Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (21 page)

A ribald and raucous undertaking, the bawdy rituals of which he could do without.

Aye, the coming night would prove a challenge to be suffered through—lest some dark-hearted soul had ventured into a secret vault beneath the dais end of the hall and meddled with the workings of an ancient trapdoor that one of his more dastardly-minded forebears had built into the floor beneath the high table.

One touch to the triggering mechanism, and anyone sitting on the wrong side of the dais table would vanish into a supposedly bottomless pit—trestle bench and all.

A convenient way to dispose of an enemy.

Or, with a wee bit of devious contrive, a whole horde of carousing revelers.

Laird, family, and kinsmen alike.

Plunge down worse than the latrine chute, you will, you stoop-backed bastard!
A certain someone stood swathed in the hall’s blackest shadows and glared the threat at Donald MacKinnon, even as he lowered his bony bottom onto the padded seat of his laird’s chair.

The pestiferous old goat needed cushions to sit upon—frail and feeble as he was. Not that his scant weight would keep him from falling all the harder into his own keep’s deepest pit!

Aye, hearing mass on his knees for a thousand years wouldn’t save him.

Him, his fool sons, and—would the gods of wrath and vengeance be kind—as many MacKinnons as the gaping dais floor could swallow.

A pity the eldest son, great champion of the field and unwilling husband, hadn’t the wits to recall his dastardly forebear’s favored means of having done with those who displeased him.

A greater shame that no MacKinnon chief since those times had thought to take an ax to the rusty but still-functional triggering mechanism hidden away in a dank, cobwebby corner of Coldstone’s deepest, least-visited undercroft.

Melting out of the darkness, a certain someone took especial care to blend into the milling throng, and even to offer Hugh a few words of solace on his busted elbow.

But urgent matters needed attendance, so the vengeance-seeking figure pushed with ever more determination through the smoke-hazed hall, cutting a path through boisterous clansmen and scurrying servitors.

Eager to slip from view and mind, Clan Fingon’s faceless foe sought the blessed shadows. And savored the anticipation, basking in the glory of knowing fullest retribution would soon be had, and not long thereafter nothing would disturb the desolation of MacKinnons’ Isle save the sound of the sea and the cry of seabirds.

Lips twisting in a grim smile at the notion, someone finally reached the sheltering gloom at the lower end of the hall, only to spin around, eyes flying wide at the sudden commotion on the raised dais.

Hands curled in tight, white-hot fury, that same someone looked on as Magnus barreled his way through startled-looking kinsmen. He burst onto the dais, plucked his spluttering da out of his laird’s chair, then tossed the old he-goat over one shoulder and leapt off the dais before anyone in the hall could even draw a breath.

A great ruckus ensued, shouts and outcries ringing all around, the confusion so great, not an intelligible word could be understood.

Not that everyone present required an explanation for the laird-in-waiting’s odd behavior.

Frowning blacker than the coming Highland night and muttering damnation, the figure slipped from the hall, alone and unobserved.

Old MacKinnon’s tourneying son did indeed have his wits about him. A surer method of having done with Clan Fingon would have to be found.

If sawed-through privy seats, poisonous adders, and ancient trapdoors proved to no avail, more drastic methods would be employed.

Or aimed at softer, less-suspecting targets.

He’d given an oath and was a man of honor.

Magnus would not lose his head and rail at the evidence that his express orders had been so baldly ignored.

Thus determined, he repeated the words to himself as, much later, in the gathering dusk, he stood in shadow and watched
her
creeping through the even darker shadows of the stables.

Old Boiny’s presence should have warned him, though. The calf-sized beast lay snoring before the stable door, his great and shaggy bulk sprawled across the threshold and blocking the entry.

Magnus blew out a breath. He’d only wanted to stroll about a bit, examine the curtain walls and mayhap ride around the outer perimeters, looking for a newly dug tunnel or any such hidden means into the stronghold, when he’d noticed wisps of pungent smoke drifting out from the stable door.

A door that stood ajar . . . curling threads of smoke he had no explanation for—until now.

The smoke tendrils came from the small torchlight she held in her hand as she poked about where, regardless of what she sought, she’d find little more than dust, cobwebs, and a pitiful few underfed garrons.

Beasts who seemed to have given her their trust as wholly as old Boiny, for nary a one of the sturdy little horses so much as neighed protest at her intrusion.

Only
he
objected.

And to more things than discovering her thrusting her pretty nose into every dark corner of his lowly stables.

Aye, he must be in high favor with the gods indeed to live in a land of lochs, bogs, and rough moorlands and ne’er be able to take a step without one fetching raven-haired lass forever rising up out of the mists to plunge his life into turmoil.

As if sensing his stare, or mayhap his thoughts, she suddenly froze in her furtive exploration and whirled around. “Oh!” she gasped. “W-what are you doing here?” Her chest heaved, and a moth-eaten saddlecloth was clutched in her free hand. “I was told you were off making your rounds outwith the castle walls.”

Magnus had to smile.

At least the lass was honest.

“Do you always inquire of my whereabouts and undertakings before you set off on your own, my lady?”

She lifted her shoulders, had the grace to color. “I had reason to look in here,” she said, nipping the little handheld torch into an empty wall bracket. “I also did not want my . . . eh . . . search to upset you needlessly. There are already so many things weighing on your mind.”

“The time is long past to consider whate’er might be on my mind, wouldn’t you say?”

Magnus regretted the words as soon as they left his tongue, but, as so often in his life, the Lady Amicia brought out the worst in him.

As if to prove it, he stepped over Boiny’s sleeping form and strode through the darkened stables to stand before her. “You could lend my mind ease if you tell me what you hoped to find in here, my lady.”

He ran his fingers along the rough wood of a stall partition, the movement releasing a puffing trail of dust. “You could comb through this stable from now until the edges of doom and find nary a purse full of silver or a single length of fine braid,” he said. “Nary an ell of dearest cloth. Nothing at all to catch a woman’s eye and fancy.”

Her blush deepened and she glanced aside, her fingers still digging into the ancient saddlecloth. “I believe you ken such frippery holds little appeal for me, Magnus MacKinnon.”

“Aye, I do know it,” he said, stepping so close the heat of his body warmed her. “So what
were
you hoping to find?”

Amicia felt her cheeks flame, more with his proximity than what she must tell him, so she peered into the deep shadows of a nearby stall and answered him.

“’Tis glass shards or narrow, sharp-edged pieces of metal I was seeking,” she said, meeting his eye—and not at all surprised to see the shock there. “That, or perhaps an overlong thorn or two,” she added, making it worse.

“I warrant I know you well enough, too, to trust that such objects were not sought to bring about my demise,” he said grimly. “Nor anyone else’s, aye?”

Amicia nodded.

“I wished to avert someone being hurt—including these dear beasts,” she said, casting a quick glance at a swaybacked mare watching them patiently from a nearby stall.

“And what kind of . . .
harm
did you think to prevent?” he wanted to know, sounding and looking as if he already did. “What made you think of such a danger?”

Scrunching the saddlecloth in her hands, Amicia sent up a silent prayer that he would not think her as prone to fanciful imaginings as his father. “I saw a dark-cloaked figure scurry in here earlier,” she said, kneading the rough, scratchy cloth. “Whoe’er it was, they darted from shadow to shadow, or crept along hugging the tower walls, until they reached the stables and slipped inside.”

She looked at him, letting her eyes dare him to believe her. “Just watching chilled my blood, and then I remembered my brothers speaking of a friend’s anguish when he lost a prized steed because an enemy slipped a thorn beneath their friend’s saddlecloth. The moment their friend mounted his horse, the thorn was driven deep into the horse’s back, plunging the beast into madness. The young man was thrown—he could have suffered grave injury or worse but took only bruises. Regrettably, the horse broke a leg in the frenzy and had to be killed.”

“And you feared I would face such a fate tonight?”

“I thought it possible.”

“Then I must thank you, my lady. And count myself blessed to have such an astute bride.”

Amicia’s blood quickened at the underlying softness beneath his simply spoken words. “I did not find anything,” she blurted, her pulse beginning to beat a fast rhythm. “I may have let your father’s chatter get the better of me.”

“Whether you were right or not scarce matters.” He walked a few steps away from her, stood looking toward the light gray outline of the open door. “’Tis that you cared to come looking that I am thanking you for.”

Thanking her.

Magnus MacKinnon was thanking her.

And she wanted so much more.

But a thank-you was a thank-you, and
any
emotion was better than indifference.

Much better.

So why did the backs of her eyes ache with a jabbing, scalding heat, and why had her throat gone so frightfully tight she could scarce pull air into her lungs?

Digging her fingers ever deeper into the smooth silk of the saddlecloth, she fixed her burning gaze on him, stared oh-so-hard at his bonny young face,
willed
him to look her way.

She wanted to give him her favor.

The fine length of jewel-studded silk her father had given her a fortnight ago, claiming the precious cloth held all the colors of the sun.

She
thought the silk a perfect match for Magnus MacKinnon’s wild mane of lustrous bronze-colored hair.

And she wanted him to have it as a token of appreciation for helping her when she’d hurt her ankle at a similar gathering of the clans a year before.

A token, too, of her affection, for she’d given him her heart that very same afternoon. But telling him so could wait . . . or would have to.

She could not do or say anything to him if he ne’er bothered to look her way.

Biting her lip, she lifted her arm and waved the silk high above her head. Fine and light as it was, it snapped and rippled in the wind at once, and she was sure he’d notice.

Tears of frustration began filming her eyes, blurring her vision, but she kept her arm in the air, holding up her favor until her shoulder burned as hotly as her eyes and her arms and fingers began to tingle.

And still he did not look.

“Hell’s damnation,” Amicia hissed beneath her breath, venting her misery with one of her brothers’ curses.

It felt good to at least curse since she could not call out Magnus’s name. To do so, him being a MacKinnon, would have her father dragging her off the games field by her ear and mayhap even forbidding her to return the next year.

So she kept brandishing her shimmering gold prize, praying he would see and come for it—for if he did, especially as a much-loved games champion, even her da would not be able to keep her from presenting it to him.

To do so then, with all the clans looking on, would be a gross breach of Highland etiquette.

So she hoped and waved and stared his way, silently calling his name as loudly as her heart would let her.

But he stood, turned halfway from her, almost in full profile, and so hemmed in by clamoring, clutching maidens, her hopes of catching his eye grew slimmer by the moment and the archery trials were about to begin.

Crying inside, she drank in his golden beauty, branding him onto her memory so she could relive, at will, each precious moment of looking at him. Each dimpled smile he flashed at someone, every bonny twinkle in his laughing blue eyes. Even if his smiles and laughter weren’t meant for her.

In her dreams, she claimed them.

Saw again her young Caledonian god, standing in half-profile to her, so proud in the sunshine of a fine Hebridean day, with the wind tossing his gleaming bronze mane, his handsome face shining.

His refusal to accept her favor as sad as the way her beautiful silk banner turned old and scratchy in her hands, its cool smoothness forever gone, the teensy seed pearls and gemstones adorning its edges now only irritating bumps of itchiness on a tattered and smelly saddlecloth.

The saddlecloth!

Jerking, Amicia flung it from her, her heart still splitting with the anguish of her memories. She swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks, not surprised to find them wet, as she peered frantically about the darkening stable, once more looking for Magnus.

Once more having to note that he’d gone, left her behind, just as he’d done in her oh-so-vivid dream.

But then she saw him, still there, and her heart bounded. He stood in the deeper shadows near the door and was watching her with the strangest, most intense of expressions.

His eyes almost blazed in the darkness, and were she one to believe in wonders, she’d swear a passion as heated as her own flared in those magnificent blue depths.

Turbulent emotions roiling just beneath the surface of his carefully checked control.

Emotions she intended to unleash.

And now, unlike all those years ago, she possessed the will and backbone to run with her heart. Even better, there was no one around to drag her off by her ear and deny her what she wanted so badly.