Until the Knight Comes (23 page)

The back of Mariota’s neck grew hot and she swallowed, her mind’s eyes seeing a woman with well-fleshed curves and a shimmering curtain of glossy hair, like as not dark, long, and rippling.

A sultry-eyed temptress who moved with languorous grace and bespelled all men who glanced her way, forever besotting those beguiled enough to reach for her.

Sample her bountiful charms.

Her brows snapping together at the image, she swiped a hand beneath her eyes, squared her shoulders.

“The Keeper of Cuidrach will help any glen folk in need,” she said, armoring herself with that surety and banishing the
other
thoughts.

Nessa snorted and puffed at a lock of hair falling over her forehead.

“You are letting false fears eat at you,” she scoffed, her nimble fingers sorting the herring. “’Tis young James the widow’s like to set her
needs
on—all ken the lad paid her a call. You know he will have . . . pleased her.”

She slid a glance at Mariota, one dark brow arching. “You also know I speak as I find, my lady. If you see fat sizzling and smoking in that fire you’re stirring, ’tis your own good self what tossed it there. Your Keeper is too in lov—”

“O-o-oh, do you not see?” Mariota flipped her braid over her shoulder, her heart near bursting. “I am not sure of his feelings! Would that I were. But I . . . I love him.”

She glanced aside, blinked furiously.

“Aye, Nessa, I do love him,” she admitted. “Deeper and more powerfully than I e’er loved Hugh the Bastard—more than I would have believed possible. ’Tis not fear of losing him to the
lusty widow
that freezes my blood, but dread of losing him if he learns that I was ne’er widowed!”

Her head spinning, she lowered her voice. “What he will do when he discovers I’ve lied?”

“He will do nothing for he loves you true. And he does, I am sure of it, even if you aren’t. His feelings are writ all o’er him—ask anyone in these walls!” Nessa thrust a cup of ale into her hand. “Here, drink, my lady. And dinna you fret.”

“You say that so easily.” Mariota set down the cup untouched. “Yet it was you who told me of his mother—how a
fallen woman
ruined her life and how, watching her pain, left him with an aversion of such women.”

Nessa sniffed. “You are nowise such a woman, and well you know it,” she snipped, shaking her head. “Lachlan told me Sir Kenneth’s father was lured astray by the guile of a conniving, cold-blooded adulteress. Sir Kenneth’s uncle’s own lady wife. Or rather, his first wife. A woman wicked and fickle to the bone, by all accounts.”

Mariota looked away, unconvinced.

“Dinna you see?” Nessa touched her arm. “’Tis no small wonder such a scandal made him wary of devious women . . . whores and true joy women, the sort without a jot of scruple.”

But Mariota only shook her own head, hearing little but the word
whore.

The selfsame word Hugh the Bastard’s men had hurled at her the night he’d died and Elizabeth Paterson had plunged Mariota’s dagger into his heart.

As well, a slur she could not deny.

Whether she’d thought she’d loved Hugh Alesone more than life itself, or no.

Steeling herself, she looked back at her friend, wishing she had that one’s faith, her confidence.

The saints knew she used to—but that now seemed so very long ago.

“He will not understand, see you?” She dashed a hand across her cheek again. “What you have told me means he has been injured twice. The suffering he saw his mother endure . . . at the hands of a light-skirted female. And then the treachery with his Maili, the fisherman’s daughter who married someone else, breaking his heart and rubbing salt in the wound by letting it be known she’d shunned him because of his bastardy, the reputation of his father.”

Nessa snorted again. “Men talk of a night in Cuidrach’s hall. Duncan MacKenzie’s first wife was anything but a casual
light-skirt,
and your Keeper’s Maili was a brazen piece he should ne’er have winked at in the first place!”

“Even so . . .” Mariota bit her lip.

Finding it ever harder to breathe, she went to the nearest window, needing the air. “For mercy, Nessa, even if he can accept my vulnerability towards Hugh and believes me when I tell him I e’er thought Hugh would take me to wife, if he learns I lied, he will be devastated.”

She wheeled on Nessa then, her anguish a hot clamp around her heart. “He will ne’er trust me, see you? Not after I’ve kept silent so long.”

“And you trust him so little to give him the chance?” Nessa angled her head and clucked her tongue.

“I do not trust myself to bear the pain if he turns from me,” Mariota admitted, fear of losing him nigh choking her. “I cannot take that chance.”

But then a tiny smile began curving Nessa’s lips and she moved away from the worktable to stand before the open kitchen door. “And if I tell you he already trusts you more than you would ever guess?” The smile now reached her eyes, lighting them and making them twinkle. “H’mmm, my lady? What say you to that?”

“I say you’ve run mad,” Mariota returned, her heart beginning to thump all the same. “Or that the moon sickness has finally seized you.”

“No moon madness, my lady.” Nessa placed a finger to her lips then, glancing over her shoulder into the darkness of the vaulted passage leading away from the kitchen. “Tell me, have you not heard the thudding of feet tramping up and down yon turnpike stairs as we’ve been working away in here?” she asked, turning back to Mariota. “The muffled mumblings of men underfoot? Many men?”

Mariota frowned. “I have heard nothing,” she said, puzzled.

Naught save the crackling of the cook fire, the sound of rain from beyond the unshuttered windows, and, of course, the hammering of her heart.

The occasional grinding of Cuillin’s stump-like teeth on his soup bone.

“A shame, that.” Nessa looked down, made a show of shaking out her skirts. “See, if you’d listened closely, you might have heard the sounds of trust.”

“The sounds of trust?”

“Och, aye . . . sweet, burgeoning trust.”

Mariota blinked, straining her ears . . . and still heard nothing unusual.

“I do not understand,” she said, truly puzzled. “Speak plain—so clearly as you e’er pride yourself on doing.”

“So be it,” Nessa agreed, beaming now. “When Lachlan first told me why Sir Kenneth feels such distaste for
fallen women,
I, too, feared he might not listen when you tell him the truth about Hugh the Bastard—that he was your lover and not your husband.”

Mariota crossed her arms, feeling chilled again. “What has happened to make you think otherwise?”

“His
trust,
my lady,” her friend explained, speaking in riddles again.

She came forward then, gripping Mariota by the arms. “See you, if he loves you enough to trust you as he has ne’er trusted another woman in all these long years, he will not disappoint you when he learns the truth.”

Mariota shook free. “And how do you know he trusts me? That is what I would hear!”

Nessa threw another glance at the passage beyond the door arch. “Did you not wonder why I pleaded your help today? Do you not ken me well enough to know I do not need another woman’s hand in the kitchen? That I prefer going about such tasks on my own?”

“I did wonder,” Mariota admitted, her gaze going again to the mound of goods near the door. “But I knew there was much to be readied for the widow.”

“And so there was,” Nessa ceded, smiling again. “But the true reason you are here is because I was asked to keep you occupied until Sir Kenneth and his men could carry his bags of coin up to your bedchamber and store them in the aumbries—”

“His bags of coin?” Mariota stared at her friend, her jaw dropping. “I have heard whisperings that he kept his monies stashed outside the castle, in a broch, I believe? But you say he now—”

She broke off, clamping her lips around the words, unable to form them, for the hot lump that had been lodged in her throat suddenly swelled to such a degree she could scarce breathe much less speak.

Her
heart
melted.

“Aye, my lady, just so,” Nessa confirmed.

Looking pleased with herself, she seized Mariota’s arm and propelled her toward the door arch. “He’d stashed his wealth in the double-walled thickness of nearby Dun Telve—did so long months ago, Lachlan told me. Well before we even neared Cuidrach.”

Mariota’s eyes widened, her tongue still too thick to form words.

“You needn’t look so flummoxed.” Nessa prodded her down the passageway, toward the upward-winding stairs. “’Tis all true. He’s fetched his coin here, securing every siller he possesses in the wall cupboards in your chamber. Lachlan says he wishes to prove his trust to you, let you see how much he values and loves you.”

“But—”

“Hah! I will hear no
buts,
my lady,” Nessa chided, stopping at the base of the stairs. “Go and see for yourself. He’ll be waiting for you, Lachlan swore it.”

But even as Mariota’s feet carried her upward, each echoing footfall drove a spike of fear deeper into her heart.

If he truly had vested so much trust in her, how could she dare risk breaking it?

She couldn’t.

Much as her heart begged her.

The sad truth was, the puissant Archibald Macnicol’s only daughter was not so braw as she’d thought.

He didn’t care.

Or, rather he cared so much that naught that had gone before mattered to him.

A truth that rocked Kenneth to the roots of his soul the moment the bedchamber door opened and
she
paused on the threshold. Even through the shadows, he could see her eyes widen as her gaze went straight to the magnificent Flemish tapestry flapping gently in the night breeze.

A richly woven gem, and newly hung, its brilliant colors glowed in the light of the hearth fire. Yet another gift from Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, and depicting a romantic woodland scene, the tapestry served its purpose well, its great size completely hiding the four aumbries that, until a few hours ago, had loomed in clear view.

Aumbries now filled with every coin he possessed.

And all his dreams—and more.

He only prayed she’d be honest with him.

Tell him her secrets without him having to pry, something he was determined not to do. Much as keeping his silence pained him.

In especial, when he so wished to reassure her.

But she hadn’t yet noticed him, concealed as he was in the blackness of a corner. Instead, astonishment lit her face, her surprise seeming to swirl more thickly around her with every step she took into the room.

Carefully placed steps, for her knees had jellied upon seeing the tapestry. And her heart pounded so loudly upon not finding
him
waiting for her, the sound of its thundering vied with the night wind, a cold wind with the dampness of rain on its breath.

A chill clamminess mirrored in the damping of her palms as she crossed the room and reached for the wall hanging, lifting its edge to see four stout new locks guarding whate’er had been placed in the aumbries.

“The keys are hidden inside your mattress,” said a deep voice behind her. “All four of them.”

Mariota spun around, her breath snagging.

Her eyes flew even wider. “Faith, but you startled me,” she gasped, staring at him. “I did not see you when I came in.”

“Nay, you would not have,” he owned, smoothing his knuckles down the side of her cheek. “I was in yon corner by the window embrasure.”

But she noticed him now.

And even with so much on her mind, her heart dipped and she went liquid, wanting him so much she could hardly breathe.

As if he sensed her need, he stepped closer. So close that his nearness wrapped round her, his sensual heat seducing her ever deeper into a whirling maze of giddy sensation.

“Sir.”
She breathed the word, unable to say more.

Not with her heart pounding and his dark eyes holding hers, his smoldering gaze making her burn. Faith, she ached for him with such urgency she trembled.

“Were you not told I’d be here . . . waiting for you?”

She nodded, melting when he stroked her hair.

“Then you see that your friend spoke true?” He pulled her to him, slid his hands up and down her back. “We have much to speak of, my heart. But first, you must know that the locks on the aumbries are not meant for you.”

Mariota stiffened, an edge of ill ease sluicing through her. “You needn’t have told me about the keys,” she said as he nuzzled the top of her head, kissed her brow. “I have no need or wish for—”

“’Tis I who have need, my lady.” He eased back from her, holding her at arm’s length. “Need for you, as you ought well know. And this night, a great need to know you safe.”

Mariota swallowed. “Safe?”

“Aye, safe,” he said, his dark gaze solemn.

Unsettling.

“That is why I told you where the keys are.” He paused, crushed her to him again. “As well, because I trust you. Ne’er doubt that. No matter what comes.”