Chapter Twenty-Eight
The days since Da’s death had been difficult, each and every one of them. The weight Quarrie assumed the moment his father passed only grew heavier, increasing by increments. Everyone expected so much from him.
There had been no chance to recover and precious little time to grieve.
The clansfolk assumed he would step into Da’s place immediately.
In truth, he had been going through the motions of filling that place for a long while.
But holding the responsibility for the settlement and everyone in it could not feel more different.
Ma had fallen apart in her grief and made no fit ally. Though he’d known all his life the affection his parents held for each other, he did not think he’d realized till now how much Ma had loved her husband. She wept for days. He could get no sense from her, and he began to worry for her health.
He could not lose her, also.
That particular worry might well pass, so he hoped, as she recovered. His responsibilities would not, never until he himself died.
Those around him made him aware of his responsibilities at every opportunity. At every moment of the day and half the night, people came at him sharing problems and wanting answers. He was not sleeping much, and when he did manage to sleep, he dreamed.
Those same dreams over and over again.
He was with a woman. Not always the same women. Only—she was the same.
It was as if in his brief moments of sleep he returned to a past he could not remember.
A trio of pasts, for she was a woman of varying guises.
She stood outside the washing place with him in the sunshine.
She walked toward him with a great gray hound at her side.
She lay with him in passion while sweet music played upon a harp, somewhere close at hand.
She did not appear to be the same woman, but aye, she was. The smile in her eyes that embraced him was the same. As were the feelings that engulfed him at her presence.
He craved those feelings just as he craved the music he heard in his head. Yet he slept so seldom and had only glimpses of her. Enough to make him ache.
He told himself it was all just fancy, a reaction to his grief and distraction. A means he’d found to escape what he carried.
But the dreams did not feel like dreams so much as—aye—memories. Unlike other dreams, the feelings they evoked did not fade at dawn. He recalled every detail and each one made him tingle, a sensation that, just like his grief, preoccupied him.
Neighboring chiefs both to the north and south heard of Da’s death and sent messages with their commiserations.
Those messengers also brought terrible tales of Norse attacks all along the shore as far as Anglesea in Wales.
A number of churches had been destroyed and smaller settlements burned to the ground.
Every chief along the Scottish coast remained on alert.
Which was what took Quarrie up on the walls first thing every morning and last thing every night.
Among his other duties, keeping his people—Da’s people—safe from attack seemed a most sacred one.
But though they did sight sails against the wild blue of the sky from time to time, the boats always passed by.
Until, that was, one sunny morning.
Quarrie had just begun with drilling the men in the field alongside the keep. Indeed, so warm was it that he had stripped down to his kilt, as had many of the men with whom he worked.
They had a number of the younger lads out, those who so often clamored to be allowed to fight, and Quarrie meant to give them a taste of what that meant, now that his ribs had long healed and his bruises were things of the past.
So noisy was it in the field, he nearly missed the cry from the walls above. Men were hollering, lads chirping and exclaiming. Weapons clattering.
Not until someone repeatedly called his name—“Chief Quarrie. Chief Quarrie!” and then, “A sail!”—did he pause and look up.
Those words, a sail, captured everything within him.
“Hush!” He held up a hand, and by bits the training field fell silent. He looked up.
Borach it was, straining to catch his attention. “A sail.”
Just passing? Quarrie did not pause to ask. His feet already moved, carrying him from the field to the steep stairs with a train of others following.
He never later remembered climbing those stairs. Only the harsh texture of the stone wall under his hands when he reached it and stood leaning out, following Borach’s pointing hand.
There.
Aye, it was a boat. Disappointment hit him like a punch to the gut. Not Hulda’s ship, the one aboard which he’d been held captive. But…
It might be the other he’d seen sail past, aye, earlier in the season. The one aboard which he’d fancied—fancied—he’d spied her.
Had it been but fancy?
This boat was agile, like the other. Light in the water. The dragon at the prow appeared to be staring them down.
That was because the boat was heading in to shore. Heading in.
“They are heading in!” Borach called. “Everyone to arms. To arms!”
The men on the wall scrambled. Those below in the bailey, most of whom had followed Quarrie from the training field, including the youngsters, froze and gazed to sea.
Quarrie raised an arm and called, “Halt. Halt!”
This was no attack. The boat came in gracefully without haste, the crew at the oars and not a sword or axe in sight.
Not an attack. Something else.
Men on the shore ran to the place whence the boat headed. As before, when Hulda had come for her answer, it paused just offshore, the boat having a shallow draught.
Quarrie could see figures moving about on deck. He could also see his own men looking up to him for direction.
“Hold!” he called again, and to Borach, “They want to talk.”
“Aye, but—” Borach began.
Quarrie, his eyes narrowed against the glare of light on the water, barely heard him. He watched the figures moving about on the boat and fastened on one in particular. He went abruptly light in the head and had to clutch the wall to remain upright.
It was her.
She had returned.
To him.
None of those three thoughts made any sense. No more sense than the dreams he’d been having or the sudden conviction that the woman from those dreams would soon stand before him.
Again.
He floated down the stairs and along the lengthy path to the shore, even as she and a single companion leaped over the side of the longboat and splashed through the tide.
They met just where the foam kissed the shingle, two elements that could scarcely differ more coming inevitably together.
“Hulda Elvarsdottir,” he said.
*
He spoke her name, and it sounded like music in Hulda’s ears. She had wanted this so long, she’d been more than half convinced that when she saw him again, when he stood before her, it would all come crashing down in bitter disappointment, for naught could match her imaginings.
She’d been wrong.
For he stood here before her whole and alive, and he looked good.
Ach, by Freya’s heart, better than good.
Tall and bare-chested, wearing only a checkered kilt with the sun shining full upon him and turning his brown hair to copper.
Her eyes feasted upon the sight of him and her spirit also, something that had all the while been yawning and hungry becoming satisfied.
He was real. He was here. He was all a woman’s heart could desire.
Everything else faded away from her. The water at her feet. The boat at her back. Garik at her side. Even the savage Scotsmen glaring at her, most with weapons in their hands.
She might die here and now.
At least she’d laid eyes on him first.
“Quarrie MacMurtray,” she returned, and her voice, rather surprisingly, sounded like her own. For she did not feel like herself. She felt like a woman who knew him, who had claimed him, somehow as her own.
Madness.
“I come not to attack,” she said, and looked around at all the hostile faces, the hostile postures, even though it hurt to take her eyes from him. “But to talk.”
“Talk,” he repeated, and even that single word shivered through her.
“Ja. You owe me that.” She returned her gaze to him. Did he look surprised?
A man came running up to him, out of breath and heavily armed. Quarrie glanced at him.
“She comes to talk,” he said. “No attack. Understand?”
The man gave Hulda a glare out of hard blue eyes but nodded.
“Come,” Quarrie said to Hulda, “we will speak together in the hall.”
“Stay here,” she told Garik, and to Quarrie, “My man will not come under attack? I have your word?”
“My word on it.” Quarrie directed a look of his own at the men and added, “This man’s safety is assured, aye?”
No one spoke. No one moved as Hulda and Quarrie walked up the stony path toward the tall stone structure ahead.
How strange it felt, after her summer, to enter a Scot’s settlement in peace.
The thought crossed her mind that she might not leave again. She could indeed die here. Felled by a dirk in the back. An arrow. MacMurtray’s hand.
Not by MacMurtray’s hand. He would not harm her. How she knew that, she could not say. She just did.
She entered the stone structure at Quarrie’s side, him meeting every hostile glare with an even stare.
She remembered the place, ja, from her last visit—it could not be less like the houses back home, which were long and roofed with thatch or soil and had a central hearth.
This had an entryway made of stone and a hall with a timbered roof.
A hard place to fight one’s way into, or out of again.
A fire burned at the far end of the room. Quarrie led her to this and turned to face her.
After the strong light outside, this seemed very dim. She could not see him as well as she wanted to. His hair—tied back into a tail down his back—looked plain brown. His bare chest no longer gleamed.
It did not matter, because he was close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.
She did.
“So…” He spoke softly and it sounded incredibly intimate in that large, empty place. As if whatever words they spoke should be honest ones and would exist only for the two of them. Even if she knew better. Naught in their world could concern but the two of them.
“Will ye sit,” he invited her, “before ye say wha’ ye will?”
Why did he affect her the way he did, this one man out of the many in the world?
Why did the sound of his voice send that shiver through her every time he spoke?
Why did the very scent of him—for she stood near enough to catch it—cause her emotions to rise up wild?
Longing and an answer to it, all in one.
“Ja, let us sit together and speak.”