Only For A Knight (30 page)

”

 

Nay, but Robbie’s intended bride—is—a great beauty.

 

Linnet shook her head, not certain if she’d spoken the words or if they only rang so loud in her ears.

 

For truth, each one came almost as deafening as the thundering hoofbeats of the lathered horse hurtling ever faster toward the distant horizon—pounding at full gallop through a world of blueness that now surrounded Linnet, filling her vision with the deep blues of the hills and the sea, the water even reflecting the blue of the sky.

 

Her heart racing, its thunder joining the drumming beat of the horse’s hooves, Linnet gripped the seat of her stool, tried not to see the horse or even the dark flurries of wind on the water now showing between the broken cliffs of a strange coast.

 

Cold, tossing water that should have been the skirts of her sister’s blue-colored gown.

 

But Caterine’s skirts were nowhere to be seen.

 

The voluminous folds were ululating and expanding to blot out the Lady’s Solar and plunge Linnet into a landscape she knew she’d ne’er glimpsed, where for mile upon lonely mile not even the humblest cot-house could be seen.

 

Only the sea and the sky.

 

The great hills stretching away in endless succession.

 

And a flame-haired lass riding pillion behind a man who looked like Robbie but was not. The maid sat rigid, her arms wrapped tight around the man, her endlessly flowing tears copious enough to fill an ocean.

 

The man’s face appeared to be sculpted of granite, his tight-checked fury icy enough to freeze Linnet’s heart.

 

Lady . . . ’tis long I have waited . . .

 

The strange words echoed from the blue darkness swirling round her, an ever deepening blue, its edges now tinged with soft-glowing gold . . . a pulsating red-gold that crept outward across the blue land, swallowing the galloping horse and its two riders, then embracing and engulfing Linnet herself until she stood alone surrounded by a sheet of ringing flames.

 

Nay, not quite alone for the male rider was returning on foot.

 

Linnet straightened her back at his approach, even squared her shoulders in preparation for a confrontation—her fear chased by a burning need to hurl challenges at the man for the cold mien and stony silence he’d turned to the flame-haired maid’s proud anguish, her river of tears.

 

But then he came closer and Linnet’s heart plummeted.

 

At once, a new terror iced her skin and froze her marrow, filling her with a numbing cold such as she’d ne’er dreamed existed . . . despite the heat of the raging inferno blazing all around the fiend coming so sure-strided toward her.

 

Not the rider at all, she now realized, but a magnificent-looking man whose heart-stoppingly handsome face she’d ne’er once seen without a roguish grin, his wickedness shimmering all around him—a sickly greenish black glow that marred his beauty and marked him as a truly evil man.

 

A man who, in life, had been her lord husband’s bastard half brother, Kenneth MacKenzie.

 

A dead man . . . a
ghost . . . whose flashing smile and glimmering aura of evil-green were no more, the wrenching sadness replacing them, scattering her terror and twisting her heart as none of his e’er so silkily spoken words and false chivalry could have done.

 

“You!” she cried, some small part of her blessedly aware of the hard stool beneath her, someone’s tender hands pressing a cooling cloth to her forehead.

 

Gentle hands that held her steady in place on the three-legged stool when her body’s own limpness threatened to send her sliding onto the floor rushes.

 

“Kenneth. . . .”

 

“Aye, fair lady,” said the apparition as he sketched her a gallant bow—just as he’d done so often in the past, using his undoubted charm to spew his darkness on whoe’er was fool enough to be blinded by his smooth tongue and high looks.

 

“You are dead,” Linnet stammered. “Run through by Sir Marmaduke’s sword—”

 

“Aye, and a well-deserved end it was,” Kenneth owned, his deep voice . . . accepting.

 

His gaze pinning her, he came closer, the flames licking round him scorching her, the intensity of his heat scalding the breath in her lungs.

 

He reached a hand toward her, let it fall as quickly.

 

“Ach . . . dinna cringe, my dear lady,” he said, a shadow crossing his still-handsome face, the ne’er forgotten richness of his voice curdling her blood.

 

“I told you once that you had not seen the last of me . . . that we would meet again,” he said, the sad echo behind his words undermining her best efforts to shield herself . . . to hide from whate’er vileness he desired of her.

 

“You are a ghost,” Linnet protested, her fingers clamping round the edge of her stool. “I am not . . . seeing you.”

 

“Alas . . . I am here all the same, fair lady.” He shrugged, flashed her a travesty of his old smile, his voice so close by her ear she feared his sulfurous breath would singe her hair.

 

“But ne’er you worry . . . ’tis not forgiveness for long-ago sins that I ask of you.” He made an expansive gesture with his hand. “You can see I am doing ample penance, am slowly losing the taint of deeds, a life I truly repent.”

 

Linnet tried to look away from him, struggled to leap from her stool and run from the solar . . . escape
him.

 

But her limbs had turned to lead, holding her soundly in place and damning her to the whims of her
gift’s
latest nightmare.

 

Not that her heart would have allowed her to flee if even she could, for something in Kenneth’s eyes held her captive and made some small part of her heart melt for him . . . let her almost believe his anguish.

 

The depth of his pain . . . the soul-wrenching plea her fright-filled ears refused to hear.

 

“A boon, naught more. . . .”

 

That, she heard, and her eyes rounded with terror.

 

Sakes, she could even feel her own heartbeat pulsing through her body, tickling fingers of ice creeping up and down her spine.

 

“A boon?” The two words left her tongue of their own volition, scarce more than a squeak but the specter heard them . . . and smiled satisfaction.

 

He nodded at her, his smile deepening, but unlike his earthly smiles, this one held warmth and hope. “Naught that you cannot give without pain . . . so as I have e’er observed you.”

 

Linnet swallowed, her heart falling open just a wee bit more when he crossed his arms in a gesture so like the Black Stag’s her breath snagged in her throat.

 

For one full crazed moment, she glimpsed his once-pulsating handsomeness, the spent and wasted vitality, and . . . sorrowed for their loss.

 

And her husband’s loss, for she knew that once, in another time and place, he’d trusted and loved this man to the last inch of his soul.

 

Her Duncan’s only brother.

 

Bastard, blackguard, or nay.

 

“The boon, milady . . . I ask not for myself, but for them.”

 

“Them?”

 

Nodding, he pointed to a fluttering tear in the sheets of flame surrounding them . . . a narrow, vertical opening that showed thronging clouds of blue and bright-glinting water, a tiny speeding horse with two riders streaking at a pace across the high moors toward the horizon, soon to vanish from view.

 

“I do not understand.” Linnet pushed the words past the dryness in her throat. “You must tell me more.”

 

But the specter was retreating now, his every backward step taking him deeper into the wall of crackling flames and letting her catch sweet, reassuring glimpses of the Lady’s Solar’s own tapestry-hung surrounds.

 

“I made many wrong choices in my life, milady, e’er took the darkest path or walked in the bitterest winds,” he said, his voice fainter now, the flames fading with his image.

 

Would that I could undo my misdeeds. . . .

 

Linnet blinked, scarce hearing him for he was now little more than a shadow before the hearth, his once-proud form only visible at all because of the flickering vermilion edging his fast-fading silhouette.

 

His last words no longer spoken but borne on the night breeze circling round the solar.

 

Pray, dear lady, have mercy on one who repents and do not let innocents pay for my ill doings . . .

 

Do not allow her to flee . . . be gentle to him when he comes . . .

 

I beg you on your soul . . .

 

And then he was gone, leaving only a still, sepulchral darkness behind.

 

Linnet shuddered, hugged herself against the sudden biting cold. She glanced round, not yet convinced he had vanished—not truly certain he’d come at all.

 

For the only flames now crackling in the Lady’s Solar were the smoky-sweet ones licking quietly at the red-glowing peat bricks on the hearthstone.

 

And the only blue in good glimpsing distance proved Lady Caterine’s skirts and the deep late-night blue pressing hard against the tall, arch-topped windows.

 

Kenneth’s emptiness and sadness did remain behind, the essence of unspoken what-ifs and might-have-beens, the sorrowful vestiges of an ill-spent and broken life, lingering in the air to squeeze her heart, haunt her, and fill her with a fierce and burning determination to fulfill her late good-brother’s sole request.

 

Not that she knew what exactly would be required of her—or why her husband’s long-dead nemesis would take interest in Robbie’s flame-haired lass.

 

The maid she’d glimpsed on the horse could be no other.

 

The fury-bitten man she’d not worry about—for the nonce.

 

She would do all in her power to keep the maid from fleeing, would thwart any and all attempts . . . be they with Robbie if he’d indeed been the grim-faced rider.

 

Or, if not, with any other unfortunate soul who might attempt to waylay the lass.

 

That much she could do.

 

So soon as she’d regained her composure and convinced her sister she’d only swooned o’er that one’s startling but jubilant news.

 

Drawing on a well of strength that ne’er failed to astound her, Linnet sat up straighter on her stool and grabbed her stitching cloth, using its clumsily-embroidered length to mop the dampness from her brow.

 

She’d been warned and such warnings were oft blessings in disguise, so she’d take good heed and mayhap even attempt to soften her lord husband’s bitterness toward his long-reviled late brother and foe.

 

She
had no need of magical bronze cauldrons to judge a man’s character.

 

Though a charm or a spell to help her turn her husband’s mind might be most welcome indeed.

 

But slip past his shields she would.

 

And with such stealth he’d ne’er know what had happened to him until she stood quietly before the deepest, darkest corners of his heart and shone light into them all.

 

 

Robbie stood before the single window in his old bedchamber and breathed deep of the chill night air. Blessedly
fresh
air tinged only with the damp of the rain and the cold-gritty smell of wet stone.

 

Air not tainted by the faint but pervasive bite of roused female and musky masculine lust.

 

Two odors that pulsed like a raw throb throughout the immaculate, sparsely furnished little chamber whether his teensy, flashing-eyed betrothed chose to ignore the smells or nay.

 

He noted them well.

 

As he’d also spotted the opened jar of some kind of glistening whitish ointment . . . and the jar’s telltale proximity to a small, three-legged stool.

 

A stool he knew stood in a direct viewing line beneath the little room’s well-hidden squint hole.

 

Confirmation enough that his giggling sisters had spoken true.

 

He looked down, examined the shard of the broken ewer in his hands. A jagged piece that included the ill-fated ewer’s handle—brought along as evidence and explanation for the lady’s missing dinner tray.

 

And to keep his hands busy so fidgeting fingers would not reveal his nervousness, the maddening importance of persuading the lady Euphemia to heed his proposal with goodness and grace.

 

Attributes he doubted she possessed . . . even if she did appear to be inordinately adept at
speed.

 

Frail and ailing as she purportedly was, ripening with child or no, how she’d managed to dress so quickly, and secret away whoe’er must’ve been in here, proved a puzzle too great for Robbie’s cudgeled wits.

 

Stunned disbelief still knotted his tongue, but he supposed he ought be grateful that someone relished the maid’s
enchantments.

 

He, for one, thought it best to admire her from a distance.

 

For the nonce, the scant breadth of his boyhood chamber would suffice.

 

Later, so soon as he’d made her more amenable to his suggestions and settled certain matters, as far apart and miles distant as he could arrange.

 

With hope, a Douglas would savor her enticements as a Highland heiress enough to accept her with a swelling belly.

 

“Ah, well,” he said at last, twirling the ewer shard round his thumb, “mayhap if I’d not dropped your dinner tray and you’d been able to stave your hunger, you would not find the notion of wedding a Douglas so unpalatable?”

 

She colored—and held her perturbed silence. Save for a quick, harsh cough and a barely audible imprecation she could not quite keep from slipping out with the cough.

 

A low-muttered spot of insult that had sounded suspiciously like . . . hen piddle.

 

Hen piddle on the Douglases.

 

Ignoring the slur, Robbie glanced at the still-opened door. “Shall I order more victuals?” he asked, giving her his most solicitous smile. “Another dinner tray . . . and with two goblets?”

 

Not to be intimidated, however peaceably, she squared her shoulders and frowned.

 

“I am not a plump-bottomed and complaisant byre-wench to be cast off to another, shoved aside as carelessly as the people of this castle toss bones to your hounds,” she said in a tone of angry hauteur.