Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (35 page)

But that hardly made
any
sense… These people were all half strangers.

She paid more attention and found those within the hall now behaving a bit more familiar—Jaime’s men sat amidst MacLaren’s men, all of them chattering together. Jesting. Laughing. Stealing bits from one anothers’ plates.

Mairi, Ailis and Kenna all wore their new dresses, flitting about the tables with renewed smiles that were far brighter even than Lael’s shiny new blade. In but a few days’ time her husband had somehow accomplished this, transforming a cold, gray keep into some semblance of a home… and more.

She feared he was undermining her resolve to go.

At this rate, she might never have the will to leave.

She lifted up her dagger and stabbed at her trencher, her confusion multiplied a hundredfold.

And then she felt his hand at the small of her spine, and it was both welcome and unwelcome all at once.

After last night, it gave her pleasure to feel it there. Warmth burst into her cheeks at the memory of the night’s carnal pursuits. But it was far too familiar—a gentle lover’s touch. She heard him laugh and hardened her resolve to go.

The sooner the better.

“I sent Kieran into the Mounth,” he said over her shoulder.

His best man.

He did not need to say why. She understood he’d sent Kieran to deliver Lael’s message. She lifted a bite to her mouth, feeling the sharp blade against her tongue. Although it pleased her much that her brother would soon know she was not dead, she could not look at Jaime for fear that he could read her mind.

“He’ll never make it,” she assured, and found herself hoping it was true, for if he did happen to reach Dubhtolargg, there was no telling what her brother might do to him. She had given him a message between her words that only Aidan could decipher, and she knew her brother well enough to know he would rouse Sluag himself to bring her home.

There was a smile in her husband’s voice. “I assure you that if anyone can, Kieran will.”

A knot formed in Lael’s belly, one that had little to do with the soured meal put upon her plate.

“Does that not please you, Lael?”

Lael peered up at Jaime finally, finding his gaze completely without guile. She nodded. “Aye,” she reassured. “It pleases me verra much.” And for the third time in a single night, she found herself thanking the man who’d spared her life.

After a week of convalescing, Cameron migrated to the hall. He made certain never to be alone with Cailin, although his thoughts were with her all the day and night long. He found himself obsessed and beset, unable to see himself leaving Dubhtolargg without her.

In fact he was heartily glad now that he was stuck here for the winter, and he hoped and prayed that Aidan dún Scoti would warm to him as he clearly had to his Scoti bride.

Cameron knew these people set themselves apart, and had no love for Scotia or its king, but he himself had long been a man without a home and had never truly felt himself a part of the MacKinnon clan. Aye, the MacKinnon was obliging enough. He’d accepted all the displaced MacEanraigs as his kin, but Cameron felt the separation nonetheless. Now as it would seem, he might never see his cousin again, and he wondered what there was to return to…

Broc’s wife and bairns were at
Chreagach Mhor.
But they were not Cameron’s family, and there was little enough he might to do aid them when he knew every last MacKinnon would take Broc’s loved ones to their bosom.

As for Broc, he could scarce believe his cousin could be gone. That much aggrieved him more than words could say. He felt aggrieved for Lael—and her family as well—but it was his cousin he mourned above all else, with a weight and torment that Cailin’s smile could only begin to atone for. She poured him a dram of
uisge
to ward away the cold, but her bonny smile warmed him all the more.

His wounds were healing quickly, though his heart was wasting away, for Broc was the only true family he had ever known. They had been through so much, and even when Cameron had once thought to betray the clan, Broc had saved him from himself. In truth he would have given his life for Broc, would do so even now,
if he only had the chance.

Another week went by, and he had little notion when he rose one gray morning that he would get the chance to prove his worth—not simply to Broc, but to the woman he meant to wed.

Against all odds, a messenger rode into the vale—a golden-haired warrior who appeared for all his English garb like a Scotsman to the bone. He sauntered in with all the bluster of a Scotsman, wearing an English-styled tunic and cloaked in heavy furs. His beard was frozen and there were icicles hanging from his nose hairs. With fingers that were nearly frostbitten, he handed over a missive to Aidan, and then went without permission to warm his fingers by the hearth as he awaited Aidan’s reply.

The dún Scoti chieftain’s face darkened with a frightful scowl. His brow furrowed and his green eyes shot a glance at the burly warrior Cameron had come to know as Lachlann. Aidan gave his captain an ominous nod toward the door and Lachlan moved to bar the exit. Another two guards followed his lead, flanking him on either side.

The hall fell silent as a crypt. Cailin stood behind Cameron, digging her dainty fingers into his shoulder so desperately that Cameron bit back a cry of pain.

The stranger seemed to understand their wordless discourse, but despite that, he did not move from where he stood, warming his hands by the fire.

Aidan made his way to where the man stood. He re-rolled the parchment and held it in his fist. “My sister lives?” he asked the man directly.

The stranger nodded.

“What of Broc Ceannfhionn?”

“Lives as well.”

Cameron surged to his feet where he sat at the long table, and both the dún Scoti and the stranger peered his way.

Cailin seized him by the elbow, holding him back.

The level of fury in the dún Scoti’s gaze should have set the man afire right there where he stood, because it set Cameron’s face ablaze. Aidan turned once more to face the stranger. “And ’tis true? This?” he demanded to know, snapping the parchment against his palm. “At the peril of her life, my sister was forced to wed and bed the demon Butcher?”

The stranger turned once more to Cameron, then back to Aidan, and the he said, “You might put it that way.”

When she was outside their bedchamber, Lael was always certain of her path. It was only when she retreated to her tower refuge that she felt utterly torn. Here, she was her husband’s wife, responding wantonly to his every touch, yearning desperately for his kiss.

On their second night Jaime came prepared to woo her, after giving her the gift of his mother’s blade. And despite that she’d expected him to seize it away after the mealtime was over he did not. He allowed her to keep the knife and she wore it in a belted sheathe about her waist.

But that night, after supper, he came to their bower bearing yet another gift and it was then she understood how much in peril lay her vanquished heart.

He handed her a folded cloth in the colors of his long-forgotten clan, imbued with all the shades of the earth—rich browns, black and earthy greens with silvery threads that matched the color of his eyes.

“I never thought to begin anew,” he confessed as he poured himself a dram from the barrel David left behind. He then told her about the fall of Dunloppe, and how the fire illuminated the twilight sky for miles.

He bared his heart, and Lael found herself speechless.

“’Tis lovely,” she said of the cloth, and laid it, still folded, upon the bed.

The scene he described rivaled even her own memory of her father’s betrayal in their hall—not precisely the same, but his grandfather, too, had been betrayed by those he trusted. In the end, while it drew her kinsmen closer, it wrested Jaime’s apart. There was little left of his legacy now, and the land, he said, had begun to reclaim its due. He’d returned only once to find the blackened stone overrun with vines and little remaining of the palisade walls. Thereafter he turned his back on all that should have been his through his mother’s kin, embracing a life with those he deemed more worthy.

He drank a moment in silence, and then added, “After all was said and done, it seems I locked my pride it in that same box where I stored my family’s plaid.”

Lael caressed the dusty fabric with a trembling hand, considering the youth he once had been—a displaced young man with at terrible fury in his soul.

She shared that with him she must confess… an overwhelming desire to avenge the family she’d lost. But for Lael it was tempered by the love her kinsmen gave her, and if she’d fought for anything at all, it was to protect the ones she loved.

“I told myself it was for the best—that my kin were naught but reivers with loyalties to none, that I was better served to choose a side.”

“And so you chose England and Henry?”

“My loyalties are to David,” he disclosed.

Listening to him speak, Lael stared at the Dunloppe plaid, wondering if there was a difference after all.

“Do not look so sad, Lael. Donnal MacLaren may have been the device, though in the end, fickle hearts—mine included—destroyed my clan. I suppose I must have attributed the ignoble trait to all Scots. After all, ’twas I who put those walls to flame that night.”

He set his glass down—she heard it clink—and approached the bed.

“But you my lovely wife… you risk everything for what you believe in…” He planted a gentle kiss upon her shoulder, and Lael swallowed hard.

“In truth, I have never had any cause to love my kith or kin… until you. David chose me as Keppenach’s laird, he said, because I was a Scot—and that it was high time I learnt to be one. Now I understand something I did not…. I feel a flame in my breast and it burns for more than Keppenach… my darling bride.”

Lael’s head lolled backward at his touch and her head swam with thoughts she ought not think. Her body craved things she should not want…

“But I am
not
a Scot,” she advised him, turning her back to the bed, to the plaid he had given her, placing herself into his embrace.

“Ah, but you are now,” he argued, his words scarce more than a whisper.

But it was simply not true. She might have given him her body, but it did not mean she could forsake all she ever knew…

That was something her husband seemed inclined to forget.

Even if he found himself returned to his roots, she was
not
like him. She was
not
a Scot and she could
not
remain here. This was
not
her kith or her kin, and unlike her husband, her family had always been her pillar. Now more than ever she understood how wrong she was to leave them—for all the reasons he had elucidated so clearly. The thought of her people vanishing, their blood gone from the face of the earth, just like his… It made her sick to her belly.

Indeed, fickle hearts were the destroyer of families.

Her clansmen had not survived so long in the Mounth by turning their backs on all they believed in—everything they sought to maintain. They had a single, united purpose there in that vale—to safeguard the stone from Scone—and she had ineffectually turned her eyes to another cause.

Ach, she
must
find a way home… though she could hardly think clearly with her husband leaning so close, tugging up her skirts and kissing her lips…

With a will of its own, her body betrayed her once again, pressing into his embrace until his hands went to the back of her neck and to the small of her back.

She went limp against him, giving herself into his hands, kissing him back with all the abandon she’d known before, reveling in the feel of his hands as they traversed her body.

He laid her back gently upon the bed, whispering into her mouth. “I have more gifts to bestow upon ye.” And then he lifted her dress, fell to his knees, and put his tongue there between her legs. Lael was instantly lost. She gasped aloud.

Unable to bear it, she pulled him up, and somehow, amidst the groping and kissing, they shed their clothing as they went, and found themselves in the middle of the bed, her husband as bare as she and laying prostrate upon his back.