The Warrior

by Margaret Mallory

  “We stole this little galley from Shaggy Maclean when we escaped from his dungeon,” Duncan said in an attempt to take her mind off Niall and their precarious situation. “The four of us had a long-running argument over who had the better right to it.”

  “How did ye end up in Shaggy’s dungeon?” she asked.

  “We left France as soon as we heard about the disastrous battle against the English at Flodden.” Duncan looked off at the horizon, remembering it all. “We didn’t know that your father and brother Ragnall were dead or that your uncle Hugh Dubh had taken control of Dunscaith Castle and proclaimed himself the new chieftain.”

  “I did not hear of it myself until afterward,” Moira said.

  “Hugh feared the clan would choose Connor as chieftain if he returned,” Duncan continued. “He knew we would have to sail past the Maclean fortress on our way home, so he asked Shaggy to keep watch for us and see that we never made it to Skye.”

  “My uncle wanted Connor murdered?” she asked.

  “He still does.” Duncan continued bailing as they talked, but the water was seeping in through the cracks almost as fast as he scooped it out. “We managed to toss Hugh out of Dunscaith, and Connor was made chieftain. But Hugh is still a threat. He’s tried to kill Connor more than once, and he’ll try again.”

  “Surely the clan wouldn’t make Hugh chieftain if he murdered Connor,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t have much choice,” Duncan said with a shrug. “The clan will follow tradition and choose a man of chieftain’s blood. If Connor were dead, that would leave only Hugh and your other miserable half uncle.”

  “And my son,” Moira said.

  “Aye,” Duncan said.

  Moira rubbed the wolfhound’s ears while silence fell between them.

  “Ragnall loves this dog.” Moira’s lip trembled as she spoke. “Sean made Ragnall give him up.”

  That explained why the dog was so thin.

  “He’s a big dog for a wee lad.” Duncan turned his gaze to the sea and asked his question as if the answer were not important. “How old is this son of yours?”

  “Five,” she said. “Ragnall is five.”

  * * *

  Moira lied instinctively to protect her son, but she did not regret it. Duncan did not deserve the truth. After living with Sean, Ragnall was hungry for a man he could look up to. He would take to this big man who had a quiet strength and the fighting skills of the warriors of legend.

  She would never give Duncan the power to disappoint Ragnall as he had her.

  “Ye said the four of ye had a dispute over this boat,” she said to change the subject. “How did you get it?”

  “I made a wager with Alex that he would wed within six months.” A rare smile lit Duncan’s face. “He was wed in three.”

  “Ach, the poor woman.” Alex was her cousin, but he was a born philanderer.

  “His wife Glynis is happy,” he said. “Alex is a devoted husband and father.”

  So many changes at home. She reminded herself that she had missed them all because of Duncan. While she was exceedingly grateful that he’d rescued her, she would not have needed rescuing if he had done the right thing seven years ago. He had failed her when it mattered most.

  Moira looked out at the empty sea and wondered if she would die out here with him. She could almost hear the faeries laughing.

  Chapter 13

  Moira was desperate to get out of this damned leaky boat. Duncan was wearing her down with his kindness and self-sacrifice. After handing her half of their remaining dried meat and soggy oatcakes, he packed the rest away, saving it for when Niall woke up.

  “Aren’t ye going to eat any of it?” she demanded.

  “I don’t need it,” Duncan said. “I’ve gone without food far longer than this. I’m trained for it.”

  “You’re a liar. Your stomach has been growling like a bear since yesterday.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry,” he said with a half smile.

  Ach, the man thought he was invincible. It was beyond annoying. She shared her meat with Sàr, hoping to get a rise from him, but Duncan did not appear to begrudge the dog a share.

  Duncan put his arm beneath Niall’s shoulders, gently lifted him, and held the last of their ale to his lips. Niall was burning with fever, and she suspected worry was half the reason she was snapping at Duncan.

  “’Tis good we’re nearing land,” Duncan said. “We need to find help for him.”

  Moira leaped to her feet. When she saw land in the distance, her heart beat fast. Seven years she had waited to see her home again.

  “Is that Skye?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like I remember it.”

  “The storm blew us miles off course,” Duncan said. “That is Skye, but we’re headed for the MacLeod end of the island.”

  “My son is with the MacLeods,” she said

  “Our being taken hostage would not help bring your son home to Dunscaith,” Duncan said.

  But perhaps she could be with him. She wished she knew whether the MacLeods had Ragnall here on Skye or at their fortress on the isle of Harris.

  “See that small bay?” Duncan pointed toward the shore. “It belongs to the MacCrimmons. The MacLeod chieftain gave it to them as reward for serving as the MacLeods’ hereditary pipers. That’s where I’ll try to land.”

  “Won’t these MacCrimmons deliver us to the MacLeods?” she asked.

  “I’m hoping they won’t since I’m kin of sorts,” he said. “My mother’s mother was a MacCrimmon.”

  Why did she not know that? What else didn’t she know about him?

  “All the same, let’s not tempt them by telling them ye are the MacDonald chieftain’s only sister,” Duncan said.

  Not that Connor cared what happened to her.

  Duncan touched the back of his fingers to Niall’s forehead. Then, using an oar in place of the broken rudder, he guided the boat toward the MacCrimmon cove. At the same time, he minded the sail and bailed with one hand. Did he think she was useless?

  “Let me do that,” Moira said, snatching the bucket from him.

  Duncan picked up a large wooden bowl that was floating in the bilge and began to bail with that. The land was farther away than it looked, and it seemed like they bailed for hours. Despite the cold winter mist, Moira was sweating when they finally drifted into the cove. A small crowd had gathered on the shore. The men had their blades drawn.

  “Your MacCrimmon relations don’t look friendly to me,” she said.

  * * *

  Duncan grounded the boat and hopped over the side. As he dragged it up on shore, several men with unsheathed blades surrounded him. The women and children gathered on the beach stared at him from behind their men.

  “I am the great-grandson of Duncan MacCrimmon,” Duncan said. “I have an injured man in desperate need of a healer.”

  Without waiting for permission, Duncan lifted Niall’s limp body out of the boat.

  A young, fair-haired woman pushed through the men and peered down at Niall. “He’s in a bad way,” she said and then turned to one of the warriors. “Take him to my cottage.”

  Luck was finally with them. They had found a healer. Duncan let the MacCrimmon man take Niall from him so he could help Moira out of the boat.

  “Ye must come to my cottage as well.” The young woman took Moira’s arm and gave Duncan a sour look. “Big fellow like you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  By the saints, the healer thought he had done that to Moira’s face.

  Moira touched her swollen jaw, as if she had forgotten her injuries. “I’m fine,” she said. “And it wasn’t him that did it.”

  “Wasn’t your husband?” Duncan heard the healer say as he followed behind the two women toward a line of cottages built along the shore. “That’s a story I want to hear.”

  It was odd to hear the healer mistake him for Moira’s husband. For the first time, it struck him that Moira was free. Hope was a foolish thing. He had no reason t
o believe Moira would have him now, or if she did, that he could keep her. Yet, despite the unremitting disasters since they were reunited, hope sparked in Duncan’s chest for the first time in seven years.

  * * *

  Moira sat on the edge of the bed holding a vile-smelling compress to her eye while she felt Niall’s forehead with her free hand. Praise God, his fever was down. Despite all the commotion in the little cottage, he was sound asleep. Duncan had had to hold Niall down while the healer cleaned and sewed up the wound on his leg, and the process had sapped Niall’s strength.

  “How do we know you’re who ye say ye are?” one of the men asked Duncan.

  “My mother gave this to me.” Duncan pulled the six-hole whistle he always carried on a leather cord around his neck from inside his shirt and held it out for them to see. “She told me it belonged to her grandfather, the one I’m named for.”

  An ancient woman with wild white hair shuffled up to Duncan and examined the whistle an inch from her nose. As she turned it in her hand, Moira remembered that the whistle had a thistle carved on the back of it.

  “This is Old Duncan’s whistle, but ye could have stolen it.” The old woman leaned her head back and scrutinized Duncan as carefully as she had the whistle. “If ye are his grandson, ye didn’t get your size from him.”

  The MacCrimmons whispered among themselves for a time, then a handsome man with graying hair asked, “Can ye play that wee whistle?”

  Duncan sat down on a stool that was far too small for him, placed his fingers on the holes of the whistle, and began to play. His music was so entwined with Moira’s memories of the summer they were lovers that the first note took her back to that time.

  “Ach, he’s got MacCrimmon blood in him for certain,” the man with graying hair said when Duncan had finished the song. “Ye should have learned to play the pipes.”

  “I do play the pipes a wee bit,” Duncan said, “though not as well as the harp.”

  “The man is boasting now,” the old woman said. She waved to a lad in the corner. “Fetch Caitlin’s harp, and let’s see what this big fellow can do.”

  When Duncan strummed the strings of the harp, the sounds made Moira think of delicate faery wings and the fields aflower on a high summer day at home. She closed her eyes and let the music take her back to a time when she was a young lass with nothing to worry her but which gown to wear.

  “Who taught ye to play?” the same man asked after Duncan finished the tune.

  “One of the MacArthurs taught me the pipes,” Duncan said, referring to another well-known piping family. “My mother played the harp a bit. I figured the rest out on my own.”

  “I remember your mother well,” the man said. “She was a fine woman and a beauty, but she didn’t have the gift.”

  “’Tis in his blood,” a plump woman standing next to Moira said. She waggled her eyebrows and nudged Moira. “MacCrimmon men have music in their souls and magic in their fingers.”

  Moira remembered. The memory had blighted her marriage.

  “Shame your mother didn’t send ye to us,” the man said.

  “I was born to be a warrior, not a piper,” Duncan said.

  “Ach, the Highlands are filled with warriors,” the man said, waving his hand. Then he grinned. “If ye had the training ye should have, ye could be a famous piper like me. My name is Uilleam, by the way. I’m Caitlin’s father.”

  “I’ve heard of ye,” Duncan said. “I hope I have the pleasure of hearing ye play before we leave.”

  “Ye won’t be taking your friend anywhere for a few days,” the healer interrupted. “Now, if ye all have satisfied your curiosity, let me tend to this poor injured man in peace.”

  Duncan expected to be sleeping with the cow in one of the cottages. Instead, one of the women led him and Moira to the last cottage in the little row.

  “We keep this cottage ready for visiting pipers,” the woman explained as she opened the door for them. “We have pipers from all over the Highlands come here to improve their skills, though we have none staying with us at the moment.”

  The woman opened the door and bustled about the tiny cottage, lighting the lamp on the table and pouring the pitcher of water she had brought with her into a bowl for washing.

  “You’ll find peat by the hearth and warm blankets on the bed,” she said.

  There was only the one bed. Duncan told himself that nothing interesting was going to happen in that bed. For one thing, Moira was widowed but three days.

  But his cock was not listening to reason. As he looked at the bed, seven years of pent-up yearning had him nearly shaking with desire. His body prickled with awareness of Moira’s as she stood so close to him. When his arm brushed hers, a jolt went through him like the lightning in the storm they had sailed through.

  “Caitlin said to give ye this salve,” the woman said, handing a pot to Moira.

  “Thank you,” Moira said as the woman left.

  Duncan heard the door close. The two of them were alone.

  Chapter 14

  Moira glanced about the tiny cottage, but there was only the one bed. Duncan was looking at her as if he were dying of thirst and she was the last drop of water on God’s earth. If ever there was a man who could tempt her, it was Duncan MacDonald.

  “Moira.” He said her name as if she were all he wanted in this world.

  But she knew better. She had been down that road before.

  “The ladder to the loft is there.” She pointed to it and turned her back on him.

  As she listened to Duncan climbing the ladder, she forced herself to recall how she had stood on the wall at Dunscaith in all her wedding finery, still hanging on to hope like the foolish and trusting lass that she had been.

  “How could he do this to me?” Moira had said to her maid, Rhona, who had been her confidante from the start of her affair with Duncan. “How could he leave me?”

  “This Irish chieftain’s son is a handsome man—he’ll make ye a fine husband,” Rhona said, patting her arm. Then her eyes got big as she looked over Moira’s shoulder. “Your father’s coming. I’ll wait for ye down in the hall.”

  Moira turned and saw her father. Rhona bobbed her head and hurried past him.

  “What are ye doing up here?” her father asked. “Everyone’s waiting for ye.”

  “Da!” She threw her arms around his waist.

  “There, there.” Her father brushed her hair back. “What’s this about?”

  “He didn’t come,” she said against his chest.

  “Is it that damned Duncan you’re still fussing about?”

  She wept for three days after Duncan left before she confessed to her father that she was in love with Duncan. He had been the angriest she had ever seen him when she told him she had given Duncan her virginity and would marry no one else. But that was before she discovered she was with child. When she told her father she was pregnant, he had quickly arranged a marriage to a man who happened to be their guest at the time and who had the appropriate pedigree.

  “I thought Duncan would come back for me,” she choked out.

  “Ye can see now that he didn’t deserve ye.”

  “Duncan’s the one I want, Da,” she said into his shirt.

  He leaned her away from him and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I’m telling ye, that Duncan is bad seed.”

  “Ye don’t know that, Da,” she said. “And I don’t care who his father is, anyway.”

  “Ye should. Blood will out.” Her father took her face in his big, rough hands and looked straight into her eyes. “I didn’t tell ye before to spare your feelings, but I gave Duncan the choice of going with the others to France or staying. He chose to go.”

  Now Moira pushed the painful memories of that day aside and took off her gown to wash up in the water the woman had so kindly left for them. She gingerly washed the cuts and scrapes on her body that the healer had not seen. Even after being drenched to the skin in that storm at sea, she found blood in the creases in
side her elbows.

  Moira covered her face with her wet hands, sank to the floor, and wept. She did not regret killing Sean, but the memory was still terrible. Then she cried for all those years of trying to appease him, of always having to be careful and constrained. And now Duncan was here, bringing back those other memories. And then there was Niall to worry about. And hardest of all, she missed her son.

  She was not one to give in to self-pity, but she was just so damned tired of being strong.

  * * *

  Duncan lay staring up at the thatched roof above his head. His every muscle tensed as he strained to listen to the soft splash of water each time Moira wrung the towel out in the bowl. As she washed herself, he tortured himself imagining her long, slender fingers running the wet towel over her throat and down her breasts.

  His erotic thoughts were interrupted by another sound, like a mewling kitten. Was that Moira weeping?

  Ouch! Duncan hit his head on a wooden beam when he sat up. The roof was so low that he had to crawl across the straw on his hands and knees to the hole where the ladder was. Peering through it, he saw Moira sitting on the floor with her head on her knees. Her shoulders were shaking.

  She did not look up as he climbed down. When he sat beside her and put his arms around her, she leaned into him. Duncan’s heart beat too fast, and his chest felt too tight to breathe. She was just in her shift.

  “Shh. You’re all right now,” he said as she wept her heart out. Words rarely helped anything, but he gave it a try. “If it’s Niall you’re worried about, he’s tough. It takes more than a wound like that to kill a MacDonald.”

  There was nothing he could say about her dead husband except good riddance.

  He kissed the top of her head. Memories of kissing her creamy skin flooded his mind as he breathed in the smell of her hair. His hand shook as he ran his fingers through the shining black locks. He should not take advantage of her being distressed to touch her, but he could not help himself.

  When she buried her face against his chest, the heat of her breath through his shirt set his skin on fire. He never thought to hold her again, and he told himself to be content with this. But having her in his arms only made him long to touch her in all the ways he had during that long-ago summer. He wanted to kiss every inch of her skin and make her his a thousand times over.