By Fire and by Sword (23 page)

He held her close to him, closer than she could ever remember being held. How perfectly their bodies molded to each other’s, as if they had been joined somewhere, or at some point in time, then split asunder, only to find themselves perfectly aligned once again.

Her loosely piled hair fell around her shoulders, and she could smell the scent of heather from the soap she used to wash it. She wondered if he caught the scent of it as well.

She could be so strong when it came to bandying words with him, but she was too weak to resist him when they were together like this.

But, she reminded herself. I cannot deal with him in the midst of all that’s happening in my life right now. He is a distraction, which is the last thing I need. Even so, she debated the issue with her subconscious mind: He has to leave soon.
Then why not enjoy the time you have with him? Let him teach you what you want to know, teach you what it feels like to have his hands and his mouth worship your body. Let him give you the things you can only imagine. And when he leaves, you can keep the memory.

As if sensing her thoughts, he turned slightly and took her in his arms and began kissing her with soft,
nibbling kisses, then spoke warmly against her lips. “Why can you not trust me, or at least meet me halfway?”

His voice was gentle and soft, and she knew the words came from his heart. Burning tears blurred her vision. She wanted him to always be here for her, wanted to bask in the security of his protection. She desired these things, but she could not tell him how she could want one thing and do another. She could not bear the thought of him, or anyone, losing their life in order to save hers.

She had started this battle when she intervened on her sister’s behalf. In doing so, she had saved Claire’s life and endangered her own, but it had not ended there.

Lord Walter took Claire’s rescue as a fair exchange: Kenna’s life for that of her sister. They had traded places now; she was the hunted. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. It is simply that you do not belong here. Not now. This is not your war.”

“The hell it isn’t. Your war is my war.”

She was about to tell him differently, but changed her mind. She did not want an argument, a discussion or a debate. What she wanted was to feel his arms around her.

She was under a powerful spell that took her breath, shook her composure and left her open and yearning. She could feel Colin’s unbearable nearness and warmth. She wanted him to touch her. She did not need to get involved with him, she reminded herself. And in frustration, she pushed away from him and walked to the other end of the table, where she stopped and opened a book lying there.

It was a poor substitute for a man like Colin and she regretted her impulsiveness. She might as well give in, she thought, because it was going to torment them until they were both crazy.

She wondered if she had spoken those words aloud, for he moved down the table and stopped behind her. He pressed closer and his arms tightened around her. She released a faint moan and her head fell back against his chest.

Suffused with weakness, she was too filled with yearning to stand. He was kissing her neck—his breathing quick and heavy. She moaned, louder this time, when she felt his hands dip down the front of her gown and lift her breasts, exposing them so he could torment them with the sensuous movement of his thumbs. He kissed her neck again, his breath hot and erotically arousing, as he moved his lips over her skin, deliberately slow, deliberately sensual, deliberately seducing her. The heat from the fire within her clawed its way upward, to wrap scorching tentacles of flame around her, winding itself tightly. She gasped and her breathing increased, until she felt as if she might suffocate from it.

Everything within her was intense, tight and waiting.

Colin whispered in her ear the things he wanted to do to her, the things he wanted her to do to him. Her mouth parted and she felt her breath coming in short pants. Her skirt slipped over her hips to the stone floor. One hand was on her breasts, the other slid over her stomach to find the opening in her drawers.

She gasped at the intrusion, the strangeness of it.

“You have tormented me since I first saw you, to the point that I have thought of little else, save having you here like this.” He held her in his power now, for he knew her body better than she, and each time he touched her she felt herself flowing out to him.

“You are like a flower, soft, delicate, kissed by dew. I am charmed by you. Infatuated. Would that I could do more, that I could show you the way of it.”

He did not speak again, and if he had, she doubted she would have heard him, for her own rapid pants sounded like a rushing wind in her ears. She groaned, and felt a gathering of tension, a delicious sensation that enveloped her. His hand touched her again and again until she was mindless, her head rolling from side to side, her legs parting more, granting him access.

Something was happening as pressure built within. Strange noises came from her throat; she thought she could die from the pleasure of it. And then she felt her body shudder again and again in a wild, escalating spasm in perfect harmony of the sensual beat of the music below. She held back the cries that pushed at the back of her throat to be released.

And when she thought she could not hold them back any longer, that she had to give birth to the scream in her throat, he turned her and crushed her against him with powerful arms, while he kissed her, and kept on kissing her until her arms went around his neck, and she caught a little glimpse of heaven.

Afterward, Colin held her, occasionally kissing her neck but saying nothing. His silence burned into her,
hot and searing. She was hurt to think she came close to making love with him, when Colin had not even mentioned the word or anything close to it. About the only thing she knew was, he desired her. That was not love, and it was not what she was willing to settle for.

“I must get back,” she said.

“Don’t go. Not yet.”

She was embarrassed to have gone as far as she had, and it caused her to speak with indifference. “It has been a very long day as you know. I am tired. I want to retire, and I think I have dallied here with you over-long,” she said, her tone flat and a little icy.

“Dallied? Is that what you call it? Dallied?”

The word seemed appropriate to her. What else could she call it? He’d made amorous advances without serious intentions and she had let him. She deserved what she got. She was a fool to grant him such liberties. Next time they were together he would expect more, and the time after that, until it became a regular thing, and when he tired of her, or when it came time for him to leave, he would do so, without so much as a hint of sadness.

What comes easily goes easily. “Yes, that is how I see it and what I choose to call it. Do you have a better way to express it?”

“Why does it have to be reduced to one word, diced and chopped to oblivion? You make it sound like a topic for debate.”

“We are debating it, are we not?”

Colin was silent for some time, and although she did not look at him, she knew his eyes were on her. “What made you change so suddenly?”

“Perhaps I saw myself as something I neither approve of, nor like.”

“You are a passionate woman with feelings. Is that so wrong?”

“I do not want to be hurt, Montgomery, and I cannot face Lord Walter with my mind distracted and my heart broken. It is as simple as that, and if that sounds cruel, so be it. I must remain focused. Surely you can understand that.”

“It does not have to be that way. I can take care of you and I can take care of Lord Walter. Why can’t you let me?”

“Because I can’t. I don’t know why, but I can’t. I have always seen this as my fight. I have already lost someone dear to me by letting my guard down and thinking I could live a normal life, and I lost sight of the fact that I will always fail in that regard simply because Lord Walter is not normal.”

She threw up her hands and walked away, her brain too jammed with words, thoughts, emotions, wants, desires…all that was missing was something to club him over the head with. Just why couldn’t he understand?

She turned back to him. “I don’t want to disagree anymore. I don’t want to argue. You have your ideas and I have mine. Neither of us is right or wrong. We are just different people. Our ideas are different. Even our genders are different. We come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different everything. We were not meant to agree on everything. But we should be able to get along if we try. If only for a little while. Can’t we decide to at least be friends while you are here?”

He did not say anything, but there was a spark she would call hope in his eyes. And then he surprised her again, when he pushed away from the table and said, “I’m hungry. Do you want to go to dinner? That should be a subject we can agree on.”

She smiled. “I am always agreeable when it comes to food.”

He returned her smile. “I will remember that.”

They began to snuff out the candles, and doused all the torches but one, which they carried toward the same door where they had entered. Colin opened the door, and Kenna waited in the corridor while he doused the torch and replaced it in the metal bracket.

They passed along the corridor, and when they were beside a long medieval bench, Colin grabbed her and pulled her down to sit beside him. “Once we are back in the castle, I won’t be able to have you all to myself,” he said, in a husky, desire-laced voice that was both teasing and confident.

He knew she was still not completely comfortable with this, and he understood how all of this was new to her. He would not push her, but he knew that when a deed needs doing, it is best to do it quickly. So, without furthering her discomfort, he took her mouth with a kiss.

He wanted her and he made no effort to hide it. He knew she had feelings for him—feelings that grew stronger each time they were together, with each kiss they shared. He knew she was both puzzled and curious by it all, considering her limited knowledge in matters of the heart.

He still couldn’t understand that. What was wrong with the Scots males? So, she lived on an island. To get to a woman like Kenna, he would have crossed a dozen lakes, swimming until he reached her island, if that were the only way he could be near her.

He did not understand his own seeming obsession for her. It wasn’t something that he had experienced before. He liked women, and for a time imagined himself in love with one or another of them, but his interest soon waned, and his love for the sea called out to him.

With Kenna, it was different. He was in no hurry to go anywhere, unless she was there. His desire for her became a driving need to mate with her, even though he was thinking somewhere in his mind that Kenna was a woman who deserved more.

His hands were on her beautiful breasts, so soft and full, and the weight of them felt glorious in his hands. There wasn’t a part of her he did not desire, or anything he would not do for her. He wondered if they were going to end up making love right here, because she was melting against him and responding like she never had before. She was ready. He was ready. Hell and damnation! He had been ready since he first saw her.

“Colin, we cannot…not here…please stop.”

He eased his hold and sat there, not saying anything. He was feeling plenty, however… Like someone had sliced a vein, and he was watching his life flow out of his body. They were so close. He knew that. He also knew better. A man can never predict what a woman will do, or say, or how she will react. Isn’t that what
his own mother had told him when he was in the first years of his yearning?

He leaned his head back, took a deep breath and smiled.

“I expected you to be angry, yet you smile. Why?”

“I was recalling something my mother once told me.”

“Which was?”

“‘Colin, there are three things you must remember about a woman. Never take her for granted. Never think you know what she is thinking. And never think you know what she will do in a given situation. A woman is like smoke. She will curl seductively around you one moment, burn your eyes the next, tickle your throat until you cough, and then poof! She is gone. She is a mirage. She is a thunderstorm. She is a sailboat on a sunny mirrored lake. She will run when you reach for her, and come to you when you wish her away. You can solve a problem. You can analyze logic. You can explain how vapor turns into water. But you cannot understand the mind of a woman. And do you know why? Because she does not understand herself.’”

“Then what do you do?”

“You love her and deal with her in all honesty. You earn her trust. And then you trust the Almighty, who made women the way they are, believing that He knew what he was doing.”

“What if that doesn’t help?”

“Blame Him.”

The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,

For want of fighting was grown rusty,

And eat into it self, for lack

Of some body to hew and hack.

—Samuel Butler (1612-1680),

English satirist.
Hudibras
(1663).

T
he clash of swords; the ring of steel…

From the sound of it, pandemonium had broken out in the great hall of Durness Castle. In time, the staff and any visitors who happened by would become accustomed to the daily chaos, and they would know the clattering din was not due to a wild uproar, or otherworldly chaos.

But today, they did not know that, and for this reason, throughout the castle, the household help dropped what they were doing and rushed to the great hall, expecting to meet the scourge of the human race, a raid of Viking warriors, the return of the Spanish Armada, or even the resurrection of William the Conqueror.

What they found were two women making sport with the silvered blade as they engaged each other in practice.

For a moment, no one said anything, so stunned they were to see Lady Kenna Lennox and Josette Revel parry and thrust their way across the vast hall and back.

It wasn’t an uncivilized horde, after all. Nor was it a Viking raid.

“It is only Attila the Hen,” said Ewen McNab when he arrived and found the gathered throng. “Now, back to work with you.”

The crowd dispersed, leaving behind only two men, Colin and Alejandro, who came to observe, and ended up squashed, mashed and shoved against the wall.

Sometimes, Colin would close his eyes and listen to the rhythm of the foils, the hollow ring of steel against steel, the accompanying sound of feet moving swiftly, and once in a while, her triumphant laugh when she scored a hit.

Kenna…day by day his feeling for her was growing stronger, while at the same time his concern over her determination to have a final confrontation between herself and Lord Walter. It was not something he could talk to her about, for he had tried that once, thinking he could persuade her to put down the foil and let someone else fight her battle…namely him. It took her very few words to let him know that Lord Walter was no one else’s concern but hers. “If I would not allow my family to intervene, what makes you think I would even consider allowing your acting on my behalf?”

He knew he had done all he could do, and nothing had changed. She would continue to practice daily with Josette, and wait for the appearance of Lord Walter. There was no place for him in this. She made that abundantly clear. His ship was ready to sail, and today he would sail out of her life, but she would never be out of his heart.

“If you care for her so much, why are you giving up so easily?” Alejandro asked.

His glance told Alejandro what he thought of his comment. “That is what she needs, isn’t it? Me hanging around here, a daily distraction, who causes her to lose her concentration and her focus, while I fill her head with romantic ideas, and then I can stand aside and watch her face her nemesis unprepared.”

The two of them fell silent, and continued to observe quietly, until they ended the practice and placed their foils in the rack.

Kenna approached Colin, her face rosy from exertion. She had picked up a towel after she put away the foil, and now she blotted the perspiration from her forehead. Her breathing was labored. He was distracted by the way her breasts moved beneath the soft cotton shirt she wore with her fencing skirt. Her mouth was pink and shiny, and so perfect for kissing, he wanted to send Josette and Alejandro off on a fool’s errand, so he could carry her away and make love to her for the rest of the day.

“It grows warm,” she said. “I wish I had time for a swim in the loch.”

“Take time.”

“You know I cannot.”

It was a phrase she said a great deal, for she was always busy. “Are you going to the distillery, then?”

“Yes, for a while, once I change out of these clothes. I plan to be back here later, for another match with Josette.”

“You are undertaking a great deal.”

“I prefer to stay busy, with my hands never idle. I hired a man this morning. Owen Fletcher is his name. He is going to help with getting the distillery operating again.”

“I hope you will be pleased with the results. Finding good help is difficult, and doubly so when you live in an isolated place like this.”

“Oh, I am already pleased. He started taking inventory of the boilers, pipes and furnaces this morning. He will let me know which are operable and those we must replace. He knows whom to contact to get estimates for the wood and carpentry work, the water wheel, and the malt barn. There is a growing list of supplies we need to order…things I am not familiar with, like a saccharometer and a hydrometer. Do you know what they are?”

His expression was one of amusement. “They are not part of my vocabulary, if that is what you mean.”

Her eyes were lovely and bright with humor. “Take a guess.”

“I am falling back on my Latin for this,” he said. “
Saccharon
is sugar, and mēnsūra is measure, thus a device to measure sugar content. As for hydrometer…a measure of water density.”

“Oh, you are very good at this,” she said. “A saccharometer measures the strength of sugar solutions by measuring its density. A hydrometer determines the specific gravity, or density, of a liquid.”

“I can hardly wait to pass on that bit of information,” he said. “I am sure others will find me a charming conversationalist because of it.”

They both laughed, and then their eyes met and held. He took her hand in his, and kissed it in a way that was softly intimate. “You were fortunate to find someone with Owen’s knowledge.”

She took her hand back. “Yes, it is true enough. I know I would not be able to do this without someone like him to teach me, although there is a growing list of other people I must hire—a malt man, bollman, someone for the tun and cooler, and each of these needs an assistant. That is only the beginning of the list. The most important position will be difficult to fill, according to him, and that is a distillery manager. These are all terms I was unfamiliar with a few days ago.”

“I am glad to see you happy. Your body, your voice and your eyes express it beautifully.”

“I am happy. I never dreamt I would be in these high spirits when I made the decision to live here. It is ironic that what started as a result of misfortune ended with a blessing.”

“It is good to see you this way.” His eyes searched her face. “Be happy, but remember it isn’t over yet. You still have Lord Walter lurking in your future. Be cautious, Kenna. He will come when you least expect it.
Don’t let your other endeavors distract you to the point that you are unprepared.”

What she was unprepared for was his next statement, when he told her
Dancing Water
would be sailing as soon as he was on board.

At first, her expression was blank, as if his words had not penetrated her consciousness. Then came surprise. “You did not tell me you were leaving,” she said, a hint of anger in her voice.

“I told you we would be leaving as soon as the ship was mended, which it is.”

Her brows knitted together in a frown, and he knew that look well enough by now to know she was weighing and balancing things in her mind, while she tried to decide if she should try to detain him for a while longer, or take the more flippant attitude and tell him she would miss him.

He was not a man to grovel, no matter how much he cared. He would make it easy for her. “I came to tell you goodbye.”

“Without having lunch?”

His smile, he knew, did not hide the bittersweet mood he was in. “We have a galley on the ship, remember?”

“Then this is goodbye?”

He stroked her cheek. “Only because it is a part of leave-taking.”

“You will be back, won’t you?”

He smiled at her and said in his customary teasing way, “Is that an invitation?”

“Of course,” she said, and then, as if she did not
want to commit herself, she added, “You know you are always welcome here.”

He nodded. “Your warm words will be comforting, I am sure, on a long, lonely journey.” He put his hands on her arms and held her fast, so he could look into her eyes, where he saw nothing to give him encouragement, so he gently kissed her on the forehead. “Stay safe,” he said, and he turned and walked from the hall.

Kenna continued to stare after him, long after he was gone, with only the rhythm of his boots on the stone floors telling her that he had been here at all.

“Damn!” she said, and shoved a chair out of her way as she strode from the hall.

She planned to have lunch, but she ended up on the battlements instead, where she had a good view of the bay and
Dancing Water
as she awaited the arrival of her captain.

It was not long until she saw Colin and Ewen ride down the beach to rendezvous with Alejandro, who stood with Josette by his side, which reminded her that was where she should have been—down there as well, to see Colin off.

There were not many times in Kenna’s life when she felt very, very small, but today was one of them.

She decided she would stay until they were in the boat and rowed out to the ship. But when they disappeared on the decks of
Dancing Water
, she decided she would remain until the ship sailed.

She saw Ewen was holding the reins of the horses, and realized there were only three of them, which meant Josette rode down there on the same horse with
Alejandro. It was only so she could ride the horse back, she told herself, choosing to ignore the fact that Ewen had come to take Colin’s horse and could have easily taken Alejandro’s as well.

In the end, she stayed until Colin and his ship sailed out of the bay and disappeared in the vastness, where the heavens met the sea.

Kenna wasn’t hungry after all, she realized once she was back inside the castle, so she went to the distillery where she would work, until time to meet Josette in the great hall.

Owen was a godsend, and Kenna was more than pleased with the work he was doing, but she desperately needed someone knowledgeable about the distilling process, and to hire the workers needed to run it. She had talked with a man named Dougal Allan, who managed a distillery at one time. She hoped he would agree to take over the management of her distillery, which meant she had to wait until he let her know what his decision was, and Kenna was awfully impatient when it came to waiting patiently.

She knew there was a lot to learn, and for the past week, she had been studying the books in the distillery, and she understood the process, but that was a long way from actually transforming those words into a bottle of whisky.

The stills were cleaned and set up, but no one knew positively that they were set up correctly, or if they were too outdated to use, which Owen suspected. The two of them discussed this and other distillery matters for quite some time before she had to leave to meet Josette.

Prior to sailing from Durness Castle, Colin decided to take the gold seized from the French, who had seized it from the Spanish, to his grandfather, who would know who could be trusted to get the money into the hands of the Highlanders who needed it most.

Colin knew many Scots had emigrated to America, for he had transported a great many of them in his ship. Large numbers had also fled to France and Australia, and there would be innumerable waves of them in the future—those who could no longer support themselves due to the changes that were sure to come, and the Jacobites who were now in hiding, desperate to escape Scotland before the British found them. The desperate highlanders saw their situation grow more hopeless with each day that passed, for they needed money for transportation out of Scotland, and additional cash to help them settle in a new country. For those who chose to remain in Scotland, things could only get worse.

Colin and his grandfather, Hugh Montgomery, the twelfth Baron of Fairlie, did not get along well because of the long-standing resentment his grandfather had for Colin’s father, Alexander. The baron had never forgiven his son for moving to America and leaving Baron Fairlie with no one to take over the family castle after his death. It was a crushing blow to him to think that after thirteen generations, the title would become extinct. It did not help that Alexander was so frank in his rejection, when he wrote:

The castle falling into ruin matters not one iota to me. I owe naught to Scotland, and my only indebtedness to you is due to your having sired me.

Having failed to persuade Alexander, the baron began to work on Colin, with hopes of convincing him to become the thirteenth Baron of Fairlie, by telling him the title could be legally passed to his grandson, which made Colin feel like his father, in that he did not care one iota to become the thirteenth of anything.

Colin felt sorry for the old man, for there had been much sorrow in his life—a wife who died along with her unborn child, and the subsequent deaths of three of his four sons and both daughters—and for a while Colin attempted to form some sort of relationship with him, but the baron was bitter and his resolve was as hard as the Cairngorms’ granite.

The thing that kept Colin going back and subjecting himself to his grandfather’s harsh ways was simply the fact that, unlike his father, Colin felt an inexplicable need to honor the blood connection to his grandfather.

“That is not something you inherited from me,” Colin’s father said, when Colin explained how he felt. “Go ahead and befriend him if you like, but in time he will wear you down to a nub. He is obstinate, flinty-hearted and as dour as a Puritan. Scotland will sap the humanity out of you, and give you nothing in return.”

Because the baron’s home, Barroleigh Castle, looked out upon Dunnet Bay, on the Pentland Firth, it was only a day’s sail from Durness Castle. Colin decided to stop at Barroleigh, where they would unload
the two chests of gold. Alejandro would then take the ship on to Edinburgh for repairs. Colin would stay with his grandfather a day or two, to make certain the gold was in a safe place, then he would go back to Durness. Part of the reason was he did not like the way things were left between himself and Kenna, but there was another, more important reason, and that was Colin had a persistent feeling that he should go back. He did not know why, only that something kept urging him to return.