Chapter Seventeen
What began for Katrin then was the strangest of times, when she seemed to live her life on two divergent paths, both of which beckoned her to follow.
The paths possessed their similarities. On both did she oversee her father’s house, work with his seneschal, look after his guests, and fulfill ordinary duties.
But in the afternoons, when it grew quiet, she took lessons on the harp from Finlay.
And evenings after supper, she continued to work with the Gallowglass commander.
It felt almost as if she were two women. One who dealt in beauty and dreams woven across the strings of a harp. One who perfected the most effective way to remove a man’s head.
Which was she, in truth?
She’d always been aware on some level that Da was disappointed in her—and Ma too, while she was alive—for not fulfilling her expected role in life, marrying early, and producing a herd of children.
It would have taken care of Da’s current difficulties.
She’d heard him call her stubborn when he thought she could not hear.
But she’d never found the man to whom she could give herself entirely.
Now there were two of them. Both so different it made her head spin. Both of whom she admired and sincerely liked in vastly different ways.
Reagan brought out something inside her, a fierceness she’d always known was there and that she sought almost instinctively to cultivate. An ability to look after herself and so be her own woman. An assurance that no one would ever have to go off to die on her behalf.
But it was more than that. She liked Reagan’s sense of humor and his great and boundless energy, and the fact that he respected her. It came to be that she enjoyed the work itself.
The trouble was, ever since he’d attempted to kiss her, she’d looked at him differently. Now, although he said nothing of it and never attempted to press himself upon her again, she saw more than approval in his tawny eyes.
There was desire.
She dealt with it by telling herself she could have him, if she chose.
Why not? She was a spinster and the head of the household, promised to no one.
She could have the Gallowglass commander, which would unquestionably be an experience like no other.
He would then go away. Naught permanent and naught lost.
He would go away perhaps to die.
That was the trouble with warriors. They lived life on the edge of a blade, and that terrified her.
Still, she did not think of loving him, of giving him her heart. She thought on physical gratification.
Then there was Finlay. Och, Finlay. They met in the hall when it was deserted or sometimes, when the weather favored it, out on the hillside for the lessons he provided on his harp.
A privilege it was to hold the beautiful Brada in her hands.
And Katrin proved to have an aptitude, the same fingers that could grip a sword—Reagan said she was particularly skillful with a long knife—agile enough to coax delicate notes from the strings.
Ye might ha’ been a harper, Finlay told her. Just like Bradana.
She remembered it then. Had Adair not given his Bradana seven kisses—two in the palms of her hands, two at the corners of her mouth, on her cheeks, and one upon her brow?
Had, in fact, Ardahl not also done so for his Liadan?
All the times the two lovers from Finlay’s tales had met through the ages, it had been so. Over and over again.
Was that why Finlay had treated her to those seven kisses, what she’d called a blessing? Had he been trying to suggest something?
Nay, and nay, that was far too fanciful. For what might he have been trying to suggest? And why did she crave that he might so bless her again?
Despite her confusion, she enjoyed the lessons she shared with him, aye, as much as the instruction at arms, if not more. The true joy of it, though, was spending time with Finlay. Being in his company. Merely absorbing the feel of him.
There was an ease in that, and a fierce temptation. Whereas she spent her time with Reagan hoping he would not try to kiss her, she spent that with Finlay praying he might.
He did not. He conducted their time together with perfect propriety as if anyone might walk in upon them. Sometimes, folks did.
Yet during that time she became intensely aware of him. The depth of patience he possessed and the quicksilver ability of his mind that could retain a host of stories and tunes to the smallest detail, yet could leap also to laughter.
The music of his voice so often in her ear when he instructed her. The grace with which he moved. The light that came and went in his eyes.
She could not possibly be falling in love with the harper.
Why not?
Because it was a thing she did not do, and anyway, growing feelings for Finlay would be just as inappropriate as for Reagan. For Finlay, too, would move on eventually, leaving her.
Leaving her.
To be sure, he gave no signs of it yet. Every time she brought up the subject, and she surely brought it up more often than she should, he said only that he had accepted Da’s invitation, and hers, to stay as long as he wished.
The question then became, how long would he wish?
She had a feeling when the word came from Earl Randolph to muster, Finlay would take up his harp and move on. Sail to Ireland, mayhap, where there was less war and strife. Free as the wind, he could go anywhere he chose.
Meanwhile, she learned his songs. The ones he had made, like the Gallowglass march, and some far older. She did not play them with any skill approaching his, to be sure. But it satisfied a need inside her, almost as bright as that to take up a sword.
While they worked, she spoke to him. She became so comfortable doing so, it felt like speaking to herself rather than another person. He took in her words the way the sea accepted raindrops, without fuss or exception, and said little enough in return.
He did not have to. She could so often see his thoughts in his eyes.
Wondrous eyes, the harper had. Deep and yet bright, caught like living gems between dark-brown lashes, intelligent and often full of laughter and—well, she did not possess sufficient words to describe them. Sometimes when he looked at her, she saw the whole world there.
Mayhap, after all, she was falling in love with the harper. Which made a good enough reason to stop with the lessons.
Only she could not.
Occasionally she asked him direct questions just to hear him speak, most often the question she had asked before without receiving what she considered a satisfactory explanation. How and why did ye learn those stories o’ us? Because that question haunted her, so it did.
Mistress, a bard learns many stories.
Aye, but why us, and no’ some other clan? Some other family. Are ye certain what ye told us of our ancestors is true?
Every word.
How could he know? Not the general history of her ancestors, nay—that he might well have picked up somewhere in their world.
But how could he tell in such detail how Liadan had felt standing in the sun, watching her Ardahl strip down to wash himself?
How did he understand the fear in Bradana’s heart when she crouched in the bottom of a tiny boat with her hound, knowing they returned to Alba only to fight?
How to so well describe the agony of Darlei, the Caledonian princess, traded away from the man she adored, or the fierce resolve of Hulda, the Norse maiden, set upon fighting her own battles?
All the things Katrin felt.
It must be some mysterious magic, for Finlay did know these things. He but rarely spoke of it. He asked her few personal questions, merely answered those she asked with brief yet boundless courtesy.
One afternoon they moved out to the grove of rowan trees that grew at some distance from the keep. A glorious afternoon it was, with a limitless sky of deep blue above and a light breeze that brought to them the scents of the hills. Too lovely, as Finlay had commented, to stay indoors.
Katrin could hear the sea from down at the shore. She could also, distantly, hear the Gallowglass at practice. A strangely divergent combination.
Something about it made her restless. Or perhaps it was Finlay’s calm that did. Like a small child seeking attention, she wanted a reaction from him. At last she put aside his harp—with great care, for she never treated it any other way—and got to her feet.
“Are we finished, mistress?” He had grown used to her moods, as she had to his. Not that he had moods, as such. The man merely flickered quietly.
“Nay,” she said. If he thought they had finished, he would leave. She was not ready to part with him. “I am merely feeling unsettled. Ye must play for me. Please.”
She knew no greater pleasure than listening to him. She wondered if kissing him would be a still greater pleasure.
“The point o’ us meeting is for ye to practice,” he told her. “Ye may hear me play anytime.” He slanted her a gleaming look. “Through the wall, of a night.”
Aye, he continued to do that for her, oft times. A kind of lullaby it was, and good of him.
She said, “I can ne’er get enough.”
Their eyes met and held. The breath hitched in Katrin’s throat.
He smiled. “Ye flatter me, mistress.”
“Call me Katrin, for God’s sake.”
“Katrin.”
“And nay of flattery. Ye maun ken ye be a magician with Brada in your hands. Is it too much for me to ask that ye might play for me?”
“Naught ye might ask would be too much.”
Then lie with me. Let us strip off our clothing here in the warm sun beneath the rowan branches and touch one another skin to skin, so I might memorize the feel o’ ye, and we might forever become one.
She did not say that. Instead she kept her wanton thoughts in her head and stretched out in the fragrant grass to watch him while he played.
His fingers wove enchantment upon the strings. What, she wondered, if he wrought a new song, only their own?
Breath caught, she listened. She admired.
Whereas she might be unable to do aught but watch when beads of sweat gathered upon Reagan’s brow as they worked together, and ran sliding down over the muscles of his broad chest, she now marked the many colors the sun found in the harper’s hair.
Not just rich red but threads of gold also, and copper, and brown.
The way the tiny hairs grew along his jaw.
He did have a fine jaw, the harper. And the glint of hair at the open throat of his tunic.
How would he look naked? No warrior, the harper, but not a soft man either. She’d learned that much when he sat behind her and reached around to direct her fingers on Brada’s strings. He had tramped all over the Highlands, and other lands, in all weather.
She could almost see him stripped of his clothing. She could almost taste him.
Those fingers that moved so deftly over the strings, how would they feel upon her body?
She wanted to give herself to him as she never had to any man. She saw herself rising, going to him, taking the harp from his hands and kissing him so she’d know how he tasted. So he’d know how she felt.
She did not, merely lay there listening, her mind and body alive with desire.
He finished the song he was playing and let his fingers rest on his knee, asked softly, “Ye remember that tune?”
To be sure, she did, and he knew it, for had she not mentioned it to him before? It was the tune the old harper, Coll, had played while Darlei and Deathan made love for what they’d believed would be the last time, in the alcove behind the great hall. Desperate and unendingly devoted love.
“I do. Do ye, Finlay, believe in the wheel o’ destiny that ye describe in your tales? That we are caught upon it and return to this lifetime after time to mayhap find one another?”
“I do,” he told her in turn.
“Do ye suppose we—ye and I—might ha’ known each other before?”
He seemed to catch his breath for an instant before his lips—those mobile, beautiful lips—curved in a funny, canny little smile. He ran his fingers down the strings, producing a shower of bright notes. “I think we might.”
“As friends?” As lovers.
He said nothing.
Katrin sat up in the grass. “Let us go sailing.”
“Eh?” Seldom did she surprise him. She did so now.
“As Darlei and Deathan did, in your tale. As Bradana and Adair did, for all that.”
“To Ireland?” Now it was his eyes that smiled.
“Aye, why not? ’Twill be a rare adventure.”
He dragged his gaze from her and looked toward the sea, as if considering it.
Say aye, she bade him silently. Because out there upon the sea, away from everything that anchored her life, she could kiss him even as Darlei and Deathan had kissed for the first time.
“Say aye,” she pressed aloud.
“Can I e’er deny ye anything?”