Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (19 page)

The blacksmith gave the guard who’d held him a beleaguered glance, and shrugged away, slipping past him into the hall. He came straight toward the dais, his stride full of purpose, but Jaime saw only worry writ upon the man’s face. “’Tis my son,” he declared. “Baird is gone!”

David leaned over the table, scowling suddenly. “For
this
you interrupt your laird and king?”

Recalling himself at the sight of David’s scowl, the man slid Jaime a pleading look.

“Might your boy simply have gone to the gaols?” the king inquired. “Little lads love intrigue.”

The worried father shook his head. “Nay,” he said, neglecting to address David properly and David’s fury only deepened. It was writ there upon his face but the blacksmith seemed not to notice. “I told my boy to stay—the thing is, I know my son,” he said more frantically as the king rose from his seat.

“Bedamned!” David exploded. He smacked his palm atop the wooden table. The sound reverberated throughout the hall. Inasmuch as David insisted Jaime never use formalities while they were alone, he knew the king took offense to the lack of respect from these brutish Highlanders. He had spent his early life incurring a lack of respect from Henry’s brother William Rufus, and watched his brother Edgar endure even more whilst he was king as Rufus often failed to accord the Scots any due respect.

“If ’tisna one thing ’tis another,” the king proclaimed, and began to cough. “Steorling, please!” he entreated.

Jaime slid off the table, realizing David was barely rested and far too irritable to deal with aught. He started toward the errant blacksmith, hoping to turn the man out of the hall before David could assign him to the gallows.

“My laird, the king’s priest has arrived.”

“At last!” David declared, “Bring him in. Bring him in.” Looking entirely relieved, the king sat again.

Jaime pulled the worried father aside. “Come,” he directed the man. “Tell me where it is you last spied your errant boy.”

Appearing even more distraught, the father shuffled his feet. He opened his mouth to speak, and seemed to struggle with words. He hung his head, staring at the ground. “Ye see… I… er… well, I found… something,” he said, and then he met Jaime’s gaze, and seemed reluctant to continue.

Jaime waited patiently to hear what more the man had to say, but at that very instant the priest sauntered in, full of pomp and all his divine glory. The blacksmith was suddenly forgotten as Jaime’s thoughts returned to Lael.

To his relief, Rogan’s steward approached, his manner hardly so gruff as before. “Dinna worry,
laird
, he said. “I’ll help Afric find his son.” Grateful for Maddog’s willingness to help, Jaime stepped aside. “Thank you,” he said, and released the blacksmith into Maddog’s charge.

“Come,” the guard demanded, waving Lael out of the room.

It was quite fortunate that she’d slept in her clothes. Stone-faced, with gazes that peered beyond her, they led her out into the corridor, down the stairs and then more stairs, ignoring her no matter how many times she asked.

“Where are you taking me?”

Only the sound of their footfalls along the empty corridors breached the silence. “Ach!” she exclaimed. “May your tongues rot in your mouths.”

Keppenach was a very grim place, she was coming to realize.

Despite that the tower was little like the donjon tunnels, it was nevertheless mean. Along the corridors there were no tapestries, no furs. The floors had no rushes, neither dirty nor clean. The furnishings were sparse and there were few windows affording little light. She eyed her surroundings with distaste, wondering how her dear sister-by-law had ever lived this way.

To some Dubhtolargg might seem crude in comparison, with its ancient wooden hall and surrounding huts, but at home, there wasn’t a room or a cottage that wasn’t suffused with warmth and love. Here, there was little to engender any.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked again.

Once again, stubborn silence met her question, and she shrugged away as one of the guards pressed her shoulder in an attempt to guide her down the stairs.

“Dumb Sassenachs,” she muttered.

The keep was entirely too quiet, prickling at her nerves. At the instant she would settle for even David’s haughty voice.

It was only once they arrived in the great hall that she realized why the castle seemed so bloody quiet: The entirety of Keppenach’s population was waiting outside the door—likely to witness her sentencing.

Nevertheless, Lael lifted her head and held her tongue as they led her into the great hall, noting that Scotia’s dubious king had already seated himself in the laird’s chair whilst the Butcher stood before the laird’s table beside

David’s prelate—the same bumbling priest he’d sent summer past to see Lìli and her brother duly wed. She recognized the balding simpleton. In his hands, he held his holy cross and a strip of ribbon.

The hairs on the back of her nape prickled.

Jaime’s heart leapt at the sight of his unknowing bride.

He felt David’s gaze upon him but studiously ignored the king. For that matter, he refused to acknowledge the tiny thrill that quickened inside him. No matter that he told himself he was merely doing his duty, somewhere deep down he realized that was not entirely the case. All he needed to do was say, “no.” David would not force him. The king was wise enough to realize that he must appease his barons—particularly those he was counting on to tame the tempestuous north.

He watched her walk proudly into his hall and in that instant he experienced an overwhelming desire to gentle her wild heart. Merely the thought of holding her in his arms made his blood sing through his veins.

Dressed in a soft-green woolen gown that fell high above her ankles, she nevertheless wore it like a pagan queen. Her long, ebony tresses lay loose at her back, although she’d bound it at her temples with tiny braids that helped to tame the lustrous black locks. Her brilliant green eyes were deep set in a finely sculpted face that could have been an effigy to the gods. She was lovelier than any woman he had ever beheld… even when her green eyes met his and speared him with spite

The king addressed her first. “I trust you ken why I dinna rise to greet you, dearest Lael.”

She tore her gaze away from Jaime to face David of Scotia, and it was only then that Jaime realized how greatly she affected him, for the release of her gaze was oddly physical.

She smiled serenely at the king—a gesture that belied the vicious gleam in her jewel-like eyes—and then she glanced down at her hands once more bound before her as though in prayer. “I trust ye ken why I dinna cut out your Sassenach heart,” she countered with grace.

Jaime tried not to smile at her mettle, but his lips betrayed him and he turned away, clearing his throat to conceal an unanticipated chuckle. She was lovely as a rose and twice as prickly, he could tell. God’s teeth, but a near hanging and two days in his gaol had hardly softened her in the least. Even more than Keppenach, she was a challenge he would rise to with immense pleasure.

At her answer, David’s face mottled with anger, but to his credit he remained seated, pushing away Aveline’s cloak with a look of disgust. “Enough with the niceties,” he exclaimed. “You are here for one reason and one reason alone.” He pierced her with an angry glare, and said pointedly, “In fact, you are
alive
for one reason, and one reason only—because of my good graces.”

Simply for effect Lael rocked backward upon her heels.

“Yours?” she asked, then dared a glance at the Butcher.

Inconceivably, the demon was smiling, though not with his lips. His eyes glinted with amusement.

“I think not,” she said, returning her gaze to David. “Lest my eyes deceived me, it was not ye who rode like a demon angel through those gates. ’Twas your Butcher.” She refused to look at him again, unnerved by that smile in his smoky eyes. Let him be amused if he so pleased. Lael refused to commune with him. He was not her friend, nor was he her ally. And she didn’t want to share his smiles.

David’s jaw visibly tightened. “Nevertheless. As you say, he is
my
demon butcher—my champion—and so he rides in
my
name,” he argued ridiculously. “Thus, it was I, in truth, who spared you from those gallows, make no mistake, Lael dún Scoti.” His look was smug and he cocked his head at her in that officious manner that always managed to irk her so much. Then he tapped a finger upon the table. “Were I to ask him to hang ye here and now, what do ye suppose he would do?”

Despite that the possibility sent a frisson of fear down her spine, Lael shrugged and tilted him that very look she knew her brother hated for he thought it belligerent. “I dinna ken,” she replied sweetly. “Why do we not ask him?” And then she looked straight at the Butcher to see what he would say.

To her utter annoyance, the man simply stood there, looking at her with a new glint in those steely eyes.

When she glanced back at David, he too was smirking. “Clearly ye’ve no love for me as I’ve no love for ye,” he suggested, “so let us get to the point. Ye’re a smart lass,” he said. “So this is what I propose: Wed your demon angeland for that I’ll set Broc Ceannfhionn free.”

For an instant, Lael wasn’t certain she’d heard the man correctly. However, one look at the Butcher assured her that she had. He stood there looking at her, smirking behind those sinfully beautiful lips.

“You want me to wed the Butcher?” she asked, to be sure.

The king shrugged. “There are some who call him by that name, aye.”

Lael’s mouth opened to speak.She peered suddenly at the priest with entirely new comprehension. The priest’s look was smug as well. He stood rocking back and forth on his heels as though he were restraining himself from a victory dance. And now that prickling sense of foreboding she’d felt upon entering the hall became all too clear. They’d brought her in shackles to her own wedding!

“I will not!” she declared.

“Aye, ye will,” David said evenly, and then he waved a hand at someone standing behind her. Lael turned to find four well-armed men marching Broc Ceannfhionn into the hall. Filthy and bound in chains, they forced him to his knees just inside the door and then surrounded him, hands ready upon their hilts. Broc’s mouth was bound, but he shook his head adamantly, telling her without words not to comply. Mercy, but he couldn’t know what it was they’d asked of her, or he would realize that she could never live with herself if she allowed him die to save her pride. Alas, but that was all that was at stake here since she needn’t remain wedded to the Butcher even after the vows were spoken. By law, she had a right to leave him whenever she pleased.

“So ye will,” David reiterated, “or I’ll take Broc’s head.” He nodded once to affirm his position. “And then… I’ll take yours and send it to your brother on a targe.”

Behind her, she could hear Broc struggling against his captors, but the sounds were stifled nearly at once.

Disbelieving the turn of events, Lael cast the new laird of Keppenach a disbelieving glare. “You would wed a woman who would not have you?”

The Butcher’s face was a mask. For a long instant he did not answer, and then he did. “In truth, nay,” he said, surprising her. “But my lady, you do have a choice, do you not?”

King David’s expression turned even more self-satisfied, if that were possible. “So what will it be?” he pressed.

Behind her, Broc Ceannfhionn continued to protest. She could hear him attempting to rise and she turned to spy one of the guards bat him across the back to force him down again. That same man drew his sword and placed it to Broc’s neck. Another seized Broc by his golden locks and held him down.

Lael’s heart twisted. She took refuge in anger. The cords of her neck tightened. She couldn’t in good conscience say, “nay,” but she would see them regret this day.

“
If
I agree to wed
him
—“ she couldn’t even speak his epithet “—ye will set Broc free? Here and now?”

The king smiled thinly. “Not so easily done, my dear. First ye shall wed the new laird of Keppenach, get his babe… and
then
we will set Broc free. So what’ll it be?”

Wed the demon butcher, or see Broc die before her eyes—then join him too upon the executioner’s block.
That was her choice.

Her entire life she’d trained to fight as men fought, to hold herself above the trappings of her sex… and this is what it came to after all?

She couldn’t look at
him
, refused to even look into that knowing gaze. “I’d as soon challenge
him
for my freedom,” she insisted. “If in fact he is your champion, let him choose a weapon and I will match him here and now.”

The hall erupted with laughter and Lael was at once disheartened. For all that she’d already matched these men blade to blade, they saw her as little more than chattel. In truth they were already English, and Scotia was naught but a name, for they had all forgotten from whence they came. Their ancestors were strong men and women—both valued for what they could bring to a clan. Her own folk would never forget, and her brother would never devalue her this way.