Chapter Sixteen #2
They walked side by side, their arms swinging close but not touching. “Grace could be in the Great Hall. I need to see her, make certain she’s well.”
Laria nodded. She’d been quiet that whole morning, and he was lost as to where they stood on…well, on everything.
“Yer grandmother will be safe now, and some of yer people,” he said. “Rory will make certain of that.”
She nodded, still alternating her gaze between the tall grass waving around their legs and the distance. “I know. I’m grateful.”
“Ye’re worried about what Iain will do now?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him. “He’ll be furious when we just show back up and say we’ve been there the whole time. He’s had his army out looking for us.”
“A man loses focus and makes mistakes when he’s furious,” Cyrus said. “’Tis good to ruffle the peacock’s feathers.”
She exhaled. “I must find out what he did with Aunt Jane, his own mother. He must have sent Jasper to dig her up and move her once I said I’d seen them kill and bury her on the moor.”
He stopped them, his hand on her arm. “Yer life is in danger, Laria, because ye witnessed it. Ye shouldn’t go back with me to the tower.”
“My life’s been in danger for a very long time.” She pursed her lips. “And don’t forget that Iain ordered me to kill you. Your life is in danger, too.”
Laria pulled away and began walking. “Without a body,” she glanced at him over her shoulder, “you might be questioning if I’m truly mad, like Iain says.”
He’d already decided that she was sane, that Iain was the villain in this whole mess. Hadn’t he? Then he’d truly put Grace in danger.
Cyrus easily caught up with her. “The ground was churned up. Someone was digging right where ye said she was buried.” Admittedly, he hadn’t been with Laria all the time.
She’d hurried out of Tuath Tower hours before he could catch up to her at the broch.
She could have taken the shovel they had there and run to the spot to churn up the soil.
But there had been strands of hair in the dirt.
She could have pulled them from one of her people. Bonnie?
Bloody hell. Who would do something like that? Someone mad. Was the heat he felt for her clouding his judgment? Nay. Laria wasn’t mad.
When they reached the outskirts of Staffin Village, they kept to the edge until they circled around to the gardens that flanked the tower. As Cyrus had expected, there were boards across the door.
“Iain must have boarded it up right after I left,” Laria said. She glanced around, but a series of bushes mostly hid them.
Cyrus stepped up, using the shovel to pry the boards. “I had to use Iain’s stairway.”
Her eyes widened. “In his bedchamber?”
“Aye.” He levered a nail loose and moved to the next. “The door wasn’t locked.”
“Were there any carnal implements in there?” she asked, and Cyrus turned to her, almost dropping the shovel.
“Carnal implements?”
Her cheeks colored, giving a rosy glow to the skin beneath her freckles. She had the most interesting skin, and he wished he could lay her down in the sun and study it. “Silk ropes, whips, phallus-shaped objects, feathers, pots of honey.”
He stared at her. “Nay,” he drew out. “Does Iain use those things?”
“There are rumors. The maids used to say it looked like a ransacked carnal revelry in there at times when they’d come to clean.”
Cyrus stared at her. “Pots of honey and feathers and phallus-shaped objects.” He would not think of his sister using those things, but Laria… He turned back to the boards and shoved the point of the shovel under a nail. “Would ye ever want honey dribbled on ye?” The words just rolled out of him.
“’Tis sticky,” she said.
He glanced at her. The look of bewilderment on her face made her look innocent, even though their nights together had been anything but. “For me to lick off?” he asked.
“You and me?”
“Have you forgotten our two nights together?” There was a demand in his voice that annoyed him. Was he pathetic enough to be hurt that Laria didn’t remember the pleasure between them? That he was the only one to wake stiff and needy from another dream replaying their uninhibited bed-play together?
“I have not forgotten,” she said, her cheeks flushing as if she were a virgin. “I just never thought to use honey that way.”
Relief released him to turn back to the door. “Think about it.”
She kept her voice low but earnest. “Well, I certainly don’t want to be whipped.”
He agreed with her on that, having experienced the real, vicious thing. “How about a feather?” Having loosened the nails on the second board, he threw it to the ground.
“I can’t see any harm in using a feather,” she said, “but the phallus?”
He glanced back at her over his shoulder.
Even though she was dirty from digging up a grave, her wide greenish eyes and tumbling waves of golden-brown hair made him want to carry her up to their bedchamber above and show her how good he could make her feel.
“Some lasses like a slim phallus up the arse with a real one in the front.” Bloody hell. Just the thought made his cock rigid.
She stared at him, her face now crimson. “Do you want something up your arse?”
“Nay.”
“Then I wouldn’t, either.”
He paused, staring at her for a moment, caught between the need to get inside and the involuntary urge to laugh.
Despite the turmoil around them, Laria made him feel lighter, less weighed down by responsibility and shame for not being his brother.
He tipped his head, watching her. “But the honey and feather are tolerable?”
She seemed to think it over. “I see no harm in them.”
He caught his tongue in his cheek, preventing a laugh.
This was certainly no time for laughter.
Setting the shovel down, Cyrus grabbed the last loosened board.
It came away under his tug, and he set it with the other two.
Laria’s cheeks were still rosy. “Where would ye like me to dribble honey on ye?”
“I don’t know.” Her brow arched higher. “How about on you?”
“Anywhere,” he said.
Her lips softened into a grin. “Like on the tip of your nose?”
“I was thinking of a different tip.”
“Like your elbow?”
“Not that one.”
“Your ear?”
“Nay.”
“Big toe?”
He could no longer suppress the chuckle. She smiled back, obviously knowing that his cock would feel quite left out if her pretty lips were around his big toe instead.
“Ye can put honey on me anywhere ye’d like,” he said.
“I choose elbow.”
Her teasing had helped him regain his temper. His cock had been listening, for it jutted upward under his plaid. Cyrus adjusted it.
Opening the door, they quickly entered, and he put the three boards along the inside wall before shutting the two of them into darkness. He captured Laria’s hand and headed to where he knew there were steps.
Her breathing seemed shallow. Had fire begun to race through her veins, too?
“I thought you were going to go around the front?” she whispered.
Cyrus began to climb with her behind him. “After I check that your room is vacant and that Jasper Whitt isn’t sitting there ready to carry ye off to the dungeon.”
“Tuath Tower doesn’t have a dungeon,” she whispered. “Just some storerooms with locks on the doors, full of barrels and jarred vegetables and fruits. And…I believe there’s a good supply of honey.”
He chuckled softly through his nose. How could he laugh with so much turmoil around them? Perhaps Laria was a siren able to bewitch him. If she was, he might not mind.
He lifted the latch on the door and pushed into the room.
They both paused inside, taking in the bedchamber left neatly waiting for their return.
Cyrus moved on careful feet around the room, peering behind screens and curtains and under the bed.
He locked the door leading into the corridor that ran the length of the second floor.
“I’ll have a bath sent up,” he said softly, going to her, but he didn’t lean in for a kiss.
They weren’t a couple. There was no understanding between them.
Only two pleasure-filled nights and a morning of waking wrapped in each other’s arms. And she’d already said she wouldn’t wed him.
For some reason that cut deeper than her tying him naked to this bed.
“I’ll…” He stepped back from her, going quickly to the secret door. “I’ll go back down and find my men. They’ll swear I was training with them.”
He turned back at the hidden door. “Once I leave, take a lit lantern down and lock the hidden door at the bottom of the steps from the inside.”
She shooed him.
Cyrus ran down the dark steps, his footing sure as his hand brushed along the wall.
Pushing slowly back outside, he shut the door and walked toward the edge of the village so that he could be seen returning.
Where would his men wait for him? Probably around the stables, even though they’d brought no horses with them on the ship.
Two ladies stopped in their daily work, one plunging a butter churn, the other beating a quilted coverlet on a line to get the dust out. They stared at him as he ran by, and he smiled to let them know nothing was amiss.
“Lord Cyrus!” one yelled and turned to the open door. “Mary, get out here! Lord Cyrus has returned.”
The second lady stepped up to the low wall as he jogged by. “My daughter is Marie and says she’s the one you kissed.” Her words came quickly as if to grab him. “She made you tarts and left them up at the tower.”
“Good lady,” he said, “I am heartily sorry, but I have found my Mary.” He held his fist to his heart for a moment before turning back to the road.
“Nay,” the first woman called after him. “You’re mistaken. My Mary…”
The rest of her words faded away as Cyrus ran farther down the path at a good clip. He slowed in the square before Tuath Tower, where several Macqueen men were talking in a group. They stopped to look at him as he approached.
“Running builds a warrior’s heart,” Cyrus said.
“Not if he’s running away from battle,” a middle-aged man said, his belly hanging over the edge of his plaid. The other men laughed.
Cyrus kept his smile until he passed them and strode toward the set of stables Iain kept. Circling it and not finding anyone, he stopped a lad who was carrying a heavy bucket of water inside. Where were his men? “A word, lad,” Cyrus said, taking the bucket from him. “Inside.”
“Aye, milord.” The boy raced ahead. “I’m bringing water to this horse that’s been ridden hard.”
“Have ye seen any strangers around the stables? Any who might have asked for Cyrus Mackinnon?”
“Aye, this is his horse.” He indicated the huge dark Percheron mare, the largest of the horse breeds in Scotland. Cyrus only knew one such beast. “Kenan?” He looked at the boy, who took the bucket from him, lowering it before the large horse’s slavering muzzle. “Where is the man now?”
“Left for the Great Hall when I said I thought ye were there.”
Cyrus slipped the lad a coin and strode out. Why was Kenan Macdonald here? Cyrus’s boots clipped as he entered Tuath Tower and continued on to the Great Hall. The large room seemed both full of people and empty of sound, as if his hearing had suddenly diminished.
Kenan Macdonald turned to him, his hair windblown and his tartan splattered with mud from the fierce ride. But Cyrus’s eyes fell on Grace, allowing him to inhale fully. She seemed unharmed, although her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“What’s happened?” Cyrus said, and Kenan walked toward him. Grace wouldn’t be weeping because her old suitor had shown up here. She might be trying to scratch Kenan’s eyes out if she were in a poor mood, but she wouldn’t be crying.
“Kenan?”
Iain was there, too, looking grim.
Grace ran to Cyrus. She stopped short of throwing herself into his arms. Instead, she grabbed his hands, holding on tight. “Where have you been, Cy?” Grace’s words held blame, as if his absence was the source of all the wrong in her world.
He nodded toward the door. “I was out running to strengthen my heart.”
“She means last night,” Iain said.
Cyrus raised his gaze to him. “Laria and I sneaked out for some privacy under the stars.”
“Where is she?” Iain said.
“Where I left her this morn, up in our bedchamber. I went out to run and do some training drills on my own.” He looked down into his sister’s face. “What’s happened, Grace?”
“Neither of ye were here last eve,” Iain said.
Cy’s look became condescending as he raised his gaze to Iain.
“Like I said, privacy and stars. We were gone for several hours last night.” He turned to the nearest maid, whom he remembered from the gathering outdoors.
“Mistress Penny, could ye please see about heating water for a bath for Lady Laria?”
She hurried off, and Cyrus turned to Kenan. “Now tell me. What has ye riding that beast of a horse at a gallop up from Scorrybreac?”
“Cy, I’ve come to bring sad news.”
“Rory and Sara? The bairn?” His entire middle tightened into a knot.
“Nay. ’Tis yer father.”
His father? So the stubborn old man had finally passed. He’d been fighting back death for a long time. “My father has died?”
Kenan didn’t nod, just met his gaze. “We received word at Scorrybreac, and I said I’d come, since Rory had just arrived.” He took a breath before he continued. “Chief Hamish Mackinnon has been poisoned.”