Conquer the Night (26 page)

She hesitated, standing before the fire. “Oh, you didn't make me bargain!” she murmured.

“Nay, lady, I did not.”

“But now …”

“You tried to kill me.”

“I swear, it was not what I meant.”

“Why not?” he asked abruptly, sitting up in the bed to watch her.

“Because … I …”

“It would be perfectly understandable if you did want to kill me, right? I came here, seized your castle—ruined you for your precious fiancé, who is scouring the countryside, killing off old warriors! I have made your life wretched.”

“You have!” she said softly, with surprising passion.

“Then—”

“I never wanted to kill you. Remember, sir—I showed you mercy.”

“I seized the sword.”

“Because I hesitated.”

“Aye—you hesitated.”

“So we are back where we started. You tried to kill me; I triumphed. I'm sorely aggravated, and my hand really hurts! The choice, however, remains yours.”

“The choice?”

“The fur remains before the fire, lady.”

“And you will trust me to sleep this distance from you? Perhaps I've other weapons hidden away.”

“Perhaps you do. Perhaps you should be tied up—dangled from the parapets!”

She started to answer, then didn't. She lowered her head and almost smiled.

“I didn't mean—”

“You did take a sword against me, lady, and you do know how to use it.”

She nodded.

Then slowly, naked and lithe in the firelight, she came to him. She hesitated just a fraction of a second again by the bed. Then she came in, crawling over him to reach the middle, where she had slept days before.

She had come; it was enough.

He caught her as she came into the bed, enveloped her in his arms, met her eyes, and then her lips. The taste of her was like fire to kindling. The blaze swept his limbs and his groin, and he hungered for her with a sudden fever that was all but crippling. And still, his fingers entwined in her hair, he felt the silk; his kiss ravaged her lips. He stroked the length of her form, cradling her breasts, her buttocks, the curves and mounds of the length of her….

He forgot his hand completely.

She tried to meet the savage passion of his kiss, cried out at his caress, gave in to his every stroke. Tonight she touched in turn, hands upon his chest, fingers stroking down his spine. She writhed to the fullness of his mouth upon her breast, whimpered something as he laved and sucked the nipple, trembled with no protest when he parted her thighs. Still he fed his hunger, touching and tasting her flesh again, feeling the smooth, sleek ivory of her belly, limbs, and thighs, the blush red tenderness of the apex between them. He rose to her; her lips found his. Firelike rods of steel seemed to race through him as her fingers closed around him….

He caught her hands, lowered himself over her and into her, and into the oblivion of a desperately driven passion. He forgot all else except the rise of desire, the center of his hunger, the pulse that filled him and quickened him and moved him like thunder. She moved with him, and against him, arching, meeting him, withdrawing. The sight, sound, and scent of her increased his need, his hunger, his desire. He dimly heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the constriction of her body beneath him, around him. A staggering warmth, enwrapping him, a frenzy, then …

He climaxed violently, burying himself in her with the ejaculation of his seed. He eased against her, loath to withdraw, rolling with her rather than doing so, keeping her sleek, damp flesh pressed to his own. His fingers entwined in her hair. He lay with his heart beating hard, the tempo slowly beginning to ease.

No surrender
.

Good God, what she could do, so unknowingly, with so little effort …

The scent of her hair still teased his senses.

He closed his eyes and thought of the golden-haired woman in his arms. And he pictured old Tigue MacDonald, and ached that his proud old friend should have found such an end. He saw the battles that loomed ahead for Scotland.

“Do I need to tie you up, my lady?” he asked softly. “Twice now I've met a sword in your hands; once, a knife. What blade do you now wait to use against me?”

Her head remained lowered against his chest. The length of her hair teased his flesh, entangled upon it. Her hand lay upon his midriff.

She stirred just slightly. “I swear I've no weapons left to use against you.” She hesitated, then raised her head, meeting his eyes. “My blade, for my father's!” she whispered softly.

Bargaining. She was always bargaining.

But there was a true plea to her voice.

“So you have surrendered your sword to me this time. I haven't just seized it from you; you have given it to me?”

She didn't answer.

He didn't force her to do so.

Pride was a great sin, so Father Corrigan had told him.

But if it was a sin, it was one he understood far too well, and one he knew that he shared with her.

“Don't tie me, please.”

“Obviously, my lady, I would not dangle you from the parapets.”

“I know, but … not here, either. Please.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“Before God, I did not wish to kill you.”

“Or disembowel me.”

“Nay.”

“Castrate me!”

She flushed. “I swear, it was not my intent.”

“Your blade, my lady, was most deceptive then.”

“I meant to show you—”

“Power. Ah, yes. The power to negotiate. All you sought was freedom!”

She didn't reply.

He watched her for a long moment.

“You want freedom so desperately?”

“Wouldn't you?” she queried.

He shook his head. “You can't ask that question; there is no comparison to our positions. I have taken the castle, aye, but I will leave it again.”

“When, can you give me a date, sir? Not just as to when you will go and come on business that keeps you here. Can you give me a date as to when you'll really be gone?” Her words were cold; her eyes were curiously damp, glittering, deeply emerald.

“You know I can give you no date!” he said impatiently.

“Then, sir, why wouldn't I want my freedom?” she whispered. “Am I to stay, be charming, cooperative … until you decide that you have robbed me of all that I have and it is time to move on?”

“That is the way of things, aye,” he said wearily. But he stroked her cheek. “You'll have your freedom,” he told her. “That is all that I can give you. You'll have it—in time. In time, my lady.”

“Aye!” she murmured. “I will have it.”

She agreed with him, but she had conceded nothing. And still …

He threaded his fingers into her hair and drew her head back down to his chest, cradling it there.

And thus they slept.

CHAPTER TWELVE

William Wallace was a huge man.

Tall, burly, muscled like steel, his strength of will lay in his eyes, and in his soul.

Andrew de Moray was not so large—few men were—yet he seemed no less powerful, and all that he had accomplished thus far was probably greater, for his name was well known even here in the south. He had come from power and wealth, had much at stake and much to lose, and by God, would risk all to be free from the shackles of Edward of England.

The call was out for men, and many had come, and more would come. Despite the disaster at Irvine, the successes of these men—and others, such as Arryn, who had also seized great English holdings—were so great that the barons of Scotland, frightened as they might be, were still ready to cast their lot with a battle that might be won.

Men were encouraged to come, to fight. Some were trusted, some were not, and yet as both Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, who met with Arryn in the forest at Selkirk, told him, they might be in the midst of battle, and still not certain of whom to trust.

“You have a large number of men, so I've heard,” Wallace told him, his foot upon a log in the clearing where they gathered. “And I have heard that you have worked them with schiltrons, taught them what battle against English cavalry might be like.”

They spoke alone that night, a meeting arranged by John so that Arryn might be assured of the intentions and determination of the two leaders here, just as they might be assured of troops that would bring an assured loyalty—something not likely to be had from the nobles with their knights who promised to fight but might not do so if they didn't see victory in the offing.

They sat on logs around a small fire that burned in the center of the copse—Andrew de Moray, Wallace, John, Jay, Ragnor, and himself. The surrounding forest was filled with men, those who rode with Wallace now, those who had ridden south with de Moray, and those who were beginning to come to the banner of their country.

Wallace and de Moray themselves had just met, and though most men in Scotland were wary of the nobles and the clergy, Arryn was certain that Bishop Wishart, an old Scot to the bone no matter what the church or a king might claim, had set in motion this chain of events. He had found the two men most responsible for rebel activity in the country, and he had surely been the one to suggest the union. They came from far different lives: de Moray wore fine clothing with rich armor, while Wallace remained a rough-hewn knight. Arryn, knighted when Alexander still lived, and a landowner of rich enough estates until Darrow had scorched his people and place, was better equipped for the battle to come. Yet Wallace, with his great successes against the English, might have seized any form of weapons and armor he chose, but he knew, as well, that speed of movement was often a far greater asset than the weight of plate and mail. He would choose carefully in the battle to come, Arryn knew.

“Aye, William, we've worked formations, trained with pikes, shields, swords, battle-axes, more. They've learned to gather weapons from fallen enemies; and they've learned to stand their ground against English cavalry—and to take care against Welsh bowmen. Some men with me are knights such as myself, trained and ready; some are farmers; some are fishermen. I've an astrologer, a cook, and a teacher of Latin among my men. Many of the men who fight with me were merchants, masons, goldsmiths … they lived and worked at Hawk's Cairn, little of which remains, as you well may know.”

“Aye, indeed!” Wallace murmured bitterly. His retaliation against the English had often been brutal, but the atrocities committed by the English well warranted his fury. He'd seen men go before the king of England in good faith, only to be weaponless and powerless, and betrayed: hanged, slain, skewered, beheaded.

And like Arryn, he had lost the woman he had loved, in his case to the English lord Heselrig, the bastard who had crushed Marion's head in his determination that she give away Wallace's whereabouts. There were those who whispered it had been her fate to die, for it had been Wallace's furious murder of Heselrig in return that had spurred so many rebels to join him.

“So there is nothing left of your Hawk's Cairn, eh?” Wallace asked.

“Aye, well, the land remains. And the ruins. When the time is right again …”

“Aye, when the time is right. When Scotland is for Scots,” Wallace said. He lifted the skin of ale that they had shared between them. “And to your clan, my friends, for it seems there are many of you, and the lot of you fair fighters, and loyal to a cause.”

John and Arryn looked at one another and shrugged. “I believe we have been a fairly proliferate clan, and so I cannot speak for all our numbers. There are many branches of the family now, most from the area of Stirling, but we've kin in the isles to the west, and through marriage, up into the Highlands,” John said. “My father, you'll recall, William, was not so ready for this fight!”

Wallace affectionately slammed John on the shoulder. It was meant to be a tap, but Wallace was a powerful man, and John grinned, nearly toppling from his log. “Your father kept his peace, and bought us time, and gave us cover. He's an old man, and this may well prove to be a young man's war. He signed the Ragman Rolls, John; we did not.”

“Still, bear in mind, we are many, and some honor the Comyn claim to the throne, while others think that Bruce must be king,” Arryn said.

“For now, I need only know that a man is for our freedom.”

“That you have from us both,” John assured him. “As well you know.”

“Aye.”

“Sir Richard de Lundy has gone over to the English, I am told,” Arryn said.

“Aye,” Andrew de Moray said, “and 'tis more than true that we'll not know who fights with us until we begin to take the battle.”

Arryn studied Andrew anew, impressed with what he saw: a man with a firm, deep voice, steady hands—and steady eyes. He was a great tactical commander, Arryn had heard. He had beaten the English by attacking—and disappearing. He knew what ground to fight on, how to trap cavalry in bogs, how to avoid bowmen by slipping into the cover of thick forests, and, most important, how to inflict heavy damage on the enemy while retreating in time to prevent retaliation. From strategies of striking and melting away, he had gained strength, enough strength to attack castles, seize them—and hold them.

“There's no help for it that there are factions,” Wallace said, leaning forward. “For the most part we are one people, the layman and the cleric, the rich man and the poor. We are Scots, and weary of English oppression and the lies of a king who claims to be an overlord and would be a conqueror. I'm sorry that young Bruce is more concerned with a crown than a country, but God knows, he'll learn soon enough that Edward intends to give no man this kingdom.”

“When the battle comes now, we'll be ready, as we never were before,” Andrew said firmly.

Arryn looked at him sharply, knowing that he referred to a number of the tactics that King Edward had taken. Since Alexander's death ten years ago, Edward had taken step after step—and those first steps subtle—to secure Scotland. Some said that the Scots had asked for trouble when they'd sought his guidance as an arbiter among the noble contenders for the Scottish crown, but seeking his guidance and opinion had appeared to be a sound decision made by the regents—a decision that might help prevent civil war. Naturally, the Scots saw it as the worst kind of betrayal when he had used this invitation as further license to demand homage from Scotland.