Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] (26 page)

"He would and did. You are meant to be mine."

"I will never be yours!"

He snatched her wrist. "Remember the Stone Maiden. Nothing can protect you once spring is here," he hissed. "Neither kinsmen nor Norman, nor the faeries themselves."

Sebastien strode toward them, sliding his sword free. Bright steel flashed in a falling arc to touch Cormac's forearm. "Take your hand from her or lose it to the blade," he said. Behind him, he heard the sound of steel slithering free from leather sheaths as the elderly clan members and his own knights grasped their weapons.

Cormac let Alainna go. Sebastien eased her behind him with an extended arm, and rested his sword tip on Cormac's chest. "Be on your way," he growled.

"Norman," Cormac said. "Now that you are laird of Kinlochan, you and I are enemies. I will spare your life because you helped my son, but I will never call you friend—unless you honor Laren MacLaren's promise to me and give me his daughter and a fair portion of her land."

"My father made no promise to you," Alainna countered.

"Giric knows!" Cormac said, turning. "Tell her about the day Laren MacLaren was wounded to his death!"

"I told her what she had to know," Giric said. "That he was ambushed by you and your men. What should she know, but that tale of treachery?"

Sebastien saw Alainna close her eyes in anguish, then look at her foster brother. "What does he mean, Giric? What more should I know?"

"No more," Giric said through tight lips, glaring at Cormac.

"Laren MacLaren gave me permission to wed his daughter," Cormac said. "He gave our marriage his blessing."

"You are a liar," Giric snarled.

"I should kill you where you stand," Cormac said. "Your life is only saved today because it is the Sabbath."

"Enough!" Sebastien cut in. "Be on your way."

"You and I will meet at Turroch, Norman," Cormac said. "Alainna MacLaren, ask Giric about that day. Do not forget that you are mine. If you value your clan—what is left of it—you will choose me for your husband, for I know your lands as well as my own, and I am a Highlander to my bones, unlike some." He glared at Sebastien and turned away from the pressing edge of the sword, striding away with his brother behind him.

Sebastien watched them vanish over a hill. Once he was sure that they had no other men with them and had gone, he sheathed his sword. He turned to discover Alainna and Giric standing not far from him, talking earnestly. Beyond them, the others resumed their journey over the hills.

"It is not so," Alainna said as Sebastien came closer.

"It is," Giric said, and reached for her arm. She pushed his hand away. "I am sorry, girl. I hoped never to have to tell you. It is true. I heard them talking that day."

She glanced at Sebastien, and he saw longing and fear in her eyes. "My father promised me to Cormac?" she asked Giric. "How could he do that?"

"He was hurt badly, and he knew he would not survive. I saw it in his face, that awakening that comes into a man's eyes when he knows his death is upon him."

Alainna put her fist to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "Go on."

"Cormac had not wounded Laren with his own hand, but he saw your father fall. I could not get to Laren myself, for I had a wounded leg, and Aodh the Red had fallen beside me. His weight trapped me with my back against a rock."

"Aodh," she said. "He was a good man. But tell me what came next, with my father."

Sebastien began to walk away to give them privacy, but Alainna held up a hand as if pleading for him to stay. He did, standing quietly, watching her with concern.

"I saw Cormac kneel beside your father. He could have given Laren the killing blow there and then, but he did not."

"My father spoke to him?"

"Cormac demanded that your father surrender the feud to Clan Nechtan. Laren refused. But he asked for peace and an end to the feud."

"Cormac asked for my hand, and my father agreed?"

"I do not know what was said between them. But Cormac nodded as if he were satisfied. He called to his men to leave when they could have killed us all, for they were five times our numbers and had taken us by surprise. And I know what your father told me when I finally crawled to his side."

"You told me he said nothing to you that day," Alainna said. "You did not tell me any of this before."

"How could I hurt you when you were already suffering?" Giric asked. "I kept it to myself. I knew what Laren wanted." He drew a long breath as if he fought a powerful emotion. "Laren told me that you would be chief in his place soon," he went on. "He asked me to watch over you. He begged me to make sure that you married, before spring arrived, the strongest warrior to be found, someone to defeat Cormac."

"He must have given Cormac permission to marry me once the spell over the Stone Maiden ends," Alainna said. "Then he asked you to see me wed to someone else before then, to thwart Cormac."

"I think so. Cormac is sure he will have you when spring comes. But your father wanted you to be safe, Alainna. Laren would approve of your marriage to Sebastien."

Alainna nodded, and looked at Sebastien, her gaze fastened to his. "My father would want this marriage for me," she echoed.

Sebastien watched her steadily, while the cold wind whipped at his cloak.

"He would want you to be happy," Giric said quietly. "As all of us want for you."

She looked at him. "Do the old ones know about my father's request?"

"Some of them," Giric said.

She nodded slowly, her eyes spilling over with tears.

Sebastien felt something tug inside his heart. He took a step toward her, compelled by the need in her expression. Her hand lifted toward him.

Dear God
, he thought. He wanted to hold her so much that it was painful, a sudden physical ache inside him. He took another step forward.

Then Giric took her shoulder and turned her into his own embrace.

Sebastien paused. He saw the loving look that Giric gave her, saw her crumple against him. He clenched his hands against the yearning that swelled in him.

Giric belonged here in her world, he told himself. He did not, regardless of king's orders, regardless of the game destiny played with their lives. No matter if he longed to be part of such a kinship, such a legacy. No matter that he craved Alainna with every part of his being in that moment.

His was a wandering soul, as Alainna had termed it. He had never known a true home, and he wondered if he would ever belong anywhere, no matter how much he wanted it.

Giric smoothed his hand over Alainna's back, and Sebastien felt a stabbing sensation in his gut. He turned away in silence. Alainna regarded Giric as a brother only and needed her kinsman's comfort, he knew, but he did not like the sight of it.

He drew a sharp breath and walked away. He felt a strange hurt inside, as if a strand of his heart had been torn away, as if he left part of himself on the windy hilltop with Alainna.

Chapter 16

Alainna waited while the others filed out of the church after Father Padruig gave the final blessing. Their voices echoed against the whitewashed walls, and soon the priest's booming laugh rose above the rest as he joined them outside. She heard Lorne introduce Sebastien to Father Padruig, and she saw Una and Giric glance toward her as they left. She motioned them ahead. They would understand, she knew, what she must do.

She crossed to the north side of the church and went through a narrow doorway. A candle flickered in a wall niche, and she lifted it, shielding the flame as she walked down a few steps into a dark crypt.

The underground chamber, with an earthen floor and a low, vaulted stone ceiling, contained several tombs. Alainna went to the farthest corner, where the tombs of her parents and brothers were placed, the space forming a small chapel. She set the candle on the floor, knelt on the cold earth, and bowed her head to pray for their souls.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of her father. Knowing his wound was fatal, harassed in his weakness by his mortal enemy, he had been forced to agree to something he did not believe was right. He had protected her by asking Giric to make certain she wed a warrior before Cormac could claim her.

She bent over her folded hands and cried out of sorrow and thankfulness. But the knowledge that her father would approve of her marriage to the Breton knight was a great relief and a true blessing. She wiped her tearstained face, feeling exhausted, washed clean. Sorrow would return again, she knew, unbidden as a storm, capable of overwhelming her. She weathered it a little more easily each time, though she knew she might never fully recover from the hurt of losing her family.

She could only find niches for the pain, the emptiness, the memories. And she felt as if she had grown stronger from the burdens she carried.

After a while she whispered a prayer for her sleeping family, rose to her feet, and went to the crypt stairs. From above, she heard the scrape of boots on stone.

Sebastien stood in the narrow doorway. She looked up at him, candle in her hand. Then, silently, she beckoned for him to come down into the crypt.

"Are they here?" he asked as he entered.

She knew what he meant, and nodded. "Come, I will show you." She spoke softly in English, the language they most often used with each other. She held the candle high and led him to the corner. "My parents are on that side, and my brothers are there," she said. "They too are buried side by side. Conall and Niall were soul-friends in life. We put them together in death, beneath one tombstone."

"Soul-friends?" he asked.

"Souls linked to one another through love and loyalty all their lives. They can be comrades, brothers and sisters, or lovers. Not everyone has a soul-friend, but those that do are blessed." She touched the sandstone slab that covered them; carved in raised relief, two warriors surrounded by an intertwining vine wrapped around two swords.

"My cousin Malcolm made this tomb for them," she said, brushing away the dust on its surface. "Malcolm is not buried here, for he died in Glasgow and was laid to rest there. He made my mother's stone, just there, when I was a small child. She never knew the sorrow that came to us later."

Sebastien nodded. Tall and broad-shouldered in his armor, his hair sheened gold in the candlelight, he seemed to fill the tiny space. Quiet power radiated from him, bringing a sense of comfort and security that Alainna had rarely experienced before.

That tangible steadfastness came from more than a muscled, skillful body, or the reassurance of few words. He emanated a reserve of inner strength. She wanted to draw from it as she might draw water from a well. She desperately wanted to give him something of herself, too, but she was not sure how to do that, and not sure what he would accept from her.

He seemed a private, guarded man, but she had glimpsed compassion, gentleness, and tenderness in him. His brief references to his childhood revealed vulnerability that contrasted the hard shield of his power.

Strange, she thought, glancing up at him in the shadows, to have such thoughts about a man she had once thought only to resent and resist. Strange to think, too, that soon she would be married to him. That thought stirred a subtle excitement that quickened her heartbeat like a drum.

He turned to the tomb beside her mother's. "And your father's stone? Who carved this, if your cousin was gone?"

"I did this." She traced her fingers along the interlaced border that framed a knight holding a sword, with a fortress carved beneath.

"You?" He sent her a keen glance. "My God, girl." His voice was hushed, awed. She blinked tears away again, and turned to stand beside him, her arm pressing his in the small space. He did not shift away, his solidity a comfort. She stroked the stone, so familiar to her fingers.

"Sandstone is easy to carve," she said. "It falls away from the chisel like dry clay, and does not take long to work. I do not generally carve it, for its dust is unpleasant and causes a bad cough. But Malcolm had cut the other slabs of the same stone, and we had several blocks of it. We have endured so many deaths, you see," she said softly. "We had many tombstones and crosses to carve in the years that Malcolm was with us. There are more stones here in the crypt, and several outside the church, for other members of my clan.