Read Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) Online
Authors: Tanya Anne Crosby
Tags: #Historical Romance
“Nay!” her husband barked, releasing her nevertheless.
Lael placed her hands upon her hips, raising her voice despite that he did not. “Ye said I could!”
His gaze stabbed her as sharply as any blade, but he lowered his voice yet again. “I said you could send the man a plate. You may
not
visit him yourself. I have given word to the guards to keep you out of the gaols. Our bargain does not include sharing my wife with a traitor to the crown.”
Lael glared at him, infuriated and taking refuge in her anger. “As you will,
my laird
. After all, this is
your
home. It will
never
be mine!”
With that said, she spun on her heels and hurried from the hall, not daring to turn to see who might be watching. She didn’t want anyone to spy her tears—tears she refused to shed, but they stung her eyes nonetheless.
Cursing her husband to the netherworld, she hurried up the tower steps, ceding to his will, but if he thought she would be waiting for him in his bed, he was sorely mistaken.
Swollen and bruised, Cameron MacKinnon lay sleeping peacefully, though Cailin herself had barely slept at all. After many long hours of sitting by his side, the braided candle was nearly spent. Its flickering light cast unsettling shadows on his face, contorting it hideously. Black and blue though he might be, he no longer seemed to have the pallor of death upon his skin.
He slept less fitful now that Lìli had given him a draught of white willow bark and valerian. The willow bark would ease his pain, Lìli said, and the valerian would keep him resting whilst his body healed. His ribs were cracked, his right arm broken as well, but much of the blood they’d found upon him and upon his clothing and Lael’s horse had come from elsewhere—which boded ill for Lael.
With grim thoughts of her sister, the entire mood at Dubhtolargg was somber now. Worry etched new lines upon every face, and poor Una, who now sat sleeping intermittently in a nearby chair, hardly needed anymore. Yet such as it was, with snow pummeling the vale, there was not a chance anyone could learn more than whatever news Cameron had yet to tell—as yet not a bloody word, and Cailin sat fretting for her eldest sister. She fretted too for Cameron although she scarcely knew him.
At long last, her brother had ceased pacing in the hall and had gone to bed along with his wife. But if Lael died, Cailin knew her brother would never forgive himself. Alas, but there was no way to know where she was or how she fared and not even Cailleach herself would have ventured out in this dire weather. One good gust of icy wind could freeze a man to stone and none would chance to find him again until the spring. By then, the wolves would have had their way and picked the bones clean. Cailin knew precisely what they could do after last winter’s snows melted and they’d discovered what was left of Rogan MacLaren up on the hill.
Alas, the snows came too early this year.
More than three feet of powdery drifts greeted them outside the crannóg and not even Una dared return to her grotto up on the mount. For the first time in nearly ten years, the old woman slept beneath the crannóg’s roof, keeping vigil at Cailin’s side. She’d fallen asleep merely an hour ago. Cailin refused despite that she was forced to keep her lids pried with her fingers.
Cameron moaned suddenly, fidgeting restlessly as he had begun to do. “Dinna go,” he said, still asleep, and Cailin moved a little closer to listen.
She touched his face gently with a hand, feeling the temperature of his cheek. “Cameron,” she whispered when he said naught more. “Cameron MacKinnon.” She patted his face tenderly, bidding him to wake.
Una snorted awake. “Leave him be!” she demanded, and Cailin started at the sound of her withering voice. “Let the lad rest.”
“But I heard him speak,” Cailin said in her own defense.
“Pah!” Una exclaimed. “Ye’ll kill him yet if ye dinna give him peace. ’Tis nay time for ye to be pining over a bonny face.”
Feeling utterly helpless and guilt ridden—and a tad resentful because Una thought she cared only about Cameron MacKinnon’s face, she sat back to watch him rest whilst the wind whistled overhead and the crannóg moaned like an auld crone with gout in her bones.
“I hear the
bean sìth
,” Una whispered low and rose. She scurried from the room more swiftly than any old woman should, and returned momentarily with new candles. She set them all about the room and one upon the bedside table next to Cameron, then lit them all so quickly that Cailin swore she lit them all at once.
“Gird your loins, child,” Una warned as the room was set aglow. “No matter what Lìli has said, I hear the
bean sìth
wailing at our door! And before I heard her wail, I spied her in a dream. She sat washing your sister’s cloak in Caoineag’s Pool, where the waters were cast to red.”
A terrible shiver swept through Cailin, for it did not take a seer to know what that meant:When the
bean sìth
wept into the howling wind, her mournful shrieks heralded only death. “Cailleach save us,” she whispered softly.
“Ach, child, she can do no such thing,” Una lamented. “Only the fates may intervene. Now, please, let the laddie rest.”
Fat snowflakes drifted down from a bruised sky as the last rays of sunlight stabbed through icy clouds. Lael closed the shutters against the rising cold and peered about the stark room.
Winter so soon has arrived.
Even if she could find some way to free herself now, there was no way to traverse the mountain path. Until the spring, south was the only way to ride, and naught awaited her there save more Sassenach loving Scots.
However, for the sake of argument, if they were to take a route south and double back to
Chreagach Mhor
, where her sister Cat now lived, she might take refuge there until the snows melted come spring. And yet it was pointless to devise such plans because she was stuck here, not for the least of reasons that included her spoken vows. Inasmuch much as she didn’t wish to recall those, she had very little choice. Her brother Aidan would say that a man or woman’s word was law unto itself. The price of breaking it, even once, was the trust of their kin. No man or woman worth his salt would fail to honor his word.
Crossing the room to the bed, she muttered an oath to herself, vexed still, though she wished not to be.
Her husband, for all his subtleties, was a despotic cur!
At least she had one place to find respite from her enemy—meager as it was. Sighing with abandon, she lay back upon the crude little bed and watched a fading sliver of sunlight creep along the gray ceiling.
She wished she’d kept the poniard for naught more than to toss it at the shadows—but her husband’s nose would be a better target.
Her head muddled with mead, she lay watching the shadows creep into the room. And then she recalled the box beneath the bed.
Curious as to what it held, she hopped off the bed and got down upon her knees, peering beneath the bed.
Intrigued enough to brave the cobwebs, and the spiders and dust balls that were each the size of Una’s keek stane, she shimmied beneath the sagging bed…
Acutely aware of Lael’s absence from the hall, Jaime took his leave and climbed the stairs, eager to speak with his wife.
Perhaps the occasion was not precisely to either of their liking, but no matter where the year should leave them, there must be a measure of peace for the sake of everyone involved. It would be a long winter otherwise, and the discord would weary them all.
Whether by spite, or whether she’d genuinely intended to impress him with her skills as chatelaine, he had a sense she knew how to manage a household well. That was how he intended to cry peace—by giving her a role in his home that she could embrace. And perhaps in time she would soften enough and find a way to embrace her husband as well?
Grateful that Kieran had arrived to help set the castle to rights, his head nevertheless swam with lists of duties left undone. It was little wonder Lael had been quick to temper for they had all been through a trial here, his beautiful bride none the less. If possible, it seemed the past two days had shaved years off his life.
He’d given Luc leave to remain in the hall. For all his travails, the lad looked a bit worse for the wear after trailing Lael about all day long, from one corner to the next. In fact, he’d lied when he’d told her he’d warned the guards against allowing her down into the donjon tunnels, but this much was certainly true: He didn’t relish the thought of sharing even an instant of his wife’s time with Broc Ceannfhionn.
Jaime had never been a jealous man, but there was something about their friendship that gored at his gut like bull’s horns.
Still, it could be that he owed her an apology…
perhaps
… and then again, it might be true that any leeway he gave her she would use it to harass him.
Lovely little vixen.
As much as his wife was certain to be, ambivalence was his newest bedfellow.
In his haste to reach her, he leapt over the top two stairs and his heart gave a tentative flip as he opened the door, expecting to find her brooding in the laird’s chamber. After David took his leave from Keppenach, he’d returned here to prepare the chamber for his wedding night, for despite that this was a hurried union, he didn’t intend for their first night to be perfunctory.
The room was empty.
Jaime’s first thought was that she had disobeyed him and gone down to the gaols despite his wishes, but that simply wasn’t possible. He’d had his eyes trained upon the stairs, for the most part ignoring every word Kieran uttered, in the hopes of spying his bride returning to the hall. She could not
possibly
have passed by without Jaime seeing her, of that he was certain.
He peered around the room just to be sure, his gaze alighting on the bath he’d had drawn for her, the clean shift he’d had a maidservant fetch and the empty goblets with the flagon of
uisge
beside it. Warm and toasty from the fire he’d lit earlier, the room remained dim, barely bright enough to see that not a soul was there.
His gaze skidded to the window, finding the glass intact and no sign of tampering. He did not think she was foolish enough to climb outside, and neither would it serve any true purpose since, in truth, she could leave at any time… though not without sealing Broc’s fate. She was a prisoner only to her word, even though he had yet to tell her so in quite those terms. He’d set Luc upon her as an escort as much for her own protection, for he did not know these people as yet.
Suddenly realizing where she must be, he spun to face the next door in the uppermost hall… Did she prefer to spend her first night as his wife alone in the dark and cold simply to avoid him?
“Spiteful wench,” he muttered beneath his breath and spun toward the door, intending to put his wife precisely where she belonged.