Chapter 18

A month later, atop the Keep, Rowena wrapped the worsted plaid Nhaimeth had given her firmly about her cheeks and neck, and looking at him, she said, “The view is grand but being up here makes me wish for the safe shelter of the hidden vale where ye found us.”

Rowena’s comment caught the wind and was thrown back at him as he followed her onto the high battlements of the Keep o’erlooking the Bailey and hills one side, and the sea on the other. “If safe was what ye were looking for ye would ne’er hae followed us to Cragenlaw. The land about the Castle can be wild, and cateran use the forest to steal and kill, though not so much these days. Some days it feels as if betwixt them, the wind and the sea will scoop us all up and send us to the bottom of the North Sea. Yet still the place stands solid.” He laughed behind his hand so the wind couldn’t steal it away. “I have to admit that Cragenlaw was the first place I ever felt safe. At Dun Bhuird, even with my sister Astrid keeping an eye on me, I could ne’er tell when Erik the Bear might toss me off the ledge into the Bailey in a fit of temper. I think he felt that having a son who looked as I do diminished him as a man.”

Shuffling closer, the easier to be heard, Rowena said, “And yet ye survived, thanks to yer big sister, Nhaimeth. Something we have in common. If Guaril hadn’t found me beneath that tree in the forest, a wolf would have had me; of that I’m certain.”

“I’m of a mind that the Green Lady must have led Guaril to ye. I believe that she takes care of her own. Did I say that I’ve seen her here at Cragenlaw? They do say she hides in the brewery where the air smells of hops and damp greenness. But that day she looked down at us frae the tree where Morag, Rob and I had just buried the afterbirth of Astrid and Euan’s stillborn son. We did it as an offering to the auld gods in the hope they would keep the wee lad safe.”

“Ye mean like the white stag that Rob said led ye to our camp, as if the beast was sent to help both him and his clansmen?”

He turned to face her and looked into the depth of her bonnie green eyes. Momentous events happened to him on the top of Cragenlaw Keep. It was here he first felt safe enough to draw his father Erik Comlyn’s eye, certain that nae matter how much the Bear shook his fist at him, the McArthur wouldn’t let him harm a hair on his head. The most recent earth-shaking event had just taken place when he looked into Rowena’s eyes, positive he couldn’t let her go. “Aye, that’s what I’m talking about. Though most of the auld Celtic gods have been driven into hiding, I still believe they have a hand in our fate. Why else would they have brought me a lassie after my own heart, right now?”

Rowena’s lips curled in a smile that tightened the strings around his heart, making his breath hard to catch. “As ye are aware Nhaimeth, I can never read my own future and, strangely enough, I’ve discovered that no matter how hard I try, I’m prevented from seeing a skerrick of yer fortune as well. It appears we must leave what lies ahead of us to the hand of fate,” she leaned closer to whisper as if telling a secret, saying, “and mayhap the Green Lady.”

She took his hand then and pulled him away frae the crenulated battlements. “Now take me down to the fire, lad, for even without the help of my inner eye I can tell there is snow blowing in the wind. The winter weather ye have been promising is on its way.”

Nhaimeth took her hand and tucked it under his arm, glad he had worn a sheepskin short-coat as well as his plaid. “There’s nae need to worry, Rowena. Trust me to keep ye warm.”

In the month since they had arrived at Cragenlaw, both Harry and Ralf had grown adventurous, no longer content to spend the daylight hours under Becky’s eye. The chamber they had been allotted kept them far too constrained and made them cry in frustration.

Melinda couldn’t help but smile as she watched them now. Not only could Ralf walk now; everywhere he went he ran full tilt. She couldn’t imagine them allowed to play so freely in her father’s Hall. They were trouble, the pair of them, always under the maids’ and menservants’ feet as they worked in the Great Hall. At the present time, worn out at last, both twins sprawled across their Scots’ grandfather’s old wolfhounds. Greying around the muzzle, the great brutes slept in front of the fire, snuffling and snoring.

“Where is Maggie?, I’d have thought she would be turning a hand to the sewing, for when she has a place of her own… They grow so quickly.” Melinda tucked in her chin to hide her strained smile. “It seems we prepare for marriage from the moment we learn to thread a needle.”

Rob’s mother chuckled under her breath, a throaty sound that reminded Melinda of Rob. “I have to confess that mending is Maggie’s least favourite task. She is better at holding a sword than a needle, and her father encourages her, teaching her how to fight with a sword, and Rob encourages her. When she was born, Euan and I were relieved to find I’d carried a lassie and all our fears over the curse running true to course, whether we were married or not abated. Fate has always conspired to surprise me. I never expected to have another bairn.” She held Melinda’s gaze for a long moment, as if she had heard gossip about Melinda—from Becky no doubt. “They told me I’d be barren after Rob was born; he was always a big lad and his birth wasnae easy.”

Empathy for Rob’s mother had her stretching out a hand. “The getting of bairns is a pleasure and the birthing pure pain. Living in fear of getting with child isn’t easy,” she said, withdrawing her hand, fearing she had gone beyond the bounds of their tentative friendship. As for her renewed link with Rob, she was well aware he would intensely dislike discovering that she had discussed such personal matters with his mother, then she leapt farther into the area she had decided but a moment before was best avoided. “From the looks of him, the McArthur is still a lusty man, not one to imagine abstaining,” she said, remembering how Euan was with Morag, the small touches, the snatched kiss when they thought no one observed them. It had once been like that betwixt her and Rob.

Once...

When Melinda looked up, somewhat aghast at her own impertinence, she saw colour stain Morag’s cheeks, yet she was laughing. “Oh, he doesn’t abstain, he has nae need.” Her voice faded away and her laughter fled with it. “Oh, my poor dear, is that what is wrong betwixt ye and Rob. Ye dinnae behave like a newly wed couple. Rob spends his days training for the next battle while his wife sews shirts for their bairns.” She explained her reasoning and the light reappeared in her eyes along with the smile on her lips. “Ye were correct, Euan has never been a man to abstain.”

“Rob was determined his sons would never be called bastards.”

“And so he married ye to give his bairns a name. I never realised he felt his illegitimacy so deeply. He never showed it, and Euan never treated him as other than his heir.” A sigh slipped frae Morag’s lips—of sorrow, of regret. “I would have married, but Euan refused to take the risk, not with my life. So we live as man and wife without benefit of the kirk’s blessing. It held him back. Euan was a favourite of King Malcolm and his wife, Queen Margaret, yet I didn’t feel able to accompany him to court. The news of the Queen’s death so soon after King Malcolm’s disturbed him greatly. It was through her sending mercenaries here to help fight against Erik the Bear and my brother Doughall that we discovered my elder brother, Gavyn. Ye might have heard he is the true heir to Wolfsdale, or was until King William gave it away to yer father.”

“I never knew that before I arrived at Cragenlaw. Rob never mentioned it,” she confessed, twisting the garment she had been sewing in her lap.

Morag nodded. “I suppose he felt it wouldn’t be politic to let yer father know he had been born at Wolfsdale and knew the lay of the land, so to speak, like the back of his hand.”

“There were a lot of things he didn’t tell me, including his illegitimacy. Not that it mattered; even William of Normandy was a bastard.” She blurted out the word, worried about giving insult.

Morag’s eyes appeared distant, as if caught up in memories. “It happened to Euan much as to Rob. We met in the aftermath of a battle; we fell in love, then he left without knowing he had left a bairn in my belly. Fortunately for Rob, he was born afore his father was cursed. Even so, it was many months after we arrived afore I found the courage to tell Euan—was forced to confess in order to make him save Rob’s life.”

Melinda didn’t know what to say. In her father’s house such honesty was unknown—Henry La Mont’s pretence that he had brought Brodwyn to Wolfsdale to be his daughter’s companion for example. “I’ve observed how the McArthur still loves ye, but I lost any regard Rob felt for me when he discovered how I found myself incapable of showing Ralf affection. It is better now since Rob forced me to face the fear I lived with after Ralf’s birth. The sensation that would rise inside me when I held Ralf, the feeling as death had reached out and tapped yer shoulder is hard to forget. And the guilt is almost as bad, but no more than I deserve.” She smiled wryly, trying to show herself in a different light. “My father had no problem accepting Harry as his heir and would have been happy to take him without me. I think that’s why he was keen to marry me off to St Clair while he would keep the twins.”

Morag said little, simply listened while Melinda unloaded all the worries she had carried alone, and didnae perk up until Melinda covered a laugh with her hand as she said, “I’ve a feeling my father thought he could put Brodwyn in my place to take care of the lads, but if he expected her to do aught more than play with them and chuck them under the chin, he would soon have learned his mistake.”

“This Brodwyn, was she Scottish?”

“I was under the impression she hailed from Cumbria, but I couldn’t be certain. She was definitely my father’s leman.” She finished with a curl of her lip, then leapt to her feet to apologise as she realised how disdainful she sounded. “I beg yer pardon a didn’t mean...”

Morag waved her back into her seat, “I’ve put up with worse, and I won’t hold it against ye. I can tell ye’re unhappy, and that’s what we need to do something about the situation. Do ye still love my son?”

“I wish I knew. Sometimes I think I could. There are times when he looks at me and it is as if none of the bad moments existed. Then I’m certain he remembers how I told him I hated him and called him a bastard...” She drew a deep breath as if to clear her lungs of all the rage that had filled her when she discovered who had abducted her, to have been treated as if she were nothing then to discover Rob was responsible. “Honestly, I had no notion Rob wasn’t legitimate. As I said, it wasn’t something we spoke of, but then getting me with child had never been mentioned either. Ye must have felt much as I did the day ye discovered ye were with child. I never knew what it was to feel so alone until that day, and that’s part of the reason I will never lie with him again.” She felt her bottom lip quiver as she finally admitted the truth. “I’m frightened of dying for love.”

Morag’s jaw dropped as she swiftly got to her feet, put her arm round Melinda’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, my poor wee thing, don’t cry over it. I have a secret I’ll share with ye that is just what ye need.” She glanced down at their feet where the twins were beginning to stir and with them the dogs that rose, stretching, as the lads tumbled off the long, shaggy backs. “Aye, bonnie as they are, ye can have too much of a guid thing.”

They both bent their backs, each reaching down to lift a lad off the floor and for once she held Ralf to her without being swamped by the memory of his birth. As she and Morag walked toward the stairs, the aulder woman told her the secret that might save her marriage.

His footsteps dragged on the stairs; the reluctance in them gave lie to his true feelings, his needs. How could ye need someone ye found it hard to like? How did ye prevent yer arms frae reaching out and grabbing her into them? Rob hated that the lass he first met was still rooted deep in his heart. He abhorred that a glimpse of her could turn his cock to stone. Never had he imagined becoming obsessed—being caught up in a love-hate connection, so strung up some days he felt he would as soon strangle her as kiss her.

That’s why he had been working himself to the bone, training, planning stratagems for the day Donald Bane’s followers began to question why a few of the Highland clans didn’t support his rule. It was what auld Mhairi had called being caught betwixt the devil and the sea at the bottom of the cliffs. One either fought it, jumped, or stood yer ground until they went away. All ye could do is prepare well, and he had.

He thought of the day Melinda sought out Rowena to read her future—if only it were that easy. To his way of thinking, having her look at his hand and his fortune would be like giving in without a fight because somebody told ye the fight couldn’t be won. Hope and courage flowed in his veins, which he didnae take lightly.

McArthurs didn’t surrender their land.

The lantern he used to light his way swung frae his fingers, throwing elongated shadows of a big man reeling around the curved wall of the stairs as if racing ahead of him to find Melinda. He stilled its movement afore he reached the door to his chamber—his and Melinda’s chamber. As always, he had left it until late in the evening afore making his way up frae the Hall where some of the younger housecarls sat around the fire bragging, as reluctant as he to leave the fire on a night when snow piled up against the walls of the Bailey. He didnae even attempt to cap their stories, certain any boast of his would have a hollow ring obvious to the most stupid among them.

Holding the lantern high to make sure there was naught on the floor to trip him up, he slid through the narrow opening he’d made and closed gently it behind him, not wanting to wake Melinda. He had been right to be cautious, for a couple of wooden horses Guaril had carved for the twins formed a trap on his way to feed the flames afore readying himself for bed. He would have liked to play with Harry and Ralf the way his father and mother did, but that meant spending more time in his young wife’s company—a desire to be avoided through necessity.

He stood afore the fire, unbuckling his belt removing his boots and the knitted stockings his mother had given him for Yuletide, stripping his body of one piece of clothing after another until they made a pile atop the wooden kist and he stood beside them as naked as the day he was born.

A fool unto himself, he couldn’t resist glancing into the shadows above the narrow mound in the covers that was Melinda. He sucked in a long harsh breath to contain the want, the need, as he pulled his plaid off the kist, preparing to wrap it around his long body, to imprison himself in its folds. Busy with his simple task, he was startled to hear his wife speak out of the darkness. The tail of his plaid tumbled onto the floor, and he shuddered but not frae the chill in the air. “Ye must be frozen. Today’s been the coldest since I arrived here, and there ye are late to bed again after working every moment God sends. I can tell yer worn out, Rob. Ye lie alongside me all night through without moving.”

What was he supposed to say—tell her he didnae dare move in case he reached out and pulled her up against him in the night? His mind could dissociate itself frae her but his body seemed to have a mind of its own. “It might be cauld, but there are still problems to tend to. I’m nae longer a bairn who leaves everything to his father; ours is a partnership.”

“I like yer father.” A simple statement, yet it filled his chest with regrets, for he couldn’t say the same about hers. God’s teeth. he felt more respect for what he’d learned of St Clair than he did for La Mont. Her father had used him; he would do the same to St Clair, and to Melinda if it worked to his advantage. Rob had closed most of the available gambits by his marriage to Melinda.

That didnae mean he would ever put any trust in the man ever abandoning his grab for the twins. He’d understood that much frae St Clair when he’d followed him outside while Melinda was occupied with Harry and Ralf, and it was the lads that dominated his thoughts as he answered her. “And he likes ye as well. Ye gave him the greatest gift in his life, since the day Morag confessed I am his son, his heir. That’s why he kept marrying only to lose his wives and sons to the curse: he had promised his father to keep the clan’s destiny safe.”

Bending his knees, Rob retrieved his plaid, intent on covering his nakedness, when he noticed a movement in the bed and lifted his gaze. The firelight flared as if in response to the heat surging through his veins. Her green eyes reflected the flames as she sat up, her shoulders pale as milk above the wolf-skin covers, watching.

He recognised the look, as did his cock, which he felt harden in response to the heat it engendered low in his belly. Rising awkwardly in an effort to keep his back toward Melinda, he began to wrap the plaid around his hips, while his mind imagined swimming in the cauld water of the lochan at Dun Bhuird, water that came straight off the mountain. It didnae help, though he did shiver at the memory of the bluidy remains they had found that day.

“Look at ye, shivering. Turn down the lantern and come to bed. No need to lie atop the covers tonight; it’s too cold, and I can’t find it in me to be cruel to man nor beast on this kind of night. I listen to the wind screaming around the Keep and I imagine it’s the poor lost souls of yer father’s dead wives coming back here from the brae where they’re buried.”

She pulled back the covers on the opposite side of the bed in invitation. “If I can’t trust the father of my sons to share my bed without doing me harm, there is no one at Cragenlaw I can trust.” She left the covers pulled back then lay down again turning onto her side with her hand tucked beneath her cheek, appearing innocent when he knew well she was anything but. That didnae mean he would gainsay her; he was a man not a fool. Or was he? Lying beside her in bed for the first time in two years would be sheer torture, a potent challenge to his manhood.

He tossed his tightly woven worsted plaid onto the chest. Part of its warmth came frae the way the threads prickled his skin, but he’d worn it all day while he worked—hard physical labour meant to keep his thoughts off the woman in the bed. He could smell his own manly smell mixed with the lanolin frae the sheep that helped prevent the rain soaking through. He’d rather sleep with Melinda’s scent in his head, breathing it deep into his lungs the way he had in the early days when they had stolen time together to make love.

Doing his best not to disturb her, he lay down on his side, facing away frae her. Lifting the coverlet until the soft fur tickled his shoulder, he let his body sink into the mattress, felt her heat slide under the linen sheet to caress him, and let out a groan that had been lying in his gut since she looked out of her flame-lit green eyes at him.

“Ye must be worn to the bone, Rob. At least tonight ye will sleep warmly and I’ll not feel so lonely. Ye can say it’s my own fault, but that’s not news,” she paused while he considered how little sleep he was likely to get with her beside him. He hadn’t realised until she mentioned it that he too had felt lonely, missing her; but some problems couldn’t be fixed simply by wishing words unsaid, so he said naught and it was left to her to finish her thoughts. “I don’t suppose ye have ever been frightened of anything. Yer a man, big, strong, able to fight…” The sigh leaving her lips was tinged with irony. “…Able to talk yer way out of anything.”

He’d give her that. He’d never talked so fast or so convincingly on that day he had persuaded La Mont to ransom him instead of kill him in his first battle at Alnwick. It was the second that had almost done for him—discovering the existence of his sons after all yon months of pining for Melinda with nary a word, nae message. Easy now to think that was the very thing that gave him an excuse to be harsh with the moment she cursed him out as a bastard. Aye, and mayhap the anger had hovered above Ralf’s head with every breath he took on the way to Loch Leven.

Suddenly, her voice came to him out of the darkness—quiet, unsure. “I was terrified that day, lying bundled up in the wagon, thrown in there with as much care as ye would give a sack of turnips, all the while waiting for the knife that would strike through the covering and kill me. Not once did I imagine my father setting out to retrieve me. Why need he, when he had my sons, his heirs? He’s as much enamoured by that notion as the McArthurs are. Why would I believe my abductor would have taken my sons as well as myself?”

Rob heard her laugh, a soft huff of air, yet it struck him to the core as it emphasized her closeness. “Never in a million years will ye guess my thoughts as I lay there in the darkness, bumping along an unknown path, scared out of my wits. Ye see, to me my father’s nature needs no thought, no figuring out. He was about to marry me off to St Clair and there’s me blind to everything but the fact that at least my abductors would have saved him a dowry.”

“Ye shouldn’t belittle yerself, Melinda,” he said in a voice croaky with the emotions her story had wrought in his chest. “He sent St Clair to find ye.”

“Aye, he did,” she whispered but without much conviction, sighing, “which only means he’s not done with us, hasn’t given up trying to get the lads back. I can’t see Brodwyn taking his mind off them for long, no matter how happy my erstwhile companion seemed to make him in bed.”

Brodwyn... The name sent ripples running through his mind the way a stone dropped into a loch did. “Brodwyn,” he echoed the name. “I never heard ye make mention of her afore.”

“My father brought the red-haired harpy back from the south with him not long after yer ransom was paid and ye went back to Scotland. He tried to pretend he had brought her home to keep me company, but my nights, and sometimes days, in yer bed made me well aware what the sounds from my father’s chamber meant. I think she enchanted him, and not in a magic way, but with her wiles. I’d see her and recognise what the expression in her eyes meant when she flicked her gaze over him. Even the way she moved her body as she walked was designed to lure him to her.”

The hairs on the back of Rob’s neck rose on the thought that there were more coincidences in heaven and earth than one mere man would ever understand. Yet he took Melinda’s meandering story as a warning sent frae some power that it was time to be wary of more than Donald Bane.

He dragged his thoughts back to the present, back to the discovery that Melinda had gone through the entire duration of her journey in Guaril’s wagon both in fear of her life and in the belief that her sons were lost to her. The notion of her decision that she hated him was easy to come to grips with; her calling him a bastard would take longer to forgive. It brought back shades of his childhood and his Uncle Doughall cursing him for living, believing him another obstacle on his path to becoming Baron Wolfsdale.

Ach, well, if it hadn’t been Erik the Bear that killed him it would probably have been Henry La Mont.

“I’m glad we’ve had this wee talk lass, but dinnae worry too much about yer father attacking us at Cragenlaw, many have tried and many have failed. He’ll never have our sons. The defences we’ve been putting in place against Donald Bane’s followers will work as well against yer father and, as they say, forewarned is forearmed. Sleep now, tomorrow will be upon us afore we realise it with naught ahead but more work.”

He did manage to sleep, but it was a slumber disturbed by dreams of Lhilidh, and the flames of the burning broch seemed to pour frae Brodwyn’s red hair. He awoke wondering whether he should warn Jamie that the bitch was still alive, certain now frae Melinda’s description that her father’s leman could be nae other than Brodwyn Comlyn.