The Viking's Highland Lass (6 page)

She was a beauty, her cheeks rosy from the cold, her dark hair falling about her shoulders in a cascade of shiny curls, her lips as red as her cheeks. Her eyes were blue and bright and worried. He couldn't believe she was the same lass who had come to his aid before. Or that she would be out in this weather, running for her life.

“What about
your
feet?” she asked.

“They will be fine.” Though the thought of his feet locked between her thighs made him imagine other possibilities. And that notion heated his blood right away.

“They must be freezing,” she said.

“I will tend to them when your feet are feeling nice and warm.”

She said, “I will help you.”

He smiled at the notion, but he would not let her do such a thing. He was afraid if he put his ice cold feet against her bare skin, she'd be chilled too much.

“You have not eaten yet,” she said.

“I will eat when your fingers are sufficiently warmed. So tell me, lass,” he said quietly, “who are you running from and why?” Now that he'd had a chance to consider her garments, he was certain she was a woman of some importance. Not just a sheepherder's daughter as she appeared to be when he'd first seen her so many years ago.

“What clan are you with?” she asked him first.

He wished he knew where she was from and who had harmed her. If she was from an enemy's clan, he was certain she wouldn't wish to tell him who she was. She needed his help, no matter which clan she hailed from.

He sighed. “I am with the Clan MacNeill.”

Her eyes widened and her whole posture stiffened.

“I mean only to protect you and take you somewhere safe,” he said.

“To where? To the MacNeill stronghold?”

“The MacNeills will protect you. No one will harm you. It appears to me that whoever hurt you and wants you to return at once is the enemy here, not me or the clan I have grown to love.”

Tears clung to her eyelashes and she stifled a sob.

“Lass,” he said, just about to pull her into a hug, but she shook her head quickly.

“Nay, my feet are still cold.”

“All right, lass. Why are you so distressed at the mention of my clan?”

“My mother was of the Clan MacNeill. She was a MacAffin.”

Gunnolf closed his gaping mouth.

“She was sent away from the MacNeill castle before I was born. But she was carrying my brother and he didna live. This was probably before your time and you might no' have heard anything about it.”

“Which clan are you with now?” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice. He couldn't imagine any woman carrying a bairn being treated in such a manner.

“Auchinleck.”

“I don't recall anything about them. We must not have any trouble between us.”

Brina looked down at their joined hands. “She… my mother, that is… was said to be… wild. But when the laird learned she was with bairn, he sent her away.”

“Where was her husband?”

She shook her head.

“She had none?” Gunnolf considered that notion for a moment, but he would think that if anyone had mistreated the woman like that, the laird would have sent men after her and returned her home. Then he frowned, another notion coming to mind, knowing how lecherous the former laird was. “The laird himself was the father of the bairn?”

Brina let out her breath and nodded.

“Your mother…she is…no more?”

Brina shook her head. “She died a year before I met you.”

“What was her name?”

“Davina.”

Gunnolf stared at Brina in disbelief. He had not joined the clan until two years after the incident, but it had still been fresh on everyone's minds. The woman had worked in the kitchen and was said to have been wild and untamable and had run off three times from the castle that year. Some said it was because James's father had had his way with her; others said because he had not. But Gunnolf hadn't known the woman had been carrying a bairn. He wondered if anyone else had known, or if only the lass had. Maybe the laird.

“Then…I am taking you where you belong. To my home now. And even more your home as your mother was from the clan,” Gunnolf said with some relief. “James, son of the previous laird, now rules the clan. You have nothing to fear from him. He is good of heart and would never turn away a woman in need.”

Brina didn't seem eager to embrace the idea.

“Lass, what is the matter? Surely you see you belong with the MacNeills.”

“In truth, I had hoped to. But what if I tell them who my mother was?” She shook her head. “I know what the people will say. That I am like my mother. Especially since I have run away from my own keep.”

“The laird isn't like his father. So you have no need to be concerned there.” Then Gunnolf wondered if she
was
like her mother, running off in the middle of bad weather with no goal in mind. “You are not with bairn, are you?”

She tried to pull her hands away from his.

“Nay, lass.” He held her tight. “The Clan MacNeill took me in, a wild Norseman, not that you are wild like that. They showed me kindness and that I belonged when I had never thought I would feel such a thing unless I was home with my own kin. You will be safe.”

“The Clan Auchinleck is my clan,” she said, her words tight with anger. “They are my people. When no one from the Clan MacNeill would protect my mother, my da and his people did. But Seamus, whom my da had entrusted the clan to when my da died, will destroy the heart and soul of my clan. Aye, I could live with you and the Clan MacNeill, and I am sure from what you say that I would be allowed to stay there, but accepted? I am no' sure about that. They are no' my…, well, my mother was a MacAffin, allied with the MacNeill, and they had pledged their loyalty to the old laird. Maybe some of the rest of the MacAffin married the MacNeill and their offspring would be related to me. But what of my da's people? They will have to live with Seamus's rule and suffer for it.”

“Your father was chief of your clan? You are Lady Brina then.”

“You didna know me as such before. I am the same as then.” She spoke as if she really believed she could be the lass that he had met so long ago.

But she wasn't. She was vital to the clan as a means to make an alliance with another clan through marriage.

Gunnolf didn't know what to say. He wasn't sure what she wished of him. She wouldn't be able to rid the clan of Seamus on her own. Rescuing her was one thing, but fighting Seamus and all those who followed him? “You dinna wish to return there, do you? You must have escaped from there, if you were running all alone in the wilderness during the height of a snowstorm.”

“It is my home.” She let out her breath. “But my da also declared I would be wed to Seamus. The man wished it of me the morning following my da's death. Could he no' have at least given me time to grieve? Except Seamus had no intention of waiting for the wedding to bed me,” she said bitterly, her cheeks even growing redder and this time Gunnolf thought from embarrassment.

“Then you canna return there. Unless you have had a change of heart concerning Seamus.”

“I havena.” She wiggled her toes and moved them against Gunnolf's thighs, making his staff tighten further. “My feet are warm.”

His blood was sizzling. “Are you sure, lass?”

“Aye and you need to eat.”

“All right, but only if you are certain.”

She pulled free of him, and then moved around to crouch at his feet. He couldn't believe it when she untied his boots and pulled off one and then the other. Then she slipped off his wet socks and wrapped her warm hands around one of his feet.

“Your feet are ice cold. Do they burn?”

From just her hands on his foot, he felt his whole body heat. Not just his feet. “
Ja,
lass.”

“I canna hold your feet between my legs as you have done for me as I am no' as strong as you. But, mayhap I could sit on them?”

He envisioned her sweet bare arse sitting on top of his feet and thinking how much he wished she was sitting on other parts of his anatomy that stirred to life even more from the words she had spoken and the way her soft, warm hands felt pressed against his foot.

He couldn't say yes or no. He wasn't the most talkative of men normally, but he really couldn't find his tongue. He thought she meant to keep her kyrtle and chemise wedged between her arse and his feet, and nodded. But when she lifted the layers of her gowns slightly and planted her sweet, naked arse on top of his feet, he was shocked.

She frowned and he started to pull his feet out from under her, thinking his icy, cold skin had chilled her too much when she placed her hands on his legs and held him down. The woman had a strength he didn't believe she could possess as petite as she was. And the pressure she exerted on him made his thoughts drift to carnal pleasures again. He couldn't help thinking of her in that way—not after she had shoved him down in the snow when they first came into contact, tightened her sweet body against his when riding together, and now this.

“Stay. The worst of the cold will go away,” she said.

The cold she was feeling? Or the cold he was feeling?

“Talk to me,” she said. “The way you are looking at me when you are so silent unnerves me.”

He cleared his suddenly very rough throat. “My feet are burning.” And so was the rest of him, but he wasn't sure she would understand about that.

She nodded. “Which is a good sign. Aye?”

“
Ja.
” He hid a small smile.

“Why are you out here in this weather?” she suddenly asked, sounding suspicious. “Surely, you are no' running away from anyone or anything, are you? Why were you at that shieling? I assume it was not your own if you are with the Clan MacNeill. And I dinna believe I ran far enough away from my castle to have reached your lands.”

Would she believe in an old woman's visions? He had no reason to make up any other tale.

“A woman told me I needed to travel south of our lands to aid a woman. Now, if you are the woman, I am in luck. If you are not, I still have to find the other one.”

“You are serious?” she asked. “You went where you have never been before, searching in this terrible storm for a woman you didna know at all because a
taibhsear
told you so?”

“She is like my
amma
, my grandmother. And though she can sound ambiguous and abrasive to some, she has lived a hard life and I respect her and her ways. She would not ask me to do anything that she truly didn't believe in. Not everyone understands a
taibhsear'
s ways.”

“Do you?”

He shrugged and fished a bannock from his pouch. “Even if I did not, it seems to me I have rescued you.” He chewed on his bannock.

“Whether or no' I am the one you were supposed to aid.”

“
Ja
.”

She studied him for a moment while his thoughts returned to the way her sitting on his feet was heating him thoroughly.

“My mother was supposed to have the gift of two sights,” she finally said, watching him carefully.

Gunnolf frowned at her, surprised first that her mother had the visions, but secondly, that Brina would share this with him. The way she observed him, he knew she was trying to determine how he viewed the news. So maybe Brina believed in them. “My
amma
was supposed to have as well.”

“Your grandmother?” She raised her brows.

“
Ja
.” He frowned at Brina, wondering if she had the gift also. His grandmother's talent had not passed down to him though. “Do you have the ability?”

Brina lowered her gaze from his face to her lap. “Are your feet warm yet?”

Her reluctance to explain that she had the gift made him think she did. But he also knew some believed those who could see such things would think they were witches.

If she did have any visions, had she seen him in one? Maybe not, as she had seemed genuinely surprised to cross paths with him at the shieling. “If you are able to foretell some future happening and it has anything to do with running into Seamus or his men, I hope that you will feel free to warn me about it.”

She studied him for a bit, then nodded.

He let out his breath. “Your secret is safe with me. I believe there are things in this world, and not of this world, that we cannot readily explain. Are you cold, lass?” He noticed then that her body trembled a little. He reached for her hand and pulled her down against him, not waiting for her reply.

She stiffened, but he kept her close to show she had nothing to be afraid of. Then he yanked the blankets and furs around them and over their heads. “We will share our body heat and naught more,” he assured her, though truly, how could he not wish for more?

Thankfully, she did not stiffen or pull away from his over familiarity with her further, and she seemed to realize she was safe with him. It was good she could not know his true thoughts.

“So where do we go from here?” she whispered against his cheek.

He savored the touch of her warm breath on his cold skin as if they were lovers in a welcoming embrace on a frigid night. “We head north to see Wynne and learn if you are the right woman who needed my aid. And then, whether you are or not, I will escort you to Craigly Castle where you can meet your kin. I am certain they will be pleased to learn that something good came of your mother's disappearance so long ago.”

“You are so very kind, Gunnolf, despite where you come from.” She nestled closer, sharing her heat with him, and he couldn't help the way his body reacted.

She didn't say anything more, and he thought she must have fallen asleep.

He had never imagined holding a woman in his arms like this, trying to keep her warm while she warmed him in a crumbling Roman tower in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm when all James had sent him to do was check on Wynne and ensure she was safe.