Chapter Twelve
Ronan held back a curse as his little cavalcade jingled through the scudding mist. He stared into the gloom, his jaw locked
and his entire body wound tight as a bowstring. He shifted in his saddle, so stiff he might have been hewn of graven stone.
Had he truly praised the saints not so long ago?
Well earned as such paeans might have been, he was now of an entirely different mind.
Several hours and many cold and drizzly miles after the bull attack, he felt more like challenging than praising long-dead
holy men. Truth be told, at the moment, he was more than capable of calling out anyone.
Friend, foe, and, aye, even those of otherworldly nature.
A black wind was whistling past his ears, each icy, indrawn breath burned his lungs, and his fingers felt frozen on the reins.
Squaring his shoulders, he sat up straighter, refusing to grimace.
That small victory he would claim, difficult as it was.
Every inch of him flamed with pain, especially his ribs, though the day’s bitter chill had taken care of his throbbing toes.
Blessedly, he could no longer feel them.
Would that the rest of him wasn’t proving so susceptible to every jarring, jolting bit of the long journey home.
Even his head throbbed, the annoying pounding in odd rhythm with his garron’s endless, clip-clopping hoofbeats.
As for his ribs, he’d known they were cracked not long after leaving Creag na Gaoith, when he’d halted to shrug off his travel
cloak, twist around, and sling the mantle’s voluminous warmth over Buckie’s onion creel.
The twisting round left no doubt, that one simple movement sending a white-hot fire-vise to clamp around his chest. Fierce and scalding, the
pain stabbed him, stopping his heart and cutting off his breath.
Only his pride — and his lady riding beside him — kept him from crying out.
Just as pride and her presence wouldn’t let him show his disappointment now on noting how dismal Dare looked silhouetted against
the bleakness of what promised to be a particularly black wet night.
Thick, billowy mist poured down the braes, and the deep green tops of the pines near the curtain walls were already sinking
from view. High above, an early moon broke through the clouds, silvering the rolling spread of the moors and the long slopes
of rock and heather.
But then the moon vanished, slipping from sight and leaving Dare’s gatehouse to loom before them.
Night-darkened and formidable, the machicolated walls stood out against the blackness of the trees, the double towers’ gloomy
face making the brief autumn sun of Creag na Gaoith seem a distant memory.
A muscle began to twitch in his jaw.
This was Dare at its worst.
But the gates creaked open at their approach, dutiful as always. And the heavy iron-tipped portcullis rattled noisily upward
as the little party cantered near.
Ready as ever to greet any guests, Dare beckoned with bright lanterns and torches lighting the way through the long, tunnel-like
entrance. Still more brands smoked and sputtered in niches set into the bailey’s walling. But rather than seeming welcoming,
the hissing flames only threw eerie orange haloes into the darkening twilight.
Wild flickering circles of mist-hazed light that looked too much like staring, piercing eyes of red.
Ronan shuddered and then ducked as one of the flaring pitch-pine torches popped as he rode past, the wretched thing sending
a spray of sparks and ash right at him.
He bit back a curse.
Then he allowed himself the scowl he’d been trying so hard to squelch.
A frown he surely deserved, for his head pounded and his patience had long since flown. Even more vexing, despite his ills,
he couldn’t banish the image of Gelis’s fingers sliding up and down the sheath of her thigh-dagger.
Or the sweet triangle of lush red-gold curls he’d glimpsed so briefly when she’d whipped up her skirts to show him the sgian dubh.
He slid a glance at her, not at all surprised to see that the day’s turn in weather scarce affected her.
She sat her steed as if she’d been born on the beast’s own back. A true daughter of a thousand chieftains, she held herself
erect and kept her shoulders straight, her chin proudly lifted. Indeed, she rode along as easily as if the summer sun shone
bright above them and the blue roll of the hills weren’t blurred by mist and the fast-encroaching darkness.
Even so, the day’s cold and wind had touched her. Her cloak and skirts were damp, the woolen folds clinging to every lush
curve and swell of her voluptuous body. Even more telling of her nature, Ronan was sure, her braid had come undone, again.
Wholly loosened, her flame-bright hair tumbled in a welter of riotous curls over her shoulders to her hips.
Eyeing those curls now, he swallowed, certain he’d ne’er seen a more fetching sight.
Every line and curve of her stirred him, her very dishevelment taking his breath, and in ways that pained him far worse than
any cracked rib or crushed toes.
But now wasn’t the time to heed such an ache.
Already they were riding into Dare’s thronged bailey and mist swirled everywhere. Snaking tendrils curled rapidly over the
damp, wet-gleaming cobbles, and great, billowing sheets of it blew across the open spaces.
The tower stood dark and silent, its narrow slit-windows and arrow loops showing scant light while its massive bulk proved
nearly obscured beneath the fuzzy-white drifts rolling in off the moors.
A quick glance showed that Maldred’s hoary crest glared down on the bailey from its place of honor above the keep’s oaken,
iron-studded door. But, surprisingly, the ancient stone looked more like an ordinary clump of hill-granite than Ronan had
ever seen it.
Of the bold horned raven of the vision his lady had shown him there was nary a trace.
Indeed, the stone’s engravings had so deteriorated that it was no longer recognizable as a heraldic shield.
But before he could wonder o’er the matter, Sorley, Tam, and the Dragon pushed through the tumult, eager to see to his wishes
and help him and his lady dismount.
The Dragon lavished his usual care on Buckie, lifting the now-tail-wagging dog from his onion creel.
“See he is bathed properly and combed,” Ronan said, turning aside even as the pock-faced, gap-toothed guardsmen strode away
with the dog. “Then have Hugh MacHugh give him as many meat-bones as he desires.”
A wind-muffled as you wish drifted back to him, but he scarce heard.
Nor did he do more than nod his thanks when Sorley handed him the Nordic armlet Gelis had gifted him with just before the
bull appeared.
At the moment he had greater matters on his mind than bejeweled armpieces.
His lady had somehow slipped through the ring of guardsmen and was tripping up the outer keep stairs, already nearing the
landing.
But it wasn’t her light step or her remarkable speed that sent him bolting up the steps after her.
Not even the tempting bounce of her shining, loose- swinging hair.
Nor the promise of her seductive siren’s bauble, bouncing just-so betwixt her thighs, its glittering green gemstone an allure
powerful enough to turn the most resolute abstainer’s best piece into granite.
Nor was it the way she seemed to glow from within.
An irresistible beacon to a man so long without a woman’s warmth and loving.
Och, nae, it was nary a one of such disasters.
It was the horrible red stain soiling one side of her uphitched skirts.
Ronan stared, at first not comprehending.
Then something inside him ripped.
The world turned as red as the spreading stain and his pain vanished.
At his elbow, young Tam was just lifting his travel cloak from Buckie’s onion creel, and a laundress stood by, her hands outstretched
to take it.
Ronan almost plowed them down in his haste to reach the keep stairs.
“Suffering saints!” He pounded up the steep stone steps, catching Gelis just as she set her hand on the door’s great iron
latch. “Hold, lass! Dinna you move!”
Gelis started at the loud words.
She swung around to face him, about to ask what was amiss, but he was on her in a wink. Eyes blazing and hair whipping in
the wind, he swept her into his arms and kicked open the hall door.
“Someone fetch the hen wife!” he yelled, racing through the crowded, smoke-hazed hall. “My lady is injured!”
He crashed into a trestle table, near overturning it before sprinting on, knocking aside startled, wide- eyed kinsmen.
“Bring bandaging and have MacHugh send up his selfheal unguent!” he roared, bursting into the dimness of the stair tower.
“Put me down!” Gelis wriggled in his arms as he bounded up the curving steps, taking them two, sometimes three at a time.
“You’ll kill us both!”
“Hush, lass.” He clapped a hand over her mouth, pressing her head against his shoulder. “You’ll weary yourself if you speak.”
“ Pah-phooey!” She squirmed, her protest muffled. “You are the one who was hurt, not me.”
“Say you?” He gained the top landing, streaked down the darkened passage. “ ’Tis you who are bleeding, no’ I,” he flashed,
slamming open his bedchamber door.
He ran across the room, barely avoiding a collision with the steaming bathing tub some fool had placed in the middle of the
room instead of before the hearth fire.
Then, chest heaving, he lowered her to the bed with a gentleness that belied his wild flight across the great hall and up
the turnpike stair.
“Your skirts are bloodied,” he panted, stepping back now, a glossy spill of raven hair falling across his brow. Shoving it
aside, he looked at her, the dread in his eyes squelching her denial.
She blinked. “My skirts?”
“Aye, yours.” He swiped at his hair again. “To be sure, and they’re no’ mine!”
His dark brows lowering, he leaned close and snatched up a fistful of her damp, red-stained gown. He shook the reddened folds
at her.
Gelis pushed up on her elbows, eyeing her ruined skirts. “I am not hurt — not badly,” she insisted, only now feeling the slight
sting on her thigh.
The faint but steady throbbing and the telltale trickle of warmth.