Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
H er lashes lay dark against her cheeks, her breathing thickened.
"Look at me," He told her.
That dark blue gaze slowly met his.
"I don't want to hurt you."
Alix laid her hand against his chest, the ridge of muscles hard there as if he fought against something. Against her? Himself?
"I am not afraid of you."
His lips brushed her cheek, his beard scraping her skin, then took her mouth, slipping between her lips, tasting the heat there, as he imagined his flesh joining with hers, imagined that heat wrapping around him, consuming him. He wanted more. He wanted her strength and her spirit. He wanted her mindless with her own need, he wanted to taste her. He wanted all of her.
She was on fire, heat burning through her with each stroke of his fingers, the scrape of his beard at her breast, his tongue stroking over that sensitive flesh, then the sudden whisper of cool air as he pushed her shift aside followed by the brush of his lips at her belly, then at the curve of her hip.
" Jolie fille ," he whispered against her thigh, because she was that--so fine, so soft, then lower.
She gasped. "Ruari... !"
Then tasted all of her, the sweet, slightly musky taste that was hers alone. And now his.
She was coming apart, Alix was certain of it, even as she slipped into a place of pure sensation unlike anything she had ever known, a place where only the two of them existed.
Sensations poured through her and her hands tangled in his hair as if she would push him away. She could not as he took her to a place she'd never been, something almost painful exploding inside her. Her body arched as it began. Then he tasted it in the tender folds of flesh, that moment when her release began, her first time, and she cried out as it took her.
Afterward, he held her, her face pressed into his shoulder.
"I didna know," she whispered, and he smiled as he brushed a strand of dampened hair from her cheek, his fingers tracing the frown at her lips.
"What did you not know?"
"I didna know about... that ," she confessed. "I thought... "
One corner of his mouth twitched a faint smile.
"What did you think?"
Slender dark brows came together. "Well, it's just that... "
He watched the emotions at her lovely face as she struggled to explain, the frown at her mouth--that incredible mouth that had the ability to drive him near mad when it curved just so, and now, when he knew the taste of her, more than he had imagined and not near all that he wanted. And the way her eyes had darkened when he moved low over her, and now when she wanted very badly to say something, but hesitated suddenly shy when she had never been shy about anything.
"What is it?"
He enjoyed this far too much, even as his body ached. Was there ever anyone as bold as the young woman who lay with him, her body only now cooling from moments earlier?
He was not going to make this easy for her. He wanted her to say it, needed her to say it.
The frown deepened. She turned and stared into the fire.
"I thought there would be... more."
His mouth twitched as he forced back the grin. "More?"
She continued to stare into the fire.
"It's just that I've seen... "
He took her slender chin between thumb and forefinger and angled her lovely face toward him.
"What have you seen?"
"At Lechlede... " She shrugged a shoulder. "It's impossible not to notice when a man and woman... " her voice trailed off.
"I know the way of it," she said, not quite meeting his gaze. "Ye canna live in the place with near forty people about and not know. And then when the young girls come to me, needing a tonic and they talk of it."
"What do they talk about?"
"Well, about how it is with a man... "
She bit at her lower lip, her eyes squeezed shut. Color flamed across her cheeks.
"It's not that I didna like what ye did... I did!" she looked up at him then. "It was verra nice, and I suppose if ye were injured some way... That maybe ye couldn't... "
"Injured?"
She saw the laughter at his eyes and had the sudden suspicion that he was teasing her. Just as he had so many times in the past.
"I mean, from yer time in France," she tried to explain. "It didna seem as though ye were injured there, but maybe tis something I don't know about."
Father in heaven! She was a rare one! Bold and beautiful, and at the moment, very serious. He fought back the laughter that he strongly suspected would not sit well with her.
"You have seen me," he reminded her, serious now. "All of me."
Even when he was so near death he wouldn't have thought it possible for that part of him to rise in need. He'd been proven wrong on more than one occasion with her so near. She had undoubtedly seen that as well.
"Aye, well that was different. Ye were fevered and in so much pain, and I suppose tis possible that a man... might be in that condition from fever, and at first you were hardly able to use the piss bucket.
"And, I was thinking if ye canna... You know... Well I don't mind so verra much."
Fevered. In pain. As he was in pain now.
He groaned, fighting laughter and the tears. He sighed.
"Sweet Alix."
He brushed his lips against hers. "There is a great deal more. And I was not so badly injured that I cannot show you." He removed the leather brecs.
She had a brief glimpse of him, then he pulled the warm fleece over the both of them.
"Now, I want to see you . All of you."
Her shift disappeared in the shadows. He gently clasped both her wrists and pinned them over her head with his fake hand. Then, he slowly stroked the length of her body, touching every part of her, memorizing her, the way her skin felt, the way it warmed, and the way her breathing changed.
"Look at me," he told her and lost himself all over again in the deep blue of her eyes. He wanted to see her eyes when they joined, needed to see them when he was deep inside her.
She slowly opened her eyes and her breath caught in her throat as he pressed against her, then stopped breathing as he slowly moved inside her. She felt that she must break, a twinge of pain that was gone almost as soon as she felt it, then a far different sensation.
She had heard it spoken of, the way the young women rolled their eyes and whispered, the knowing looks and smiles of the older women. Always there were comparisons, but nothing to prepare her for the feel of him inside her, the way her body protested then gradually took him, then deeper still as her body welcomed him.
"Ruari! I canna bear it. I swear that I canna!" It was torture, and the greatest pleasure she had ever known.
His beard scraped her neck. "Aye, you can!" he whispered as he slowly eased deep inside her.
"And you will."
She had feared she might break. He proved that she would not as he moved slowly, letting her body learn his as he learned her, her gaze fastened on him, her hands at his shoulders, then sliding down his back as his head came down beside hers.
His lips brushed her throat, the soft skin below, and for a time nothing else existed except her, the feel of her body, the heat that wrapped around him.
There was no anger, no pain, no loss, or regret... only her, the boldness in that gaze that never left his as she gave herself to him, in the way she cried out against his shoulder as pleasure took her once more, and then held him as he lost himself in her.
... Images slipped through the stones of the shelter and found him, the screams reaching out in the darkness, rage burning through him, blood soaking his tunic. He threw down the slender blade as the screams died away, and there was only the face of the monk staring wide-eyed up at him from a pool of blood at the stone floor of the sacristy.
... The wind at the desert swirled clouds of sand over the bodies. At his feet lay a Saracen warrior, blood at the front of his robes, the curved sword at his hand clutched in lifeless fingers as dark shadows of the coming storm swirled over the dead and dying...
... The waves lashed the beach that ran with blood, bodies floating in the blue-gray water as the warrior bore down on him. Fighting the water that dragged at him and the bodies that brushed his legs, too late he brought his sword up, felt the blow that drove him back, then pain that was like fire, and he was falling, the water pulling him down as he stared into the face of death...
The sound he made tore at her--the anger, the rage, then another sound, an agony of pain so deep, that she had heard before in those first weeks after he returned.
Gabhran had called it ' the agony that lives in a man's soul for the things he's done' , when she told him about it.
" We all carry it. The chieftain carries it for the things he's done, and the things others have done to those he cares about."
" Will it ever go away?" she had asked.
The old warrior had shrugged. "For some, if they bury it deep enough, they learn to live with it. For others... "
Much like Seamus, he had explained, who had taken himself off into the mountains, a memory that took hold so deep that it claimed their soul.
"Tis a battle for the soul ," Gabhran had explained. "With strength, courage, the care ye give, and a reason to live against the dark things that would take him."
Dark things. That no tonic, no balm she might make could reach or heal. She gave him herself, reaching out, touching him as he had touched her, willing him to come back from that dark place.
Gentle, so that he might not even have felt it at first, at his shoulder, then at his cheek. Feather soft, reaching out, touching, the gentle hand that pulled him back, back from the edge, from that dark place of death...
In the shadows of that old place, he found her, turning toward that touch, the deep blue of her eyes waiting for him, reaching deep inside him, holding on, refusing to let the anger and pain take him.
"Forgive me... I did not wish you to ever see... " His voice broke. When he would have turned away from her, she stopped him.
"There is nothing to forgive."
She wrapped her arms around him. He held onto her, pulling her against him, and closed his eyes at the feel of her body against his, driving the demons back into the shadows.
It was hours yet before first light when he rose from her side and went to the fire. It had burned low, the last embers slowly dying. He placed small pieces among the charred remains. Eventually a flame caught, smoke spiraling up through the sagging roof, flames bursting to life, then spreading, driving back the cold.
He pulled on leather pants and the linen shirt against the cold as he watched the flames, and though of the hours past, and the hours and days to come, and what waited for them at Stirling.
He looked over at her, a shoulder exposed where the fleece had fallen away, her hair spread across the place where he had lain.
What if he did not return? He let the silver chain run through his fingers, the stone at the ring James had given him that long ago day, glinting in the firelight. His father's ring, and his father's before him. He had carried it all this time.
He had no illusions about what the clan might face at Stirling in these uncertain times. He did not mind so much for himself. He had faced death before, hoped for it as he lay on the cot at the Abbey at Mont St. Michel, and then after.
Until her.
What would be her fate if he did not return? To wed another? His gut tightened like a fist at the thought. What if there was a child from this one night together?
It was not impossible. The thought of it did not weigh heavily. He had never thought of having a family, children. With the path he'd taken, the things he'd done, such things were not part of his life. They were for others, his brother, their kinsmen with their roots at Lechlede. Until now.
What of her? What of the coming weeks if he did not return, and even now a child had begun? Would she be like other women whose men had not returned, left to raise the child alone? Or was there some magic herb that would sweep the child from her womb as he knew other women did?
She moved restlessly. He returned, crouching down beside her, and pulled the fleece back up over her shoulders. When he stood and would have returned to the fire, she reached for him.
He laid beside her and pulled her against him. Her breathing slowed as she curled against him. There in the shadows of the place where his ancestor first set foot on Fraser land, he wrapped the chain around her wrist, and clasped her hand.
"I give you the protection of my name, and my clan," he whispered against the softness of her hair.
"And what little honor I have left."
It was barely first light, gray shadows in the surrounding forest. Nothing was said as he left the shelter of that old place and saddled the horse. They had escaped for a few hours. Now the coming days and what might come with them, waited.
There was no escape, Alix knew as she looked around at what was left of the stone walls and the sagging timbers of the roof that had kept out the rain. As it had for his grandfather's grandfather and those who had come there with him, given this place in a foreign and unknown place where so many had died two hundred years before.
What were their thoughts as they left behind their homeland, their blood soaking this ancient place? Had his ancestor perhaps lain in this same place with a young woman and faced an unknown future? A future filled with blood and death? The blood of generations of warriors who fought to hold what was theirs, the blood of the new generations born in this place? An unknown future?
And now Ruari and the chieftain prepared to ride into a new unknown, perhaps not to return. Alix pushed back the fear as she pulled on her tunic and boots, then shook out the fleece that had been their bed.
It sparkled in the shaft of light that slanted through the wall of the shelter, something that had fallen from the folds of the fleece.
The chain was made of silver and intricately woven, the ring suspended from it made of bronze with a blue stone at the center, clutched in the teeth of the lion's head.
A dream stirred from the night before, Ruari holding her...
She looked up as the horse snorted, Ruari soothing it with a gentling hand, and frowned. Her fingers closed around it. Not a dream?
Ruari fastened a leather strap, securing it, a frown at his mouth. Already his thoughts were far from there, far from Lechlede. He took the fleece from her and tied it behind the saddle, then gathered the reins to steady the stallion. He steadied her leg and boosted her into the saddle.
She held out the ring secured on the silver chain. That blue gaze as bright as a summer sky locked with hers.
"You should keep it in a safe place," she told him, meaning to give it to him.
Where ever he had been moments before, he had returned. He was with her once more, but the frown remained. He shook his head.
"Tis safe enough with you."
Anger welled inside her. He was giving it to her for safekeeping?
She loved him, had always loved him. She had given herself to Ruari Fraser long ago, with every fiber of her being. If he had not returned, she would have held onto that for there would have been no place in her life for another.
But he had returned and she had fought for him, for his life, cursing God that he might take him from her, refusing to let that happen with no notion of his own thoughts or emotions. Until the night before.
He had let her inside, for just those few hours, exposing the anger, the bitterness, and the uncertainty for what he had become. But what were his thoughts now?
Pity? Some misplaced sense of obligation? Or... payment?
Her first instinct was to throw the ring at him.
"Ye think to give me some trinket because I layed with you? Well you can take... "
Ruari swore again and dragged her from the saddle.
"It is not payment!" he swore again, holding onto her. "And it is not some worthless trinket!
His right hand locked around hers-- strong once more, perhaps stronger than before in what had shaped him since his return--that fierce determination, his own anger, and something else she had glimpsed but not recognized, something wounded that had reached out to her that day when he first returned.
"It was my father's! And his father's before him, given to the first Fraser by King William of Normandy. James gave it to me when I left for France, so that I would always know that I was Fraser born." He took a deep breath, looking away, not trusting the anger when he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled at the same time he wanted to haul her back inside the ruins of the hut and prove to her just what he meant. But there was no more time.
"So that I would always find my way home! It is yours, if you will have it... If you will have me."
That gaze met hers then, fierce, as angry as her own but for different reasons. Their hands joined, the chain wrapped around their wrists. The old way. She knew the meaning of that simple gesture, his hand wrapped around hers.
Handfast . The old way of a man and woman pledging themselves to each other, long before monks built their churches and stone altars, when the words that were exchanged and promises made, stronger than any ceremony spoken over by one of those pious brothers. Even more so for what he had been through.
Now she understood--not a dream, but a memory when he had wrapped the chain around their wrists as she had drifted off to sleep.
"I give you the protection of my name, my clan, and what little honor I have left...."
He released her then, driving his hand back through his hair.
"But if you don't want me ... !"
"I do want you. I thought you dinna want me... in that way."
Not want her? He felt as if he taken a blow. He could hardly breathe for wanting her.
He turned back around, fighting back the anger, and that other emotion unwanted when he need to think of only one thing--the long ride to Stirling and what waited there. Unwanted as it was, it would not be ignored. Just as she would not, had never allowed herself to be ignored.
He slipped his hand to the back of her neck and pulled her against him.
"I need you, as I need air to breathe." His eyes closed on that unwanted emotion. But as hard as he tried to push it away, it pulled him back at the feel of her skin, the warmth of her.
"I will have you, and no other... " The taste of her as he kissed her, the way her breath caught, and the way she gave herself to him in that way.
"And I will have you, Ruari Fraser."
Here, in this place, just the two of them, where his ancestor had first claimed this land. His gaze locked with hers.
"I give you myself, my honor, all that I am."
She repeated the simple words .
"I give you myself, my honor, all that I am."
No one seemed to notice their return, there was no time as their kinsmen and the other clans made ready this last day before leaving for Stirling.
Her grandmother simple nodded when she entered the kitchen and put on an apron.
"The mistress asked for ye," she said, pounding a fist into the mound of bread dough on the wood board in front of her.
"She had a restless night and did not sleep well."
Alix nodded. Restless, as they were all restless, uneasy, the feel of it in the air as everyone went about their work, knowing what the coming day would bring. And the days after that.
The waiting. The unknown.
She scooped water from the pot that simmered. "I'll take her a tea to help her rest."
Morna nodded. "One of the girls from the village, was here at first light askin' for ye. Seems she's been keeping with one of the Munro kinsman." She looked up then.
"Ye might provide her a tonic, with the Munro men riding out tomorrow, and some likely not to return."
A tonic--to prevent the girl from conceiving unless the deed was already done. Her meaning wasn't lost on Alix.
"I'll see to her after I've taken the tea to Lady Brynna."
But it was several hours later before she was able to leave the kitchen and then found the girl, Kilda, in the encampment just outside the gates. She gave her the thick syrup in a clay jar with instructions on its purpose.
"It will do no good if yer already with child."
She nodded. "Thank ye, kindly, Miss Alix."
The rest of the day seemed to have wings when she wanted to hold back the hours and hoped for some moment alone with Ruari. But every time she looked for him, he was surrounded by Fraser warriors, or with Gabhran and the chieftain.
She worked in the kitchen, helping pack the rest of the food the men would need. Then it was late and the tower hall strangely silent. The chieftain had retired for the evening with Lady Brynna and their children. The last she saw him, Ruari was in long conversation with Gabhran. He looked up once as she passed by, his expression different now. Then he had gone back to his conversation with the old warrior.
The last cook fire had been banked, the last pot cleaned and set aside for the morning meal, the other women gone to their beds or the bed of one of their husband or mate.
"Come along," her grandmother told her. "First light will come soon enough and there will be more work before they leave."
Ruari had left with Gabhran earlier. There was no place where they could share this last night together with so many within the walls that it wasn't possible to walk through the hall without near stepping on someone, or in the encampment beyond.
"I'll be along," she told her, hoping to have some moment alone with him. But it was not to be as loud snoring filled the hallways and still he did not return.
She rose before first light, putting on a clean gown that wasn't splattered with stains from the kitchen. She plaited her hair, the chain with the ring Ruari had given her about her neck. There would be no hot morning meal that day, only oak cakes, pieces of venison and boiled eggs. The chieftain and their kinsmen would be far afield before the sun climbed.
Food they would take on the ride had was laid out, grabbed as they headed for the yard and the stables beyond. The time for leaving came, the chieftain descending the stairs from the tower, Alexander the oldest, and young Eleanor at his heels. He looked about the hall and his fellow kinsmen. His gaze fell on her and he quickly crossed the hall.
"I would speak with you," he said, his manner brief, the words even more brief.
He pulled her aside, the two children beside him.
"I have entrusted Lechlede to Gabhran."
She nodded.
"I entrust my lady and the children to your care."
There was no need to say it. She would see that any scrapes or afflictions were cared for.
"I will see that they are kept from harm."
Almost as one, young Alexander and Eleanor rolled their eyes.
"Lady Brynna... " he began again. "And the child... If I should not return..."
She sensed the deeper concern, his expression the same she had seen before, whenever he looked for Lady Brynna, then found her nearby. That special closeness they shared from things of the past.
There it was, the same sense of responsibility, the same concern, and the fear behind it.
"You have my word," she assured him.
He nodded. "I would trust them to no other." Then he turned, scooped Eleanor into his arms and left the hall, Alexander racing ahead of him, excited, with little awareness of the danger that waited.
Ruari had not returned to the hall. She sensed that he would not. He would be at the stables with his kinsmen, preparing for the ride ahead and what waited at the end of it.
She stood at the steps to the hall, and handed a kinsman his provisions, then looked up as Ruari emerged from the stables astride the stallion, the metal arm gleaming in the misty morning sunlight. She watched him, and thought of the hours past, a darkness of something unknown tightening inside her.
He saw her across the yard, as he had seen her a hundred times since she was a child, but she was a child no more, serious, thoughtful as she and the other women bid their kinsmen farewell.
Ruari halted the stallion before her. She handed a leather pouch to him, then slowly looked up. His expression was different. He was someone else now, someone she didn't know, the long sword in the scabbard at his saddle, a war axe in the leather sheath at his back.
She held up the chain with the ring he had given her in her hand, with the intention of giving it back to him. He was the one leaving. It was only right that he should have it. If she was one to believe in fate or things that were meant to be, then she needed to believe it would bring him back to her.
"So you will always know your way home."
He refused to take it. Instead, his right arm went around her, lifting her. He pulled her against him. Then he kissed her, a kiss filled with everything that had been said and everything that had passed between them.
" You are my home," he whispered.
It ended as suddenly as it began, and he set her back to the ground. Then he was gone, riding out through the gates of the keep.
She watched as he joined his kinsmen and the other clans who had gathered there the past weeks--just as she'd watched him ride away all those years before.
A shadow fell across her and she looked over at Gabhran, his gaze fixed on the riders who seemed to grow smaller and smaller until the last ones disappeared into the misty morning. She saw the expression at his face, the set of his mouth, the unspoken words.
"You want to go with them." She wanted it as well, even though it was not allowed except in rare instances as when the Lady Brynna had accompanied the chieftain to Edinburgh, or to visit the outlying villages and crofts.
This was different. It was as it was four years before when the chieftain and their kinsmen had left for the borderlands, when many had not returned.
"Aye," Gabhran nodded. "I would go with them. But Jamie asked me to remain to see to the safety of Lechlede and those within. And I will see it done as he asked it."
He glanced over at her then.
"Come along, lass."
He ordered the gates closed and barred as they walked back to the hall together.