Much Ado About Highlanders (The Scottish Relic Trilogy) (14 page)

“Aye. Six months. Longer. I’ve been faithful to you from the moment we exchanged our vows.”

She met his gaze. At that moment Kenna realized that he wasn’t holding anything back. She believed him.

“It’s been long enough, wouldn’t you say?” he whispered, his voice husky with desire.

She didn’t trust her words. She wanted him. Kenna nodded and brushed her lips softly against his.

Alexander’s mouth took hers, just as his hands pulled her hard against his chest. Suddenly Kenna wanted to lose herself in him, drown in him. Her fingers locked in the strands of his wet hair and she pulled him even closer.

“Tell me what to do.”

“This first time? Nothing but hold on to me. I can’t bear to have you touch me. As it is, I may come apart before I even get inside of you.”

Inside of you. The words clicked in her mind. She wanted him inside of her. Deep inside.

As he held her close and moved through the water, she ran her fingers along the muscles of his chest and neck. She saw his gaze wander down over the transparent material clinging to her body. She pulled herself higher and trailed her head back as he forged through the water. He kissed her chin and ran the tip of his tongue down the hollow of her throat.

When he could stand, he swept her up in his arms and carried her. Once ashore, he placed her on her feet, and she stood at the edge of the water as he picked up a blanket and spread it on the smooth rock. Her eyes focused on his manhood and she hesitated. He was huge, intimidating. She wondered how they could possibly fit together.

Before her doubts could become actions, she was back in his arms. He kissed her deeply, and Kenna shivered with excitement when he traced the swells of her breasts. She pulled back and followed the movement of his fingers and saw her nipples again come to life beneath his touch. He pushed her wet shift off her shoulders until it was held up only by the tips of her breasts. She thought she would die of the anticipation that inflamed her, so she slipped the chemise past her breasts, letting it drop to the ground. Now there was nothing that separated her body from his gaze. Nothing that separated her burning skin from his.

“You are so beautiful.” His mouth descended on hers, crushing her lips with his bruising passion.

A hot, liquid yearning began to flow deep within Kenna, rising from her very core and searing her flesh with its heat. Wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, she felt Alexander’s hands move down her bare back and take hold of her buttocks, lifting her against him. She moaned at the feel of his arousal pressing against her flesh.

“Husband and wife. Say it after me.”

“Make me yours, Alexander.”

He laid her down on the blanket and before she could move to make room for him, his mouth closed over her breast. Her mouth fell open with a gasp as he circled her hard, erect nipple with his tongue before tugging at it with his lips and teeth. She paused, paralyzed with excitement, and watched him through half-lidded eyes until she could barely lie still another moment.

He buried one hand in the heavy silken spill of her wet hair, tugging it back, exposing the stretch of her neck. He ran his tongue and lips over the skin of her throat while his other hand cupped her breast, his thumb stroking the aroused nipple.

“I wanted to do this to you from the moment Diarmad brought you back to me in the abbey.”

“I was tied. Such wicked thoughts,” she groaned as his hand slid down her stomach, over the downy mound, and between the folds of her womanhood. She shook from the vibration of her body’s response. Her hips curled against his hand, and one leg lifted and wrapped itself around his waist and his naked buttocks.

Her blood pounded in her brain. Her body and skin were on fire, and she felt her breaths growing shorter as he continued to stroke the sensitive spot within her. Kenna threw back her head and moaned as he probed deeper and deeper into her intimate heat, and his mouth once again suckled a breast.

Sensation began to crowd out her consciousness. It was like gliding along on some fast-moving cloud, or running in a dream down some endless hill, feeling the excitement rising and never wanting it to end. But there was an urgency that told her that complete fulfillment was near at hand. Still, she didn’t want it to finish. No matter how rapturous whatever lay beyond could be, she didn’t want to cross that line—this time, not without him.

Blindly, she reached out for him, her fingers groping down his body until she found the long, hard shaft. The skin was hot, and he throbbed to her touch. Her hand curled around him and slid the entire length until her thumb caressed the satiny crown.

“Nay, Kenna,” he groaned tearing his mouth away from her breast. “Not yet.”

But in spite of his voiced reluctance, he hardly resisted as she brought the broad tip to her moist folds and pressed herself against it.

“Now, Alexander,” she whispered, looking into his passion-glazed eyes. “Take me now.”

Driven with the urgency to have him inside of her, she moved with him as he centered himself over her and took hold of her hips.

“You belong to me now . . . and forever.”

She drew his head down, kissing him with all the passion she had in her.

As he drove into her, Kenna stiffened at first, stunned by the tearing pain of his entry. She kept her eyelids pressed shut and bit her lip to keep from crying out as he ceased to move for what seemed like an eternity. But then, gradually, she felt him begin to move, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until her mind cast off all memory of pain, all memory of innocence, and the white-hot lights of some blazing heaven opened and consumed her.

“The
Macpherson
ship is sailing past Oban. It’s heading north.”

Maxwell drove the point of his dagger deep into the rough-hewn table.

“Are Alexander and his wife aboard the blasted thing?” he barked.

Not an hour earlier, he’d received word from his priest’s man that the two had left the camp. They’d even been given a horse by the priest and sent north to Oban, where Maxwell waited to spring the trap. But the bloody Highlanders had yet to be seen.

“We don’t know. No one saw anything. But Macpherson and the woman must have boarded somewhere, for that ship’s just been sitting there a-waiting.”

“How about the younger one
. . .
James? Where is he now?”

“He ain’t moved since coming north to Oban. He’s still at that inn a stone’s throw from the harbor. The livery boy says, word is that he’s waiting for more fighters to arrive before coming after us.”

Maxwell stood up, yanked the dagger from the table, and stalked to the fire. He wouldn’t be so stupid as to wait any longer. He wasn’t about to waste men fighting James Macpherson after the Highlander gathered more men. And he had no way to attack that ship or put up a chase, either. It was one thing to burn a village and scare gutless tenants
;
it was another to fight and lose. And for what? He wasn’t being paid to fight Highlanders, only to get the woman.

Evers was pushing north. Maxwell wasn’t going to wait around to be chastised for what he should or shouldn’t have done. There were too many coves south of Oban where those two could have been picked up. Damn them all.

He turned to his men. “We still get them to come to us.”

“How?”

“If they
’re
sail
ing
north past Oban, then there are only three places they could be going. Benmore Castle, MacKay land in the godforsaken north, or Glosters Priory on Loch Eil. We don’t have enough men to be going in all three directions.”

Maxwell’s men waited for him to continue.

“But we do have enough men to snatch away the ones that matter to them,” he said. “We take the right people, and the bitch will come willingly
. . .
and give us anything we want in exchange.”

Is’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world

one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?

Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?

A Highland clan would fight ten years over a shaggy-haired cow and a hundred years over a barren, windswept sea marsh that no one really wanted. A broken promise over a political alliance could set two clans off, and a reneged-upon marriage contract could start bloody feuding that would cost the best warriors of a generation. Bullheaded in their ways and passionate in their opinions. There was no other way of describing a Highlander.

James Macpherson shook his head and looked into the horn holding the ale. What a bloody race he belonged to, he thought.

“And all those bloody lairds and clan chiefs are no better than the most ignorant slop boy,” he muttered. Realizing he’d spoken his thoughts aloud, James looked again at the ale. Stronger than one might expect, he thought.

James had spent enough time acting as negotiator between leaders in the Highlands to know that regardless of how well they dressed or how small the issue at hand was, getting them to agree on anything was nearly a miracle. Except for one thing: when the word went out that an enemy threatened Highland soil.

Edinburgh had just been burned by the English navy while the Lowland court of King Jamie ran for cover into Fife. Sir Ralph Evers was pushing north with his army. His treasonous Lowland lackey, Donald Maxwell, had made raids almost to Oban with his men.

The time had come for the Highlanders to step up and defend their land.

James pushed his trencher of food away and looked down the long table at the inn’s boisterous revelers. Focusing was becoming a problem, and he held on to the table to slow the room from spinning.

He and his men had reason to celebrate. Upon reaching Oban, he’d received word from Diarmad. The Macpherson captain was picking up Alexander and Kenna at Hermit’s Rock and taking them up to the River Spey, where they’d go overland with a Macpherson escort to Benmore Castle.

And Diarmad would be back soon with enough men to stop Maxwell here.

James knew his older brother would be angry to miss out on a fight, but he had gone to a lot of trouble to get that marriage back on the right foot. Neither appeared to have killed the other during their days together, which was excellent news, and James wouldn’t let anything slow them down until they were delivered to Benmore. Diarmad was also sending word to Magnus MacKay that his daughter was en route to the very place she was supposed to go to six months ago.

James tried to focus on the half-eaten trencher of food before him. He couldn’t.

“Brilliant work,” he muttered, congratulating himself. A month ago, he’d met with his own father, Alec Macpherson, and the MacKay laird. The marriage had to work. Both clans needed it. It was left to him to make whatever arrangements needed to be made. His job wasn’t to negotiate an intricate treaty but to play matchmaker for two of the most pigheaded people he knew.

“Marriage,” James snorted. He’d never been married himself. Never considered it. And the only time he’d ever met a woman that might even tempt him, she’d been promised to someone else. And a bloody Lowlander, at that!

“You say ‘marriage,’ love?” a wench asked in slurred tones, dropping herself onto his lap. “I’m available, if yer askin’.”

She laughed and shouted across the table at some blurred shapes. “Ain’t we available for marryin’, Jeannie?”

James’s head wobbled but he managed to shove the woman off his lap.

He knew nothing about matchmaking or marriage, so he’d sought out advice from experts. According to his mother and Tess, Colin’s wife, the secret to love appeared to be spending uninterrupted time together. James had been able to arrange that. The plan was brilliant.

All around him, the tavern where he was staying bustled with Macpherson men and some Campbell warriors who’d already come across from Mull to join them. The food wasn’t sitting well in his stomach. He pushed unsteadily to his feet.

James needed a bed—somewhere to put his head down and close his eyes for a few hours. That would mean somehow making it up the rickety stairs to the bedchamber he was sharing with a half-dozen Macpherson men.

One of his men suddenly loomed up in front of him.

“James, you look about ready to lose your innards.”

A woman’s voice, shrieking with laughter. “He just promised to marry me, and won’t that be a great surprise to my old man!”

James pushed his way past them and lunged for the closest door. Behind the tavern, he stumbled and then doubled over, his stomach emptying, even as the ground rolled like a stormy sea.

He wobbled, trying to stay on his feet. Something was wrong. He hadn’t drunk anywhere near enough to feel this way. Nay, it wasn’t too much food or ale. It was something else.

The realization came too late, and James Macpherson fell flat on his face.

In a final moment of awareness, he heard the slurred sound of hushed voices and a set of boots beside his head before the world went dark.

As the ship pitched again, Kenna braced herself against the bulkhead in the near-darkness of the tiny cabin.

She had very little space to clean up, and getting out of her wet shift and soiled dress had been a struggle with the Macpherson ship rising and diving into every trough in the sea. The row of holes in the wooden wall let in little air and even less light, but she could hear bits and pieces of Alexander’s discussion with Diarmad next door in the larger cabin beneath the stern deck.

Sailors from the Macpherson ship had arrived at Hermit’s Rock too quickly. Alexander and Kenna where still wrapped in each other’s arms after making love and swimming and making love and . . . it was all such a blur. Hearing their voices when they came hallooing into the cave had quickly snapped her back to reality. Her face still burned in the darkness as she recalled the smirks and knowing sidelong looks the men exchanged. Alexander didn’t help things, either, by treating her so tenderly in their presence. Not too many days ago, he’d been ordering Diarmad to throw her from the abbey tower into the sea, and they all knew it. And none of this improved during the long row to the ship.

A young lad had followed them into the cabin when they arrived, carrying in a pitcher of fresh water, a washbowl, and dry cloths. Showing her the tiny space where she could get cleaned up and change, Alexander had motioned to a chest in the cabin, telling her that she’d find dresses and some linen undergarments there. Kenna immediately bristled at the thought of some other woman’s clothing in her husband’s cabin.

That was a conversation they’d be having in the very near future, she thought.

Ignoring the chest of clothing, Kenna eyed her own ruined garments. They were disgusting. She couldn’t put them back on. Seeing a line of pegs on the bulkhead and what hung there, she realized she wouldn’t have to.

Alexander stopped talking the moment Kenna stepped into the room. His gaze traveled from her bare feet and legs to the woolen jerkin that covered a coarse shirt and hung below her knees. She’d also found a rope that she wrapped twice around her waist to hold everything in place. There was nothing she could do with her hair—that untamed wilderness of brown curls had taken on a life of its own. His eyes fixed on her face.

“You look . . . beautiful.”

Diarmad looked from Alexander to Kenna and back at Alexander with an expression that clearly said,
You’ve gone mad. Stark raving mad.

She smiled at her husband and strode to the table where the two had been bent over a map. Diarmad moved to the far side of the table. Kenna knew the man still had to be thinking of the scratches and bruises she’d given him when he’d kidnapped her.

“What’s this about?” she asked, noticing the small flat stones arranged on the map. One was sitting on what she thought must be MacKay land.

“Diarmad has learned a few things about this English commander named Sir Ralph Evers, who’s pushed his men all the way to the Highlands. And there are rumors about
why
he’s going so far north.”

Kenna had never heard the man’s name. “He’s responsible for all the destruction?”

“It appears to be so.”

“And he has an army of his own?”

“Small and fast moving, they say. And not entirely made up of English fighters. Outlaws and rogue Scots, all mercenaries, make up more than half of his command. And from the looks of things, he’s cut his ties with Henry Tudor. There’s something bigger he’s after.”

Kenna felt the weight of the pouch around her neck. None of this made sense. There was no logical reason why there would be any benefit in coming after her, unless it had to do with the tablet. But if that were true, then it meant others had to know of its value.

She felt the heat rising in her face. There was no way to hide her emotions. Alexander’s gaze never wavered from her. He saw everything. She’d already hinted to him that there was something she was holding back.

“And Maxwell works for him,” she said.

“Aye, that bloody Lowlander leads one of three fronts that Evers is pushing into the Highlands,” Diarmad explained. “Maxwell is moving in the west. Another command is moving northward up the eastern coast. Evers has split the country.”

Kenna was tired of speculating. “What do they want from me? Why is there a price on my head?”

Diarmad exchanged a look with Alexander and then continued. “There are rumors.”

“What? What’s being said?”

“Something happened to Evers when he was fighting in the Borders. He’d been doing his king’s bidding. Burning monasteries. Raiding castles. Torturing and killing anyone he pleased. They say there was an old man named Cairns who died at Evers’s hands. The rumors are that the old man had a gift.”

Kenna’s heart drummed so hard in her chest that she feared the two men must hear it. She focused on the map to avoid facing her husband’s scrutiny.

“What kind of a gift?” Alexander asked.

“It sounds daft, but they say Cairns talked to the dead. The local folk swore to it. If it was witchcraft, no one complained. The old man never brought harm on anyone.”

“And Evers changed after he killed Cairns?” Alexander repeated.

Diarmad shrugged. “After Cairns died, Evers stopped following the king’s orders. He went where he pleased. Stopped ravaging the Borders and pushed north. Sent out raiding parties looking for specific people that he wanted. Word went out about bounties offered.”

“Who were they looking for?” Kenna felt her voice had crept out of a deep well.

“A woman in clan Munro. And another who’s a MacDonnell.”

“And me,” Kenna said. It wasn’t a question.

Three women and Cairns. Could it be that the piece her mother gave her was one of four fragments of a larger stone? Did Cairns have one of them?

Diarmad nodded.

“Do you know the names?” Alexander asked. “We should warn their clan.”

“Nay. That’s all I know of them. But I sent out word to the clan chiefs in both places.”

Kenna had to stop herself from pulling the pouch from under the shirt. “He put a bounty on me. He knew my name.”

“They say that your mother was the one they were looking for. Once word came back that she had passed away, Evers sent his men in search of you.”

“What could your mother possibly have had that is so valuable to him?” Alexander asked.

Kenna shook her head and focused on the map. Three women and an old man living in different corners of Scotland.

Questions battered her mind. How did her mother come to have such a thing? And why Sine and not her sister, Emily’s mother? Sine was the elder. Did
their
mother possess it before Sine? Where did it come from originally?

And Cairns and the other two. How did they come to have a fragment, if that’s what it was? What connected them? She had the power to heal. If the old man could speak to the dead, what powers were trapped in the other fragments?

Cairns must have had many of the answers. But he was gone now, and Evers appeared to know what he knew.

Alexander broke into her thoughts. “Think, Kenna. Did your mother give you anything before she died? Pass
anything
on to you?”

She held back what she knew because she didn’t know the entirety of it. Because she wasn’t certain of the source of its power. Now she had to hold it back because of the danger it entailed. She would never bring that kind of peril into the life of the man she loved.

Kenna fought back the tears and shook her head.