Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (15 page)

“Nay, lass, there can be no doubt.” He shook his head. “The cut edges bore the marks of the saw’s fury. The knave who did this was not only stout-armed, but driven by white-hot rage.”

His face grim-set, he went to the window embrasure where he ignored the twin-facing benches, newly adorned with plump, finely embroidered cushions. He stood with his back to her, staring out at the swirls of eddying mist drifting past the window arch.

The night breeze, heavy with the smell of rain, riffled his hair. Firelight from a nearby torch picked out the brightest strands of gold, and Amicia’s fingers itched to test the silkiness of those bronze-gleaming highlights. A near all-consuming urge stoked through countless nights of youthful longings.

Shaking off the spell of him, she clasped her hands together and drew a great breath before she spoke. “If this is someone of such a twisted heart, I pray you discover his identity with all haste. For the good of us all.”

“Never you worry, I shall,” he said without glancing round. “The dastard will soon find himself clapped into Coldstone’s deepest pit and regretting the day of his birth. Or mayhap I shall put him to the cliff—let him plunge headlong into the sea as he’d hoped to see one of us hurtle into the cesspit.” His hands clenched to tight fists. “On my soul, Amicia, I swear I will let no harm come to you.”

Amicia’s heart dipped at his use of her name without the formalizing
lady
prefix. A first, and a triumph she seized with gladness. Sweetest pleasure spiraled through her, too, at the fervor in his voice as he’d vowed to protect her.

“I have fullest faith in your ability to safeguard me,” she said, melting, a flood tide of preciously guarded images whispering across her heart. “Mayhap I should not tell you, but the truth is, I have long admired your strength and skill, Magnus MacKinnon.”

Now he did look over his shoulder. “I—thank you for that,” he said, an odd thickness to his voice.

The glow from the brazier revealed a faint tinge of pink stealing onto his cheeks. Perhaps an indication of how uncomfortable her compliments made him—or mayhap how much they pleased him.

And that second notion pleased her.

Inordinately so.

Her sapphire ring seemed to warm on her finger as she looked at him. The possibility, real or imagined, made her heart smile. “See you, I remember from early on, how you e’er won the day at the competitions of strength our clans participated in,” she minded him, encouraged.

She circled her thumb over the ring as she waited for his reaction, drew courage—and boldness—from the stone’s satiny, almost pulsing warmth. “I vow you e’er left the field as champion.”

“Och, nay, lass. There you mistake,” he said, turning back to the window, the darkness of the mist-hung night. “I once lost an archery contest by badly overshooting the target. But that was many long years ago and no longer of import.” An odd touch of melancholy threaded the softly spoken words.

“For now, in
this
pass, just know that I will guard your safety with the whole of my strength and all the breath in me. That is so sure as night follows day.”

His vow, and even more so, the tinge of regret edging his husky-smooth voice, lifted the fine hairs on the back of Amicia’s neck. In truth, even whilst flattering, she did not want him to fight for her. She wanted to protect him. To know
him
safe from all darkness and danger. And she loathed the notion of being a responsibility.

Another burden placed upon his shoulders.

She burned for one thing only.

His love and adoration.

A chance to win his heart.

With effort, she tore her gaze from his broad, plaid-draped back, shivers of regret slinking down her own. Unless her eyesight had weakened since her arrival on MacKinnons’ Isle, there was now a decided slump to his shoulders and, damn her clumsy-tongued hide, but she feared something she’d said might be the cause of it.

Or mayhap the moon eyes she’d surely been making at him since he’d burst into the bedchamber—despite her best efforts to maintain a composed,
ladylike
demeanor.

To control the yearnings that raged inside her with enough passion to set all the heather ablaze.

Her throat tightening, her eyes filming with sheerest frustration, she turned back to the table, glared down at the gleaming ax blade. The polished steel shone overbright in the candlelight and the sharpness of its edge left nary a doubt to the damage it could wield.

As could the broadsword hanging at his side, the wicked-looking dirks thrust beneath his waist-belt. Faith and mercy, he even had one sheathed in his boot!

She slid another look at him, eyed the weapons—a veritable arsenal—and tight bands of trepidation coiled around her chest, obliterating all her other emotions.

Her own now paltry seeming concerns.

All save one.

She glanced back to the securely bolted door.

Did he mean to sleep here? Mayhap even in their fine four-postered marriage bed—at her side?

Her heart pounding, she stared at him for a long moment before taking the first step across the skin-strewn floor.

She had to know.

Even if the discovery found him shunning her. The warm-pulsing weightiness spreading through the lower-most reaches of her belly at the thought of lying with him demanded she learn his mind.

So she let the urgently pleasurable sensation spur her forward, toward its braw and bonny source, one brazen footfall after the other.

Fitting or no, the timing propitious or nay, the gnawing need inside her stamped out every last flicker of propriety.

Not that a MacLean e’er walked the earth who’d let seemliness—or risk—bar the way to their deepest desire!

And she was a MacLean—through and through.

Bold and resolute, even if her knees trembled just a wee tiny bit.

She moved closer, chin lifted and shoulders straight, her heart thundering against her ribs. Faith, she could even hear the blood roaring through her ears!

Even Boiny, until now deep in his canine slumber, raised his shaggy gray head to peer at her—his rheumy gaze curious, as if he, too, could hear the insistent hammering.

Only Magnus appeared oblivious.

He stood at a slight angle, the whole strapping length of him silhouetted against the tall, gray arch of the window, his profile silvered by moonlight, softened by shadow.

For one shattering moment, the strange half-light of the embrasure erased the tight lines of strain carved into his face and let her glimpse the Magnus of old—a beautiful lad of spirit and vigor. The dashing young champion with the roguish grin, who’d charmed all the lassies and laid fast claim to Amicia’s affections.

A forever claim that had burned all the brighter with each passing year.

An unspoken bond that now consumed her.

Almost upon him, she slowed her pace, savoring the remembrances stirred by his moonlit image, not quite ready to break the spell. But, like old Boiny, he heard her approach and spun to face her, looking at her with eyes filled with light and laughter, and flashing his dimpled smile.

Until the ruddy glow of the firelit room undid the magic of her yearning heart.

Her breath caught at the transformation, her eyes flying wide even as his narrowed in piercing consternation.

“You’ve gone pale as the moonlight—even as I am looking at you,” he said, something in his gaze and his voice making her tingle all over.

“Do you think to stay the night here . . .
with me
?” she blurted before the hard-won steel in her backbone could melt, slide right out of her to form a molten pool around her feet.

“I would think that was obvious,” he said, stepping from the embrasure. “Why else would I have bolted the door?”

Amicia drew a breath, prayed she would not stutter in her nervousness. “My pardon. I phrased the question poorly. ’Tis where in here you think to sleep that I would know?” she asked again, this time placing special emphasis on
where.

“Not where you are thinking,” he said, his gaze lighting briefly on the massive four-poster across the room.

He placed his hands on her shoulders, and the intimacy of that small contact, even through her clothes, slid through her like a caress.

“Do not fret yourself, lass. You may be at your ease this night. There will be time anon for . . .
connubial pursuits.
” He began kneading her shoulders, his gentling of her and the mention of their joining, however tactfully worded, undoing her, making her breath come in short, shallow gasps.

Then the warmth and concern slipped from his clear blue eyes and the hard, set-faced look returned. “There are enough rich trappings spread about this room for me to make a more than comfortable pallet to sleep on. I’ faith, I spent most of the last three years making my bed on the rough heather with naught but my plaid to warm me.”

A MacLean to the bone, Amicia seized her chance.

“You may share the bed . . . I do not mind,” she heard herself suggest, scarce believing her brazenness but loving her daring.

For one exhilarating moment, giddy excitement streaked through her, but Magnus shattered her hope by stepping back to put a good arm’s length between them.

“That would not be wise,” he said, looking down to adjust the hang of his plaid. “See you, I shall rise before first light and I have no wish to disrupt your sleep.”

“I see very well, my lord,” Amicia said, embarrassment sweeping her.

Visibly stiffening, he fixed all his attention on brushing at nonexistent specks of lint on his plaid, the bright mail of his sleeve. “I warrant you see what you believe you see. That is not necessarily the truth of it, lass.”

“Nay?” She cocked a brow. “Then what is, my lord?”

He drew a tight breath, clearly uncomfortable. “That I desire an early start to begin looking for the miscreant—”

“You needn’t trouble yourself overmuch, I vow—it can only be Janet,” she blurted, her frustration and hurt hurling the suspicion at him.

“Wee Janet?”
He gaped at her, incredulity stamped all over his bonny face. “Och, but you are sore amiss, lassie, that I promise you.”

To her aggravation, he nigh snorted his astonishment. “Did you not hear what I told you? Whoe’er is behind such dark deeds is fueled by hatred. Janet’s worst wrath could reap no more trouble than a wet kitten.”

Green-tinged heat pouring over her, Amicia struggled to banish the younger woman’s image from her mind, but the vexing likeness remained, taunting her with all its fragile loveliness and flaxen-haired charm.

“A wet kitten can have mightily sharp claws,” she snapped, feeling about as frail and tender as a plow horse, with her stained and disarranged bodice, her wild and mussed hair.

“Mayhap you are the one who misjudges,” she said, trying not to glare.

A shuttered look came over his face and he glanced aside. “I have misjudged many things of late, to be sure. But Janet is kin. I will not think poorly of her.”

“Are there any under your roof who are
not
kin?”

That got to him. “Nary a one,” he owned, rubbing at the red-gold stubble on his chin. “Nevertheless, it is pure folly to suspect Janet.”

Amicia stifled a huff of indignation. “Your cousin is sore vexed—and surely less delicate than she looks. I would advise you or anyone in the path of her fury to take fullest heed.”

Magnus passed a hand over his eyes, shook his head. “Nay, I will not believe it. Not of Janet. Not of anyone of MacKinnon blood.”

“Then mayhap you must indeed look to your ghosts,” she said with a flare of finest MacLean temper.

“My ghosts?”

“Reginald of the Victories and his lady wife for a start,” she tossed at him, too grieved to heed the tightening of his features, the twitch of a muscle in his jaw.

“Dagda tells me they favor this very room,” she declared, her cheeks flaming. “Perchance here is as good a place as any to begin your search?”

She marched to the massive four-poster, flipped up a corner of the opulent coverings. “Mayhap they are hiding beneath their bed?”

“Their bed?”
This time, he did snort. “Without question, that hulking monstrosity is of great age and has stood in this chamber for a good many years,” he owned, speaking as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. “And I have no doubt Reginald would have approved of the finery adorning it since your arrival, but I’ll swallow my sword if he e’er spent a single night in it. Neither with his doomed lady wife or any other lass.”

Amicia let the bedcovers fall, dusted her hands. “So Dagda told me falsehoods?”

“Dagda is a prattling fool, and more the pity she wasn’t born a man—with her glib tongue, she would have made a better teller of tales than my brother Hugh!” Magnus folded his arms, turned a sharp eye on her. “I am hoping you have a better head on your shoulders than to believe such belly-wind?”

“If you do not believe in the tradition, why has the fire in this chamber not been allowed to go out since their day? Your own da told me so—that its peats have been kept alive even though no one used the chamber all these centuries.”

Magnus heaved a great sigh. “Last I heard,
all
hearth fires hereabouts are kept from fully extinguishing. Or have you ne’er seen the old women of a household skulking about late at night, burying wee clumps of live turf in the ashes so a spark can be fanned into a blaze come the morning?”

He had her there.

Indeed, most clans prided themselves on the claim that their peat fires had been kept aglow as far back as family memory could stretch. ’Twas a time-honored tradition that the fey folk would frown on the household if a fire wasn’t kept to warm them through cold and dark Highland nights.

Aye, he’d maneuvered her into a corner. So she nodded, wordless. And let the thrust of her chin and the tight press of her lips say what her tongue didn’t.

To her amazement, rather than darkening with ire, a glint of amusement lit in his eyes. “Just dinna mind me of the fairy part,” he said as if he’d read her thoughts. “We both ken a body’s comfort of a frosty morning is the true reason for such goings-on.”