Until the Knight Comes (20 page)

He kept his gaze on her, his longing, his hopes to win her, almost causing the room to spin. Blessedly, the lingering musk of their joining still clung to the bedsheets. And powerfully enough to waft across the room, even drift into the closeness of the embrasure.

A glorious scent, his redemption and strength.

Living proof that St. Girta’s Isle, bird oil, and even the Orcades, were finally behind him.

And especially . . .
her.

The fisherman’s daughter whose green eyes, however lovely, had ne’er stared at him so unwaveringly as Mariota’s—or so filled with compassion.

Mayhap even sympathy.

The last thing he wanted from
this
green-eyed vixen.

His shoulders tensing, he let go of the window ledge, rubbed a hand over his face.

“A woman did not make the scars,” he said, turning to face her. “I fell, see you? Lost my footing on a narrow ledge while being lowered on a rope down one of Hirta, St. Girta’s Isle’s, most treacherous sea cliffs—I plunged into the sea, my lady.”

He angled his head so the flame of a nearby wall torch could illuminate the scars. “’Twas the jagged rock face of the cliff that sliced open my cheek—not the slashing nails of a woman scorned.”

Och, nay.

He’d
been the betrayed one.

But now, so many cold and empty years later, he thanked the saints for that long-ago perfidy. Even the anger and hurt that’d distracted him, tainting his usual concentration and balance until he’d placed a foot exactly where he shouldn’t have.

And the fall had done more than scar his face—it’d jarred him into remembering those he loved best.

His mother, may the Almighty bless her soul and keep her, and his half-sister, Juliana, now well-wed, and happily, to his uncle’s son and heir, Robbie MacKenzie.

He smoothed the folds of his plaid, a lump rising in his throat. Hot and burning, a thickness he doubted could e’er be swallowed. But his mother and sister had needed him direly at the time, sustained themselves on the help he sent them, so often as he could.

Hard-earned monies he’d hoard and then see delivered into their hands—even during the rough times when he’d not known where he’d next lay his head or when he might enjoy more than salt herring and ale for his next meal.

On their own in one of Glenelg’s darkest, most remote corners, his mother and Juliana had needed the help more.

The plunge down Hirta’s razor-sharp sea cliffs made him realize how much he’d needed them.

A blow from fate that was also the beginning of the end of his days as one of most sought-after bird-oil gatherers in all the Western and Northern Isles.

His heart gave a lurch, his mind filling with the image of seabirds, wheeling and screaming all around him. Crying their rage, swooping in to attack. Hearing them now, he shuddered, wiped his palms on his plaid.

He had no cause to complain. The good God knows, had his life been . . . otherwise, he would not be standing here today, his losses far greater than three pale lines marring his cheek.

Greater than he would have e’er dreamed.

One look at his lady, so desirous and desirable, proved it.

And thinking of her, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, drawing in the scent of her.

His mind filled with her image, the joys they’d so recently shared. The ecstasy and wonder.
The closeness.
Saints, the immensity of his pleasure in her, the depth of his need, near overwhelmed him.

And not just because of her lush, warm curves; the promise of hours spent in heated, carnal delight. Truth be told, simply gathering her in his arms and holding her proved an irresistible bliss.

The sweetest intoxication.

And in ways no one else had e’er stirred him.

Swallowing against the tightness in his throat, he slid another glance at the dark silhouette of the Bastard Stone, wishing poor Cormac’s plunge to the sea had been as fortuitous as his own.

Good fortune that regarded him quietly, her remarkable eyes looking deep, seeing . . . everything. “God be thanked you were not killed,” she said, her voice soft, minding him of what he’d revealed.

And what he hadn’t.

“A fall. I would ne’er have guessed.” She stood with one hand pressed to her breast, something too close to sympathy flitting across her face. “Yet, still—”

“But you knew I earned my coin at sea?”

She nodded, her eyes luminous in the moonlight. “I have heard talk, aye.”

“I imagine you have,” he said, touching her cheek with a work-roughened hand. “’Tis no secret. All ken that I hired out on any galley that would take me on, toiled for years as a gatherer of bird oil. A plunderer of cliff-side nests, for the chicks gave the most and richest oil. In especial, the young fulmar petrels.”

He paused, reached to toy with the ends of her hair. “’Tis a foul trade and one I wish I’d ne’er practiced, but bird oil is prized all over Christendom. The sea traders of the Hansa League will pay nigh any price for the oil—they reap fine profits from churchmen everywhere, all eager for a goodly supply. The holy men consider the oil sacred and use it for lamps, anointing, even preserving corpses. Physicians vie for it as well. The market is endless, and greedy.”

Mariota lifted a brow. “But you are not greed-driven,” she said, hearing his words, but listening deeper. “That much I know—just from having seen you with your men.”

Faith, all at Cuidrach knew he’d paid more than triple a fair price for the cattle he’d ordered from young Jamie’s father.

And everyone knew why.

Her heart swelled and began to thump. Even now, weeks later, his men still wagged proud tongues about how the new Keeper had put such shine in the young Macpherson’s eyes.

Good of heart, they’d called him. The best yet of Cuidrach’s long line of bastard Keepers.

A man like no other.

Sure of it, her gaze slipped past him, out the high, arched windows to the moonlit glint of Loch Hourn far below. She welcomed the freshening wind blowing in from the sea, enjoyed its rain-washed purity.

She drew a deep breath of the chill air, letting the wind clear her mind. To be sure, the Keeper of Cuidrach was a man different than most—a man possessed of the sleek grace of a night-stalking predator, his every move and thought, carefully executed, mayhap even fluid.

Ever at ease.

And sure.

That, too, anyone could see.

Mariota’s brow knitted and she slid a glance at him. Such men did not easily stumble. Save perhaps over the slumbering bulk of a certain ancient beastie, e’er determined to plop his great, shaggy self in the path of his hapless two-legged friends.

Nay, Kenneth MacKenzie was not a man given to careless missteps.

But he could have been . . . pushed.

Driven to clumsiness by . . . circumstance.

At the realization, a powerful emotion surged into Mariota’s breast. Hot, tight bands sliding round her ribcage, pinpricks of unexpected jealousy jabbing at her heart.

“So it was a woman,” she said, running with her instinct, taking a risk. “She may not have scratched your face, but she scarred you all the same—enough for you to not have your mind where it ought to have been when you were on that cliff.”

His sharp intake of breath answered her.

The sudden shuttering of his handsome face.

“It makes gloomy telling,” he said, and bit back a curse when her eyes clouded upon the words.

But there’d been no point in keeping silent; the truth already thrummed all through her.

Leastways, what she believed must be the truth.

“Aye, there was a woman on my mind that day.” He paced back to the window, looked out at the night, the stars gleaming in cold beauty above the loch. “Her name was Maili, a maid in full blossom of youth when I met her. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks dimpled when she’d smile and her hair rippled like golden silk. She was a fisherman’s daughter and lived with her father in a cottage in a wee bit coastal village in the far north, not far from Durness. She mended nets and wove rush baskets for the fisherfolk—”

“Until you came along and she set her heart—”

“Not her heart,” Kenneth corrected, rubbing the back of his neck. “That she ne’er gave me—as I learned to my cost.” He glanced at her, wanting her to understand. “’Twas my own heart that was shredded. All I’d e’er believed in, knocked out from under me so swiftly I thought the world would ne’er stop spinning.”

His
true
lady looked down, plucked at the embroidered edge of her bed-robe. “You loved her that deeply?”

“At the time, aye. She was young, exceedingly fair, and . . . flatteringly attentive.” Kenneth let out a long breath, forcing the tension from his shoulders. “Seeing her the first time was like having the sun burst through a gray fog—I was bedazzled and smitten . . . blinded.”

Mariota’s head snapped up. “And she was not equally . . . moved?”

He glanced at the hearth fire, his expression unreadable.

Not that it mattered.

His silence said everything.

A stony-eyed mole could see that his experience with the fisherman’s dimple-cheeked daughter had torn his soul, defeated him.

Mariota shivered, despite the warm thickness of her bed-robe. Faith, she could
smell
the other woman’s deceit, even over such a distance and so many years.

A living, waking nightmare, much like her own.

Only she’d been warned.

Squaring her shoulders, she kept her chin raised, marveling at how little her own hurts pained her. Faith, she couldn’t even conjure Hugh the Bastard’s face.

Or his whore’s.

She only saw
his
face, and ached to soothe him.

“I thought that was the way of it,” she said, her stomach clenching in fury at any woman who could have such a good man on his knees, then betray and gut him. “Did you ne’er have reason to—”

“Doubt her? Suspect she’d forget me, cast me aside the instant someone better came along?”

He looked at her, the words hanging between them. Each one dredged from his soul, offered to her to do with what she would.

“Nay, I had no idea.”

Mariota stared at him, the outrage in her belly tightening to a small, hard knot.

“Nor had I considered that her father might not hold me . . . suitable.”

He paused to look intently at her. “See you, I was well-paid for my skill at sea and although I sent help to my mother and sister, I was also saving for a future with Maili. I’d planned to wed her, wanted a family—so soon as I’d amassed enough to quit the sea. But she—”

“Left you for another?”

“Nay, her father
sold
her to another,” Kenneth said, absently stroking the scars on his cheek. “An aging fisherman he was, and friendly with sea merchants and shipowners. Friendly enough to notice the eye one of them cast on Maili. That man was nearly twice her age, and my employer on more than one occasion.”

He looked aside, ran a hand down over his chin. “He was also much deeper-pursed than I could e’er have hoped to be at the time, and . . . he wasn’t a bastard. All reasons, I was later told, that Maili agreed to marry him. And happily, though I cannot vouch for that, as I ne’er saw her again. It was her father who told me.”

“I think the greater loss was hers,” Mariota said, not missing the rigid set of his jaw, or how the muscles around his eyes were tightening. “I am sorry . . . do not know what to say.”

“There is naught to be said. Not o’er things long past and no longer of importance. Though the saints know, I should have been wary . . . bastard-born as I am.”

“Och, aye, that is so.” Mariota nodded, well aware her eyes must be flashing. “’Twas an unsanctioned mating that spawned you, to be sure, Kenneth of Cuidrach.”

She stepped closer, tapped his chest with a finger. “You, and many more like you throughout these fair hills. And beyond. Even the good King Robert Bruce had his bastards—and loved them well! Two of my own father’s by-blows grew to manhood within Dunach’s walls, joining our household after their lady mothers’ succumbed to fevers.”

“I am not shamed by my heritage.” He eased her finger from his chest. “But other things should have warned me.”

“Indeed?” Mariota tilted her head, her heart thumping. “I already ken how much your lady mother loved you—all speak of your devotion to her. Was it your father? Did he treat you ill?”

But rather than answer her, he only set his mouth in a hard, tight line.

Her own blood heating, she grabbed his arm, squeezing tight when he made to turn back to the window. “O-o-oh, nay, Sir Keeper, do not hide your hurt from me. Think you I could come to age in a keep full of men and not learn to read their every mood?”

“Ah, but I no longer hurt, lass,” Kenneth returned, wondering at the truth of it.

Not about his roaming-eyed scoundrel of a father and that one’s legendary infamy. Truth tell, he had it on best authority from his uncle’s own lady wife, that, in death, his father had finally found the peace he’d ne’er enjoyed in life.