Until the Knight Comes (11 page)

Unlike Somerled, who thrived on such magical missions.

“Ach, laddie—here is a surprise!” the crone enthused, tipping the last of her offering of goat’s milk onto the base of the sacred stone.

Quiet as the night, the fox watched with steady eyes as she set aside the now empty ewer and pushed to her feet with a discreet clucking of her tongue, an affectation she allowed herself to disguise the creaking of her knees.

The only bane of age that truly annoyed her.

But one she couldn’t help, so she beamed delight at the little fox and looked on as he nosed the lute toward her.

“You are a welcome sight,” she fussed over him, reaching down to smooth his silky red fur. “O-o-oh, to be sure, and you are!”

But Somerled only angled his head, tapped the lute with his paw.

“Aye, a fine braw laddie,” Devorgilla praised, squinting against the lute’s brilliance.

Wrought of fairy gold and studded with jewels, it glowed as if lit by an inner fire, its light shining even brighter when she gathered it into her hands and ran loving fingers over its warm, slightly vibrating surface.

“By all the fates,” she crooned, “I vow he is as pleased to be returned to us as we are to have him again, eh?”

The fox blinked in answer, his gaze solemn.

Earnest enough to make Devorgilla lift a grizzled brow.

Something about the evening’s stillness, or perhaps the way the moon hung so low above the hills, let her know her own powers were yet needed.

And in more ways than she’d planned to use them!

Tightening her fingers around the lute, she nudged at a clump of deer grass, struggled to capture the message humming just beneath the surface of the night.

That two deserving souls needed to learn to trust again, she knew. Caught in a place betwixt and between, they were—and aching! So much had been apparent some long nights ago when the innocent peats smoldering on her hearthstone suddenly turned into burning crisps of parchment!

Love sonnets, the scribblings were, and penned by the hand of greed and ambition rather than honest passion. A great stirk of a cross-grained lout who’d only pretended to care for his adoring, deep-pursed lady.

“Fiend seize and keep him,” the crone huffed, her ire rising.

As for the
other
one, the good lad, earlier this very e’en, she’d glimpsed him in the steam rising from her cook pot—a fierce scowl on his handsome face, his heart still shuttered.

And now, somewhere across the night sea, the stubborn fool rode . . . elsewhere.

“Tush!” she sniffed, glancing at the moonlit waters. “Lusty widows, indeed!”

Aye, the Keeper of Cuidrach had a few lessons yet to learn.

But mayhap she did as well if Somerled’s piercing stare meant anything.

“You’d best tell me,” she urged him. “Say on—be the talebearer I know you are.”

But the little fox only looked away across the Sea of the Hebrides toward the distant mainland coast, the taut set of his shoulders and his perked ears revealing all the crone needed to hear.

“Humph!”
She sent a disdainful glance in the same direction, scorning not the land or the sea, dear as both were to her, but the dastards lurking there, creeping through the darkness, ill winds swirling in their wake.

“Dire, indeed,” she assured Somerled, then drew a quivering breath, hoping her skills were up to a challenge.

“How close are they?” she queried, misliking the great number of them.

But before Somerled could respond, she hobbled over to the basket that held her dinner—a small portion of roasted gannet, the seabird meat tender and succulent. Two cooked eggs and a honey-smeared bannock, a flagon of heather ale.

Sustenance to give her strength for the trek back to her cottage. Simple but filling fare for one of her years—but a veritable feast for her little friend.

Victuals she surrendered gladly, arranging them on a cloth spread at the base of the Clach na Gruagach. And only when the fox had sated himself, did the she cock her head and listen with her heart to Somerled’s tale.

His adventures.

And warnings.

Devorgilla sighed, looking out to sea again, then back at her little friend.

“Ach, you have the rights of it,” she agreed. “We must keep a wary eye. If only I kent what. . . .”

But Somerled was no longer paying her heed, his attention now on the clump of deer grass she’d poked with her toe.

The high-growing grass was moving, swaying to and fro as if stirred by an unseen hand.

And that on a queer windless night, the chill air stiller than still.

Devorgilla’s breath caught, especially when her little friend threw her a knowing,
watch-this,
kind of glance. Sitting back on his haunches, he lifted a paw again, this time in a well-recognized gesture of caution—even as a tiny field mouse scurried out from the grass and hurried past them, making for a tumble of boulders.

“A mouse?” Devorgilla blinked after the scampering beastie, watching him flit between two hulking stones, his little body disappearing into a crack no wider than a wink.

For long, she peered at the crevice and then she understood, and clapped her hands in glee.

“O-o-oh, but that will serve,” she crowed, comprehension tingling through her.

“If a certain lassie is as observant as she is willful.”

’Twas a sweet bit glen, opening just off Kenneth’s own Glenelg.

A place that ought to hold the very essence of peace. Even on such a gray and drizzly night. But this night, the gray struck him as darker than usual, the shadows of the wood, a deeper black than comfortable.

Worse, he imagined distant eyes watching him. He was barely restraining himself from turning in his saddle and peering deeper than was wise into the birches that seemed to close round him, stifling rather than pleasing him as such Highland woods usually did.

Instead, he shivered and fixed his gaze on the path before him, frowning.

Sakes, even the rain annoyed him more than any true-blooded Highlander ought admit!

In no good humor, he considered reining round then and there. Digging in his heels and tearing down the narrow little glen the same way he’d come.

But a strange wind blew through the darkness, its hollow whistle carrying . . . hushed laments.

Nay, scoldings.

A truth he’d swear on the morrow, for the whispers dogged him no matter how fast he rode, disapproval ringing in his ears, persistent like the clanging of a bell clapper.

A fool and his folly.

Fate will soon be manifest—no matter whose skirts he lifted.

The admonishment hit him like an upended bucket of iced water, the taunt slicing through him, making his cheeks burn.

And unfairly.

He was not riding into ruin.

And if he’d ne’er partaken of the solace awaiting him at the end of this particular side glen, he’d surely slaked his ease with enough fair widows to justify visiting this one.

Whether the wind approved or nay.

The hot pulsing in his loins gave him scarce choice.

But when, a short while later, a flicker of lights pricked the chill dusk, letting him know he’d found the widow’s cottage, the throbbing at his groin diminished, dwindling as quickly as a snuffed out candle flame.

And with the dwindling came a cackle on the wind.

A triumphant sounding cackle.

Reining in, he swiveled round, glaring into the shadows, but saw . . . nothing.

Nor did he feel anything
there,
where he’d had such an itch just moments ago.

Unsettled, and determined to air whoever’s skirts he desired, he jerked back round and glowered at the widow’s tidy turf-and-wattle cottage.

Glowered, because his need, so insistent since thundering away from Dun Telve, now proved as stubbornly aloof as the silent hills surrounding him.

He drew a hand over his brow, wishing himself back at Cuidrach. But before he could be away, the door of the cottage opened and a woman appeared. A well-made one—and wearing only a scanty undergown.

If that!

Kenneth swallowed and weighed the chances that she couldn’t see him, sitting his horse as he was, half hidden by the trees at the edge of the clearing.

But her direct eye said otherwise—a hungry stare he felt all over him.

And whether he desired a tumble with her or no, honor forbade him from cantering away. So he dismounted and strode forward, his mind whirling for a chivalrous . . . excuse.

“Keeper of Cuidrach—I welcome you!” Gunna of the Glen called, her voice low pitched. Rich and smooth.

Just as he would have expected, considering the lushness of her curves.

Indeed, any other time, she would have fired his most heated dreams.

But not now, not on this ill-fated night.

“Lady, I greet you,” he said, keenly aware of the absence of heat that should have been pulsing into his loins. “I am come to—”

“I ken why you are here,” she supplied, fingering the long plait of her hair. “Your uncle sent word that I might expect you.”

“I am sure he did,” Kenneth acknowledged, the neck opening of his tunic growing tighter by the moment—especially when she began
really
toying with her braid.

A thick coil of glossiness, raven as his own, he glimpsed its sooty darkness repeated in the prominent,
V
-shaped triangle at the top of her thighs—a luxuriant thatch, clearly visible through the thin cloth of her low-cut shift.

As were her generous breasts, the large, well-defined nipples.

“Lady, you . . . take my breath,” he said honestly, watching as she curled her fingers around her braid’s thickness and moved her hand slowly up and down its black-gleaming length. “Even so, my reason for being here is not what you think. I—”

“Och, I ken what you seek,” she purred, the glide of her fingers turning even more sensuous. “You will be well served, do not doubt it.”

She stepped closer, her musky scent rising between them. “Come away in then, and—partake!”

Kenneth shifted, glancing at his horse, but before he could take a step backward, she circled strong fingers around his arm, pulled him inside.

And her cottage
did
welcome.

A wee bittie place, it glowed with warmth. Wafting peat smoke thickened the air and blackened the walls, but a swift look-around showed a swept earthen floor and a rough-hewn table that looked less than sturdy but was notably well-scrubbed.

But she was turning to face him then, the candlelight showing her not quite so young as he’d first thought, but undeniably alluring.

“You require sustenance,” she said, gesturing to a platter of oatcakes and cheese on the table. Even the cold, sliced breast of a fat capon. A well-filled jug of ale.

But the cottage’s sole chair, a simple three-legged stool by the shape of it, proved hidden beneath the damp expanse of a homespun kirtle.

A gown she snatched up so soon as his gaze lit upon its freshly-laundered folds.

“Aye, you have caught me at my washing,” she admitted, indicating a steaming washtub Kenneth hadn’t yet noticed.

“This is my best kirtle,” she said, hanging the gown on a wall peg. “My other one is yet in yon wash kettle—so dinna think I greet every man who darkens my door quite so . . . invitingly!”

Coming close again, she smoothed a hand over his groin. “But you, sir . . . ahhh, let us just say, I am pleased you caught me thusly—even if you do not seem quite so
eager
as those who usually come to call!”

Kenneth froze at her touch, trying not to grimace.

She
lifted a brow . . . and squeezed.

“O-o-oh, but you are a fine-made man,” she purred. “Mayhap if you see what a well-made woman I am, you will grow even finer!”

The words spoken, she rid herself of her undershift and stood before him naked and glorious, her creamy skin luminescent in the candle glow, her bountiful curves and the dark triangle of her womanhood, dangerously apparent.

But before he could look too closely, a sudden blast of wind shook the cottage, sweeping in through the smoke hole in the ceiling. Eddies of peat ash swirled into the air—right into Kenneth’s face!

“By the Rood!” he spluttered, spitting out ash and rubbing his eyes.

“Och, mercy me!” Gunna of the Glen grabbed her undergown, dabbed at his face.

A calculated move, to be sure, for with every circular rub of the cloth, her full breasts brushed his chest and the lush thicket of her female curls teased across his thigh.

“Here, hold tight lest you overbalance afore you can see again,” she urged, seizing his hand and pressing his fingers to an unmistakable damp and silken heat. “A firm grip just
there
and—”

“Nay, I see fine already,” Kenneth blurted, extricating himself.

Quick as winking, he nabbed the undershift and whirled it around her shoulders, covering her breasts if not the vee of curls so evident between her shapely thighs.