Until the Knight Comes (4 page)

“By the Rood,” he muttered, staring at the window.

A window now soundly shuttered, its flickering golden light no longer so easy to see.

Not that it mattered. He’d already seen enough. And now he knew why he’d experienced such prickling urgency on the hill.

There could be no doubt.

Cuidrach was anything but empty.

A woman had claimed the castle and that wasn’t even the worst of it. Setting his jaw, he ran a finger beneath the neck opening of his tunic, his dark mood complete.

Nay, the worst of it was, the woman he’d glimpsed had not been just any woman.

She’d been a naked woman.

Chapter Three

“G
od’s bones!” Mariota spun from the window, one hand pressed to her wet, naked breasts. “There are men below,” she said, her heart thundering. “A whole party of them, drawn up before the gates!”

“Hah!” An equally unclothed Nessa sprang to her feet in the same wooden bathing tub Mariota had vacated moments before. “And you gape at me in disbelief?” she challenged, jamming her fists against her well-rounded hips. “Did I not say tempting the Devil would bring him a-calling?”

Mariota made an impatient gesture. “I ken right enough what you said,” she admitted, her stomach already clenched in knots. “But it scarce matters now.”

Snatching a drying cloth, she began rubbing the rivulets of water from her chilled body. “Dear, sweet Christ,” she breathed, her cheeks flaming despite the cold air biting into her nakedness. “Who would venture so deep into this forlorn corner of nowhere?”

In agitation, she flicked a hand at the limed walls, bare of even the simplest hangings. The chamber, too, noble only in its spaciousness, bore little furnishings save the two bracken-stuffed pallets and scratchy old plaiding the women used for bedding.

The meager light of a few candles and a poorly burning cresset lamp illuminated the remains of their supper: a half-eaten round of coarse brown bread and a rind of moldy cheese, and the shiny opened hulls of fresh black mussels, gathered only hours before. Simple fare, washed down with spring water.

Testament enough to Cuidrach’s dearth of comforts.

A lacking she hoped would work in their favor.

“Even if someone wished to come here,” she ventured, “on such a night of mist and rain they’d need a hawk’s vision to find us.”

Nessa clucked her tongue and twisted water from the long coil of her dark hair. “They do be saying the Devil’s eyes are well peeled. He—”

“The Fiend is not below, only a company of men,” Mariota disclaimed, ignoring how her heart thumped. “They will be travelers,” she asserted, wishing her damp palms did not say otherwise. “Simple wayfarers.”

Nessa snorted. “Whate’er their purpose, if you’d heeded my warning about throwing open the shutters, like as not, they would have ridden on, thinking this an abandoned shell.” She stepped from the tub, stood dripping. “Now they will have seen the candle glow, ken we are here.”

“Oooh, to be sure.” Mariota’s stomach gave a lurch. Chances were, they’d seen much more than the flickering light of a few tallow candles.

Wincing at the thought, she crossed the room, handed her friend the drying cloth. “No matter, we will greet them as we discussed. So soon as we stand before them, I am lady of this castle. Dutiful wife to my absent husband, the present Keeper of Cuidrach.”

Nessa raised a brow, her expression more eloquent than words.

Secretly agreeing with her, Mariota pulled on her gown, not even bothering with a camise, though she did attempt to plait her still damp hair into some semblance of decency.

“They are only passing through—you shall see,” she declared again, willing it so. She waited until her friend scrabbled into her own clothes, then added, “Once they see we can offer them scarce more than slaked oats and water, they shall be eager enough to leave.”

But the foolery no sooner left her tongue before a great clamor sounded from below. The champing of horses’ bits and the
clop-clopping
of hooves, the unmistakable
clink
of steel . . . a cacophony well recognizable to Mariota.

The undeniable sounds of the arrival of knights.

A great many knights and with the ruckus they caused rising up from
within
the curtain-walled bailey.

Her stomach churning, Mariota grabbed a candle from the room’s small table and hurried for the door. “Come you,” she said, urging Nessa into the darkened corridor. “Let us intercept them before they ride their presumptuousness right into our hall.”

A feat of boldness already in full progress as the two women hastened down the winding turnpike stairs.

An invasion straight from the depths of Mariota’s blackest nightmares, for
he
was no longer contained safely in his grave in distant Assynt, but stood grinning at her from the middle of the great hall.

Hugh Alesone in all his golden splendor.

“Oho!” he cried, his voice ringing with mirth. “Not one angel, but two!”

Another man, older and well-bearded, plunked down a heavy-looking travel coffer and stared. “Mercy me—and to think we didna expect to meet up with anyone save old Ranald or a few wood pigeons!”

Hugh
just peered owlishly at her, his good humor scarce contained.

Mariota set down her candle, too stunned for words.

She drew back her shoulders, readying herself for a confrontation. But then torchlight flickered across the man, revealing not just his amused grin and brawn, but also his youth.

That, and the astonishingly large bulge at his groin.

She swallowed, her error obvious. Whoever this knight was, he was
not
Hugh Alesone.

But he was standing in Cuidrach’s hall and more of his rain-splattered ilk were streaming in behind him. Several of these wind-tossed souls also bore good-sized travel chests and what looked to be assorted knightly accoutrements of the highest quality.

The kind of gear her warrior laird father would have examined with a gleam in his eye, his tongue clicking in hearty approval.

She
clenched her fists in her cloak, strove for composure. “We are not wood pigeons or angels,” she said, her pulse racing. “Merely women—”

“That we can see,” said another man, his voice a shade deeper and carrying none of the others’ levity. “Indeed, I doubt an angel has graced these walls in longer than man can remember. And with surety, not two.”

Stepping from the shadows, he narrowed dark eyes at her. “Celestial beings can surely find more amenable haunts to grace with their hallowed presence. Do you not agree, my lady?”

“Not necessarily.” Mariota lifted her chin at his arrogant menace. “Mayhap it would depend on what conditions such a being found amenable?”

“Or,” he said, arching a raven brow, “perhaps what conditions drove the . . .
angel
to such a place as this?”

“And you, good sir?” Mariota returned, struggling against the urge to squirm beneath his midnight gaze. “Devils are known to seek such places as well. What brings
you
here this dark and rainy night?”

To her surprise, the corners of his mouth lifted in a smile . . . a sensual-looking smile but without warmth.

He said nothing.

Nor did he need words.

Faith, she could
feel
him all over her, sliding round and inside her, his all-possessing power so palpable, for one crazy-mad moment she imagined him seizing her, pulling her close for a deep, bruising kiss that would blot out her past and banish her cares and hurts in one shattering, decadent moment.

A lightning-quick impulse that would make her forget, possibly even love again.

Certainly desire.

But the coldness of his stare restored sanity and Mariota raised her chin a notch higher, puffed a wayward strand of hair off her forehead. “I asked you a question,” she prodded, some not-to-be-repressed part of her femininity still taking his measure. “Why are you here?”

“You cannot guess?” He stepped backward, held up his hands, as if inviting her to examine him.

And she did, her blood heating more with each slow-beating
thump
of her heart.

Tall, raven-haired, and powerfully built, he
was
a man to inflame a woman’s . . . interest. Much to her discomfiture. Indeed, the sheer male dominance of his presence brought a hot flush to her cheeks and, worse, smashed any remaining vestiges of her hope that he and his men might be simple wayfarers-in-passing.

These were men with a purpose.

And judging from the number of them moving about in the thin curtain of rain visible beyond the hall’s open door arch, there were enough of them to garrison a much larger holding than these ruinous walls.

And how she wished this dark-frowning specimen of maleness had taken his men and his business to one of those other, more commodious keeps.

Instead he loomed far too near, the rain-fresh, outdoorsy scent of him and the heat of his large, masculine body, filling the small space between them. Befuddling her wits and making her shiver.

And that was just the beginning of it.

In truth, everything about him made it increasingly difficult for her to breathe.

And next to impossible to feign calm.

As if he sensed her ill ease and meant to seize advantage, he stepped even closer, his stare burning her, displeasure and something else—something infinitely more unsettling—pouring off him until she had to lock her knees to keep from swaying beneath his stare.

A measuring, all-seeing perusal that, she was certain, pierced clear through her cloak and gown to her nakedness beneath.

She returned the look, damning propriety to glare right back at him, straight into the deepest, darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen. And what she saw made her breath catch, all but choked her.

Without question,
he
led the men still pouring into Cuidrach’s hall. Marked as a knight by the flash of his spurs and the glint of mail showing beneath his plaid, his arrogant stance, and the cold, assessing look in his eyes revealed his status.

Even more telling, three vertical scars marred his left cheek. Thin, barely-there lines, but prominent enough to warn that he was a man battle-probed and hard.

One who weathered his storms and would not be disposed to make light of falsehoods.

Or fall easy prey to contrived feminine intrigues.

Proving it, he boldly touched her hair, smoothing back the errant strand she’d been trying to puff out of her face. And the instant his fingers lit on her cheek, another dangerous-looking half-smile curved his attractive mouth.

Mariota stepped back from his reach, tried in vain to ignore the disturbing
intimacy
of his stare.

The intimacy of everything about him.

“You are here alone?” he spoke again, his deep voice provocative.

Softly Highland, seductively smooth, but undeniably . . . challenging.

Mariota bristled, found her steel in the shaming way his mere voice undid her. “What is the meaning of this?” She made a sweeping gesture, indicating the men tramping about, shouldering goods or dashing rain from their hair and beards. Some even lighting wall torches and setting up trestle tables.

Almost laying claim to Cuidrach.

Acting as if they belonged here.

Her mouth going dry at the notion, she glanced at Nessa, noted what could only be called grim humor twitching that one’s lips.

Mariota frowned.

She saw nothing amusing in their plight.

She looked back at
him,
hoped her cheeks weren’t as bright a red as she suspected. “I warn you, sirrah, if my friend and I are but two this e’en, we shall not be so few in number much longer,” she lied, wishing he didn’t make her feel like a sparrow caught in the talons of a hawk. “My husband’s return is imminent.”

“Indeed?” The knight arched a brow. “And who might this paladin be?” he inquired, his tone indicating he hadn’t missed the ravages wrought upon the hall by years of disuse. “I wonder at a man who’d leave his lady unguarded in such a comfortless keep.”

“And where is
your
lady this cold, inhospitable night?” Mariota shot back, her words edged. “Safe, dry, and well-cosseted—or no?”

“I do not have a lady,” he said, giving her another penetrating stare. “But if I did, you can be assured she would not be dwelling here unguarded.”

“An ill matter, aye,” a stout-bellied man chimed in as he bustled past, red-faced and puffing under the weight of the iron-bound coffer hoisted upon his shoulder.

“Ne’er seen the like,” another agreed, stroking his great bush of a sandy-colored beard. “Master of the house leaving two fine-looking women to fend for themselves in this remote upland bit of nowhere.”

Ignoring the Nordic-looking beard-puller, Mariota kept her focus on the dark, lady-less knight. “If you find these walls without succor, sir, then I ask you again, why are you here?”

She tilted her head to study him, her perusal gaining her a moment to compose herself before yet another untruth passed her lips.