Until the Knight Comes (12 page)

“Och, I see as well.” She looked at him, her face coloring. “So you did not come here for the reason I’d expected?”

Kenneth winced at the hurt in her eyes. But it couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t salve her feelings at the cost of another’s.

“Och, lass, ’tis true enough I came here desiring your . . . attentions,” he admitted. “But, see you, somewhere along the way, it came to me that I’d best seek such comforts elsewhere.”

Gunna of the Glen eyed him, comprehension replacing the hurt on her face.

A wistful softness that made her appear younger than her years, and surprisingly . . . vulnerable.

“You are a very beautiful woman,” Kenneth spoke true and reached to smooth his knuckles down her cheek. “So desirable that, were I made otherwise, I would wish to lie with you for days and days, but—”

“Your heart belongs to another,” she finished for him, catching his hand and kissing his fingers before he could lift them from her cheek.

“Dinna fash yourself,” she said quickly. “I once knew that kind of love myself—with my late husband, the saints rest his soul. ’Tis missing him and what we shared, that keeps my door opened to those who might bring me a night’s forgetful solace!”

Kenneth looked at her, her admission touching him deeply, making him ache for something he’d long ago stopped believing in.

Something he wanted to trust in again.

If only he could.

“Your needs are well met?” he asked, pushing thoughts of
her
from his mind—especially thoughts of the might and status of her father.

What such a man might think of him.

But the widow was smiling at him,
now
a welcome distraction. “I live in amity with everyone in these parts, ne’er you worry,” she said, donning her undergown. “See you, bitter feuds and reprisals are always forgotten when men turn their minds to . . . other things!”

“I am glad to hear it,” Kenneth said, moving ever so tactfully toward the door. “Nevertheless, I would leave some coin with you—for whate’er your heart fancies.”

She blinked, looking almost hesitant, but not quite.

“You are kind.” She watched as he fumbled in the money purse at his belt and slapped a handful of coins on a wall shelf. “I would not mind cloth for a new gown. My usual visitors are not overconcerned with such needs.”

“Well, then, it is settled,” Kenneth rushed on, already half out the door. “You have my siller, and, come spring, I will have my men bring you a fat milch cow—and a few goats as well.”

Her eyes glimmered at that, and she touched a hand to her cheek.

“You are a fine man, Kenneth of Cuidrach,” she said, giving him a tremulous smile. “Your lady is more than fortunate.”

“She is not my lady,” Kenneth amended, unable to lie.

“So-o-o.” The widow raised arching brows. “Then you must see that she is. If she is a wise woman, she will not need much convincing.”

But a short while later, as Kenneth spurred his steed ever faster toward Cuidrach, the only thing he knew was that it wasn’t Cuidrach urging him to such speed, but
her.

The flame-haired minx he had no intention of letting slip from his grasp.

If ever he could hope to have her.

A possibility that seemed more than unlikely, now that he knew her true identity.

Indeed, as he finally neared Cuidrach, the numerous gaps in the curtain walls and, in particular, the decrepit state of the gatehouse, only underscored the vast differences in their worlds.

Her status as daughter of a much-respected warrior laird, whether the man was wroth with her or no.

And his taint as bastard son of scoundrel so dark-hearted many in Kintail still refused to utter his name.

Kenneth frowned. Such was a stain even his new style as Keeper of Cuidrach couldn’t erase.

Nor did he wish to see his half-ruinous holding judged against Archibald Macnicol’s Dunach Castle, a strength he was sure would prove magnificent.

And impregnable.

As unconquerable as he suspected the old laird would be if e’er one such as he were to desire his daughter’s hand.

The man’s approval and consent.

A blessing Kenneth’s honor sorely wanted.

Nay,
needed.

And knowing it, he kneed his horse forward, his narrow-eyed stare not missing Cuidrach’s bent and rusted portcullis. How the spike-tipped ironwork hung at such a crazy angle.

Vowing to have a new one made so soon as he could, he clattered through the gatehouse pend, determined to do what he hadn’t done in years . . . pray.

And to any saint that might listen.

But before he could reach Cuidrach’s bare-walled little chapel, a movement in the shadows near the castle well caught his eye and all thought of piousness fled. Indeed, the urges that had so plagued him earlier, then vanished, returned with a vengeance at the sight of
her.

She came toward him across the moonlit bailey, her hair loose and tumbling around her shoulders. A rippling, gleaming skein of liquid bronze that spilled clear to her hips.

Glistening waves that took his breath and . . . enchanted him.

“You return late,” she said, reaching him at last, handing him a wineskin. “I have been . . . waiting. Watching for you.”

“In the cold dark, my lady? At this hour?” He accepted the proffered wine, drank gladly—and tried not to drink in her scent as well.

A perfume made all the more disturbing for the bright wash of moonlight gilding her curves, the glimpse of her flimsy night robe beneath the woolen cloak she hadn’t bothered to fasten.

“It is because of the cold dark, and the hour, that I am here.” She cut a glance toward the keep, pushed her hair back over her shoulders.

The movement caused the front of her mantle to gape a bit wider and Kenneth swallowed a groan. His entire body tightened and heat sluiced through him, pooling in his vitals. Never in his life had he been more . . .
aware
of a woman.

Saints, but that wee slip of a gown clung to her!
Made him burn.
He inhaled sharply, his heart thumping so fiercely he wondered she didn’t hear its thudding beat, the hot rush of his blood.

Feel his need, the want consuming him.

But she only blinked and moistened her lips. “I feared something might’ve happened to you.”

“Enough to leave the warmth of your bed?”

She flushed, looked down, clearly seeing her unbound hair, the transparency of her nightshift. Yet she made no move to cover herself. “It
is
obvious I was abed, isn’t it?”

Kenneth nodded, met her gaze and held it. The saints knew he was too hard to risk looking lower!

“What isn’t obvious is why you came out here.” He stood rigid, not seeing her curves, but
sensing
them, feeling them rubbing all over him, wrapping around him.

Addling his wits to the point he wondered he could even string words together.

So he frowned.

A dark scowl that helped immensely.

“You could have easily caught me inside,” he said, feeling better already. “On my way through the hall.”

“I did not want your men to hear us.” She cast another glance at the keep. “There is something else, see you. Something I must know. When you kiss—”

“
Kissed
you?” His brows shot upward. “You came out here to be kissed?”

“Nay,” she denied—and so quickly he felt a sharp stab of disappointment. “Though I am woman enough to admit I . . . enjoyed your kiss!”

The disappointment vanished.

“Yet?” he prodded, tempted to flash her his most winning smile. But her eyes held shadows, he could see them now, and knew something troubled her.

“What is it, lass? I say you—you can ask me anything.”

“Then . . .” She hesitated. “You said you wished to find a husband for me. I would know if you returned so late because you were busy initiating such . . .
arrangements
? I thought you might have been.”

“You thought wrong.” Kenneth rammed a hand through his hair and looked up at the starry night sky.

What a clumsy-tongued fool he’d been—setting himself up for her to ask the one thing he couldn’t answer.

Didn’t want to answer.

He strode to his horse instead, bought thinking time by patting the two bulging coin pouches still tied to his saddle. “I did as I said I would—I was gathering coin to purchase cattle from young Jamie’s da.”

He did not mention his visit to the widow.

Or how he’d been on the way to Cuidrach’s chapel when she’d stopped him to seek an answer to just the question she’d posed.

An answer he’d hoped would allow him to make her his.

And as if the saints had heard him after all, that answer came to him now.

The name of a man he could claim as a possible husband for her.

“I would know the names of any men you may wish to speak to about me,” she said, making him wonder if she were privy to his soul.

Indeed, she was peering at him through the moonlight, a frown crinkling her brow. “I am sure I will not be willing to consider a single one of them.”

“O-o-oh, there is one we shouldn’t discount.” Kenneth scratched his chin, tried not to smile. “A man of strength, integrity and honor—though he can be a bit difficult to locate.”

The little pucker in her forehead deepened. “Who is he?”

“A very great man. Indeed, the finest I know.”

“And his name?”

“Duncan Strongbow,” Kenneth told her, and hoped the saints would forgive him.

The saints, his uncle, and certain overly soft-hearted Sassunach.

Chapter Eight

A
roll in the heather with three bonnie, big-breasted lassies.

Naked lassies!

The words circled in Jamie’s head, plaguing him as they’d done for some nights now, giving him no peace, and doing disastrous things to his man-parts.

An annoyance he meant to address this very e’en, before he suffered another sleepless night thinking about fulsome, unclothed womenfolk.

A dip in the ancient burnt mound would soothe him.

And if such a luxury didn’t slake the twitching at his groin, a long soak in the heated waters of the stone-slabbed bathing tank would surely ease his other muscles, send him into a dreamless sleep.

One not filled with round, bouncing breasts and sweet succulent thighs.

Lush, well-curved bottoms—totally bare!

Closing his mind to such images, he eyed the stones he’d set to heating on a well-doing birch fire. Already they glowed and popped with increasing heat, the sight and sound of them making him feel connected to the ancient ones who’d created such a unique communal bathing facility.

Leastways, that was what he and others believed the stone-lined water tank must be, set into the earth as the pit was, near a well-running burn, and with charred, burnt stones at its bottom.

Immediately upon discovering the pit, Sir Lachlan and a few others declared it may have been used by hunters, for cooking large sides of meat, but Jamie and the younger knights decided it’d been a communal bathing tank—and with heated water, once white-hot stones had been plunged into its depths.

They’d conjured images of scantily-clad or naked wenches. Brazen, bold-eyed maids who took pleasure in bathing war-weary valiants.

In especial, the careful tending and washing of certain manly accoutrements!

Jamie groaned.

His
manly accoutrement needed more than careful tending!

Scowling, for it’d been more than a season since he’d last fumbled beneath the skirts of a bonnie kitchen lass at Eilean Creag Castle, he snatched two lengths of wood and began rolling the white-hot stones from the fire to the water tank, tipping them into the pit until the water hissed and sizzled, steam rising up all around him.

But the steam only reminded him of the warmth of soft, pliant female bodies, so he threw off his plaid and made short work of other hindering
constrictions,
then leapt into the water.

“Ahhh . . .” he sighed as blessed heat swirled around his shoulders. “I’ve died and awakened in the land o’ angels . . .”

At once, his brows snapped together.

He should not have thought of . . . angels.

And he should have known better than to bathe in heated water—in his present, agitated state.

“Och, aye, I must’ve thrown off my wits with my plaid!” he muttered, and took an indignant swat at the rising clouds of steam.

He tried to ignore how the water’s warmth made his already embarrassingly long man-piece grow even longer!

Longer and . . . harder.

And twitching so ferociously there remained but one way out of his current pain.

Would that he’d sank into
cold
water.

But he hadn’t, so he gritted his teeth, heaved himself to his feet, and, turning his face to the heavens, closed his eyes and took the aching
matter
to hand.