To Tempt a Knight (15 page)

Siobhan stood at the water’s edge the next morning. The wind blew across the hills, cold and sharp. It scattered the mist that had gathered across the water and around the glen. Gray clouds hung overhead, threatening rain.

She pulled up her hood as the wind caught the length of her cloak and her skirts beneath. The garments snapped and fluttered like banners. Despite the strength of the wind, it felt good to draw a breath of the cool, crisp air. The process cleared her senses and helped her see things as they were.

In the stark reality of day, she felt no shame, yet she had to wonder what had possessed her last night. Was it the serenity of the glen, the charged emotions of surviving the dangers of their journey so far, or was it the danger itself that had thrown them into each other’s arms? Without any hesitation she had given herself over to William. Doing so, she had always been told, was wrong. Yet it hadn’t felt that way. Being in William’s embrace and merging with his body had felt as natural as the breath she drew now.

Miss Edina MacInnes, her nurse from days gone by, had warned her that sacrificing her virginity to any but her husband would cost her dearly, indeed. Had William not sacrificed as much as she had in that moment by turning against his vows? A flush crept into her cheeks at the
thought that sacrificing her maidenhead probably meant less to her than violating his vows had to him.

So where did that leave them? They would continue on to the treasure, of course. But what about the two of them?

Last night had been magical. Perfect. She craved more of the same. Siobhan brought her fingers to her lips, remembering the honeyed taste of his kisses, the warmth of his body pressed against her own, the passion that had ignited and burned beyond their control.

But it was more than just her desire for William.

She wanted to know more about him. She wanted to understand what brought the haunted look into his eyes when he thought she wasn’t aware of him. He’d told her about his journey to the Holy Land and all that he had suffered there. Was there more he still held back?

He was clearly of importance in the Templar Order, yet he often stood apart from the other monks. He’d talked of his family’s brutal murder, yet he had no desire for revenge against his uncle. Each time they talked, or whenever she studied him, she discovered a new facet that intrigued her.

Slowly he had begun to reveal himself, and she wanted to discover who he truly was beneath his protective armor. Would he be as vulnerable as she often felt herself? She frowned down at the sparkling blue-green waters at her feet. Perhaps that is what had drawn them together last night: that deep down they were the same, two people struggling to find a place in the world.

“There you are,” William said, and Siobhan turned to see him striding toward her, his hair and cloak tossed by the wind.

Without hesitation, he drew her into his arms and held her tightly.

She closed her eyes and leaned into him, pretending for a moment that they belonged that way, looking out over the waters of the pool on a spring morning, that they lived in a time of peace and prosperity. Birds called softly in the distance and the scent of grass and wild- flowers tickled her nose. If only there were no de la Roche, no Spear to find, no threat to their lives or to the life of her father…

“Are you ready to go?” William asked, as if he’d heard her thoughts.

Siobhan’s eyes flew open. Her daydream vanished. Her father needed them to continue. “Aye.” Her own questions could wait. They would have time to discuss whatever future lay before them as the journey progressed.

He offered her his hand. She gripped it tightly, without fear or reservation, as he led her from their encampment.

The Spear awaited.

As they climbed the steep slope beyond the waterfall, Siobhan kept looking into the foliage on both sides of the path.

“Are you looking for Lucius?” William asked with raised brow.

“He’s still out there,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”

“You’re right.” William inclined his head to the left side of the trail.

She came to a stop.

William kept up their pace. “Keep moving, and keep talking.”

She hurried to catch up.
Keep talking about what?
Her former nurse would have advised her to discuss the weather—always a topic of interest, given Scotland’s varied climate. “The sky is growing darker, and the wind is picking up. I dare say we shall see rain before the night is through. I’m quite certain this path will turn to mire, if
there is any rainfall at all. But the waterfall below,” she said, trying to inject a bit of wistfulness into her voice, “will no doubt be lovelier than ever with—”

William was gone.

She drew a quick breath and kept on walking. “The view from the top of this hill will be quite spectacular, I’m sure. Even if it’s raining, might we—?”

A cry of pain echoed across the hillside, followed by a male voice sputtering expletives in Gaelic. Then silence. Siobhan stopped, waiting for William to reappear. He reemerged from the foliage after a short time, sheathing his sword as he strode toward her.

“What happened?” Siobhan asked.

William tossed her a satisfied smile. “Our friend will not be any more trouble to us.”

“You can’t leave me here. Come back and untie me,” a male voice called from the foliage where William had reappeared.

Siobhan hurried along after William. “Will he be all right?” she asked, pursing her lips with concern. She didn’t want the man to meddle in their affairs, but she didn’t want him hurt either.

“Trust me.” William met her gaze. “I left him food and water and enough slack to get it. It’ll only be a day or so until we send someone from the monastery to get him. He’ll be just fine, I promise.”

She didn’t have much time to linger over thoughts of Lucius’s fate as the ferns and shrubs thinned, then vanished, and the path they followed became a steep and rocky slope. “Stay close,” William advised as he continued upward. Siobhan grasped at brush to keep her balance while clambering over boulders.

The wind calmed as they continued, but the sky grew darker and the heavy air pressed in around them.
If only
the rain holds off a while longer,
Siobhan thought as she picked her way across the rocks.

When they came to an area that flattened out, William stopped. He offered Siobhan his hand, pulling her up over yet another boulder that obstructed their path. “How’s your head?” he asked. It was the first time they had spoken since they’d encountered the rocky terrain.

“Better today.” She nodded breathlessly, grateful for the small respite. “How much farther?”

“I’m not certain. Let’s take another look at the scroll.” His breathing was steady now.

Siobhan removed the container from her pocket and set it carefully upon a nearby rock. She settled on the ground beside it.

“We must be getting close.” William sat opposite her and waited for her to open the scroll. She unwound the papyrus, careful to make sure it did not fly away in the breeze. The paper looked stark, pale, eerie in the darkening afternoon light.

Siobhan concentrated on the sketch William had said represented the Mother’s Cradle high in the Cairngorm Mountains. A smattering of dark dots littered the base of the cave. She twisted the scroll toward him. “Could these be the rocks we’re climbing over?”

“Could be.” As he studied the drawing, she looked at it from the opposite side.

She drew a sharp breath as something she hadn’t seen before appeared on the upside-down page. “From this angle, the whole drawing looks like a cave.”

William moved to kneel beside her.

“It’s a bit like looking at cloud formations and seeing something in the odd angles and depths. But if you look at it just right, you can definitely see a cave.”

Siobhan stared at the drawing that had not made any sense when they had viewed it in the monastery. But up
side down, random marks formed into images before her eyes. The same smattering of dark shapes lined the bottom of the page, along with two vertical lines crossed by a horizontal line.

“Look here,” William said pointing to a long, flowing line that split in the middle. The words that had looked like gibberish before now looked the same as those on the bottom of the page that Brother Kenneth had translated as “mother’s tears.”

Siobhan inhaled sharply as she stared down at the drawing. “Could that line be a hidden waterfall inside yet another cave? Could the treasure be hidden there, behind the falling water?” She paused. “An underground water-fall?”

William sat back, staring not at the scroll but off in the distance. “We’ll know soon, because I do believe that is the Mother’s Cradle up and off to the left.”

Siobhan looked to where a dark shape yawned in the hillside. She frowned. “It’s just a shadow.” She squinted and glanced down at the scroll, then up at the high site. “It…Maybe. But could it be any less accessible?”

He grinned, bringing out the slight indentation in his left cheek. “The Templars were hiding a very valuable treasure. They weren’t going to make the task easy.”

She returned his smile. “You have a point.”

“Ready to find a treasure?” William stood and waited for Siobhan to return the scroll to its leather casing, then slide it into the secret pocket in her gown. When she was done, she stood, and together they hiked up the steep mountainside.

Finally, they reached the lip of the cave just as the pewter gray skies opened wide, sending a hard, steady stream of rain to the earth.

“Luck seems to be on our side,” William said as he set his saddlebag down and rummaged inside until he
withdrew a flint stone, a tallow candle and the lantern. With a flick of the stone, he sent a spark onto the wick. The spark became a flame, and soon light spilled into the darkness, illuminating the cave’s interior.

“Ready to continue?” he asked.

She reached for his free hand. “Thank you, William, for helping me and my father.”

For an instant a shadow crept into his eyes, and then it was gone. “We’ll free your father.” He gently squeezed her fingers, then released them. “Let’s find the Spear.”

Side by side they moved deeper into the cave. Siobhan’s heart raced as they descended the downward slope. “Will there be another trap?” she asked, giving voice to her fears.

“Anything is possible. Stay alert.”

They passed through a long tunnel. William stopped and pressed his hand to the smooth stone walls. “These walls were shaped by man’s tools, not by nature.” He lifted the lantern to reveal a face carved into the wall above them.

Siobhan’s hand clutched William’s arm. The image was of an old man’s face surrounded by greenery. “What is it?”

“A Green Man. They’re nothing to fear. They’re pagan in origin and were sometimes used by the Templars as a symbol of rebirth. The faces should grow younger in appearance as we progress. It also means we are going the right way.”

They headed deeper into the coolness of the cave. As they headed downward, Siobhan would occasionally spot another face peering out of the chipped stone. The faces did appear to be growing younger as she and William moved deeper into the mountain.

The farther they went, the more silent the air became. They rounded a bend in the rock and came to a large open
area. To the right were four colonnades carved from the mountain rock, almost like a temple. Beside each colonnade stood a statue of a knight wearing a Templar tunic and holding a sword across his chest. “What does it mean?” Siobhan asked.

“I believe we have found the entrance,” William replied. “What else could it be?”

“A trap?” she suggested as an odd sensation rippled across the back of her neck. “It looks too perfect, too splendid.” Siobhan retrieved the scroll from her pocket and set it on the ground. She smoothed the surface and studied the three lines she’d noted earlier. “We’re missing something.” She stood. “Can I have the lantern?”

He gave it to her. Slowly, she walked past the colonnades and around the open area, pausing every few steps to illuminate the high rock walls. She tried to remember her father’s stories. Then it was there. A fragment from a tale he’d told her about entering God’s treasured kingdom.

“Most people anticipate walking through Saint Peter’s gates,” she said out loud, “when sometimes it’s down Saint Peter’s stairs that will take you where you want to go.”

Siobhan’s mouth went dry. How had she remembered that? Instead of looking at the ceiling, she dipped the lantern toward the floor as she continued her progression along the walls until she came to a dip in the ground. She dropped to her knees, and with one hand dusted the loose earth aside from between the dip and the stone wall to reveal a carved step. “Hidden stairs.”

William joined her, and together they brushed the earth back away from the wall to reveal not just three stairs, but an archway set back into what she’d assumed was more of the stone wall. The hardened dirt fell away to reveal the passageway.

“Do you think this is it?”

Siobhan sat back on her heels and smiled. “This is it. I can feel it. That doesn’t sound logical, I know. But the temple is wrong. I feel that just as strongly.”

He reached out and grasped her hand with his. “I believe you.”

Warmth crept through Siobhan at the three simple words. Together they set to work clearing the stairs. The earth was loosely packed, and it didn’t take long before they stood in yet another small chamber, at the bottom of ten stairs that had been carved into the rock.

William held the lantern aloft to reveal three slabs of rock, also cut from the stone. Two stood vertically, with a smaller slab perched across the top—just as the drawing indicated. Placing the lantern on the ground nearby, William and Siobhan brushed away the last of the dirt to reveal a stone door.

William pulled his dagger from his boot and chipped away at the seal until the last piece fell away. The sound of crumbling mortar hitting the earth echoed in the silence. “This is it. We are here.” Excitement danced in his eyes.

Her heart beat so fast she could scarcely breathe—not from fear, but from the fact that they had found the treasure room by putting together the clues her father had left.