Until the Knight Comes (2 page)

But, as quickly, her attention flickered to the half-opened window shutters across the room, and something about the glint in her eyes iced Mariota’s blood.

“Did you know that your precious Hugh carved footholds in the outer wall of this tower?” She spoke softly, her fingers playing over the gemstones in the dagger’s hilt. “He cut them there to allow such as me to win in and out of this chamber discreetly.”

“Indeed?” Mariota raised a brow. “I see nary a shred of discretion on you.”

The odd look in Elizabeth Paterson’s eyes intensified, her expression hardening. “The need for suchlike is past, would you not agree?”

Mariota held her rival’s stare and hoped her own features appeared as cold. Drawing a deep breath, she strove to ignore the tight edges of fear beginning to beat through her, the rapid hammering of her heart.

“Tcha, my lady, all that remains is my need for revenge.” The woman’s contemptuous glance slid over Mariota. “Aye, vengeance will be mine and served on you!” she hissed, hauling out to slap Mariota full across the face.

Mariota gasped, the smashing blow sending her reeling. She flung up an arm to stave off further blows, but her knees gave out and she sank to the floor.

“Not so proud now, are you?” The whore’s face darkened with malice.

Mariota blinked, tried not to gag on the blood filling her mouth as Elizabeth Paterson’s menace and her own pain slipped over her like a sheet of cloaking ice.

“Fie, but you have lost your wits, eh?” The alewife leaned close, spite pouring off her. “You’d best gather them, for when I climb out yon window, your life will be worth less than these floor rushes,” she vowed, scooping up a handful and letting them drift onto Mariota’s head. “A meet revenge, Mariota of Dunach, for with your untimely return, you have ruined my life!”

Mariota stared at her, the woman’s gall restoring her tongue if not her strength. “’Tis you who—”

“’Tis I who could have made Hugh a master at barderie,” the other boasted, waving the dagger for emphasis.

“You come of a long line of fighting men, warrior lairds who live by the sword,” she went on, her eyes blazing. “I have the blood of poets, and a sufficiency of influence in bardic circles to have seen him on his way. So soon as he’d amassed enough coin for us to journey forth from this bog-ridden land of dark hills and desolation.”

“Sweet Jesu, you are mad,” Mariota breathed, her cheek still burning like a brand. “Hugh would ne’er—”

“Hugh would as he pleased, and he ne’er intended to make you his wife,” the other flashed, bringing the blade dangerously close to Mariota’s face. “But if it soothes your mind, I had no use for him beyond his promise to settle me with a new alehouse—a fine establishment to serve a better lot than frequent the Burning Bush.”

Mariota struggled to her knees, silently cursing the light-headedness that kept her from standing. She did turn a blistering stare on the woman. “And now you, like I, have nothing.”

“Not so,” Elizabeth Paterson disagreed, whirling back to the bed, a
whooshing
streak of steel revealing her intent.

“No-o-o!” Mariota’s eyes flew wide as the dagger plunged into Hugh the Bastard’s chest. “In sweet mercy’s name!”

“Not mercy, revenge.” Her tone chilling, the ghastly deed done, the alewife calmly retrieved her gown from the parchment-littered floor and crossed to the windows.

Heedless of her nakedness and with her flaunting wealth of hair swirling around her, she tossed her gown into the dark night beyond, hoisted herself onto the broad stone ledge.

“Be warned. Hugh’s men will have heard the ruckus,” she said, looking pleased. “When they come, your dirk will be raging from the Bastard’s heart. You will be thought to have murdered him. Vengeance will be mine.”

And then she was gone, her parting words echoing in the empty chamber, the threat behind them giving Mariota the strength to clamber to her feet.

She staggered forward, intent on reclaiming her dagger however mean the task, but the moment her fingers curled around the blade’s jeweled hilt, the sudden clamor of pounding feet stayed her hand. Harsh male voices, raised in outrage and disbelief.

Hugh’s men.

A half score of them pushed into the room, ready anger flaring on their bearded faces, hot fury thrumming along every inch of their brawny, plaid-hung bodies.

Her own body chilled to ice, Mariota faced them. “God as my witness, I did not kill him. ’Twas—”

“Whore! See whose blade pierced his heart!” The nearest man pointed at the dagger hilt thrusting from Hugh’s chest. The dirk’s jewels sparkled, each colored stone screaming her guilt. “Think you we do not have eyes?”

“And lo! See the handprint on her cheek,” another yelled, seizing her arm. “They fought and she slew him in his sleep!”

A third man spat on the floor.

“Hear me, you err . . .” Mariota protested, but her tongue proved too thick, the agony in her head and arm too laming.

With the last of her strength, she jerked free and threw a glance at the window. But nothing stirred save a thin smirr of rain.

Elizabeth Paterson may well have been a moonbeam—a figment of Mariota’s imagination.

But the blade lodged in Hugh the Bastard’s heart was real.

And it was hers—as all at Drumodyn knew.

She
knew she was innocent. And that Hugh the Bastard was a bastard in more ways than one.

A murrain on the man and all his perfidy!

Her peace so won, she offered her arm to the guard who’d seized her only moments before, let the fire in her eyes dare him into escorting her from the chamber.

Mariota of Dunach, proud if misguided daughter of the far-famed Archibald Macnicol, would be double damned if she’d tremble and cower before any man.

And she’d be thrice cursed, and gladly, if ever she fell prey to love again.

“Pigs will sing from trees the day I take a wife.”

His mind spoken, Kenneth MacKenzie glanced around the dais table of
Eilean
Creag
Castle
’s great hall, looking for understanding. Perhaps a sympathetic nod or, at the very least, a companionable grunt to acknowledge the wisdom of his views.

He received neither.

Worse, he was almost certain he’d caught one or two looks of pity.

Having none of that, he fixed his gaze on the high, vaulted ceiling. Just long enough to swallow the snort rising in his throat. Dear to him or nay, the menfolk of Clan MacKenzie had addled wits when it came to the lasses.

He
knew the dangers.

Not that he ne’er appreciated the amiable sweetness of soft, well-rounded and acquiescing females. Their warm loveliness and other such intoxicating accoutrements.

He relished suchlike indeed.

But only with a good measure of caution and when mutual need and satisfaction could be assured, hearts and emotions unfettered.

A wife was a wholly different matter.

And utterly out of the question.

“Singing pigs? And in trees?” Elspeth, Eilean Creag’s female seneschal shook her gray head as she plunked down a platter of oatcakes in front of him. “Tut, tut, laddie, here is no way to talk.”

The only woman in the hall this early of a morn, and the most free-spoken one at that, she dusted her hands on her skirts and looked at him, her merry eyes displaying how little she thought of his declaration.

Her certainty that he’d unsay the words.

But Kenneth made no reply.

Nor did he regret the sentiment.

Indeed, were it not for the respected old woman’s bustling presence, he would have spoken more boldly. Told every gog-eyed, woman-crazed fool who called the loch-girt castle their home exactly what he thought of their jabber. As it was, he simply pressed his lips together and reached for an oatcake.

Not that the sternest look he could muster or even stuffing his mouth with Eilean Creag’s finest baked delicacies might spare him the seneschal’s keen-eyed perusal.

Or her opinion.

“Stranger things than singing pigs have been known to roost in these hills,” she said, proving it. Leaning close, she topped his ale cup. “A wise man is prudent with his vows.”

“And a wise woman knows when to curb her tongue,” Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail, declared from his laird’s chair at the head of the high table. “She knows, too, when men wish to be left alone.”

That last, Kenneth’s uncle put to the woman with a level, narrow-eyed stare. Taking the hint, she nodded and withdrew. But not before flashing the MacKenzie chieftain a smug look of her own.

“Stranger things, indeed,” she mumbled as she hastened away.

“Pay her no heed,” the kinsman to Kenneth’s left advised, casting a glance at her receding back. “She would have us believe creatures of legend yet haunt our shores.”

“And do they not?” Another man slapped his hand on the table. “I once saw an
uraisg
creeping along the lochside not ten paces from where I stood. Half-human, half-goat, he was, with a wild mane of hair blowing in the wind and long teeth and claws a-flashing in the moonlight.”

Kenneth frowned. “It matters naught to me what lurks in Kintail’s woods,” he said, tightening his fingers around his ale cup. “So long as I am left in peace.”

Peace well earned, he allowed to himself, not wanting to bicker with his kinsmen only a few short months after they’d welcomed him into their fold, naming him the new Keeper of Cuidrach.

His heart welling at the honor, he reached to smooth the folds of the blue-and-green plaid slung ever so casually over his shoulder.

The MacKenzie plaid . . .
the very same weave and style worn by nigh every man presently crowding Eilean Creag’s cavernous great hall. But to Kenneth, a forever reminder of the dastard who’d sired him.

A blackguard who’d allowed his mother, God rest her soul, to give him the name even though the reputed skirt-chaser ne’er bothered to lessen her shame by wedding her.

At the memory, his jaw tightened.

As did his resistance to having a wife thrust upon him, however well-meaning his kinsmen.

For all their goodwill, they had not shared his troublous years at sea. Rough years spent chasing the dreams of wealthier men, risking his life for their greed. He alone had slept on the frigid decks of wave-tossed galleys, wrapped in his plaid and with naught but the comfort of its wool and the tight-pressed body heat of other slumbering seamen to keep him warm.

That, and his memories of home.

His longing to return.

Lifting his ale cup, he took a pull of the frothy brew. “Trust me,” he began, careful to catch the eye of each kinsmen still gawking at him, “I crave Cuidrach’s solitude and shall glory in its quiet.”

“So you say,” Duncan MacKenzie fired back. “But it is that very stillness that concerns us. The long and dark winter nights, soon to break upon the land.”

Leaning forward, the MacKenzie chief maneuvered Kenneth right into the corner he’d been striving to avoid.

“See you,” he pressed, pinning Kenneth with a piercing stare, “it is not the sad tale of the Bastard Stone or some henwife’s prattle about legendary beasts that weighs on us. ’Tis the emptiness of Cuidrach itself that we would see filled for you.”

Kenneth said nothing.

A reply wasn’t needed. Every man present knew what the MacKenzie chief meant by filled.

He wanted Kenneth wed.

As did the others, judging by the enthusiastic bobbing of heads to be seen throughout the hall.

“Cuidrach is a lonely place,” a new voice said into the hush. “The hold would be much better if enlivened by the good company of women, their lightness and warmth.”

Kenneth arched a brow at the speaker, Sir Lachlan Macrae. His own chosen garrison captain. A man a full score of years older than Kenneth, and widowed. Kenneth had deemed him a fair choice to head up Cuidrach’s guard, thinking he’d savor the holding’s isolation.

Its lack of women.

But Sir Lachlan, like the others, stared at him as if he’d grown the devil’s own horns.

“It
is
peace I crave,” Kenneth insisted, pushing to his feet. “Precious solitude unmarred by female skirlings and chatter. Wifely or otherwise.”

But as he strode away, the seed of an echo followed him. Dim, distant, and alluring, its tendrils wound through him, fragmented images of hopes long extinguished, annoying remnants of shut-away dreams.

Nonsense he would not let plague him.

Foolery he had no intention of heeding.

And one thing he knew with surety—he would ride for Cuidrach sooner than planned. Nary a pig had crossed his path in recent days, but he did not want to press his good fortune.

He was, after all, a prudent man.

Chapter Two

D
eep in Drumodyn’s dungeon, Mariota shifted on her lumpy pallet, her splitting head not keeping her from wondering whate’er foolery had possessed her to think Hugh’s men would listen to reason. A false hope it’d been, and one that mocked her now, firing her indignation and calling her back from the merciful oblivion she’d been whiling in for the saints knew how long.