Chapter Six #3
Her own mettle recovered, Dagda grabbed a fistful of his plaid, gave it a healthy shake. “Sons o’ Beelzebub, laddie!” she scolded. “Are you ale-witted this e’en? Or have you lost your wits completely to come pounding in here armed to the teeth and spitting fire at two innocent women?”
Ignoring her, he jerked his plaid from her grasp, then swung round to glower at the opened door.
Amicia stared at it, too, quite certain the heavy oaken panels still vibrated from being flung against the lime-washed wall—a wall that now bore a notable dent where the iron door latch had crashed into it.
“Why wasn’t the door bolted?” he demanded.
Amicia moistened her lips, curled her fingers deeper into the folds of her skirts. “Here, sir? In your home?” Her voice sounded hoarse even to her own ears. “I do not know why it should have been?”
“Neither do I, my lady, and that is the problem,” he gave back, raking a hand through the deep chestnut waves of his hair. Some of the bluster appeared to slip from him, only to return with a vengeance the instant his gaze lit on the door’s unused drawbar.
He stepped toward her and placed one ever-so-firm hand on her shoulder, looked deeper into her eyes than anyone had ever done. “The Fiend take me if I e’er catch you behind an unbarred door again, do you hear me, lass?”
Amicia stared at him, sore tempted to brush aside his demand. But, to her own surprise, she found herself nodding. “As you wish,” she acquiesced, determining to do just as he’d bid.
But not because his words or even his display of seething fury had cowed her into meek submission.
Nay, she’d follow his order for one reason alone.
That reason being the unsettling thread of fear he couldn’t quite keep from his deep, husky voice.
Ill ease rippled all through his great, strapping body, clouding the clear blue of his eyes and overlaying every magnificent inch of him with simmering, scarcely-held-in-check tension.
And as if he sensed she’d glimpsed it, the last of the strain vanished from his handsome face and he gave her a wan smile—if the slight uptilt at one corner of his mouth could be counted as a smile.
“It is not my wish to frighten you,” he said, still peering deep into her eyes. “Just do as I ask and I promise to do my best not to plague you with such an outburst again.”
A loud snort came from behind them, near the table, quickly followed by the glug-glugging noise of wine being poured. Dagda appeared at their sides a moment later, offering two brimming cups of the potent Rhenish wine.
The instant her hands were free, she planted them on her black-skirted hips and turned on Magnus, her dark eyes flashing.
“And if you don’t mean to be a-scaring the life out of your womenfolk, mayhap you ought not stomp around this pile o’ stones on dark and windy nights a-warning of dangers what don’t exist? ”
Magnus cocked a russet brow, took a hearty gulp of wine. “And what were you doing a-stomping round this tower so late of a night? Keeping Lady Amicia from her night’s rest on a . . . dark and windy night?”
“Mayhap there would not have been a cause for my visit if you would be busy about your duty keeping her warm on such nights.” The mischievous glint in Dagda’s eye took the sting from her tart reply.
Hitching up her skirts, she swished to the door. But she paused on the threshold, raised a forefinger. “Be sure to bolt the drawbar,” she warned. “You wouldn’t want old Reginald or his lady to come looking to see who’s in their bed!”
And then with a knowing wink and whirl of black linen, she was gone, slipping away into the corridor’s gloom without so much as a further glance or fare-thee-well.
Magnus stared after her, his brow darkening again. “That one e’er walks on the precipice,” he said, swirling the wine in his cup. “May the saints be kind if e’er she takes a false step.”
“I vow she has her reasons for being as she is,” Amicia said, feeling a need to defend the old woman.
“To be sure,” Magnus responded with equal speed.
But his eyes narrowed and he looked anything but charitable as he brought the wine cup to his lips and downed its contents in one long swallow.
He set down the empty cup with an overloud clack, and regarded her with sharp, measuring eyes. “Like as not, we all have justification for our actions—if only to our own good selves.”
“And what are yours?” Amicia put down her own cup, the wine untouched.
She took a heavy linen napkin from the table, ran its embroidered edges through her fingers as she looked at him, waiting. Their gazes locked, and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
“Why are you here, my lord? Now, this night, before propriety deems you join me?”
At his silence, she lowered her gaze to the battle-ax he still clutched so fiercely. And the ax was by no means his only weapon. The bulk of his broadsword, its hilt and scabbard, loomed ominously apparent beneath his plaiding. She’d also counted at least two dirks thrust beneath his belt.
“I would know the truth, Magnus.” She used his given name for the first time—the sound of it on her tongue both strange and thrilling.
“I simply wish to know you safe.”
“Know me safe?” she echoed, sensing more behind his actions than his words revealed.
He nodded, and a nervous-twitching muscle in his jaw confirmed her suspicions.
“If I cannot greet our marriage with overweening gladness, the very least I can do is assure no harm comes to you.”
She crumpled the napkin, let it drop back onto the table. “I have been looking out for myself for many years. Despite my brothers’ brawn and concern.”
Disillusionment and a frightening sense of hopelessness filling her chest, she struggled to keep from blowing out a breath of pure frustration. His indifference in their youth had lacerated her heart and now he would rub salt in the wound by vowing to protect her whilst he grieved her soul.
She appreciated his protection, but she wanted his love.
“There are more grave hurts than physical ones, my lord,” she said, challenging him. “Would you help me to allay those as well?”
He touched her cheek, toyed with a strand of her hair. “It would be better for you if we do not go down that road, my lady.”
“And if I am already more than halfway along it?”
He pressed his lips together and just looked at her.
Then he took his hand from her face and the loss of his touch, however innocent and fleeting, sluiced through her like ice water, leaving an empty, unquenchable void.
Amicia curled her own hands to fists, resisted the urge to grab and shake him. He was beginning to remind her of her brother Donall the Bold at his vaunting best.
Or worst!
Aye, save for the bright gleam of his rich auburn hair, so lustrous in the flickering candlelight, he looked exactly like Donall in one of his I-am-the-laird and no-one-ought-question-him moods.
Beneath her skirts, one foot began to tap furiously—thanks to the thick layer of furred skins spread on the floor, no telltale tap-tappings sounded to reveal her agitation.
He would know her safe.
Old Dagda would see her pleasuring him.
Amicia’s chest heaved, the longings unleashed by his simple touch tearing her heart. She just wanted a home . . . a husband to love, and love her, a hearthside to call her own, and a bairn or two to bounce on her knee within the cozy circle of its warmth.
Instead, she’d won the leal affection of a doddering old man and his equally aged dog, a fierce-eyed female seneschal with the heart of a bawd, and a husband who’d rather skulk about encased in mail and suspicion than climb into her bed, wearing naught but his fine dimpled smile and the desire to make her his own.
Determined to claim that smile and the pleasure any way she must, she indicated the battle-ax, which, to his credit, he’d rather sheepishly laid upon the table when she’d turned a disapproving stare on the weapon.
“From whom would you keep me safe, good sir? The fierce Norsemen of old have not threatened these waters in centuries and we are at peace with all our nearest neighbors.” She reached to trail one finger along his mailed sleeve, gave him the best little smile she could muster.
“Or do you wish to protect me from the ghosts of the fabled Reginald and his lady? They are the ones of the curse, are they not?”
The quick snapping together of his brows told her they were.
“I have yet to hear their tale,” she went on, hoping the recitation of the legend might prod him out of his tight-lipped silence . . . urge him to open up to her. “Will you tell me of them? Dagda—”
“Is that why she was in here? Filling your head with her crazed tales of ice-cold stones and lost love?” he jerked, staring at her.
“Heed not a word of her prattle. And that is all the great MacKinnon curse is, I promise you—foolish prattle,” he vowed, his deep voice vehement.
“A fireside tale for a long and dark winter night, naught more. The day centuries-old sorrows and walking ghosts harm a hair on any living soul’s head is the day a cow will fly to the moon. ”
“But there is something amiss. You would not have stormed in here tonight, girded for battle, were that not so.” Amicia folded her arms, lifted her chin. “I would know what that something is. A nameless foe cannot be fought.”
“Think you I do not know that?”
“I am sure you know much, my lord. And of things I would enjoin you to share with me,” she said, leveling her gaze at him.
His gaze slid downward. Following it, her heart leapt to her throat, for her crossed arms had lifted and plumped her already generous breasts and the clinging linen of her gown drew especial emphasis to their welling fullness.
Worst of all, the upper rim of her dusky right nipple peeked above the dip of her low-cut bodice. Nay, truth be told, fully half of her good-sized areola showed! One deep breath and the whole nipple would pop into view.
Uncrossing her arms at once, she tugged the gown into place. “As you can see, sir, I am not a wee and delicate flower afraid of a bit of wind and rain. You needn’t shield me. I will not melt if you tell me what troubles you.”
He lifted his gaze from her breasts at once. Faith, his face glowed brighter than the brazier! And Amicia had a sneaking suspicion she knew why.
The thought sent a riptide of sparkling pleasure shooting through her, even warming her there in the sweetest, most secret part of her lower belly, but she’d test the notion and its possibilities later—in a more auspicious moment.
For the nonce, she contented herself with tilting her head to the side and studying him through carefully lowered lashes. “I ask you again—why are you here?”
He cleared his throat. “Unexpected tidings brought me here, my lady,” he said, his flushed cheeks proving just as unsettling as his frown.
“What tidings?”
The scowl returned. “Sakes, but you are a persistent wench,” he said, ramming a hand through his hair. “’Twas the privy seat if you must know.”
“The privy seat? The one that collapsed beneath your da?”
Magnus nodded. “Aye, the very one.”
She opened her mouth to ask him what the broken privy seat had to do with his skulking about of a night, armed to the teeth, but before she could, he swung about.
Crossing to the door in three long strides, he closed it and slid home the greased drawbar in one smooth movement.
Her wide-eyed gaze not leaving him, Amicia snatched her arisaid off the back of a chair and swirled its soft woolen folds around her shoulders, shielding her dishevelment and, above all, any wayward-inclined nipples from view.
But when he wheeled back around, he wore an expression so bitter earnest she doubted he would have noticed if both of her nipples sprang free to wink at him.
Mayhap not even if they spoke up and said him a fine and merry good-e’en.
Indeed, he drew a deep breath and stared at an undefined spot somewhere across the firelit chamber, his gaze strangely inward-looking.
He patted the hilt of his sword, then lifted the silver-linked hem of his mailed hauberk.
“You would know why I burst in here garbed for battle, and so I will tell you,” he said, his face granite-set.
“My father’s plunge into the latrine chute was no accident.
See you, I sent a few lads to retrieve the privy seat.
I just had an uneasy feeling. A hunch. If you prefer, call it a cold prickling along the back of my neck. ”
He paused, drew a long breath. “The cesspit was long overdue for a good scouring, so it would not have been a waste of anyone’s time. Either way, the lads brought the seat to me a short while ago.”
Now he turned to her at last, his gaze steady and penetrating. “The seat had been sawed in two,” he said. “And very neatly.”
“Sawed in two?” The suggestion stole Amicia’s breath. “As in a-purpose?”
He nodded.
“That will have been the way of it, aye. Someone wanted Da, or whoe’er happened to use the garderobe, to drown in the cesspit.”