Only For A Knight (25 page)

 

Without doubt, she’d ne’er seen a more dashing man . . . save perhaps her brother. He, too, was darkly handsome, despite his scarred cheek. And his eyes were of the same deep sea-blue.

 

Even her knight’s formidable father was a handsome man, she grudgingly admitted, his dark-brooding face rising up from nowhere to bedevil her.

 

Truth be told, with the exception of his ill humor and scowls, there was little bad that could be said about the man. With surety, he appeared almost ageless . . . raven-haired save a wee sprinkling of silver, he shared the same strapping build and great height as his son and her brother, looked every bit as hard-trained as the two younger men.

 

Aye, she’d find him striking indeed, his face most bonny if e’er he’d smile.

 

But she doubted he knew how, so she drew her
arisaid
closer against a sudden chill wind knifing through the window and returned her attention to a MacKenzie who did smile.

 

And with the most delightfully dimpled smiles—reason enough to fill her mind with him and forget his grim-bitten sire.

 

“. . . many kinds . . . though the true-hearted love of a man and a woman is surely the greatest blessing under the heavens.”

 

Juliana blinked, her knight’s deep voice startling her. He’d ceased his prowling, and stood not two feet away from her, his dark blue gaze locked on her face, studying her.

 

“You did not hear me.”

 

“I am sorry,” she said, meaning it sincerely, for he was looking at her from beneath black, down-drawn brows, and with an earnestness to almost match the darkness of his sire’s stone-cast visage. “Will you tell me again what you wished me to know?”

 

“I only said that we have more in common than you suspect, and that this herbarium is a meet setting for me to share this . . .
secret
with you,” he told her. “For it was here that I spent much of my boyhood yearning for the love of a mother who cared more for her paramour than her son, and crying o’er a father who’d stopped loving me because he’d been told, albeit falsely, that I was not his.”

 

Juliana stared at him, her own cares forgotten. “Dear sweet saints, what are you saying?”

 

“Ach,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug that fell just short of appearing casual. “’Tis all long past, and best left there. I am only telling you so you believe me when I assure you that I ne’er meant to offer you an illicit liaison . . . although I know many men enjoy them.”

 

Pausing, he scooped Mungo off the floor, nestling him in the crook of his arm before he resumed his pacing.

 

“See you, both our mothers lost their hearts to dastards,” he said, kneading Mungo’s floppy ears. “Though it would seem yours was a truly good woman who merely gave her love unwisely. My own mother, I regret to tell you, was as black-hearted and evil as her lover.”

 

“Evil?” Juliana gasped, the curing stone so cold now it nigh burned the flesh of her palm. “Black-hearted?”

 

“To the bone and deeper. Their passion was not only immoral, but innocent lives were ruined or lost before they met their own respective ends,” he said, glancing at her.

 

“Castlefolk knew. They e’er hovered about, prattling and shaming my father even if, at that point, he wasn’t aware of the treachery. Uncle Marmaduke learned of it swiftly. Crusader of goodness and virtue that he is, he confronted my mother’s lover, demanding they be gone from our lands, ne’er to return.”

 

“They fought—and Sir Marmaduke lost,” Juliana guessed, recalling snatches of kitchen babble. “’Tis how he was scarred?”

 

“Aye, but not quite then,” he said. “That day Marmaduke only issued a warning. He even suggested they journey to the sanctuary of the wee Isle of Oronsay where, if they remained for a year and a day, they’d be cleansed of all sins, might even return to these parts, unmolested—but his advice went ignored and worse was yet to come.”

 

“Worse?”

 

“Much blacker, aye.” He looked at her, a shadow crossing his face. “My father’s sister, Arabella, who was married to Sir Marmaduke, overheard the lovers plotting to kill my father. They found out and had done with her before she could warn him.”

 

“Dear sweet saints.” Juliana shook her head, her pulse roaring in her ears. “I am beginning to see why your father is so grim. Merciful heavens, I have ne’er heard of such villainy.”

 

“Ach, mercy came of it in the end,” he said, setting down Mungo. “But the darkness was a long time in healing.” He fixed his gaze on the window, his face hardening with a stoniness to match his father’s.

 

“Such is the reason I spent so many years away—even though, in time, I came to have faith in my father’s affections again.”

 

He turned to face her. “I’d lost too much heart as a wee laddie, see you? I needed distance and time . . . hard deeds to rebuild and prove my faith not only in my father but in the worthiness of my own good self.”

 

Juliana cleared her throat, hoped her voice would not betray her outrage. “Your father’s reputation harkens from those dark days, doesn’t it?”

 

He gave her a wry smile. “In great part, to be sure, but, God kens, he’s earned it in other ways as well—do not be fooled. He is a hard man, as the notches in the haft of his war ax will prove, but he possesses a softer heart than most people allow.”

 

“And he knew of these goings-on?”

 

Her knight took one of the bunches of bundled herbs from the table, lifted it, then replaced it again as quickly, his expression inscrutable.

 

“At the latest, he knew the day his world smashed down around him,” he said, not looking at her. “The day his sister, Sir Marmaduke’s first wife, was murdered. The whole treachery came out then, and he confronted my mother.”

 

“As well he should have,” Juliana said, worrying the snake stone, twirling it round her palm with her thumb. “I imagine she begged for forgiveness?”

 

He cocked a cynical brow. “Nay, I do not believe so,” he said, moving to the window to stare at the darkening sky.

 

“’Tis said she fled to the battlements, him chasing after her. Kintail’s clattermouths will tell you she taunted him as she ran up the stairs, boasting to the last that I was not his . . . that I’d been sired by her lover.”

 

“And she fell from the tower—plunging to her death?” The words just came to her, some deep-buried
knowing
she must have heard somewhere, dredged from her memory like gravel stone from the bottom of a river.

 

She stared at his back, her stomach clenching. “Your father was blamed for her death.”

 

“That was the way of it,” he said, his raven-dark hair riffled by the damp wind blowing through the window. “But I swear to you, he had naught to do with her death. Of that, I am certain—as is anyone who knows him. My mother tripped on her skirts, caused her own fall to doom. But, aye, my father was blamed, and shunned, for many a year.”

 

“And Sir Marmaduke’s scarring? Your mother’s lover?” Juliana sank onto a three-legged stool near the brazier. “What happened to them?”

 

He was silent for a moment, considering.

 

“What happens so oft in life,” he finally said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Uncle Marmaduke caught my mother’s lover trying to flee. They fought, and Marmaduke lost. Both men were excellent sworders, but Marmaduke’s rage made him clumsy . . . a weakness that cost him much. My other uncle escaped, but lived to rue the day—he died by Marmaduke’s sword some years later.”

 

“Your other uncle?”

 

“My other uncle, aye.” Her knight looked down, flicked a speck of lint off his plaid. “He and my mother were lovers for several years—their liaison is why my father believed the taunts about me not being his.”

 

The damning words glittered between them like splitters of ice.

 

“That was the bitterest bile of the scandal—my father’s own brother seducing my mother.”

 

“Of a mercy!” Juliana pushed to her feet, unable to remain seated. “Ne’er have I heard suchlike.”

 

“Believe it or no, lass, there are some who would not pour scorn on such a one as my late uncle,” her knight said, surprisingly level-voiced. “Much blacker deeds than his came to ears during my journeying . . . trust me, there are enough dastards scattered about these hills—and elsewhere!”

 

“But your father’s own brother—and at such cost!”

 

“Ach, in truth, he was my father’s bastard half brother,” he revealed, a brief flash of long-ago pain in his eyes. “But, in youth, my father loved him as a true brother—or so it is said. My father will not speak of the man, even pretends he ne’er existed.”

 

“But he did, and what a dark legacy he left of himself.” Juliana frowned. “I am sorry . . . for all of you.”

 

He came forward, rested his hands on her shoulders. “’Twas a baring of the soul I felt you should hear, but remember—we were blessed with much mercy in the end.”

 

“Mercy?”
Juliana could not believe it.

 

But he apparently did, for a slow smile spread across his handsome face. “So I have said, sweetness. Come, I will show you.”

 

Juliana made a doubtful sound in her throat, but before she could form a true response, he linked her arm through his and drew her to the door, easing it open with his foot.

 

“Do you see yon walls of the keep?” he asked, gesturing toward the gray stonework barely visible through the sheets of gusting rain and mist. “Those stones have withstood the storms of centuries—and flourished,” he said, slipping his arm around her shoulders.

 

“When darkness spreads o’er them each night, those within endure—and have endured, each new generation in their time. Some may see malice and scheming, ’tis true, but they will also know joy, happiness, and triumph along with the sorrow and pain.”

 

He smiled at her, squeezed her arm. “See you, Juliana, we should ne’er forget that even the blackest night is greeted by the morn. So even though bitterest tragedy may stain my home, the blessings that followed were perhaps all the more dear.”

 

“What blessings do you mean? I would hear them.”

 

“Och, mayhap the kinds of blessings I would teach your brother,” he said, leading her back into the herbarium, away from the rain. “For one, I have learned that true-hearted love is ever worth the journey to reach it, no matter how long or fraught with hardships.”

 

“True-hearted love?”

 

A jolt of sharp-edged envy shot through Juliana at the thought of him loving, or even having loved, some other woman with the deep emotion he’d just described.

 

“Have you—have you known suchlike?” She had to know.

 

He gave her another of his disarming smiles and reached to swipe his thumbs across her cheeks, before dropping a kiss to the tip of her nose.

 

“So you would hear of love, would you?” His eyes twinkling again, he held up a hand, began counting on his fingers. “Let us see . . . I have known the love of a father, lost and regained,” he said, indicating one finger, then moving on. “Then there is the love of a faithful four-legged friend; the love between friends—even when they bicker constantly.”

 

Juliana smiled at that for she knew he meant his father and his uncle, the good Sir Marmaduke of the fabled even temper.

 

“And . . .” her knight continued, leaning so near his breath warmed her cheek, “I have witnessed the soul-deep contentment of men who are blessed to win love with the woman of their heart . . . most times when they’d long surrendered any hope of experiencing such bliss.”

 

His explanation finished, another lazy, deep-dimpled smile lit his face. “So-o-o, have I answered your question?”

 

“Nay, to be sure, you have not. I asked about
you
loving a woman.”

 

“Och, but if you do not know the answer to that, I am thinking I will not be telling you,” he said, and winked at her. “But, later this e’en, I might be of a mind to show you.”

 

“Show me?”

 

He nodded.

 

The look on his face, and its portent, heated her in all her dark and secret places—awakening the sparkling tingles, so sweetly tantalizing, an echo of delicious prickliness right at her neediest, most feminine core.

 

“Then, mayhap, good sir, I shall look forward to being . . .
educated
.”

 

“I am sure you will be most adept at learning, Juliana.”

 

Caught in his knowing gaze, she could only nod her agreement.

 

Faith, just having him so near, looking at her as he was, she would’ve sworn she could feel his hands on her body as if he were touching her again—smoothing and probing her naked flesh, his skilled fingers taking sensual measure of her every curve, dip, and hollow.

 

“Be assured it shall be my greatest pleasure to instruct you,” he said, his voice dropping to a murmur, husky and low.

 

He touched her face.

 

“I’ve a feeling you shall be teaching me a thing or two as well, and that notion delights me,” he added, those knee-melting dimples flashing again. “I rather favor a lass who knows her mind.”

 

Juliana kept her face blank of expression, not wanting regret to color this moment, the closeness forming between them. For while she might give him her passion,
knowing her mind
seemed an obstacle determined to cast shadows on her happiness.

 

He touched two fingers to her mouth, rubbed her lower lip. “We at Eilean Creag ne’er speak of past sorrows, lass,” he said, perhaps seeing her hesitation and sensing the reason for it. “’Tis e’er best to look only to the brighter path ahead,” he added, laying a note of finality onto the words.

 

“But—”

 

“You need only trust that I desire to have you as naught but wholly and truly mine . . . in the good graces of God and man,” he said, deliberately steering her away from hurtful places and into waters requiring equal but decidedly more agreeable navigation.

 

“And I
do
want you,” he added, placing his hands on her shoulders again, kneading them.

 

“But,” she said, “how can you make me yours