Highlander Avenged (7 page)

When she returned from the cave, Malcolm was leaning against a large boulder not far from the mouth of the cave. His face was turned up to the sun, eyes closed as hers had been, but he looked much more at peace than she had been, and it came to her that he was content with where he was in this moment. She could not ever remember a time when she had been as content as he appeared. She was always looking ahead to the next challenge, the next need of those around her, the next problem to come her way.

But here was a warrior, calm, focused, content. How did he do that?

She studied him. His tunic lay on the ground at his feet. His broad, heavily muscled shoulders were relaxed, and she could see his chest rise and fall slowly. His brow was smooth, his feet were spread and braced him easily against the boulder. The breeze caught his golden hair, tossing it in his face, but he did not push it back or try to control it at all. He just smiled, a small smile that played over his perfect lips. Kissable lips.

The memory of their kiss hit her hard and fast, and she found herself wanting to go stand between his legs and kiss him again.

“Are you not done looking at me yet, angel?” he said, cracking one eye open to look at her.

She opened her mouth to deny it, but nothing came out. She tried again, but still, no words. “Aye,” she finally managed and the man beamed at her. “I see you had no trouble with your tunic,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

“Only a wee bit. ’Twould have been much easier had you assisted me, Jeanette.”

“Aye.” Her breath hitched at the image in her head of pulling his tunic up, slowly revealing all that honeyed skin covering the rippling muscles of his stomach, his chest, his arms. She wanted to reach out and touch him, run her hands over him, fall into his kiss again. “Aye,” she said again.

“Jeanette? Where are the extra—”

Jeanette gasped and whirled to find Teasag striding into the clearing, grinning at her.

“—Plaids?” the woman finished.

“Plaids?” Jeanette fought her way out of the sensual haze of her daydream, trying to understand what Teasag had asked. “Plaids,” she said, focusing on that one word and wishing Malcolm still had his plaid draped over his shoulders, hiding some of that enticing . . . “Aye, plaids.” She pulled herself back to the auld woman’s question with an effort. She pointed to where a pile of them were stacked just inside the cave. “Shall I bring them to you as soon as I’ve seen to Malcolm’s injury?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound as unsettled as she felt.

Teasag smiled, a knowing look in her eyes. “Perhaps Malcolm can help you,” she said, turning around on the path and once more leaving Jeanette and Malcolm alone.

Malcolm was quietly laughing behind her. She whirled back to him, a finger raised.

“Do not laugh at me,” she said, mortified that she had been so obvious in her distraction not just to him, but to the auld woman, too.

Malcolm quieted his mirth, but grabbed her finger, pulling her close, just between his legs, where she had moments ago imagined herself.

“If you will not laugh at yourself, angel, you leave it to the rest of us to do so.” And then he kissed her . . . or maybe she kissed him. Nay, he kissed her, pulling her closer until he could hook his good hand behind her neck and draw her down to his mouth. Not that she put up much of a fight.

“ ’Tis sure I am his wound is on his arm,” came Teasag’s voice again from somewhere behind Jeanette, but Malcolm did not stop kissing her. The woman cackled, but Jeanette could not find it in herself to care, not in this moment when his lips were so soft yet so demanding against her own, when his hand both held her and caressed the sensitive skin of her neck. She cared about nothing except continuing the kiss, until men’s voices filtered into her fuzzy mind. ’Twas one thing for the auld women to know she kissed Malcolm, but ’twas an altogether different thing for the guards to know. The women could be trusted to keep the gossip among themselves. The men would tell Uilliam, and he would tell her father.

She backed out of his embrace, blinking and running the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip.

“We have much to do,” she said, forcing herself not to look at his mouth, but rather at the bandage she needed to remove.

“There is much we need to do, indeed, angel, but I think you should tend my wound for now.”

She glanced at him and the look of raw desire upon his face must have matched her own. He ran a hand down her arm, hooking her hand in his, and she realized that though his words sounded teasing, he was completely serious.

S
COTIA STOOD JUST
within the shadow of the trees, a bucket of water in either hand, and stared at her sister, nestled in the space between Malcolm MacKenzie’s thickly muscled thighs, pressing her palms to the man’s naked chest and kissing him as if they were lovers, as if they had known each other far longer than a few days.

Scotia’s hands clenched around the bucket handles and a muscle twitched in the side of her face. How could her sister—calm, purposeful, steady Jeanette—be dallying with a man she barely knew when their world was crumbling to pieces around them? That was something they would all expect of Scotia, but she found the idea repulsive now. Dallying with lads was for kinder days, not for days when revenge was all any of them should want.

The bastard who had killed her mother had paid too easily for his crime. It grated upon her that she had not been the one to kill the man. Her father had taken all of their revenge for himself, leaving nothing for the rest of them. But there were other English who would be held accountable for the commands of their king. She had made a vow to herself, and to the memory of her mother, to see it so.

Though it would seem even that had been stolen from her by sending her away to the caves with auld women and her humiliated sister. ’Twas not a time to retreat and she wanted nothing to do with such a cowardly act.

She wanted to play a part in protecting the clan from the English that Nicholas was sure were on their way.

Nicholas.

She wanted to hate him, too, for his half-English blood and his years in service as a spy for King Edward, but the man had proven himself true to the needs of Clan MacAlpin. Rowan had chosen him. Kenneth, Scotia’s father and the chief, had stepped aside to make Nicholas chief. And she could find nothing to hate in the man as hard as she tried.

Auld Teasag’s voice broke into Scotia’s spiraling thoughts, chiding Jeanette for her wanton behavior, though the woman did not seem serious. If it had been Scotia kissing any man, everyone would have scolded her. But Jeanette only got teased when they all should be serious.

They all should be serious . . .

Aye. Her mum would tell her to stop feeling sorry for herself and to do something useful, that it would make her feel better, stronger, and Scotia would like to feel both. Voices of the guards returning from their hunting turned her thoughts to what was being done . . . and what wasn’t being done . . . for the safety of the clan.

Everyone was focused on getting the caves settled, finding food, hauling water. She looked down at the heavy buckets she held, loosening her white-knuckled grip on them just a little. They needed to find other sources of water, lest the burn nearby dried up in the summer. If that happened, they’d be constantly hauling it up the benside from the burn that ran along the bottom of the glen. She could search for other burns, and while she did that, she could look for ways to protect the MacAlpins while they lived here for who knew how long.

Tomorrow, at first light, Scotia would say she was searching for water, but she would be doing so much more. She would be doing something important, something that might turn the tide should the English find this glen—which is exactly what Jeanette should be doing. Not kissing the MacKenzie like nothing terrible had befallen her and her clan, like there was nothing to grieve over, and nothing to avenge.

Scotia would not sit by and let more grief befall them. She would do something even when Jeanette did nothing,
especially
when Jeanette did nothing.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HAT EVENING
M
ALCOLM
was grateful that some of the lads had been successful in their rabbit snares this day, for he had quickly grown tired of porridge and dried meat three times a day. There was still porridge for dinner, but there was also rabbit stew.

He looked about at the large cooking area with its makeshift spit and iron pots nestled in the coals of several different fires. The men had managed to move large stones and a portion of a downed tree to circle the cooking area, serving both as a way to keep the bairns and weans away from the fires and as seats for some while they ate.

Malcolm closed his eyes and breathed in the crisp air and the relative silence of the night, hearing only the crackle of the fire and the sound of the wind in the trees. Every once in a while there would be a low murmur as someone spoke, or a bairn would fuss, but everyone was tired and seemed content to sit for a while before turning in for the night.

Night. It was inevitably the time when his mind, and his body, settled on thoughts of Jeanette. The knowledge that she slept not far from him invaded his dreams, making his sleep restless, and his waking hours a lesson in self-control. He found himself watching her move among her kin as she worked during the day, admiring her grace and the easy way she had with everyone. When she tended his injury, all he could think about was kissing her again, but inevitably they were not alone. If she didn’t linger so over the care she gave his arm, he might think she arranged for others to be about, but it seemed she was as distracted by him as he was by her.

The lass in question chose that moment to leap up from her spot opposite him across the fire.

“I shall see the last of the food is put away,” she said.

Scotia yawned. “I shall let you, though ’twas my task this evening.” She rose and took her leave. Malcolm watched as she disappeared into the main cave, followed by a few others who had lingered after the meal until it was only Malcolm and Peigi by the fire, while Jeanette crouched across it, scrubbing a pot out with sand. A pleasant silence settled over them all until Peigi rose and moved to sit near him on the log.

“Go to her, my braw lad.” She patted him on the arm with a hand twisted by age. “Jeanette has always been fixed on duty, has always put the needs of others before her own. Even now when she grieves over the loss of her mother and her home, she does not think to reach out for comfort, yet she seems to find it with you, Malcolm MacKenzie.”

He glanced at her, finding mirth glittering in her eyes.

“Go and help her in her task, then steal another kiss or two to send her to sleep with sweet dreams, not the nightmares she has been having.”

“Nightmares? I have heard naught from her in the night.”

“Even in that she would hide her own need. She has not slept well since before we came here.” She nodded toward the cookfire where Jeanette was now busy banking the embers. “I think she does not wish to sleep but she will not speak about it.”

That explained the circles under her eyes better than the work she had been occupied with these past days.

Peigi gave his arm a squeeze. “I think you were sent here for a reason, lad, and not just so our Jeanette could heal your arm. The lass needs a bit of fun in her life, especially now when all is doom and dread. You seem just the lad for the task. This life is too short, and all too often too hard, not to take what pleasure you may when you can.”

Malcolm stared at the woman. Was she suggesting . . . Nay, surely not, but she winked at him as she rose.

“I was never one to miss a bit of fun when I was younger and prettier. It is what makes life worth living, especially in hard times.” She looked down at him. “Go. Show the lass that it harms not to have some fun. Duty will always be waiting for her.”

Fun? ’Twas not exactly how he would describe the quick passion that rose between himself and Jeanette whenever they touched. He looked over his shoulder and found the auld woman standing in the mouth of the cave watching him. She leaned her head toward Jeanette, then gave him a shooing motion with her hands. He nodded at her, not knowing if being alone with Jeanette was a good thing or just a test of his will.

“Can I help you with that, angel?” he asked, not waiting for an answer before taking the heavy lidded iron pot from her hand. He grabbed another, leaving the largest for her to prepare the morning porridge.

Without a word he took the pots, both now clean, into the cave and deposited them along the wall. He grabbed the plaid he’d been using for a bed and returned to the cook circle. Jeanette had filled the remaining pot with oats and water and was settling it into the embers to cook slowly overnight. He put the lid upon it, then grabbed her hand and led her to the log Peigi had sat upon.

“I am not done banking the fire,” she said, even though she showed no resistance to being pulled away from that task.

“Aye, lass, you are.” He wrapped his plaid around her, taking a moment to pull her braid free of it as an excuse to stand close to her, then he tugged her down to sit next to him on the ground, the log at their backs trapping some of the fire’s heat about them.

“Peigi says you’ve been having nightmares,” he said quietly, staring into the fire. He knew this was not what Peigi had in mind, but he needed the distraction of conversation until he could overcome the instinct to pull her into his lap and kiss her until he’d had his fill, if that was even possible. Besides, if he could get Jeanette to talk about what bedeviled her, it might help her sleep better. “Is that why you become so busy in the evening? So you do not have to dream?”

She gave a long sigh and leaned her head on his shoulder. He smiled as the scent of her, like a breeze off a loch in springtime, settled over him, but he kept looking at the fire pit, hoping to give her a sense of privacy in the dark of the night so she’d talk to him.

“Peigi is a busybody,” she said quietly.

“Aye, a spunky auld woman she is, but she means well.” He needed to touch her, so he took Jeanette’s hand in his and let them rest on his thigh, their fingers twined together.

“I dream, but I do not remember much . . . just a feeling of panic, of grief, and anger. So much anger.”

“You have much to be angry about.”

“You have no idea.”

“Nay?” The pain in her voice pulled at him in a different way than her scent or her touch did, making him want to soothe her hurts, and right whatever wrongs had been done. “Tell me, lass. Perhaps that will help keep the dreams from tormenting you.”

She was quiet for a long time and he thought perhaps she had gone to sleep, but she sighed again and began to speak.

“You ken what happened with my mum, her murder?”

“I know only that she was murdered, not why, or by whom.”

“There was another spy,” she said. “He came here with Nicholas, but he was a very different sort of man. When Nicholas’s loyalties shifted to Rowan and our clan, his partner decided to finish the job himself. He thought my mum could help him do that and when she couldn’t . . . she was so ill . . . He . . . I . . .” It was as if she could not push the words out into the night air.

Malcolm gave her hand a squeeze, but kept his eyes trained on the glowing coals of the fire, hoping she would continue. He heard her swallow hard.

“I could not stop him. I could not help her. And then Rowan was the one . . .”

The one? Questions. So many questions plagued him, but he did not want to push her when she was just beginning to open up. His questions would hold and perhaps she would answer one or two without him even asking.

“Rowan went with the men to find the spy. Rowan turned the tide in the fight. Rowan became . . .”

“Became the Lady of the castle? Should that not have been your place as the eldest daughter?” He silently cursed at his inability to hold all his questions in. The spark of anger he felt over her rightful place having been taken from her made that difficult.

She hesitated. “That is not how it works in our clan. Rowan was . . . chosen. Then she chose Nicholas and now my father is no longer chief and my sister and I . . . we are unneeded.”

“ ’Tis not what I have seen.” He lifted her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles where they twined with his. “You are much loved by your clan, and much trusted to take on this task of providing safe haven for them.”

“Peigi and her sisters are the ones providing safe haven. I was sent here so I would not press Rowan any longer.”

“Press her for what, angel?”

Jeanette seemed to consider how to answer him. “There are duties she must perform as Lady of the castle, duties I have been taught, since I was a wee lass, in preparation for her position, but she resists my teaching them to her.”

The urge to shake Rowan surprised him, but then her resistance to learning her proper duties also surprised him. “Perhaps she needs some time to adjust to her new duties?”

“Perhaps. In truth, we have never been at such odds with each other and I find it hard to accept. ’Tis why I came here, rather than staying with her at the warriors’ camp, to give us each some time to accustom ourselves to the changes in our destinies.”

Malcolm mulled over all the things she’d told him, understanding now why there had seemed to be such tension between the two women, though his instinct was still to protect Jeanette and reprimand Rowan for causing her cousin such distress, but that was not his place. He and Jeanette had shared a few kisses, though that was hardly enough to make him lay claim to her and her troubles as his own, and yet, just as much as he ached for more kisses, he wished to ease her heartache. Jeanette shivered and Malcolm wrapped an arm about her, pulling her close and arranging the plaid to better shelter her from the damp night air. They sat quietly together for a time, staring into the crackling fire that was starting to burn low. After a while, she turned enough to rest her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder and pulled part of the plaid across him as she rested her arm across his waist. Her breathing slowed. She tucked her hand under her cheek and Malcolm found himself living his own dream. Only this time, instead of her making him restless, he pulled her even closer to him, breathing in the scent of her, and slipped into sleep.

J
EANETTE WANDERED HIGH
up on the ben, picking her way along a rocky path between huge pines, silvery birch, and the occasional rowan tree. A stag with one jutting antler, and one bent at an odd angle, stepped out of the shadows into the path before her and stopped, turned to stare at her for a long moment, then continued on his way, disappearing quickly and silently back into the forest shadows. She tried to follow him, but the trees were too densely packed, the underbrush too full of thorns, and so she turned to see where he had come from.

In that direction the trees seemed to open for her, displaying a breathtaking view down the benside, laying out the glen below her. It was thickly blanketed in shades of springtime green, broken by the darker green of the pines that had yet to shed their winter needles. She could just make out a wisp of smoke drifting up through the tree cover and she knew that marked the cookfire outside the main cave.

The thought drifted through her mind that they must be more careful to keep the fire small so no one hunting them could find them by its telltale plume. But as quickly as the thought came, it drifted away from her and she found herself farther up the ben, standing on a barren shelf of stone. The stag stood once more before her, as if he had been awaiting her arrival. He looked at her, then looked at the massive stone next to him. It jutted from the face of the mountain, broken by a slash of darkness that beckoned her to step into it.

And then the stag was gone.

Jeanette approached the place where he had stood, but she could not see him anywhere. She looked down the ben again, but the glen was much farther away, as if she’d climbed twice as high as she had been the first time the stag crossed her path, though she did not feel tired, nor could she remember traveling so far. The cookfire smoke was still visible, but only if she looked hard for it, and it was off to her right now.

She turned to look at the massive boulder behind her and found a picture of a resting stag incised into the stone. She ran her fingers over the curve of the stag’s antlers and over the back, and then remembered the slashing cleft in the boulder. She tried to slide into the break in the stone but could not. Again and again she tried. Each time she could smell fresh air wafting through the darkness, a coolness floated over her heated skin, taunting her with the mystery of what was within.

“Lass?”

A warm, callused hand stroked her face. A kiss feathered against her forehead. She whimpered, aching with her frustration. But she did not look away from the entrance to whatever lay beyond the stone. She knew she must get through that stone.

“Jeanette, angel.”

A deep voice floated around her, surrounding her in warmth and an itchy sort of need akin to, but not the same as, her frustration over being barred from whatever the stone held secret from her.

“Wake up, lass.”