Bride for a Knight Read online

“He spoke to you?” Aveline hurried back to the head of the table, smoothed the damp hair back from the old man’s brow. “When was this? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “He came to me in his bedchamber,” Munro managed, his gaze sliding to Jamie. “He told me if I took all the candles I can carry to St. Maelruhba’s chapel and lit them in penance, he’d ne’er visit me again.”

  “‘Candles’?” Aveline glanced at Jamie.

  Jamie shrugged.

  Morag stopped dabbing at Munro’s wound long enough to jerk her head toward a dark corner of the dais. A familiar-looking wicker basket stood there, heaped high with fine wax tapers.

  Fine wax tapers splattered with red, as was the basket itself.

  “The candles the Lady Aveline brought for him from Fairmaiden,” Morag explained, taking the fresh wet cloth Gelis handed her and dropping the bloodied one into a pail.

  She pressed the new cloth against Munro’s torn flesh, then looked their way again. “We found the crossbow bolt in the basket of candles. He was carrying it when he was hit.”

  Aveline gasped, clapping a hand to her breast.

  Jamie frowned.

  He could well imagine why Neill’s bogle wanted Munro’s hands full once he’d lured him outside the keep.

  Even old and addle-headed, Munro Macpherson was a hard man to beat with blade in his hand.

  And everyone in these parts knew it.

  But before Jamie could think on it further, a cleared throat and a hesitant touch to his elbow startled him. Turning, he came face-to-face with the stable lad who’d been holding a dirk in the flames of the hearth fire.

  The lad indicated that dirk now. He’d wound several layers of thick leather and cloth around the hilt and was holding the thing as far from his body as he could.

  Jamie understood why.

  The dagger’s broad, two-edged blade glowed redder than the gates o’ Hades.

  “Holy saints,” Jamie swore, his stomach clenching. He nodded to the stable lad, all else forgotten.

  He didn’t dare look at his father.

  But he had to.

  Yet when he did, Munro was staring past him, an awed-looking smile hovering on his lips. “Iona,” he breathed, his gaze fixed on the empty shadows of a corner.

  Chills swept down Jamie’s spine and the fine hairs on the back of his neck lifted. Iona was his mother’s name. And with surety, she wasn’t standing across the dais looking at Munro.

  She’d been dead since Jamie’s birth. A tragedy his father had ne’er let him forget.

  “My Iona,” Munro said again, and a tear trickled down his cheek. “Nay, I am not afeared,” he added, his strained voice sounding just a shade stronger.

  Then his eyes cleared and he looked straight at Jamie. “The searing,” he said, unblinking. “Do it now, son, and be done with it.”

  “So be it.” Jamie took the red-hot dagger from the wide-eyed stable lad. He jerked the instant his fingers closed on the well-padded hilt, the throbbing heat from the blade nigh scalding his hand. And he was only grasping layers of cloth and leather! Unthinkable what the fired blade would do to his da’s naked flesh.

  Wincing, he slid a warning glance to the four men holding his father. At once, Morag nodded and pressed the gaping flesh together. Then, before Jamie lost his nerve, he stepped closer and lowered the blade to the wound.

  “Awwwwwwwwggghhh!”

  Munro’s cry and the loud zish of burning flesh pierced the silence. Blessedly, his eyes also rolled back into his head and his body went still, leaving the echo of his pain and the horrible smell of singed flesh to his kin and those others who cared for him.

  The deed finished, Jamie stepped back, glad to drop the searing dirk into the pail of water someone thrust at him. Then he wheeled away from the table and stood silent, waiting for the bile to leave his throat.

  From the corner of his eye, he could tell that Morag and the MacKenzie women had taken over. His old nurse and Lady Juliana were already spreading a healing salve onto the newly-branded flesh and Gelis and Arabella stood close by, strips of clean bandaging in their hands.

  “Come, you, let us be away abovestairs.”

  Jamie turned and found Aveline peering up at him, an indefinable promise in her sapphire eyes, a pleasing curve to the sweetness of her lips.

  She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers with his bloodstained ones. Her gaze went to Munro then back to Jamie. “You can do no more for him. Not this night,” she said, leaning into him, her words for him alone. “I would see to your needs. If you will come with me.”

  “My needs?” Jamie cocked a brow, wishing he hadn’t let show how deeply branding his father’s flesh had affected him. “It had to be done, lass. Sorry though I am to have hurt—”

  “You misheard me. That is not what I meant, though I know the searing cost you,” she said, her gaze dipping just enough to let a heat of a very different sort begin flickering across a certain sensitive part of him. “I am thinking you might favor a bath?”

  The flickering heat became an insistent throbbing. Jamie cut a glance at the hall’s large double-arched hearth fires, the heavy iron cauldrons of steaming water suspended above the crackling flames.

  Water heated in vain for a siege that wasn’t.

  He looked back at his bride, his pulse quickening even when his conscience balked at leaving his father.

  “He will not waken until the morrow,” Aveline said, making him think she’d peered into his mind. When her gaze then slid to the steaming cauldrons, he was sure of it.

  “The water is already heated,” she added, the soft huskiness of her voice convincing him. “There is surely enough for a long, leisurely bath.”

  Jamie nodded. He agreed entirely.

  His lady smiled and Jamie was well pleased to let her lead him toward the stair tower. He could use a bath. The morrow would be soon enough to renew his efforts to root out the mysterious bogle.

  Neill’s bogle. And a few other things weighing heavily on his mind.

  But one of those things resolved itself halfway up the winding turnpike stair, the answer hitting him in the gut with all the punch of a well-aimed fist.

  As if someone had reached out and ripped blinders from his eyes, he knew why he’d felt such a wrench when he’d seen the fear in his father’s eyes.

  That fiery squeezing sensation had been more than mere sympathy.

  His heart had heard what he hadn’t.

  Tell me, Da, was Neill wearing his wet plaid …

  His own words came back to him and he paused to press a hand against the cold stone of the stair tower wall lest his knees buckle beneath him.

  A crossbow bolt and a red-hot searing knife were not exactly the means he would have chosen to come to such a stunning pass. The result was earth-shattering all the same.

  And so utterly amazing he was tempted to whoop for joy.

  Under any other circumstances, he would have.

  As it was, he simply gave himself a much-needed shake before grabbing his bride’s hand again so they could resume their spiral ascent to Kendrick’s bedchamber.

  He didn’t need whoops and chest-thumpings to celebrate. Nor even a night of revelry and free-flowing ale. What he’d learned was more than enough.

  In truth, more than he’d e’er expected.

  For the first time since he could remember, he’d called his father Da.

  And even more astounding, his father had called him son.

  Chapter Twelve

  That same night, Baldreagan’s kitchen lads filled buckets of hot water from great iron cauldrons and lugged their sloshing burdens abovestairs to the linen-lined bathing tub in Kendrick’s bedchamber. And as they went about their task, another very different cauldron simmered and bubbled elsewhere. Across darkening peaks and silent glens, dubiously scented steam rose from this second cauldron. A fine, black-sided cauldron, this kettle’s murky waters weren’t intended for any lairdly son’s leisurely bathing pleasure.

  Nor were t
he nameless objects floating on the water’s surface meant to fill anyone’s hungry stomach.

  A scrying cauldron, the kettle served one purpose and one indomitable soul.

  And its keeper, Devorgilla of Doon, the most far-famed cailleach in the Highlands, had already made use of its powers earlier that night.

  Just as she had every e’en for some while, hoping to catch a glimpse of a certain faithful friend. A valiant, true-hearted friend who’d been away on a special mission, and was overdue to return.

  She’d tried to scry his whereabouts in the soft hour of the gloaming, when the veil between all things of legend and wonder tended to be at its thinnest. But this e’en as on the other nights, she’d failed.

  Even the especially powerful charms she’d tossed into her cauldron in the hopes of enhancing her success only turned the usual pungently scented steam into rankly foul smoke. She addressed this nuisance by opening her window shutters and seeking her pallet for an early night of dream-scrying. A method nowise as reliable as her cauldron’s seeing steam, but the best she could hope for if the steam refused to cooperate.

  Annoyingly, her dreams denied her as well and rather than the return of her brave and adventurous friend, she only saw Baldreagan’s distant walls. Her dreams showed her through those walls and into one of the keep’s darkest and oldest stair towers, her sleep filled with images of trudging feet and well-filled pails of heated water.

  Churning, racing water, too.

  White and deadly.

  Blessedly, the tiredness of her bones let her slip into a deeper, dreamless sleep. One not plagued by such devil’s waters, though her ears, e’er sharp and keen, still rang with endless, trudging footfalls.

  Even though she made her pallet a good distance from Kintail and the deep pine hills of Baldreagan.

  Truth be told, anyone seeking her wisdom would have to journey for days over rough and treacherous land, then sail across miles of shining, moon-silvered water to reach the great sea cliffs of Doon. Proud and forbidding, they rose darkly from the Hebridean Sea, their precipitous heights privy to many ancient secrets.

  Now, as Devorgilla slept, heavy sea mist clung to those cliffs and the night wind fell light. Especially along the crone’s own stretch of the jagged, rock-bound coast. There where the Old Powers still lived and breathed, and only Devorgilla’s wee cottage broke the loneliness of the shore.

  Few dared follow the narrow stony path to her dwelling’s misty hiding, tucked as it was in deep heather and dark, sheltering rock, but of those souls brave enough, most were made welcome.

  All were received hospitably.

  Even those of darker hearts and ill luck, for such was the Highland way.

  Some visitors, of course, were eagerly seen and even greeted effusively.

  One such soul arrived now, slipping quietly out of the inky black shadows and into the little clearing in front of the low, thick-walled cottage. Sure of his welcome, the visitor sought the center of the moon-gilded clearing, knowing well that he’d soon be noticed.

  He was expected, after all.

  And the cailleach had been getting impatient.

  He knew that because the thin blue line of peat smoke rising from the cottage’s thatched roof carried a tinge of the crone’s more powerful spelling goods.

  Pleased by such tangible evidence of the crone’s regard, the visitor stretched and yawned, then sat on the night-dampened grass and waited.

  Soon he’d be praised for a job well done.

  And the crone’s eagerness to see him might mean he’d receive a more generous reward than usual—especially when she learned how successful he’d been.

  Not that anyone named after the great Somerled, King of the Isles, would be anything outside of victorious.

  He was hungry, though. And thirsty. He’d journeyed far and his task hadn’t been easy. O-o-oh, aye, he decided, watching the moon slide out of the clouds, he could use a bit of the pampering the crone showered on him when he pleased her.

  And tonight, she’d be very, very pleased.

  So he looked round to make certain none of his friends or kin were about and might see him. Then, once assured that he was alone, he allowed himself a small and seldom-used breach of his usual dignity.

  He barked.

  Devorgilla’s eyes snapped open.

  Somerled. He’d returned.

  Relief sluicing through her, the crone pushed up on her elbows and peered about, looking for her little friend. Then full wakefulness came and she realized he’d be out in the moonlight.

  Somerled favored silvery, moonlit nights, claiming they were as conductive to his magic as Devorgilla’s own favorite soft hour when night fell and the mists gathered.

  He barked again and Devorgilla cackled with glee, her pleasure helping her to her feet.

  “He is hungry,” she said, glancing at her other four-legged companion, her tricolored cat, Mab. A creature nigh as old as Devorgilla herself but a deal more crotchety.

  Leastways in Devorgilla’s view.

  Curled at the most comfortable end of the pallet, Mab pointedly ignored her rival’s return.

  She simply opened one eye, her look of disdain assuring Devorgilla that her feline sleep concerned her far more than a certain adventure-seeking red fox was troubled by an empty belly.

  “You, mo ghaoil, ate your fill of herrings this e’en,” Devorgilla reminded her as she pulled on her boots. “So, my dear one, surely you will not begrudge Somerled a wee bowl of gannet stew?”

  Another of Mab’s superior stares said that she did. The seabird stew was one of Mab’s favorite dishes. And definitely tasty enough to please Somerled.

  Even so, Devorgilla hobbled to the door and opened it wide. Her little friend sat silhouetted in moonglow in the middle of her charmed glade, the grassy clearing that shielded her from unwanted, prying eyes.

  Somerled’s eyes watched her now.

  The little red fox had magical eyes.

  Beautiful, expressive, and wise, his eyes could tell whole tales with one carefully aimed stare and as he stretched to his feet and came forward, Devorgilla knew that his mission had been a success.

  A tremendous success.

  “Ah, my precious,” she crooned, stepping aside to allow him into the cottage, “I see everything went as planned.”

  Somerled strolled around the cottage, then chose to sit in the warmth cast by Devorgilla’s charcoal brazier, his expression assuring her that he’d succeeded indeed.

  But his task hadn’t been without difficulty and as she filled a wooden bowl with the fine-smelling gannet stew, he let her know that he suspected she’d soon have reason to send him back to Baldreagan.

  Truth tell, he was so sure of it, he would have stayed and not yet bothered himself with the long journey to Doon did he not know the crone would be fretting about him.

  That, of course, he would keep to himself.

  Devorgilla had her pride, he knew.

  And while she also had a surprisingly tender and sentimental heart, he knew she secretly enjoyed knowing how fearsome some folk considered her.

  “We shall not think about that this night,” she said, setting down the stew and a small platter of bannocks smeared with honey and bramble jam. “If there is a need for you to return, the Old Ones will let us know.”

  A large bowl of fresh spring water followed, and a smaller bowl filled to the brim with her very own specially brewed heather ale.

  But Somerled deserved a special treat, so she waited until he began eating the gannet stew, then she shuffled to a hanging partition of woven straw that hid a small larder off the cottage’s main room.

  Shoving aside the straw mat, she stepped into the cool dimness of the larder, quickly gathering choice portions of her best cheeses and dried meats, a generous handful of sugared sweetmeats.

  These treats she arrayed on not one but two good-sized platters, carrying them over to the handsome little fox with all the glory-making ado a woman of her years could muster.
/>   “So-o-o, my fine wee warrior,” she crooned, her face wreathing in a smile, “in honor of your triumph, two platters of delicacies for you.”

  Raising his paw in acknowledgment, Somerled thanked her, then made haste to avail himself of his reward.

  His just reward, if he did say so himself.

  Much pleased, he deigned to ignore Mab’s hostile stare and finished off the gannet stew. He’d enjoy his remaining victory victuals—both platters of them—at a slower, more leisurely pace.

  As befitted a great hero.

  And he had no doubt that he was one.

  Indeed, if he had two long legs rather than four short ones, he was quite sure someone would’ve knighted him for his most recent knight-like accomplishment.

  Sir Somerled.

  He could almost hear the accolades. The trumpet blasts and horn blowing, the cheers from maidens fair.

  Instead, he realized with a start, his horn tooting was only old Devorgilla’s fluting snores.

  Poor soul, she’d fallen asleep on her three-legged stool beside her cook fire. Not wanting her to waken any more stiff than could be avoided, Somerled fixed his golden stare on her, working his magic until she stirred herself and, still sleeping soundly, returned to her plaid-covered pallet.

  A penetrating look at her thin-soled black boots saw them slide easily from her feet. And one last stare tucked the plaid gently around her, draping her clear to the tip of her grizzled chin.

  Satisfied, he decided he really should begin to think of himself as Sir Somerled.

  He was, after all, the wisest, boldest, and most magical fox in all the Highlands.

  He was the most successful, too.

  A true champion, as his two platters of reward delicacies proved.

  He just hoped he’d be as triumphant the next time.

  Back at Baldreagan, darkest night curled around a certain stout-walled tower and a biting chill slipped through the wooden slats of the bedchamber’s brightly painted window shutters. Freezing autumn rain pelted those shutters, but the brilliant, jewel-toned colors shone fetchingly in the candle-and-torch-lit room, their romantic whimsy bearing yet another reminder that the chamber had belonged to Kendrick.