Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (25 page)

“And . . . ?” she prodded when he hesitated.

Feeling defeated yet again, Magnus reached to skim his fingertips down the curve of her cheek.
“And,”
he began, his tongue annoyingly thick, “some claim the passing of the mazer gathers all the happiness in each clan member’s heart.”

“But there is more, is there not?”

Magnus nodded. “The ‘
collecting of the clan’s
goodness’ is why the new couple share not only the first sips from the Claiming Cup, but also the last,” he explained. “It is believed those last two sips contain joy of a brilliance to rival all the stars in the night sky. And that, fair lady, is Clan Fingon’s gift to each new married pair we welcome into our midst.”

She sniffed at that.

Sniffed, and glanced aside.

But Magnus could see she was blinking furiously.

Still, true to her MacLean heritage, she recovered with all speed to pin him with a most penetrating gaze.

“Is all well with you, my lord?” she wanted to know. “You sound rather . . .
pained.
”

“Och, to be sure, I am fine,” he said, laying on a deliberate bluster, lying through his teeth.

He wasn’t well at all.

Or mayhap he was.

More well than he’d e’er thought to be again.

Chapter Eleven

C
ANDLELIGHT GLEAMED
on the Claiming Cup, turning its gilt-bronze to shimmering gold. In especial, the embossed war galleys circling the mazer’s rim shone with eye-catching brilliance. Each galley boasted a sail crafted with a different inlaid gemstone and these flashed colored sparks of light as Dagda carried the ceremonial vessel around the great hall, making certain each clansman partook of the ritual sip.

The sharing of his heart’s gladness and joy.

A spectacle Magnus watched with mixed feelings from his place at the high table.

The sadly displaced high table.

A botheration he’d sworn to keep from his mind, if only for this night, but an annoyance nonetheless. And one that had returned with howling vengeance the moment he’d escorted his lady to the table’s temporary place of eminence at the lowest, most humble end of the hall.

“It matters not.” Amicia leaned close, her words and the press of her hand to his sleeve letting him know how well she read him. “I would savor this night were the high table placed in the middle of the wildest moor and with a fierce black wind raging all around us.”

Magnus looked at her, found her watching him with an expression that made his heart clutch. Not trusting himself to speak, he patted her hand, gave it a warm squeeze.

A wee concession she topped by trailing the fingers of her free hand along his jaw in the lightest of touches. Sweet, feathery caresses that sent small ripples of sensation all through him.

Clearly bent on pursuing her advantage, she gave a soft little sigh . . . just the kind of feminine
purr
guaranteed to slip beneath a man’s skin and melt his bones.

“Aye, sir, that would please me well—a table beneath the moon and stars . . . just for us. I would relish such a celebration,” she said, her voice low-pitched, smoky. “I wouldn’t even mind if we dined on simple pottage.”

Magnus stiffened, her well-meant assurances dashing cold water on the languor she’d stirred in him, each word a lance thrust to his pride.

Simple pottage washed down with watered ale would be the kind of fare she’d have to tolerate were her coffers not so bottomless—did her brothers’ largesse not provide every tempting morsel set before them.

Set before every hungry mouth in the MacKinnon hall.

Including the black-hearted dastard whose penetrating stare and malice he could feel coming at him in rank waves ever since he’d claimed his seat.

He could also sense the miscreant’s smirking pleasure in his own discomfiture—yet every time he glanced round, he saw only the benign-smiling faces of his kinsmen.

“You do not believe me,” Amicia was saying, taking her hand from his arm, the thread of hurt in her voice a hard fist in his gut.

Magnus made a noncommittal sound, for a moment, not quite sure what she meant. But then he remembered—dining in the heather and sating oneself on starlight.

A foolishly romantic notion she could almost make him believe in.

“Nay, there you err,” he said. “I do believe you, and fully.”

That is the great tragedy of it.

He
was the one who would see her spared a plaguey life marred with cares and too little meat. But now, after holding her, after tasting her kiss . . .

“But you are . . . displeased,” she said, her eyes bright.

“Amen to that—the stubborn fool,” Colin put in, leaning around several clansmen to level a stare at Magnus. “Mayhap ’tis you who ought to seek healing in your Beldam’s Chair. Perchance it can restore the wits I suspect you left on the banks of the River Earn.”

“Aye, mayhap I should.” Magnus returned Colin’s stare with one of his own. “Your visits certainly have honed the edge of your tongue.”

He raised his ale cup. “Here’s to the Beldam’s Chair! May its curative powers aid the weary and the damned for all time.”

But he slammed down the cup a mite too loudly. Truth was, he
had
been sneaking alone to the sacred stone chair. Though the saints knew what he hoped to accomplish by going there.

He’d just felt a . . . need.

He stared out into the smoky hall, his gaze latching on Dagda. Looking well-pleased with herself, she was giving a great bear of a red-bearded kinsman his obligatory sip from the Claiming Cup.

And getting frightfully close to the high table.

Magnus drew a deep breath, looked back at his wife. “See you, I would only . . . ah, lass—” he broke off, gestured to the opulence all around them. “Funding such splendor would have been a drop in the ocean had I not lost my fortune—the tourney winnings and booty that were stolen from their hiding place when I fought at Dupplin Moor.”

“You can be proud you were there that day,” she said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “My heart swells with pride that you were—that you stood fast to defend this land. And you did so when it must’ve been apparent before the first English arrow flew, that defeat would be inevitable.”

The heat in her eyes softened to a heart-melting warmth. “Aye, you can be proud. Honor is the most noble cloak a man can swirl about his shoulders. The lost riches matter not a whit—not to me.”

A goodly portion of the ice coating that had slid round his heart cracked and fell away, but not nearly enough. His pride still pulsed with agitation regardless of how uncomfortably tight his throat had gone at her words.

Snatching up a freshly-topped ale cup, he tossed down its contents in one long swill. “It matters to me.”

Undaunted, his bride slid a pointed look at the well-laden tables, but Magnus knew that she meant to indicate the clansmen crowding them and not the succulent viands.

“This time it is you who mistake,” she said. “Take a good look at your kinsmen. All that matters is the light on their faces—their restored pride. Not the wealth lining those tables. Only the men sitting at them and the renewed purpose shining in their eyes.”

Pride and purpose he should have put there.

Not the gold coin he’d married.

And that knowledge sat like a cold, immovable lump in his gut.

As did the glaring bareness of the raised dais. The hall’s once-pulsing center gave itself as a grim reminder that beneath the night’s raucous celebration, all was not well within Coldstone’s thick gray walls.

Far from it, an invisible pall hovered over every crowded table, thick as the haze of the smoking peat fire and every bit as choking.

A sad and sorry state made all the more notable in the frequency with which many clansmen refilled their ale cups and the furtive glances they sent into the hall’s shadow-deep corners.

And that, despite the jovial grins pasted on their faces.

Magnus grimaced. The necessity of such ill ease in one’s own hall galled him, but he’d be damned if he’d allow a faceless coward to mar what little jollity his people had seen in years.

Nor would he let it ruin the one night he’d sworn would pass in naught but his wife’s pleasure.

His
pleasure in
her.

With the blackest weather keeping her clan from attending the festivities, Magnus wished doubly hard to make this night memorable for her.

So he thrust back his chair and stood, reaching a hand to his bride as a great hush fell over the hall.

“Dagda! Make haste and hie yourself over here,” he called, eager to move on to the more
enjoyable
part of the evening.

“Son of Clan Fingon!” The seneschal played her part, hurrying forward to plunk down the Claiming Cup.
“Drink, and be as one!”

Magnus glanced at Amicia, meaning to reassure her that this foolery, too, would quickly pass. But the words lodged in his throat when she stood and her cloak slipped from her shoulders.

Thus bared, and with her braids coiled above her ears, naught but flickering candle glow stood between the lush swells of her breasts and any eyes that cared to relish the view.

Indeed, her gown’s bodice dipped lower than any Magnus had yet to see her wear. And thanks to his great height, he was gifted with the best view of all.

Worn off the shoulder, the gown was crafted to delight any man of height who might happen to stand close and cast a downward glance at the inviting expanse of exposed flesh.

For if he did, as Magnus was now doing, the tall man could view much more than the top crescents of her areolae that sometimes peeked above the rim of her gowns.

Nay,
tonight,
the tall man could peer down and view the entirety of each nipple.

And Magnus MacKinnon was a very tall man.

Tall, and with a down-directed gaze.

Over-large, darkish, and relaxed, his wife’s nipples stood fully free within the bodice’s artful gap, each one deliciously puffed, though already beginning to pucker and tighten beneath the heat of his stare.

Magnus tightened as well, and only with great effort tore his gaze from his wife’s now boldly-thrusting nipples.

But not before he lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “You are not wearing a camise.”

She drew back to glance at him, a tiny smile playing at the corners of her lips. “It seemed expedient not to . . . this night.”

“Shall we proceed?” Dagda spoke up, a knowing gleam in her eye as she slid the Claiming Cup across the high table. “There will soon be time aplenty for you to savor . . . other pleasantries.”

Somewhere close by, someone chortled—by the wheezy sound of it, his da. “I knew the lass would please him,” the same thin voice declared, indeed his father’s. “Ho! The laddie will ne’er suffer a cold Highland night again with yon lassie a-warming his bed!”

Secretly glad to see his da enjoying himself for once rather than grousing on about dark powers and curses, Magnus schooled his features into an appropriately solemn expression.

“My wife and I will receive Clan Fingon’s blessing with much favor,” he said, giving the seneschal the expected answer as he lifted the drinking vessel in toast to those gathered in the hall. That courtesy done, he turned to Amicia.

Locking gazes with her, he tilted the Claiming Cup first to his own lips, then offered the heavy mazer to her, taking care not to look any lower than her face as he held it for her.

“Hail to the new lady of Coldstone Castle!” Resounding cheers thundered through the hall before he even took the vessel from her lips.

“Aye, she is the new lady of the keep. Let none forget it!” Magnus lifted his voice above the shouts of acclaim and thrust the empty Claiming Cup above his head, upturning it to prove that nary a drop remained in its depths. “I thank you, Clan Fingon! For the gift of your hearts’ happiness—for your claiming of my lady as your own.”

“Hail to Sir Magnus and Lady Amicia!” the clansmen roared. “May your hearts e’er be filled with gladness, your joys never end. This night and ever after.”

“Hail Clan Fingon—may you e’er be strong and thriving!” Magnus returned, slamming down the mazer. He grabbed Amicia’s hand and raised it high so all could see their linked fingers.

“My good MacKinnons and friends, we salute and thank you,” he finished, lowering their hands. “It has been a long day and longer evening. I invite you to partake of all that is set before you. Aye, I say, let the feasting commence.”

At once, men settled in to the more serious undertaking of filling their bellies and slaking throats parched from cheering. But a new hum of exclamation rose as not a few voices clamored for entertainment—a tale from Clan Fingon’s own silver-tongued bard.

Yielding to their encouragements, Hugh heaved himself to his feet and reached for his lute. He sketched Amicia a gallant bow. “For your honor, fair lady. What would you hear?” he asked her, already strumming a quiet tune, setting the mood that had many clansmen already sitting forward, watching and listening in rapt attention.

Amicia slid a glance at Magnus. “Is there a clan favorite?”

At once, Magnus’s brows snapped together. He held his tongue, but hoped Hugh would not mistake the warning.

A certain one-armed ancestor with too much pride had plagued him enough of late.

But Hugh merely gave a lighthearted shrug. “Many and varied are the tales we enjoy,” he said, ever the smoother of rough waters.

“Would you hear a tale of high valor on the field of battle? Or mayhap one more suited to the night—a tale of beauteous women and chivalrous knights, filled with yearning hearts, lost love, and haunting romance? The endless tragedy of what-ifs and might-have-beens?”

“’Tis the story of Reginald and his lady she might be wanting to hear,” Dagda suggested from where she hovered near the far end of the high table.

“The Devil take Reginald,” Magnus nay-sayed her choice. “My wife has already heard his tale.”

“Then what would you hear, my brother? As honored groom of the day?” Hugh waited.

Magnus frowned.

There wasn’t a tale worth being told that did not hold enough tragedy to pierce a heart of stone: griefs that could ne’er be healed, losses that could ne’er be replaced, yearnings and aches that would ne’er be assuaged.