Until the Knight Comes (26 page)

“See you, the new day is almost upon us.” He smoothed back her hair, drew his knuckles down her cheek. “There is not time to send a rider to my uncle for reinforcements. Eilean Creag is too distant, and—as you know—our walls may well be made of butter.”

Mariota opened her mouth, but he raised a hand, silencing her.

“Luring them away is our only option. I will not risk letting them gain entry to the keep.”

“You will be killed,” she pushed the words past the hot burning in her throat. “Because of me, you and your men will be—”

“Do not underestimate me, lass,” he said, disentangling himself when she clutched at him. “I may not have my uncle’s vaunted skill with a sword, but I have my wits.”

Mariota flushed. “I did not mean—”

“I know what you meant,” he said, crushing her in his arms, urging her back against the cold stone of the passage wall, his mouth slanting hard over hers in a swift, furious kiss.

She locked her hands behind his neck, giving herself up to the frantic need raging inside her. A desperation as wild as his fierce, demanding kiss.

A possessive claiming, hot and hungry, fiery enough to send molten heat sluicing all through her even as it increased her dread.

A suffocating panic that welled inside her, darkening the edges of the sweet, golden warmth he’d brought her and threatening with a dark and ugly cold capable of extinguishing all light and joy from her life.

Cut her off at the knees . . . just when she was learning to walk again.

She shuddered, chills sweeping the length of her. She could not bear to lose him.

Not now when she loved so desperately, wished to cling greedily to every moment they had, burned for a
lifetime
of moments.

An eternity is what she wanted.

Not a cold-cast marble effigy to kneel at each night, her fingers stroking stone as she marveled at his valor, bathed his likeness with tears that could ne’er revive him.

He stiffened against her, setting her from him as if he sensed her doubt, felt and understood the icy terror digging its claws into her most vulnerable places.

“Ah, my Mariota minx, know well that I am not about to lose you. Not to marauders—not to . . . any man,” he vowed, the words spoken so softly she was sure she’d imagined them.

“Wait!” She tugged on his arm. “What did you mean—”

“I was assuring you’ve no need to worry—about anything,” he said, evading her true question as he urged her down the vaulted corridor. “The curtain walls and battlements will be manned, we’ll drop the portcullis, such as it is, and even see extra bolts slid across all the outer doors.”

“And if they scale the walls? Push through the larger gaps?” She gathered up her skirts to keep pace with him. “If you meant what I think you meant?”

He shot a glance at her, the look in his eyes telling her he did.

But the moment passed when several of his garrison men rushed by, their naked swords gleaming in the torchlight, their fierce-set faces making even the warrior laird’s daughter’s breath catch.

“See, lass, I told you—I have good men,” the Keeper said, glancing after them. “My uncle gave me some of his best. Sir Lachlan was once his most favored squire, and later served as house knight to Sir Marmaduke. He learned much from those valiants, and thanks to his foresight, we already have a goodly supply of stones and quicklime stored along the wall-walk.”

He stopped to give her another fast kiss. “We’ll be ready for them before the first man breaks from the woods—scaling ladders or no.”

“Do you not see?” Mariota shook her head. “Nessa and I can do so much—”

“You and Nessa shall be barricaded in the storeroom,” he repeated, pulling her behind him down the turnpike stairs. “You will be safe there—and comfortable. There is surely enough time for you to gather enough foodstuffs and plaids for pallets.”

Mariota sniffed, scarce hearing him.

Instead, her ears echoed with the shrieking yells of men rushing castle walls, the cries of the wounded and dying. The
zishing
whine of fire arrows, followed by the crackle and roar of burning pitch; the shudder and splintering of smashed wood.

Sounds she’d heard often enough at Dunach and other castles where her father had made his name. Nightmarish horrors she did not want to hear at Cuidrach.

Especially not at Cuidrach!

But her Keeper seemed unconcerned. Far from it, he fair thrummed with the surety of victory as he hastened her down the stairs.

“See you, lass, I will even open one of the wine barrels in the storeroom for you,” he promised when they reached the foot of the stair tower. “If Providence is kind, everything will be over before you have time to worry.”

“I am worried now.” She caught at his arm. “I told you—’tis madness.”

“Nay, it is the best we can do.” He touched her face, smoothed her hair. “And whether you like it or no, it is the only option we have.”

Mariota swallowed and said nothing.

The granite set of his jaw warned of the pointlessness of further objections.

And only made her all the more determined to find a better way. She did not have Archibald Macnicol’s blood in her veins for naught.

Or so she hoped.

Chapter Fourteen

M
ariota fisted her hands against her hips and peered deep into Cuidrach’s kitchen larder. “He’s run crazy mad,” she mumbled, leaning forward to rummage through the available food stores.

“Growing up with the father I had, I’ve likely seen more sieges than any man beneath this roof.” She flashed an indignant look at Nessa. “And Kenneth MacKenzie knows it!”

“He would know you safe—as he told you,” Nessa returned, looking annoyingly unperturbed as she stood beside the cook fire, jabbing at the logs with an iron poker. “It is good-hearted of him to want me in the storeroom with you. I will not forget his concern.”

Mariota frowned. “His concern is misplaced,” she said, digging deeper into the larder. “Womenfolk are always about during sieges. Who else sees to the wounded when they’re brought in for tending? Who keeps the water boiling—as you are now doing? Makes a fuss and bother o’er the valiants when they need an uplifting word?”

“That may be so, my lady, but I vow your Keeper’s thoughts are more on having us in a secure corner of the keep than any doubts about our usefulness.” Nessa set her poker aside and pressed a hand to the small of her back. “We all know Hugh’s men could saunter right up to our high table if they’ve a mind to it! Sir Kenneth wishes you out of harm’s way if that happens.”

Frustration began beating in Mariota’s breast. “And what about
him
?”

She straightened, threw a hot look at her friend. “I am not pleased about his notion to lure them away. You know Ewan the Witty will ne’er fall for such a ploy.”

Nessa snorted. “I would pit your Keeper against that one any day, my lady. Whether these walls are less than invincible or no!”

Mariota sighed. “Mayhap I worry because I have more at stake than you—I am in love with him, could not bear to . . . to—”

“And you think I love my Lachlan less?” Nessa eyed her across the kitchen. “Let us be glad they would know us in a safe corner. Truth is, many are the faint-hearts who’d be only too eager to hide away during a siege, spend those fraught-filled hours far from the chaos and bloodletting.”

As if to underscore her point, she brushed at her skirts with unnecessary vigor. “Men and women!”

“You are surely right,” Mariota conceded, her vexation spiking. “Even so, I would rather make myself . . . useful.”

Determined to do just that, she tossed a cloth-wrapped bundle of salt herring into a large wicker creel on the kitchen’s sturdy trestle table and looked around for other thirst-inducing delicacies she could add to her growing stash.

A pile of two-day-old bannocks caught her eye and were seized upon at once, soon to join the salt herring and twisted lengths of dried venison already languishing in her basket. It was a motley assortment of goods not lacking in taste on their own, but viands greatly enhanced by the addition of a thickly-smeared layer of butter or honey.

Embellishments she purposely left out of the innocent-looking basket.

Luckily, Nessa did not appear to notice.

That one seemed far too occupied filling endless barrels with scalding water and, much to Mariota’s growing annoyance, extolling Sir Lachlan’s knightly virtues.

“I say you,” she gushed even now, her eyes going all soft again, “Lachlan will have that rabble of savages wishing they’d ne’er left their northern fastnesses! They’ll rue the day they even glanced toward Kintail.”

Mariota said nothing.

Nessa hooted.

Her dark eyes glittering, she snatched up her long iron poker and began jabbing at the cook fire with renewed gusto. “Ha, lady! We will soon see them running back to Assynt—and with their forked tails clapped between their legs. If our men let them go!”

“Och, to be sure.” Mariota smoothed a cloth over the top of her basket. “The flat-footed louts will all follow Sir Kenneth to Dun Telve and allow themselves to be cut down one at time as they slink through the broch’s low and narrow entry passage.”

Feeling color rise in her face, she paused and strode to the window and back again. “And those remaining will hie themselves away. They’ll bolt straight back here to seize Cuidrach so soon as they realize our best men lay in wait inside the broch—or in the woods surrounding it!”

Nessa snorted.

“Cuidrach’s garrison is large enough to man these walls and send a party to the broch,” she argued. “Lachlan says the men are readying themselves even now. They’ll be in place, well-armed and hidden, long before Hugh the Bastard’s men make their first demands. They—”

“Have you forgotten the sheer number of Hugh’s men?” Mariota reached for the basket of victuals, hefting it on her hip. “Far greater a garrison than we have here. In especial, if ours is split.”

Nessa leaned the poker against the wall and dusted her hands. “Even so, Sir Kenneth’s ploy is the surest tactic we have,” she said, gathering up a pile of folded plaids. “If you were not so vexed about his wish to know us safely barricaded in the storeroom, you would see the sense of it.”

“
Guid
sakes—I do see the sense of it. Would that I did not! And would that none of this was happening.” Mariota swallowed at the agony jabbing holes in her heart. “Ach, Nessa, every man within these walls is about to take great hazards—mayhap even to the loss of life—and that, because of me.”

She glanced aside. “That, my friend, is the way of it. And such is a sore burden.”

Nessa frowned, flicked a speck of lint off the topmost of the plaids clutched against her breast. The hiss of the logs on the fire and the rolling boil of the kettle filled the silence, the sounds overloud in the warm, smoke-hazed room.

“Lachlan says the men are high of heart,” she said at last, still worrying the plaid. “There is not a one amongst them who is not eager to take up his blade.”

Mariota drew an uneven breath. “Aye, and in my honor.”

And
that
was her problem.

She knew only too well what Cuidrach’s men were risking and her own honor would not allow her to do any less for them.

Despite the difficulties.

Standing straight as she could with the food basket jammed against her hip, she gulped back the bile in her throat and wished for about the hundredth time that she’d fled Drumodyn in any direction but the route she’d taken.

Truth tell, she’d barter her soul if she had!

The sweetest bliss under the heavens was not worth the darkness she’d brought to Cuidrach’s door.

To a man who’d yearned for only peace and quiet living in his beloved Kintail. And now found himself facing the worst pack of snakes to e’er crawl out of the heather.

She saw him now, in her heart, imagined him up on the parapet-walk or in one of the topmost rooms of the gatehouse tower, waiting. Dark, bold-eyed, and daring, so full of life. Her stomach clenched on the image, her blood running cold.

E’er seeing him
otherwise
was a thought so unbearable she could scarce breathe.

Indeed, the horror of it nigh lamed her.

She loved—and needed him—that much.

“Lachlan says there isn’t a man within these walls who wouldn’t face down the Devil for you,” Nessa blurted, making it worse.

Not trusting her voice, Mariota bit her lip, trying not to wince as guilt-laced dread coiled in her belly.

She tightened her grip on the basket—a sop to her conscience. The carefully chosen delicacies her sole chance to make amends.

But Nessa, Fiend take her, was having none of it.

“O-o-oh, aye, my lady. They are stalwarts and valiants, every one,” she enthused, eyeing Mariota with a look that made her grip the basket even more fiercely. “Gallant as any boldly-mounted champion thundering down the lists with his lady’s favor flying from his lance.”

“Aye, to be sure, men of great valor.” Mariota could not have agreed more.

She almost wished it were . . . otherwise.