Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03]

by Wedding for a Knight

  “For now, in this pass, just know that I will guard your safety with the whole of my strength and all the breath in me. That is so sure as night follows day.”

  His vow, and even more so, the tinge of regret edging his husky-smooth voice, lifted the fine hairs on the back of Amicia’s neck. In truth, even whilst flattering, she did not want him to fight for her. She wanted to protect him. To know him safe from all darkness and danger. And she loathed the notion of being a responsibility.

  Another burden placed upon his shoulders.

  She burned for one thing only.

  His love and adoration.

  A chance to win his heart.

  With effort, she tore her gaze from his broad, plaid-draped back, shivers of regret slinking down her own. Unless her eyesight had weakened since her arrival on MacKinnons’ Isle, there was now a decided slump to his shoulders and, damn her clumsy-tongued hide, but she feared something she’d said might be the cause of it.

  Or mayhap the moon eyes she’d surely been making at him since he’d burst into the bedchamber—despite her best efforts to maintain a composed, ladylike demeanor.

  To control the yearnings that raged inside her with enough passion to set all the heather ablaze.

  Her throat tightening, her eyes filming with sheerest frustration, she turned back to the table, glared down at the gleaming ax blade. The polished steel shone overbright in the candlelight and the sharpness of its edge left nary a doubt to the damage it could wield.

  As could the broadsword hanging at his side, the wicked-looking dirks thrust beneath his waist-belt. Faith and mercy, he even had one sheathed in his boot!

  She slid another look at him, eyed the weapons—a veritable arsenal—and tight bands of trepidation coiled around her chest, obliterating all her other emotions.

  Her own now paltry seeming concerns.

  All save one.

  She glanced back to the securely bolted door.

  Did he mean to sleep here? Mayhap even in their fine four-postered marriage bed—at her side?

  Her heart pounding, she stared at him for a long moment before taking the first step across the skin-strewn floor.

  She had to know.

  Even if the discovery found him shunning her. The warm-pulsing weightiness spreading through the lower-most reaches of her belly at the thought of lying with him demanded she learn his mind.

  So she let the urgently pleasurable sensation spur her forward, toward its braw and bonny source, one brazen footfall after the other.

  Fitting or no, the timing propitious or nay, the gnawing need inside her stamped out every last flicker of propriety.

  Not that a MacLean e’er walked the earth who’d let seemliness—or risk—bar the way to their deepest desire!

  And she was a MacLean—through and through.

  Bold and resolute, even if her knees trembled just a wee tiny bit.

  She moved closer, chin lifted and shoulders straight, her heart thundering against her ribs. Faith, she could even hear the blood roaring through her ears!

  Even Boiny, until now deep in his canine slumber, raised his shaggy gray head to peer at her—his rheumy gaze curious, as if he, too, could hear the insistent hammering.

  Only Magnus appeared oblivious.

  He stood at a slight angle, the whole strapping length of him silhouetted against the tall, gray arch of the window, his profile silvered by moonlight, softened by shadow.

  For one shattering moment, the strange half-light of the embrasure erased the tight lines of strain carved into his face and let her glimpse the Magnus of old—a beautiful lad of spirit and vigor. The dashing young champion with the roguish grin, who’d charmed all the lassies and laid fast claim to Amicia’s affections.

  A forever claim that had burned all the brighter with each passing year.

  An unspoken bond that now consumed her.

  Almost upon him, she slowed her pace, savoring the remembrances stirred by his moonlit image, not quite ready to break the spell. But, like old Boiny, he heard her approach and spun to face her, looking at her with eyes filled with light and laughter, and flashing his dimpled smile.

  Until the ruddy glow of the firelit room undid the magic of her yearning heart.

  Her breath caught at the transformation, her eyes flying wide even as his narrowed in piercing consternation.

  “You’ve gone pale as the moonlight—even as I am looking at you,” he said, something in his gaze and his voice making her tingle all over.

  “Do you think to stay the night here . . . with me?” she blurted before the hard-won steel in her backbone could melt, slide right out of her to form a molten pool around her feet.

  “I would think that was obvious,” he said, stepping from the embrasure. “Why else would I have bolted the door?”

  Amicia drew a breath, prayed she would not stutter in her nervousness. “My pardon. I phrased the question poorly. ’Tis where in here you think to sleep that I would know?” she asked again, this time placing special emphasis on where.

  “Not where you are thinking,” he said, his gaze lighting briefly on the massive four-poster across the room.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, and the intimacy of that small contact, even through her clothes, slid through her like a caress.

  “Do not fret yourself, lass. You may be at your ease this night. There will be time anon for . . . connubial pursuits.” He began kneading her shoulders, his gentling of her and the mention of their joining, however tactfully worded, undoing her, making her breath come in short, shallow gasps.

  Then the warmth and concern slipped from his clear blue eyes and the hard, set-faced look returned. “There are enough rich trappings spread about this room for me to make a more than comfortable pallet to sleep on. I’ faith, I spent most of the last three years making my bed on the rough heather with naught but my plaid to warm me.”

  A MacLean to the bone, Amicia seized her chance.

  “You may share the bed . . . I do not mind,” she heard herself suggest, scarce believing her brazenness but loving her daring.

  For one exhilarating moment, giddy excitement streaked through her, but Magnus shattered her hope by stepping back to put a good arm’s length between them.

  “That would not be wise,” he said, looking down to adjust the hang of his plaid. “See you, I shall rise before first light and I have no wish to disrupt your sleep.”

  “I see very well, my lord,” Amicia said, embarrassment sweeping her.

  Visibly stiffening, he fixed all his attention on brushing at nonexistent specks of lint on his plaid, the bright mail of his sleeve. “I warrant you see what you believe you see. That is not necessarily the truth of it, lass.”

  “Nay?” She cocked a brow. “Then what is, my lord?”

  He drew a tight breath, clearly uncomfortable. “That I desire an early start to begin looking for the miscreant—”

  “You needn’t trouble yourself overmuch, I vow—it can only be Janet,” she blurted, her frustration and hurt hurling the suspicion at him.

  “Wee Janet?” He gaped at her, incredulity stamped all over his bonny face. “Och, but you are sore amiss, lassie, that I promise you.”

  To her aggravation, he nigh snorted his astonishment. “Did you not hear what I told you? Whoe’er is behind such dark deeds is fueled by hatred. Janet’s worst wrath could reap no more trouble than a wet kitten.”

  Green-tinged heat pouring over her, Amicia struggled to banish the younger woman’s image from her mind, but the vexing likeness remained, taunting her with all its fragile loveliness and flaxen-haired charm.

  “A wet kitten can have mightily sharp claws,” she snapped, feeling about as frail and tender as a plow horse, with her stained and disarranged bodice, her wild and mussed hair.

  “Mayhap you are the one who misjudges,” she said, trying not to glare.

  A shuttered look came over his face and he glanced aside. “I have misjudged many things of late, to be sure. But Janet is kin. I
will not think poorly of her.”

  “Are there any under your roof who are not kin?”

  That got to him. “Nary a one,” he owned, rubbing at the red-gold stubble on his chin. “Nevertheless, it is pure folly to suspect Janet.”

  Amicia stifled a huff of indignation. “Your cousin is sore vexed—and surely less delicate than she looks. I would advise you or anyone in the path of her fury to take fullest heed.”

  Magnus passed a hand over his eyes, shook his head. “Nay, I will not believe it. Not of Janet. Not of anyone of MacKinnon blood.”

  “Then mayhap you must indeed look to your ghosts,” she said with a flare of finest MacLean temper.

  “My ghosts?”

  “Reginald of the Victories and his lady wife for a start,” she tossed at him, too grieved to heed the tightening of his features, the twitch of a muscle in his jaw.

  “Dagda tells me they favor this very room,” she declared, her cheeks flaming. “Perchance here is as good a place as any to begin your search?”

  She marched to the massive four-poster, flipped up a corner of the opulent coverings. “Mayhap they are hiding beneath their bed?”

  “Their bed?” This time, he did snort. “Without question, that hulking monstrosity is of great age and has stood in this chamber for a good many years,” he owned, speaking as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. “And I have no doubt Reginald would have approved of the finery adorning it since your arrival, but I’ll swallow my sword if he e’er spent a single night in it. Neither with his doomed lady wife or any other lass.”

  Amicia let the bedcovers fall, dusted her hands. “So Dagda told me falsehoods?”

  “Dagda is a prattling fool, and more the pity she wasn’t born a man—with her glib tongue, she would have made a better teller of tales than my brother Hugh!” Magnus folded his arms, turned a sharp eye on her. “I am hoping you have a better head on your shoulders than to believe such belly-wind?”

  “If you do not believe in the tradition, why has the fire in this chamber not been allowed to go out since their day? Your own da told me so—that its peats have been kept alive even though no one used the chamber all these centuries.”

  Magnus heaved a great sigh. “Last I heard, all hearth fires hereabouts are kept from fully extinguishing. Or have you ne’er seen the old women of a household skulking about late at night, burying wee clumps of live turf in the ashes so a spark can be fanned into a blaze come the morning?”

  He had her there.

  Indeed, most clans prided themselves on the claim that their peat fires had been kept aglow as far back as family memory could stretch. ’Twas a time-honored tradition that the fey folk would frown on the household if a fire wasn’t kept to warm them through cold and dark Highland nights.

  Aye, he’d maneuvered her into a corner. So she nodded, wordless. And let the thrust of her chin and the tight press of her lips say what her tongue didn’t.

  To her amazement, rather than darkening with ire, a glint of amusement lit in his eyes. “Just dinna mind me of the fairy part,” he said as if he’d read her thoughts. “We both ken a body’s comfort of a frosty morning is the true reason for such goings-on.”

  He gestured to the hearth and its softly glowing turf fire. “As for the fire in this chamber, I’d judge old Dagda and my father keep the tradition not because they fear the wrath of the wee folk, but because they enjoy believing in tall tales. In magic.”

  “And you do not?”

  “Believe in magic?” The twinkle in his eye vanished, its disappearance proving as eloquent an answer as any spoken denial.

  “You brought your friend here to sit in your Beldam’s Chair. You must believe in its powers?”

  “Oh, I’ll not gainsay the efficacy of all such wonders and ancient observances.” Going back to the table, he poured himself another cup of the potent Rhenish wine. “I simply put more faith in the strength of my arm, the steel of my brand, and what I can see with my own two eyes.”

  “But—”

  “I have seen magic of the Beldam’s Chair, lass. That is why I brought Colin here.” He rubbed a finger back and forth along the rounded side of the wine cup. “And because he has a more trusting heart than Da and Dagda put together.”

  “And you, sir? Do you trust your heart?”

  “If you ask Colin, he will tell you he has seen enchanted isles rising from the sea only to vanish on second glance,” he declared as if he hadn’t heard her—or chose not to. “He’ll also swear any good cailleach worth her salt can conjure up a storm by incantation. Call forth waves so heavy, they’ll smash against the windows at the tops of the tallest castle towers.”

  “So you are telling me the Beldam’s Chair will heal Colin because he believes it will?”

  “Either that, or his own will to be whole again so he can pay proper court to my wee kittenish cousin.” He shrugged great shoulders. “He is sore smitten with her.”

  Amicia bristled. “Then mayhap you ought warn him she wishes to sink her claws elsewhere?”

  Spinning about before he could answer, she went to the row of tall, open windows. Behind her, she could hear him pulling coverings from the bed, imagined he meant to use them for a pallet.

  But she’d be damned if she’d turn around and look.

  Not after offering him the comforts of her bed—the unspoken but understood welcome of her arms.

  Better to inhale deeply of the chill night air and let its cool embrace douse some of the ire streaking through her.

  Extinguish the heat of her passion.

  Humiliation twisting through her, she did just that, dragged in great gulps of the cold air, but the husky purr of her rival’s voice grated in her ears, the other woman’s carefully veiled jeers tossing handfuls of ice chips at each glimmer of warmth she’d tried so desperately to cling to ever since Magnus had burst so unexpectedly into her bedchamber.

  And the moment she remembered the reason for his presence, guilt assailed her for snapping at him.

  But not for resenting Janet MacKinnon.

  That, she couldn’t help.

  Not after his second reference to his cousin as wee. Or more annoying still . . . a kitten.

  Adored by Colin Grant or otherwise.

  Her blood rising, she paced about the room, her nerves too flayed for her to even attempt to stand still, though he appeared to have turned to stone.

  He’d indeed made a comfortable-looking pallet near the hearth and now stood before it, his wide-set shoulders rigid, his hands clenched at his sides.

  And, may the Devil take her for noticing in such a stress-fraught moment, but in the flickering light of the fire glow, he looked at once magnificent and vulnerable in his knightly array.

  Mostly vulnerable.

  Because his warrior’s trappings appeared so incongruous surrounded by the domestic finery of the well-appointed bedchamber.

  And saints help her, but each time she glanced at him, that air of vulnerability slid ever so deeper beneath her skin, wrapped its golden cords all the more sinuously around her foolish adoring heart.

  ’Twas a dangerous peril that banished her anger as quickly as it’d come and made her burn to march right back to him and have done with every bit of ludicrous-looking knightly adornment affixed to his great, strapping body!

  A very unladylike moan escaped her, and she clapped a hand to her lips, praying he hadn’t heard.

  Not that she’d have been able to withhold the moan even if she’d tried.

  The thought of him standing naked before her, knightly or unknightly, roused-to-full-stretch or otherwise, proved too potent a notion for even a feckless MacLean to bear without capitulating.

  Her mouth ran dry. Saints, but she yearned to see him in all his bare-bottomed glory!

  To touch him.

  Put questing fingers to him . . . there, where he was most manly.

  “Mercy me,” she breathed, fanning her face with her hand as she wore a track in the floor skins.

&nbs
p; Her wanton musings warming her more than the heat of ten raging bale fires, she swiped the backs of her fingers across her moist forehead. Then she threw off her clinging arisaid, tossing its woolen length onto a three-legged stool.

  And if her nipples chose to pop over the low dip of her bodice edging and make another uninvited appearance, so be it!

  At least she had nipples, and fairly good-sized ones—an embellishment she doubted her small-breasted rival could boast of.

  That small triumph buoyed her until she happened to glance downward. For her low-belted gown called attention not only to the generous curve of her hips, but also the ever-so-slight roll of flesh at the top of her belly.

  Forcing herself not to grimace, she pulled in her stomach. Then she crossed the room until she stood but a breath away from him.

  “So you mean to sleep here?” She indicated the heap of coverlets and furs, and one pillow he’d taken from the bed.

  “This night, aye. I told you—tonight you may rest undisturbed.”

  And if I desired to be disturbed?

  Her hot MacLean blood nigh flung the words at him. But her greater wish to please won out and so she bunched her hands in her skirts and blurted the first thing that came to her mind.

  “You said Reginald’s lady wife was doomed. Why was she?”

  Because she loved a man whose pride damned her, Magnus’s heart answered.

  He started, the innocently asked question hitting him like a fist in the gut.

  His every instinct warned against venturing anywhere near the old tales—the legend and the curse—but his honor would not allow him to lie to her.

  “What have you heard of the legend?” He focused his attention on her face rather than the appealing flush that spread ever so sweetly across the top swells of her breasts.

  “Scarce little,” she said, her voice testy, an almost-rebellious glint flashing in her eyes. “No one seems wont to speak of it save to cluck their tongues or bemoan its tragedy.”

  “It is tragic. A sad and sorry tale. The hearing of it would only distress you,” Magnus said, hoping to dissuade her.

  But his words had the opposite effect, for she jutted her chin at him and the glint in her eyes turned fiery. “If I am to be lady of this keep, I would know Coldstone’s heart. The good and the bad of it.”