Her Savage Scot: 1 (Highland Warriors) (10 page)

Damn lies.

The notion of seduction haunted his mind and tortured his body.
But even knowing this encounter wasn’t a prelude to a sexual liaison, he’d
looked forward to seeing her again. As if he was a starstruck fifteen-year-old
boy instead of a warrior of twenty-six whose stars had been seared from his
eyes long ago.

No sound alerted him, but a strange awareness prickled the
back of his neck. Slowly he turned and Aila stood on the ridge, looking down at
him.

He stared at her, spellbound. The afternoon sun cast a halo
around the delicate fabric of her sapphire veil, illuminating the gold and
auburn of her hair. A light summer shawl caressed her shoulders, allowing him
an unhindered view of the blue gown that clung to her breasts and waist and
hips.

Only after he’d approached and offered her his hand did he
notice the heavy Gaelic-inspired cross. And although it reinforced the twin
reasons why he and Aila could never enjoy a brief affair, the warning was
distant in his mind.

“My lady.” He smiled up at her, because how could he not?
With one glance his irritation had dissolved. “Take care.”

She smiled back and allowed him to take her hand. “I’m
familiar with this land, Connor. I know quite well how to take care.”

He clasped her fingers and assisted her down the slope
although it was plain she required no such help. “Do you wish to sit by the
stream? Or shall we walk for a while?”

Her fingers slid from his and for a second he felt oddly
bereft. Yet she didn’t turn away. Didn’t rebuff him by word or glance. She
simply held the folds of her shawl to keep it in place.

“We can walk if you wish.” She glanced at the dog by her
side. “But not too far. Drun’s days of tramping the mountains for hours on end
are long past.”

Connor followed her glance. “He did well to recover from
such an injury. What happened? Did a stag fall on him during a hunt?”

Aila, face averted, ruffled her dog’s head. “Not exactly.
Although,” she hesitated, obviously uncertain whether to continue. “It was a
hunt, of sorts.”

He couldn’t imagine what she meant. “His devotion to you is
clear.”

This time she did look at him. For a moment, he thought he
saw an icy bleakness in her eyes but then she blinked and it vanished.

“Oh.” She offered him a small smile. “The devotion is mutual
I can assure you.”

Lucky dog. The thought chased through his mind and dark
amusement unfurled at the realization he envied a dog Aila’s regard. “Then we
will walk until the noble Drun wishes to rest.”

This time her smile reached her eyes and they sparkled with
mirth as they had yesterday. Before his blunder. And the oddest sensation
assailed him.

She was made for laughter. And yet an aura of sadness clung
to her, as if the loss of her husband was a recent tragedy, still raw.

The dog limped between them, a four-legged chaperone. They
followed upstream, leaving the copse and entering untamed woodland, where
seclusion beckoned.

Except he wasn’t searching for a secluded hollow in which to
take Aila. Much as the notion enticed.

“So, Connor.” Aila glanced at him as she detoured from the
stream. And because he didn’t care where she led him, he followed. “What do you
think of our Highlands? Isn’t it the most beautiful country you’ve ever seen?”

“Aye.” He grinned back at her. “It’s beautiful, Aila. But
Dal Riada is also beautiful in her own way.”

Aila lifted her face to the sun that penetrated the sparse,
leafy canopy and her exquisite golden circlet tumbled from her head. As he bent
to retrieve it, never taking his eyes from her, the blue veil slid to her
shoulders.

She appeared not to notice.

“Dal Riada could never compare.” She turned and looked
surprised to see him on his knees grasping her circlet. “This land is in my
blood.”

He rose and offered her the circlet. She took it then
appeared unsure what to do with it.

“And Dal Riada is in mine.”

She slid the gold circlet through her fingers and finally
placed it back on her head, although she forgot to secure her veil first. He
didn’t remind her. Wasn’t sure why.

“Well,” she said. Her circlet was a little off-center,
giving her an oddly endearing look. He battled the urge to straighten it before
it slid off her hair once again. “We have that in common, at least. A love for
our country.”

“It’s a good start.” The words were out before he could
prevent them, before he could analyze what, exactly, he meant by them.

“Yes.” She didn’t appear to think there was anything strange
about his remark. And why should she? It could easily refer to a long-term
peace between their two peoples.

Wasn’t that what he’d intended to convey? Yet even as he
tried to convince himself he knew, deep inside, he’d meant something more.
Something personal.

“It’s a good start.” She repeated his comment and he caught
her eye, and a flash of awareness seared through his chest. Perhaps she, also,
infused the words with intimate possibilities.

Then she looked away but the connection remained, sizzling
in the air between them. He followed her deeper into the woods, where the trees
grew closer together and the sunlight faded to green.

And then she paused.

“Perhaps we could rest awhile.” She indicated a fallen tree,
its mossy trunk a more than serviceable bench. “I don’t like to overtax Drun.”

“Of course.” Hell, he didn’t care whether they walked or sat
or paddled their feet in a freezing loch in a nearby glen.

She sat, as regally as a queen, and then bent toward Drun
and her circlet once again slipped. He caught it at the same instant she did
and their fingers tangled against the slender gold band.

She gave a breathless laugh and he was enchanted to see the
blush stain her pale cheeks. “I keep forgetting I’m wearing it.”

“It’s exquisite.” He took the circlet from her limp fingers
and examined it. The workmanship was superb. The sapphires genuine. “A family
heirloom?” If so, her family was grand indeed. And again he wondered why her
father hadn’t insisted on her remarriage. One worthy of her status.

“No. My husband gave it to me on our wedding day. It’s quite
unconnected to any of our kin.”

Her husband. Suddenly he lost interest in discussing the
masterful craftsmanship of the circlet. Except if her husband had been able to
afford such riches, he had likely been of the nobility.

And because he didn’t know what else he could say, he handed
the band back to her. She took it, traced her fingers over the sapphires and
then placed it on her lap.

Carefully he sat next to her. Closer than decorum decreed
but not as close as he wished. She didn’t appear to mind, unless the way she
toyed with her cross was an indication of distress.

His glance snagged on that cross. In Dal Riada many women
possessed such items of jewelry although he’d never seen one this elaborate
outside of a church.

Realization dawned and it wasn’t particularly welcomed.
“Another gift from your husband?” He nodded at the item although he couldn’t
fathom why the damn object offended him. Just knew that it did.

Aila snatched her hand from the cross. “What?” She appeared
distracted. “Oh, yes.” Her fingers fluttered over the intricate carvings before
dropping once more to her lap. “This was a family heirloom. Rumored to have
once belonged to Columba himself.”

Connor frowned and leaned in to get a closer look at the
artifact. If it was a relic from Columba’s time, it would make the cross almost
three hundred years old.

And it certainly looked it. He’d wondered at its Gaelic
influence. Was it possible the Christian saint, who originated from his own
ancestors’ land across the water, had lived among the Picts long enough to
bestow upon them personal items?

Connor had always believed the saint’s relics remained on
the sacred Isle of Iona. It was one of the reasons the cursed Vikings kept
raiding. For the treasures left there over the centuries.

“A precious heirloom, for sure.” No wonder she kept it close
to her heart. Not only was it a gift from her dead husband. It had also
belonged to the man who’d brought the light to a pagan land.

He knew, now, the Picts weren’t the savage heathens he’d
first thought. But neither were they truly Christian. The queen and her kin
made no secret of the fact they continued to worship the old gods. So why then
would a noble-born lady like Aila not follow the conventions of the royal house
of Ce?

“It is precious.” Aila’s voice penetrated his thoughts. She
traced one finger over the cross then looked over at him. “It was crafted with
a matching casket. The cross fits into the lid. It’s a kind of key—lift out the
cross and twist the mechanism beneath to open the casket.”

“It sounds ingenious.” More than precious. Priceless. “A
treasured keepsake.” From a husband who had clearly loved his bride. Would such
a love have transcended the physical? He was beginning to doubt his earlier
assumptions. Just because men of the church in Dal Riada followed orders of
chastity from Rome didn’t necessarily mean the Picts did.

“Yes.” Her hand dropped to her lap. “I would have treasured
it forever. Not because of its heritage. But because Onuist gave it to me.” She
hesitated. “But the Vikings stole it nine years ago.”

The same time they had murdered her husband. He ached to
take her hand in his. To offer comfort. And yet despite how close he sat to her
she remained aloof, strangely untouchable, as if his acknowledgement of her
deeply held grief would somehow diminish her.

“The Vikings,” he said, “have a lot to answer for.”

She shot him a glance and in the second their eyes met, he
saw surprise and gratitude merge. It was clear she had steeled herself for his
pity and his lack warmed her.

But she didn’t answer straightaway, as if allowing the
memories to fade. The silence soaked into him, oddly companionable, as though
they had known each other for a long time and words were not needed to shatter
a pause.

Finally she stirred. And he realized he had been staring at
her as she gazed into the woods; staring and not realizing because to look at
her was as necessary to him as breathing.

“You know many of my secrets now.” She offered him a smile
that told him there were many other secrets she kept and had no intention of
ever revealing. “Yet I know nothing of you, save you’re a savage Scots
warrior.”

“What else is there to know?” Did she really still think his
race savage? “I serve my king. There’s nothing else.”

“Nothing?”

A sad reflection on his life, yet nonetheless true. “What do
you want to know?” Perhaps he could persuade her Scots were as refined as her
Picts. Even if their monasteries didn’t hold as many books, or their people
weren’t given a choice in the god they worshipped.

A small smile tugged at her lips. “Are you married, Connor?”

Dull pain twisted his heart. It was his own fault. He should
have known her question would be personal because she was a woman, and personal
was what women did.

With anyone else, woman or otherwise, he’d turn the subject.
He didn’t like talking about that time in his past.

But Aila was different. She had told him so much. How could
he dishonor her by refusing to share his pain when she had shared hers?

Aila saw the way Connor stiffened at her question. She’d
obviously touched a raw nerve, something he never spoke of. And although it
made no difference whether he possessed a wife or not, she knew that it did.

It made all the difference.

She rubbed her thumb over the sapphires on her circlet. So
few members of the aristocracy married for love. She and Onuist had been an
exception and she would rather have cut her own throat than been unfaithful to
him.

But that wasn’t the norm for most of society. Both husband
and wife thought little of taking lovers. Discretion was expected, the
occasional bastard was accepted. Marriage was for strengthening allegiances.
Love was for pleasure.

Were the Scots any different?

“I was married.” There was a strained note in his voice and
her fingers tightened on her circlet as his words penetrated. Was. Dear God.
She hadn’t meant to cause him pain by her question, but it was obvious she had.
“She died four years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” She struggled against the urge to reach out to
him. Offer him comfort. Instead she stared at her fingers as they gripped her
circlet, the gold cutting into her flesh.

“I was at war. As always.” Bitterness tinged the last two
words, or was that her imagination? Warriors thrived on battle. It was their
life. “While I fought Vikings and secured a trophy envied by all, Fearchara
fought for survival. But she perished in childbirth.”

He had a child.

Her heart wrenched, a physical pain that obliterated the
empathy she’d felt for the loss of his wife. Because…

He had a child.

What wouldn’t she have done to own the right to say
she
had a child? A living reminder of Onuist. A manifestation of the young,
carefree love they had shared. Before the ugly darkness had descended.

Foolishly she thought she’d resigned herself to the fact she
would never know the joy of feeling a babe growing within her womb. Never hold
her own child in her arms. But the anguish was as raw as ever. The resentment
in her heart as fierce.

Yet another reason why she had turned from Bride, the goddess
she had adored as a young girl. The goddess who, on so many occasions during
those early years, had teased her with fleeting glimpses of children Bride knew
Aila would never have.

“Connor.” Her voice was husky, a combination of sorrow for
his loss and sorrow for something that could never be hers. “At least you have
your child. That’s more than some are blessed with.”

He looked at her. Stormy-gray eyes glazed with pain-filled
memories. For one incomprehensible moment she wondered if he resented the child,
could not bear to look upon it because it was the reason for his wife’s death.
And rejected it, for how could he think such a thing? How could he not rejoice
that, even in the midst of death, he had been given the most precious of gifts?

“No.” The word was hollow and a shiver trickled along Aila’s
spine as her certainties suddenly shifted. “They tried to save him but he was
already dead before they sliced open her womb.”