Until the Knight Comes (24 page)

He trusted her.

Mariota’s heart stopped. No three words could have pleased or frightened her more.

As it was, they spooled through her, warming her and taking her breath. But the ill ease inside her bloomed as well. No longer a flickering edge, a growing current of fear slid through her, chilling her.

Consuming her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he framed her face with his hands and kissed her hard and swift. His tongue swirled into her mouth to slide against and tangle with hers. Their breath mingled as he deepened the kiss, devouring her as if he sought life-giving sustenance from her. But then he gentled the kiss and pulled back to look at her again, his eyes dark with passion.

Passion, and something else.

Something that quickened her pulse, but not in the way his gaze usually stirred her. Nay, there was an almost stony hardness about his expression, a carefully controlled tinge of anger simmering beneath the blaze of his desire.

Indeed, a terrifying sense of underlying fury throbbed in the air around them. A living thing, bold and untamed, come to join them in the chamber.

“See you, I would know that you have access to yon monies should aught happen to me,” he said, his words allaying one fear but adding another. “Only if I know you safe, can I do what I must.”

“What you must?”

He nodded, shoved a hand back through his hair.

Dread rising in her throat, Mariota looked at him, comprehension crawling up from the shadows, nipping and nibbling at her until she understood.

And with the realization, his words took on their own ominous meaning.

“Oh dear saints,” she cried, memories of the early days at Cuidrach flooding her mind.

Days and nights lived in fear of Hugh’s men finding her.

There could be no other reason Kenneth would take the precaution of assuring she had access to his coin—not unless he wished to know her secure if aught happened to him!

And
he
had no sworn enemies.

None that she knew of, anyway.

Only she did.

“God in Heaven.” She clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Ne’er would I have wanted it to come to thi—”

“But
I
want, my lady. I burn to resolve this for you,” he vowed, the determination in his voice squeezing her heart, lancing her.

“Men are passing through Kintail, see you? Your late . . . husband’s men, and they are looking for you.” He touched the hair at her temple, caressed her cheek. “I mean to ride out and sort them before they can find you—send them back whence they came. Lest they wish an early reckoning with their Maker.”

Mariota stared at him, his words laming her.

Her blood froze.

She’d also heard the hesitation in his voice when he’d said her late
husband’s
men.

But his expression was now unreadable, could have been sculpted of granite. Its hardness not aimed at her, but at Hugh Alesone’s minions.

Broken men with less scruples than adders. Malcontents who did not fight fair and knew no honor.

Her stomach heaving, her soul began to rip.

A thousand horrors spun in her head, the tapestried walls shifting and contracting before crashing inward to bury her beneath her guilt.

Her deep regret at e’er coming here, involving
him
in such madness.

Or with such devil-damned snakes as Hugh the Bastard’s men.

“Nay, I cannot believe it,” she denied, willing the moment to be a fearing dream.

He fixed her with a long stare.

“But they are here,” he said, then went to the window, stared out at the silver-gilt night. “They stopped at Gunna of the Glen’s cottage. Not long before Jamie visited her. ’Twas she who sent the warning.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “She, too, wishes you well, my lady.”

Mariota shook her head, still disbelieving.

“My . . . Hugh the Bastard’s men would ne’er come this far, nor venture into Glenelg. Even in Assynt one hears of the dread
urisgean
said to haunt these parts.” She joined him at the window, touching a hand to his arm. “It is why I fled here. I ken those men, much as I wish I didn’t. They fear no man, but tremble at the unseen.”

She drew a shaky breath, shuddered. “’Tis why they sought to offer me to the
Each Uisge
—they wished to appease the beast.”

“I suspect they had other reasons,” her Keeper said, still staring out the window.

He stood rigid, the set of his shoulders speaking his mood, as did his clenched hands.

“I vow, too,” he added, “that there is more to their being here than a wish to toss you to some water horse that might or might not exist.”

Mariota’s face began to burn.

“’Tis true enough,” she said, the words tumbling. “I told you before, every ten years the Assynt water horse is delivered a sacrifice. Folk believe the offering keeps him beneath the river’s surface.”

She looked down, fussed with her skirts. “This year, he killed before a sacrifice could be made.” She spoke quickly, before the image of Hugh’s naked whore could rise in her mind. “He ravaged the village alewife and left her broken body on the banks of the Abhainn Inbhir, the River Inver, not far from Drumodyn Castle.”

Kenneth glanced at her, one brow raised. “She died near your husband’s holding?”

“Close to Hugh Alesone’s castle, aye.” Mariota forced herself to nod. “Her death increased the wish to serve me up to the beast—to hinder further savagings. Leastways, that is how folk in those parts saw it.”

“And why did they choose you?” The brow arched a tiny bit higher. “A warrior laird’s daughter?”

Mariota moistened her lips, tried to ignore the sudden damping of her palms. “I was told folk believed the water horse would consider a
lady
a rare treat,” she said, forcing herself to hold his gaze. “And . . . Hugh’s men did not like me. They will be sore vexed I escaped them.”

He didn’t look convinced. “And you do not think there could be another reason these men followed you here?”

Mariota blinked, fingers of ice clutching her heart.

Something in his tone, the way he was looking at her, screamed that he knew there was another reason.

A horrible reason.

And one he wanted to hear.

“Well, my lady?” He took her chin, holding her face so she couldn’t look away. “No other possibilities?”

“No. I—”

“Think hard, lass.” He touched his fingers to her lips, pressing gently. “And do not speak again until you are prepared to tell the truth.”

Terror bit into her then, white-hot misery clamping around her ribs, stealing her breath.

“I—” she began, only to break off and swipe a hand over her cheeks, not surprised to find them damp, streaming with tears.

Scalding tears that continued to spill—especially when she tried to glance aside and her gaze fell across a settle half-hidden in shadow, her swimming vision not yet so poor that she missed the gleaming mail hauberk draped across the settle’s cushioned bench.

She also caught the silvery glint of a shiny new war ax propped against the wall.

The one, a knightly accoutrement men donned before heading into battle.

The other, a warrior’s weapon, large, wicked, and deadly.

An ax she knew would boast a smooth, notch-free haft and a well-honed but untried blade.

She stared at both, their portent breaking her as dread churned and whirled inside her.

“There is another reason.” She straightened her back, making herself meet Kenneth’s eyes. “Hugh Alesone’s men believe I murdered him. He was found with my dagger buried in his chest.”

The words came fast and breathless, but that she’d said them at all filled Kenneth with such numbing triumph he was hard-pressed not to throw back his head and shout with joy.

True, she hadn’t said all he’d hoped she’d say, but it was enough.

A beginning.

So he pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking her to cushion the one question he couldn’t ignore.

Even though the answer did not matter.

He could not face these men without knowing.

He drew a breath, steeling himself. “And did you, my lady?”

She jerked in his arms, the horror of the truth filling her eyes. “Nay, I did not. I swear to you on—”

“You needn’t tell me more—I believe you,” Kenneth said, surprising himself with the depth of that belief.

His willingness to wait until she trusted him enough to admit the rest.

For the nonce, he took her face in his hands again and kissed her, sweeter and deeper than before. A
soul
-deep kiss he hoped would shield and protect her heart, warm and sustain her always, if aught happened to him.

Not that he had any intention of leaving this world any time soon.

Not now with such a bright future glimmering on his horizon, on
their
horizon.

Even if she didn’t yet know it.

Convinced he’d soon be able to tell her, mayhap even long before spring, he unfastened his plaid and let it drop to the floor. His sword belt followed, an incredible sense of rightness and purpose filling him as he pulled her with him across the room.

“Come you,” he said, helping her with her own clothes so that when they tumbled onto the bed, naught separated them but the linen of his braies and her scant nothingness of an undershift.

Time stretched, accommodating their need as he moved on top of her, loosened his braies. She reached for him, arching her hips to ease his entry even before he could shove her camise above her thighs.

“Pray God do not go seeking them,” she cried, clamping her legs around him, rocking against him when he thrust deep inside her.
“Please.”

She clung to him, digging her fingers into his shoulders as he began moving in and out of her. “I could not bear to lose you.”

“And you shall not—the saints would ne’er be so unkind,” Kenneth breathed, hoping he spoke true.

Determined to
make
it so if he wasn’t.

But already his body was tensing, the smooth, fast rhythm of their movements milking him. The tight, wet sleekness of her draining his strength as everything suddenly spun around him and the most intense pleasure he’d ever known burst through him, shattering him.

“That—was—too—soon,” he gasped, collapsing against her, his heart hammering. “But I shall make it up to you.”

As if to start proving it, he slid one hand over her breast, let his fingers toy with her nipple through the fine linen of her camise. “Aye, lass, I shall make . . .
everything
better for you,” he promised, his breath still uneven. “If you will only let me.”

And somewhere through the drenching haze of their just-sated passion, he thought he heard her say she loved him, though it might have only been a sigh.

Or the fitful night wind.

Not that it mattered . . . yet.

For the moment, it was enough to just hold and stroke her. Perhaps later, they could savor a longer, more languorous joining. Mayhap even two. A glance at the still-darkened windows, and the utter stillness beyond them, reassured him of the possibilities.

Aye, this night, at least, he could give her.

He suspected they had till sunrise.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he night was too still.

The shadows creeping across Kintail, too well-hung with swords and daggers to be ignored. Even by those who slept so deeply as the well-sated Keeper of Cuidrach, his dreams alive with the succulence of moon-silvered thighs—warm, sleek, and silky. Long, deep kisses, endless and slaking.

Tongue kisses.

Soft, slow, and full of breath.

Scorching kisses, each one more intimate than the last. His need to taste and savor, all-consuming; the wetness between her thighs, an irresistible beckoning, urging him to plunge ever deeper, to claim and possess.

Exquisite thrusts, languid and sweeter than any he’d ever known.

Delicious dreams, heady and intoxicating.

Quicksilver swirls of glory, his minx writhing beneath him, her lush curves clad in naught but the silken spill of her hair, the rapture of her sighs.

Even so, an edge of iciness cut through the languorous warmth of his dream, its black chill sliding ever deeper into Kenneth’s contentment, shattering his bliss.

Squeezing everything inside him until his eyes snapped open.

Thick silence rushed him at once, its suffocating presence filling the darkened bedchamber and chilling his blood before he could even blink away the dredges of sleep.

He peered about the room, his senses coming alert as he searched the shadows, but found only emptiness. An odd frozen-in-time quality that brought a worse dread than if all his demons had suddenly escaped from the hither side to manifest before his disbelieving gaze.

Swallowing hard, he sat up in the curtained bed and rubbed his eyes. Tense and breathless, the unquiet grew as he tilted his head to listen and heard . . . nothing.