If they touched, the strength of their desire shook her, echoing through her wispy form until her heart also pounded with the wonder of it.
Unfortunately, like so many young lovers of feuding clans, they also thought they couldn’t find happiness. At times, they even thought they despised each other.
But there was hope.
The maid fretted for James. Scandia could see her clutching her charmed amber necklace, holding the stones so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white. And—Scandia thrilled—Catriona’s good wishes for James were so fervent, so desperate, that they poured out of her, vivid and shining, drenching the air around her.
Surely the ambers’ magic wouldn’t disappoint her.
Scandia shimmied faster, willing it so.
The maid cared for James, and mightily.
As he did for her, though he was much too thrawn to admit it.
Cameron men were among the most stubborn in the land.
Worse—Scandia shook her head sadly—when dusk fell that night, if James yet walked with the living, the young pair would forget that caring.
They’d return to thinking they reviled each other.
Such was the way of men.
Until—she sighed—they found themselves where she was and learned otherwise.
Wishing she could make them understand their folly, she twinkled closer to James. She flitted as near as she dared, for the ferocious thunder of the shield beating stirred the air, making it difficult to hover near the marching warriors without being tossed and whipped about like a curl of mist. Which, she supposed, she might as well be, given that she was quite insubstantial.
And if she used what energy she had to manifest properly, she’d surely give a good number of the champions a tremendous fright.
A frown marred Scandia’s still-lovely brow. The last thing she wanted was to alarm anyone.
Every warrior on the field needed his wits about him. Being known as a doom bringer was a sad enough burden without giving truth to such a terrible by-name by shattering a man’s battle concentration.
But James and his men were just now marching past the MacDonalds, and she caught him glancing at Catriona. The maid met his gaze and their eyes locked and held, fiercely. Scandia’s breath caught, for she could see the path of their connection, the dazzling-bright band that stretched between them, glittering like the sun.
A fate thread, it was.
And Scandia hoped so fervently that nothing would sever it.
Men often did so. Knowing or unknowingly, they sliced such precious ties. Or, she knew, they allowed them to fray until the thread snapped on its own.
Scandia braced herself against the war music of the shield beating and fluttered closer to James. Near enough to see how firmly the fates had spun the shining thread tying him to Catriona. The thread looked like silken iron, the color of moonbeams.
She trembled, much in awe.
It would be difficult to damage such a noble bond. If it truly was spun as tightly as it appeared.
One could never be sure with such things, as she knew to her cost. Sometimes even the fate spinners made mistakes, dropping threads that should have held firm. Scandia shivered, the cold air around her darkening for a moment.
She was a dropped thread, she knew.
Catriona—she suspected, watching her follow James with her gaze—would yank back her thread if it fell from her hands.
She’d never become her family’s doom.
Scandia hoped she would become Clan Cameron’s joy.
Willing it so, she gathered her strength and whooshed herself higher in the air, where she circled brightly over the heads of the marching warriors. She knew they couldn’t see her and would think her passing was just a cold breath of wind racing across the field.
But it made her feel good to make such a flourish, wishing each one strength and courage and willing that none among them were a dropped thread like her.
Men should die only when it was time.
Never a moment before.
Chapter Fifteen
You have my oath, I will no’ fell your brother. James kept his gaze on Catriona as he marched past her, willing her to hear his silent vow.
He’d shout the words if his cousin Colin weren’t sticking so closely to his side that the lout may well have been a prickly burr.
Annoyed, James stepped faster. But Colin only increased his own pace, refusing to be shaken.
Ignoring him, James focused on Catriona. If he weren’t striking his sword against his shield, he’d put his hand on his heart. Then she’d hopefully understand the assurance he’d been sending her ever since he’d strode out before the royal loge and spotted her in the crowd, staring at him with such dread in her eyes.
But now, as then, when she caught him looking at her, the fear vanished. Instead, her chin shot up and she blasted him with such a heated glare, he wondered the grass between them didn’t catch fire.
“She hates you, she does.” Colin long-nose proved once again how irksome he could be. “I’ve ne’er seen such loathing on a maid’s face.”
“She’s fearful for her brother, you lackwit.”
“Doesn’t look like fear to me.” Colin beat his shield with particular vigor. “I say she’s hoping you’ll soon be cut to ribbons.”
“That may be.” James hoped agreement would silence Colin’s flapping tongue.
Some men grew quiet before a battle, some drank themselves senseless, quite a few bedded as many willing wenches as they could in a night, and scores knelt in prayer. Others were beset with a desire to talk incessantly.
Colin fell into the latter category.
And his blether was grating on James’s nerves.
Wishing him on the moon, James again lengthened his stride. He also gave Catriona a hard stare, knowing it was surely best if she did hate him.
“She has a dog with her.” Colin caught up with him, still thwacking his sword against his shield.
James struck his own targe harder than he’d intended. “I don’t care if she brought a squirrel with wings. It changes nothing.”
Or so he thought until the crowd around her shifted and he saw Colin was right. Alasdair’s dog sat beside Catriona. The ratty-coated cur was leaning into her, cowering in terror. And the sight made James’s gut clench. The dog—Geordie?—was one of those animals no man could look upon without feeling something twist inside him. The dog’s frailties stirred sympathy. His fierce loyalty touched a man’s soul, humbling him. Scowling, James beat his shield harder, tearing his gaze from the bony old beast.
Grinding his teeth, James bent an annoyed look on his cousin. “I’ll wager two pins that Alasdair ordered his sister to bring the dog to the field. The bastard’s that wily.”
Colin shrugged. “We brought Skald.”
“Skald isn’t real.” James prayed for patience. “He’s embroidered on a banner. And he doesn’t distract men from battle fury with frightened, milky-eyed gazes.”
James clamped his mouth shut, determined to ignore his cousin and Alasdair’s dog. It did trouble him to know the aged beast sat trembling at the field’s edge. And it outraged him that Alasdair would stoop to such trickery. He wouldn’t have thought it of the man.
Not that it mattered.
He’d already sworn not to kill the MacDonald chief. But if he hadn’t, the old dog’s presence would’ve made it impossible. Just as Camerons honored and protected women—regardless of blood or clan—there wasn’t a man among them who’d inflict pain on a dog.
What would happen this day was bad enough.
Bile rising in his throat, he glanced across the field to where his own people pressed against the barricade. As Colin reminded him, the Banner of the Wind had been raised there, flying proudly. The streaming silk rippled in the wind, showing Skald’s snarling head. And the beast’s fiery eyes seemed to stare right at him, accusingly.
“Hellfire and damnation!” He looked quickly away.
Skald would chase him through ete
rnity, tearing into his flesh and not an enemy’s, if James let himself be cut down to spare the neck of a foe.
Skald knew no mercy.
But—James’s chest tightened painfully—Alasdair’s Geordie wasn’t made of silk. The old dog was flesh, bone, and blood, and he loved his master as much as Hector worshipped James. Alasdair had even told him that the poor beast could no longer bark. And seeing Geordie so distressed now proved what James had known all along.
Geordie was Clan Donald’s secret weapon.
Catriona and the dog sealed James’s fate. So he aimed one last gaze their way, willing Catriona to grasp that he’d never bring her anguish. The haughty look on her face said he already had.
To her, he was the devil.
A cloven-footed, horn-headed jackal who’d sinned grievously against her.
That isn’t the way of it. A soft, feminine voice came from somewhere above his left ear. She doesn’t want you to see her fear.
Startled, he looked up, half expecting to see an angel. But there was nothing but mist and cloud, racing before the cold wind coming down from the hills. Even so, gooseflesh rippled his skin. Ignoring the chill, he crushed the urge to break rank and pound across the field, demanding a favor of Catriona. Something to bring him luck and perhaps give him the courage to yank her into his arms again, this time asking her forgiveness and telling her he wasn’t the devil.
He was a man entranced by her, and he’d had good reason to push her from him that night in the stair tower. Just as he’d only wanted to guard her good name later, in his bedchamber. He’d thought to protect her.
Instead, he’d sullied her. A dark deed he’d committed because he was falling in love with her.
Nae, he already had.
God help him.
“God’s mercy on us.” Colin halted abruptly, his words echoing James’s thoughts. But his cousin’s oath had nothing to do with a woman.
James froze, seeing at once why Colin swore.
The shield beating had stopped.
Only James had kept on pounding his targe, though he ceased now, his ears filling with the roar of the crowd and the scream of the pipes, more shrill now than ever. The drones and wails competed against the sudden blaring of trumpets from the King’s royal loge as a great commotion rose from the spectators gathered there.
Eager for blood, they clapped hands and stomped feet, shouting for the slaughter to begin.
Earl David and the Lyon herald stood at the edge of the King’s viewing platform, their faces impervious. But their stares were trained on the three groups of warriors, more directly on James.
Or so it felt to him.
Certain they’d seen him striking his shield after all other champions had stopped, he straightened to his full height, shoulders back and standing proud. He also set his face as sternly as possible lest anyone in the crowd dare to smirk at him.
Then he flashed a glance at Alasdair, not surprised when that one merely nodded, grimly.
When he turned to the Mackintosh warriors, Kendrew patted his sword hilt and gave him a grin that would’ve shriveled the liver of a lesser man.
“Mackintosh is mad.” Colin spat on the ground.
“His men are just as crazed.” James dropped a hand to his sword, frowning at Kendrew and his men. Unlike their chief, naked to his waist, many of the Mackintosh warriors had thrown wolf pelts over their shoulders. “Long as they remember they’re Highlanders and no’ Odin’s fools, they can fight naked for all I care.”
Looking away from the demented cravens, James drew his sword and raised it high. The other two chieftains did the same, though Kendrew roared like an enraged bear as he did so, earning glares from James and Alasdair. He grinned back at them, his face almost feral.
Then, on a swift nod from James, they each brought their blades winging down to point at the ground.
But in the moment they all yelled, “Archers!” something drew James’s eye to the royal loge, where a party of MacNaughton spectators stood nearby, sneering.
James blinked, suspicion chilling him, turning his heart to ice.
MacNaughtons weren’t welcome in the glen. They dwelt in the next glen and were ever at odds with the Camerons, MacDonalds, and Mackintoshes.
But now wasn’t the time to puzzle over their gloating presence.
Or that when James looked again, they’d vanished.
Already, the best bowmen of the three groups were loosing their shafts, the first two volleys of arrows whizzing over the warriors’ raised shields. None found a mark, and James said a silent prayer.
He also risked a glance at Alasdair, catching him jerk a nod at the MacDonald archers.
Kendrew, damn the fool, was still grinning like a madman.
James scowled at him, but the jackal only threw back his head, laughing.
“Again!” James roared, glaring at his own archers, hoping his shout would overtone the fool’s braying. That his dark scowl would hide his own swelling relief that no arrow had yet pierced flesh.
“Launch!” Alasdair’s cry also went up.
Kendrew’s Berserkers answered to the crazed look on their leader’s face, howling like demons as they sent their arrows hissing into the air. Wild-eyed as they were, they could have been the legended Berserkers of Norse myth. Odin’s own bodyguards, ferocious fighters who craved battle lust more than they desired women.
All men fired now, the arrows darkening the sky, and—as if the gods indeed loved Highlandmen—some shafts sailed high over their targets while others glanced off the upraised shield wall of targes. Most of the arrows clattered together to fall harmlessly to the peaty ground.
“Damnation!” Colin jerked when one of them dinged his shield and another slammed into the ground near his ankle. He shot a furious look at James, the near misses sending a rush of cold down James’s spine.
The two arrows had come after the others.
And the icy prickles creeping all over James’s nape told him the shafts hadn’t been loosed by one of Alasdair’s men. Or even that wild-eyed fiend, Kendrew’s.
But the arrows had been aimed.
He was sure of it. And he doubted they were meant for Colin.
He’d been standing right next to his cousin, and his every warrior’s instinct warned him that the arrows had been launched at him.
And they’d come from the direction of the royal loge.
Fury slamming through him, James ripped one of the spent arrows from the ground. Not surprising, the shaft bore no ownership markings. James glared at the arrow, the rank stench of treachery almost choking him. He tightened his jaw, his blood heating as he broke the shaft in two and flung the pieces away from him.
He’d have thrust the two halves beneath his belt, keeping them to fret over later, but he wouldn’t give the King—or the likes of Sir Walter and his ilk—the chance to accuse him of holding on to an arrow after the allowed quota of three shafts per man had been loosed.
They wouldn’t care that the arrow was snapped and useless.
That he knew.
“They’re no’ ours, eh?” Colin kicked the arrow that had nicked his targe.
“They’re no’ any man’s.” James’s head was beginning to pound. “The shaft was bare as a bairn’s arse.”
Colin’s eyes glittered. “I say that’s as telling as any mark etched on wood.”
“I say it, too.” James turned to scowl at the Mackintosh Berserkers, who were casting off their hunting crossbows, tossing aside the light weapons as they howled and leapt about like banshees.
“Heathens.” James pretended not to see when Kendrew yanked his huge war ax from his belt and swung it in a vicious arc, saluting him. Kendrew’s men roared approval, slapping their thighs or grabbing their own axes and waving them high above their heads, challenging.
“The bastards are starting with axes.” Colin stared at them, gog-eyed.
“Thon Viking axes will do them no good.” James rolled his shoulders, flexing his muscles. “No’ when we slice
through the hafts with our swords.”
As if they heard, a round of hoots and rude taunts rose from the Mackintoshes.
Wishing the earth would open and invite them into hell, James threw down his crossbow, the signal for his men to do the same.
Down the field, Alasdair’s warriors were also ridding themselves of their bows. Crossbows were useless now. Dead weight none of them needed when fighting face-to-face with the naked steel of great swords, dirks, and axes.
Alasdair caught James’s eye then—as did Catriona, for the MacDonald warriors stood close to where their kinsmen clustered along the barricade—and James felt his frustration clamp hard and tight around his chest. For an agonizing moment, he couldn’t breathe. Not with a fury of kick-to-the-gut guilt slamming into him the longer he stood there, Catriona’s hot blue gaze locked with his.
Colin was right.
She did look like she hated him. Then, for the space of an eye blink, her face cleared and she mouthed the words, God save you.
At least, James thought she did.
Until it hit him that she must’ve been sending the well wishes to Alasdair, who’d used the moment to make a quick sword flourish to his kinsmen.
Ignoring Alasdair, James threw one more look at Catriona and saw at once that he’d guessed rightly.
This time there was no mistaking that she was staring at him. And the fury on her face scorched him.
If he’d thought she was angry before, her eyes blazed like hellfire now. She’d flung a section of her cloak over Geordie’s head—James could see the dog’s shaking beneath the mantle’s woolen folds—and she’d fisted her hands on top of the barricade railing. Her back was so straight it was a wonder the wind didn’t snap her in two.
James couldn’t look away from her.
Her rage was that terrible.
Sins of a Highland Devil Page 23
