Until the Knight Comes (22 page)

Nor had he e’er seen him look so miserable.

So utterly stricken.

But then, at the moment, he wouldn’t give two pins to see his own expression, either. Truth tell, with anger burning him like a flame, he could almost feel steam pouring out of his ears.

And he knew the muscle beneath his eye would soon be twitching up a storm.

A MacKenzie plague, annoying and unavoidable.

So he just stared back at Jamie, shock hollowing him.

“A murderess?”
Kenneth’s breath stopped. His outrage echoed in the tight stairwell. “And of not one, but
two
men?”

Jamie gulped audibly and nodded, his misery palpable.

The other men crowding the steps exchanged glances.

No one spoke.

Each man held one or two coin pouches in a white-knuckled grip and stared owl-eyed.

But not at Kenneth.

Och, nay, to a man, the lack-hearts made a great show of studying their feet, the wall, or the bulging leather bags in their hands—the lot of them peering anywhere but at the dark-scowling Keeper of Cuidrach.

Ignoring them all—save Jamie—Kenneth lowered his own remaining coin pouches to the stone-slabbed landing and folded his arms across his chest.

“So-o-o.” He narrowed his eyes at the strapping young man who’d just come pounding up the stairs, flush-faced and breathless. “Make the sun shine again, Macpherson. Tell me I misheard you.”

Do not ruin the day I’d hoped to start rebuilding my life again!

But Jamie only shook his head and rammed a hand through his shaggy, bronze-bright hair.

And seeing his discomfiture, Kenneth cleared his throat and blessed the cool draught pouring into the stairwell through a nearby arrow slit.

“This is not to be borne,” he said, pushing the words past his fury. “A slayer of two men? Hah, I say!”

His temples pounding, he shot a glance at Lachlan, two steps below him. “Be on with the siller,” he ordered his grim-faced captain, “see the coins stashed in the four aumbries. Assure the locks are stout—and hang a tapestry o’er the whole of them.”

“You still want the coin deposited in
her
chamber?” a deep voice queried from farther down the turnpike stair.

“Now, when such dastards might assault us any hour?” another called, his cry reaping a round of hearty agreement.

“In especial, now!” Kenneth returned, more sure of his path than e’er before.

But the throbbing in his head increased, so he closed his eyes, breathed deep. Just long enough to gather his good sense and . . . his control.

Saints, but he felt an urge to curl his fingers around the necks of whate’er gutter-sweeps would dare taint his lady’s good name.

For the now, he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his own neck.

“Aye, to be sure and I wish the coin stored in her bedchamber—in the aumbries, as I have said,” he confirmed, relieved his voice sounded firm.

Untroubled.

“Naught has changed, my good men—and woe be to any who might deem it otherwise,” he added, raking them with the best
Keeper
look he could muster.

A fierce-eyed glare that would have made his uncle proud.

Mayhap even Ranald the Redoubtable.

Even so, a spate of quibbling followed. Not a full-blooded stramash, but a belligerent shuffling of feet and few corner-of-the-mouth mutters. A tightening of lips. But finally the men scowled as only Highlanders know how to do, and one by one inclined their heads.

Satisfied, Kenneth waited until they resumed their trudging, circular climb, then caught Jamie by the arm.

“Come, you,” he said, the calm of his voice cloaking a seething anger.

His dark brows drawn dangerously low, he dragged the young knight across the landing to a tiny chamber built into the thickness of the wall, pulling him inside, then slamming the door.

He wheeled to face Jamie, his gaze sharpening. “I swear on God’s holy name, I have ne’er heard aught so foul.”

“Just that!” Jamie agreed, bobbing his auburn head. “I saw it as my bounden duty to warn you, as did the widow. She didn’t believe a word the men said.”

He looked down then, brushed a speck of lint off his plaid. “See you, she said they were a meaner sort and—”

“Think you I’d hold them for any other?” Kenneth strode to the little room’s chink of a window, stopped and swung around. “Hear me well, lad, I do not believe any of this. And if my lady
did
thrust a dagger in some man’s heart, I’ll vow she had good reason!”

Jamie’s chin jutted. “I dinna believe it, either.”

But for all his bluster and indignation, Kenneth’s favorite couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

Indeed, every time Kenneth narrowed his gaze on him, the lad plucked at his plaid or looked down at his overlarge feet.

Opened his mouth as if to say something, only to shut it like a trap before a single word emerged.

Kenneth frowned.

“Tell me again who she is supposed to have dirked? Her husband? This Hugh Alesone?” He began pacing again, slanted a dark look at the young knight. “The Bastard of Drumodyn, I believe he was styled?”

“Aye, that one.” Jamie confirmed, a fresh wash of pink staining his cheeks. “He was found with her dagger in his heart—and in the bed they shared, aye. ’Tis said he was . . . naked, sir.”

Kenneth winced. “And the other?”

“A guardsman, as I said.” Jamie rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “He was found just outside her dungeon cell—with a gash on his head.”

Kenneth swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “So no one saw these . . . supposed murders happen?” he asked, the cold knot in his gut growing tight and hard.

“I dinna think so.”

Kenneth wheeled round again, his fists clenching and unclenching. “So what
do
you think? I can see all o’er you that there is something else.”

“H’mmm. Och, well.” Jamie blinked, and coughed. “I’m a-thinking these dregs will soon be at our walls. They told Gunna of the Glen they’d heard tell of Cuidrach, knew it stood empty. They suspect she’d head here.”

“As well she did,” Kenneth agreed, with some significance. “And if they follow, they’ll regret it in ways they cannot begin to imagine.”

He hoped.

“Oh, to be sure, we’ll ready a fine welcome for them if they come,” he vowed, tension twisting his innards.

Damping his palms.

He was a highly skilled seaman, not a blooded warrior.

Not allowing doubts to darken his already black mood, he wrapped his hands around his sword belt and prayed the saints the finer techniques of swording his cousin Robbie and Lachlan had taught him would serve him well if it came to it.

But it’d been a long while since those early days at his uncle’s Eilean Creag Castle, and he’d not yet had a chance to test his skill.

There wasn’t, however, anything wrong or lacking in his ability to recognize ill ease.

In especial, in someone with as honest and open a face as young Jamie.

The lad was keeping something from him.

Something he feared would upset him.

Certain of it, Kenneth ignored the cold seeping into his marrow and turned a black-browed stare on his young friend. “So-o-o,” he said again, and folded his arms. “There is still something I must hear, aye? Something you think might be better left unsaid?”

Young James was slow in answering. “It will rouse your ire, sir.”

“Not so much as silence,” Kenneth owned, his heart thudding. “Or what I have already guessed—just from looking at you.”

“Aye, well . . .” Jamie let the words tail away.

“‘Aye, well’, indeed.”

Kenneth stepped closer, clapped a hand across the younger man’s shoulder.

“Now speak,” he said in a tone brooking no refusal. “And do not play me for a fool. I would hear . . . everything.”

“Have a care, my lady, or you’ll spill everything.”

“As if I could.” Mariota’s breath caught at her friend’s slip of tongue. “Now—after what you’ve just told me.”

But Nessa simply gave her a long, hard stare and reached for the heavy creel of golden-smoked herrings, wresting the brimming basket from Mariota’s arms and plunking it onto the sturdy kitchen table.

“You wouldn’t know,” she added, wiping her hands, “but such creels are just like the back-creels used for carrying peats and sea-wrack. There’s a hinged bottom, see you? That allows the load to be dropped where’er it’s desired—and not there, where
that one
lies a-waiting such a savory treat!”

On the last word, Cuillin sat up and raised a paw, his rheumy gaze full of hope.

Glad for the distraction, Mariota shook her head. “Ach, nay, laddie, no herring for you,” she crooned, reaching down to grasp the proffered paw. “But a fine soup bone, you shall have,” she added, handing him a large, well-fleshed bone.

A prize he carried to a far corner of the kitchen, where he flopped down with a contented grunt, the temptation of the smoked herrings promptly forgotten.

Just as she’d surely slipped from Hugh the Bastard’s mind the moment he’d closed his hands on the riper, fleshier curves of the alewife of Assynt.

Mariota shuddered, a red-hot bolt of alarm piercing her fortitude, chills spilling down her spine.

But not because of Hugh Alesone.

Och, nay, a far greater concern plagued her, filled her with uncommon dread and . . . doubt.

The gnawing fear of just how swiftly
he
might wash his hands of her if she revealed her last remaining secret—a disclosure she’d hoped to share with him this very e’en, and would have, had not Nessa learned why he favored widows.

Or, better said, why he despised fallen women.

Tainted women,
scorned by God and man.

Shadow souls, cast out by their own families, dead in the eyes of those who’d once loved them. Forgotten women, branded as senseless chits for having followed their hearts and trusted, succumbed to the worst glib-tongued, gentle-handed men.

She drew an uneven breath, her lungs filling with the comforting pungency of wood smoke, roasted meats and salt-dried fish. Fresh-baked bannocks and stout, frothy ale. Not that such homey smells made much difference.

Her heart still skittered out of beat, her blood still firing with fury at the past she couldn’t undo.

His past
that threatened to withdraw every shred of hope she’d been clinging to.

If he discovered that she was just such a woman as he chose to avoid, her racing pulse taunted her. As did the hot lump in her throat, the stinging heat searing the backs of her eyes.

She bit back a strangled oath and looked around the smoke-hazed kitchen, her gaze going anywhere but to old Cuillin and his bone.

Or Nessa with her all-seeing stare.

A rough-hewn oaken bench stood against the far wall and it was there she turned her attention, aching to cross the room and just sit there, close her eyes and then be somewhere else when she opened them.

Better yet, be someone else.

Someone untarnished.

Unblemished and free.

Instead, she blinked away the tears she refused to spill and turned back to the table. Well-laden with joints of beef, roasted capons, and still-warm loaves of crusty brown bread, it proved the creel of herrings that caught her eye.

And so soon as it did, her stomach fluttered and unfair resentment began beating in her breast.

“The widow must have sent him her entire store of smoked fish,” she said, chilled despite the warmth of the cozy, fire-lit kitchen.

“Sent
all
of us, my lady,” Nessa amended, examining the herrings. “And a fine batch they are, too. Of equal quality if not superior to my own.”

But Mariota scarce heard her, save to recognize that her friend meant to lead her away from a hurtful topic.

A thorn
she’d
plunged into Mariota’s side, however well-meant or innocently.

“Och, I understand why the woman sent her herrings,” Mariota owned, hoping only she heard the tremor in her voice. “Sir Kenneth is a good Keeper, a great-hearted man. He has promised the widow a fine, fat milch cow and other stock come the spring, assured her of his protection. She is appreciative. . . .”

She tailed off, her pulse thundering as her gaze lit on the sacks of salt and flour piled near the kitchen door. The crates filled with dried venison, wineskins, and jarred honey. Small, cloth-covered baskets of jellied eggs and fried seabird pasties. Three or four good-sized wheels of cheese, rolled lengths of the finest wool and linen, softest leather for shoes and belts.

Provender and gifts for Gunna of the Glen.

Goods awaiting transport, so soon as some lust-plagued garrison man volunteered to make the journey to the little side-glen where untold pleasures surely awaited him in the grateful widow’s arms.

The
lusty
widow’s arms.