Sue-Ellen Welfonder - MacKenzie 07 (21 page)

That was the sad way of it.

So he returned to his place at the high table and pretended he'd only wished to stretch his legs.

Besides, it would have been a mistake to confront Conall. And an even worse disaster if he'd followed the lad to Arabella's room. He'd been avoiding her all these days and was doing fine without her.

But when he reached again for his wooden plate of oat-cakes and green cheese, he knew that wasn't true.

He wasn't fine.

He missed her.

The wrong man loomed in the doorway when Arabella turned from the bedchamber window to see who she'd just bid welcome to enter. She stared, though she shouldn't have been surprised. In truth, she'd expected him. She certainly couldn't blame him for the squeezing pain in her chest. Or how her pulse had leapt only to slow again the instant she'd seen him. He couldn't help any of those things. Indeed, he simply hovered on the threshold, the image of innocence.

Arabella smiled at him, her heart freezing.

He grinned, his face friendly as summer sunshine. Warmth poured off him, gentle and kind.

Even so, she had to fight not to show her disappointment. She'd so hoped the knock had been Darroc. He'd been avoiding her, she knew. Each hour rode heavy on her shoulders, bearing down on her and seeping into her substance. Then the rapping on the door had sounded so strong and confident. She'd been sure it was him. But the young man with coppery red hair and lively blue eyes was Conall, his cousin.

The one with the fire-scarred arms.

Shame pinched Arabella when, seeing those arms now, she remembered how he'd frightened her when he'd helped rescue her from the barrel raft. In her dazed state, she'd thought he was a man of flame, come straight from the pits of hell to seize and take her there.

Now she knew he was one of the most gallant men at Castle Bane. One of the few who hadn't slid cold dark looks at her when she'd first started making brief visits to the hall. Ever cheerful, he'd faithfully brought her dinner trays, with Moraig often trailing on his heels, eager to help.

This time he'd come alone.

And instead of her evening meal, he clutched a large wicker creel that she knew held the table linens Moraig had promised her.

Linens she could use to make a decent gown.

"Here they are, the linen goods, fresh and laundered." He confirmed as he came into the room and plunked the creel on the floor near the window. "Moraig tucked a small bag into the basket. It holds her sewing needles and better thread.

She'll surely be looking in on you later, wanting to help."

He straightened and dusted his hands. "I can find something to keep her busy until you're done," he volunteered, a pink tinge staining his cheeks. "It's no trouble if you prefer. She'd have no need to know."

"But I would." Arabella smoothed the front of Darroc's borrowed shirt and his plaid, the latter wrapped several times around her like a great tartan skirt.

An overlarge, ill-fitting skirt she'd no doubt have had to wear for weeks if not for Moraig's kindhearted suggestion that they stitch her some gowns from the keep's store of fine linens and napery.

Moraig's own prized collection of ribbons.

Arabella's stomach knotted to think how the light would fade from the old woman's eyes if she stitched the gowns without her assistance.

"I do not mind Moraig's help." She saw no point in lying. "I can fix whatever harm she does. I'll enjoy her company."

"You're sure?" He looked skeptical.

She nodded. "I'm not used to being alone. Eilean Creag - my home - is a busy place. Moraig's visits are welcome."

She didn't say that his were, too.

Young as he was, she knew he'd crimson if she did.

He did blink, looking unconvinced. Night wind pouring in the window teased his bright hair. For some reason, the effect of those dancing red-gold strands made her think of some braw Celtic god standing proud on a cliff-top. She could see Conall as an avenging deity. Ancient, bold, and ready to challenge the elements and anything else in order to see the innocent protected.

Just now, she was the innocent.

But some of her thoughts about Darroc - especially his kiss - were quite wicked.

So brazen and scandalous that her sister would toss back her head and laugh with glee if she knew. Their father, if he knew - saints forbid - would lose sleep for a year, she was sure.

As it was, a certain place she couldn't think about without blushing, clenched tight and began to tingle hotly. The same thing happened every time she relived Darroc's kiss and imagined what it would feel like to have him slide his mouth down her naked skin, moving slowly lower and lower.

Until...

Mortified, she gasped. Devil blast Gelis for telling her about such things. And triple damn her own self for the question burning like pepper on her tongue.

"Where is Darroc?" Her pepper-laced tongue betrayed her. "I haven't seen him in so long."

Then, a terrible thought came to her.

She stepped forward, touching light fingers to Conall's well-muscled but ravished arm. "He does know about the linens? He isn't angry at their loss?" She lowered her hand, no longer at all sure of herself. "I'll see they're replaced, you may assure him."

"Ach! He'll no' be letting you do that." He turned to face the window. The tides were running fast and a thin crescent moon rode high above the horizon. Brilliant stars glittered everywhere, dazzling against the night's blackness. "None of us will allow you to replace the linens."

He glanced at her, quickly. "Darroc knows you canna be running around as you're dressed now."

"But where is he?" She could've bit her tongue.

Instead, she continued to look out the window. The stars twinkled as brightly on the night-darkened water as they did in the heavens. Almost as if the whole of the sea sparkled with dancing fairy lights.

It was a night made for lovers.

Her face flamed and she laced her fingers together, grateful that Conall seemed as entranced by the night's beauty as she was.

Something told her he had a poet's soul.

"Darroc is... er..." His inability to finish the sentence proved his sensitivity.

But that didn't stop her from shaming herself. "I know he's avoiding me."

"Ah...." He looked down. He appeared to have a deep and sudden interest in the waves creaming over the rocks beneath the tower. "It isn't you, my lady."

"Then why hasn't he been to see me?" There was no point in backing down. "He stopped in often during my first days here."

"Aye, well." He kept his gaze on the rocks. "He has much on his mind, see you?

He intends to go after the Black Vikings. There have always been tales about them, but never proof. Not until - "

"You rescued me."

"So it is, aye." He nodded grimly. "But there's more to it than that. There are men

- good, strong fighting men - that we call friends and who Darroc believes will join us. Together, we can chase them from our seas. But if we wish to do so in fullest strength...."

He paused to stare up at the stars. "Such a foray will cost many sillers and" - he inhaled deeply - "Darroc is no prideless man to leave such things to others. Yet our coffers are none too full of late. Not long before we... er... found you, we fair scraped the barrel to build a new warring birlinn and Darroc has been wearing a track in the rushes of his thinking room e'er since.

"That's where he's been, my lady." He glanced at her, looking embarrassed. "More like, he's there now. Pacing and thinking, all else far from his mind."

Arabella's brow knit. "I see."

She felt a rush of guilt because her own purse had always been heavy. Her father might have ruined her chances of winning a bonny suitor's heart, but he'd been open-handed with his wealth.

Still...

Something wasn't right.

"My father has many friends in the Isles." She blurted what was puzzling her.

"Some have jested about how much timber washes onto their shores. They claimed never to spend a siller on lumber for their galleys. They - "

"They weren't boasting." Conall drew himself up, the inherent pride shared by all Highlanders making him seem even taller. "We, too, have used such strand-ware.

But we ne'er touch wood from a foundered ship. And we only use shore-found wood to build fishing cobles and the like."

He looked at her, his eyes glinting in the starlight. "Our new birlinn is different.

It's what the early MacDonald Lords of the Isles called a nyvaig. Such little ships have the greatest maneuverability. They fly across the waves and can wheel about in the wink of an eye. And" - his chest swelled - "with the birlinn's high stern and raised fighting deck, we can win any sea battle. But that isn't why she was so dear.

That was because we built her of wood from Nairn on the distant Moray Firth.

The wood - "

"Nairn?" Arabella blinked.

Conall's head bobbed.

His confirmation confused her. She'd thought she'd misheard the name Nairn.

She'd never been to the little burgh but knew it to be near the market town of Inverness. She also knew there was a deep wood at Nairn. It was called Culbin or something similar, if she recalled rightly.

Even so, Nairn was a long and difficult journey from Kintail. From MacConachers'

Isle, the wee bit place might as well perch on the edge of the world.

Arabella frowned. She wouldn't have thought Darroc so unpractical. There were other, equally fine forests stretching along Scotland's mainland coast.

"I don't understand." She spoke softly, not wanting to offend. "Couldn't the wood have been bought elsewhere? Argyll's shores have many forests and - "

"Nae." Conall shook his head. "It had to be Nairn timber. Darroc would settle for no other. The trees on Nairn's coast are special."

"Special?" Arabella struggled to keep her brows from arcing.

Conall looked serious. "Aye, so many seafarers claim."

"Why?" She didn't want to pry, but growing up with a stars-in-her-eyes sister ready to swallow any tale of wonder, made her wary of anything that even smacked of magic.

She looked at Conall, waiting.

He didn't answer.

His attention was once again on the long, white-capped rollers smashing into the rocks below the window.

Arabella couldn't quite suppress a sigh.

"Please, I must know." Curiosity was one of her greatest faults. "What makes a boat built of Nairn wood different from another?"

He flushed and shuffled his feet.

She waited.

"I've already said more than I should have." He spoke at last.

"Then perhaps you shouldn't have mentioned the birlinn at all?" Was that her voice?

Arabella cringed. Faith, but she'd sounded shrewish.

Even Frang and Mina turned recriminatory stares on her. She could feel their displeasure from across the room where they reposed on the bed, their two sets of canine eyes steady and unblinking.

She ignored them and inhaled deeply.

Then she did what she had to do. "I'm sorry, Conall. I shouldn't - "

"No apologies needed. The tale does sound like a tall one, eh?" He turned to her, ever the gallant. But his face glowed brighter than ever. "Truth is" - he rushed the words - "boats made from Nairn wood never sink and no man has ever been lost from one."

"And why is that?" Arabella hoped he didn't hear the disbelief in her voice.

"Because the wood is charmed."

"By the fairies?"

"Nae, by a mermaid." Conall didn't bat an eye.

Arabella laughed outright.

"Oh, dear. A mer - " She pressed a hand to her breast, cutting off the next wave of laughter by clamping her mouth tightly shut.

"Darroc and I didn't believe it, either." Conall's gaze flickered to the door, as if he expected his cousin to appear there. "But we made enquiries and learned the tales are true. See you - " he pushed away from the window and started pacing -

"the Nairn shipwright is said to have a distant forebear who once rescued a mermaid he found trapped above the tideline. She couldn't get back to the sea on her own and when he carried her into the surf, returning her to her watery home, she granted him a wish."

Arabella leaned back against the wall and folded her arms.

Her leg was beginning to pain her.

Conall stopped pacing to search her eyes. "You don't believe me."

"I want to." It was the most tactful answer she could give him.

Seeming satisfied, he resumed his circuit of the room. "The shipwright's ancestor, also being a builder of boats, asked the mermaid for the ability to build ships that would never be lost and cost no man his life."

"And the mermaid granted his wish." Arabella knew better than to make the statement a question.

Conall clearly believed every word.

His flashing smile proved it. "Aye, she did. She promised that as long as his ships were built of trees felled on that stretch of shore, the ships would always be sound and no hands lost from them."

"So Darroc wanted an unsinkable birlinn." Arabella lowered herself onto a nearby stool.

"No' for himself." Conall shook his head, vigorously. "He wanted it for his men.

The graybeards and others who" - he blew out a breath, looking uncomfortable -

"aren't so good in strength as they once were.

"That, my lady, is why he emptied our coffers to purchase Nairn timber."

"I see." Arabella wished the floor would open up and swallow her. It didn't matter if she didn't believe in mermaids and wishes.

She did believe in kindness and looking out for one's own.

And if she'd been half-convincing herself she was falling in love with Darroc, she knew it now.

There could be no other like him.

And her eyes were hot and stinging, her vision crazily blurred. She glanced down at the voluminous plaid she was using as her skirts, horrified when a tear plopped onto the hands she'd clasped on her lap.

To her relief, Conall was looking elsewhere.

"Darroc is like that, my lady." He turned back to her, the admiration in his eyes almost blinding. "And he'd cut out my tongue if he knew I told you. Our men, the others, know nothing about Nairn and its charmed wood. They only know the birlinn was dear and that they feel like young, fierce warriors when they're out in her."