He would have satisfaction. He would have blood. He would have his damned horse back, and then he would ride to Loch Drurie and ask Mairi Dunbar to be his wife.
Only then would he go home and explain it all to Iain and Gilchrist. They would be angry he hadn’t asked for their help, but they would understand his reasons. They always did. They always would. They were his brothers, family. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed them till now.
For the first time in his life Conall knew what he wanted, what would make him truly happy. And contrary to what his brothers suspected, ’twasn’t a life of carefree adventure and endless conquest. Though he had a feeling life with Mairi Dunbar, if she’d have him, might offer a bit of both. And so much more.
The night they’d made love in the lake house he’d looked into her eyes and realized how much more there was, how much more there could be for the two of them. He’d never felt that way with any woman in his life.
He’d had a long time to think about it, shut up in the foul hold of that rotting slaver. He was certain now, about himself and about her.
When Jupiter stopped at the crossroad near a familiar ridge above an even more familiar loch, Conall pulled his mount up short and drew a breath of frigid air. Winter sun glittered off icy water.
He recalled his swimming lessons with Kip and smiled. He conjured up the color of Mairi’s eyes, her touch, the willful arch of her fiery brows when he asked her to do something she didn’t wish to do.
An overpowering urge to ride east toward her village gripped him. Jupiter must have felt it, too, for he trotted off in that very direction. Conall hardened his heart and called him back.
“Not today, boy,” he said, and gestured for the mastiff to follow him down the hill toward the forest camp and the standing stone marking the path leading west to Falmar Castle. “Tomorrow we shall see her, and the lad.”
As they picked their way down the heavily wooded hillside, Conall considered his next move. ’Twas dead on winter, and he’d no intention of swimming that fetid moat again. But neither did he wish to announce his presence at Geoffrey Symon’s front door. This presented a problem.
He wanted the chieftain alone, and once he had him, he intended to kill him. Not by treacherous means, but in a fair fight. Just the two of them. He didn’t wish to engage their clans in an all-out war. Nor would Symon, if he were smart. One word to Conall’s brothers about his abduction, and they’d see Falmar leveled, stone by stone if need be.
Nay, ’twas not the kind of vengeance Conall burned for.
The unmistakable sound of livery carried up the hill from the forest camp. Jupiter froze in place, ears pricked. Conall stilled his mount, drew his broadsword and narrowed his eyes on an opening in the trees twenty yards below him.
What he did burn for was the opportunity unfolding before him.
Geoffrey Symon, dressed in leather breeks and a fur tunic, stepped into the cold circle of light between two naked larch trees and a smattering of pines.
There were others with him, but not many from what Conall could hear. Silently he slid from his mount and tethered the mare to a tree. Using hand signals well-known to his companion, he ordered Jupiter, now shielded by a thicket of gorse, to stay.
’Twas hard to tell from this vantage how many men accompanied the chieftain. In his mind, Conall counted the days since he’d left Wick. Of course! ’Twas one day beyond the Sabbath—Symon’s hunting day. What a stroke of luck. He’d not have to breach Falmar at all.
Conall stole down the hill, sword in hand, recalling that Symon preferred to hunt alone. There were men with him now, but likely he’d send them away or ride off alone, as he had that day three months ago when last they met.
“I should have killed you then,” he breathed.
A flash of red-gold hair caught the light as a white mare trotted into view. Conall’s heart stopped. Symon reached up to help a woman—a vision—from the mount.
Mairi!
She placed her hands on Symon’s broad shoulders and smiled at him as he set her lightly on her feet.
Conall could barely breathe.
He’d ne’er before seen her look so lovely. Under her cloak she wore a gown of pale fabric that, if he didn’t know her to be poor as a church mouse, he would swear was silk. And slippers. For the briefest moment he recalled her slender feet, those long legs, and how they’d felt entwined ‘round his hips as he made love to her. Oh, Mairi.
Her hair was long and loose and a bit wild, as was its wont. He longed to touch it. Atop her head she wore a wreath of dried flowers that set off the color in her cheeks.
Crouched in the stinking hold of that Norse ship day after day after day, the memory of Mairi Dunbar the only thing keeping him alive, Conall at last had embraced the magnitude of his love for her. But now, seeing her in the flesh, hearing her voice, her lilting laugh, feeling the warmth of her smile inside himself—’twas almost more than his heart could bear.
Only her smile was not for him. ’Twas for Geoffrey Symon.
Conall edged closer, unable to stop himself. Though well hidden by the dense foliage, his footfalls masked by the sounds of other horses and other men—more than a dozen, he realized, as he quickly scanned the camp—he risked discovery at any moment.
“Won’t ye sit, love,” Symon said to her.
Love.
Conall waited for some smart retort to slip from Mairi’s lips, but she merely smiled at the endearment.
“Nay,” she said. “I’m weary of sitting. ’Tis a long ride ‘round the loch.”
Symon moved closer, his face edged with what seemed to Conall to be genuine concern. “Are ye well?” He took her hands in his and gazed into her eyes.
Conall redoubled his grip on his sword.
“Oh, aye. Just a bit tired.”
Symon smiled. “’Tis natural for a woman in your condition.”
What condition? Oh, God, was she ill? Conall slipped behind a stout pine as Geoffrey led her away from his men to the very edge of the clearing, not a dozen feet from where Conall stood concealed.
His heart beat wildly. He worked to control his breathing as he imagined every terrible illness she might be plagued with. It occurred to him that he should simply snatch her up, here and now, and bear her away to Monadhliath. His brother Gilchrist’s wife was a healer, the most skilled Conall had e’er known. Perhaps she might help if—
Symon placed his hand on Mairi’s stomach, and Conall held his breath, waiting for her to slap it away. To his amazement, she did not.
“I pray each night ’Twill be a son.” Symon stroked the soft curve of her body, and the joy and pain Conall read in her face told him more than words could e’er reveal.
A…son? A child?
The truth hit him like a hundredweight stone.
“I shall be an ideal father,” Symon said, and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “And husband.”
Good God, she carried Geoffrey Symon’s child!
Conall gripped the pine for support as he felt his knees give way beneath him. Recovering his balance, he tightened the death grip he had on his sword.
“Aye, and I’ll hold ye to both promises for as long as ye draw breath, Geoffrey Symon.” Mairi removed his hand from her body, and Symon used the opportunity to pull her close.
“Kiss me,” he said.
Conall didn’t want to watch anymore. He didn’t want to hear what words she might say to him, but he was powerless to move without revealing himself.
“I’m tired.” Mairi tried to turn away from him, but Symon was persistent.
“One kiss.”
Conall squeezed his eyes shut, only to see the vision of Symon kissing her, and Mairi kissing him back, emblazoned on the backs of his eyelids.
When he dared look at them again, Mairi was turned away from him, her body rigid, her head down. “I’d have some time alone e’er we continue on to Falmar.”
“Why, love?” Symon asked.
Mairi cast a look toward the trees, s
o near to where Conall stood he thought she might see him.
“Ah, I understand.” Symon smiled at her. “Verra well. Take all the time ye need.”
When Symon brushed another kiss across her cheek, Conall could swear she flinched. ’Twas naught but his imagination, his wishing it were so. He simply couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed.
She’d married Geoffrey Symon. She’d…shared his bed.
Conall stood motionless for what seemed an eternity, staring at her, his mouth dry as ash, trying to fathom how she could have done this thing. ’Twas not so very long ago she’d shared his bed, and had looked upon him with what he’d known in his heart—but had denied—was love.
This marriage made no sense to him. She’d gotten what, all along, she’d made clear she wanted. Conall had helped her get it. Deliverance from her father’s debt, her independence, a means of keeping her land and her clan intact. Why, then, had she done it? Why had she given herself to Symon?
Conall pressed his forehead into the rough bark of the pine as if ’twould stop the dull pounding in his head. All plans of retribution threatened to slip away on the icy breeze that lifted Mairi’s hair away from her face like gentle fingers. Would he make her a widow, her child an orphan, to satisfy his bloodlust?
Why, Mairi? Why?
As if in answer, she looked up and her gaze collided with his.
Mairi thought she would faint dead away.
But she didn’t. She stood there in shock, unable to move, unable to take her eyes off him for fear he’d vanish like an apparition. Aye, one conjured from her most secret yearnings.
Clad in the same garments she’d last seen him in nigh on three months ago—a dark hunting plaid and leather boots, a homespun shirt she recalled the feel of—he looked leaner than she remembered him.
In his eyes she read an almost painful confusion—one she knew well, one she, herself, had felt throbbing inside her like a dull ache these past months.
“Conall,” she whispered, simply to hear his name on her lips, a name she hadn’t uttered since last they were together.
He took an awkward step backward, and her feet moved of their own accord in response. His gaze flashed briefly to the clearing where Geoffrey stood with his men in a tight circle, sharing oatcakes and passing a wineskin amongst them.
Mairi ignored them and moved into the cover of the trees, drawn to him as if by some force outside her body. When at last she reached him, she fought an overpowering urge to throw herself into his arms.
“Mairi,” he breathed, and looked at her, studied every feature, as if seeing her for the first time.
They stood inches apart, yet he did not touch her. She felt his breath on her face as she looked into his eyes, yet he made no move to kiss her.
She thought she might die if he did not.
At last she had the presence of mind to speak. “Why have ye come?”
The question fueled an uneasiness in his expression.
“No reason,” he said. “Save to…wish you well. You and…” He nodded toward the clearing. “Symon.”
His words caused her stomach to clench. Her hand flew instantly to her abdomen.
“Are you…” He grasped her arm, as if to steady her should she falter. His touch alone was enough to make her want to weep. “Are you unwell?”
“Nay, far from it.” She shook off the roil of emotions welling inside her and looked away. “I’m well, quite well.”
“And your babe?” He nodded at her hand resting on the soft swell of her stomach.
Her gaze flew to his. “Ye know?” He’d heard what Geoffrey had said to her a moment ago. How else would he have known?
“Oh, aye.” He shrugged and cast her a brief smile. “That’s…why I’ve come, in fact.”
Her heart stopped. “Is it?”
How had he known? No one knew, not even Dora until a handful of days ago. But he did know, he had known—she could see it in his face.
“Aye.” He stepped back, putting an arm’s length between them, his gaze flitting over the foliage, then skyward, then up the hillside where she saw a tethered mount and Jupiter peeking out at her from a bush.
“So then…” She moved toward him and boldly placed a hand on his arm. “Ye dinna mind the idea of the babe?”
“Not if it makes you happy.” He met her gaze again. “Does it, Mairi?”
She couldn’t believe his answer. Perhaps she’d misjudged him. But if that were the case, why had he stayed away all these months? Why had he left her to begin with?
“Aye,” she breathed. “More than I can tell you.”
He went stock-still at her words, and said nothing in return. Her momentary joy turned to doubt.
He fixed his gaze on the loamy earth between them and spent what, to her, was an excruciatingly silent moment, nudging a stone with his booted foot. She’d seen him do that once before, the night of the explosion after he laid the dead body of his kinsman John gently upon a rock. ’Twas as if he were searching for words and none would come.
When she thought she could bear it no longer, he at last looked at her. “He shall be a good father—” his gaze flashed briefly to where Geoffrey stood in the clearing with his men “—and husband.”
Her stomach did a slow roll. She felt as if she were weightless, floating, caught in a spectral ether from which there was no escape. “Geoffrey, ye mean?”
“Aye.”
“Then…”
“Aye.” He drew himself up, redoubling his grip on the broadsword that, oddly, he’d seemed to be using to support himself the last minute or so. “’Tis a good match. You chose wisely, Mairi Dunbar.”
Never once in their past association had he used her surname when addressing her. His manner was cool, his eyes distant. She couldn’t bear it. She simply couldn’t. Emotions she was desperate to conceal flooded her chest, constricted her throat, heating her face to burning.
“I…I must go. G-Geoffrey…” She turned, clutching her stomach, fearing she’d lose what little food she’d managed to force down earlier that day.
“Mairi.” He reached out and grasped her wrist. She froze in place, her gaze fixed on the moss clinging to a nearby tree. She feared that if she looked at him, the tears stinging her eyes would flow free, betraying her feelings.
Gathering her resolve, she drew a breath, pretending she didn’t feel how warm his hand was, how strong it felt, how right, her blood beneath the skin pulsing warm and fast against his fingers.
“Fare you well,” he said, and let her go.
At the break in the trees where the ground leveled off into the clearing, she looked back at him. For the briefest moment something flickered in his eyes, a raw grief that seemed to weigh him down, and that she, too, felt to the core of her bones. Then ’twas gone.
He turned into the wood, and for the second time in her life she wanted to cut out her heart and send it with him.
“Ye are much changed, brother, since last we met.” Gilchrist set his ale cup down beside the trencher he shared with his wife, Rachel, and cast Conall a long, measured look across the table.
“Am I?” Conall held his brother’s gaze. It had been a long time since they’d all come together here at Findhorn Castle, their birthplace and seat of Clan Mackintosh.
His eldest brother Iain sat at his customary place at the head of the table, his wife Alena on his left, seated next to Conall, Gilchrist and Rachel on his right.
Laughter and high-pitched squeals drew Conall’s attention briefly away from them to the hearth, where Jupiter lounged in front of the fire, sated from a heavy meal, busily licking the children who crowded ‘round him measuring their hands and feet against his enormous paws.
’Twas good to be home. To share a meal with his brothers and their families. To hear children make merry. To feel, at last, a part of the whole.
He realized he’d always been a part of them. They were one, a family, a clan. ’Twas he, himself, who’d put distance between them in the years since he
’d grown into a man. A distance that was measured not only in leagues, but in the casual, often charming indifference he’d spun with purpose into a shield around his heart.
He knew, now, why he’d done it. To protect himself should he lose them. To be certain such a loss would not break him. And he had nearly lost them, both of them. Iain to battle, Gilchrist to fire. He glanced briefly at his brother’s burned hand gently cradling Rachel’s, and remembered.
Loving Mairi Dunbar had made him see the truth of things. But too late.
There’d been a price to pay for his distance, and ’twas dear, too dear. He knew that now. Love was a gift not to be held in check for fear of its loss, but to be spent lavishly and with abandon, risking all.
Losing Mairi had taught him that. Again, too late.
He smiled wanly at Gilchrist, then looked away, fixing his gaze on the fire as he absently drummed his fingers on the table next to his untouched trencher of food.
A moment later, a serving maid he’d once enjoyed sidled up beside him and refilled his ale cup, and purposely grazed her breast against his arm. Conall ignored her.
“His appetite for food has waned nearly as much as his appetite for women.”
His sister-in-law’s comment drew much laughter from the men at the far end of the table, though she herself did not laugh. Nor did his brothers.
Alena turned to him. “You love this woman.”
’Twas not a question. He felt his brothers’ eyes on him but did not return their stares.
When he’d arrived at Findhorn earlier that day, Conall told them what they hadn’t already known about the events at Loch Drurie, his departure nearly three months ago, his meeting with Symon in the wood, the abduction, and how he made his way back to Falmar intent on revenge. As predicted, his absence had been credited to his flighty nature. Foul play had ne’er been suspected. Lastly, he’d told them what he’d witnessed between Mairi and Geoffrey Symon in the clearing.
But he hadn’t told them everything.
Perhaps now he should.
“Aye,” he said quietly, and looked into his sister-in-law’s pale eyes.
“Then what the devil are ye doin’ here with us?” Iain boomed. “Go after her, man.”
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