Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (23 page)

“Your brother will need me this night . . . if only to wear a joyous, untroubled face before his people,” she asserted. “Do you not see? The dastard behind these attacks will be there tonight. Waiting, watching, and hoping to see us cowering in fear.”

Staring at her, Dugan started to shake his head, but then an ever-broader smile began sneaking across his face.

“By the Rood, I knew you’d make my brother a fine bride,” he said, offering her his arm with a bit of a flourish.

“Then let us hope he can be convinced of that as well, good sir,” Amicia gave back, linking her arm in his.

Feeling bold indeed, she let him escort her forward, toward the great hall and her waiting husband.

And each step of the way, she drew Devorgilla’s cloak a bit more securely about her shoulders.

Just for good measure.

Amicia clutching the cloak was not lost on a certain someone observing the fine lady’s arrival. In the secrecy of shadow, a far better cloak than any fur-lined mantle however dear, someone allowed a wee smile to tug at lips too long set in lines of vengeance.

The night was yet young and fresh, but Clan Fingon’s doom inched ever near. And just as the new bride’s richest raiments couldn’t keep her from shivering, neither would dragging tables and shoving benches from one end of the hall to the other stop someone’s boiling wrath from crashing down upon their unsuspecting heads.

And all the fool precautions they attempted would prove fruitless.

Someone’s machinations and wit would e’er besiege them until very soon, in the hour of their greatest need, they would be brought to their knees.

One by one, if need be until the earth had been cleansed of their scourge and every last MacKinnon awakened to find himself on the hither side.

Aye, their end approached.

Tonight was the beginning of it.

Amicia paused just inside the hall’s arched entrance, her breath catching at the transformation of its most-times silent and grim vastness. Though the choking bite of countless pitch-pine torches stung and watered her eyes, the difference couldn’t be denied.

Nor the splendor.

Silver branches of fine-burning candles lit every trestle table, and not the lesser-quality tallow candles most often found throughout the MacKinnon stronghold. Nay, these were fine tapers of purest beeswax, and the dazzling array of victuals they illuminated would have received
oohs
and
ahhs
at the noblest of tables.

Aye, for this one night, Coldstone Castle seemed to have set aside the burden of troublous days and truly outdone itself.

Someone had spread sweet-scented meadowsweet atop the floor rushes and that delicate scent pleased the senses even as the richer, heavier aromas of well-roasted meats and seafowl hung in the smoke-hazed air, tantalizing the taste buds and making mouths water.

Amicia caught her lower lip between her teeth, pleased beyond measure. Ne’er had she seen a more impressive display.

Even with the somewhat disconcerting circumstance of the high table no longer gracing the raised dais at the other end of the hall, but in such close proximity to the main entry door she’d almost walked straight into it.

Nevertheless, the scene before her stole her breath.

In especial, the sea of staring faces turned her way.

Shining faces filled with warmth and welcome.

The fleeting glimpses of recovered pride touched her deeply. The manifestations of pride ran rampant throughout the hall, visible in the upright posture of those lining the trestle benches and in the unmistakable spring in the step of those not yet seated.

“I’ faith!” she managed to gasp—just before her throat locked on her.

Too stunned to do much more than stare, she dug her fingers into Dugan’s arm lest he urge her any farther into the thronging masses of more MacKinnons than she’d known existed.

“They are here to greet you,” he told her, correctly guessing at least one reason for her gasp. “You haven’t seen them before now because they’ve been toiling at the boat strand day and night, rebuilding our fleet. They are there at earliest cockcrow and do not return until long after you’ve sought your bed.”

“There are so many.” Amicia stood as if frozen to stone, keenly aware of countless sets of eyes turned her way, each pair scrutinizing, even if in friendly and warm regard.

Dugan patted her hand. “You needn’t fret, lass. They are pleased to see their future laird’s bride.” He slanted her a look of brotherly encouragement. “Magnus’s bonnie, raven-haired bride.”

“Raven-haired?” Amicia shot him a quick glance.

If one more MacKinnon called attention to the sootiness of her hair color, she’d shave off the whole of it.

Everywhere!

“Well, you are—are you not?” Dugan teased, winking at her.

He lifted a lock of his own black hair. “’Tis a bonny enough shade, I’d say.”

Amicia shrugged one shoulder, not wanting to dwell on her coloring.

Not now.

Not this night.

“Dinna look so troubled. ’Tis a good thing you are not fair-haired or flame-topped, never you worry.” Dugan took her hand, kissed the air above her knuckles. “My brother has e’er had a taste for sultry lasses. You will have him on his knees and begging your favor before you can say, ‘Coldstone Castle.’”

A stab of sharp green
ache
shot through her upon his words. “At the moment, I would be well-content just to see him smile.” She tightened her grip on his arm when he made to lead her forward.

She wasn’t taking another step until she’d assured herself nary a one of those blowsy, black-tressed phantoms hadn’t used Dugan’s innocently hurtful words to slink close to her again.

Nay, she wasn’t budging.

Not before she’d had time to regain the strength of her MacLean blood.

Its steel.

An advantage she’d sorely need to face and claim the magnificent man pacing in front of the hearth fire.

Not that she couldn’t look on him until her eyes ached!

She stared across the hall at him, her heart thundering, the nervous flutters in her stomach underscoring the thrall he held over her.

Heads taller and more powerfully built than any other man she’d ever seen, Magnus MacKinnon didn’t notice her at all. Truth to tell, he didn’t appear to notice . . . anything.

But hard lines of strained concentration stood etched into his handsome face and each one suggested the reason for his preoccupation. As did his over-long strides and the fierce passion blazing in his eyes.

A heated fervor she suspected had scarce little to do with the charms of lushly curved lasses, sultry or otherwise.

Even so, just seeing such passion—
any shade or flavor of it
—burn so brightly in those clear blue eyes of his made her heart pound all the same.

A soul-deep sigh rose in her throat. Faith, but she yearned to see those gorgeous eyes alight with an obsession of an entirely different sort.

She
was more than obsessed.

Not that she cared.

Far from it, she’d swim the deepest Highland loch, climb the steepest brae, brave the fiercest north wind, and even shout her sheer, raging
want
for Magnus MacKinnon to all the world and the entirety of the heavens—and do so gladly, if only such a spectacle would help her win his heart.

His love.

The deep abiding kind she’d harbored for him since all time was, and for as long as time would e’er continue to be. A love that swelled her heart until she’d swear she could touch the wind and sea and sky.

A passion that, if e’er released, would shake the hills—should she put any faith in such romantic notions.

Possible or nay, such had been the shape of her every dream too long for her not to take full advantage of any crumb of opportunity he tossed her way.

So for the moment, she ignored the stir all around her and simply drank in the glory of him, let his heady male beauty melt her. Garbed in full Highland panoply, with his plaid slung proudly over one shoulder and his mailed hauberk gleaming in the torchlight. Just looking at him heated her in places a more timid lass would ne’er acknowledge.

But for the nonce, she forced herself to stop thinking about the welter of kisses she burned to light upon every inch of his great, braw-muscled body!

“I told you he’d be well-occupied,” Dugan said, his voice scattering the tingles, restoring her wits.

He latched a strong hand around her wrist, began dragging her forward, apparently having decided that it was time for Magnus to own to his bride.

Whether he wished to or no.

A notion circling through Magnus’s own mind—laying bright golden bands about him, a new one for each nearing step
she
took toward him.

It was time to face his fate.

Without dark scowls and evasions, and making use of every shred of charm he’d e’er been credited to possess.

If he hadn’t forgotten what to do with them.

And if his new bride didn’t find the nonsense that opened each MacKinnon wedding feast so off-putting, she truly did seek return passage to her fair isle of Doon—a place where he doubted such folly would be tolerated.

“Ho, Magnus! I bring you a meet bride,” Dugan called out, propelling Amicia toward him—just as ritual demanded. “Will you claim her? Or would you relinquish her charms to me, as next in line to represent this great and worthy house?”

“What?”
Amicia’s wide-eyed glance shot to Dugan’s bitter earnest face,
her
face having gone a flattering blanched-white upon hearing his words.

Magnus stood still as stone, hating to see his bride’s dismay, but secretly pleased by her reaction to the nonexistent possibility of finding herself as Dugan’s bride.

Catching that one’s eye, Magnus squared his shoulders and gave the expected response.

“I will surrender her to none,” he said, speaking to Dugan but looking at his wife. “That I swear!”

He swore, too, to change the tradition that forbade him—or anyone—to warn her about this ritual test of her affections, her loyalty.

Aye, a change would be the order of the day once he became laird in truth. But for now, he contented himself by trying to reassure her with his eyes.

Let her know by his expression that she needn’t fret—that he wasn’t about to give her over to Dugan or any man. And that he’d have done with this buffoonery as swiftly as circumstance allowed.

Circumstance, and the scores of MacKinnons savoring each moment of the much-anticipated ritual.

A silly custom if ever there was one, dreamed up by some long-dead ancestor—like as not when the lout had been too drink-taken to occupy himself more wisely.

“So that is the way of it—you desire her. I have feared as much.” Dugan rubbed his chin. “And if there is someone here who might wish to challenge you for her favor?”

Magnus dropped his hand to his sword hilt, withdrew the blade to half its gleaming length. “Any insolent cockerel who’d dare attempt to win her shall leave here with his tail between his legs like some whipped cur,” he vowed, summoning his darkest mien. “Of that, you may be sure!”

“By all God’s wrath, what
is
this?” Amicia demanded, her initial shock swinging into a bold display of the famed MacLean temper.

With two spots of bright red coloring her cheeks, she glared at him, at Dugan, and even at those hapless clansmen who just happened to be standing close enough to catch the heat of her stare.

And, saints preserve him, but Lady Amicia in full, fiery temper proved more fetching than he would have thought possible.

Indeed, he found her so glorious that, for a moment, he forgot his own cares and knew his first true lift of the heart in longer than he could recall.

Knew, too, a hot stirring beneath his braies.

“Well, MacKinnon?” she demanded, glittery-eyed. “I asked you what this is about?”

Damning tradition, he mouthed one wee warning:
’Tis only the begin of MacKinnon Claiming Ceremony. . . .

Regrettably, even as he formed the words, his kinsmen chose the moment to voice their good cheer.

“Hech, hech, but she’s a fiery piece o’ womanhood!” a deep male voice called from somewhere in the hall.

“Aye, the sparks will be a-flying tonight!” another agreed, hooting with glee. “Would that I could be a shadow on their bedchamber wall this e’en!”

“Would that
I
were less gray-topped,” an older clansman burst out, thumping his chest. “I’d lay claim to her myself, by God!”

Her eyes now at fullest stretch, Amicia wheeled to level a stare at the snaggle-toothed graybeard before turning back to aim the entirety of her incredulity on Magnus.

“For truth, sir . . . can it be the whole Clan Fingon has run craven?”

The fiercest urge to agree with her swept through Magnus, but duty bound him to ignore her protestations and follow the course of the fool ceremony.

He
did
rake his kinsmen with a warning stare—the fiercest he could muster.

Their peace thus assured, he pressed a hand to his heart. That, too, being part of the ceremony.

The part he most dreaded.

“Be on with it, Magnus—or shall I say the words for you?” a gravelly-voiced clod of a clansman with a bushy red beard put to him. “I’ll fight you or anyone here for the lass—and give you my last
siller
for her, too!”

“Very well . . . so be it,” Magnus said more to himself than anyone.

“Lady Amicia is mine,” he declared, lifting his voice. “And I am hers. We belong to each other,” he rushed on, nigh shouting the remaining words. “Now. This night. And forever more . . . if she will have me.”

A throbbing hush spread through the hall, all gazes shifting to Amicia.

Magnus hesitated but a pulse beat, just long enough to swallow the tight knot in his throat. “Lady, will you show us where your heart lies?” Somehow he got the words out. “Is it your will to be my lady wife? To share my hearthside and bed, mother my bairns?”

Her dark eyes shining, Amicia nodded. “I have always willed it—such has e’er been my deepest hope,” she responded at once, rubbing her thumb over her sapphire ring as the words spilled from her heart.