Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] (22 page)

Iain tried to look away, but making his heart stop beating would have proved easier. His blood running hot, he stared back at her, his gaze fastened on the rivulets of water trickling down her breasts. Some snagged on the very tips of her nipples, forming tiny droplets on the hard-budded peaks, clinging there for long, tantalizing moments before dripping off one by one.
Then a droplet fell onto the nest of red-gold curls topping her thighs, and his entire world contracted to the fierce pounding need thundering through his loins.
He stared at the water droplet, watched it disappear into the lush tangle of wet curls, and the instant it slipped from sight, his sanity returned.
Or mayhap his honor, for he lifted his gaze to her face and saw his own need reflected there, caught the desire burning in her own eyes just before her lashes swept down to hide it from him.
He recognized it, too, in the deeper red of the flush slowly spreading across the upper swells of her naked breasts. A flush that had naught to do with the warmth of her bath and the brazier’s luxuriant heat.
’Twas the rosy glow of a woman roused . . . a flush Iain hadn’t seen in years and ne’er such a beautiful one.
Turning back to the window before his sore-battered honor slipped back into the shadowy depths whence it had made its timeous appearance, Iain glowered down at the felled alestake and crossed his arms.
He, too, had been felled.
At least the throbbing part of him that shared distinct similarities with the long, hard length of the alestake.
Aye, she wanted him, there could be no doubt.
A woman’s eyes, in particular, never lie. Not if a man looked deep enough, and Iain had, even in that one fleeting glimpse before she’d lowered her lashes.
And much as a
certain part
of him would wish otherwise, his heart and, aye, his honor, wouldn’t allow him to touch her so long as shadows of doubt clouded her eyes.
Pain had been there, too.
And rampant frustration.
All harbingers of just the sort of shaky foundation he did
not
want to build a new life upon. The kind of ghosts he did not want looming between them.
He’d started one marriage with a lass whose gentle eyes had held shyness and, aye, fear, too, and though time banished those shadows, even replacing them with love, it’d ne’er been the urgent, all-consuming passionate love he knew he could have with Madeline Drummond . . . if he didn’t let the raw lust gnawing at his innards drive him to rushing her.
Nay, that, he would not do.
Even if she danced naked before him and
begged
him to take her.
He wouldn’t lay a finger on her—in
that
way—until naught but purest love, shining and clear and untroubled, shone in her magnificent green-gold eyes.
And until the last of his own ghosts were laid as well.
But he burned for her nonetheless. Knowing her naked, wet, and
willing,
if he encouraged her, so near behind him and yet so far, almost killed him.
Raking a hand through his hair, his breath still harsh and ragged, he stared down at the inn yard, watching as someone flung open the door and a stream of shouting men poured out to gather ’round the downed alestake.
He recognized two men.
The miscreants who had thought to accost his lady.
And he welcomed their timely appearance, for they took his mind off the sound of Madeline stepping from the bathing tub. They also reminded him of the danger facing her . . . a thought that cooled his ardor in one fell swoop.
They slunk along the lee of a wall, heading toward the stables, their path keeping them close enough to the light spilling from the windows for him to brand their faces into his memory.
For the second time that night, Iain dropped his hand to his sword hilt. But this time he let it linger there.
Caressed it.
As he lived and breathed, those two jackals would not walk away from their next encounter with him . . . if his lady’s terror upon seeing them indeed be
spoke the kind of villainy he suspected.
And that was something he meant to find out.
Twinges of guilt nibbling at him for the distress he was surely about to cause her, he opened the leather purse hanging from his waist belt and retrieved the little silver leg ex-voto.
“Tell me when I can turn around, lass, for I would speak to you,” he said, curling his fingers around the votive, his impatience to get answers from her kindled by the men’s appearance.
“I am covered,” she said, after several long moments of soft rustling noises.
Iain turned. She’d wrapped his sister’s
arisaid
about her and stood watching him from eyes gone wary.
“It is not my wont to distress you, but . . .” He left the sentence unfinished. “Pray believe I wish I were better blessed with words, lass.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I conceive you speak quite fine,” she declared. “And I must ask you something, too, and would rather have an easier way with the words.”
“I will answer any questions you have for me, milady . . . if first you tell me why you were gathering these”—he paused to hold up the ex-voto—“from cathedral shrines and holy wells?”
She stared at the votive, the color draining from her face. “Where did you get that?”
“Gavin found it,” he told her, setting the little silver leg on the table. “He saw it fall from your hand when you ran from Glasgow Cathedral.”
“I was not
stealing
the votives,” she said, her voice tight, quivering with pent-up emotion. “I was looking for them, that is all.”
“And why were you looking for them? You must tell me,” he urged her, his heart wrenching at the pain in her eyes. “Only so can I help you. I cannot challenge a faceless demon.”
“No one can help me.” She lifted her chin a notch. She was
not
going to cry. So she reached deep inside herself, probed for the crackling anger she preferred keeping hidden away.
One glance at the little silver leg, gleaming bright on the oaken table, helped her find it.
“Can you bring my father back to life? Mayhap turn back time and undo the hideous act that took his life? The lives of innocents?” She spoke past the hot lump swelling in her throat, her voice rising with each word. “A young goatherd burned alive, do you ken? Burned, and just because he happened around a corner at the wrong time . . . can you save him, too?”
Iain stared at her, outrage churning in his gut. “Pray tell me that isn’t what happened at Abercairn?” he asked, already seeing the truth in her eyes.
He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her, drew her close, tried to spend her his warmth if he couldn’t comfort such great horrors. “Tell me you did not witness such things?”
She clung to him, her entire body beginning to tremble. “Aye, that is the fate of Abercairn,” she said, her voice breaking. She released a long, quivering sigh. “Abercairn, my father, and the young lads Sir Bernhard Logie burned on pyres before the castle gates.”
She looked up at him, her face deathly pale, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Do you ken how much I loved my father, sir? More than the whole of the world, I did,” she said, her anguish ripping Iain’s soul. “’Tis true I hardly speak of him, but that is because I cannot bear the pain of thinking of him.”
Her fingers dug into his shoulders, her words a swift-flowing current. “And the boys! Logie’s men seized them—goatherds, most of them were. T-they threatened to burn them lest my father threw open the gates. He did, and forthwith, but Silver Leg burned the lads anyway.”
Iain’s breath caught, icy cold slithering down his spine.
“Silver Leg?”
She pressed fisted hands against her eyes as if to stave off tears, and nodded. “Sir Bernhard Logie is his name, but he styles himself thus for the little silver leg votives. ’Tis said he was lame as a boy and some obscure saint cured him, so he now makes pilgrimages to shrines where’er he happens to be. He leaves the votives as tokens of his appreciation,” she explained, the words flowing like a torrent.
“H-he is one of the Disinheriteds, come back from England in support of Edward Balliol, but his own holding—the one he lost—isn’t as rich as ours, so he wanted Abercairn, and took it.”
Iain’s brows drew together in a frown. “And your father? What of him?”
“My father is . . .
was
an ill man,” she said, blinking hard. “A greathearted man and much-loved laird. But he was a man of letters and learning, not a warrior. He made an easy target for one as ruthless as Silver Leg.”
Slipping a hand beneath the damp fall of her hair, Iain kneaded the back of her neck, amazed he could move his fingers so gently with such rage pumping through him.
But Madeline Drummond needed gentleness.
Dear saints but she needed a tender hand on her.
“You saw your father killed? Burned on a pyre before your eyes?” Bile rose in Iain’s throat, fury at the beasts responsible for such heinous acts.
She hesitated, drew several great breaths. “I saw him led to the pyre. The two men belowstairs earlier . . . t-they were the ones who escorted him.”
“By the Rood!” Iain swore, the revelation sealing the men’s fate. “I should have run them through then and there.” His blood ran cold, outrage pumping through him. “Rest assured I shall avenge you, lass, and if I have to track them across the width and breadth of the land.”
Horror at what she’d been through churned in his gut, twisting his innards and squeezing his heart. “You saw this happen?”
She hesitated, shook her head. “I did not s-see him . . . see him burn,” she admitted, swiping a hand across her cheek, just beneath her eyes. “I couldn’t bear to watch.”
“God in Heaven.” Iain tightened his arms around her, his own heart breaking. He tucked her head beneath his chin and rocked her. “Sweet, sweet lass.”
“T-that was the day Nella and I left Abercairn,” she said in a voice so small he scarce heard her above the slashing rain.
“The day you decided to join a nunnery?”
A travesty he was not about to let happen.
She nodded, looked up at him with green-shimmering eyes gone dark as moss. “The day I decided to kill Silver Leg.”
Iain’s jaw dropped. “So-o-o!” he said, the pieces beginning to fall in place. “That is why you were looking for the votives?”
She nodded again. “I couldn’t hope to avenge my father at Abercairn. Too many of Silver Leg’s men would be about. So I thought to catch him unawares, at a shrine, and . . . and—”
“And kill him with the wee bairn’s dirk you carry in your boot?”
“Aye, that was my plan. And why I meant to enter a convent afterward . . . to atone for the sin of murder in a holy place.”
Iain stared at her. “Sweet lass, ne’er have I heard a plan more doomed to failure and ne’er have I seen a lass less suited for life as a nun.”
Much to his relief, a spark of anger appeared in her eyes. “And you have a better plan?”
“Och, aye, lass, but I do,” he said, setting her away from him.
His mind racing, hope burgeoning in his heart, he took the sphagnum moss tincture off the brazier, snatched up a few small linen towels from the stool next to the bathing tub, and carried them to the bedside table, using the few moments away from her to suppress the triumph beginning to surge through him.
The lass didn’t know it yet, but she’d just given him a far better way to atone for his own sins than prostrating himself before moldering bones and bathing in supposedly sacred waters.
He’d help her regain Abercairn Castle, avenging her father’s death and gaining time to woo her properly in the process.
Much pleased with himself, he returned to her side and struck his most valiant Master of the Highlands stance. Thus posed—legs slightly apart and his arms folded—he drew back his great shoulders and gave her what he hoped would appear as a smile of confidence and encouragement.
One he hoped she wouldn’t be able to resist.
If
he didn’t look the fool, which was a distinct possibility, as he was sorely out of practice at smiling. Being anyone’s valiant hero was new territory for him.
But he must have done something right because she blushed prettily and gave him a tremulous smile in return. “And what is your plan, good sir?”
Why, to charm and seduce you, sweet lass. And make you mine for all our days,
his heart declared.
“I shall tell you of my plan as I soothe your ankles and wrists with the sphagnum tincture,” he promised, guiding her toward the bed. “And you have my word I shall tend only those parts of you that are aching.”
He almost grinned at that last, and would have attempted it if she hadn’t ground her feet into the rushes and tugged on his arm.
“Aye, lass?”
“You no longer wish to bathe?”
He shook his head. “It can wait,” he said, and ran the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. “Soothing your hurts, inside and out, matters more at the moment.”
She blinked at that. He’d thought she would smile. But she peered at him, the shadows he’d noted earlier creeping back to cloud her lovely eyes.
“There is something I must ask you, Iain MacLean,” she said, her chin lifting, her gaze bitter earnest. “And I must ken the answer afore I lie down on that bed for your . . . er . . . helpful ministrations.”
“Then ask away, lass, for I shall keep no secret from you,” he said, and meant it.
“Are you married?” she blurted, high color spotting her cheeks. “Is there a lady of your heart?”
Iain blinked, for a moment flummoxed, but secretly pleased she’d asked.
It meant she cared.
He took one of her hands between both of his, squeezed lightly. “I was married, aye.” He answered her true. “But my wife has long since passed from history, lass. She is dead and has been for o’er a year.”
“But she has not passed from your heart?” she probed, surprising him. “You still love her.”
Iain’s brow knitted, his initial pleasure at the question swinging into confusion. But he’d sworn not to lie to her, so he answered these questions honestly, too. “She will always be in my heart, aye.”
But ne’er in the way that you are,
that very heart giving the answer he knew she needed.
“You need what?”
Donall the Bold, proud and mighty laird of the MacLeans, crossed his well-muscled arms and peered down at the wee crone standing before him in his cavernous hall at Baldoon.
Slight and black-garbed as a raven, Devorgilla, Doon’s resident wisewoman, cleared her throat and drew a self-important breath.
Indeed, she allowed herself a second one, too.
She’d made the long and tedious journey from her cliff-top cottage on the other side of Doon, crossing roughest moorland and peat bog, even suffering the blast of wind and rain in her face without hardship.
And now that she had the man she needed before her, she wasn’t about to deny herself stating what she required.