Only For A Knight (40 page)

 

A smile that widened, growing e’er brighter and more surprisingly
warm
by the moment. A smile that was joined by a shimmer of telltale brightness in his eyes when Duncan MacKenzie himself strode up to him and slung a strong arm around Kenneth’s shoulders and began leading him beneath the gatehouse pend and into his hall.

 

“You, my son,” the Black Stag could be heard to say by those walking close enough by him, “have been too long from home. Come, and let us welcome you properly and see if we can persuade you to stay?”

 

“Stay?” Kenneth blinked.

 

The Black Stag nodded, a smile of his own splitting his handsome face. “If you will have us . . . long as we have been apart?”

 

“And you, my sweetness,” Juliana’s knight whispered in her ear as they stood, still in tight embrace, watching as Kenneth and Duncan were swallowed up by cheering,
streaming
-eyed kinfolk. “Will you stay? Will you be my—”

 

“Not your leman,” Juliana answered, a teasing light in her eyes. “But if you were about to ask me to be your lady wife, then, aye,” she agreed, sealing her promise with a kiss. “A thousand times aye.”

 

“For all your days, lass?” He put his hands on her shoulders, waiting. “Will you
love
me all your life? I warn you, I shall accept no less.”

 

“And neither will you have less,” Juliana vowed, throwing her arms around his neck. “My all and everything is and shall e’er be yours . . . for the rest of our days and beyond.”

 

 

 

 

About the Author

 

 

 

SUE-ELLEN WELFONDER is a dedicated medievalist of Scottish descent who spent fifteen years living abroad, and still makes annual research trips to Great Britain. She is an active member of the Romance Writers of America and her own clan, the MacFie Society of North America. Her first novel,
Devil in a Kilt
, was one of
Romantic Times
’s top picks. It won
RT
’s Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First Historical Romance of 2001. Sue-Ellen Welfonder is married and lives with her husband, Manfred, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Em, in Florida.

 

 

More Sue-Ellen Welfonder!

Please turn this page for an excerpt from her new novel

UNTIL THE KNIGHT COMES

available soon from Warner Books.

The Legacy of the Bastard Stone

 

 

 

LONG AGO, IN ONE of the darkest periods of Scotland’s history, but not so distant that time has blurred the memory, a great MacKenzie chieftain prided himself on his strong character and strict uprightness. An indomitable warrior, he was known to fame as Ranald the Redoubtable, his name commanding respect far beyond the Highland fastnesses of his own rugged Kintail.

 

A masterful man well able to maintain peace in this vast country of darkling hills and shadowed glens, he had but two disturbing weaknesses: a thread of greed that at times vied with the goodness of his heart and a distinct tendency to loftiness.

 

Susceptibilities that were to prove calamitous when a low-born by-blow of the clan lost his heart to the daughter of a neighboring chieftain. A mere cowherd, Cormac by name, the young man’s physical prowess and skill rivaled even the fittest of Ranald the Redoubtable’s sons, much to the puissant laird’s annoyance.

 

Cormac’s claim that the lass, a maid much-prized for her beauty and high spirits, wanted him with equal fervor only ensured that fate was to go against him. Indeed, when he approached his chieftain for help in amassing a suitable bride price, false hopes were given, empty promises cast to the fickle winds.

 

On a day of rain and strong winds, he was to journey to the farthest reaches of Kintail, the dark shores of Loch Hourn, there to climb to the highest point of the sea cliffs where a certain outcropping of rock resembles a giant door.

 

If upon positioning himself atop this natural-made arch, he is able to balance on one foot, he will be deemed worthy to claim any chieftain’s daughter as his bride.

 

And to celebrate his daring and agility, he will be rewarded with double the bride price he’d desired.

 

Regrettably, as the seannchies so poignantly extol, just as Cormac completed his incredible feat and began the climb down, his foot caught on the edge of the door-like outcropping and he plunged to his death, never to know whether his liege-laird would have kept his word or no.

 

Only Ranald the Redoubtable knew, and over time his guilt overrode his greed and his pride, the true goodness of his heart triumphing to banish his darker side for the rest of his days.

 

In young Cormac’s honor, the rock formation was dubbed
The Bastard Stone
and in its shadow, a mighty stronghold was raised: Cuidrach Castle, place of the forceful and determined.

 

And since these earliest times, Cuidrach stands as the proud inheritance reserved by Clan MacKenzie for the most valiant warriors amongst the clan’s by-blows. One such stalwart in each generation is raised from his low-born status and granted the style of Keeper of Cuidrach.

 

A tradition upheld all down the centuries until in none so distant times one such favored bastard turned so black-hearted that the villainy of his deeds left the clan little choice but to withdraw the privilege, the sad forfeiture leaving Cuidrach to stand untended for decades.

 

But now a new Keeper of Cuidrach has been named.

 

A braw young clansman of the same strong character and strict uprightness as his long-passed forbear, Ranald the Redoubtable.

 

And if along Kintail’s wild coastal headlands, the wind-swept hills could stir, they’d surely be restless, the wind eddying about the rocks perhaps whispering of an ancient wrong.

 

And pleading it be righted at last.

DRUMODYN CASTLE SCOTLAND, THE FAR NORTH AUTUMN 1344

 

 

 

H
UGH THE BASTARD.

 

The three words dealt Mariota Macnicol a smiting blow, each one lodging in her throat like searing lumps of hot-burning coal as she stood on the threshold of the tower bedchamber and stared at the man she loved more than life itself.

 

Certainly more than her own, for she’d willingly suffered the pains of scandal and ruin to be his lady, turning her back on her well-comforted existence to pave him the way to his dreams.

 

His lofty ambitions.

 

And now Hugh Alesone, Bastard of Drumodyn, was dead.

 

Or soon would be, for the twinkling blue eyes that had e’er besotted her were now full-glazed and bulging, the horror on his handsome face as he caught sight of her, an unmistakable recognition of his imminent end.

 

Aye, Mariota’s golden giant of a Highland lover was about to die naked in his bed.

 

Naked in the arms of an equally unclothed whore.

 

And more damning still, with a rolled parchment clenched in his fist—without doubt one of the many love sonnets the well-lettered Hugh was e’er composing for her in supposed praise and adoration.

 

Shivering, Mariota stared, not trusting her eyes.

 

White-hot shock and disbelief crashed over her, stealing her breath until, in desperation, her anguish rose in a tide of fury, and the welling pain burst free.

 

“No-o-o,” she cried, agony ripping her soul. “By the living God!
Hugh
. . . .”

 

“’Tis m-my heart,” he gasped, his precious scroll dropping from his fingers as his eyes widened even more.

 

Her own heart pounding furiously, Mariota bit down on her lip as he broke away from the sweat-dampened bawd straddling him and pressed both hands against his chest, its well-muscled planes, resplendent with a smattering of golden hairs, proving as drenched and heaving as his whore’s fleshy, over-generous breasts.

 

His penis glistened as well, highlighted almost obscenely by the glow of the night candle. Flaccid now, and surprisingly small for such a great stirk of a Highlandman, the dangling appendage was clearly wet from vigorous love play.

 

A truth underscored by the disarray of the bed coverings, the flagon of wine and two half-emptied goblets on a fireside table, and the trail of discarded clothing littering the rush-strewn floor.

 

That, and the reek of passion sated still hanging so heavily in the chill air.

 

“Saints have mercy!” Mariota pressed her hands to her face, the only movement she could manage for her legs felt leaden, her feet as roots of stone.

 

The other woman suffered no such loss of agility, scrambling off the bed so swiftly her ungainly efforts to extract herself would have been comical if her very presence didn’t feel like a vise around Mariota’s heart.

 

All but spitting and snarling, the bawd flung the last of the bed coverlets from her naked body, knocking over the flagon of wine in her clumsiness, the blood-red libations splashing onto the floor rushes.

 

Watching her exodus, Mariota curled her hands into fists. The back of her neck throbbed, its tender skin blazing as her gaze lit on the spilled wine, some still-coherent part of her seeing a reflection of Hugh’s ignoble demise in the quickly-spreading stain.

 

An irony the Bastard of Drumodyn would miss for he’d collapsed onto the bed sheets, lay staring at her from blank, unseeing eyes.

 

And just looking at them sent a bitter, piercing cold sluicing through her. “Dear sweet saints,” she gasped, more to herself than the other woman still looming so naked beside the bed. “He is dying. . . .”

 

But Hugh Alesone was already gone, having left to join his forebears, breathing his inglorious last without a further word spoken.

 

And with his departure, a great gusting wind rushed into the room, guttering candles and sweeping across a worktable strewn with parchments, the icy blast scattering Hugh’s treasured writings to every corner of the room.

 

Love sonnets, the most of them, but also painstakingly gathered accountings of the ancient line from which he proudly claimed descent—even if his bastardy had constrained him to subsist on little more than his own silvered words and broth of limpets and milk.

 

Good enough fare until Mariota’s munificence enabled the would-be bard to indulge his higher tastes and live as befitted one who was believed to carry the blood of kings.

 

Scarce able to believe him dead, she swayed, reeling as if she’d been running full-tilt only to hurtle headlong into a stone wall. A damning obstacle whose long unbound hair tumbled around her naked, generously-curved body.

 

And something about her prickled Mariota’s nape.

 

“
You
!” she cried, awareness slamming into her. “You are—”

 

“Elizabeth Paterson,” the whore supplied, her gray eyes cold and glittery as a winter dawn.

 

In numbed shock, Mariota recognized her with surety now. If not by name, then by reputation for the woman was none other than the notorious alewife of Assynt.

 

Widowed and slightly older than Hugh, Elizabeth Paterson ran
The Burning Bush
, an establishment of less than noble repute where the high-spirited widow was rumored to offer wayfarers much more than victuals and simple lodgings.

 

The air around Mariota grew colder. “You are the ale-wife,” she said, the acknowledgment sounding faraway, her voice a stranger’s.

 

“And that surprises you?” Nowise inhibited, the bawd made no attempt to cover her spurious charms. “Did you not know Hugh had dark,
lusty
tastes? Needs he could only quench with someone like me?”

 

Mariota gritted her teeth, her world splitting open to become a yawning void filled with naught but Hugh’s naked, inert form and the triumphant little sneer playing about the alewife’s generous, love-swollen lips.

 

“Be gone from here.” Mariota flicked a hand at the crumpled clothes on the floor. “Dress, and take yourself from my sight.”

 

The bawd ignored that, lifted her chin. “A pity you returned sooner than expected, Lady Mariota,” she said, her throaty voice taunting. “You might have been left to your illusions had it been otherwise.”

 

Mariota stiffened at the woman’s haughtiness, something inside her cracking, turning her to stone.

 

“I turned back before even nearing Dunach,” she admitted, the name of her home bitter on her tongue. “Praise God I did not plead my father’s beneficence yet again—”

 

The alewife sniffed. “I told Hugh he’d seen the last of Archibald Macnicol’s coin. Word of your puissant father’s spleen with you is widespread.”

 

Sliding a hand down her belly, the bawd let her fingers hover ever so briefly above the dark tangle of her nether hair. “See you, Mariota of Dunach, ’tis well Hugh knew you might return early, but he did not want to forego our
amusements
.”

 

Mariota’s eyes began to sting, hot gall swelling in her throat as searing heat burned her cheeks. Equally damning, she seemed unable to lift her gaze from the other woman’s abdomen.

 

Elizabeth Paterson’s decidedly swollen abdomen.

 

Her emotions churning, Mariota dug her hands into her skirts. “It would seem the two of you indulged often enough,” she said, speaking without inflection.

 

The other shrugged. “That is as may be, but ’tis not Hugh’s child I carry. Not that he cared. Truth be told, he took great relish in hearing of my
encounters
at the alehouse.”

 

Mariota stared at her, wordless.

 

The alewife’s lips quirked. “If you would know the whole of it,” she said, reaching to trail her fingers across Mariota’s stomach, “he gloried in my swelling form, even likened my sweetness to a ripening plum, his get, or no.”

 

Recoiling from the woman’s touch as well as her words, it took Mariota a moment to notice the multi-colored bursts of light suddenly flashing about the alewife’s fingers, and yet another to recognize the bawd’s true purpose in putting her hand to Mariota’s waist.

 

“My dirk!” Mariota’s heart slammed against her ribs at the sight of her bejeweled lady’s dagger in the other’s hand.