Bride for a Knight

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “Only one,” she supplied, taking a sip of wine. “Something I suspect all maids yearn for if they are bold enough to admit it.”

  Jamie smiled at her. “And are you a bold lass?”

  She nodded.

  “Then what did you ask?”

  “For a pleasing and passionate match,” she said, the blaze in her eyes melting him. “A new life with a man who loves me and will let my heart meld with his.”

  A man who will teach me the meaning of mindless rapture and fill my days with joy.

  Jamie looked at her, not sure he’d heard her say that last—or if he’d only imagined the words. Either way, he’d heard enough.

  His bride was a hot-blooded faery.

  And of Fairmaiden stock.

  Whoe’er in all the hills would’ve believed it? His heart took up a slow, hard thumping, a thousand provocative images whirling across his mind. But before an appreciative smile could spread across his face, the door swung open and he swiveled round, glancing toward the threshold.

  “Sir James, my father would know if you’ll be staying for the evening meal?” Sorcha inquired. “He says he’ll open a cask of celebratory wine if you are.”

  Jamie rose, going forward to greet the lass properly.

  Not that he knew what to say to her. Hovering on the threshold, she clutched a rush light in her hand, its upcast light turning her long, sallow face into an even more sorrowful image.

  “Lady Sorcha.” He made her a quick bow. “You were missed earlier,” he said, regretting the words immediately, remembering her reason for avoiding the hall.

  But she only nodded, her gaze going past him to Aveline. “Father has ordered Cook to prepare your favorite savories. I vow he is ready to plunder the castle larder just to set a grand table.”

  “He’ll be feeling guilty then,” Aveline observed, rising. “He’s played with the fates of too many people in recent times and will be wanting to make amends.” Coming forward, she touched a hand to her sister’s sleeve. “I am sorry, Sorcha, he should not be arranging such a feast. Not with you—”

  “I do not mind,” Sorcha said with quiet dignity. “The revel will keep my mind from straying where it ought not.” Turning back to Jamie, she waited. “Will you stay?”

  “My sorrow, but there will not be time for suchlike this e’en,” he spoke true. “I would be back at Baldreagan before dusk and I’m hoping to pay my respects to my brothers along the way.”

  Sorcha inclined her head. “To be sure, my lord. I will inform my father and he will welcome you to our table another time.”

  “I shall look forward to it.”

  Sorcha nodded again and retreated, closing the door softly behind her. Jamie almost followed after her, her plight compelling him to comfort her, if only with a few awkward words and a gentle pat or two upon her shoulder.

  But by the time he stirred himself to open the door and step onto the landing, the narrow turnpike stair loomed empty. His bride’s unhappy sister was already gone.

  Turning back to the solar, he was heartened to see that the sky seemed to have lightened. He’d be well served to be on his way before the clouds lowered and the cold rains returned.

  His bride had other ideas.

  “May I go with you?” she blurted, suddenly standing in front of him.

  Jamie blinked. “To Baldreagan?”

  She nodded. “I have some wax candles for your father,” she said, indicating a cloth-covered basket he hadn’t noticed. “He keeps them burning of a night and needs more than Morag can supply him.”

  Jamie tightened his lips and retrieved the basket, not too keen on catering to his da’s fool whims. Like as not, if he’d burn fewer candles, he’d sleep better and imagine less ghostly visitations.

  But what was one basket of candles when it meant more time spent in his faery’s company?

  And even if she weren’t a true Sithe maid, she certainly had the grace of one. She bedazzled him, standing there limned by the hearth glow and with her violet scent rising up between them, teasing his senses.

  For one unsettling moment, she appeared clothed in sparkling, misty glitter and Jamie nigh dropped the basket, but then the image cleared and he realized she’d only flashed him a smile.

  “I thank you,” she said, touching his chest, and despite the cloud-cast afternoon, he would’ve sworn the sun itself burst into the tiny chamber. “I know your father can be vexing, but the candles soothe him.”

  “I suspect it is you who comforts him.” Jamie stepped away from her, making long-strided for the door.

  His father was a sore subject and other, grievous duties lay ahead of him.

  But as his bride slipped past him out the door, his father’s scowling face rose up before him and he shot out a hand, circling his fingers around her arm.

  “My father is overfond of you,” he said, looking down at her. “I doubt it’s because you take him candles. Yet”—he paused to angle his head—“so far as I know, he hasn’t had a pleasant word for any female in years.”

  Aveline shrugged. “Perhaps he likes me because of the alliance between our clans?” she suggested, lying out her nose.

  Jamie could tell because of the way she avoided his eyes, looking down to flick invisible lint from her gown.

  Folding his arms, he drew himself up to his fullest height, fairly or unfairly employing his great bulk as his only self-defense against wee, fetching faery lasses, his over-sized body making escape impossible.

  “Could it be you treat him too softly?” Jamie lifted a brow, watching her carefully. “Perhaps listening too long to his blabbering and, through your well-meant sympathy, encouraging his foolery?”

  She sniffed. “Some might say you treat him too harshly. He is old and should not be made to pay for past sins or regrets. For myself, I would never do aught that would encourage him to frighten himself.”

  “Hah!” Jamie grinned. “And there we have it.”

  “Have what?” Her chin took on a defensive tilt.

  “You listen to his prattle about my brothers’ ghosts. That is why he is so fond of you.”

  “Nay, that is not the reason,” she said, shaking her head. “Leastways I do not think so.”

  “Then what do you think?”

  “That he likes me because I am the only one who believes him.”

  Jamie stared at her, his brows shooting upward.

  And then he laughed.

  “Ah, well, letting him think you believe him may well be it,” he agreed, pleased to have solved the riddle.

  “You do not understand,” she said, the look on her face sending shivers down his spine. “I do not let him think I believe, I honestly do.”

  Jamie blinked at her. “You believe he sees my brothers’ ghosts?”

  She nodded. “I know that he does.”

  “And how do you know?” he asked, feeling the walls beginning to close in on him.

  “Because I have seen them, too.”

  Chapter Five

  It wasn’t just his father.

  His bride had seen the ghosts, too. And her words kept gnawing at Jamie. Especially when they reached his family’s chapel and churchyard and he spied all the richly carved grave slabs, the tall Celtic crosses, and other signs of lives long past. Each ancient, moss-covered stone bearing tales and stories.

  And some, like the mounded stones covering his brothers’ graves, weren’t moss-grown at all.

  Jamie’s breath caught as he drew rein and swung down, reaching out at once to help his bride dismount.

  He tried to steel himself, striving to appreciate the beauty and stillness of this sacred place, but it was no use. Telling the sun not to rise in the morning would have been easier.

  His brows snapped together in a fierce scowl and his mouth went dry.

  His heart split.

  “We can leave now.” A small hand touched his plaid. “It will make no difference to your brothers if you visit them this night or another,” she said, the same note of sympath
y in her voice that had so touched him earlier, in her father’s hall. “Truth be told, I vow it would please them more if you’d spend the time getting to know your father better. He is not the ogre I know you think he is. He—”

  “He ought to have repaired the bridge,” Jamie said, still frowning. “Had he not been so tightfisted mayhap my brothers—”

  “Do you not think he suffers every night for such a remiss?” Aveline took her hand from his plaid, the warm look of understanding in her eyes cooling. “Can you not think more kindly of him?”

  Jamie compressed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. He was trying to mend things with his da. Leastways, he was trying to help the man.

  But at the moment, the nine burial cairns hit him like a fist in the gut. Nine hard-hitting fists cutting off his air and knifing through him like fire lances. His insides churned and he would’ve sworn hot, smoldering coals burned in his chest.

  Now he knew why he’d put off coming here.

  The pain was worse than he’d expected. Far worse. Cold rain and blustery winds were sweeping in from the west, but he paid scarce heed to the rough night.

  Even so, the finality of the combined scent of rich damp earth, leaf mold, and regret, almost knocked him to the ground. As did the unspoken echoes of words he wished he’d said and now would ne’er have the chance.

  “Holy saints.” He blew out a breath, more aware of his bride’s pitying glances than was good for him. “If only I’d told them how much I loved them.”

  “They knew,” she said, her voice revealing the thickness in her own throat. She stepped closer, reaching to touch him again, this time smoothing a fold of his plaid. “Their fondness for you was one of the reasons I knew I needn’t fear our betrothal.”

  She raised her head and looked at him. “Your father loves you, too. He hides it well, but he does.”

  Jamie shrugged. Were they anywhere else, he might have hooted his disbelief. Or questioned her, for the possibility did give his heart a jolt.

  But here, in the windy dark of the churchyard, he could see only his brothers’ graves. He stared at them, feeling the weight of his sorrow bearing down on his shoulders.

  A fierce, searing pain he’d endure gladly if only such suffering would undo the cause.

  Certain his soul was ripping, he stared up at the heavens, seeking answers but finding only a scattering of cold, frosty stars and drifting, wind-torn clouds.

  The night sky stared back at him with all the chill silence of the hills and the thick-growing whin and broom bushes hemming the churchyard. The dread row of low, piled stones he knew held his brothers’ bodies until their fine granite tombs and effigies had been readied for them.

  Only he couldn’t feel them here.

  Not his nine full-of-swagger brothers who should have come strolling forward to welcome him home, their eyes alight and their arms spread wide.

  Loud, boisterous, and alive as he remembered them.

  Jamie’s mouth twisted and he clenched his hands, the hot tightness in his chest stopping his breath. He could think on his brothers all he wished, hearing their voices and seeing their smiles. But still they’d be gone.

  Already were gone—and well beyond where’er he might reach them.

  Nothing but oppressive silence greeted him as he forced himself to approach the graves. A black and eerie quiet marred only by the howling of the wind and the drumming of rain on the dark, wet stones.

  That, and as a glance across the deserted churchyard proved, fat clusters of red-berried rowan bedecking the narrow chapel door.

  He frowned.

  His bride curled her fingers around his elbow, gently squeezing. “Your father thought it best,” she explained, once again playing his da’s wee champion. “What can be the harm if such safeguards soothe him?”

  Jamie tamped down the urge to scowl at her. The harm was in allowing his da to sink deeper into his delusions. “My father is close to losing his wits,” he finally said. “That is the danger.”

  The maid’s chin shot up. “I told you, I have seen the ghosts, too,” she reminded him. “And so have others. Just the other day, one of my father’s squires swore he saw Neill and Kendrick in the wood near St. Bride’s Well.”

  This time Jamie did scowl.

  But he held his silence, not trusting himself to comment on such foolery.

  Neill and Kendrick, his two favorite brothers, were just as dead as the others. Alan Mor’s squire had likely seen morning mist drifting near the sacred well.

  Not his brothers’ bogles.

  “’Tis true,” his bride persisted, almost as if she’d read his mind. “I saw how upset the lad was when he came in.”

  But Jamie scarce heard her. He was looking past her to the chapel, his stomach knotting.

  Someone had even draped rowan around the splendid carved standing stone that guarded the entrance to his family’s ancient, half-ruined sanctuary. Supposedly built many centuries before by a follower of Skye’s far-wandering saint, Maelrhuba, the tiny chapel stood on the site of an even older stone circle.

  Clan belief held that the remaining standing stone marked the burial place of the chapel’s sainted builder. But some graybeards and local henwives insisted the magnificent Pictish stone was all that survived of the original pagan circle, claiming early Christians destroyed the sacred stones, renaming them Na Clachan Breugach, the Lying Stones.

  An intended slur against stones once believed to have been prized as the Stones of Wisdom because of their ability to foretell the future. Tradition claimed that anyone stepping within the stones’ charmed inner sanctum on the nights of certain moons would be blessed with brief glimpses of events yet to transpire.

  Jamie didn’t know which version of the remaining stone’s past he believed and, truth be told, he didn’t really care.

  At the moment, he could only think of his brothers as he’d last seen them. Bold, brash, and mirthful, each one bursting with spirit and vigor.

  “’Fore God,” he swore again, blinking hard.

  The wind surged then, splattering his face with icy rain droplets, but he made no move to dash at them. Instead, he let them track down his face, rolling over his cheeks like the tears he could no longer shed.

  He did narrow his eyes on the little chapel and its hoary sentinel, fixing his gaze on the rowan garland wrapped round the proud stone’s venerable height.

  Wind whipped at his plaid and tossed his hair, but he stood rooted beside the burial cairns, his fingers swiping at raindrops that suddenly felt hot on his skin, salty on his lips.

  Whether or not the stone was a true remnant of the Na Clachan Breugach, the handsomely carved relic didn’t need the rowan’s protection.

  The monolith held magic of its own.

  And so far back as he could remember, deference alone would have kept any Macpherson from even touching a finger to such a sacred relic of the clan’s dimmest, haziest past.

  “Thunder of heaven,” he breathed, his heart drumming against his ribs.

  He flashed another glance at the chapel door’s rowan-draped lintel. In keeping with old Devorgilla’s erstwhile instructions, he could see bright red ribbon winding through the berry-rich branches.

  Like as not, he’d find the interior of the church equally festooned; the whole wee chapel brimming with charms and foolery designed to scare away his brothers’ souls.

  Jamie’s jaw tightened. He kicked at a clump of rain-speckled, knee-high deer grass. Then he stooped to snatch up a small rock, hurling it into the moon-glinting waters of a nearby burn. Only Aveline’s presence and his damned knight’s spurs kept him from muttering an oath that would’ve blistered the night’s chill.

  An oath that would’ve made his brothers roar with laughter and jab each other with their elbows as they wriggled their brows at him, challenging him to do better.

  But he couldn’t.

  Not this night.

  Not standing in the wind and rain, heart-stricken, and knowing he’d still be mi
ssing them even after he’d drawn his last breath.

  Then make me proud and prove you have at least a bit o’ my charm by seeing your lady out o’ the rain. Now, before it’s her last breath that concerns you.

  Kendrick!

  Jamie started, glancing around.

  The words still shimmered in the darkness. They’d come from nowhere and everywhere, yet echoed in his ears so real as if his brother stood right beside him. Glowing with vitality and strength, too handsome by a stretch, and ready as ever to boast about how easily he turned female heads.

  Make haste. The voice came again, more urgent but fainter. Do you not see how the lass shivers?

  But to Jamie’s mind, he was the one shivering.

  His Fairmaiden bride graced the night composed as always, even if she was staring at the Na Clachan Breugach stone with eyes as wide as if she’d not only heard Kendrick, but seen him as well.

  Not that he was going to ask her.

  He did coil a quick arm around her and sweep her up against his chest, flipping his plaid over her to shield her from the gusting wind.

  But as he strode toward the chapel, a rash of shivers spilled through him. And just when he nudged open the narrow, rowan-bedecked door, he thought he caught a glimpse of something flitting through the trees.

  A faintly luminous something, moving away from the cairns and aglow with soft iridescent light.

  Until he blinked and nothing but mist-wraiths and empty wind curled through the wood and the only glow in sight proved the glimmer of the moon, peering down at him through the clouds.

  The strange light was gone.

  And for that reason, he left the chapel door open, preferring a clear view of the churchyard and the surrounding wood of birches and oaks. But he did not fear his brothers’ bogles. Truth be told, he’d be keen to see them. But he trusted his instincts.

  With all respect to his bride, Fairmaiden Castle was known to attract unsavory men. Broken, clanless caterans well adept at hiding in bracken and heather. Brigands he’d trust to skulk through the gusty night, swinging lanterns and rattling chains, whate’er their nefarious purpose.

  A possibility he wasn’t about to share with Alan Mor’s daughter.