Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy (22 page)

“Mayhap you could go and fetch me some water and an apple,” she said.

“Cap’n Jake said he wanted tae talk wi’ ye,” Will said. “I can get ye there in one piece if ye dinna like tae walk the gangway on your ownsome. It takes a mite o’ practice tae walk it without falling off.”

“There isn’t room for us to walk side by side.”

“Nay, I’d go first, and ye’d put a hand on me shoulder tae steady yourself.”

It had to have been a trick of his imagination. Surely, people who thought they saw their future through a circle stone were people whose minds simply provided them with the image they wanted to see.

He had not lied in telling Alyson that he believed in magical things. But he had not been including anything akin to seeing a likely wife through a stone. Sakes, he didn’t want a wife! He was a man of the sea. The longer the voyage, the better. Moreover, he was a knight of the realm, trained to fight on land or sea, and he enjoyed that, too… the physical effort, at all events.

In truth, he preferred tiltyards and tourneys to battles. Pitting his wits and his strength against others of equal or greater skill was a welcome challenge. But he knew his duty, and he had never turned from a fight or a battle.

The forecastle cabin door opened, and Will said, “I’ve brought our Allie. She says she’s gey hungry.”

Jake nearly suggested that Will remember that he ought to address her as Lady Alyson, but something in the lass’s expression stopped him.

He said instead, “Thank you, Will. If you will run and fetch a roll for her, I’ll give her an apple or two.” As the boy turned to leave, Jake added, “Leave the door open when you go. There’s a wee rock by it to keep it so until you return.”

When the boy had set the stone against the open door and gone, Jake said, “What is it, lass? Another bad dream?”

Alyson felt herself relax and realized that, until then, she had been unaware of her tension. She said, “Will said you
wanted to see me. And, last night, I thought…” Pausing to consider
what
she had thought, she recalled only the dream that had wakened her that morning, in which Jake had played such a prominent role. Abruptly, then, she remembered. “You said you would talk to me by daylight, sir, and the way you said it—”

“I remember,” he said. “You were fretting about being a nuisance, and I may have sounded curt. I don’t want you to feel so about something beyond your control, lass. One simply has nightmares. One does not create them.”

His tone was mild, but she detected a difference in him this morning. If she had not come to believe that he lacked ability to fret or to worry, she might think something was disturbing
him
.

Perhaps he did not want to fratch with her. But she needed to know if she was reading him correctly. “I thought perhaps it was my insistence that I might be ‘seeing’ Niall’s death with that dream. Or my thinking that it was a warning of some sort. You did sound a bit… well… irked.”

His smile flashed. “Lass, if something angers me, you’ll know it. You won’t have to guess. I’ve learned enough about you to believe that, whether it is the Sight or just finely-honed insight, you
can
rely on your instincts in most situations. You won’t pretend that I frightened you into thinking you’d face a scolding or worse.”

“Nay, not that I—” She paused. “In troth, sir, I don’t know what I thought. Although you suggest that I should rely on my instincts, I must tell you that in the past sennight, I’ve come to doubt them sorely. Faith, but I’ve come to doubt much about many things, and… and about people that I thought I knew.”

He frowned, then glanced past her and said, “Will is coming back with your rolls. I’m going to send him away, because I want to talk about this. We’ll leave the door open, though. No one will hear us whilst we stay in here, but I’d liefer give the lads nowt for gossip, so we’ll stay in plain sight of anyone who looks this way.”

Will entered and handed her two crusty rolls. “I cut ye a bit o’ cheese, too, m’lady,” he said, shooting a glance at Jake before he added, “I trow I shouldna ha’ called ye ‘our Allie’ afore, as I did. Since we’re no wi’ that Lizzie and them.”

“ ’Tis a good notion,” Jake said. “It was clever of you to think of that.”

“Aye, well, ye were a-looking as malagrugrous as me old master when he were a-reaching for his leather, so I thought I’d best talk soft,” Will said.

Alyson suppressed a smile but could not resist saying, “Malagrugrous?”

Jake said evenly, “The polite word would be ‘grim’ or ‘forbidding.’ ”

“I thought ‘malagrugrous’
were
the polite one,” Will said. “ ’Tis a
long
enough word and better nor ‘peevish,’ I’d think.”

Alyson laughed, and Will grinned at her.

Jake said sternly, “That, my lad, will be enough from you. The sea is well-behaved today, so ’tis a good time for someone to tidy the hold. You may ask Mace to hang a lantern down there for you.”

“Aye, sure,” the boy said cheerfully. “I’ll see tae it.” With another grin for Alyson, he dashed down the gangway to Mace’s bench.

Alyson shifted her gaze to Jake. “It is good to see him smile.”

“I was just thinking how good it is to hear you laugh.”

She sobered. “Will and I have both been worrying about Jamie and Orkney. It is hard to be cheerful when they are both in grave danger.”

“The only danger to them would be if Hugh-atte-Fen sinks his ship,” Jake said. “And with such prizes aboard, I doubt that he will. Nor will English Harry let harm come to them, because they’re even more valuable to him. Now, I want to know what was troubling you,” he added. “What did you mean when you said you’ve come to doubt much about many things? I especially want an explanation for the bit about people you thought you knew.”

She hesitated, but she was grateful for the opportunity to talk and determined to learn what she could. Jake would not have been her first choice as confidant, because—rescuer or not, friend of Ivor’s or not—he was a man and she barely knew him. Even so, he had been the first one that came to mind when her questions arose. Something about Jake Maxwell kept telling her that she could trust him.

It wasn’t just that she liked him or that he listened so intently to whatever she said. It was that something deep inside her rejected the notion that he might share her confidences with anyone else. She knew that about him as clearly as she knew it about herself, although she could not have explained why.

As it was, getting the first words out was almost painful. At last, she said, “In troth, I don’t know if I understand the matter well enough to explain it. Sithee, I told you about my conversation with Lizzie but not all of it.”

“I doubt that you should worry about anything that Lizzie told you,” he said. “She leads a gey different kind of life.”

“But she was married,” Alyson said.

“As are you.”

She grimaced, finding it more than difficult now to explain.

He glanced out the door, then took a step away from her before he said softly and with more gentleness than she had yet heard from him, “Lassie, just spit out the words dancing in your head. I’ve nae doubt they’re there, teasing ye tae spring them free. There’s nowt that ye canna say tae me in safety.”

Drawing breath, she said before she could stop herself, “Lizzie talked about intimate things she did with her husband. Things just between the two of them.”

“D’ye fear ye’d be breaking her confidence to tell me?”

“Nay, I think she would say what she said to nearly anyone who would listen and understand her. But… I told her I did not want to discuss such things, and she apologized, saying she ought to have known it would be too painful.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Nay, the fact is I did not know what else to say to her.” Determinedly, she added, “In troth, I did not understand much of what she was talking about.”

For the first time in his life, Jake wished that he had a sister. If he’d had one, he might understand women better. It was, however, the first time that he had wanted to understand them better—one of them, at least. Hitherto, his notion of the opposite sex had been that they were interesting, even fascinating, could be entertaining in many ways, particularly in bed, and often had caperwitted notions.

Knowing no way other than with his usual bluntness to manage the one at hand, he said, “What, exactly, did she say?”

Alyson flushed deeply and looked away. But he waited until she looked back again and said, “She talked about how her husband, Jeb, touched her… down there… and she said he had a thick piece. I think I know what she meant by that, because I
have
seen a man naked.”

“I should hope so,” he said. “You do, or did, have a husband.”

“Aye,” she said doubtfully. “Niall was usually away after our marriage, though, and…” She spread her hands.

“Don’t stop there,” he urged her. “What else are you trying to say?”

She nibbled her lower lip. “I don’t know what else
to
say.”

“See here, Allie, you married Clyne. Surely, he bedded you at every chance, no matter how often he was away.”

She did not reply. She just gazed at him, as if she expected him to say more.

“Well, didn’t he?”

“We slept together when he was home, aye. But… but from what Lizzie said about her marriage—the bit I told you about and other such things—I suspect that Niall and I did not behave as other married people do. Or perhaps they do such things only in England. I thought you might know more about that than I do.”

“I know little about English customs. But when I was a bairn, folks on both sides of the line seemed tae be much of a muchness, as they themselves would have said. Without knowing what other things Lizzie said…”

An absurd and most implausible thought entered his
head just then. To keep it from lingering there, he said, “You coupled, surely.”

She looked uncertain but said, “I told you, we slept in the same bed.”

“Aye, but… D’ye ken what coupling is? Your mother must have explained what your husband would expect of you.”

“My mother does not converse much,” she said. “She sits in her solar at her tambour frame and plies her needle. She eats what we put before her and sleeps when her woman says it is time for bed. I meant to ask Cousin Catriona when she came for our wedding, but her second child was born just then, so her husband, Fin, came, but Cat did not. I asked my great-aunt Beatha to tell me what duties my marriage would entail, but she said I should ask my husband, that I was too fond of telling everyone else what to do and should learn to practice wifely obedience.”

“Did you ask Niall?”

“Aye, but he said I need do no more than what he asked of me, and he asked only that I welcome his friends and see to his needs. Three days after we married, he left with Mungo. I scarcely saw him again until we boarded the ship.”

Jake exerted himself to conceal his shock. Unless he was mistaking the matter, Alyson was still a maiden. His cock stirred at the thought, but a surge of anger struck at the same time. Clyne was—had been—a damned fool!

Chapter 11