Warrior and the Wanderer (25 page)

“Halt!” one of them shouted importantly.

Alasdair did as ordered, and looked down at the guards as sternly as they looked up at them.

“Is there a problem?” Ian asked. “Don’t they know we have the king with us.”

“Alasdair will tell them in good time, if necessary. ’Tis best we protect His Majesty’s identity until we are within the castle.”

“Who are ye?” another guard demanded.

Alasdair harrumphed with the delicacy of thunder. “’Tis Lady Campbell of Inverary to see Her Majesty, the queen regent.”

“Aye, we ken who Her Majesty is,” the first guard said. “And we also ken who Lady Campbell is. Lord Spittal left word that should she try to come into Stirling, we should not let her pass.”

Bess gasped. Lord Spittal! Who was this man but a royal tailor? What power had he to keep her from Stirling Castle?

One of the guards eyed the king. Ian’s plaid had fallen down his slender back revealing his rumpled and stained clothes. James looked down at him, but did not utter a word. The king looked more like a scruffy boy than Scotland’s monarch. The guard walked past him and stopped before Bess’s horse. She sat stiffly in the saddle. If she could burn this pike-carrying bastard down with one stare, she would certainly try. The claymore on her back would not fail her if her wicked stare did.

The guard pointed at Ian. “Ye’re the bard. Lord Spittal sent word that ye would be traveling with Lady Campbell.”

Ian shifted behind her. “Always nice to have advance publicity,” he said.

Bess reached back to give his knee a warning squeeze, but he was no longer behind her.

Ian had slipped from her horse and stood before the guard. The two other guards stepped forward to join their leader.

“Aye,” Ian said. “I’m the famous bard. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

The guard did not betray that he knew of him.

Ian continued, “The queen has requested my presence. Lord Spittal must not have been made privy to that vital piece of information.”

Ian’s strange language made the guards take one step back. They were either afraid of him or ready to have him shackled into the dunking chair on the north side of the bridge.

“Ian,” she urged in a loud whisper. “Dinnae—”

He stepped close to her mount turning his back on the guards. “When you see a chance…,” he said, holding his hand in front of his leather doublet, aiming on finger at the road just beyond the raised portcullis, the road that climbed a hill to the castle. “…Make a break for it. I’ll find you.”

She began to shake her head, but Ian turned away before he could see her disapproval for her and Alasdair to take the King and “make a break for it”. There was little doubt in her mind that Ian would find his way into the castle. He was finding his way into her heart, and she had once thought it bore a rampart more formidable than Hadrian’s Wall.

“Want a song? Want the full Ian MacLean Experience?” he asked the guards.

Young King James looked at Ian, a smile on his face. He, too, anticipated this “experience”.

Bess rode up beside Alasdair and their royal charge. Catching her champion’s attention, she nodded toward the open gate. Alasdair nodded in understanding.

The guards backed away from the gate as Ian stalked closer to them, leading them away from Bess, the king, and Alasdair. He stopped in the center of a circle of torchlight. Ian raised his arms and his face to the soot-stained ceiling.

“OHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” he sang loudly up to the rafters. The guard’s eyes snapped wide open.

Then Ian launched his voice and his entire body into a song that began with “c’mon” and then the song turned into to some gibberish about lighting a baby’s fire. The melody was as harsh as any he had sung in court. James bobbed his head a few times and his right foot seemed to have the palsy as he tapped it up and down in thin air while sitting upright on Alasdair’s mount.

The guards, obviously, thinking Ian was a chimera or some otherworldly specter stepped away from him until they were halfway inside the bridge.

“C’mon bay-bee!” Ian wailed. “MAKE A BREAK FOR IT!!!!!” The last line he screamed out making it sound like part of his mad song. Bess knew it was her signal.

Without hesitation, she jerked the reins and jabbed her heels into her mount. The horse whinnied, in harmony with Ian’s song, and surged forward. Alasdair popped to attention and urged his mount under the portcullis with the king hanging fast to his waist. Ian’s plaid flapped behind His Majesty’s and dropped to the ground. Bess had no choice but to drive her horse over it as she followed her champion and her king, stealing one glance over her shoulder at Ian and the stunned guards.

He will make it to the castle, she prayed. Dear God, he has to.

* * * *

The night deepened into midnight, and Bess still waited for Ian to find his way into Stirling Castle.

She stood quietly, alone, beside a large tapestry of a unicorn that covered one wall of the queen regent’s vast outer chamber. A joyful melody from a quintet to her immediate left emphasized the lively air of this castle situated on the eastern border of the Highlands. Bess had united the queen regent and her monarch son without either of their groups of councilors in attendance. It had been a private reunion.

In their royal joy, they had given Bess the thing she thought she wanted more than anything: royal censure against Lachlan MacLean.

The mere thought of the word, censure, gave her a bitter taste on her tongue. She had in her possession by signed royal decree the right to expand Campbell holdings to the western isles and into Lachlan’s holdings, for the good of her clan and for the good of her monarch. Censure oft came with blood and battle, but now Bess and her clan had the might of the monarchy behind them. She should feel satisfied.

But she thought of Ian, and wanted him with her to share in her victory. And to tell him she no longer needed him as her witness after all. And he was free of her company.

This thought pulled her from the only thought she should have: to fight for the good of her clan, with the king’s army behind her, and to bring Lachlan down.

Yet, her mind could not rest until Ian was back in her company.

She watched Alasdair prepare to leave to return to Inverary. He was to lead a large contingent of the king’s soldiers there to help uphold the royal declaration to side with Clan Campbell should Lachlan strongly disagree, which was a certainty. Bess was staying behind for a wee while in the hopes that Ian would show himself. Was this the action of a Highland chief? She had asked herself that dozens of times and could not arrive at a proper answer. Only a wee while, and then she would depart.

Bess gave Alasdair a confident smile. He leaned near her ear and whispered, “Fear no’, m’Lady. If I find the bard, I’ll send him to ye straightaway.”

“Just see ye safely to Inverary with the king’s soldiers. I’ll leave no later than daybreak and meet ye there.”

Alasdair gave her a quick nod. “Watch yer back, m’Lady.”

“Aye. Of course.”

Alasdair lifted the unicorn tapestry and disappeared into the servant’s passage. Bess sighed and turned around. She watched the happy commotion on the other end of the chamber. The queen regent and her James toasted each other with overflowing silver goblets as the queen’s ladies-in-waiting watched.

Bess slumped against the tapestry, weary from the day, from her worry about Ian’s well being. The unicorn tapestry suddenly gave way behind her. With a gasp, she fell through servant’s opening. She slipped from the chamber and behind the tapestry, stopping in mid-fall.

“Hello, Blaze,” a familiar voice said above her.

She looked up at Ian from the security of his arms. He helped her to regain her balance. Ian crinkled his brow, and a half-grin on his lips. “What’s the matter?”

The muffled music and voices on the other side of the tapestry faded as she explored Ian’s face, the scent of him, the way just standing before him, still gathered in his arms made her body weaken, made her forget anything but that moment.

Ian would leave her.

Yet, she wanted to live a lifetime with him before he departed.

But where was he returning? Or was it
when
was he returning? She swallowed. Back to his time, so he had once claimed, and she was finding herself believing him. There could be no there explanation for how he had so suddenly come into her life, how he behaved, how he spoke, and how he promised he had to depart to some vague place called “his time”.

“Didn’t the king keep his promise?” Ian asked, brows knitted in confusion. “Is that it? Did the wee bastard go back on his word?”“Quite the opposite,” Bess said. “Their majesty’s have censured Lachlan and have declared their support for my clan.”

“That’s great, Blaze. Just what you wanted—” He paused, then said, “But why doesn’t your face show it?”

“Just because the royals have given my clan their support, doesnae mean Lachlan will give up his lands peacefully. War is certainly on the way.”

Ian held her tighter. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Alasdair has taken some of the King’s soldiers to Inverary. He will rally then with our Campbell warriors. I must be there to lead them. I leave at daybreak.”

“
We
leave at daybreak,” he said.

“Aye…we. I’ll take ye to where we met as I promised.”

Ian embraced her tighter, burying his face in her hair. “Thank you.”

“Her Majesty had availed an upper chamber for my use,” she whispered into his ear.

Ian paused. “A chamber? An upper chamber?”

“Aye.”

“Can we get there from here?”

“Aye, we can.”

“Time’s a’wasting,” he said with a grin. “Let’s go.”

His words were truer than he knew.

Bess took Ian’s hand and led him to the first act of a lifetime until he left her forever.

* * * *

“Ten days,” Bess said mournfully. “’Tis all ye have left until ye go.”

“When you say it like that it sounds more like ten minutes,” Ian said as he drew the back of his hand slowly along her side. The fire in the hearth where she laid so near warmed her naked flesh.

They rested on the plaid he had worn, the same long length of wool that slipped from Alasdair’s mount when he rode the king over the bridge, the plaid Ian had rescued from the ground before finding his way back to Bess.

She shivered under his touch. Ian allowed his hand to continue its journey, around her breasts, gliding over the taut nipples, making her shudder again. This time she punctuated it with a lingering sigh.

“I have to go back, you know.”

Despite his confident tone, he could not summon the list of reasons he must leave. The list he had kept in his mind since he had come here and found out when exactly he was. The
why
he had to leave had to do with a mysterious Dane and his portent of a low tide and exposed Corvette turned time machine. Ian knew with biting certainty that if he missed the next tide, the next full moon that kept the firth far from the shore, he would miss his only opportunity to get home. At least that was what he thought the Dane had meant in Edinburgh prison, back when getting back to his own time had seemed so bloody important to him.

He gazed at Bess, lying on her side before the fire. Reasons to stay, to upset “the balance”, bombarded him.

All he could say was, “I have to go in five days.” He drew his hand along the side of her face. “Let’s make the most of it. You have what you want. The king has sent his soldiers to help your clan get more land. You—”

“Don’t have my revenge.”

“Excuse me?”

“I want revenge against Lachlan for murdering my brother and trying to murder me.”

Ian sighed heavily. “What do you mean exactly?”

“He’ll pay,” she said.

“With his life?” he asked. “Is that what you mean?”

Bess paused. She wanted to say ‘aye, with his life’, but could not. There was clear disapproval in Ian’s tone. “’Tis the Highland way.”

“You’re going to take his land, and toss him into prison. Isn’t that revenge enough?”

“No. He deserves worse.” Her gaze darkened.

“Don’t, Blaze. Murder isn’t an option. It never is. You would be bringing yourself to Lachlan’s level if you attempted it.”

She averted her gaze to the fire. “Aye, ’tis true. But I must do what is best for my clan.”

“Begin by doing what is best for you, Blaze,” he said.

“Sounds a wee bit selfish,” she said.

“Take care of yourself, and you are better prepared to take care of your clan. Is murdering Lachlan what is best for you? Could you live with that once it was done?”

She had not considered that her conscience would live on after Lachlan did not should she exact her revenge to the fullest degree. She was no killer. And she did have the king’s army to bring Lachlan down. And she did have this night with Ian…

He brushed his fingertips through her hair. She closed her eyes and lulled her head back. “Tonight will be for us,” she sighed.

She pressed her body against his naked flesh and walked her fingertips down the center of his chest. A small smile crossed her lips.