Chapter Seven
AMICIA STARED AT HIM, not quite certain she’d heard aright.
Regrettably, the tension hanging thick in the air about him and the hard, firm set of his jaw said she had.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be sure.
“Are you saying someone deliberately cut through the privy seat?” She pressed the words past lips gone dry with shock. “A-purpose?”
He’d been standing before the table, staring down at his discarded battle-ax, but now he turned. “So I have said,” he confirmed, his expression like granite. “Would that it were not so.”
Amicia blinked, even though his answer did not surprise her. Neither his words nor her own body’s reaction to having his looming so tall before her.
So near and imposing.
Soft light from a suspended cresset lamp spilled across his head and shoulders, glinting in the rich chestnut strands of his hair and gilding the silvery rivets of his mailed shirt. The gold-flickering glow also illuminated the disquiet marring his handsome brow.
Her pulse quickening, she studied him through lowered lashes.
His proximity and even the simple act of breathing in the same air undid her.
The heady masculine scent of him, an appealing mix of clean linen, leather, and polished steel, sent long, liquid pulls through the deepest part of her stomach and watered her knees.
Warmth began pulsing through her and everything around them seemed to fade away while her focus on him sharpened to brilliance.
Just looking at him branded possession. Even without the dimpled grin and merry eyes of his youth, he made a compelling presence.
Strength and irresistible vitality thrummed through him, tantalizing and drawing her despite his dark frown.
Mayhap even because of it.
Truth be told, in his discomfited state, he exuded a smoldering appeal that caught at her heart, filled her with a welter of emotion and unleashed an overwhelming urge to skim her fingertips along the tight-set contours of his face. To smooth away each line of hardness with the gentlest caress.
But nagging memories of reaching out to him in the distant past, and being rebuffed, slid through her, shading and curbing any such compulsion. So she simply smoothed her skirts and contented herself with her determination to claim such liberties soon.
With the good saints on her side, and a wee bit of MacLean daring, mayhap even sooner than she’d dared hope.
Her heart lifting at the possibility, she cast a glance between him and the bolted door. “What you are saying would mean treachery within these walls, my lord.”
“Aye, like as not that is the way of it.” He sounded as if his very soul quailed at the thought. “Try as I might, I can think of no other explanation.” He squeezed shut his eyes for a moment, tunneled his fingers through his hair. “We have a devil supping amongst us, lass. But who?”
Amicia held back for a moment of maddening indecision. She had a very good idea of who could be the instigator behind such vindictive doings. But now was not the time to voice her suspicion—unless she wished to mark herself a jealous shrew.
So she swallowed the accusation and prayed he would not see it in her eyes. “You truly believe so?”
“Och, but I do—regrettably.” He glanced down, trailed a finger along the handle of his battle-ax. “I will tell you, too, that I do not believe in curses or ghosts,” he said, pinching the wick of a guttering candle before returning his gaze to her.
“It would take an arm almost as strong as my own to saw through well-seasoned oak—an arm attached to a living and breathing person. Someone who is bold, foolhardy, or comfortable enough to move about these walls at their will and leisure.”
The implications of his words beat through her but did not lessen her distrust of his cousin. The wee snippet could have cajoled any besotted fool from the garrison to do her will.
Almost certain of it, Amicia cleared her throat, blinked against the smoke rising from the snuffed candle.
“Can the wood not have cracked of its own? A natural fault . . . mayhap rotten inside?” She clutched at other possibilities, however remote. “Once, at Baldoon and in the midst of the Yuletide carousing, a trestle board split clean in two. Could not—”
“Nay, lass, there can be no doubt.” He shook his head. “The cut edges bore the marks of the saw’s fury. The knave who did this was not only stout-armed, but driven by white-hot rage.”
His face grim-set, he went to the window embrasure where he ignored the twin-facing benches, newly adorned with plump, finely embroidered cushions. He stood with his back to her, staring out at the swirls of eddying mist drifting past the window arch.
The night breeze, heavy with the smell of rain, riffled his hair.
Firelight from a nearby torch picked out the brightest strands of gold, and Amicia’s fingers itched to test the silkiness of those bronze-gleaming highlights.
A near all-consuming urge stoked through countless nights of youthful longings.
Shaking off the spell of him, she clasped her hands together and drew a great breath before she spoke. “If this is someone of such a twisted heart, I pray you discover his identity with all haste. For the good of us all.”
“Never you worry, I shall,” he said without glancing round.
“The dastard will soon find himself clapped into Coldstone’s deepest pit and regretting the day of his birth.
Or mayhap I shall put him to the cliff—let him plunge headlong into the sea as he’d hoped to see one of us hurtle into the cesspit.
” His hands clenched to tight fists. “On my soul, Amicia, I swear I will let no harm come to you.”
Amicia’s heart dipped at his use of her name without the formalizing lady prefix. A first, and a triumph she seized with gladness. Sweetest pleasure spiraled through her, too, at the fervor in his voice as he’d vowed to protect her.
“I have fullest faith in your ability to safeguard me,” she said, melting, a flood tide of preciously guarded images whispering across her heart. “Mayhap I should not tell you, but the truth is, I have long admired your strength and skill, Magnus MacKinnon.”
Now he did look over his shoulder. “I—thank you for that,” he said, an odd thickness to his voice.
The glow from the brazier revealed a faint tinge of pink stealing onto his cheeks. Perhaps an indication of how uncomfortable her compliments made him—or mayhap how much they pleased him.
And that second notion pleased her.
Inordinately so.
Her sapphire ring seemed to warm on her finger as she looked at him. The possibility, real or imagined, made her heart smile. “See you, I remember from early on, how you e’er won the day at the competitions of strength our clans participated in,” she minded him, encouraged.
She circled her thumb over the ring as she waited for his reaction, drew courage—and boldness—from the stone’s satiny, almost pulsing warmth. “I vow you e’er left the field as champion.”
“Och, nay, lass. There you mistake,” he said, turning back to the window, the darkness of the mist-hung night. “I once lost an archery contest by badly overshooting the target. But that was many long years ago and no longer of import.” An odd touch of melancholy threaded the softly spoken words.
“For now, in this pass, just know that I will guard your safety with the whole of my strength and all the breath in me. That is so sure as night follows day.”
His vow, and even more so, the tinge of regret edging his husky-smooth voice, lifted the fine hairs on the back of Amicia’s neck.
In truth, even whilst flattering, she did not want him to fight for her.
She wanted to protect him. To know him safe from all darkness and danger.
And she loathed the notion of being a responsibility.
Another burden placed upon his shoulders.
She burned for one thing only.
His love and adoration.
A chance to win his heart.
With effort, she tore her gaze from his broad, plaid-draped back, shivers of regret slinking down her own.
Unless her eyesight had weakened since her arrival on MacKinnons’ Isle, there was now a decided slump to his shoulders and, damn her clumsy-tongued hide, but she feared something she’d said might be the cause of it.
Or mayhap the moon eyes she’d surely been making at him since he’d burst into the bedchamber—despite her best efforts to maintain a composed, ladylike demeanor.
To control the yearnings that raged inside her with enough passion to set all the heather ablaze.
Her throat tightening, her eyes filming with sheerest frustration, she turned back to the table, glared down at the gleaming ax blade. The polished steel shone overbright in the candlelight and the sharpness of its edge left nary a doubt to the damage it could wield.
As could the broadsword hanging at his side, the wicked-looking dirks thrust beneath his waist-belt. Faith and mercy, he even had one sheathed in his boot!
She slid another look at him, eyed the weapons—a veritable arsenal—and tight bands of trepidation coiled around her chest, obliterating all her other emotions.
Her own now paltry seeming concerns.
All save one.
She glanced back to the securely bolted door.
Did he mean to sleep here? Mayhap even in their fine four-postered marriage bed—at her side?
Her heart pounding, she stared at him for a long moment before taking the first step across the skin-strewn floor.
She had to know.
Even if the discovery found him shunning her. The warm-pulsing weightiness spreading through the lower-most reaches of her belly at the thought of lying with him demanded she learn his mind.
So she let the urgently pleasurable sensation spur her forward, toward its braw and bonny source, one brazen footfall after the other.
Fitting or no, the timing propitious or nay, the gnawing need inside her stamped out every last flicker of propriety.
Not that a MacLean e’er walked the earth who’d let seemliness—or risk—bar the way to their deepest desire!
And she was a MacLean—through and through.