Warrior’s Redemption (10 page)

“Yer right. An act of pure foolishness on my part, my lady. I apologize for yer discomfort and for wasting yer time. It’s best we get you mounted and out of this weather.”

As he drew close, she snatched the reins from his hand, fitting her foot into the stirrup to pull herself up onto her horse’s back. She lifted her skirts, tossing them over her arm, and pushed up into her seat, ignoring his offer of help.

Decorum be damned. The last thing she needed was his hands on her again. She was cold and hungry and frustrated beyond belief to be trapped in a place where she wasn’t wanted. His touch could well be enough to send her over the edge into a rare crying jag, and that was simply not happening.

Not in front of him.

With a tug to adjust her woolen, she kicked her
horse and started off, stopping only when she heard him clearing his throat behind her.

“What?” she demanded, forcing a level of irritation in her response to hide the humiliating threat of tears.

“Yer headed in the wrong direction, my lady.”

She jerked her reins again, turning her horse to follow when he mounted and urged his horse forward. But she refused to make eye contact.

Damn it all. A perfect exit ruined by her crappy sense of direction.

T
HE ELF SPOKE
the truth.

The thought wound and circled its way through Malcolm’s mind, over and over again, slithering like a snake across exposed rock in a field of heather.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Dani rode, her cheeks a mottled red, her eyes much too shiny, as if one wrong word from him would be all it would take to send her into a fit of blubbering. He’d seen just such a look on his younger sister’s face when she’d taken all the teasing she could bear from her brothers. He knew all too well what came next. Tears.

The Elf spoke the truth.

No tracks marred the soft ground inside the ancient stone circle save for those he and Patrick had left. Not even a single animal had strayed into the area, let alone another human.

However Dani had gotten there to begin with, her visible frustration made it clear she had no idea how to return to where she’d come from. As clear was the fact that neither she nor anyone else had walked into
the center of that circle from the outer ring. It was as if she had been dropped into the circle from the sky above.

Though nothing explained the tracks outside the circle. Tracks as if someone had waited there. Waited and watched.

The Elf spoke the truth.

About everything, it would appear.

He should have known that from the beginning. The old legends taught that the Magical Folk didn’t lie. They might not tell a man the whole of the truth, but what they did say was spoken in accuracy. Even if what they disclosed was shared for their own nefarious purposes.

That would likely be a more profitable use of his time, trying to figure out Elesyria’s purpose in telling him as much as she had.

“Do we have any water?”

At least he thought that was what Dani had called out, her words garbled as she tugged the plaid up over her mouth for warmth.

He pulled up on his reins, waiting until she drew her mount close to his.

She peered out of the hood of woolen and fur wrapped around her, her face drawn with exhaustion and discomfort.

Little wonder. Immersed in his own concerns, he’d lost all track of how long they’d traveled. Lost all track of his companion. Snow, which had fallen steadily since they had left the circle, clung to her garments like a second cloak.

“You wanted water?” he asked, making sure he’d heard her correctly.

“Really thirsty.” Her lips quivered as she spoke, another reason why he’d had difficulty understanding her earlier.

He dug in his pack for the wineskin he carried and offered it to her, mentally amending his earlier assessment of her condition to include cold.

One sip and her face scrunched into a mask of displeasure.

“What is that? Beer? Seriously?” she asked, handing the container back to him.

“Honey ale,” he corrected, and took a drink for himself before returning the container to his pack. “Ale is what we have with us to drink.”

“No.” Finality layered through the word. “Look, I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m cold. I’ve sucked it up all day and followed along, agreeing to whatever you decided without unreasonable complaint. But this is where I draw the line. I’ve spent the whole day on horseback and I want some damn water to drink. Is that too much to ask?”

Guilt prickled uneasily under Malcolm’s emotional armor. It was as she said. She hadn’t really complained. And he, like some half-addled excuse for a man, hadn’t once thought of her comfort or needs. Hadn’t once considered how much of the day’s light he’d squandered in the stone circle, forcing her to try again and again to send herself home.

As a result, it was approaching nightfall they faced now, along with hunger and cold.

More proof, if he’d needed it, that he was unfit to see to any woman’s safety and well-being.

“As you say, my lady. It is indeed not too much to ask. There’s shelter no far from here where we will see to yer water. And a meal.”

Their current path carried them close to the high pastures where the flocks summered. There he could locate one of the scattered shelters the shepherds used. Huts, really, no more than a thatch-covered roof and four walls. But he could build a fire to warm her, and there were a few provisions Cook had sent along with them to eat. And nearby, a stream where she could get all the water she wanted.

“Y
OU’RE KIDDING ME
, right?”

Dani looked from the stream she squatted beside back up at Malcolm. He stood there, beaming from ear to ear like some idiot who’d just led her to a treasure.

“You said you wanted water and it’s water I give you.”

“To drink.” Surely he didn’t really expect her to drink from this stream. They’d just ridden their horses across it, not five feet from this very spot. “I want water to drink. Do you have any idea how many germs are in here?”

His blank expression assured her he did not. Lord, did he even know what a germ was?

“Okay, fine. I need something to put this in so I can boil it.”

Without a word he disappeared into the
ramshackle structure he’d brought them to, reappearing with a disapproving frown and an iron pot that had obviously seen better days.

“You dinna say you wanted yer water hot.”

He leaned down and scooped the pot full before turning his back on her to head into the hut.

Dani scrambled to her feet to follow him inside through the small opening.

Four walls, no windows and a hard-packed dirt floor greeted her. The only two features in the building, if she could even call it that, were the opening that served as a doorway and a small protrusion in the far wall that was meant to be a fireplace.

Malcolm worked over whatever materials were stacked there and within minutes a tiny flame flickered to life, quickly growing into a crackling fire.

Now that was better. Much better.

She huddled close to the fire, holding her hands extended toward it, surprised to realize how badly her fingers ached with the cold.

Next to her, the iron pot hung over the fire, flames licking up around the bottom of the metal.

“Give me yer wraps.”

Dani did as asked, too tired to argue over the obvious cold in the room. Instead she scooted closer to the fire, turning her back to it to watch as Malcolm shook the woolen and furs just outside the doorway, sending droplets of water flying.

When he stepped back inside, he stretched something over the doorway, looping one corner over a hook in the wall.

“Tanned hide,” he said when he caught her watching. “It will
keep the better part of the weather out.”

Offering to help as he bustled around the little room might have been the proper thing to do but she simply sat, watching while Malcolm unpacked the contents of the bag he’d carried on his horse.

As her hands and feet warmed, they swelled and tingled and every movement shot burning needles through the skin. Even the ring she wore felt as if it was cutting off her circulation. Clumsily, she twisted the band, working it round and round to get it off her swollen finger in an attempt to remove it before it was too late. When at last it gave way, it flew from her grip and she pushed herself to her knees, feeling around the dirt floor, hunting for her treasure.

“What are you doing?” Malcolm paused in his chores to stare at her.

“I dropped my ring. It has to be here somewhere.” A flicker of panic formed in her stomach at the thought of losing the only physical reminder she had of her old life.

Malcolm dropped to his knees beside her, helping her search, and a moment later, he was successful.

“Here it is.” He held the ring up toward the fire to examine it before handing it over to her. “I’ve no ever seen the like of this delicate jewelwork. It must be very valuable.”

“Only to me,” she said, accepting the ring and placing it on her little finger for safekeeping until the swelling in her hands subsided. “Thank you for helping me find it. It was a birthday gift from the aunt who raised me. It’s not worth much money, but it
means more to me than anything in the world.”

Aunt Jean had been the only mother Dani could really remember, and the ring was her only tie to her memories of her aunt.

Silence reigned in the little hut as Malcolm spread a small cloth between them and laid out bread, cheese, and bits of hard, dried meat.

By the time he offered her a carved wooden ladle filled with water, she felt too guilty to even question how dirty the implement might have been. He had dipped it in the boiling water, after all, so maybe that had killed the majority of whatever nasties might have lived on it.

She blew across the surface of the liquid, concentrating on the little ripples that formed before she tested her first sip. Warmth filled her mouth and trickled down her throat, and for the first time in hours, she began to feel almost normal.

Malcolm sat cross-legged across from her, eating quietly, his gaze fixed on her face.

“What?”

He shrugged, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Thinking about the fine work on the jewel you wear, my mind runs to fancy, I must confess, contemplating the differences in yer world and the wealth of knowledge you likely possess, coming from the future as you have.”

“So you believe it, now?” She wasn’t at all sure he had before.

“The Elf said—”

“Faerie,” she corrected. “Elesyria said that she’s a
Faerie, not an Elf. She seemed pretty emphatic about it, too.” And more than a little bit irritated as well, but Dani didn’t add that.

“Faerie,” he conceded. “She said it was so and I’ve no longer any reason to doubt her word.”

Apparently their day’s adventure had precipitated quite a shift in his thinking. Only this morning he’d insisted she join him on this godforsaken quest precisely because he
didn’t
believe Elesyria. Though why he’d need to verify the word of someone who lived in his home made almost as little sense as his quick switch in attitude.

And the fact that neither Malcolm nor his brother seemed very enamored with magical beings, period, regardless of what name they called them, made Dani even more curious.

“From the sound of it, you don’t seem to think too highly of Faeries. So how is it you have a Faerie living with you, anyway?”

“No by my choice, I can tell you that.” Malcolm’s brows knit together in a frown, a fleeting expression that he quickly wiped away. “Elesyria is mother to the woman I married. I have no right to turn her away, no matter what I may think about what she is.”

A small lump formed somewhere in Dani’s chest, a hard blockage around which she suddenly found herself struggling to breathe normally.

The woman I married.

A wife? Malcolm had a wife? No one had ever said anything about a wife.

“I didn’t realize you were married.” There were
likely many, many things she didn’t know about this man, so why that one tiny piece of information should bother her so much made absolutely no sense at all.

But bother her it did.

“My . . .” He paused, like a man unwilling—or unable—to speak the next word. “Isabella is dead.”

His statement sounded bitter, final, as if he wished to end the discussion.

It absolutely was not relief she felt at his declaration. It was more along the lines of some detached sense of sympathy, skewed by her physical discomfort. That had to be it. No other emotional response was even close to reasonable.

Dani inhaled, slowly, deeply, attempting to clear her confused emotions, nodding in what she intended to be a show of real sympathy.

He didn’t sound as if he wanted to discuss it anymore. And she meant to drop the subject right there. Aunt Jean had always told her you didn’t go picking at the scabs of someone’s emotional wounds. Truly, she didn’t want to make him deal with a painful past.

Only, try to let it go as she might, his story just didn’t quite jell, and curiosity drove her to continue.

“Your wife must have been young. Really young.” Like maybe twelve or thirteen, if even that. Because Elesyria didn’t look to be much older than Dani, and if she’d had a child when she was barely a teen, that still wouldn’t make her child more than, well, twelve or thirteen at the oldest.

And even if this was the Middle Ages, the idea that a man clearly in his twenties would marry someone that young added a whole new “ick” factor to their conversation.

His head cocked to one side and his brow furrowed as if she’d just commented on painting his face purple. “No, I dinna believe that to be the case. In fact, I’d reason Isabella to have been older than you. What would make you think otherwise?”

“Because you said Elesyria was her mother. And Elesyria can’t be much older than me right now.” If even.

That brought the smile back. Along with a laugh. “Are you daft, lass? That
Faerie,
” he emphasized the word with a raised eyebrow, “is well advanced beyond yer years. You’ve only to look at her to ken that. Her hair is grayed; her face is wrinkled. Though she may not yet be a crone, her days as a maiden are long gone.