Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (38 page)

Broc’s grin widened. “Aye, though if you’ll allow me to send word to the MacKinnon. We’ll fill your stores at once so then ye may fill my belly.”

He said it as a jest, but truth was laced amidst his words.

Jaime gave him a nod. “Consider it done, but for now, let me return to my wife, lest she discover precisely where I spend my time. It suits me well enough to let her believe ye’re down here suffering,” he said with a wink.

Broc’s hand snaked out to seize him by the shoulder. “Love her well and love her long,” he entreated. “She’s a good lass.”

“I will, my friend. I will.”

Broc shook him gently. “Go and get ye a bloody bairn so I can go home to my wife before my bollocks turn blue.”

Jaime laughed. “At least it willna be on account of the cauld.”

“I hear the burr in your words already, Sassenach. Ye’ll make a fine Scotsman after all.”

The two men shared another laugh and then Jaime left and Broc returned to his
uisge-beatha
, contemplating the strange turn of events.

If all went as it should, he might yet return to his bonny Elizabet before the snows entrenched themselves for the winter. He prayed to God Lael was as pleased with Jaime as her husband was with her, and that their union would quickly beget a child with lungs as powerful as hers.

His conversation with Broc at the fore of his thoughts, Jaime climbed the steps to his bower. He was surprised to discover his wife already there, seated upon the bed, unplaiting her hair.

“Jaime?” she said, startled from her revelry.

It was the first time ever she’d spoken his name, and it gave him a rush of unbridled pleasure. He entered the room, closing the door behind him, staring like a besotted youth despite himself. In the soft light, she was a raven-haired goddess, with soft rosy cheeks and eyes that glimmered by the firelight. Soft ebony waves fell across her shoulders wherever the bindings were loosed.

He tried to find his voice, but words escaped him so he crossed the room and poured himself a dram, determined now to find a way to restock the heady drink.

“I never thanked ye properly for my gift,” Lael said with a smile in her voice.

“Your smile was gift enough,” Jaime assured her, and Lael rose from the bed, her feet moving of their own accord. Before she could think better of it, she laid her hand gently upon his shoulder and he froze at her touch.

Try as she might she could not stop thinking of the way he’d gazed at her while gifting her his mother’s dirk—so full of anticipation it wrenched at her heart.

Never in her life had she received a gift that bespoke so much trust. Coupled with the tenderness of their first night—and every night since then—everything she thought she knew seemed wrong.

In truth there was little chance for a Sassenach butcher and a daughter of her people but here, in their tower room, with no one about to judge them, it was so much easier to see him as someone other than who he was: her captor, in truth.

And yet…

He turned to face her, his gaze so full of uncertainty.

Lael lifted a finger to his brow, tracing his scar gently with her thumb, as though to heal it by her touch.

“Will you come to leave me, Lael?”

She gave him a rueful little smile. It was impossible to say what might have been had she come to him of her own accord. Her gaze pleaded with him to understand. She answered with a question of her own. “Will ye set me free?”

His silver gaze penetrated her to her very soul. “Nay,” he whispered, answering truthfully.

Unbidden his fingers moved to the plait she’d yet to unbind, untangling the braid and combing his fingers gently through her hair. And then, because there was naught more to be said, he moved his hands behind her nape and drew her close for a tender kiss.

But after all… I have love for you.
“Ach ged a bha… tá grá agam duit,”
she whispered into his mouth. He responded with a little shudder as he swept his tongue between her lips. Falling readily into his embrace, Lael only prayed he wouldn’t ask her what it meant.

Recalling the strange box beneath the bed in the adjacent room, Lael went immediately up the tower stairs, curiosity getting the better of her.

With her gift from her husband tucked into one hand and a fire iron in the other, she flirted with a smile, thinking that perhaps it gave her far too much pleasure to feel the bite of cold steel in her hand—nearly as much as it gave her to hear her husband utter the word, “yes.”

While breaking their fast she’d simply asked him if she could employ the adjacent room for her maids, and he had agreed.

Her sister Cat once swore that men were easy enough to please, and it certainly appeared to be so. The more Lael embraced her husband, the more eagerly he gave her her heart’s desires—anything save her freedom or a visit to the gaols. Those were two things she could never broach without his temper turning to ire.

Ach, well, until the opportunity arrived for her go, it would serve everyone far better if she simply endured her sentence with a smile. After all, she hardly wished to be recalled the way she remembered poor Aveline of Teviotdale—morose, unfriendly and ill fated from the first. In fact, she needn’t embrace misery at all. A caged bird might sing a lovely song, but if you opened his door, he would spread his wings and fly away; so too would she. Broc
must
return to his people and so must she.

No matter what feelings Lael might now bear the man she was coming to know as her husband, this was not some good faerie’s fabrication. Lives were at stake, not merely her own. She could no more forget about Broc Ceannfhionn, and carry on as though she were a blushing bride, than she could seem to ignore the yearnings of her traitorous body.

And yet… if she had simply known what drove a woman into a mon’s bed, she might not have been quite so stubborn about staying out of them. Now at last she understood all the titters of her friends.

As for Mairi, Ailis and Kenna… She hadn’t told them yet about the tower chamber, but she hoped they would be as pleased as she was. Once the room was emptied the lassies could use it as they pleased—as a solar perhaps? Though first she intended to retrieve that box and then she planned to fill those peep holes in the wall. It hardly pleased her to know that anyone could spy into either room from the other side.

Contemplating which of the MacLaren lairds must have placed those holes, and which had had the ill-graces to use them—mayhap all—she shoved the gifted blade into its sheathe at her belt and then opened the door and went straight to the bed, getting down to her knees to peer beneath.

There it was, precisely where she’d left it, at the far corner, shadowed in mystery. Her belly fluttered.

What else could it be but someone’s secrets?

Feeling giddy with anticipation, she pushed the fire iron beneath the bed, and with it, she batted the box gently until it was in a position to drag it out from under the bed and then, leaving the iron on the floor, she slid the box out and lifted and placed it upon the bed, sitting down beside it.

For a long moment, she simply admired the box itself. It was exotic. Made of some type of soft wood, it was carved and painted along the sides with lions, stags and wolves. Expectation fluttered once more in her belly as she set her hand to the lid, though upon opening it and peering within, she was at once disappointed with the mysteries it held.

It was filled with small pebbles and a child’s bloodstained teeth, along with sundry baubles—a copper penny, with the front-facing image of a king surrounded by the words Pillemus Rex. The reverse side of the coin bore a cross and she could make out the words
on Lewes.

The coin was a curiosity, because they didn’t use them Dubhtolargg. Everything was bartered there. If a roof needed mending, they pitched in together. She did not ken the need for amassing metal coins. It took up space better used for something else. And the metal itself would make far better tools.

But this, again, was not her life, and it was yet another reason she must leave. This was a place where coffers were built to safeguard shiny metal pieces that were more intended to proclaim one’s worth.

Disgusted, she tossed the coin back in the box, and her gaze fell upon three small rolled parchments.

Halfheartedly, she unrolled one and found it to be a king’s list—something she had not seen since she was a child. Una kept one in her grotto, though since it had little bearing on their lives, Lael paid it little mind. Sorcha was far more enamored of Una’s books—far less practical than a knife, no matter what Una claimed.

Expecting to find naught more worthwhile, she unrolled a second parchment and began to read aloud. And then blinking at the words, she reread it again.

To Dougal MacLaren, heir to Keppenach, Dunloppe and lesser manors, your father gives ye greeting.

Here and now I deliver ye a child goes by the name of Kenna. She comes by way of Maddog, your bastard brother. As I once held affection for the child’s mother, I bid ye keep her well until my safe return. And if therein I should fail, you being my sole heir, and your sons thereafter, I entreat upon ye to regard the child as kin, giving her all that is due her as a child of my blood.

Subscribed and sealed on this eleventh day of September by me, Donnal MacLaren, forebear of Domnall mac Ailpín, brother to Kenneth, and laird of Keppenach, Dunloppe and lesser manors.

Lael let one end of the parchment go, allowing it to re-roll itself on its own. Kenna… was Donnal MacLaren’s daughter. That would make her… a bastard sister of Dougal, aunt to Stuart and Rogan MacLaren, despite her tender age…

But what was far more intriguing was the fact that Kenna hailed from Dunloppe. Could she be any relation to her husband?

Stunned, she replaced the parchment in the box.

“What’s that ye’ve got?” a man’s voice inquired.

Startled from her reverie, Lael quickly closed the lid. “Naught but trinkets,” she answered, looking up to find Maddog peering in from the doorway. It was the first time he’d spoken to her since he’d attempted to hang her, and for the first time, she realized Luc was no longer shadowing her and she frowned, peering about.

“Trinkets?”

“Aye.” She turned the box, scooping up a handful of teeth and pebbles to show him, uncertain why she would keep the rest hidden from his view. The contents of the box no doubt would be of interest to him, and yet… something kept her from revealing what it contained.

He seemed to lose interest in the box quite suddenly. “At any rate…
my lady
.” The title clearly did not come easily to him. “I’ve come to speak wi’ ye if ye would.”

Lael rose from the bed. “Of course,” she said, but she didn’t want or trust him in the room, so she abandoned the box and brushed past him into the hall.

Just as she knew he would, he followed her out onto the landing. There he shuffled his feet. “I am truly sorry for all the trouble I caused.”

Lael cocked her head, unable to keep a measure of impertinence from her voice. “D’ ye mean perchance for trying to hang me?”

He met her gaze directly, looking contrite. “Aye.”

She was being rude, she realized. Since that first day, Maddog had scarce spoken to her. He had left her to her own devices, and in the end, he had done naught more than she would have if the tables were turned. “I suppose in your shoes I may have done the same,” she allowed, and started down the stairs, intending for him to follow.

They had at least that much in common, so she must forgive the ill-mannered lout for doing all he could to safeguard his kin—especially after learning what she had. After all, it certainly seemed he had far more to lose than most.

Far below she could hear them preparing the hall for the dinner hour. The chaos echoed up the stairwell. Lael was keenly aware of Maddog behind her, and so she stopped, one hand upon the rails. It was hardly unreasonable to consider he might think to shove her down the steps, but she realized the thought was oversuspicious, coming from a child leery of betrayals. It was no easy task to overcome the manner of her father’s death. But it was not like the man hadn’t already attempted to kill her once. She peered down to see if anyone was nearby to see or overhear them.