Until the Knight Comes (3 page)

But waking only plunged her into a black mood the likes of which hadn’t plagued her since the day her father had disowned and banished her, sending her from their home at
Dunach
Castle
for consorting with Hugh the Bastard.

A man Archibald Macnicol had deemed an up-jumped swellhead, an insolent cur unworthy to sweep the ground beneath his only daughter’s feet.

Wincing at a pain that went deeper than the pounding at her temples, Mariota swiveled her head to the side and opened her eyes.

Not that much could be seen in the murk greeting her.

Damp walls and shadow pressed near, the small stone cell proving dark save for the glow of a tiny coal-burning brazier. The only stretch of comfort she could distinguish before swirling black mist closed about her again.

Mist and, amazingly, the faint strains of the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. A lute or harp if she could trust her dulled perception. And such sweet singing. . . .

Almost angelic.

At once, icy chills swept her. Sainted holy hosts or nay, she wanted naught to do with angels. Weakened, shivering, and hungry she might be, she was nowise ready to exit this world.

The angel, however beguiling her song, could return whence she’d come. Or seek out someone more amenable to her visit.

That decided, Mariota raised herself on an elbow and tilted her head toward the distant music.

Or what she’d thought had been music.

For now, even straining her ears, she heard only the rushing of her own blood.

No other sounds reached her, apart from the snoring of her guard and, through the high slit in the wall that served as a window, the light patter of rain.

Night sounds by no means as enchanting as angelic song, but infinitely sweeter for their normalcy. Stinging heat pricked the backs of her eyes then, the grimness of her surrounds hitting her like a hard-toed kick in ribs.

Equally distressing, the wretched little cell began to spin again, a great wave of weariness washing over her, urging her to let the darkness reclaim her.

The darkness and . . .
furtive sounds.

Awake again at once, she heard a scuffle and a thud, hurried fumblings at the iron bar of the door. An overloud
creak
as the door swung open and a figure appeared in the torch-lit doorway. Soberly garbed and generous of girth, the woman bore no trace of misty glitter or gauzy wings.

But she did look familiar.

“Nessa!” Mariota’s brows shot upward, her nose recognizing her friend despite the unaccustomed ampleness of the other’s form.

And for all her big-heartedness and charm, Nessa Mackay smelled.

Not unappetizingly, but . . . distinctly.

Of peat smoke and salted herring, the good rich earth and the sea.

Widowed some years now, she plied her late husband’s trade, drying what fish and eel kindly valiants brought her, and tending her small farmery as best she could.

Such served her well, Nessa was wont to say, claiming her wants were few.

“Nessa . . . ,” Mariota repeated, near choking on her astonishment. “Is it yourself?”

“Even as you can see!” Nessa’s hands went to her hips, her gaze sweeping the cell. “This is worse than I’d feared. A plague on the miscreants for bringing you here.”

“But how did
you
get here?” Mariota shook her head, her mind still flailing. “Hugh is dead. His men think I—”

“Och, I ken what the louts are saying. Why else would I be here, in this guise?” Nessa patted her somewhat lopsided hips. “Someone must help you out of this tangle!”

Coming closer, she whipped open her cloak, revealing the sacks of provender hanging about her waist. “Word travels fast in these hills. I came prepared. I’ve even secured two garrons. They stand waiting in the birchwood beyond the stables.”

Mariota’s heart began to pound. “Saints praise you, but there is more—”

“Ooh, no doubt, my lady. Even much that you do not know.” Nessa wagged a finger. “Aye, there is much amiss. We must be away from here this night.”

But Mariota sat still, her brow furrowing. “I cannot leave until my name is cleared,” she said, her resolve firm however strained her voice. “My good repute might be tarnished, but I will not be named a murderess—”

“Not you, but I may now bear such a stain in truth.” Nessa flicked a glance at the guardsman.

No longer snoring, nor moving at all, the man lay sprawled on the stone floor just outside the door.

Nessa’s face hardened. “That one cared more for the plump flesh he supposed about my hips than the respect usually accorded a castle guest,” she said, readjusting her cloak. “He lunged for me when, in my guise as traveling bardess, I sought a word with you. I shoved him away, but deep in his cups as he was, he stumbled and knocked his head on the drawbar. I would ne’er have desired it, but I fear he is dead. . . .”

“Mercy!” Mariota’s gaze narrowed on the man, the dark red stain spreading from beneath his head.

Heat, rapid and pulsing, spread up her throat and flooded her face. “Aye, we must be gone,” she agreed, pushing to her feet.

She eyed the dead man, praying her words would not be misunderstood. “Like as not, I am in this cell, foul as it is, because I am well born. Hugh’s men will release me once they come to their senses.” She paused, moistened her lips. “You would be dealt with more severely, met at once by the sharp end of a sword. And that I cannot allow—”

“Faugh!” Nessa waved a dismissive hand. “You, my lady, will have naught to say of my fate or your own if we do not make haste.” She grabbed Mariota’s arm and pulled her from the cell. “It is your very station dooming you! At first light they mean to take you to the River Inver, at the far end of the loch—”

“What are you saying?” Something inside Mariota stirred, a memory hovering just outside her grasp. “Why would they take me there?”

Nessa shot her a glance. “Have you forgotten the Each Uisge said to dwell near the river mouth? The most dread water-horse in all Assynt?”

Mariota shuddered. “Every man, woman, and bairn hereabouts has heard the tales.”

And even if she hadn’t, of late, the glens had been ablaze with prattle about the river-dwelling monster, a creature able to assume a bonnie man’s form and, so disguised, lure fetching lasses to watery ends.

But the Each Uisge of River Inver hadn’t ravished a woman in ten years. Tongue-waggers claimed he’d made a pact with the good folk of Assynt, that every tenth year he’d be delivered a living sacrifice so long as he bided beneath the river’s surface.

And, Mariota recalled with a sinking heart, the time for a new sacrifice was at hand.

Her eyes flew wide. “You are not saying they mean to offer me to the water-horse?”

“That is the way of it, aye.” Nessa flicked a finger at Mariota’s heavy braid. “’Tis said the beast favors comely wenches with reams of coppery red hair.”

Mariota glanced at her plait, feeling ill.

Even in the dimly lit passage, her hair gleamed a bright shimmering bronze.

Some might even say
coppery red.

“I do not believe in the Each Uisge,” she said, lowering her voice because they were nearing the stairs leading up to the great hall. “Such foolery is good for naught but entertaining gullibles on cold, fire-lit nights.”

“It scarce matters what you believe . . .
they
believe.” Nessa tossed a glance up the darkened stairwell as they hastened past. “And, may the fiend roast their toes, they think the water-horse will find you a particularly pleasing sweetmeat because you are a lady!”

“They’ve run mad.” Mariota bit back an oath when her foot collided with a stack of charcoal baskets and empty braziers heaped against the wall. “Full addled.”

Nessa huffed. “That, too, will make nary a whit of difference when you are trussed up and sinking like a stone.”

Mariota quickened her step, her pulse racing now that a little-used door to the bailey loomed before them. “Ne’er would they dare such a deed.”

“Mayhap not when you were their leader’s lady love,” Nessa countered, already fiddling with the door latch. “But now, and with the death of the alewife—”

Mariota drew a sharp breath. “The alewife of Assynt?”

Nessa nodded and flung open the door. “The very one,” she confirmed. “Found dead beside the River Inver a few nights ago, she was. Word is the Each Uisge had his way with her. But whatever caused her end, her demise has folk clamoring for a new sacrifice.”

“Dear saints,” Mariota gasped, her stomach roiling.

Outwardly calm, but inwardly shaking, she followed her friend into the bailey and braced herself against the night’s wind and rain, the long road before her.

A new life she wouldn’t begin to contemplate until Drumodyn and all its darkness lay far behind her.

A fortnight later, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie, newly styled Keeper of Cuidrach, reined in atop a high gorse-covered ridge and surveyed the wide expanse of hill and sea spread before him. The evening air held a wet chill, but neither the cold nor the deepening twilight dampened his spirits.

Swallowing hard, he drew a hand across his brow, hoped the gesture would hide his emotion from the men pulling up beside him.

Not that his handpicked array of companions shouldn’t understand, for this was Kintail at its finest. And this lonely corner of Kintail was his heritage—a landscape he’d carried etched across his heart during every one of his years at sea.

A legacy he’d ne’er dreamt to claim.

Remembering that ache, he breathed deeply of the damp, earth-rich air, his blood quickening.

In the distance, flurries of wind played across the dark waters of Loch Hourn and on its high, precipitous cliff rose the great arch of the Bastard Stone, and, not far from its shadow, the silent ruin of Cuidrach Castle.

“Yonder she lies!” One of his men pointed to the abandoned stronghold. “But I vow Cuidrach is not so empty as we were led to believe.”

At once, all eyes turned on the speaker, young Jamie the Small, a great strapping lad, all high spirits and cheer. He was known and heckled for his unmanageable shock of auburn hair and, amongst the men bold enough to tease him, the astounding size of his most manly accoutrement.

He was also amongst the youngest of Kenneth’s stalwarts and possessed of excellent vision.

Certainly better than Kenneth’s for
he
saw naught but the emptiness of the land, a few notable gaps in Cuidrach’s walling, and the gathering dusk.

But Jamie was looking round, eyes bright. “There, a faint drift of smoke,” he insisted, still pointing. “Someone has lit and stirred a fire to blaze. And in the tower!”

“Havers, lad, ’tis cloud and mist you see,” an older man challenged, tut-tutting into his beard. “Naught else.”

Unfazed, Jamie lowered his arm. “Wayfarer, broken men, a wandering friar, I know not. But someone whiles there,” he said, and with entire authority. “I’ll eat a brick of peat for my supper if I am wrong!”

“And I shall consume double your portion if you are right,” Kenneth took him up, with equal conviction. “We shall find naught at Cuidrach but our own shadows—and a good night’s rest!”

But, of a sudden, something charged the air with all the crackling intensity of an approaching thunderstorm. Saints, he could even feel gooseflesh rising on his nape, the shimmer of awareness pulsing through his bones!

He cleared his throat, ignoring the sensation. “And lest we wish to linger on this hill until we are hoary and gray, I say we make haste. Let us be away home!”

The words no sooner left his lips than he sent his mount plunging into the autumn evening, his men having little choice but to spur after him.

But when, at last, they drew up before Cuidrach’s walls, a great hoot of laughter came from young Jamie.

Blue threads of peat smoke
did
curl from the keep.

And pale yellow light glimmered in one of the uppermost windows.

Reining in not far from the gates, Kenneth stared upward, disbelief washing over him.

“Heigh-ho!” Jamie cried, his voice bursting with all the exuberance of having been proved right. “I told you I saw smoke!”

“Aye,” Kenneth admitted, scanning the parapet walk, his narrow-eyed gaze searching for further signs of intrusion. “And the worse for whoe’er dares come at me with a handful of peat—”

“Holy Saint Columba!” one of the men crowed then, gesturing wildly toward the tower. “An angel!”

Snapping his own gaze back to the lit window, Kenneth saw not an angel but a woman.

Clearly in the full blossom of her beauty, her silhouette appeared only for a fleeting moment, just long enough for the fiery-haired siren to close the shutters. And give the men below a good view of her curvaceous form.

Even, Kenneth would have sworn, a quick glimpse of thrusting, chill-tightened nipples!

A certain part of himself beginning to tighten in response, he frowned, imagined icy water sluicing over his male parts as he raked a hand through his hair and blew out a stunned breath.