Knight In My Bed (38 page)

Until just a few scant moments ago when Devorgilla had confirmed her suspicions about the foul-tasting tincture she'd let Isolde imbibe for weeks.

Not an anti-attraction potion at all, but a
love potion
!

And with the crone's upsetting admission, the cottage's homespun appeal had slipped right out the ceiling's chimney hole, its entire allure spiraling away along with the wispy ropes of smoke rising from the cook fire.

And neither the smoky-sweet smell of burning peat, the earthy tang of dried herbs, nor the tempting aroma of the simmering stew could fetch back the charm.

She'd had enough of charms.

Sitting bolt upright, driven to sheer madness by the firm grip he had on her heart, she blurted, "I have fallen in love with him!" She expelled a ragged breath of frustration. "I've wantoned myself, Devorgilla, and ... a-and enjoyed it!
Craved
his touch, and 'tis all your doing."

Devorgilla lifted a straggly brow in mock astonishment, the simple gesture giving Isolde's heart a sharp jolt, so very much did it remind her of him.

Ignoring her distress, the crone hobbled to one of the un-shuttered windows, the long-handled stirring ladle still clutched in her hand. "Did you see Lugh or Mab on your way here?" She stared out into the darkening night, her words as casual as if Isolde hadn't just bled her soul onto the stone - flagged floor. "The boy wanders ever farther of late, and Mab is getting too old to be about on wild and stormy nights," she fretted. "It will rain soon."

“I saw neither," Isolde answered, her voice fiat, her irritation high. "Nor did I see a single cloud, but I ken better than to doubt you if you say a storm is brewing."

Nor did she fear the wrath of an approaching storm.

Nary a tempest could rise from the sea to rival the might of the tumult raging inside her.

But her resolve cracked when Devorgilla returned to the cook fire and dipped the wooden ladle into the cauldron, calmly stirring the stew as if Isolde's visit had been a purely social one and not a call paid in dire desperation.

"Oh, Devorgilla," she wailed, "how could you?"

"You should ken I'd ne'er do aught to vex you a-purpose.” The crone slid her a guileless look. "'Tis possible I mistook an ingredient or two, but not with ill intent, my lady," she said, her thin voice steeped with contrition.

False contrition.

A tone as false as the contrived look of innocence on her face.

As mendacious as her use of "my lady." Devorgilla ne'er called her aught but lass or child.

Isolde frowned. The crone's expression, her tone, and her word choice, all boded ill.

All were but poorly disguised attempts to shield her treachery.

"'Tis my eyesight," Devorgilla droned on, warming to her deception. She set aside the ladle and rubbed at her eyes with knobby knuckles. "My vision worsens by-"

“Your vision was clear enough for you to spot teensy bog violets growing along the edges of the marsh pools the day I asked your assistance in getting my ... m-my message to Balloch," Isolde protested, grateful when Bodo hopped on her lap.

She wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close reveling in the way he snuggled his soft weight against her. He would ne'er stoop to Devorgilla's deceptions, ne'er betray her trust. Ne'er ...

Her thoughts petered to a most disturbing end when a
 
whole parade of images of Bodo and him rose up in her mind. The damning evidence of wee Bodo's betrayal marched heavily across her sensitivities.

Feeling as if she were drowning in one of the many bog pits dotting Doon's treacherous inlands, Isolde waited for the dog to settle himself before she railed on. "I think you tricked me a-purpose," she said, watching Devorgilla closely.

She didn't care for the way the crone pressed her lips together. "He's charmed you," she said.

"
Charmed me
?" Devorgilla shook her gray head, and Isolde thought she saw her fight back a smile.

"Aye, you," Isolde snapped, digging her fingers into Bodo's warm fur, seeking a hold on her world before it slanted from her grasp. "His bonnie looks have taken you in, and you've contrived to bring us together."

A strange twinkle glimmered in Devorgilla's foggy eyes and, of a sudden, the skin around them appeared more crinkled with mirth than wrinkled with age.

"It wasn't my idea to rid yourself of Balloch MacArthur
 
by trying to get a bairn off the MacLean," the crone said, filling two wooden cups with her special heather ale. “ ‘Twasn't I who wanted charmed yarrow sprigs to thrust beneath my pillow on Beltaine hoping to catch a glimpse of my true soul mate's bonnie face."

Isolde lifted her chin. "And is he the one you saw in your cauldron's steam that very same night?"

The crone's wrinkled face was wreathed in a smile. She tilted her head in a coy gesture better suited for a young maid of four-and-ten years. "Do you want him to be?"

Her ire rising, Isolde waved aside the froth-capped cup of ale the cailleach offered her. "I wanted an alliance, an end to strife and woe," she insisted. "Peace for this isle."

The crone set the cup of ale in front of her. Resting her age-spotted hands on the tabletop's rough surface, she leaned forward. "A wise person know the gods oft give us not what we want or set out to achieve, but what we need."

More perturbed than she cared to admit, Isolde glanced out the cottage's two square-cut windows at the gathering storm clouds.

Just as the cailleach had predicted.

Right as always.

A chill slid down Isolde's spine.

"And lo," Devorgilla barged on, straightening, "most times we surprise ourselves by discovering that what we need is also what we most wanted but were too blind to see."

That did it.

Isolde stood, causing Bodo to jump off her lap. He gave her a white-rimmed look of offended reproach.

"I am weary of having all and sundry tell me I am blind," she said, glancing down to dust off and smooth her skirts.

Mayhap not with your eyes, but what of your heart?

Isolde raised her head at once, but rather than peering at her with a wizened expression on her ancient face, proud of having spewed yet another noble-sounding gem of wisdom, the stoop-shouldered crone was already shuffling back to her steaming cauldron, Isolde and her troubles clearly forgotten.

Dismissed.

"Mayhap not with your eyes, but what of your heart?" Isolde muttered under her breath as she let herself and Bodo out the door. Closing it soundly behind her, she set off at a fast pace for Dunmuir and the night of passion awaiting her there.

"
But what of your heart
?" she mimicked in anger when she stumbled over a stone.

Clutching the soft, woolen folds of her arisaid more snugly around her shoulders, she hurried on. What she needed was to reach Dunmuir's sheltering walls before the storm broke.

What she didn't need, and a plague on Devorgilla, Evelina, and even Donall the Bold, his bonnie self, for telling her otherwise, was to go a-peeking into her heart.

She already knew what lurked there.

He stalked toward her the moment she let herself into her chamber, his whole demeanor rife with lordly bearing and self-contentment. His raven hair gleamed damp from his ablutions, and his dark eyes smoldered with hot need and something more fierce.

Something bold.

Something wild and furious. As untamed as the powerful storm just beginning to unfurl its might on the waiting night.

Someone, no doubt he, had not bothered to fasten the shutters, and a fast, keening wind swept into the room. The two cresset lamps swung on their chains, their flames dancing, while the more fragile tapers of the candelabrum guttered and extinguished, leaving tendrils of gray smoke hanging in the chill, damp air.

But they, too, were quickly vanquished.

The fragile smoke whisked away by the same swift-moving air licking coldly at her cheeks and every other inch of her exposed to the biting, wet wind.

Snuffed out and routed as easily as her well-laid plans.

And then he was upon her, his bold strapping self looming up before her. A pagan sea god risen from the storm tossed sea, the wrath of the heavens blazing across his handsome face, in the tight set of his jaw and the proud, imposing spread of his shoulders.

And, merciful saints, he was shirtless again.

His discarded tunic rested on the foot end of her bed, slung impotently 'round her bedpost. A frightfully mundane bit of limp brown cloth, harmless and woefully unimpressive without him filling it out.

Filling it out so nobly.

So fine.

Isolde clutched at her damp arisaid. Something had changed. Though he was still her captive, the power between them had shifted. She'd seen the change coming, but it hadn't been truly apparent, not real, until this moment.

Even Bodo sensed the difference. The little brown and white dog stared up at him, tail wagging as always, but the tilt of his head and the quizzical look in his bright gold-brown eyes bespoke his puzzlement.

Isolde stared, too. She could do naught else. The sheer power of his presence left her breathless, stayed her limbs. She couldn't even lift her hands to remove her arisaid.

As if he'd read her thoughts, his hand shot out and snatched the plaid off her shoulders. "I do not want you catching an ague," he said, the husky tone of his voice a fine match for the dark fire in his eyes.

"I want..” His words trailed off as his gaze lighted on Bodo.

The dog stood with his forepaws braced on Donall the Bold's hose-clad knees. Peering up at him, Bodo looked every bit as awestruck as Isolde herself.

For a moment, the MacLean's imposing countenance softened, but then he glanced at her again, and the hard, resolute glint was back in his eyes. And stronger, more daunting than before. Without a further word, he spun away and strode to her bed.

Bodo, the wee furred traitor, trotted after him.

Her bold knight snatched his tunic off the bed, but rather than don it as she'd expected, he kept his broad back to her and appeared to fumble with the shirt, his wide-set shoulders rising and falling with whatever devilment he pursued.

His back and arm muscles tensed and bunched, and the sight made her breath catch in her throat. Hopeless longing welled inside her, an unquenchable ache she could no sooner deny than stop her heart from beating.

Bodo stared at him, too, the little dog's stubby brown tail wagging furiously.

As furiously as the mad rush of Isolde's pulse.

Her gaze clung to his powerful back, to the sheaf of raven hair just teasing his shoulders. Thick, silken tresses, high-glossed and gleamed by the cresset lamps' glow, caressed by the night wind pouring through the open windows.

Faith, but she ached to comb her fingers through the heavy silk of his hair, burned to gentle her hands over the smooth-muscled contours of his shoulders and back.

Touch him ...
everywhere.

Be touched by him.

But her feet, her arms, even her tongue wouldn't move. She stood transfixed, awed by his magnificence. The heated anticipation of his embrace, of his
loving
, swirled through her, unchecked and free.

A pleasing languid warmth to dispel the night's chill.

To warm her soul.

Even as her heart screamed the impossibility, the shame, of loving him.

Uncomfortable, she glanced away, then immediately wished she hadn't, for she glimpsed Lileas's anguished face, a fleeting image, briefly outlined against the wind-whipped clouds racing past the windows.

No shame, not hi
-. . . the pale lips seemed to whisper, but a sudden burst of pelting rain and brilliant flash of lightning dissolved the illusion. Gusty wind and a deafening peal of thunder carried off the imagined words.

A brooding silence descended, thick and pulsing. A palpable quiet almost loud enough to block out the storm's fury.

An uncomfortable stillness to swallow the very roar of the sea.

Almost compelling enough to overpower the hard thudding of her heart. Silence the pounding of his as well, for she would have sworn she could hear its slow, steady beat.

Desire, wild and menacing as the storm, surged and tossed inside her. A hungry wanting, surely as dark and forthright as his own.

Demanding as the menaces of this strange night.

And then her feet carried her forward. To him, to her heart, and all she yearned for. She stopped an arm's length from him, trailed her fingers over the well-defined muscles of his shoulders.

"You want?" she murmured, urging him to finish the sentence he'd let hang between them.

He whirled around, his dark eyes heavy-lidded with desire, his jaw set with a new and formidable determination. "I want you," he said. "You, and naught else."

Isolde lowered her gaze, unable to bear the intensity banking in his. She saw the twisted shirt in his hands then, and her heart swelled at what he'd done. She watched him give Bodo the knotted tunic, her emotions wheeling out of control.