by Jackie Ivie
Despite the tension from practicing patience until she was ready to scream, Juliana had found the information Arran gave her interesting. Unbelievable, but interesting. And it did help pass the time.
Throughout the large meal of roast hog, fried gruel, and fresh berries that was served with full, foamy tankards of ale, Arran had regaled her with stories about their home. He’d told her how Castle Ketryck had a solid stone curtain wall that took more than seven hundred steps to walk along on each side. Juliana had looked unconvinced. That would make an almost endless barbican. It would rival Stirling and Edinburgh Castles, if not exceed them. It might even be larger than Caerlaverock Castle, and that one still held out against Edward’s forces. Arran told her Ketryck Castle’s barbican was more than three arm spans wide, too, and he didn’t mean his arm span. He meant Aidan’s, and his voice had warmed considerably while telling her that.
Hero worship of his brother? She had to contend with that, too?
Juliana had worked at controlling any argument or answer to anything Arran told her. She wanted him sleepy, not awake with anger. Besides, she didn’t care if he claimed a castle larger than those King Edward had just constructed in Wales. Nor did she care what size Aidan MacKetryck’s arms were, or how long. Or how strong. Or anything else about the man proclaiming himself her rescuer. Aidan’s image had been planted at Arran’s words, however. That was bothersome and made her feel odd. It heightened her senses, making everything more alert, and she was slightly breathless as well. Despite everything, she’d nearly sighed.
Arran hadn’t noticed. He’d been too involved with tales of the walkway all along the top of this curtain wall, connecting all eight towers, each five stories in height . . . and possessing its own stairway. Juliana almost argued that before she bit her own tongue.
Tales. That was all they were.
Arran’s voice had slowed occasionally and he’d yawned more than once by then, so Juliana just let him keep talking, while she kept waiting.
He’d described an improbable gatehouse next. It supposedly arched over an entry that was six stories high. On sunny mornings, the shadow cast by this gatehouse stretched across the drawbridge and a good walking distance into the heather as well. Arran must have noted Juliana’s incredulous look at all this, because he’d simply folded his arms, said she’d soon see, and she could then tell for herself.
Castle Ketryck sat on a bit of headland overlooking a lake they called Buchyn Loch. This loch emptied into the North Sea and had water so deep and so blue and so cold, and so full of fish, it was no wonder the first lairds of Ketryck had fought wars to gain and keep it. They hadn’t stopped there. The MacKetryck clan was rich in lands and holdings, but they had a thirst for more that seemed inbred. Arran boasted to her that they’d already gained so much land and reputation they’d had to go south for more. That was why they’d been at Castle Fyfen. They’d heard it had been taken by the Clan MacDonal, putting the land under Scot control.
And that was why Aidan had sent his men back for their dead.
Juliana had perked up a bit at that information and she’d sat forward slightly on her trunk.
It seemed that Arran’s big brother was a superstitious sort. Aidan believed that a Highlander buried in Scot-held soil had a just death and rested with his maker, while a Highlander left in any other dirt was cursed to roam the darkest mists of the glens, dales, and forests, searching out and haunting those who’d allowed such a deed . . . to exact their vengeance. Aidan MacKetryck wasn’t taking any chances.
That wasn’t the lone thing he believed. He had amulets in his possession to ward off more curses than the one he’d received at birth. Aidan truly believed that despite everything he did, this particular curse followed him, and wouldn’t release him until he reached the grave. Juliana had laughed aloud at that, making it a hearty sound on purpose. She’d guessed Aidan hovered outside the tent, listening. So she made certain he thought her completely captivated and entertained by his brother.
Perhaps then he’d relax his vigil, it would accompany Arran’s rest, and all this passage of time would serve a purpose, and Juliana could escape. Aside from which, she didn’t want to know any more about this clan. And she didn’t want to get fond of them! When she returned home, she wanted to forget everyone and everything that had happened since that horrid night that started it all.
Everything.
Aidan MacKetryck hadn’t been about when Arran had finally slept, breathing thickly and rhythmically, even as she’d passed her hand over his face twice to make certain of it. It had been fairly simple to sneak to her assigned tent, dress back in her own clothing, and then slip back to Arran without getting spotted. It had also been easy to leave again, although the second time she’d been in a slight crouch and moving toward the horses.
And then that whip-thin Tavish fellow had loomed right in front of her, frightening her into a squeal before shaking his head and blocking her. She hadn’t needed an escort back to the tent where Arran was still sleeping either, but she’d gotten one. And the next time as well. Only that time it had been Aidan stopping her. Just as he did the time after that.
Juliana gritted her teeth now and pulled in a breath. He might as well have her tied to him, as closely as he watched her! And there was simply no reason for it. He’d saved her. What of it? She was no man’s responsibility after that. His claim to keep her safe was too much! And for how long? And what reason? The man had more than enough wenches at his beck and call already, according to Arran. He didn’t need another one.
Juliana glanced over at where Aidan MacKetryck was standing. Solemn. Head bent against the onslaught of new rain, while body after body was lowered into the hole they’d dug. The cloud cover hadn’t dissipated throughout the day, so the rain wasn’t a surprise. Juliana huddled in her own shift, underdress, and boots, covered over by her cloak, learning the wet warmth of it again, and watched as they started shoveling mud atop the mass grave, covering over their dead . . . as well as the body of the woodcutter.
And that was when the first physical stab of despair came.
The lass had some explaining to do.
Aidan tapped his sporran bag, which held a signet ring they’d cut from around the woodcutter’s throat when they’d found him. It was MacKetryck property now, until he decided to give it to her. That wasn’t happening until he found out what it meant and whose it was. He didn’t recognize the crest of entwined serpent tails, but simple woodcutters didn’t usually wear gold objects, nor did they have hands raw from woodworking. A woodcutter had calluses, not blisters. So if the corpse they’d brought was a woodcutter, it was a newly learned trade. He looked more like a scribe. Or a taxman. Or a clergyman who’d lost faith and forsaken his vows . . . perhaps on the promise of a bonny lass’s hand.
Aidan hoped she wouldn’t try talking her way out of giving an explanation. He added to that. He hoped she’d finally realize the futility of trying to escape him. There was nothing to go back to. Not anymore. The English had not only burned and destroyed both the village Liddlesday, and Biggstown-by-the-Dale, leaving nothing more than a church foundation to mark where the last had been, but they were fully in control of Fyfen Castle as well. The battlements were reportedly strung with MacDonal clansmen, since these Sassenach hadn’t left one soul living.
Not even the piper.
Aidan sighed heavily, made the sign of the cross, and did his best to ignore where Juliana was standing beside him, her bent head reaching his shoulder. It was a position of abject grief. It matched the cry she’d given when they lay the woodcutter’s body out beside the MacKetryck clansmen. It also matched her fervent hugging and grasping and checking of the body and the pale drawn face she’d turned to him when she’d finished.
He couldn’t see her face now and was glad of it, although that annoyed him. She had her hands clasped before her, holding her cloak closed at the waist. Demure. Grief-stricken. Quiet.
She bothered him. Endlessly. He swore he could tell where she
was and what she was up to simply by a feeling he got. As if he sensed her in some fashion. That was worrisome, and he was spent with wasting any more time pondering. He’d given the orders. They had tonight to fill their bellies and rest up before they started for Castle Ketryck. At first light.
Aidan waited once the deed was done and ground shoveled into place, getting wetter in the downpour while the grave mound she stared at got the same.
“Lass?”
He spoke in a tone his men would be teasing him over if they heard. He frowned slightly as she ignored it. Or failed to hear it. Aidan cleared his throat, looked down at the mass grave, and that was when his eyes widened and he started silently cursing his own foul stupidity.
Facing death altered things for him. It always had. Aidan was a demon in battle, where there was too much action and force and split-moment maneuvering during the killing to experience much of anything, especially death. That happened later. Afterward, when the silence came, that was when he’d feel and experience chest-crushing suffocation, a heart that skipped and altered to the point it frightened him, and a numbness that more than once he’d feared he’d succumb to it. It was another curse he suffered, but this one he kept to himself.
Aidan fingered his sporran for the right charm, starting a silent chant in his head before he found it, while he worked at overcoming the heavy feel spreading beneath his breastbone. He sucked in, got a chest full of damp-filled air, but the tight feeling persisted. And then his heart missed a beat.
“La . . . ass?”
He tried again, only this time the word was in two syllables and had gone into a higher pitch, sounding choked and raw. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t gain enough air to speak properly. She was flirting with fate the longer she stood in the evening rain making him wait with her. Because there was one sure thing that canceled out all the death feeling and made Aidan feel alive again. The joy. Power. The frustration, anguish, anger, thrill.
All involving a woman.
Oh . . . Christ.
Aidan lifted his head to the sky and watched raindrops fall all over him before he closed his eyes. His birth curse was shoving itself right in front of him . . . taunting him. He’d been rash. Impulsive. Reckless. Unthinking. He knew this happened every time he faced death and he also knew how much his body craved this Juliana . . . yet he’d done nothing to alter it?
The amulet wasn’t working. Cursing silently wasn’t helping. Sending hollow promises to the heavens did little good either. He should’ve left the dead where they’d fallen or had them buried before reaching camp. And if he had to be that foolish, he should have planned for this. Left her in another man’s care. Sent her to the tent. Escaped to a different one. Put her back with Arran. Run away. Hid . . .
Aidan reached for her, locked on to her upper arm, and then swung her to face him. He might have used too much force, since he had to catch her with his other hand to prevent her from colliding with him. That was just as stupid, since that put Juliana in his hands, beneath his nose, and within his grasp. Aidan was further provoked when his own arms began shaking. His heart dropped another beat, startling him.
“Lass?” he tried again, but this time the word cracked, sounding brittle and dry. He swallowed, but choked on it since his throat felt like it was already closing off as it numbed.
She lifted her eyes to his, taking his breath with the contact while his heart jumped instantly into a quick-paced hammering. She looked brittle, fragile, and everything her posture had been demonstrating to him throughout the burial. She was suffering. Grief-stricken. Pale. Bereft. Hollow-eyed. Completely passive. Only the lowest wretch would even think of taking her at such a time . . .
Lowest wretch . . .
Despite the slur he’d put on himself, Aidan pulled her close, lifting her at the same time, until he had her frame and face matched to his. Her lips parted and he swore the soft sigh of breath from them touched his lips. Even through the steady film of rain draped between them.
“Take . . . me . . .” she said.
Aidan stiffened, while the roar of reaction at the content of her words made his hold shakier, his chest fuller, and the numb feeling started dissipating. He couldn’t prevent everything on him from ratcheting to a primordial level of want and need. Instantly. Voraciously. Noticeably. He gulped.
“It’s na’ . . . the best . . . place,” Aidan replied before he lost his wits. The rain might be wet and carry a chill, but nothing about it damped the heat rising from contact with her. His voice was shaking now as well. He was incapable of moving his eyes from hers.
“Please?” she answered.
“Jesu’!”
His curse word carried a plea with it. Something about it bothered her, for a small line crinkled through her forehead as she frowned. Blushed. And then she smiled slightly.
“I meant . . . take me home,” she whispered.
Aidan didn’t have a strong enough curse word available. There was a whooshing sound filling his ears and it just got louder and louder, amplifying the volume of his own heartbeats as she put her mouth in a kissable pout right in front of him. Daring him. Begging him . . .
Fool! She was asking to go home; for him to take her there. As if she still had one. Aidan sucked in a huge gulp of air that moved her with it and then he held it. Hard. Long. Steady. Counting the heartbeats that accompanied it. Before God, he wasn’t taking a grieving woman! No matter what the provocation.
She blinked, instantly silencing the whoosh of sound in his ears, but then it hit his nose as he released the breath. She dropped her gaze to the area of his chin or throat, and then she shivered . . . and added a soft moan.
Aidan had her into a berth within his arms the next moment, well away from the torment that was her woman spot rubbing right against his lower belly. Then, he was stalking through the wet, soft ground. He was determined to carry her to his tent, deposit her on the cot, and leave her there.
Women! They were the curse and bane of the earth. That was what they were. And women who looked like this Juliana were the worst. They were put here to torment a man, make him do and say and think things that weren’t. Punish him for chivalrous behavior. Punish him worse for need. Keep him in a frustration of want fueled by his own honor and denial. Make certain he’d regret not only the saving of a bonny wench, but also the self-induced restraint that kept a man from taking and enjoying and savoring said wench until hell sounded better.
Aidan was shoving words through his head with every step, adding more transgression to beautiful women who denied a man at his lowest, before he reached the door flap of his tent. He didn’t even slow down, pushing it instead with his momentum and making the piece of material cling to his head before he moved three large steps to the cot, set her down atop it, and then went to his haunches on the ground beside it.
He’d failed. He knew it. He only hoped she didn’t.
The door flap settled into place behind him, sealing them into a personal bit of space that had only rain-lit dusk to light it. Juliana had her legs curved over the edge of the cot, her hands wrapped about her torso, and a wide-eyed look that gave him a full unsettling dose of her eyes. They’d stunned him when he first saw them, and it hadn’t changed. Or muted. Or done anything other than intensify the dazed state of everything. Aidan shook his head to clear it. Then, he did it again.
Why her?
“Please?” she asked.
Aidan thought that was what she’d said, but the whooshing sound was back again, fuller than before. Nothing about her whisper penetrated it. All of which was an excuse for shaking his head again like he didn’t understand.
“Why not?”
“You nae longer have . . . a home.”
He answered brutally and watched her eyes moisten with tears she could blink into existence. But she didn’t. Instead she watched him with dewy eyes and a frame that was shaking as she caught her breath in little gasps. And then she raised her little chin, narrowed her eyes, and argued with him.
; “I do.”
“Na’ back there,” he replied.
“You don’t know that.”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Let me go. Please?” She had a pretty plea tone as well. If he wasn’t in a whorl of frustrated longing, he might even listen before he denied her.
“Nae.” He made certain she understood by shaking his head.
“Why not?” She sounded cross. Strict. Stern. She didn’t look it. Aidan roamed his vision over lush, lovely, and rightsized woman curves.
“Because I rescued you,” he told her when he’d finished looking her over.
Her plea look changed to a completely blank one. If it wasn’t so shadowed in the tent, he might be able to find an expression, but he doubted it.
“So?” she asked.
“And I claim you.”
“You can’t claim me,” she informed him.
Aidan raised an eyebrow, watched her glance at it, and saw her swallow quickly. She was acting a bit unsure and flustered. So, he raised the other brow as well and then moved them both several times. “Why na’?” he asked finally.
“Because I say so.”
She’d replied quickly, but she sounded shaky, too. Aidan spent a moment on that. If she was feeling unsettled by his presence and what it meant right here and right now, then that was fair and just and right. He grunted.
“Well, I say different, and I’m the laird. My word is law.”
She called him a name he hadn’t heard before and Aidan raised his brows again, higher this time. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say.
“For how long, then?” she asked finally.
“Ever,” he replied.
“Oh no. Never. And never you.” She had a slight sneer to her mouth as she said it. She also shook her head as if she had a choice in the matter.
“Why na’?”
Aidan went up on his knees, crossed his arms about his chest, tightened the sinew to make it impossible to overlook the strength and power he possessed, and then he tightened every muscle in his chest to fullness, in the event she failed to notice. He was a prime male, in perfect health, and he knew it. He was also hard, enlarged, and ready to take her. Fully. Right here and right now. And without much more delay. Aidan didn’t need to flex. She could see for herself. He watched her look to his groin before returning to his face. Her eyes were huge and filled with a fearful look he’d seen from the battlefield. But it couldn’t have been, for the next moment she’d pulled her lower lip into her mouth and started sucking on it. That little move could easily release the severe hold he’d placed on himself. Aidan shifted his glance away before that happened.
