Released (4 page)

“Oh my,” Kamdyn exclaimed.  “She’s very pretty.  Maybe even as beautiful as Kylah.”

“Yes, I can
see
that,” Katriona snapped.  She’d watched the buxom, flaxen-haired woman appear from the coach like a Norse goddess.  What she’d not been able to look away from, was the sharp flare of masculine appreciation in Rory’s expressive eyes. 

She and Kamdyn hovered at the edge of the large crowd, able to pick through the cacophony with their exemplary hearing and hone in on the happenings with the Laird and his intended.

“Ye’ll have fine, strong sons to war with the Sutherlands,” the Fraser was saying. 

Katriona decided to dislike him right away. 

Rory took the woman’s elegant hand and helped her down from the coach before bowing over her knuckles in a show of respect. 

The cheers from the MacKay clan shook all of Strathnaver, and Katriona could see in the eyes of the people a small flare of something that had been absent for a good long while.

Hope. 

Though the MacKays had long been one of the strongest, largest clans in the north since the last of the twelve Druidh Chieftains combined the northern clans, they’d been plagued with war, cruel leadership, and economic difficulties for centuries.

Katriona could see the fervent wish that Rory would be different than his predecessors, and this marriage of wealth would be the beginning of that.  But for how long?  Until
Laird
MacKay started building a new castle and funding a larger army with his wife’s money?  Until the children’s bodies lay starving in the square?  And the cries of the hungry mixed with sea storms that whipped through the moors?

She refused to allow it. 

Rory still hadn’t released the hand of the woman who stood silently by him.  They made a magnificent picture.  Both handsome and regal.  Her delicate golden beauty complemented his strong, bronzed, imposing features.  They looked like they were born to be Highland royalty, wrapped in fine furs and crowned with fine metals earned with the blood of their people.

“We’ve been cooped up in a coach for some days,” Laird Fraser swept his short arm to encompass the wide sky, his accent tempered by years in the Lowlands surrounded by the English.  “Perhaps a small tour of your home and lands would help us stretch the legs and work up an appetite.”

Rory motioned for some saddled horses to be brought forward.  His, a large bay stallion accompanied by Lorne’s speckled war-horse, and two other gentle-looking mares.  “I thought ye and yer father might be interested in inspecting the grounds of yer new home.”  He spoke directly to Kathryn.  “Do ye ride?” 

“I ride very well,” the woman murmured, a heated meaning glowing from eyes that matched the blue of the Highland sky.

“Do ye have a mount for Albert, here?” Frasier boomed.  “No offense meant to ye, but the man has long been a personal guard to my daughter, and she is rarely without him.”

If Rory felt any irritation, he hid it well.  “Of course.  I’ll have one saddled right away.”  Rory motioned to Baird, who jumped into action and sprang up the hill to the stables like a fleeing rabbit. 

Katriona’s lip curled in disgust and she motioned for Kamdyn to follow her.  Stealing through the crowd, they were invisible to all and only tangible as the kiss of a death-chill on someone’s flesh.  As she passed, women held their children closer and ducked into the protection of their men.  The elderly narrowed their eyes and crossed themselves or spoke a quick incantation against evil in the olde language. 

But they were all safe from her.  She was dangerous to one man, and that was if she could only find out how to kill him. While she still wanted too.  Because she did.  

Didn’t she? 

Rory put his hands around Kathryn Frasier’s waist and lifted her onto her mare, not letting go until she settled into the saddle. 

Yes, she definitely wanted to kill him.

“Thank you, Laird,” Kathryn murmured, her hands resting on Rory’s forearms. 

When he released her and turned to take the reins of his own mount, the color in his cheeks intensified. 

Katriona could feel a wail building inside her, but she didn’t let it escape in front of the gathered crowd.  Though the people wouldn’t be able to see her, they’d hear her Banshee cry.  And these weren’t just Rory’s people.  They were hers too.  She couldn’t bring herself to frighten them. 

Besides, she didn’t know where the cry came from.  Or why it had built of its own accord.  She hadn’t been particularly angry.  She’d been watching Rory MacKay put his large, strong hands on his betrothed, thinking about the last time she’d seen him blush. 

It had been two years ago, when the MacKay warriors had returned from besting the Sutherlands at Dingwall.  The men had scattered to their villages, some to Cape Wrath, and others to Kinlochburvie, Farr, and Balligill.  But Angus and Rory MacKay had returned with their soldiers to Durness.

Katriona, Kylah, and Kamdyn had been working with their mother in the washhouse they’d converted from their father’s smithy.  Bedecked with war-braids, weapons, and the blood of their enemies, ten loud MacKays had converged upon the washhouse.  One service Elspeth MacKay supplied above cleaning linen and wool was the care and upkeep of armor, learned from years with her husband.  She had the proper oils and such on hand and her family saw a great deal of income after a battle. 

“Ye canna hail Rory as the battle’s hero,” Angus bellowed as he and the men crowded inside.  “He had his sword and all I had was a bow.  Did ye count the number of corpses with arrows in them?”  Angus’s thin, stringy hair had no blood in it.  His tartan soiled with nothing but dirt and food. 

“Doesna matter,” one of the men diplomatically pointed out.  “The battle’s won, we’ll celebrate tonight!”

The men had dropped their armor off with Katriona and then crowded around the large metal basin to vie for Kylah’s dainty, beauteous attentions and Kamdyn’s youthful, fresh smiles. 

All except for Rory MacKay. 

His tartan and sword had been bloodier than the others, his chest and arms thicker, he’d towered over them, his eyes bright with a post-battle intensity.  Ducking through her entry last, he’d hung behind the crop of men, but towered over them. 

Her mother had left Katriona alone by the entry shelves of the washhouse with him to go and run interference for her two younger daughters. 

“Do you all intend to pay, or simply gawk?” she’d asked him, impatient with the extra work and maybe a little irate at the lack of attention.  Katriona had always known she wasn’t as beautiful as her sisters, and with each year she grew older as they bloomed.  She’d been attractive in her own way, catching the eyes of many lads.  Though each time they’d lost interest the moment Kylah entered a room. 

“I’ll cover expenses for the men.”  Rory’s voice had sounded dark and warm as the air in the washhouse, and Katriona had to wipe a bloom of sweat from her brow.

His large, intense umber eyes had captured hers, unsettling her more than a little.  Katriona was used to men’s notice bouncing off of her to hone in on her sister.  But not Rory.  Big and silent, he’d stared at her while she piled soiled armor, tartans, and such onto the shelves, trying to remember which belonged to whom. 

“This is Eagan’s,” he’d corrected when she’d added a coat of mail to a wrong pile.  Bending past her to lift it, he put it over near Eagan’s things.  “And this,” taking an unwieldy and soiled tartan from her, he folded it and placed it on another pile.  “Is Bran’s.”

“You don’t have to help me,” she’d snapped, embarrassed that his regard had thrown her off.  She never forgot orders.  Ever.  But with his huge body taking up most of the entryway, there’d barely been enough room to breathe, let alone think.

“I want to,” he’d rumbled, stepping even closer, crowding her and overwhelming her senses.

Backing away from him, her toe had tangled with someone’s leather sword belt and she’d pitched to the side, falling toward a boiling rinse cauldron over a bellow-fed fire. 

In a lightning-fast movement, he’d caught her, his arms locking around her like bands of iron, but not pulling her into his dirty chest.  Frozen like they’d been, bent over the dirt floor, Katriona could distinctly recall what he’d smelled like.  Earth, blood, sweat, and something sharper, very distinctly
male.
 

Katriona had liked it, despite herself.  Her body had responded to it in a way that had vexed and excited her.  She’d been entranced by his bold and grungy face suspended above hers.

Their lips parted.  Their breath mingled.  And every part of Katriona’s body had come alive in that moment. 

“Sod it, Rory, are ye goin’ ta take her virginity here in front of us and her mother?”  Angus’s cruel, bawdy taunt had broken the spell.  “Because ye’d have ta marry the spinster for certain if there be witnesses.”

He’d blushed then, too, as he’d pulled her upright and steadied her on her feet before turning away.  He’d murmured something about payment, tossed coin on the table, and left. 

The feast that night had been the first time Angus asked for Kylah’s hand in marriage.  Their mother had refused. 

“I’ll never give any of ye to Angus or Rory MacKay,” she’d vowed.  “There’s something wrong with that family.  A streak of cruelty and evil.  I don’t want you going near them, promise me.” 

They’d promised, of course. 

But Katriona had never forgotten those few brief moments in Rory MacKays arms. 

And now they steadied another.

Chapter Four

“The sheep are dying.”  Lorne strode into the great room of the keep where Rory shared a post-feast toddy with Kathryn and her father.  “Maybe fifteen of Kevin’s herd and there are reports of fresh milk curdling in the village of Tongue.” 

The serving woman, Bridget, paused in her pouring of whiskey and shuddered, her abundant cleavage drawing Fraser’s notice.  “I swear to ye, Laird, it’s that washer-woman, Elspeth.  She’s put some kind of Fae curse on the clan like she promised to do.”  Crossing herself, Bridget also made olde signs to ward off evil before running fingers through her glossy brown hair and straightening her gown.  Rory imagined a lot of women felt compelled to do such while standing next to a beauty like Kathryn Fraser. 

“Perhaps we can address this
tomorrow
,” Rory hissed at Lorne.  “It’s half ‘till midnight and I have
guests.
”  The last word he forced through his teeth.  What was his steward thinking?  Next he’d be telling them about the Banshee.

“What’s this?”  Kathryn’s soft, honeyed voice poured over them all.  “Are you plagued with a witch?”  She turned from handing a pastry to Albert, her lovely blue eyes alight with gentle curiosity. 

“Nay,” was Rory’s instinctive denial, but then he thought the better of it. “Maybe.”  It would be foolish to admit it to his intended, lest she change her mind.  “I doona know.”  What was it about beautiful women that turned him into an idiot?

“If ye ask me, ye should finish burning her and let the devil take her instead of—”

“
Thank ye
, Bridget, that will be all.”  Rory dismissed her with a warning look. “Make sure to carry yer charge on yer way home.”

“Finish?” Fraser’s eyes widened. 

“The washer woman was wounded in a fire last year, she had extensive burns,” Rory explained.  “Some say she’s gone a little daft since and was heard making curses in the square.”  He remembered seeing her charred and blistered face last summer as she wandered into Durness and pointed to Angus promising retribution on him and his clan.  Rory had never seen such hatred on the face of another.  Such loss. 

Angus had been of a mind to kick dirt in her blistering skin and Rory had to distract him from it.  That had been the first time he’d truly hated his twin brother. 

Now he knew why.  Perhaps some part of him, deep down, had sensed Angus’s responsibility.

His guilt. 

Rory shook himself, returning to the moment. 

“Maybe you should look to getting an inquisitor up here,” Fraser suggested over a swallow of Rory’s most expensive scotch.  “He could interrogate her, just to be certain.”

Alarm rippled through Rory.  He’d heard stories from Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Inverness about inquisitors terrorizing entire clans, called to start one fire, but igniting hundreds.  Then installing a monastery or church to lord over the lands.  He’d die before bringing that kind of evil upon his clan.  Some of them still followed the olde ways.  Hell, Rory himself still paid homage to the olde Gods and had delayed building any kind of church on his lands, despite the inquiries from some of his Christian people. 

There were too many Berserksers, Druids, Shapeshifters and Banshees about the Highlands to go inviting that kind of trouble.

“I’m certain there’s no need of that.”  He tried to pacify his soon-to-be father-in-law.  “I’ll pay call upon Kevin tomorrow and see if it’s a possible illness that sometimes strikes the herds.  Maybe rotted grain or the like.  And we’ll need to substantiate the claims of the milk before making any decisions.  Milk
does
tend to curdle if left out for too long, curse or no curse.”

“It’s just that ye mentioned Katriona—”

“
Haud yer Wheesht.
”  Rory struggled to keep his voice calm and his fingers from Lorne’s throat.  Hadn’t the man just lectured him this afternoon about caution?  Had everyone lost their mind?  “I’ll deal with this in the morning.”  Rory pointed to the door and glared at his steward.

Lorne wisely and silently escaped the hall. 

“Katriona?”  Kathryn’s golden brow arched, but her eyes remained gentle. 

For some reason, Rory didn’t like the sound of Katriona’s name on Kathryn’s lips.  It sounded wrong, somehow.  Like a forgotten platitude or a broken vow.

“Is this going to be a problem, MacKay?” Fraser queried with a frown.

“Nay.”  Rory grappled with his temper.  “Nay, Katriona was Elspeth’s daughter, she died in the fire.”  And perhaps now took her wrath out on sheep because she somehow failed to kill
him
?

Rory reached for Kathryn’s hand and pulled her to her feet.  He had to admit he liked the way the firelight threw strands of red into her golden hair.  “It’s been a long day for ye,” he murmured.  “Why don’t ye and yer father retire and refresh from yer journey.”