Knight In My Bed (28 page)

Donall's heart leaped, knocking against his fool ribs with all the abandon of a callow youth mooning after the first doe-eyed, long-limbed lass to cast a coy smile his way.

By the warts on my grandmother's nose, I ne'er thought I'd see the day
... Donall thought he heard Gavin mumble beside him, but his friend's words had as much a chance of stealing his attention as Donall did of slipping his foot out of the cold band of iron cuffed 'round his ankle.

She was slipping past Rory, and everything else in Donall's field of vision, and consciousness, faded. He hadn't seen her in a full four days, and though he'd half convinced himself she couldn't possibly be as fair as his fantasies painted her, he now saw he' d gravely erred.

Isolde MacInnes was even more fetching than his most wild imaginings.

"Lady," he said in greeting and pushed to his feet.

Gavin stood as well. "Gavin MacFie, my lady," he said, bowing respectfully. "I'd humbly offer you my devoted services, but" -- he shrugged good-naturedly -- "I fear I am in no position to be of use to you."

"Sir Gavin," she acknowledged, inclining her head. “Your name carries many badges of honor, and I regret we meet under these. . . circumstances."

"Sir Donall." She scarce looked at him.

The slight bit hard and deep.

The fool lopsided grin spreading across Gavin's face bit deeper. Donall shot the wretch a dark look, but Gavin was oblivious, wholly captivated by Isolde of Dunmuir's beauty and grace.

Donall frowned. He wouldn't be surprised if his gaping friend's eyes didn't soon glaze over, so thunderstruck did he stare at the wench.

She appeared oblivious, too.

Of Donall's rising irritation at being ignored, and even of having won Gavin's devotion with a smattering of flattery and a single glance from her amber-flecked eyes.

Without a further word, she headed far the small window opening, her black skirts swirling, her wildflower scent light and precious in the musty confines of the cell.

She stood looking out the window, her shoulders straight, her back proud. Her quiet dignity stirred his heart almost more than her lithesome form roused his blood. She held her hands clasped behind her, and Donall's gaze clung to the sight of them.

The memory of those slender fingers pressed against his chest, kneading his shoulders, then sifting through his hair during their shared kiss, sent shards of white-hot desire spiraling through him. His loins tightened with burning need.

Gavin stared, too, and Donall couldn't decide if his fingers itched more to throttle his friend's gawking neck, or to undo the two long braids hanging down Isolde's back.

Thick, satiny-looking, and glossed to a deep golden sheen by the torchlight, she hadn't coiled them 'round her ears in the ram-shorn style she seemed to favor, but had let them swing free, their tips just grazing her hips.

"Saints a-mercy," Gavin whispered beside him, and clapped a hand roughly over his heart.

Donall scowled at him.

Any moment, the smitten knave would be on his knee reciting a love sonnet if Donall didn't soon intercede.

And so he did.

Promptly.

By jabbing his fingers into Gavin's ribs.

Unfazed, Gavin sidestepped Donall's reach, and continued to gape. It was a merry wonder his tongue didn't loll from his grinning lips!

Donall cleared his throat. "To what honor may I credit your visit, fair lady?" He leaned against the wall and affected a most unimpressed, casual pose, should she turn to face him ... as he sorely hoped she would.

"Mayhap to discuss the merits of ...
enlightenment
?" he added when she paid no heed to his first, more courtly, attempt at catching her attention.

Gavin shot him a look of rabid astonishment – for he now knew exactly what sort of "enlightenment" Donall had shared with her -- and was no doubt amazed he'd have the cheek to utter the word in his presence.

His cheek stunned Donall, too. But her sheer proximity did strange things to his senses, and her silence frustrated him beyond all bounds, soundly chasing his chivalry out the window. Leaving behind naught but a raw urge to rile a reaction out of her.

She turned around. "I came to see Sir Gavin, not you.

Donall's heart seemed to lurch to an abrupt, jerky halt, and the hot pumping in his loins instantly cooled. "
Sir Gavin
?"

She averted her gaze. "Truth be told, I did not think you'd be here. I thou -"

"You thought I'd be off undergoing some new and devious form of agony at the hands of your two henchmen?" he finished for her, a new kind of heat surging through him.

The heat of anger.

"Well ... aye," she possessed the boldness to confirm. "I wanted to speak to Sir Gavin about ... about your brother.”

“My brother? You wish to speak to Gavin about my brother?"

She nodded, then turned back to the window.

She couldn't look at him.

She'd almost fled back above-stairs when she saw he was shirtless. The last time she'd seen his bare chest, it'd been grimed with dirt from his first cell's muck-covered floor. Smeared so darkly, she'd scarce been able to discern where he began and that cell's murky shadows ended.

The sight of his naked chest free of grime, its well-muscled expanse cast a-glow by the torch flames, his sheer
magnificence
of form almost too overpowering to bear, taxed her composure more sorely than she could control.

Control, and voice the questions she must ask.

So she kept her back to them both, thus shielding herself from his dark beauty, his darker temper, and the strange way he made her feel.

Instead, she stared at the other source of her
 
ill case. Its looming presence devoured convictions she'd ne'er doubted, and left crumbs of meddlesome doubt in their place. A dark mass rising low above the horizon to taunt her:

MacKinnons' Isle.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MacKinnons' Isle
.

Its rugged coast gentled by distance, its stern-faced cliffs softened by the luminous glow of a Hebridean gloaming, the MacKinnon holding appeared scarce more threatening than a dark, elongated lump on the far horizon.

But the onerous burden it betokened for Isolde lay so near she tasted its foulness with each indrawn breath.

A taste more bitter than the lingering vestiges of Devorgilla's anti-attraction potion yet clinging to her tongue. Praise the saints, the crone had upped its potency.

Sadly, it still did not seem to work.

Or mayhap Donall the Bold's bare chest was simply too bonnie?

Isolde expelled a sigh. She'd simply pay no heed to brave form or the pleasant flutters pulsing low in her belly since seeing him thus displayed. She'd keep her attention riveted on the one thing incapable of stirring her senses.

Stirring those senses.

She wet her lips with the tip of her potion -flavored tongue.

"Have either of you looked out this window?" she asked a chill working through her, blowing its icy breath on each corner of warmth the MacLean and his hard-muscled chest had kindled inside her. "Do you ken what lies on yon horizon?"

One of the men, she suspected him, gave a sport of derision.

"Some things need not be seen to ken they are there," he spoke up. "The weight of their influence alerts us to their presence, or in some cases, their ... smell alerts us."

Isolde blinked at the double meaning of his oh-so-smoothly spoken words.

He'd noticed the potion and wanted her to know.

"Gracious lady," Gavin MacFie intervened, "I vow we would have looked out the window were we not manacled so your wall." A trace of mirth took the sting out of words that could have been ill understood if not spoken with such courtly grace.

A tiny smile curved Isolde's lips. Gavin MacFie was a gallant, and she was beginning to understand why Evelina thought so highly of him.

"Our chains are too short to permit us to enjoy whatever view so engages you," he added, and Isolde could almost hear the smile in his words.

She turned around. "The view is not one I favor, milord," she said, purposely keeping her gaze on Sir Gavin. "Nor is it one I can avoid. It greets me every morn."

"I vow you speak of the same view visible from your sea dungeon?" he drawled. “MacKinnons' Isle?"

Isolde nodded, the bitterness in his tone making her risk a glance at him.

Light from the resin torch played over his glossy, black hair and highlighted the width of his shoulders. "Upon my word” he said, his dark eyes intense, "you could not broach a topic that vexes me more."

“You wished to speak about Iain?" Sir Gavin cut in, obviously trying to ease the tension crackling between her and the MacLean.

She glanced at Gavin, half amazed at his sunny, indefatigable charm of manner. Almost as tall and well built as him, a cheery sparkle lit his hazel eyes, while a spray of freckles and his easy, lopsided smile made him seem years younger than Donall even though they had to be of similar ages.

Isolde found herself smiling at him.

And trusting him.

"What would you know of Iain?" he asked.

Isolde drew a breath to speak, but before she could, he shifted noisily on his pallet. "She has already been told all she needs to know about him," he said, a warning tone in his deep voice. "Iain is innocent."

She risked another peek at him, and the sight of him, reposed so casually on the pallet, stole her breath. He'd folded his arms behind his head, and stared at her from eyes dark and smoldering. "Can you swear your brother's hands are not stained with my sister's blood?" she challenged him.

As she had before.

And, as before, he pressed his lips together and simply looked at her with those compelling, deep brown eyes.

Knowing eyes
.

As if he knew she'd spent sleepless nights reliving his kiss, craving more, and yearning for other things as well.

The sort of things she'd learned about from Evelina.

"Why ask me when you came to council with Sir Gavin?" he returned, irritation humming in his voice.

Something in his tone sent a little thrill tripping through Isolde's heart. He sounded miffed in a wholly different way from the other times she'd questioned him about his brother. Could he be perturbed by her desiring to speak to his friend?

Jealous mayhap?

For some inexplicable reason, the notion pleased her.

"Aye, I came to speak with Sir Gavin ... not you." She studied him as she said the words. The tight set of his jaw grew a bit more stubborn, his artfully casual pose on the pallet, a mite too contrived.

He was jealous.

Before her smile could spread from her heart to her face, she turned to Gavin. "Good sir, can you tell me if the rumors I've heard are true? Is Iain MacLean possessed of an uncontrollable temper?"

A hint of ill ease passed over Gavin's boyish features. He opened his mouth to reply, but Isolde spoke first. "So it is true," she said, her heart sinking.

"Aye, 'tis true!"
He shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. "AH MacLean men have tempers, but they do not murder their wives."

Isolde flinched beneath his black fury. "And the MacLean who started our feud?" she pressed. "The one who drowned his MacInnes bride on the Lady Rock?"

"May the wrath of God sink that accursed islet beneath the sea!" Donall threw back his head and stared at the ceiling. When he looked back at her, a cold mask had settled over his handsome face. "That happened so many centuries ago there is scarce a MacLean or a MacInnes who recalls the names of that ill-fated pair."

"But we know the names of Iain and Lileas," a wee demon inside made her say.

Donall spun away from her. His great shoulders tensed with agitation, and when he dragged both hands through his hair, Isolde would've sworn his fingers shook. "My brother loved his wife," he swore, wheeling back to face her.

"MacLean men are strong-passioned," he vowed, his tone daring her to deny it. "When a MacLean loves a woman, he loves her. With every breath he takes, he gives her all of himself, protects her with his life. She becomes his life."

Isolde took a step backward, almost reeling from the sheer power of his outburst. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gavin start toward her. "You're frightening her, Donall, have don-" he began, but Donall the Bold shot his arm out and clamped his fingers around his friend's elbow, halting him in mid-stride.

And mid-sentence.

"I am not scaring her." He glowered at Gavin. "She is a bold-hearted lass with more steel in her back than her two fool guardsmen have combined. I am telling her what she wants to know: the truth!"

Isolde gulped, her heart galloping in her chest. She didn't want to admit, even to her own self, that, indeed, his braw show of ferocity -- of passion -- excited more than frightened her.