Cushioned her from an oddly familiar fury, black-roiling and ferocious enough to sweep her length and banish every last peal of the mob’s jeerings from within her beleaguered breast.
Madeline’s heart skittered a beat, something inside her recognizing the shape and color of this man’s anger.
A maelstrom of rage aimed not at her but those who’d do her harm.
Her eyelids flickered open, the gray haze beginning to thin, the trembling of the ground and low growl of thunder by then identifiable as the drumming of horses’ hooves nearing at swiftest speed.
“Sweet holy Mother,” the onion-breathed man tying her wrists cried out behind her. “’Tis the devil hisself come to fetch his own!” he shrieked, shoving her from him with such force she slammed headlong into the hard and rocky earth.
Brilliant white pain exploded inside her, her breath leaving her in a great whoosh of air, the scrabbling man near tripping over her in his blind haste to hie himself from the scene.
Stunned and windless, the dizziness back with a vengeance, Madeline lay where she’d fallen, the ropes binding her wrists and ankles preventing any movement even if she’d possessed the breath to try.
“’Fore God, what goes on here?” his voice pierced the haze. “Lay a further hand on the lass, and I shall see the lot of you dangling from a gibbet before nightfall,” her shadow man roared, plunging his foaming mount straight into the screaming, fleeing mob.
Scattering them, he reined up in a welter of fury and wild-eyed, shrieking horseflesh, his garron rearing high, its lashing hooves a lethal threat to any fool not swift enough to spring aside.
Neighing protest, the beast pawed the air. Madeline’s shadow man flung himself from the saddle before the garron’s hooves struck ground. His handsome face thunderous as a storm cloud, he threw back his cloak and whipped out his steel, a gleaming, vicious-looking brand he clearly knew how to wield.
He strode toward her, tearing off his mantle as he came, his dark eyes flashing scorn at the gawking burghers who hadn’t yet fled. “Reveal to me who amongst you ripped her gown, and I shall emasculate the bastard,” he challenged, hurling his pilgrim’s cloak across her bared breasts.
Madeline went cold at his words, flinching as the cloak’s rough-woven warmth settled onto her naked flesh… she hadn’t realized they’d ripped her clothes, hadn’t known she’d been so exposed.
That all and sundry—her shadow man, too—had glimpsed her too-full breasts.
Large as milk cow udders, one of her suitors had once sneered, not realizing she’d heard. The remembered slur shot through her mind, its ugliness bringing a new sort of shame.…
She glanced at the tall pilgrim. He’d taken up a fighting stance, and now loomed above her, standing so close, the hard edge of his booted foot pressed against her hip. His wrath rolling off him in great, black waves, he swept the gaping onlookers with a scorching glare.
“Cease ogling her this instant, or your best amends will not keep you from the cutting edge of my sword,” he vowed, his outrage a loud crackling hum in Madeline’s ears.
He stepped over her then, his hard-muscled legs protectively straddling her. “The man who thinks I jest can greet the morrow from beneath his headstone.”
Still dazed, Madeline stared up at him, his earthy, masculine scent, a heady blend of woodsmoke, leather, and wide-open spaces, filling her nostrils and reeling her senses with each ragged, indrawn breath she pulled into her burning lungs.
Nella dashed to her side then, her own clothes badly disheveled, but untorn. Dropping to her knees, she cradled Madeline’s head in her lap. “Oh, dear saints, what have they done to you?” she cried, horror standing in her face.
She ran trembling fingers across Madeline’s brow… they came away smeared bright red.
A fresh wave of churning nausea welled in Madeline’s stomach at the sight of the blood dripping from Nella’s fingers. She opened her mouth to speak, to assure her friend she was only dizzy—merely queasy—and not bleeding to death, but her tongue wouldn’t form the words.
“’Tis more than a few drops o’ blood she ought lose for stealing from a saint,” a hostile voice called out, its anger breaking the crowd’s restraint.
“Thieving postulants don’t deserve mercy,” another agreed.
“And ’tis for mercy you’ll be pleading when I cut out your tongue,” Iain called back, scanning the throng for the first man bold enough to step forward.
Searching, too, for the long-overdue MacFie.
The lout should have ridden up minutes after Iain even if he’d kept his mount’s pace to a trot merely to underscore his displeasure with Iain’s plan.
A mousy, stringy-haired woman darted from around the side of the holy well and tossed a little silver-cast leg at Iain’s feet. “Stole that, she did,” the shrew scolded, raking the prone beauty with disdain. “I saw her take it with my own two eyes. We all did.”
Iain’s fingers tightened on the hilt of his blade.
He glanced around again. If MacFie didn’t arrive forthwith, the redheaded Islesman would be the first to get a taste of Iain’s full temper… even if he ne’er glimpsed Doon’s bonnie shores again.
The underswell of grumbles coming from the crowd increased until a handful of bull-necked ruffians edged forward. One brandished a pitchfork, another cracked meaty knuckles, and the rest just glowered their malcontent.
The brawniest-looking one, a great black-bearded bear of a man, cocked a bushy brow at Iain. “And who be you to come between God’s own justice?”
“Someone so forsaken by Him that I make my own,” Iain shot back, his contempt for the hulking churl so rife he could taste it.
His gaze lit on the little silver leg lying in the dirt. “The lass is not a thief… she is my wife,” he said, the lie ringing with amazing authority, the words streaking through the shifting haze to squeeze Madeline’s heart so fiercely it could scarce beat.
His wife, he’d called her.
His.
And oh but she was, the vanquished shadows of her hopes and dreams rejoiced. One by one, they rose from the darkness to stretch greedy arms toward her heart until her befuddled wits set them on their ears, squelching their daring as swiftly as they’d exercised it, banishing them to their proper lodgings—locked securely behind well-barred doors—and leaving only confusion and pain to plague her.
But even in her dull-edged state, a secret part of her thrilled with the certainty that her shadow man’s bold rescue had thrust them both onto a playing ground from which there could be no easy retreat.
“Your wife, eh?” one of the ruffians sounded his disbelief.
“A strange husband, you are, pilgrim,” another chimed in, casually tossing a battle-ax from one hand to the other. “Or is it the style of you to let your lady wander about the land unattended?”
Once more Iain eyed the little leg votive… and silently cursed MacFie.
“We became separated some days past,” he lied again, the untruth falling from his tongue with disturbing ease. Casting further caution to the wind, he took his attention off the ruffians long enough to take a few steps forward and swipe up the ex-voto.
He held it aloft. “If you caught my wife with this in her hand, she was not stealing it but searching for me. My friend and traveling companion is lame and—”
“You’d best hope you have some friends, brother, spouting such drivel,” the ax swinger cut him off. “I, for one, do not believe you.”
“Nor I,” came a chorus of denials from the crowd.
“He speaks the God’s own truth,” another voice boomed, and Iain wheeled around to see MacFie riding into the kirkyard.
His expression as clouded as Iain knew his own to be, though likely for a wholly different reason, Gavin dismounted, giving an exaggerated wince as his feet hit the ground.
Relief flooded Iain.
The e’er upright MacFie had managed the jump o’er his scruples.
Limping forward, Gavin dragged his left
leg conspicuously behind him. He waved a little silver leg ex-voto at the gog-eyed bystanders as he came. “Yon lady kens I leave the ex-votos at every shrine we visit,” he recited the agreed-upon words. “She will have but sought the way back to her liege husband by using my votive offerings to trace our steps.”
The grumbles amongst the crowd dwindled until one cheeky soul called out, “And the other lass? Be she your wife?”
Iain’s heart dropped to his feet.
He’d not thought far enough ahead to include the fiery-haired postulant’s tall, generously made friend into his plans.
Indeed, he’d clean forgotten her until her sudden appearance at the beauty’s side.
His blood running cold, Iain glanced off toward the distant foothills of the Highlands. He couldn’t, just couldn’t, look at MacFie.
Or the two women.
Heavy silence stretched taut over the uncomfortable gathering until the comely-featured woman herself pushed to her feet and ran to Gavin MacFie’s, near knocking him down in her exuberant greeting.
The crowd drew a great collective breath.
Iain held his.
And Gavin MacFie played along, setting her gently from him, but keeping a very husbandly-looking arm slung low about her well-rounded hips.
“Anyone still doubt this lady is my wife?” Gavin challenged the onlookers, drawing the lass even closer against his side… and winning a good piece of Iain’s gratitude.
Nigh giddy with relief—and some other best-unnamed emotion—Iain raked the crowd with the iciest glare he could muster. “And I, good fellows and ladies, would now see to my own wife,” he said, dropping to one knee beside her.
“Without an audience,” he added, glancing at the lass, his heart twisting at the waxy pallor of her creamy, lightly freckled skin.
He smoothed a softly curling lock of bloodied hair off the side of her face with more tenderness than he’d shown a woman in years—including the one who’d been his true wife.
A gesture he hoped would soothe her… and stay her questions until the crowd dispersed.
To that end, he gave them one more warning. “Be gone with you now,” he called over his shoulder, “and be aware that just because I kneel does not mean my steel cannot be at your throat in a heartbeat if you linger.”
None did.
Even MacFie and the beauty’s friend moved away, strolling toward a stone bench placed against the far kirk wall, the Islesman still dragging his leg, though not quite so flagrantly as before.
And to Iain’s greater surprise, the two appeared to be conversing most companionably.
As he would love to do with the beauty stretched at his feet if only she’d crossed his path a lifetime ago.
At a time when he would have been able to greet her with pride and woo her with grace rather than a simple show of muscle and a farcical ruse built on lies.
A faint hint of her clean, heather scent wafted past his nose just then, and Iain swallowed, his reclaimed bravura already showing the first cracks.
Willing them not to worsen, Iain unsheathed his dirk and cut the rope wrapped tight around her ankles. The same slender and delicate ankles that had so fired his blood in the cathedral, now making his gut churn with sheer, roiling anger when he saw how the rough-hewn rope had marred her tender flesh.
“Sweet Jesu,” he swore under his breath, biting back a more volatile oath as he eased away the rope as gently as he could.
“Who are you, sir? I would thank you,” she spoke at last, her voice weakened from her ordeal, but sweet enough to fell him with its pleasing, musical lilt… its softness.
A Highland lass.
“Nay, my lady, it is I who must thank you,” Iain managed, still looking at her ankles. “A man on pilgrimage doesn’t oft have the privilege of aiding a fair damsel in need.”
And I would thank you for making me feel alive again.
Alive in ways that went far beyond the fine heat she ignited in his loins.
Saints, but he wished she’d speak again… simply for the enjoyment of listening to her lilting, honey-toned voice.
Iain squared his shoulders, the full gravity and mass of everything he’d ever heard about the Bane of the MacLeans—the Legend he’d scoffed at all his life— whirling through his head as if a full score of powerful voiced sennachies stood singing the romantic fluff right into his ear.
He touched his fingers to the almost fully receded bump on his forehead, its persistent throbbing less important than his fervent hope she wouldn’t notice.
’Twas his vain hope the lump didn’t mar too badly the looks that had ne’er failed to catch the lassies’ favor in the days before he’d forgotten how to smile.
“You are gallant, sir,” she spoke again, the compliment going right beneath his skin and melting a good bit more of the ice packed so thick ’round his heart.
“But I would know who you are,” she added, the faint quiver in her voice affecting him more than he would have believed.
“And I you, lady,” Iain returned, dabbing away the blood on her ankles with a strip of linen torn from the hem of his shirt. “Will you grace me with your name?”
“I am Madeline,” she said, a wee trace of sadness dimming her voice.
“Simply Madeline?” Iain pressed, wanting, needing, to know more.
“Aye, simply Madeline,” she echoed, a note of finality coloring her response.
A slight furrow crinkled Iain’s brow, but he tamped down his desire to learn more about her and left her her peace. He, too, had secrets, and darkness best left unveiled.
Setting aside the bloodied cloth, he ripped off a new strip to wipe the blood from her abraded wrists. Blessedly, less raw than her ankles, he tended them with equal care.
And as he did so, he steeled himself finally to look— truly look—at her face.
When he did, he near lost himself in the luminosity of her steady perusal.
Ne’er had he seen such lovely eyes.
Ne’er had a woman’s mere gaze made him feel as if he’d been transported into the land of dreams and fancy… as if the very earth tilted and swayed beneath him.
She locked gazes with him, meeting his full on from incredibly large eyes of the same light green of spring’s newest leaves. Thick-fringed brown-black lashes made them appear even larger, while tiny gold flecks within their depths caught the afternoon sunlight and seemed to reflect its warmth straight into every shadowed corner of his heart.
The rest of her undid him, too.
She’d lost her head veil, and the curly spill of her coppery-gold hair tumbled in fetching disarray about her shoulders, its bright gloss making his fingers itch to scoop up great handfuls just so its silkiness could stream across his palms.
So he could bury his face in the curling, glossy skeins and sate himself on its light, heathery scent.
She wet her lips—sensually full lips—lusciously ripe-looking, and just seeing the wee tip of her tongue moisten them had his entire body tightening with a ferocity that stunned him.
A lust-stoked rigidity so shockingly fierce its potency left him half-afraid he’d splinter if he but moved his little finger.
She did move, pushing up on her elbows now that he’d freed her arms, and the motion caused his cloak to slip a bit, giving him a wondrous glimpse of the top swells of her lush, creamy breasts.
A low groan—nay, in truth, more the growl of a starving predator—rose in Iain’s throat, but he battled it back, disguising it as best he could behind a pitifully lame excuse for a cough.
She peered at him, something in the depths of her green gaze giving him the uncanny sensation that she knew his cough had been a ruse.
That perhaps she knew as well that everything about him was a ruse.
Knew, too, saints forbid, that he struggled against a raging desire to yank his cloak from the well-rounded globes of her breasts, exposing their sweetness to his full viewing pleasure.
Indeed, the urge to do so made his hands tremble.
But if she suspected, she glanced discreetly aside, and Iain used the moment to squeeze a much-needed gulp of air down his constricted throat.
Her throat tightened with equally intense emotion, hot, painful, and bitterly sweet, for his daring rescue touched her more profoundly than she ought allow. His tender ministrations to her wounds poured warmth of purest, molten gold straight into her heart and pricked the backs of her eyes with scalding heat.
Biting her lip, Madeline stared hard at the distant blue line of the Highlands, and willed the unshed tears not to spill. At length she turned back to him, her vision once more clear, but still far too vulnerable to long-un-quenched needs inside her for her own good.
Far too vulnerable to him.
She stared up at him, saw his own struggles mirrored in the tense set of his jaw and the slight narrowing of his peat brown eyes. Her gaze not letting him look away, she lifted a shaky hand to the well-worn warrior’s hauberk he wore over a finely woven linen tunic.
Finely woven, and of highest quality… as was the leather of his hauberk, despite signs of wear.
More the trappings of a braw Highland laird than what he seemed.
Watching him carefully, she withdrew her fingers… but not before lighting them briefly on the finely tooled sword belt slung low on his hips. The belt, like his padded leather hauberk, appeared well worn but of superior craftsmanship.
“You are no ordinary pilgrim, sir,” she said, not surprised when a brief flare of pain flashed across his handsome face.
A faint smile, a sad one, flickered over his lips. “And you, sweet lass,” he began, gently skimming his knuckles down her cheek, “are you a true postulant?”
“I am on my way to enter a nunnery, aye,” Madeline confirmed, a shiver of regret rippling through her at his evasive answer and the necessary half-truth of her own.
“Will you tell me your name if not who you are?” she asked, not wishing to prod too deeply, bespelled or nay.
Not when she held her own silences.
“I am Iain,” he told her, the smooth richness of his voice spooling through her, entrancing her just as thoroughly it had in the cathedral… and her dreams.
“Iain… ?” she urged, so beguiled by his golden warmth, his dark masculine beauty, and the mysterious yet so compelling air of sadness surrounding him. She could almost believe he’d manifested from some silver-tongued bard’s fireside tale of legend and romance.
Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page 8
