Only For A Knight (3 page)

 

Fiery-red flames that soon became a tall and lithesome maid’s unbound cascade of shimmering red-gold tresses. Beautifully-waved tresses that spilled clear to the young woman’s shapely hips, each shimmering strand shining bright as sunfire.

 

The lass stood tall and proud, untold happiness seeming to radiate from every glorious inch of her. And from someplace deep inside Linnet, a hidden corner far removed and safe from her hard-pounding heart and the sweat trickling cold between her breasts, Linnet knew she was staring at her stepson’s bride.

 

A truth she would have recognized even if the lass weren’t standing in front of the MacKenzies’ famed Marriage Stone, a large blue-tinted stone incised with ancient Celtic runes, a near-perfect hole in its center—the main piece and pride of every MacKenzie wedding ceremony.

 

A clan tradition all down the centuries.

 

The MacKenzies’ most sacred talisman.

 

Aye, the lovely maid with the flame-bright hair could be no other.

 

Trembling now, her knees nigh giving out on her, Linnet struggled to keep standing, reached deep inside herself to maintain her composure even as she willed the lass to turn, to glance her way, so she could see the maid’s face.

 

But such visions cannot be summoned nor steered, Linnet well knew, and even as she stared, the image began to waver and fade until the bright-shimmering tresses were once again nothing more than dancing flames, the beautiful young woman, and the celebrated Marriage Stone, gone as if they’d never been.

 

“Sir . . .” Linnet began when she could find her voice, forgetting herself in her flustered state and calling her husband by the title he loathed her to use. “Duncan,” she corrected, careful to keep her back to him, feigning calm. “You say the MacLeod lass is fetching. I would know, is she . . . flame-haired? Perchance like me?”

 

“Nay, she is nothing like you.” Duncan’s answer came swift and, oddly, exactly as Linnet had feared. “Euphemia MacLeod is dark. A wee snippet of a lass with dark brown hair and eyes. She will make a meet bride.”

 

“A meet bride,” Linnet acknowledged, her heart sinking.
But not for our Robbie.

 

That last she left unsaid.

 

 

Kintail.

 

Robbie MacKenzie reined in his sure-footed Highland garron on the crest of a windswept ridge and surveyed the wide heather wilderness spread out before him. He drew a deep breath, filling his eyes and half certain his heart would burst now that he’d finally crossed into his father’s territory.

 

Wild, bright, and sunlit, the mountains, moors, and glens of home stretched in all directions, rolling endlessly to a broad, cloud-churning horizon. Sweet, fair lands he’d ached to see every night of the ten long years he’d been away.

 

Necessary years, needed to earn his reputation and valor, but a trial all the same. And now he was a man of full age and abilities, well able if not entirely eager to step into his puissant father’s footsteps.

 

And, too, to accept the daughter of a rival clan chieftain as his bride, thus assuring peace in this rugged and mountainous land.

 

“God’s mercy,” he breathed, staring out across Kintail at its springtime finest, taken unawares by the deep emotion coursing through him.

 

Saints, even the thought of Euphemia MacLeod, the lass he’d agreed to wed but had yet to meet, could not dampen his spirits. Indeed, with good fortune blessing him, the lady Euphemia might prove none so ill a match. He might even surprise himself and find her to his liking: warm, voluptuous, large-bosomed, and . . . all woman.

 

And if not . . . then so be it.

 

He’d make do with his lot.

 

His honor demanded it of him.

 

But for this one blessed moment, the most perfect noontide he could have wished, naught would mar his pleasure or steal the sweetness of his homecoming. The heather ridge he’d chosen for his outlook bore clutches of silver birches and tall Caledonian pines, whilst the hills more distant wore deep blue shadows and sparkling white cornices of snow.

 

And, joy upon joy, beyond them waited Loch Duich and Eilean Creag Castle, as yet hidden from view, but there all the same.

 

Calling to him until he was nigh ready to fling himself from the saddle, drink in great, greedy gulps of the tangy gorse-and-juniper-scented air. And, aye, even throw off his clothes, every last stitch, and roll full naked in the heather!

 

By the Rood, but it was good to be home.

 

Or so he thought until a short while later, furious shouts, the near-crazed
baa’ing
of a sheep, and the sounds of wild,
wet
thrashing broke through the birch scrub and juniper tangle to his left, the panic in the shrill
female
cries shattering his jollity at once and dashing cold, stark dread onto the peace he’d let slide all over him.

 

A dread that clamped icy fingers around his heart when, as quickly as the fracas had arisen, the earsplitting cries and loud splashings ceased.

 

From one lightning-quick blink of an eye to the next, naught marred the silence save the frantic
baa’ing
of the sheep, now joined by the equally distressed-sounding neighings of a horse, and the uncomfortable roaring in his ears of his own fast-thundering heart.

 

“Sweet holy Christ!” he yelled, spurring hard now as he sent his garron plunging through the prickly juniper bushes and gorse.
Saints have mercy,
he meant to cry when the beast burst free of the underbrush, but the words lodged in his throat, caught and held there by the horror of the scene before him.

 

Leaping out of the saddle, he looked about, but saw only the shaggy-maned garron whose neighing agitation had captured his ear. A sway-backed wretch of a beast, the aged creature watched his approach from near a jumble of boulders, wild-eyed, panting, and skittish-looking. A leather travel bag had been tossed aside, or mayhap slipped from its fastenings and now laid open atop a flattened clump of bell heather, a scatter of good Scots siller spilling from its depths to litter the peaty ground.

 

The
baa’ing
sheep, a drenching-wet ewe, stood beside a black-watered lochan, shaking water droplets from its oily fleece and looking more angry than frightened.

 

The
lass
, the one whose cries and thrashings had frozen Robbie’s blood, stood a good ways into the lochan, submerged to her waist, the front of her gown ripped and gaping open to reveal a set of full, magnificent breasts, gleaming wet and with sparkling beads of water dripping from her tight-budded nipples.

 

But it was the crescent-shaped gash in her forehead that arrested Robbie’s attention and had him tearing into the icy water, boots, plaid, sword, and all.

 

Bright red blood flowed copiously from the wound, discoloring to pinkish-red what surely had to be the fairest face he’d e’er laid eyes upon.

 

Swaying wildly in the peat-stained water, she stared at him from unseeing green eyes, her arms flailing, her mouth opened wide in a silent, ghastly scream.

 

“Hold, lass!” Robbie found his own voice as he plunged forward, the silty bottom of the lochan and his clothes sorely hampering him. “I will have you anon!”

 

But just as he closed the distance between them and reached for her, her oddly blank eyes rolled back into her head and she slipped beneath the surface, disappearing completely save the billowing skirts of her ruined gown, the top crown of her head, and two red-gold braids.

 

Nay, Robbie corrected himself as he gathered her in his arms and carried her, blessedly still breathing, out of the lochan.

 

Not mere red-gold, but a rare and shimmering flame-bright color.

 

Aye, that was it.

 

The lass had hair of flame.

 

And as he eased himself to his knees and gently lowered her to a grassy patch of delicate little flowers, yellow tormentil and buttercups, Robbie knew only one thing—he wanted her.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

 

T
HE FLAMES OF HELL ROAST HIM
if he’d e’er desired aught more fervently. Frowning, Robbie glanced upward and repeated the oath to the great dome of the sky, his pulse racing even if the fiery-haired beauty met his astounding revelation with supreme indifference.

 

Indeed, she made no response at all.

 

He
could not be more reactive.

 

Awareness, sharp and immediate, tingled along his spine and clawed at his guts as he stared down at the lass, watching her as if they were both caught up in some eerie silent dream. A world gone deathly still. The wonder, awe, and magic of earlier now tinged with something . . . unnameable.

 

Unnameable yet real enough to split him open and lay him bare.

 

Robbie’s heart thumped. He moistened his lips. “God in Heaven, lass—can you hear me?” he pleaded, struggling against the urge to shake the silence from her.

 

He blinked, his throat tightening as disbelief thickened the air. He hadn’t come all these heather miles for . . .
this
. To see a lass’s light extinguish beneath his hands when ’twas plain she was a maid whose beauty and joy of life should have burned bright as a star. Yet her fine-drawn features remained without expression, her wide, generous mouth slightly parted but unspeaking. And the striking moss-green eyes, glimpsed so briefly and fringed with such thick black lashes, stayed decidedly closed.

 

Frightfully still.

 

Robbie set his jaw against defeat, moistened his lips again. Saints, he would have sworn his mouth had filled with stone dust! He winced.
Her
mouth looked anything but dry. And her lips, deeply sensual in their fullness, held a definite hint of seduction. Even now, in her unconscious state.

 

“Jesu—” He shivered—and not from his cold, wet clothes. With effort, he forced his thoughts elsewhere, silently vowed not to glance lower than her nose again.

 

A most delectable nose he couldn’t help but note.

 

Steeling himself against the notion that the self-discipline he so prided himself on was ebbing inexorably from his control, he reached to ease a few locks of clinging, blood-soaked hair from her forehead. A great sweep of relief surged through him when she made a soft moan.

 

Sweet assurance that she lived, a hopeful sign called forth by the clumsiness of his touch.

 

A bumbling unsteadiness that had ne’er plagued him when gazing upon or tending much angrier wounds than the crescent-shaped gash one of the ewe’s flailing hooves had engraved so close to the lass’s hairline.

 

A blessedly shallow gash, but troublesome nonetheless.

 

As was his oafish ineptitude.

 

His inability to rouse her.

 

Robbie grimaced, his mood darkening. From some uncomfortable place inside him, emotions writ deep on his soul wakened and stirred as if rising from a long winter’s sleep. Knowing he’d be wiser to ignore them, he pulled in several long, grounding breaths. But when the sought-for calm evaded him, he muttered a wicked oath and opted for sheer iron will to make his hands stop trembling.

 

It would help, too, if her ripped bodice didn’t offer tantalizing glimpses of her full creamy breasts and tight rosy-brown nipples. If her sopping, bunched skirts hadn’t fallen away to reveal the sweet curve of her hips and the shapely nakedness of her thighs.

 

And, saints preserve him, he’d know even greater comfort if he did not have the sinking conviction that somehow the very earth was about to crack open and swallow him whole.

 

Him, the dripping flame-haired vixen, and every shred of honor and chivalry he’d managed to amass over the last ten years!

 

But like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the harder he sought to school his wits, the farther any shimmer of control spun from his grasp until he knew with humbling certainty that even his fullest reach would prove futile.

 

Just as he knew with equal surety that his fingers trembled as much from the shock of
her
as from his head-long plunge into the chilly-watered lochan to rescue her.

 

Soon, a niggling foreboding warned him,
he
would be the one in need of rescue!

 

Narrowing his gaze on her, Robbie took one of her chill-reddened hands between his own and began briskly rubbing her fingers. Icy elegant-shaped fingers with neat, short-clipped nails. Lovely hands marred only by the work-roughened skin of their undersides.

 

Calluses.

 

The mark of a peasant.

 

As were the patches on her well-worn skirts and the pitifully scuffed, thin-soled boots gracing her feet. Robbie shot a glance at her ancient-looking money purse and the scatter of good Scots siller spilled across the tussocks of coarse deer grass. The coins glinted in the sunlight and to his amazement—or mayhap not—he puzzled more as to how the afternoon could still be so bright than where a lass of obviously meager means had happened upon such wealth.

 

Aye, knot-twisted as his innards were, as besieged his wits and hard-pounding his heart, he deemed it a wonder thronging clouds hadn’t spread o’er the land and that raindrops weren’t stippling the lochan’s smooth, indifferent surface.

 

But naught had changed beneath the slanting Highland sun or in the day around him—only within.

 

His mouth still tinder-dry, he tightened his fingers on hers and massaged her cold, chapped palm with increasing vigor. Blood yet flowed from her forehead, so he reached one hand to the side, dug a thick clump of moist sphagnum moss from the yielding ground, and pressed the spongy, crimson-colored moss against the wound. Then he prayed God the sphagnum would work its usual good and stanch the bleeding.

 

He leaned close, peered fiercely at her as if by the penetration of his stare alone he could reach her. “Lass . . . merciful saints, bestir yourself!” He tried again to revive her, and failed.

 

Save for a faint fluttering of her thick-lashed eyelids and another barely audible moan. A tiny breathy sigh. But reaction enough to give him his first true lift of the heart since he’d glimpsed her.