Chapter Six #2
Reid blended backward into the trees and shrubs, disappearing into a run Cyrus could hear but not see.
Cyrus didn’t care about him unless— “Is Reid Hodges, or whatever ye call him, yer husband?” It didn’t matter, except that then he’d know whether or not she honored vows.
Would a decent husband leave his wife naked in a pool with two men nearby?
“My husband is dead.” She raised her hand to twirl her finger in a circle. “Turn around, and I’ll emerge.”
“If ye run off, we can track ye.” Rory turned, keeping his sword out. His gaze had followed Reid. The MacLeod Chief had business with the little man who had been sent by his one-time enemy to infiltrate his clan’s territory.
Cyrus kept his gaze trained on Laria. “After the night we had together, ye want me to turn around?”
Her lips pinched for a moment before relaxing to their luscious fullness. His cock hardened as he remembered how her mouth had sucked along him, warm and damp, her tongue doing magical things that made him certain she was indeed a mythical being, a lover of Zeus, or Aphrodite’s apprentice.
Laria’s arms dipped just under the water’s surface as she swam to the edge of the loch.
The bottom must have sloped upward, because she broke through the surface gradually, the water releasing her like a reluctant lover.
The reeds on the bank touched her calves as her sleek muscles propelled her up the bank in all her glory.
Good Lord, she was a goddess—a water goddess.
Long legs led up to a curvy arse, her hips full so that he could grip them as they thrust together.
Her spine was long and straight, and her hair hung down over one shoulder in wet strands of brown that he guessed was touched golden by the sun when dry.
She held her naked arms before her, her back to him, as if trying to hide the scars he’d glimpsed in the pre-dawn light filtering into his bedchamber, the scars he now knew were from scorching oil.
She ducked behind some bushes and emerged a couple of minutes later dressed in a lad’s tunic and breeches with boots.
Her wet hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head, waterdrops wetting the back of the tunic.
If she were living in the forest, the ensemble was much more practical than petticoats and stays.
“I need to fill these bladders and this jug with water,” she said, carrying them down to the shore.
She was within grabbing distance, but when she crouched to the edge, she kept herself facing them. When Cyrus stepped forward, she leaped back.
“I’ll help ye,” he said, his hands before him as if taming a wild animal.
After a moment’s hesitation, she threw him the two leather bladders, and he tossed one to Rory. All three filled the vessels from the small waterfall where the spring emptied into the loch, then the men followed Laria up the path.
“’Tis a distance away,” she said, holding the medium-size water pitcher. “Keep up if you intend to come.”
Cyrus plugged his bladder and hiked up the hill, Rory following him.
They pushed through more berry-stripped brambles and past the rock wall that made up one side of the loch.
Laria didn’t look back, holding the pitcher before her with two hands.
The weight must be slowing her. “I can carry it,” Cyrus said. “We’ll go faster.”
“I can carry water quite well on my own,” she said, continuing. She tripped slightly, the pitcher up against her.
“While dousing the front of yerself.”
“Daingead,” she whispered and set the water pitcher down, plucking at her damp tunic. She wore no stays underneath, and Cyrus caught a glimpse of her nipples through the fabric. A siren in lad’s clothing. She turned back to the woods and continued without the pitcher.
Cyrus handed Rory the second bladder and picked up the pitcher.
They walked through the forest, over a small moor, and back into another, denser forest with ascending boulders and rock faces.
After an hour, Cyrus picked up the scent of woodsmoke.
The woods quieted around them, and prickles rose on the back of his neck.
“We’re being watched,” Rory said.
“I would hope so this close to camp,” Laria said, then called out, “’Tis well.”
Three men came from inside a series of rock crevasses and caves. Two held swords, and one, who was barely older than a lad, held a pitchfork. An older woman with hair that moved like wisps of thinly spun wool around her nearly bald head held a bow and arrow. She wore a fierce frown.
Laria walked into the cave and returned with a short cape over her wet tunic. She buttoned the front and then spread her arms wide, turning in a little circle. “Welcome to our troop of outcasts.”
“Clan Hope,” the bow-holding woman called. Then, as an afterthought, “I think we should call ourselves something uplifting.”
Laria didn’t look her way. She smiled a wry grin and bowed without breaking the tether between her gaze and Cyrus’s. “Welcome to Clan Hope.”
Several more people emerged. A bonny woman held the hand of a little girl who had a bright-red splotch feathering across half her face.
It crept all the way to the corner of her lips, blending into her curious smile.
A brown spaniel vaulted from where she held it on her hip, giving a couple of barks before the girl ran forward and scooped it up.
It licked her face, and she didn’t act as though the mark pained her.
A man hobbled out on a crutch, one leg missing, the end hidden under his tartan wrap.
Two older children, a boy and a girl who were possibly thirteen, rose from behind a thicket, holding hands, their eyes wide.
The girl had a hunched back. The boy stood a protective foot in front of her.
Cyrus didn’t see Reid Hodges among them.
Perhaps he’d decided it was best to leave before Rory got ahold of him.
Cyrus turned toward the cave as an elderly woman walked out, her silver-white hair neatly combed and pinned upon her head in an arrangement of curls that suited a royal palace, not a granite hole.
She walked with majesty, full of grace, and smiled easily, just like she had in her portrait hanging in the gallery at Tuath Tower.
“Lady Sophie Macqueen,” he said. Laria was making her grandmother live in the forest, in a cave. He set the water pitcher down and walked over to the elderly woman.
Her smile broadened. “That is my name, although here in the wilds we don’t stand on formalities. I am merely Sophie.”
He bowed his head to her.
“Oh my,” she said, looking at Laria. “Two handsome young knights to champion us.”
“Why are ye all out here?” Rory asked.
“Who are ye?” one of the sword-bearing men asked. He had graying hair but still looked able-bodied—if too thin.
“I am Cyrus Mackinnon of Dun Haakon Castle in the south, and this is Rory MacLeod, Chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan.”
A tall man with brilliant white, longish hair and a pale face came to stand next to Laria.
“I am Erskine Macqueen, leader of this little clan.” The way he stood so close to the lass made Cyrus’s blood run hot.
She’d said her husband was dead. Was this strangely pale man with the nearly white-blue eyes her lover?
Was that the true reason Laria had left Tuath Tower? To be with him?
Erskine crossed thick arms over his chest. “I am considered cursed because of my lack of color, and we are ostracized by Iain Macqueen because we are not perfect. We are scarred, maimed, born different, or afflicted in some way that he wishes us gone from his sight and land. So we have chosen to leave the village rather than live in fear that he will send his men to march us into exile or kill us.”
“Ye’ve exiled yerselves before he could,” Rory said.
No one answered, but the little girl with the red mark on her face nodded.
Iain had chased them from their homes with threats? Anger licked up inside him.
“Why not leave this territory?” Rory asked. “Find an accepting place.” From the tight fury subdued in Rory’s voice, Cyrus knew he must be thinking about his own sister, who suffered from a curved spine.
Laria mimicked Erskine’s stance, her slender arms crossed before her. “We are Macqueens and have every right to live here. My father, Sandris Macqueen, was the last honorable chief, and my grandmother is the Lady of Tuath Tower.”
Erskine’s face was stern but not angry. “We wait for the day we can return to Staffin Village.”
Laria’s hands were once again covered with gloves. She tucked them behind her back as if she preferred to stand that way, like a sea captain scanning the horizon from the prow of his ship.
“I am Leah, the youngest here at Clan Hope. I’m seven.” The lass waved from where she stood. “And this is my mother, Mistress Kate. We are here because I look different, and my mother wouldn’t leave me to the wolves like Erskine’s mother did.”
“One only has the right to tell their own story, Leah,” her mother said, wrapping both arms around her daughter.
“Otherwise that’s gossip,” Leah said, her voice softer. She gave Erskine an apologetic look.
Kate hugged her while her gaze met Cyrus’s. “I left the village when a physician came uncalled from Tuath Tower to inspect Leah.” Her lips thinned to mere lines. “She had tried to play with a neighbor child, who spoke cruelly to her about her birthmark, and word reached the tower.”
“Perhaps Iain Macqueen sent the physician to help yer child,” Cyrus said.
Kate drew herself up. “Nothing lessens the mark. The physician said it might recede or it might grow as she ages. We left that night. I returned a week later to gather our things, and the cottage had been torn apart inside.”
“As if wolves were looking for me,” Leah said, pushing into her mother’s side.