To Love a Highlander (14 page)

“Her what?”

A tall, plaid-draped man appeared before them, his
shoulder-length auburn hair blowing in the wind, his proud, handsome face stern. “A good e’en, Sir John, Lady Mirabelle,” said Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and King Robert III’s wildest, most notorious brother. Hailed as the Wolf of Badenoch after the rugged Highland territory he called his own, he ruled his lands with an iron fist and a brand of leadership not for the faint of heart. The Wolf wasn’t a man to counter.

He looked furious.

“Can it be you are giving this maid a poor impression of my brother’s court?” His soft Highland voice held warning notes of steel. “My lady and I thought so.” He glanced at the beautiful, well-made woman beside him. “Isn’t that so, Mariota?”

“I must agree.” The woman stepped forward, placing a hand on Mirabelle’s arm. A waft of pleasantly earthy musk perfume came with her. She had a welter of lustrous, garnet-red hair that she wore loose and curling about her shoulders and eyes of deepest blue. A heavy gold torque adorned her neck and her dark green cloak flattered her vibrant Celtic coloring.

She looked at Mirabelle for a long moment and then shifted her gaze back to Sir John. “This young maid doesn’t appear pleased by your attentions.”

Mirabelle recognized her as Alexander Stewart’s longtime and much-loved mistress, Lady Mariota de Athyn, or Mackay when away from the Gaelic speakers of her native bounds in Scotland’s remote far north.

She lightly squeezed Mirabelle’s arm and gave her a reassuring smile. Graced with a full, lush form that made it easy to understand why the earl worshipped her as he was known to do, she also had the kind of smile that held so much warmth you felt embraced from the top of your head clear down to your toes.

“You heard the lady.” The Wolf looked away from his
mistress, fixing a fierce stare on Sinclair. He also stepped closer, placing his hand demonstratively on his sword hilt. “I trust we erred?”

Sir John blanched, but he caught himself quickly, bending a deep leg to the earl. “Lord Alex, Lady Mariota. You misheard me. I jested that Lady Mirabelle’s eyes must be playing tricks on her.” He didn’t look at Mirabelle. “She said she came upon a kitten and tripped over the wee creature. I saw no such animal, but gladly offered her my arm, thinking to escort her back to the hall.”

The Wolf only arched a brow.

“You are a right gallant.” Lady Mariota spoke just as smoothly as Sinclair, her voice rich with the pleasing lilt of the hills.

Straightening to her full height, she pinned Sir John with a look that left no doubt of her opinion of him.

Mirabelle listened, a whirl of thoughts plunging her into momentary silence. The Wolf and his lady could be her greatest allies. Yet in her mind, she also saw Sorley’s hot, intense gaze locked on hers; her lips still tingled from the kiss he’d given her in the chapel.

If she begged Alex Stewart’s help, there’d be no need to tryst with Sorley.

Could she leave Stirling without seeing him again, spending time with him in the way he’d proposed? Perhaps enjoying even greater intimacies? Ones that—the saints preserve her for such wanton longings—she ached to experience and savor?

She stood straighter, put her shoulders back, the answer clear.

She held her tongue, glancing at Lady Mariota.

The older woman was looking at the Wolf. “I believe we shall accompany Lady Mirabelle to her father’s table in the hall. You, Sir John, may go where you please.”

“You are kind, my lady.” Mirabelle smiled at her.

Sinclair frowned, clearly not fond of being addressed so boldly by a woman. “See here, Lady Mariota—”

“I have.” Her tone held all the confidence of a woman well-loved and encouraged to share her views. “We both have.”

That she spoke for the earl had Sinclair tightening his jaw, his dark eyes turning cold.

He said nothing.

The Wolf let go of his sword hilt and drew a large Highland dirk from beneath his belt. “Lady Mirabelle,” he kept his gaze on Sir John as he addressed her. “Did Sir John distress you in any way?”

“No.” Mirabelle gave the only answer she could, the memory of Sorley’s wicked smile, his touch, giving her no other choice. “I did see a cat running along the arcade. Sir John appeared just after.”

“So he didn’t assist you when you tripped?” Lady Mariota touched her arm again, the gesture allowing her to insert herself between Mirabelle and Sir John.

Mirabelle hesitated, glancing toward the chapel. “Everything happened so quickly. Then you and the earl arrived.”

“Sinclair.” The Wolf looked down at the dirk in his hands and began using its tip to carefully clean his fingernails. “Did you know that no man leaves my Badenoch territory alive if he is known to have insulted a lady? My wild hills and moorlands are a great distance from my brother’s hall.” His gaze snapped up then, his light blue eyes revealing his swelling rage. “Court manners and niceties have little use there. A strong hand is aye needed in such a bleak, godforsaken place, so full of stone and peat bogs, howling wind and no mercies.

“Men know better than to rile me.” He kept working at his nails with the dirk tip, his soft Highland voice low. Those who knew well him would have turned and fled, because the deceptively gentle tone was his deadliest. “If a man’s honor
means nothing to him, we help him find it by dressing him in his finest mail and armor and tossing him into the loch. Imagine! Most such offenders sink from the weight of their sins before they can swim ashore. If they do, and they’re still reeking of guilt, we set fire to their feet and see how fast they can stamp out the flames.” He raised his voice then, speaking with relish. “Did you know such malefactors burn brighter than any balefire? That they do, I say you!”

“I have done no wrong, my lord.” Sinclair shifted, but held the earl’s gaze. “The lady is unharmed and—”

“Other times, if we’ve no mind to watch them dance,” the Wolf went on as if Sir John hadn’t spoken, “such varlets have found themselves trussed and roasting o’er a spit. Or”—he lifted the dirk, examining its blade—“we simply hang them, letting their carcasses dangle and rot. The sight warns all that I do not look kindly on the mistreating of women.”

“To be sure, my lord.” Sir John nodded.

“See that you remember.” Alexander Stewart inclined his head as well and then sheathed his dirk. “Dinnae give me cause to warn you again. Badenoch may lie many miles from here, but it is no’ so far as the moon.”

“Indeed, my lord.” Sir John bowed low. His relief was palpable when the Wolf waved him away, toward the rain-drenched courtyard.

He left quickly, disappearing into the mist before the earl even lowered his arm.

“Well done, Alex.” Lady Mariota smiled and touched her lover’s broad, tartan-clad back.

“I have ne’er liked that bastard.” The Wolf turned around, his handsome face softening when he saw his mistress’s smile. “ ’Fore God, I’d love to ken how he stays in my brother’s good graces, oily as he is. If Robert would spend even a fortnight in the north, he’d soon learn which men can be trusted and who seeks only to fatten his own purse. And”—he glanced at Mirabelle, his face darkening again—“which
men ought to have the root of their evil twisted right off them.”

“Alex!” Lady Mariota gave him a look of reproach.

But her eyes twinkled, especially when the Wolf wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close.

“I aye speak the truth, lass, as well you ken.” An exceptionally tall man, he bent his head to her brow. “And you, lady”—he straightened and looked at Mirabelle—“should have a care when traipsing about the courtyard of an e’en, bold Highland lassie or nae.”

“I shall, my lord.” Mirabelle bobbed a curtsy.

“Aye, well.” The Wolf jerked his chin toward the hall. The vigorous strains of pipes and fiddle were just beginning to drift out into the night. “I am riding north at first light. I dinnae care to be away from my hills o’er long, nor does my lady.” He pulled Lady Mariota even closer to him, dropped another kiss on her shining hair. “We’re celebrating our departure in the hall. Will you join us?”

“I…” Mirabelle would’ve loved to do so.

But what she really wanted was another long, hot bath. She felt a powerful need to scrub her flesh until all trace of Sir John’s hands on her was well and truly washed away. Her skin crawled from his touch and despite the bravura she clung to so fiercely, her heart hadn’t stopped thundering. Worse, his narrow, sharp-featured face lingered in her mind. His slickly combed hair, black as a raven’s wing and smelling of heavy spices, the salacious curve of his lips and his hooded eyes, so capable of making her feel as if icy fingers clamped around her heart, squeezing.

She’d rather think of Sorley, even if he had mightily annoyed her.

Mirabelle glanced again at the chapel and drew her cloak against the cold.

“She is tired, Alex.” Lady Mariota slipped from her lover’s grasp and reached for Mirabelle’s hand, tucking it in her
arm. “Let us see her safely to the women’s quarters and then leave her be for the night.”

“Is that your wish, my lady?” The Wolf looked at Mirabelle.

“I would like to retire, aye.” Mirabelle nodded.

“So be it!” The Wolf smiled and slapped his thigh. “I am no’ one to argue with a lady.”

And so the King’s brother and his mistress led Mirabelle through the misty dark, past the hall’s open door and the revelry within, to a far corner of the courtyard where a torchlit archway marked the entrance to the stair tower to the castle’s guest quarters.

They left her, promising to send up a bath, and she went to stand before her room’s small fire, stretching her hands to its flames as she waited. The Wolf had been kind. One word from her and he’d have dealt with Sinclair, she knew. He’d have served the noble with his own brand of Highland justice.

She’d said nothing.

Now she released a long sigh, heightened awareness of a very different sort blossoming inside her as the fire’s heat warmed her.

How far gone was she in her attraction to Sorley that she’d forgo a means to be rid of Sinclair just so that she could hold on to her one chance to enjoy a night in Sorley’s arms?

That was the way of it.

And it was a truth that had the potential to be very damaging.

What folly that she didn’t care.

Mirabelle also didn’t notice the faint glimmer of pink rippling the air near the room’s fine four-poster bed. In that, she wasn’t alone, for no one had seen the fine trace of a woman in rose who’d followed her and the King’s brother and his lady across the bailey and up the tower stair.

It was better so.

Stirling Castle’s pink lady appreciated her privacy.

Indeed, she considered the ability to remain unseen when desired one of the most appealing advantages of ghostdom.

A disadvantage was being privy to things that were none of one’s business.

For a soul with little to do but drift and flutter about walls that had once echoed with her footsteps, her laughter and, at times, her sorrows, any such glimpses into the lives of those yet mortal could prove an irresistible attraction. Much as she wished that wasn’t so.

It had hurt her heart to see the extravagantly dressed courtier accost the young Highland maid.

Hadn’t she suffered the same such unwanted attentions after her beloved husband had been killed in a raid on the castle? It’d been so many years ago, nearly a hundred by mortal reckoning, when the English had come to storm Stirling’s gate. Her husband had fought valiantly. He’d fallen with sword in hand, a stalwart to his last breath. A knight of much honor and no small wealth, he’d left her a young widow seen by many as a prize.

When she declined the offers of those eager to claim her—and through her, her late husband’s legacy—hadn’t some men turned to fouler methods in their hope of trapping her into wedlock?

Unlike the braw Wolf of Badenoch, no man of Stirling had sallied forth to spare her such indignities.

To be fair, those were troubled times in Scotland.

With England’s hated Edward I claiming the stronghold and overrunning its proud walls with his own garrison of Sassenach knights and fighting men, she’d had little recourse but to fend for herself.

It hadn’t been easy.

She’d gladly shed her earthly mantle when a bowl of spoiled eel soup took her life. In truth, with the wisdom
of the crossed-over soul, she now knew the soup had been poisoned. Tainted by those who saw her demise as the fastest means to lay hands on her husband’s lands and title, the coffers of treasure folk believed he’d brought back with him from the Crusades and journeys to distant lands.

Rosalind, for that was her name, knew better.

Her husband’s greatest treasure was the goodness of his heart and his valor and unflagging loyalty, the love he showered on her every waking moment of their much too short life together. His glory hadn’t been in gold, but in his kindness to others, especially those less fortunate. He’d used his influence to protect them. He’d been the best of men and she’d missed him fiercely.

Since then she roamed alone, glimpsed only when she wished someone to see her.

Or by those who were gifted to observe more with their hearts than their eyes.

The flame-haired maid, Lady Mirabelle, was such a soul.

Rosalind had known the moment the lass spotted her floating along the arcade.

It’d been long since anyone had seen her, even though she was about always.

The pity was that so many travails and heartaches awaited the lass. Knowing suchlike was another pesky part of being a bogle.

All manner of wisdom came to ghosts, the onslaught of
knowing
a terrible nuisance, especially in great crowds such as filled the castle hall and other such places where many men gathered. Rosalind suspected she was more susceptible than most bogles, for she’d had a measure of such talent in life. Now she need only flit past someone to sense that person’s destined path.

Lady Mirabelle’s journey wasn’t a bright one.

But she couldn’t see its end, which gave her hope and spoke for the girl’s strength. For while all things were indeed
writ in stone, a living soul still had the choice to ignore fate and keep walking.