Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] (29 page)

"Ah. So you became Sebastien le Bret. It is a fine name." Her eyes showed only sincerity, no mockery.

"My name may lack the value of generations of warriors and worthy daughters behind it," he said. "It may lack the 'de' to show a noble, landowning family. But it is mine."

"And you will never give it up," she said slowly.

He leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees. He looked out over steep slopes frosted with snow and mist, over sweeping meadows and the meandering, white-frothed burn.

"My name is all I have," he said. "All that is mine alone."

She touched his arm. He did not look at her, but was aware of the pressure of her hand. Her slightest touch stirred him, quickened his heart and his body, warmed him to flame. Best, he told himself, that she not know that; best that he not think about that.

"Do you know anything of your parents?" she asked.

"Abbot Philippe made inquiries for years, and finally, when I was nine, a priest from a Breton village came to see him. A woman had begged the priest on her deathbed to go to the monastery with her story." He paused. "She claimed to have left a child there, not of her own womb. She described the ring and the swaddling found with me. She said she was the wet nurse employed by the mother's family."

"She knew your parents?"

"The priest reported that my mother was the daughter of a Breton lord. I never learned her name or family, for the woman insisted that it be kept a secret. My father was the youngest son of an English baron, a family called de Lindfield."

"So you do know your name!" She smiled.

"It is not my name. I have no right to it."

"How can that be?"

"My father was a priest. The sons of priests have no legal claim to their father's surname. Only in Scotland," he added, "would I be legitimate and named, as the child of a priest."

She stared at him. "Who was your mother?"

"Her family had intended her for the convent," he said. "My father was an English priest at the Breton court. My mother's father hired him to teach his daughter to read. They fell in love... and so I was born. My mother died at my birth, and her brother sought out my father and killed him."

The silence grew as thick as the mist that wreathed the top of the slope. Alainna murmured a wordless sound of sympathy, and leaned against him, arm to arm. Her presence was a welcome comfort. The stone beneath them rocked gently. Sebastien did not stop its motion.

"The wet nurse left me with the monks after I was weaned, as my mother's family had paid her to do. They did not want a bastard child, a disgrace and a reminder of tragedy. She had other children and could not afford another mouth. She told the priest that her heart broke to give me up, and said that she worried about me, yet could not come forth."

"But she was a kindhearted woman," Alainna said.

"It would seem so. When I was young," he said, "I used to dream about a round little woman with brown eyes who sang to me and held me." He shrugged. "I wondered then who she could have been, since the only family I knew were the monks."

"I am sure you remembered her," Alainna said.

"Mayhap." He sighed. "The monks were good to all the boys in their care, but it was a strict upbringing. A little play, and a lot of prayer and study. Not the usual life for a child. Such a life makes a good monk, but I was not interested in that."

"You left to make your way in the secular world?"

"Abbot Philippe located my father's kin in England. A cousin came to the monastery, and took me into his household in England when I was eleven."

"You do have kin, then."

He shrugged. "I suppose. But none of them were eager to acknowledge me, and I soon learned to expect nothing of them. I was given a place in the stables, where I learned much about training horses. Eventually another knight took me into his household, where I became a squire and finally a knight. Sir Richard was a good man. He gave me many opportunities."

"You have come far from that Breton monastery."

"In some ways. I learned quite young to make my own way in the world. I wanted what other knights had—name, wealth, land, family. I determined to obtain that." He glanced at her. "In other ways, I have not come far from the monastery at all. I am still a solitary man. I live the
vita activa,
but I retain the
vita contemplativa
in my nature."

She sat quietly, her gaze earnest, her head tilted as she did so often when she looked at him. "So that is your tale," she said in a musing tone.

"Part of it. And you? What of your tale?"

She shrugged. "Mine is not so interesting, and you know much of it already. I have lived at Kinlochan all my life, with my family close about me. A sheltered life, made even closer and more guarded because of the feud and the losses and danger to my clan. But the gift of my family and my home has more than made up for the curse of that strife." She stood to pack the rest of the food away as she spoke.

The stone undulated beneath him like the bobble of a boat on water. Sebastien stilled it again with his foot. "What an odd stone this is," he said pensively. He slid his hand over the cool, hard surface.

"Some people still come up here for predictions on the first of May—lovers' questions—and for portents for the new year."

"I can imagine," he said. He stood and leaned forward. "Tell me, stone, will it snow?"

Alainna laughed, a silvery trill. "That is easy to answer."

He touched the stone gently. It slipped into an immediate rhythm. "North to south," he announced, grinning at her.

"It will snow, sooner or later. We hardly needed the stone to tell us that."

He put his foot on the stone to still it. "Will the mysterious Esa consent to return with us?"

Alainna laughed again. "I think I know the answer."

"Hush, you," he said, giving her a mock frown. She giggled, a sweet sound. He touched the stone, and the rocking began.

"North to south," he said. "Esa will come back with us."

"I could have told you that." She looked smug and pleased.

"Who needs a judgment stone when they have Lady Alainna?" He was glad to see her smile grow.

"Ask something you could not know," she suggested.

He tilted his head, pondering. "Will Alainna... find the Celtic warrior she wants?" he asked, mildly teasing.

She grimaced at him. He smiled, leaned down, and touched the stone. It moved north to south in the affirmative.

He felt a frisson of disappointment. "Ah," he murmured. "It seems that you will have your heart's desire."

She looked dismayed. "Let me try. Will Sebastien"—she walked around the stone as she spoke—"find himself a fine Breton lady?" The stone shifted when she touched it. "East to west," she said. "Oh. You will not. I should have asked if you would find a fine French lady," she amended.

"No doubt," he murmured.

"Will Sebastien... find a home for his wandering soul?" Her voice was soft.

He felt himself go very still, spirit and flesh. Alainna touched the stone. After a moment it undulated slowly.

"North to south," she murmured, and looked at him. "You will find what you want."

"Will I?" He watched her for a long moment. Then he placed a foot on the stone to stop its motion.

"It is said the jury stone is never wrong."

"We have tested it well," he said. He walked around the stone toward her, bending to pick up her cloth pack. As he straightened, he heard Alainna gasp.

"Look!" she cried.

A few snowflakes fell gently from the sky. He put up a palm to catch them, and showed them to her.

"The stone was right," she said. He smiled, more pleased by her delight than by the stone's prediction or the delicate snowflakes in his hand.

She looked up at him, so fresh and beautiful that he felt as if his heart fell to his feet. He reached out to gently brush at the snow that dusted her hair, and swept his thumb over her cheekbone, where a few snowflakes sparkled.

"There is one more question I want to ask," he murmured.

"What is that?" she whispered.

"Will Alainna," he murmured, grazing his thumb along the line of her jaw, "kiss me?"

She closed her eyes in answer, and he glided toward her to rest his mouth on hers. The snow danced over his face and the air was cold, but her lips created a circle of warmth. He knew he should not have responded to her allure, but he had discovered a weakness within him where she was concerned. He found her more and more irresistible, although he was aware that answering that desire could open both of them to sorrow.

Just for now, he thought. Just once, to taste her again. He slipped his hand along the side of her face and kissed her more deeply, savoring the glow of spirit that he sensed in her.

A moment later, too soon, she pulled back. "You did not touch the stone for your answer," she said.

He grazed his fingers over her hair in a cherishing gesture. His heart thumped oddly. He settled her plaid over the crown of her head against the snowfall.

"I did not mean to ask the stone," he said. "I asked you."

He smiled at her arid although he wanted to pull her back into his arms, he shouldered her pack instead. "Where is your kinswoman's house? I long for a warm hearth."

"We do need to get out of this wind," she agreed.

"I would warm you," he said, "until you were like a fire." She stared at him without answer, but he saw longing flare in her eyes. It flared within him, too, sudden and hot and fierce. He looked away. "But that would not be wise. What we just did was not so wise, either."

"Must one only be wise?" she asked. "If that was foolish, fools are happier than sages."

"Fools," he said soberly, "have their own sort of wisdom." He turned. "Is it this way?"

"It is," she said, and walked ahead along the shoulder of the hill.

A little while later, the snow had thickened to a white haze. Sebastien saw, along the slope ahead of them, a stone house with a thatched roof, protected from the wind by the lee of the hill. A spiral of smoke curled out of the roof and an orange glow lightened one of the two windows to either side of the door.

A goat ambled toward them, stood staring with unblinking eyes, then wandered away. The door of the house opened, revealing the tall, slender silhouette of a woman.

"Alainna? Is it you?" The woman stepped out. The goat slipped past her through the open doorway.

"Esa!" Alainna ran forward. Sebastien hung back while they embraced. Then Esa turned and smiled at him, and he was, for an instant, struck dumb.

She had a startling beauty. Her smoothly knotted dark hair was threaded with silver, her frame tall and thin, clothed in a simple gown of russet wool and a blue plaid
arisaid.
She moved like a swan on water. Her face was exquisitely modeled, with rare, perfect symmetry, her smile was charming, and her thick-lashed brown eyes were warm and bright.

He saw all of that in an instant. He saw, too, kindness and sorrow in her magnificent eyes, tinted with shadows, fragility in the slender curve of her throat, and determination in her narrow, straight shoulders. He liked Esa immediately, and he understood why the men of Kinlochan seemed terrified of her and in love with her all at once.

He took her hand. "Dame Esa," he said, bending over her slim fingers. "I am honored to meet you."

She bowed her head graciously. "Sir, it is my pleasure to welcome you to my home." Her voice was low and mellow.

"Esa MacLaren, this is Sebastien le Bret," Alainna said.

He glanced at Alainna. Her vibrant coloring was cream and fire beside Esa's cool, dark elegance. A sudden, small shock thrilled through him. Esa was a stunning and perfect beauty, but Alainna was the flame in the center of his being.

He smiled then, his gaze only for her. The snow drifted down around them, but he hardly felt the cold.

"Come in," Esa said, opening the door. "I can offer you hot porridge and a warm hearth, and a sleeping pallet tonight, for the snow is getting thicker. But I hope you have not come all the way up here to ask me to go to Kinlochan with you."

Alainna went into the little house with Esa and stood in the dim interior. She urged the goat through the doorway and looked at Sebastien. "Will you lead her around to the side of the house? There is a turf block there for her to feed on. And take the sheep with you as well." She urged a fat sheep outside after the goat, and gave Sebastien a beautiful smile.

Sighing, he did his best to shoo the animals toward the other side of the house. A tiny hillock had been built against the stone wall, where grasses and heather grew, ragged and winter-brown The sheep took to its meal immediately, but the goat trained its strange golden gaze on Sebastien and followed him in a circle.

He stepped around it and went back to the house. As he ducked his head to cross the threshold, he saw the women embracing each other. Alainna was whispering something to her kinswoman. He heard Esa gasp and clutch Alainna's arms.

Then Esa drew back, her eyes sheened with tears. "We will return to Kinlochan at first light," she said firmly.