Bride for a Knight Read online

  Jamie smiled. “I’ll send up someone with the promised ale. See that you drink it.”

  But as he made his way back to the hall, the victory in getting sustenance into his da’s belly warred with the revelation that his cantankerous, hard-bitten father had a soft spot for Aveline Matheson.

  It remained only to be seen why.

  Chapter Three

  Jamie’s good humor lasted until almost noontide the next day. But every shred deserted him as soon as he arrived at Fairmaiden Castle and two of Alan Mor Matheson’s burly stalwarts escorted him into the stronghold’s great hall. Whether the louts appeared friendly or not, he stopped just inside the shadowed entry arch, planting his feet firmly in the rushes and folding his arms over his chest.

  The back of his neck was prickling and that was never a good sign.

  Indeed, it was all he could do not to put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Perhaps even draw his steel with a flourish. But he’d come to Fairmaiden as a friend and had thus far seen no true reason for wariness.

  Even so, the fine hairs on his nape were stirring and it wasn’t the two fool-grinning loons crowding him that caused his discomfiture.

  Big as he was, he towered over them and every other clansman milling about the aisles between the hall’s well-filled trestle tables.

  Truth was, he’d surely stand head and shoulders over the table-sitters, too.

  Though were he to heed the urge to wheel about and leave, he knew he’d be pounced on. Not that he minded a good, manly stramash. Even if Alan Mor’s underlings weren’t known for fair fighting.

  Minions his da called them and Jamie had to agree.

  Ne’er had he seen so many different plaids under one roof. Or such a large assemblage of wild-eyed, lawless-looking caterans. Broken and landless men, some were even said to hail from Pabay, a tiny islet off the Isle of Skye and home to any Highland undesirable able to make it safely to that isle’s ill-famed shores.

  But with generations of Fairmaiden lairds proving unable to sire more than overlarge clutches of daughters, there were few in Kintail who’d rumple a nose at where each new Matheson laird harvested his men.

  “Ho, lad! You look like a doomed man standing before the gallows and trying to ignore the dangling noose!” The crooked-nosed giant to Jamie’s left clapped him on the shoulder, flashed a roguish smile.

  Leaning closer, the brute lowered his voice, “You’ve no need to fear dipping your wick in aught unsavory,” he said, wriggling his brows. “There isn’t a man in this hall save Alan Mor himself who’d not give his very breath for one hour with the Lady Aveline beneath him.”

  Jamie frowned. A nigh irresistible urge to rearrange the oaf’s already crooked nose seized him.

  But he’d rather not start a melee in Fairmaiden’s hall before he’d even come face-to-face with its laird, so he ignored the temptation.

  A word of warning, however, was certainly due.

  “I’ll own Laird Matheson wouldna take kindly to any fool who’d attempt to dishonor his daughter,” he said, flipping back his plaid to display the stout, double-edged battle-ax thrust beneath his belt, the hilt of his equally impressive sword. “Nor, my friend, would I.”

  His threat set the men back; his way now clear to enter the smoke-hazed hall.

  He strode forward through the throng, the back of his neck prickling more with every step he took.

  And then he knew.

  It was the hall that unnerved him; not Alan Mor’s milling horde of cutthroats. Nor was it the reason for his visit—a neighborly call to confirm the alliance and to meet his intended bride.

  Nay, it was Alan Mor’s hall.

  A hall like any other, if notably filled with boisterous, weapon-hung men. And with nary a skirt in sight. Not the sad-eyed Sorcha or any of her sisters so far as he could see. Truth be told, Fairmaiden’s hall could be anywhere and anyone’s. Its lime-washed walls were well-hung with the usual banners, weaponry, and a few moth-eaten stags’ heads, and was filled with enough peat smoke to mist the eyes of noble and baseborn alike.

  The expected number of dogs scrounged beneath the trestle tables and a well-doing fire of birch logs blazed in the massive double hearth. And speaking for his host, the floor rushes appeared newly spread, their freshness giving the black-raftered chamber a cleaner appearance than most.

  Alan Mor clearly appreciated his comforts.

  But something bothered Jamie all the same.

  A queer sense of familiarity he couldn’t put his finger on. Something faint and elusive that slid around him, teasing his senses and making his pulse race, his breath come rapid and uneven.

  An indescribable something that unsettled him so much he didn’t realize he’d returned to the hall’s heavy, iron-studded door until his fingers closed over the latch.

  And other, equally determined fingers clamped on to his elbow. “Young James Macpherson, I’ll wager,” boomed a voice deeper than sin. “If you’re looking to refresh yourself after your journey, you’ll find what you need just off the first landing of the stair tower to your left.”

  Releasing him, Alan Mor eyed him with mock reproach. “Or were you after leaving before even meeting my daughter?”

  “Och, I wasna going anywhere,” Jamie lied, stepping away from the door. “I just thought to retrieve my betrothal gift for Lady Aveline,” he improvised, remembering the silver gilt mirror and comb his liege lord’s friend, Sir Marmaduke, had once pressed on him.

  Gewgaws, Kenneth had called the gifts, but Jamie liked them. And he praised the saints he’d been so gripped by his arrival at Baldreagan, that he’d forgotten to fetch them from his saddle pouch.

  An oversight that salvaged the moment for Alan Mor slapped his thigh, beaming approval. “So you are the gallant I heard tell you were,” the man said, and with fervor. “Not at all like your ill-winded, stiff-necked father.”

  “My da says much the same of you,” Jamie returned, measuring the other. “He—”

  “Your lout of a father is blessed to have a son with a more honest tongue than his own!” Alan Mor barked a laugh, then threw an arm around Jamie’s shoulders. “Come, lad, and meet your bride. You can fetch whate’er bauble you’ve brought her later.”

  Setting off toward the raised dais at the far end of the hall, he shot a sidelong look at Jamie. “If there even is a bauble?”

  “Och, aye, that there is,” Jamie confirmed. “A mirror and comb of finest silver,” he extolled, hoping the other man wouldn’t guess he’d had no intention of making the items a betrothal gift.

  Truth be told, he’d thought to present them to Baldreagan’s cook—in the hope of securing extra portions. A necessity for a man of his size and appetite.

  “The mirror is well crafted,” he offered, maneuvering around a sleeping dog. “It’s thought to be from an ancient Celtic horde or perhaps of Viking origin. The silver is—”

  “A silvered mirror!” Alan Mor enthused, his voice ringing as they stepped onto the dais. “Heigh-ho! Did you hear that, lass? I told you Young James would do you proud. Such finery! Now what do you say?”

  “I say him welcome,” came a quiet voice from the far end of the high table.

  A softly melodious voice, calm and steady, but edged with a definite trace of reserve.

  Jamie’s brow furrowed.

  Alan Mor barged forward, seemingly oblivious.

  “And you, lad?” He nudged Jamie toward the lass. “What do you think of my Aveline?” he boomed, waving an expansive hand. “Is she not fine?”

  Jamie looked at her and drew a sharp breath, his world upending.

  Aveline Matheson was more than fine.

  She was his faery.

  And recognizing her almost stopped his heart. As did her perfume of violets and sun-washed summer meadows. A sweet, fresh scent that went to his head so quickly he’d swear it was making him drunk.

  It also let him know what had bothered him upon entering Fairmaiden’s hall.

  It’d been her scent.


  He’d recognized it.

  Jamie swallowed. Saints, he felt so light-headed the floor seemed to roll and dip beneath his feet, letting him feel almost as unsteady on his legs as the one time he’d had the misfortune to cross the Irish Sea.

  Even worse, his birthday tunic, donned especially for his visit to Alan Mor, seemed to have grown even tighter. So uncomfortably tight, he was tempted to slip a relief-spending finger beneath his shirt’s fancily embroidered neck opening.

  And all the while the Lady Aveline sat watching him, an unreadable expression on her beautiful face.

  Her unblinking eyes the very sapphire shade he’d imagined.

  Not that it mattered whether she blinked or not.

  He was surely blinking enough for the both of them. And, the saints pity him, the whole of his great, hulking body tingled beneath her steady gaze.

  Alan Mor grinned. “Well?”

  “She is beyond lovely,” Jamie managed, his heart thudding. “A vision.”

  He started to reach for her hand, but thought better of it and gave her a low bow instead.

  He’d crushed more than one knightly bravo’s fingers with the firm grip of his overlarge hand. His intended bride had the tiniest, most delicate-looking hands he’d ever seen.

  Unthinkable should he forget himself and clasp hers too tightly.

  Nor was it wise to touch her silky smooth skin, however innocently. Not with that blue gaze locked on him and her bewitching scent of summer violets wafting so sweetly beneath his nose.

  “Lady, you bedazzle me,” he said, powerless but to speak the truth.

  Her lashes—gold-tipped as he’d suspected—fluttered in surprise. “And you, sir, should have allowed yourself time to catch your breath before coming here.” She slid a glance at her father and her lips tightened ever so slightly. “My sorrow that we could not have met under more auspicious circumstances.”

  She stood then, placing her dainty fingers on Jamie’s arm. “I am ever so sorry for your loss.”

  Jamie nodded, her sympathy warming him.

  She stood proud before him, for all that she barely reached his shoulders and that the wildly flickering pulse at the hollow of her throat revealed the nervousness she strove so well to hide.

  An edginess her father dismissed with a loud hrumph.

  “’Fore God! An auspicious meeting!” He clapped a hand on her shoulder, pushing her back onto the trestle bench. “What more favorable way could the man begin his return home than coming here to meet you?”

  To Jamie’s astonishment, a flash of hot anger flared in her eyes and she lifted her chin, the stare she fixed on her da every bit as challenging as any foe he’d e’er faced down on a field of battle.

  “Aside from some quiet time to mourn his brothers, some might say a more propitious beginning might have been to count the coin in those coffers you delivered to his sire,” she declared, holding her father’s gaze. “My marriage portion, you’ll recall?”

  Jamie arched a brow, her cheek secretly pleasing him.

  Alan Mor laughed. “Ne’er you worry about Munro and his siller. That old he-devil e’er gets what’s a-coming to him and he cares far more about the sweet grass in our grazing lands than what’s in those strongboxes.”

  Jamie looked from his intended bride to her father and back again.

  He cleared his throat. “If several large, iron-bound chests in my da’s bedchamber are meant, I dinna believe he’s opened them.”

  “Hah! Just what I meant!” Alan Mor hooted another laugh. “The man has other worries these days and that’s why I’m of a mind to help him turn his thoughts elsewhere.”

  The words spoken, he thrust a hand beneath his plaid, fumbling inside its folds until he produced a small leather pouch.

  “Let no one say I’m no’ letting this alliance cost me,” he announced, slapping the pouch onto the table with a flourish. “I sent clear to Inverness for these, had them fashioned by the most skilled goldsmith known to do business in that den of robbers and money-pinchers.”

  The Lady Aveline turned scarlet.

  Jamie eyed the small leather pouch, suspicion beating through him.

  Alan Mor turned a pop-eyed stare on them both. “Well, it would be inauspicious to use the rings meant for Sorcha and Neill now, wouldn’t it?” Grinning, he snatched up the pouch and opened it, letting two gold and sapphire rings tumble into his hand.

  Jamie stared at him, his amazement only greater when Alan Mor plunked his treasure on the table and beckoned to a man hovering in the shadows of a nearby window embrasure.

  A man Jamie hadn’t noticed until now.

  A dark, heavy-set man with hooded eyes and garbed in the robes of a monk.

  He strode forward, his intent writ all o’er him.

  “Baldric of Barevan,” he announced, inclining his head to Jamie. “I am well acquainted with your sire. He’s gifted our humble church with more than one fine stirk down the years.”

  “Has he now?” Jamie folded his arms.

  “Och, aye.” The monk flicked a glance at Jamie’s bride, his slitty-eyed gaze holding a shade more appreciation than suited a man of God. He returned his attention to Jamie. “Your union with the Lady Aveline will surely raise your sire’s spirits.”

  “Say you?”

  “Ahhh, to be sure.” Brother Baldric lifted his face heavenward, made the sign of the cross. “He knows God’s hand is in the match. Why, just the other e’en he told me how much he’s looking forward to grandsons.”

  Jamie arched a brow.

  The man was a bald-faced liar.

  And if Barevan church in distant Moray did lay claim to a Macpherson bull, they’d paid out their noses for the privilege. Like as not double what Jamie’s da usually wheedled out of cattle buyers.

  “Good sir,” he began, “everyone in these hills knows my father has gone out of his way to avoid churchmen since my mother’s unfortunate passing, claiming he’d prayed his last and lost his faith that ill-fated night.”

  Baldric of Barevan shifted from one foot to the other.

  He said nothing.

  Jamie went on, regardless. “See you, my father would sooner walk naked through a blizzard before he’d gift a wee church clear across the Highlands with one of his prized stirks. Truth be told, before he’d make any church such a gift.”

  This time the monk slid an uncomfortable glance at Alan Mor, but that one only shrugged. “I’ve no idea what Munro does with his cattle,” Alan Mor claimed, settling back in his laird’s chair. “I only know he agreed to this alliance.”

  “Aye, that he did,” Jamie confirmed, if only for the sake of Lady Aveline.

  Honor and tact forbid him to add that his father was anything but pleased about seeing the lass tied to him. ’Twas a match with one of Jamie’s many cousins he’d agreed to.

  Munro Macpherson had been cozened.

  Just as the smooth-tongued, hand-rubbing monk and Alan Mor were now attempting to do to him.

  So he wasn’t about to argue about bulls, or his feelings about his sainted mother’s death. Not with two such obvious blackguards.

  And with other serious matters bearing down on him. Namely which sensation plagued him more—the one that felt like a noose slipping over his head or that his knightly spurs seemed to be getting weightier by the moment.

  Putting back his shoulders, he eyed the monk and his smug-looking host. The ever-growing circle of grinning, sword-hung Matheson henchmen crowding around them. Most especially, the Lady Aveline. Saints, the maid was tiny enough to ride a milkweed for a steed. And she had the most lustrous hair he’d ever seen.

  Jamie took a deep breath, deliberately turning his mind from her beauty. At the moment he needed his wits about him.

  Refusal or chivalric duty.

  Those were his choices.

  And if his guess about the holy man’s presence proved accurate, he’d need to decide soon.

  Unfortunately, his annoyance at being duped must’ve shown because his bri
de-to-be’s eyes rounded as her gaze flitted between him, her da, and the monk. And unless his own eyes were failing him, she even looked a little faint, all color draining from her face.

  Worse, she’d begun to tremble.

  But she surprised him by leaping to her feet and wheeling on her father. “You swore he knew the betrothal ceremony was this noon!” she accused him. “You’ve made a fool of me—letting me dress in my best gown and braid silver ribbons into my hair! You looked on when Sorcha left the hall, telling her you understood why she couldn’t bear to be a witness, reminded of the day she pledged herself to Neill.”

  “Now, lass.” Her father raised a hand. “You ken I ne’er do aught without good reason.”

  Ignoring him, Aveline jammed her hands on her hips and aimed an equally livid glare on Brother Baldric. Likewise the rough-looking clansmen who’d crowded onto the dais.

  “All of you knew!” she railed, her blue eyes snapping. “Everyone knew save the most important soul beneath this roof. James of the Heather!”

  She glanced at him then, both sympathy and agitation pouring off her.

  “He wasn’t told. Just look at him. ’Tis plain to see he knew naught of this.” She pressed a hand to her breast, drew a great breath. “I will not be party to such a deception! I—”

  “You are beset by the womanly fears that seize every bride on such a day,” Jamie declared, her distress making his decision for him.

  That, and the endlessly heavy weight of his spurs.

  Feeling that weight pressing on him, he stepped closer to her, using the width of his back and shoulders to shield her from curious stares. If there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate it was seeing a woman mistreated or shamed. Blessedly, in this instance, he had the means to salve her embarrassment.

  He straightened his back, steeling himself to lie for the second time since entering Fairmaiden’s hall.

  “For truth, I swear to you I knew about the betrothed ceremony,” he vowed, certain a lightning bolt would strike him dead on his ride back to Baldreagan. “My da told me of it when I arrived yestereve.”

  She looked at him, disbelief clouding her eyes.

  Jamie slid a finger beneath her chin, lifting her face toward his. “Think, lass. Why else would I have brought you a fine mirror and comb as betrothal gifts?”