words crisp, and filled with finality. “He was my life, see you? The air I needed to breathe, the sun’s warmth of my every day. And, aye, the sated bliss of all my nights. Hugh Alesone was his name, his style, the Bastard of Drumodyn.”

She paused, a glimmer of vulnerability in her eyes, its gleam giving lie to her calm. Her straight back and lifted chin. “I have no wish to risk loving and losing another.”

“And accepting the comforts of another?” Kenneth stepped closer, drawn by her seductive warmth, almost propelled toward her by the strange quivering in the air.

His desire to banish the tinge of sorrow hovering just beneath her words.

She met his eye, drew a trembling breath. “Are
you
offering these comforts, Kenneth of Cuidrach?”

“I am.”

“And might these . . .
comforts
be something other than ewers of wine and a richly-dressed bedchamber? Fine viands and a well-doing fire every e’en?”

Kenneth blew out a slow breath. “They are different, aye,” he admitted.

The words, the first step toward his goal.

She
stepped closer, touched a hand to his chest, curled her fingers into his plaid. “And for how long are you offering such . . . succor?”

Kenneth swallowed, drawing strength from the hope beginning to blaze in his heart. “Only for the nonce, my lady,” he made himself say. “So long as you remain beneath my roof.”

His gut clenched on the words.

But the flame in his heart brightened and warmed him. So long as he had her near he’d be winning.

Almost as if she agreed, she gave him a tremulous smile . . . and lifted her hands to the Nordic silver brooch at her shoulder.

“Then so be it.” She undid the clasp, let her cloak slip to the floor. “Give me this
comfort
you offer, for I have been empty and hollow for too long.”

“Lass, you will not regret this,” Kenneth heard himself say, his own words this time, and wrenched from the deep of his soul. “That, I swear to you.”

He reached for her, pulling her to him until her body melted against his and all flickers of resistance vanished as if they’d never been.

She threw her arms around him, sliding her hands around his neck and threading her fingers in his hair, urging him closer, their lips crashing together. Melding in a rough, devouring kiss that ripped away the walls of the little anteroom and left them alone in their own world of pure, streaming bliss.

Exhilaration and triumph pounding through him, he seized her face in his hands, angling his head to deepen the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers and thrusting his tongue deep into the warmth of her mouth. He drowned himself in the taste and feel of her, claiming her, even as her lush, female softness rocked against him with equal fervor, each urgent press of her hips, consuming him.

From somewhere beyond the roaring inside him, he heard her moan low in her throat as she opened her lips wider, welcomed the sensuous in-and-out glides of his tongue. A lascivious plundering, an erotic mating she matched slide for sinuous slide as he made good his promise, giving her the solace she needed, and slaking his own in a tantalizing whirl of tangled tongues, hot breath, and aching, sated sighs.

A bliss he’d been wanting too long to let unfold on the cold stone floor of a dank-smelling anteroom, and with a sly-eyed ancient mongrel as witness.

That one’s presence alone, and the dog’s rapt, unblinking stare, gave him the strength to break the kiss.

His heart thundering, he rested his forehead against hers, his breath ragged. “Lady,” he said, his deep voice intense, urgent, “would you enjoy further such comforts, I vow your bedchamber would better suit our needs.”

In answer, she delighted him by taking his hand in hers, lacing their fingers. “Sir, I have heard you have ne’er yet spent even one night in your magnificent bed,” she said, pulling him with her to the door. “Mayhap it is time?”

And it was, Kenneth knew, the inevitability of it, the
portent,
watering his knees.

But just before he made to step over the unmoving old hound sprawled across the threshold, he shot a last glance at the little antechamber, wondered how such a humble room could have borne such glory.

Determined to hold on to his happiness, he felt himself smiling as he led his lady toward the stairs leading up to her bedchamber.

Life at Cuidrach was good indeed.

And by the spring it would only be better.

But life was not so blessed in all of Scotland.

Indeed, there were places where the hills wept.

In one such place, many leagues away from Cuidrach and at an hour when most old and ailing Highland chieftains would be tucked comfortably in their beds, a plump and young bed-warmer pressed to their sides, Archibald Macnicol stood on the parapet-walk of Dunach Castle, glaring out across miles of jagged coastline and islets, his hands clenched in angry fists, the fierce throbbing at his temples fouling an already black mood.

Still a formidable name in Scotland’s far north, if no longer quite so puissant a man, the Macnicol laird’s failing health had yet to rob him of his impressive stature, even if he now stood with a bit of a stoop and needed longer to cross his castle’s vast great hall than a hump-backed and withered
cailleach
twice his years.

A great stirk of a man in his prime, his plaid-hung shoulders still carried an enviable width and, although his shaggy, once-red mane of hair was now generously tinged with gray, he took some small satisfaction in its continued thickness, just as he appreciated the fullness of his well-curled beard.

What he did not appreciate was the badgering of his middle son, Donald.

One of the few he had left.

Regrettably, Donald was also the most annoying.

“Och, guidsakes—what
is
this?” Archibald grumbled, not meeting his son’s eye, his gaze fixed instead on the stretch of moon-washed sand far below his castle walls.

“Have you forgotten I am an old done man?” he snapped, not taking his stare off the long North Sea combers breaking on the shore.

A shore that, just now, shimmered a fine molten silver, but that, come the morn, would glow like burnished gold set alight by the rising sun.

Nigh the selfsame color as
her
flaming hair.

And the sole reason he only made the difficult trek up to his wall-walk at such ungodly hours as this.

As if Donald didn’t know!

“Since time was, we have looked after our own,” the persistent whelp kept at him. “Defended our honor. We could still—”

“Aye, and so we could!” Archibald roared, wheeling round to scowl at his son.

A scowl that immediately deepened because, of all his seed,
this one
so resembled Archibald himself.

In years so long past, it hurt his aging, aching head to think of them.

He jabbed a finger in Donald’s chest, poking hard. “Hah, laddie, to be sure, and we could chase down the black-hearted cravens who’d dare come chapping at our door, accusing a Macnicol of murder,” he groused. “Or rather,
you
and your brothers could, with a party of men. Without me. You ken I am failing mightily these days,” he added, and clutched a hand to his broad, barrel-chest and wheezed.

But only long enough to catch a flicker of concern on his son’s handsome face.

When it didn’t come, Archibald spat over the parapet’s crenellated wall and jammed his fists against his hips.

“Saints of mercy!” he bellowed. “
Since time was,
you say. Bah, I say!” Seething, he didn’t trouble to lower his voice. Indeed, he hoped the wind carried his fury the whole heathery length and breadth of Scotland.

Hoped the very hills shook with his wrath.

“Aye, we could do all that,” he said again, his voice somewhat less than a shout now. “But you forget one thing.
That lassie
is no longer a Macnicol! She washed her hands of our fine blood the day she turned her back on me in favor of a self-serving poltroon every man, woman, and bairn beneath this roof warned her against!”

“But—”

“Dinna you but me, laddie. You were there—saw it all.” Hot gall rising in his throat, Archibald coughed, thumped a balled fist against his chest until the spasm subsided. “Her shame now rides on the backs of everyone in this clan, and if she
did
plunge a dagger into that up-jumped bastard’s heart, good riddance, I say. Him, and all his empty-winded claims to lofty ancestry! As for her—she’s only reaped what she sowed.”

But rather than share his anger, Donald’s face clouded with sympathy.

“She is your only daughter,” he said, fumbling beneath his plaid as if he had an itch. “And she remains my sister. I still love her even if you do not. Nor would I see her honor tarnished, or know her trussed and tossed to the Each Uisge of Assynt if those dastards catch her.”

“Hah! The water horse would spit her out if he kent—” Archibald broke off, stared at the great war ax Donald was pulling out from beneath his plaid.

Archibald’s war ax.

A wicked piece of weaponry that
should
be hanging on the wall of the great hall, over Archibald’s laird’s chair, where it’d remained, untouched, since the last time he’d wielded it in battle—over a decade ago.

And only Donald would dare lay a finger to it.

“God’s blood—I dinna believe what I am seeing!” Archibald’s eyes bugged. Sakes, he could feel his face turning purple. “No one touches that war ax but me, as well you know!”