Bride for a Knight (31 page)

The glade seemed smaller now. Dark and more shadow-filled. Even the well and its outcropping had slipped from sight, the stones and the hoary altar hidden by the night’s encroaching mist.

A Druid’s mist some might say.

Deep, gray and impenetrable, its shimmering silence surrounded them as they dressed for the ride back to Baldreagan. A silent ride through thick, swirling mist that blotted the hills and slipped through the trees, its luminous, rippling curtains shielding them as they rode. Guarding them, too, from a certain hooded figure’s prying, malevolent eyes.

Eyes that had seen far too much.

Not that the galling images couldn’t be wiped from memory.

They soon would be.

Banished and forever erased, the cries and writhings forgotten as if they’d never been when shock and recognition replaced blazing passion and cold, deserved death claimed its own.

And all the saints, holy wells, pagan glades, or Highland mist wouldn’t save them.

This insult had been too great.

It was time, the figure decided, for the last of the Macphersons to meet their fate.

Chapter Fifteen

E
arly the next morning, it scarce mattered whether the sun slept in St. Bride’s Well or elsewhere. It certainly hadn’t yet bestirred itself when Jamie slipped from Aveline’s arms. Kendrick’s painted shutters were still tightly fastened against the cold and the thin smirr of rain that had started sometime in the small hours of the night, and the bedchamber was yet in deep shadow. Scant illumination came from the hearth fire for it had burned low, its one-time warmth and bright reddish glow, little more than a memory.

Even the thick night candle had guttered out, but a single wall sconce yet flickered, its feeble light slanting through the parted bed curtains and across his bride’s nakedness.

Her slumbering nakedness.

Jamie stood looking at her, branding her beauty on his heart, the sweetness of her in his mind.

The image of her sleeping, her vulnerability, would strengthen his purpose. Not that he wasn’t already more than determined and able to put an end to bogles-that-weren’t and other mysterious doings.

Perhaps then he could turn more of his attention to winning a certain
cantankerous
heart. Or at the very least, see the fear leave his father’s eyes.

That, too, would be a victory.

Naught would please him more than if the clan’s famed Horn of Days remained in its place on the wall above the high table for a good many years to come, Munro once again lairding it in high style. Mayhap with a bouncing grandbairn or two on his knee.

Jamie’s heart filled at the image and he reached for his bride, pulling back just before he stroked her lovely hair. This morn, simple looking would have to do.

And she did make a fetching sight, sprawled so wantonly across the great four-poster bed, her sweet thighs opened just enough to make it nigh impossible to leave her. The tumbled masses of her luxuriant hair spilled across the pillows, each gleaming strand looking bright and silky even in the half-dark of this early hour.

A devil-damned hour, good only for mewling bairns, graybeards, and those sorry souls unable to appreciate the benefits of deep and restorative sleep.

He certainly did.

Little good that it did him this particular morn.

Other, more pressing matters took precedence, so he stretched and looked round, searching for his strewn clothes. It wouldn’t do to stumble and cause a ruckus.

Or worse, step on poor Cuillin’s tail. A distinct possibility given the room’s darkness and the old dog’s penchant for plopping down in the most inconvenient places.

Jamie scratched his elbow and frowned.

Saints, but he loathed rising before cockcrow.

Even if the strictures of his world often required it. At the thought, he almost snorted and would have, did he wish not to disturb his sleeping bride.

Truth was, he crawled from bed so early almost every morn.

But rising before the unholy hour of prime when he hadn’t slept a wink was an unnatural evil.

A very great evil.

Though the reason for his lack of a good night’s rest had surely been worth it.

Grinning, he slid another look at the bed.

A lingering look, and focusing immediately on the sweet triangular tangle of curls he’d spent so much of the night enjoying. Still damp and fragrant from hours of vigorous love play, those silky-soft curls beckoned irresistibly.

But he’d drained himself at least eight times in the long endless night and the saints only knew how often she’d found her like satisfaction, minxie and insatiable as she was proving herself as a bedmate, much to Jamie’s delight.

But he’d pushed himself for another reason as well, needing to get away before she rose and attempted to accompany him about his morning’s business.

Manly business.

Doings he hoped to shield from her.

He also didn’t want Cuillin trailing after him. The dog’s heart and spirit far exceeded his strength and abilities, so he, too, had been treated to extra care the previous e’en, receiving a generous and rich meal. As well, an especially well-fleshed meat bone waited near the hearth. A precautionary measure to content and distract the dog if he stirred before Jamie had a chance to exit the room.

Blessedly, that didn’t seem likely; both bride and dog slept deeply.

And if the saints were merciful, he’d have time to see everything tended and be back at Baldreagan, breaking his fast with his da in the great hall before Aveline or Cuillin even opened their eyes to the morning.

Willing it so, he finished dressing and latched on his sword belt, tucking his trusty Norseman’s ax into place as well, just for good measure.

If aught was truly amiss at Hughie Mac’s, he’d be prepared.

Though he hoped Aveline had the rights of it and the old rogue had only been enjoying a tryst with one of his female admirers last night.

Aye, he’d much prefer to arrive at the cottage and find Hughie fit and hale, perhaps seeing to his sheep or tossing seed to the broody hens e’er running in his wake.

However he found him, Jamie would insist on an explanation for the discarded crummock he’d tripped over in the grass in front of Hughie’s cottage. The size of the thing nagged at him as did something else . . . something he’d thought about his da recently but couldn’t recall just now. Jamie pressed his lips together and scratched his elbow again.

That was another reason he so disliked early mornings; they befuddled his wits.

Wits that came spiraling back a short while later as he rode through the empty woodlands toward Hughie’s cottage and, by necessity, passed near the great out-thrusting shoulders of the steep, rock-strewn slopes that formed the deep gorge of the Garbh Uisge.

Jamie shuddered. The roar of the rushing water filled his ears, even a safe distance from that dread, lonely place.

But louder than the boiling white waters of the cataracts, his own words slammed into him—words he’d thought when he’d made farewell courtesies to the MacKenzie lasses.

Then when he’d not wanted his da to hear his reason for denying Aveline a springtime visit to Eilean Creag, fearing the travails of the journey and, especially, the rigors of the anticipated sailing adventure on one of the Black Stag’s galleys, would prove too strenuous for Munro.

Och, nay he hadn’t wanted his da to hear such concerns. Yet, he’d suspected he might.

Again, Jamie’s own words flashed through his mind, just as he’d thought them in Baldreagan’s bailey.

Truth be told, he’d often suspected the man could listen through walls
.

. . .
such a feat might be how he always managed to get the better of his fellow Highland cattle lairds, e’er seeming to know what the men said behind his back or when they believed Munro out of earshot
.

Jamie’s blood ran cold.

He jerked on the reins, pulling up at once. “Well, then!” he swore, wrenching around his garron and digging in his spurs to thunder down a sloping braeside choked with gorse and broom, making for an innocuous-looking outcrop not unlike the stones that sheltered St. Bride’s Well.

Only these boulders hid something far more treacherous.

Something he should’ve recalled long ago.

The latest when he’d mused about his da’s seeming ability to hear through walls.

By all the saints, there’d been a time when Munro Macpherson
had
listened through walls.

Baldreagan was riddled with hidden passageways, squints, and subterranean corridors. In the glory days of his cattle dealing, Jamie’s father had used them with glee, taking advantage of being able to leave the dais on some cock-and-bull errand while, in truth, sneaking into a secret passage cut through the walls, circling back, and spying on his guests. Listening raptly, then using his gleaned knowledge against them.

Until Jamie’s brother Hamish had one day wandered into the maze of passages and gotten lost.

For three days and nights the entire clan had searched for the lad, finally finding him cowering and half-frozen on the morning of the fourth day, huddled in one of the underground passages that led farthest from the keep.

The very one that exited into the outcrop looming up out of the whin and bracken at the bottom of this braeside.

Another, similar passage opened closer to the Garbh Uisge and he’d investigate that one, too.

If he could find the old opening.

Not an easy task, as his da had ordered every last passage filled and sealed after Hamish’s disappearance.

Even his favorite squint in the great hall, a craftily placed laird’s lug with a fine view onto the dais, had not been spared.

And, Jamie saw, pulling up in front of the outcrop and swinging down to take a better look, whate’er hidden entry to a subterranean passage may once have been concealed in the tumbled rocks, with surety, was no more.

His father’s men had been thorough.

All that remained here were boyhood memories of playing with his brothers near the outcrop, each brother daring the others to venture deeper inside the passage’s dank and inky darkness.

Jamie shuddered again and pulled a hand down over his chin.

Such a passage, if a passable one yet existed, might be the answer to his da’s
bogle
visits.

“By the Almighty God,” he swore, certain of it.

His mood darkening, he remounted, his gaze falling on the plump little sack of honey cakes hanging from the saddle bow and meant for Hughie Mac, should the old man need persuasion to discuss his odd behavior last night—and the newly whittled hazel walking stick. But the honey cakes and his questions for Hughie would have to wait.

Whether it would displease his bride and certain long-nosed, clack-tongued MacKenzie females, he needed to spend some time looking around at the Rough Waters. Even so, he couldn’t suppress the chill that swept through him. After years squiring at Eilean Creag, he knew better than most how accurate were Lady Linnet’s visitations.

Her warnings of doom—when she felt compelled to make one.

But if he ignored his suspicions and further grief came to those he loved, he’d be dooming himself. He
had
to put an end to the misery someone was so determined to inflict on his family.

No matter the cost to himself.

Thus decided, Jamie dug in his spurs yet again and raced onward, sending his garron plunging back up the steep braeside. But at the hill’s crest, he turned away from the tall Caledonian pines sheltering Hughie Mac’s cottage and headed elsewhere.

Straight for the Garbh Uisge.

The roar of the falls and crashing, racing water soon became deafening, the sound blotting all else as he neared the soaring birch-clad shoulders of the dread defile. The temperature plummeted, too, and the air grew colder, chilled by the icy, foaming cataracts and because the sun had scuttled behind the dark, low-lying clouds.

Jamie’s mount balked. Hill-bred and sure-footed, the shaggy-coated garron tossed its head and sidled when a great plume of frothy spray shot up over the edge of the ravine and the beast’s hooves slithered on the slick, slippery ground.

“Dinna fret, my friend,” Jamie soothed him, “you needn’t go any closer to yon gloomy precipice.”

Swinging down, he gave the beast an encouraging open-palmed
thwack
on his broad rump, then watched as he plunged away into the bracken and whins, seeking the safety of a nearby rocky knowe, his scrabbling, clambering hooves sending a glissade of pebbles over the lip of the gorge and into the swirling, splashing water.

Water Jamie meant to ignore, concentrating only on a nearby birch-clad slope and the mossy, broken-down wall of a long-disused cot house, its ancient stones disguising another entrance to one of Baldreagan’s subterranean tunnels.

The only other underground passage that stretched for such a goodly distance, all others ending not far from Baldreagan’s stout curtain walls.

His heart pounding, Jamie followed the narrow, twisting deer path that ran along the edge of the gorge, the thick, silver-shadowed birchwood pressing close on one side, the steep drop to the ravine and its cataracts on the other.

Twice, his feet slid on the loose stone and the slick carpet of wet, brown leaves. And once, when throwing out an arm to catch his balance, he plunged his hand right into a patch of stinging nettles growing on a pile of tumbled boulders.

“Damnation!” He scowled, rubbing his palm furiously against his plaid.

This was not promising.

His hand burned worse than if a thousand fire-eaters had spewed flames on him and the dismal, pallid light of the birch wood was seeming to dim the farther along the path he went. Equally disturbing, the back of his neck was beginning to tingle.

Someone was watching him.

He was sure of it.

Especially when a twig cracked somewhere behind him and, with a quick rustling of brittle leaves, another scatter of pebbles went sliding into the leaping, swirling waters of the abyss.

“Hold!” he cried, whirling around, his hand reaching for his sword. But nothing more sinister moved in the birch-clogged, rocky-sided gorge save a family of red foxes.