Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (3 page)

Her presence now, here in his father’s threadbare solar at Coldstone, undid him, too, but for wholly different reasons . . . even if some boldly defiant part of him fair reeled with the impact of her exquisiteness.

“Christ God and all his saints,” his father found his voice, and promptly crossed himself again. “I meant to tell you, son, I swear I did.”

“Tell me what?” Magnus demanded, though deep inside he already knew.

The pallor and shock on Amicia MacLean’s bonnie face told the tale . . . as did his mother’s sapphire ring winking at him from the third finger on her left hand.

The lass herself squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

She met his stare unblinking and her courage in a moment he knew must be excruciating for her did more to soften Magnus’s heart toward her than if she’d thrown open her cloak and revealed all her dark and sultry charms.

Stepping forward, she reached for his father’s hand, lacing their fingers. “I suspect your father has not told you that you already have wed me, Magnus MacKinnon. We were married by proxy a sennight ago,” she said, just as he’d known she would.

Magnus’s jaw dropped all the same.

His
heart
plummeted clear to his toes.

Her
heart stood in her eyes and seeing it there unsettled him more than any deadly arcing blade he’d e’er challenged.

The image of serenity and grace, she’d wield her weapons with even greater skill. That he knew without a shred of doubt.

And worst of all, his damnable honor wouldn’t let him raise his own against her.

Chapter Two

“W
IFE.”
Magnus MacKinnon spoke the word as if its mere utterance might bring jeopardy to his soul. Looking anything but a man renowned for his charm and wit, he rammed a hand through his hair and muttered a curse. “Saints cherish us—married by proxy.”

Disbelief almost visibly coursing through him, he did not so much as glance at Amicia. Instead, he looked up at the water-stained ceiling for a long, uncomfortable moment before leveling the whole of his astonishment at his father.

To Donald MacKinnon’s credit, he met his son’s stare unflinching. “Aye, by proxy—to . . . to lend ease to your homecoming,” he faltered, the waver beneath his words spearing Amicia’s heart. “’Tis as binding and valid as any other marriage unless—”

“Unless it is not consummated. And let it hereby be known that I have no mind to—” Magnus broke off, his color rising. He blew out a quick breath. “God’s bones, did you think these tidings would gladden my heart? A wife? Now, when I have nary a
siller
to my name and naught to credit me save a badly notched sword and a well-dented shield?”

Listening to him, Amicia struggled to ignore the rush of shivers spilling down her spine, but the bitterness in his tone, so different from the husky-sweet voice of his youth, sent edges of empty cold spreading through her as one by one his objections extinguished the light and warmth of her carefully nurtured hopes and dreams.

I have no mind to. . . .

The words hung like ice chips between them, chilling her every indrawn breath. Mortification spinning turmoil in her breast, she rubbed her thumb over the heavy sapphire ring on her left hand. His mother’s wedding band, and now hers.

Her ring, and her comfort.

Her strength through all the long nights she’d lain awake, awaiting his return.

His return, and his pleasure.

Not repudiation.

Yet it was repudiation that poured off him in waves. And each damning surge made her heart clutch, threatened to undo her best efforts at remaining calm.

Faith, but the backs of her eyes burned—so badly that her face hurt with the effort to suppress the stinging. Surely he would not deny their union? Refuse to make her his? Her blood froze at the very thought, even as a hot-pulsing heat began throbbing at her nape.

She blinked.

Hard, for MacLean women did not cry.

From time immemorial, they braved the sorriest plights, faced their most formidable foes, and weathered darkest nights of wind and rain, dauntless and unwavering.

And she, Amicia MacLean, would be no different.

So she swallowed the thickness in her throat, held fast to the old laird’s hand, and was careful to keep her chin proudly raised. Thus steeled, she centered her most unflinching gaze on the hard-set face so irreconcilable with the bonny, smiling-eyed countenance she’d carried in her heart for so many endless, stretching years.

Since the day in the summer of her thirteenth year when she’d strayed from the tourney ground at a gathering of the Hebridean clans, only to lose her footing on a slick patch of peat moss and turn her ankle. Not wanting to heed her pain, or admit she’d lost her way, she’d hobbled about fighting tears until
he’d
loomed up before her and gallantly tucked a sprig of bell heather behind her ear to make her smile.

His own smile dimpled and bright, he’d bent to place an arm behind her knees, then swept her high against his chest and carried her across the rough moorland to her family’s tent. But upon arriving there, he’d been recognized as a MacKinnon, her clan’s then-time foe, and Iain, her quick-tempered brother, had promptly called him an up-jumped lout who did not know his place in the world.

A slur that earned her brother a split lip and bloodied nose; Magnus, a swollen eye; and Amicia, the distress of losing her youthful heart to a bonny bronze-maned lad her clan would ne’er deem worthy.

Hoping he would not see her distress now, either, she stared at him, determined to ignore the skitter of nerves fluttering in her stomach and praying she only imagined the slick clamminess damping her palms.

Taller, wider of shoulder, and more powerfully built than in younger years, Magnus MacKinnon could no longer be described as merely bonny. Nay, he’d grown full magnificent.

Achingly so, as every shred of her yearning acknowledged.

Almost as if he knew her mind, he looked at her then, his clear blue gaze locking deep on hers, and she melted, the whole of her running liquid despite the awkwardness beating all around them, the disappointment squeezing her heart.

She waited, fixing her attention on him rather than her own mounting ill ease. At some point during his time away from MacKinnons’ Isle, he’d abandoned the wild, wind-tossed mane of his youth and now wore his hair clipped. The glossy locks did not quite skim his shoulders, but the color was the same rich chestnut she’d e’er admired. Indeed, each strand gleamed with remembered luster and still made her fingertips tingle with the urge to touch and relish.

But nary a spark of good-humored light danced in his eyes, and the dimples that had so captured her girlish heart had deepened into twin creases that now bracketed the tight, forbidding line of his unsmiling mouth.

Moistening her own, Amicia gave him her bravest smile. “I rejoice to see you, Sir Magnus. Praise God you are returned well and whole,” she said, dipping in a polite half-curtsy.

The best she could manage, clinging as she was to his father’s hand and with her knees so jellied, she wondered her legs didn’t buckle and land her sprawled on the rushes at his booted feet.

Under different circumstances, she would have appreciated the irony of such ungainliness. Her awkwardness would be an oddly fitting reminder of the long-ago day they’d first met—if he even remembered.

But to her dismay, her hard-met attempt to crack his stony expression only brought a further darkening of his handsome features.

“
Whole,
you say? And
well
?” He eyed her, his hands fisted at his sides. The entire imposing length of him, rigid. “My lady, do you not ken there are wounds that even the most discerning eyes cannot see?”

“I see much, my lord.”

He quirked a russet brow. “Truth tell?”

Amicia inhaled to speak, intent on asserting that not only did she speak true, she also knew much of such wounds. The saints knew she bore a few herself—ones he’d inflicted on her, however unwittingly. But before she could form any such rebuttal, he stepped back, edging ever away from her until the sleeping bulk of Boiny, the old laird’s equally ancient mongrel, stayed his retreat.

Caught off guard, he near tripped headlong over the calf-sized beast.

“Saints of mercy!” he called out, arms flailing. “Forby, but here is something I should have expected.” He cast a dark scowl at Boiny, readjusted the plaid slung so casually across his mailed shoulder. “That wretched beast e’er reveled in bedeviling me.”

But some of his ire slipped away even as he said the words and he reached down to scratch the dog’s scruffy gray-tufted head. Boiny, not to be disturbed, peered up at him with one milky but adoring eye and thumped his scraggly tail against the floor.

Looking more than a little defeated, Magnus straightened, but kept a keen eye on the dog until the tail thumping ceased and soft canine snores once more filled the looming silence. Then he dragged a hand down his face and released an audible sigh.

A ragged, weary-sounding one.

“May the Fiend take me, lass, but I swear my ill humor has scarce little to do with you. To be sure, it doesn’t.” He came forward to brush his fingertips down the curve of her cheek, a decidedly regretful expression in his eyes. “Pray put any such thought from you and forgive me if it appears otherwise.”

Amicia flicked a speck of lint from her sleeve. “Mayhap the apology of others, and to you, would be more fitting.”

The words out, she glanced aside. His light stroking of her cheek sent tremors of an entirely different sort tingling all through her. A vulnerability she’d rather he did not see—for the moment.

Seeking to shake off his spell, she willed her heartbeat to slow, then bit back a sigh of regret when he took away his hand.

“It will be my endeavor that no further cause for grievousness shall arise from this”—he dropped a quick glance at her ring—“situation.”

Amicia gave what she hoped would appear a carefree shrug. “I but wished to bid you welcome. You will know your own mind as to how warm a one you desire.”

He pinned her with his hot blue gaze, a strange light in his eyes seeming to shine clear into her soul. “What I desire, what I have e’er desired. . . .”

Amicia narrowed her own eyes at once for something in his words made her heart jump. Faith, even the silence, after he’d let his voice tail off, thrummed with unspoken meaning.

She arched a brow, hoping to encourage him to finish the sentence, but at his stubborn silence, she bit her own tongue as well.

It would scarce do to tell him he suffered a far greater need of healing than forgiveness.

That much was plain to see.

The truth of it stood writ in every line marring his handsome face.

Another truth, namely his impotent resentment at discovering himself burdened by a wife he hadn’t sought, sent wave after wave of apprehension washing over her. A raw, gnawing dread snaked round her rib cage, winding ever tighter until she could hardly breathe.

Afraid her voice might break if she spoke again before her throat ceased trying to close on her, she focused her gaze on the nearest window embrasure. The one with the crooked hanging shutters that her proxy-wed husband, descendant of an illustrious line of great fighting men and widely renowned in his own right, had tried in vain to secure.

Cool, moist air poured through the unprotected opening and thin curtains of damp, eddying mist could be seen gathering beyond its narrow arch. She took solace in the sight, for concealing as the drifting fog might be, it could not undo the beauty of MacKinnons’ Isle.

The mist only veiled what lay beyond the window.

It could not steal away miles of sand-duned shores, rugged promontories, and fine, deep-watered bays. Couldn’t mar the awe she’d felt upon first glimpsing the burnished gold beaches rimming the isle or ruin her appreciation for the ridge of high, cloud-wreathed hills rising from its interior.

Just as Magnus MacKinnon’s frowns and fulminations did not diminish the worthiness of the man hiding beneath them.

The man she wanted.

Had always wanted . . . despite years of silly clan feuding over supposed slights and nefarious doings the origin of which no living person could recall—save that it had something to do with a stolen bride.

But their clans had been friendly in recent years, and she was anything but stolen. Nor was she unwilling, and she knew they could find joy and bliss together—if only he would give her a chance.

So she squared her shoulders and turned back to him, as determined a warrior as any to e’er set foot on a true field of battle.

“My sorrow that you could not have been told sooner,” she loosed her first assault, the cold trembling of Donald MacKinnon’s aged fingers helping her maintain an air of dignity and grace.

She let her gaze light over her husband’s rumpled traveling clothes. Dried mud crusted the leather of his worn-looking boots and her pulse quickened, her heart catching, at the darkish smears on his ragged-edged plaid.

Ominous stains that looked suspiciously like blood.

A rash of chills slid down her back and her stomach wrenched at the grim reminder of the horrors, the grinding defeat he’d seen at Dupplin Moor.

“You have only just arrived and are full weary,” she said, pouring compassion into her words. “I vow it no great wonder you’d chaffer upon learning—”

“I’ve learned naught but what canna be undone,” Magnus jerked, not letting her finish.

The words rang hollow, as if he’d pulled each one from the dredges of his soul. “A marriage needs a bed-going to be sanctified. A dowry can be returned unspent. A bride, unsullied.”

“Of a certainty, my lord, and well I know it,” Amicia granted, refusing to acknowledge the tight knot pulsing ever hotter at the back of her neck. “But—”

“For truth! What’s keeping Dagda?” This time, the elder MacKinnon cut her off. Yanking his hand from hers, the old laird cast a desperate glance at the opened door.

But Dagda, Coldstone’s redoubtable female seneschal, aptly named after the formidable and quite masculine chief of the mythical race of Irish gods, the
Tuatha dé Danann,
was nowhere to be seen.