Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] (45 page)

Working with the Caen limestone was always comforting to her. The stone cut easily, willing as butter, never crumbling, never in need of force. It was almost fluid under the touch of her tools, as if the stone knew the shape she wanted it to take.

Not so her dreams. She heard Sebastien walk toward her.

"Alainna?" he asked. "What is it?"

"You cannot stay at Kinlochan," she said bluntly.

"I told you that I would go, I know. And I must find my son. But I will not leave here until I have returned the hospitality Cormac showed to us on his land," he said grimly.

Her hands trembled. "Do not change your plans," she said. "Go to Brittany and find your son. That is most important to you, and that is what you must do."

"Surely you can see that I must meet Cormac first," he said.

"I do not want you to fight this endless feud," she answered stubbornly. "You have other goals, other matters to attend to. You have fulfilled the king's orders here." Her fingers shook so on the chisel that she put it down. But she was too anxious, and could not sit idle.

Picking up the mallet and an iron punch, a pointed tool, she began to clear excess stone away from the left side of the design, where the background needed deeper cutting. She set the point in place and smacked its handle.

"Why this change of heart?" he asked. "Not so long ago, you wanted me to stay."

She smacked again, freeing a chunk of creamy white limestone. A new ridge was exposed in the stone. She brushed her fingers over it and drove the punch with the mallet again.

"Alainna," he said sternly, "stop that and talk to me."

"You cannot stay here," she insisted. "Your son awaits you. He must be raised in Brittany, and you must be with him." She hit the point handle hard.

"All I know now is that I will face Cormac-MacNechtan and seek payment for the lives of my comrades."

"Do not change your plans. Go back to Brittany." Again she struck, and a wedge of stone flew to the floor. The lumpy ridge seemed larger now, an imperfection in the stone. She had not suspected the flaw earlier.

"I cannot as yet."

"We do not need you here. We can fight our own feud, as we have always done. When you leave, our handfasting will be voided, and... my kinsmen will choose another to help us, as we planned to do all along—before the king sent his champion."

Heart pounding, she regretted the words as soon as they were said, for she knew they would hurt him; she had wounded herself by uttering them. But she followed an almost desperate need to convince him to leave Kinlochan.

"I see. You have decided that you would rather have your Celtic warrior after all, than settle for a foreign knight."

"It is not that at all." She shook her head in misery. "If you stay, Cormac will attack again. He may kill you next time." She angled the point to cut away the flaw in the stone. "He will never give up until he sees you dead." She hit the chisel.

"So that is what troubles you," he said softly.

"Go to Brittany," she said. "Go to France, or even back to Dunfermline. Find your goals and be content."

"My goals have changed," he said. "Even as we speak, they are changing still." His voice was grim, hard, hurt.

"What will you do?" she asked in a flat tone. She scraped the stubborn fault in the stone with the chisel.

"Whether you want me here or not, I now have my own dispute with Cormac MacNechtan, and a matter to be settled."

"Cormac and his kinsmen will never settle with us!" She raised her voice frantically. "I have lived with this feud all my life. Too many of the men I have loved have died fighting the MacNechtans." She choked back a sob. "I cannot bear for that to happen to you, too!"

"I will be fine," he said calmly.

She shook her head. "Do you think I want to carve your... tombstone out of that piece of sandstone, where we... where we..." She gasped, remembering the incandescent passion of the night they had laid upon that stone. She turned away and smacked the stone again, hard. "I want you to leave. I cannot endure this."

"The risk of my death, fighting this feud for you and yours, did not seem to bother you before now."

"I had not seen you near death then," she said. "I did not love you so much then."

He lifted his hand toward her. "Alainna..."

If he touched her, she would crumble, she thought. She struck the punch forcefully with the mallet. Another piece broke away, exposing more of the obstruction.

Ach Dhia,
she said to herself, wiping the back of her hand over her eyes. She felt brittle, near tears. "It is a shell."

"A shell?" he asked. He came closer.

"Limestone sometimes has seashells in it," she said. She sighed wearily. "When they appear, it is difficult to tell how deep they are in the stone." She chipped at the rippled edge of the shell. "I can remove it, I think," she muttered. Placing the point, she stood to angle the chisel.

The obstruction to her own happiness could not be cleared away so easily, she knew. She tapped, freeing more of the shell. Carefully she positioned the point, using the sharp tip as a wedge.

"Alainna, wait." He reached out his hand.

She struck iron into stone, and heard a cracking sound. A gap appeared along the edge of the shell. The left side of the surface crumbled.

Then the stone split, and part of it collapsed to the floor.

Chapter 28

Alainna stared in disbelief at the shattered, defaced stone. Then she dropped down to snatch at the creamy, splintered chunks, tears blinding her, slivers piercing her fingers as she frantically collected the pieces.

Sebastien hunkered beside her. "Let me do that," he said. She batted at his hands and he pushed hers away. "Let me!" he snapped.

He gathered the bits in his hands. Alainna stood, tears streaming down her face. When Sebastien tumbled the pieces onto the workbench, Alainna felt as if her heart broke within her.

"It is ruined," she whispered.

He brushed a hand over the intact part of the stone, where the relief was partially destroyed. "You can recut it. Here, and here. It can be redone."

She shook her head. Parts of the tower and palisade were gone. "It cannot be reclaimed." She stifled a sob with the back of her hand, hardly believing what had happened, what damage her impulsive temper and her relentlessness had done.

"We will fix this one, or we will find another stone." He touched her shoulder, turned her. "Alainna—"

She felt herself crumble. She slid into the opening circle of his arms with a dry, defeated sob. "The breaking of the stone is a sign," she said. "An omen. You must go and never come back. If you stay here, and give up all that you hold dear—"

"Not all," he murmured, his lips against her hair.

"—you could die fighting this feud."

"Nevertheless," he said calmly, "I will stay and fight. There is no other choice, Alainna. None at all. Not now."

She closed her eyes in misery as he held her. He feathered back the wisps of hair loosened along her brow. Grief welled up within like a fountain and spilled over.

She cried for all of them, then—for Sebastien, who had nearly died, for his five fallen knights, for her father and her brothers and the kinsmen beyond them, all lost to this feud. She wept for her mother, for all the kinswomen, and for a maiden, long ago, who had died beside the loch.

In the depth of her heart, she mourned the diminished clan that she could not save alone. Her carvings could not preserve them. Ultimately, only sons and daughters to bear the spirit and the blood of Clan Laren would do that.

She could not ask Sebastien to stay with her at Kinlochan, yet she wanted to be with him, as his wife, as his lover and soul-friend. She wanted to bear their children inside her body, and live side by side with him in their own Land of Promise.

But that place was a legend, and this place was fraught with danger. And the stone that had held her dream was destroyed.

He braced her patiently until her sobs quieted. "Sebastien," she snuffled into his chest.

"What is it,
mo caran?"
he murmured. His lips touched her brow, traced softly over her wet cheek.

"I love you." Her heart bounded to say the words, to know how deeply she meant them. "And it is why I want you to leave. I cannot lose you to this feud, too."

He pulled back to look at her. "Alainna, listen to me," he said. "I am here with you, and I am safe, and I will keep you and yours safe. I swear it. If you wish it, go out with me now, down to the loch, and I will swear it with my hand upon the Stone Maiden, and you may say all the charms you like around me."

She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his chest, his voice sliding over her, comforting her. She wrapped her fingers in the plaid draped over his shoulders. "Wait a little to do that," she said. "It is snowing again. Stay here for now, with me. Just for now. Later we will talk of you leaving."

"For now," he said, and dipped his head to kiss her again. "After that, we will talk about my staying."

She placed a finger on his lips. "No more. Let us have some time without talk of what must be done. I am weary of it."

"Well enough." He gathered her close. "We will call it a truce between us. The time-between-times," he said. "For so long as the world is white and sleeping, for so long as winter holds us here, we will not talk about, or worry about, what may come later. Does that please you?"

"It does. Very much." She reached up to circle her arms around his neck. "No mention of names or legacies, duty or vengeance. We will go nowhere in this weather, and no one will come here. We will have peace at Kinlochan."

"If that peace could only last until spring." His hands caressed her back. "Until the day you mark the Stone Maiden." He lowered his face toward hers.

"Spring is closer than you think," she murmured. "By our custom, we mark the stone on the feast day of Saint Brighid. That is not so long from now—"

"Hush," he said, and covered her mouth with his own. She took in a quick breath, and felt her sorrow begin to dissolve, her body melt as the kiss deepened, lengthened. His hands grazed over the contours of her body, tender and knowing. She sank in his arms, willing, content to lose her awareness of the world, of all that troubled her, wanting only to be with him.

He pulled her close, his hand at the small of her back, so that her hips pressed into his and she swayed against him. A warm, exciting pulse stirred within her. She tilted her mouth under his and skimmed her hands up his back, beneath the plaid mantle, to his wide shoulders and the firmly muscled arms that held her.

He bent and slipped his arm beneath her, lifting her in a swirl of wool. He carried her to the sandstone slab in the corner of the room, setting her down in the shadows. Pulling the plaid from his shoulders, he swept it over the stone. She helped him arrange a padding, and she glanced up at him.

"I will never," she said, "carve this stone for you."

"Good," he said, bending over her. "We can put it to far better use." His hand was broad and strong on her back as he laid her down upon the stone. "If you would have it so."

"I would," she said, drawing him down beside her.

He kissed her deeply then, his lips caressing, his tongue seeking. She opened willingly to him and rolled more fully into his embrace. His hands skimmed, warm and sure, along her body, finding the curve of her hip, the swell of her breast. She sighed out with pleasure and arched her head back to rest it against the stone.

As his lips traced along her throat, she furrowed her fingers through his hair and leaned forward to kiss the shell of his ear. He flipped the single loop that closed the placket of her gray gown, while she pulled at his own clothing.

His breath misted between her breasts, a warm and wonderful sensation, and she sighed and shifted to welcome the sweet pressure of his mouth. She moaned softly as his hands cupped her breasts; she shivered as a deep throb stirred in her lower belly that she could not ease. Writhing, pressing against him, she kissed his shoulder and traced his ear with her tongue until he sought her lips again.