Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] (17 page)

Frowning darkly, he shifted on the hard bench, every fiber of his being crackling with the urgent need to share
intimate
touches with her. He burned to press the flat of her hand firmly over his heart so she could feel its thunder and know she stirred more than his baser needs.
Much more.
But for now she was peering at him, round-eyed and dewy-lipped, and making him ache simply to hear her call him by his name.
And to learn hers.
Her full and true appellation.
“I told you my name is Iain,” he reminded her, lifting the ale jug to pour two cups of the thickish brew. “Not sir or lord, simply Iain . . . even if you have given me a very fine style.”
He slid one of the cups across the table toward her. “It would please me if you used my name.”
“Iain then,” she said, but not easily, for her fingers tensed visibly on the wooden cup. Watching him, she took a careful sip of the heather ale. “You haven’t told me what you meant a moment ago, sir . . .
Iain.
”
“Simply that while I am by no measure a frocked priest, neither am I as the stags roaring on the hillside in season,” Iain declared, and instantly wished he could cut out his tongue.
Her eyes flew wide, her shock like a dirk thrusting into his breast.
Swallowing a curse, he set to slicing the brown bread. “Forgive my crudeness, I pray you,” he got out, his gaze on his task. “I am not known for being glib-tongued.”
He looked up, offered her a thick slice of the crusty, still-warm bread. “That you needn’t fear sharing a chamber with me is what I am trying to say.” He waited for her to accept the bread, then added, “I am not a brute-beast. I will not fall upon you when you disrobe to bathe . . . if such a worry has distressed you.”
“You’re mistaken.” The denial came so swiftly it surprised and heartened him. “That isn’t my concern. I have seen and trusted your gallantry,” she said, her averted gaze on a far corner near the hearth. “But whether you are chivalrous or otherwise, it is not . . . seemly for us to share a room.”
“Then we shall make it as much so as we can,” Iain offered, and imagined his conscience nodding in sanctimonious approval.
“I swear to you, I shall not look the entire time you bathe,” he promised, and washed down the regrettable vow with a great gulp of heather ale.
“You won’t?”
Iain near choked.
Had her voice held a trace of wistful regret?
Disappointment?
Or was he indeed losing his wits as swiftly as his control?
Setting down his ale cup, he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, and looked sharply at her. But she was still staring across the crowded common room.
“You have my word on it,” he managed at last, hoping to assure her of her modesty . . . and bind himself to his pride.
Keeping his word was about all he had left of it.
“I will do naught in that chamber save tend your abraded wrists and ankles, and keep you from harm.” He stared at her, at a loss to ease whate’er plagued her. “I do not renege on promises given.”
A quick shake of her head was her only response. That, and to wash down a healthy bite of capon with a formidable gulp of ale.
“I do not doubt your word,” she said, low-voiced, the trembling fingers wrapped round her ale cup disproving her.
Iain pried her fingers from around the wooden cup and took her cold hand between his two. Thick tension rolled off her, and while her hand shook, there was a rigid stiffness about the rest of her that tore at his heart.
She feared him.
There could be no other explanation.
And no way to allay her concerns other than to humiliate himself.
Taking a long breath, he began caressing her palm with his thumb again. Slowly and gently. To soothe her, and to let the smooth silk of her skin settle him.
“I told you I was doing penance,” he pushed out the words, each one heavy sludge dredged from the darkest, nether regions of his soul. “My sin is but my temper,” he confessed. “Naught more sinister than the quick-tindered bursts of an ill humor I cannot always contain.”
She bit her lower lip and slid another glance at the far corner, kept her gaze there.
And looked more fraught than before.
Beginning to feel helpless, Iain released her hand and sliced off another choice portion of roasted capon for her. He placed it on her side of the trencher, and he watched her take it, a different but equally fierce ache twisting his gut at the sight.
In addition to her more obvious discomfort, the lass clearly hadn’t had a good meal in ages. She’d devoured most of what they’d been served well before he’d taken but a few bites.
Not that he cared.
Not beyond knowing a black fury at whate’er circumstances had made her so needy.
Grasping the table’s edge, he leaned forward, lowered her voice. “I have ne’er harmed, nor would I harm a woman,” he swore to her, his temples starting to throb when she didn’t take her gaze off the far corner. “Nor have I e’er . . . er . . . lavished attentions on a lass who wasn’t willing.”
“It isn’t you, good sir.” That, a mere hush, scarce to be heard above the howling wind, the loud rattling of the window shutters behind her.
She turned back to him. “It is I.”
“My temper caused me to accidentally topple a standing candelabrum in my family’s chapel . . . I set the whole of it ablaze, everything. That chapel was the pride of my clan, and its loss is the reason for my penance, my journey to Dunkeld. To make amends and heal my temp—” He broke off when he realized what she’d said.
“You?”
His voice came thick, puzzled.
Their gazes met and locked.
She nodded, drew Amicia’s
arisaid
closer about her head and shoulders . . . so close he could scarce see her face for the shadows cast by the plaid’s generous folds.
Iain poured himself another cup of heather ale, tossed it down in one gulp. “As I am no ordinary pilgrim, sweet lass,” he said, plunging onto dangerous ground but uncaring, “so, too, are you no seeker of the veil.”
She made no response, but her silence and downcast eyes proved answer enough.
“How do I know?” he asked, when she didn’t. He took her hand again, turned it palm upward.
As if sensing what he was about to say, she tried to yank back her hand, but Iain held fast. He traced the tip of his forefinger first across the exposed underside of her fingers, then down the very cup of her palm.
“Smooth and tender flesh, white and unmarred,” he said, not surprised to see her flinch at the observation. Saints, but he hated having to pry the truth from her. “These hands have ne’er seen greater toil than the plying of an embroidering needle. Or the lifting of a wee votive offering, and that, sweeting, we can discuss abovestairs.”
She turned away, and Iain thought he caught the bright shimmer of tears in her eyes. But he had to know who she was, what she was about. And what had brought her to such a direpass.
Only so could he help her.
And the saints knew he wanted to.
He sighed, began gently massaging the whole of her hand, the base of her wrist. “True postulants fall into two categories,” he told her, “and, aye, ’tis your hands that give you away.”
“Think you?” she asked, a slight note of rebellion in both her tone and the lift of her chin.
And Iain was glad to see it.
He almost smiled. “Nay, I know it,” he said instead, purposely letting a wee note of arrogance into his voice . . . just enough to keep the edge on her irritation.
And hold her tears at bay.
“What two categories are there?” she snapped, and this time Iain’s lips did twitch a bit.
Folding his arms on the table, he held her gaze, pleased when hers didn’t waver.
“The first,” he began, “is the gentlebred maid, matron, or widow seeking sequestered asylum for whate’er reason spurs the need. The second is the less advantaged young woman who seeks a life—any life—away from the hardships of her own.”
One fine red-gold brow shot upward. “And why can I not be either?”
“Because you, precious lass, are the third,” he said, and hoped to the saints his voice held no trace of triumph.
“The third?”
Iain nodded. “Were you the first, the gentleborn maid sent to retire behind the safety of a convent’s impenetrable walls, you would have been under heavy escort. No family of worth allows a daughter to roam the land unprotected . . . regardless of her destination.”
“And the second?” she asked, refilling her ale cup.
“The second could ne’er be you,” Iain asserted. “A lass of the commonality hoping for a better life would have roughened, work-toiled hands. Yours have broken nails and scratches, but those are merely evidence of the hardships you’ve encountered on the road.”
She took a slow sip of ale. “Meaning?”
“You have the hands of a lady . . . your skin is too soft and white for a peasant’s.”
She didn’t deny him. “And what is this third category you would place me in?”
“A wellborn lady fleeing difficulties,” Iain said, now quite certain of it.
“And if I am?” She watched him over the rim of her wooden cup.
“Then I would know why.”
“I cannot tell you why.” Madeline squirmed on the bench. She almost wished she could tell him. But she’d already revealed far more than she should have.
She couldn’t divulge more.
Not when two of Silver Leg’s men whiled in a dark corner, speculating about her identity, their whispered slurs and suspicions louder in her ears than the clapping of the loosely-latched shutters behind her.
The men’s unspoken glee at finding her—and what they hoped to do to her—pierced her courage more thoroughly than the night’s chill damp knifed beneath every loose fold of her borrowed
arisaid,
every rip and tear in the shamefully torn clothes hidden beneath.
“Then—for now—my sweet, at least tell me your name,” her braw gallant compelled. He looked at her with such honest concern in his dark eyes that hers almost grew moist again.
Almost, for Drummonds didn’t cry.
“Come you,” he urged, taking her hand again, squeezing it. “Your name is all I ask.”
Madeline sat up straighter, expelled her resistance on a great, quivering sigh. “I am . . .” She trailed off, the letch coming at her in waves from the far corner shredding her nerve, and making it difficult to voice her name even in a whisper.
Iain stood then, coming around the table to join her on the bench. He drew her to him before she could catch breath to object.
Not that she really wanted to . . . the saints knew she’d ached for him,
needed
him, for weeks.
“Your name, lass,” he encouraged, fingering one of her curls. The brush of his warm, callused fingers against her cheek nearly undid her. “Tell me so I can help you.”
“I am . . . I am M-Madeline Drummond of Abercairn.” The truth came out in a rush . . . even as
they
concluded the same. She knew because their triumph squeezed her rib cage and filled her with dread.
“Abercairn near Dunkeld?” Iain MacLean was asking her, but she scarce heard him. The two men were looking their way, one of them even pushing to his feet.
Madeline gave a jerky nod. “Aye, from thereabouts, but Abercairn is no more,” she said, too flooded with panic to mind her secrets. “I—It’s been taken, my father slain, and I—I . . . I want you to kiss me.”
“Kiss you?”
Rather than oblige her, Iain MacLean pulled away. He stared at her so slack-jawed, his expression so totally flummoxed, she would have laughed outright had she not been so very miserable, were not Silver Leg’s minions heading her way.
“Aye, kiss me. Now!” She threw her arms around his neck, and pressed against him, crushing her lips to his in her first ever kiss.
A wild and desperate tangling of lips, tongues, mingled breaths . . . and fear.
Fear of the rank vileness coming at her from the corner, and fear of Iain MacLean, for he’d abandoned his startled resistance and was obliging her with a mastery that melted her and made her ache for more.
Sweet golden heat and delicious, prickling tingles spooled through her until she almost forgot to breathe.
His kiss filled her with a divine sweetness so intense she nearly, but not quite, forgot her troubles.
And the other pressing matter that plagued her.
An issue that had just taken on direst urgency.
The irrevocably damning knowledge that Iain MacLean belonged to another.
Chapter Ten
T
HE FOLLY OF HER ACTIONS STRUCK Madeline the instant the cold-spinning exaltation of Silver Leg’s henchmen swung into something else entirely . . . blessedly not aimed at her, but unsettling all the same. A sharp-edged and twisting lust so lewd in its intensity her skin prickled and her stomach clenched with revulsion.
Her heart began thumping hard against her ribs and her mouth went full dry. She pressed closer to Iain MacLean, winding her arms tighter about his broad shoulders, stretching her fingers ever deeper into the heavy silk of his hair.
She moistened her lips, holding fast to him as if his strength and warmth could shelter her not just from the storm raging outwith the alehouse walls but also from the turmoil whirling inside her.
But heedless of her clinging, gusty winds kept rattling the shutters, and heavy rain continued to pelt the window’s stone ledge. Cold damp seeped through the shutter slats, chilling her to the bone.
And each new crack of thunder made it easier to believe the ominous rumbles were God’s own voice scolding her.
Chiding her for imagining the floor had tilted beneath her feet the moment her shadow man’s lips had touched hers.
For truth, she’d melted, a luxurious warmth settling over her the instant he’d cradled the back of her head with a firm, steady hand and begun raining soft kisses across her forehead, her cheeks, and even the tip of her nose.
Gently caressing her nape, he brushed the lightest kiss of all against her temple.
“Sweet, so sweet,”
he murmured, teasing a loose curl with his breath.
Wondrous sensations cascaded through Madeline upon his softly spoken words, but she needed affirmation he’d actually said them, for the howling wind and raucous din inside the alehouse snatched them away before she could be sure.
She pulled back to peer at him, and his dark eyes met hers in a gaze of such startling intimacy his peat brown eyes appeared almost black. They also commanded a visceral bond between them.
A shockingly deep connection so powerful its potency surged through her, rocking her to the core of her being.
Even the soles of her feet tingled and grew warm beneath his bold and claiming stare.
But then he sighed, and a shadow flitted across his brow. The fleeting sadness stripped away all but a few shreds of his crackling male confidence and laid bare a naked vulnerability so poignant that a wholly different kind of warmth swept Madeline.