Chapter Twenty-Four
Katrin was not herself that day, nor anything approaching the self she knew.
Though she kept busy with tasks aplenty, both helping with preparations for the Murtray army to move out and providing for the families of the men who would go, a part of her remained in her own chamber with Finlay.
Lost in the heat of him, the safe harbor of his arms, the thrill of blending her very being with his.
Who would ever imagine such a thing could occur?
That she might lose so great a part of herself to any man, and in so doing gain so very much?
She ached all day long to see him. But by accident or design, he kept away from her and her agitation grew along with his absence.
Och, but this was the very reason she’d long determined never to fall in love.
Who would want to surrender a portion of her well-being and self-determination, subject to whether or not a man was in sight?
Unless that man was Finlay.
His tunes haunted her head all day long—it seemed she’d heard them even when he made love to her.
She told herself she would not meet with him again that night—though had she not promised?
And then she decided she could not live, possibly could not continue to breathe, if she did not lie with him again.
Somewhere around midday, Reagan came to her.
He had been working hard, not with his own men now but with Da’s, trying to get them all armed and in possession of some sort of armor, and looked impatient.
He snagged Katrin’s attention in the great hall, where she was helping to set out a meal, by standing in front of her till she regarded him.
He made a very large barrier.
“Have ye spoken to the harper?” he asked abruptly.
Spoken to him? Aye, she had tumbled words right into his ear. Run her hands all over his body. Had her tongue in his mouth. Felt his eyelashes against her skin as he suckled at her breast. She knew the taste of him. The weight and the heat, inside her.
“Why?” she asked.
Reagan scowled. “Somewhat is not right.”
“No’ right wi’ the harper?” That made her stop what she was doing. “How d’ye mean?”
“I do not know.” Reagan gave himself a shake. “I have seen him here and there all about the settlement today. And I think—”
“What?” Katrin knew Reagan for the consummate warrior, and knew how good his instincts were. If he had noticed something about Finlay…
“Is he gettin’ ready to leave?”
“Leave? Here? Leave Murtray?” She sounded like a madwoman, but those were the last words she wanted to hear. Dread stirred within her, all mixed up with desire. He would not. Had Finlay not promised to be with her again tonight?
Had he? Had he actually promised?
Ah, perhaps he was still annoyed with her for saying she meant to accompany her father off to fight—though ’twas she, in truth, who should be annoyed. She needed to see him, talk to him.
“Where is he?” she asked Reagan.
“Now? I just saw him headed toward the armory.”
The armory? A harper?
“I maun go,” she said distractedly. She had to run Finlay to ground. Reassure herself that he would be here as long as she needed him.
And how selfish was that? Was that what she had become in her determination to direct her own life? Selfish?
“Katrin.” Reagan seized her arm. He touched her so seldom, save when they were at practice, that it made her narrow her eyes at him. “Did the harper not persuade ye to stay back from the mustering?”
“Is that what ye thought he meant to do?”
“Let us say I still had some hope.”
She lifted her head. “Finlay knows me for a woman who possesses a mind o’ her own. That is no’ likely to change.”
Reagan let go of her and gave a careless shrug. “Mayhap that is why he is planning to leave. Not much reason for him to stay here, with ye gone.”
And why should a man not stay and wait for a woman? How many women, over the scores upon scores of years, had done just that?
She glared at him. “No call for ye to speculate over the harper’s decisions.”
“Nay, none at all. I just thought it odd, and supposed ye would want to know.”
So she did, and mayhap she should thank him.
Instead, she ran from the room, out of the keep proper and down the stone stairs to the bailey. When had it become so late in the afternoon? The light had already begun to fade, and if she was to be with Finlay this night, they needed to get the matter settled.
The bailey, overflowing with Gallowglass warriors and Da’s men at practice, hindered her progress. She kept trying to see past heads and shoulders for a dark-red mane of hair or the edges of a green cloak. Men there were out here in plenty. None that was the harper.
Katrin went suddenly breathless, as if a weight had descended upon her. As if a number of heavy clouds weighted by grief had come down. What if she could not find him? What if he had already gone? Off across the hills and glens. Away from her.
He would not do so, not without telling her. Not after last night.
She ducked around the side of the keep and headed for the armory.
*
Finlay could not think of a good excuse for a bard to go seeking a sword.
The bailey was overflowing with men. Many of those who would be required to march out at their chief’s command seemed to have flooded in, perhaps from outlying places, perhaps to get their orders and weapons.
Some had brought their women, or probably more accurately their women had come along, eager to learn how risky this venture would be.
Women worried for their men, as ever. Just as men worried for their women.
It was, as he had learned over the many, many years, one of the prices of love.
He had been shaken to his core by what passed between him and Katrin last night.
Holding her in his arms again, tasting her sweetness, claiming her for his own just as in the long-ago.
But he did not fool himself—she was not yet his own, at least not in this life.
Succumbing to passion did not mean she remembered all they had been to one another. All they were.
He stood for a while outside the crowded armory, lurking in a manner unbefitting a bard.
No one paid much attention to him, not even Chief MacMurtray, who was very much in evidence, talking to his clansmen and lending any who wanted it a patient ear.
A good chief, was Anders MacMurtray, and worthy of his name.
The chief of his guard, Robran, seemed to be in charge of passing out weapons.
Quite evidently, there were not enough to go around.
Men were showing up with implements of their own, everything from hoes to scythes, and many did not seem to want to trade them for more traditional arms. Perhaps the tools with which they were familiar felt more comfortable in their hands, and no question a scythe could make a formidable weapon.
But against a mounted English knight, if that was what King David’s army would ultimately face?
Finlay might argue that far less than these others did he warrant a sword in his hand. But if Katrin thought he would let her march off without him, she was very much mistaken.
“Here ye be! Och, I ha’ been all over the place, high and low, looking for ye.”
He whirled to find Katrin behind him, looking harried and clearly out of breath. Finlay suffered an immediate flashback to last night, and the sight of her sinking to her knees in front of him. The glorious sensations that had come after.
“Wha’ are ye doing here?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
He could scarce tell her the truth. It had been well over ten years since he’d held a sword in his hand with any real intent.
Fortunately, she did not wait for his reply. Instead, she clamped her fingers to his forearm. “Are ye planning to leave?”
“What?”
“Are ye intending to leave Murtray? Take off down the road, just, wi’ Brada on your back? Because I refuse to stay at home, I mean.”
“Lass, alanna, I would no’ do that.” He meant to leave here, aye, but only at her side.
“Are ye certain? Reagan said ye are acting strangely.” Her fingers tightened.
“Reagan, is it?”
“I wondered—I wondered if ye meant to strike back at me.”
“I would no’ do that either.” Love did not strike back.
“Or if I had done somewhat last night”—here she lowered her voice, even though no one could possibly hear them in the racket of the yard—“to displease ye.”
“Displease me?” He had to close his eyes for an instant, the emotions came so strong. “Nay, and nay.”
“Then come.”
“Where?”
She bent a look on him. “Just come.”
People did stare when she led him away. Finlay supposed it made a strange enough sight for the chief’s daughter to be hauling off the harper. Katrin hissed between her teeth and let go of him.
“Go to yer chamber. I will be right up.”
“Eh?”
She bent a look upon him that left nothing to the imagination.
“Now?” he asked. In the midst of the day. Broad daylight.
She stepped closer, so close he could see the dark ring around the pale iris in her eyes. “I mean to ha’ ye again. Will ye argue wi’ it?”
“Nay, mistress.” His whole body came alight. “No’ me.”
She marched off away from him, her hips swinging with confidence. A spear of delight pierced him. Och, and she was today as she had ever been, if only she knew it. So far, she did not. She had not remembered. Mayhap if they lay together again?
It would take much less than that to persuade him.
She was waiting when he reached the corridor outside his chamber, and her door swung open before he could touch his. She reached out and seized him, towed him in.
Her lips were on his before the door finished closing. Aye, this was the woman he remembered. The one eternally his own.
*
Katrin did not care that it was still daylight.
Dark would fall soon enough, though she had not the patience to wait for it.
She could not say what had got into her.
The effects of that which had passed between herself and Finlay last night, mayhap.
Or the way the stories he had told kept sneaking up to capture her.
The dream she’d had while in his arms. The man himself.
All she knew was, they had not many days left between them. She wanted all the nights with him. And if the night was to begin early, then well enough.
She leaned up and kissed him. He tasted wonderful, did the harper, sweet as honey mead, his mouth warm and somehow instantly her undoing. If she’d had any resistance left, it would have deserted her then.
She had none.
“We will no’ be ready to leave tomorrow,” she said as she tore her lips from his and began to undress. “It will be a few days yet, for naught is ready. No’ the house, as we maun leave it, nor the men. We have at least this night together.”
“Aye, so.” He stood there watching her as she shed her clothes, a thing she could not seem to do fast enough. “Ye said, we. Ye are still planning to accompany yer father, then?”
“I am.” She paused with the front of her dress undone, aching for his touch. Aching. “Does that matter? Does that change aught between us? Finlay, are ye angry wi’ me for no’ heeding ye and staying back, as Reagan says?”
“Reagan said that?”
“He implied it.”
“I am no’ angry wi’ ye. Fearful for ye. Worried half out o’ my mind. But that is nay the same thing.”
“Do no’ worry.” Half naked, she pressed against him. “I am strong. I am able.”
“Aye, so I ken. But Katrin…” He put his hands in her hair, and his touch affected her so strongly, the pleasure was nearly pain. “Life is made up meetings and partings. I would no’ part wi’ ye so soon.”
“Do no’ worry about it.” She kissed him again, putting all her passion into it. Why could he—this one man in all the world—not believe in her? Have faith that she was strong enough? To take Geordie’s place at her father’s side. To come back alive.
Strong enough, it seemed, to do aught except resist lying with him again.
“Touch me,” she begged when the kiss ended.
He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Once again, time—perhaps even life itself—seemed to slow down as she lost herself in the sheer need to be with him, and the rightness of it.
He finished undressing her and shed his own clothing without regard.
He began kissing her, starting with the palms of her hands, working his way up her arms, down to her breasts and further, across her stomach, down her legs and up again.
She surrendered herself to the sensation, knowing that, just like last night, she would be able to deny him nothing.
She yielded, as she would not ever to any other man. She lay in a haze with her eyes narrowed, watching the beauty of him as he kissed her, and when he nudged her thighs apart she did not resist. Whatever he wanted of her, she would give.
It was as he was bringing her to the pinnacle of delight, his tongue inside her, that the room altered. In fact, it ceased to remain a room at all.
Instead, they were outside with a sky full of stars stretching overhead and tall trees all around. Firelight flickered nearby and the man she loved—the man she adored—knelt between her legs, his warm mouth a searing caress.
Naught more for which she might live than this. To be sure, they were hungry, desperate, in danger and on the run. But so long as she remained in his company, she would ask no more of life.
“Adair,” she whispered as she shattered, and he took her in his arms and held her close before plunging into her, even while the stars sang overhead, an ancient song.
Ah, Katrin thought as she came to herself. She must have slipped into another of Finlay’s tales, the second one he had told, when Bradana and Adair fled across Alba together, the very spirit of the land helping to hide them. A curious thing…
But all she cared for now was the feel of Finlay inside her, and the warmth of his touch. The way he tasted when she pressed her mouth to his. Be they in her bed, or out on the breast of Scotland, she wanted only to be in this man’s arms.
Dark found them, the light draining from her chamber as the daylight died outside. Katrin wondered if anyone was looking for her downstairs, if they would come searching. She was always on duty in the hall or the kitchens. But this, this was time apart.
“Finlay.” She turned to him and rubbed her lips across his. “Will ye spend each night wi’ me? Until I maun leave to meet up with Earl Randolph?”
At first she thought he would not answer. His hand lay upon her naked breast, the calluses earned by contact with the harp strings a wondrous abrasion. But he kissed her deeply and said, “Aught ye ask, alanna. Aught ye ask o’ me.”