Chapter Seventeen
HALF-LAUGHING, half-sobbing, Magnus ran forward, dropped to his knees before the two women. “Praise the saints!” he cried, throwing his arms around both of them, putting the whole of his gladness in that one crushing hug. “We thought you were dead. Like poor Dagda—”
“Magnus, my dearest Magnus, is it truly you? I’d been praying you would come,” Amicia breathed, her voice quavering. “But please—do not speak of Dagda, not yet, I beg you.”
She shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks—tears that, for once, she did not attempt to check. “Not until I have savored this moment, unmarred.”
Squeezing back his own tears, Magnus made short work of her bindings, lifted her from the smallish recess, then stepped back so Colin could do the same for Janet.
“Hush you, sweeting.” Magnus sought to comfort his bride. He drew her closer, smoothed his fingers over a large bluish swelling on her forehead.
Saints, just seeing the ugly knot and her pain-glazed eyes filled him with a fury such as he’d never known.
“You are hurt.” He rocked her, rained kisses on her brow, her cheeks, and even her nose. “I will find whoe’er did this and make him wish he’d ne’er glimpsed the light of day. Praise God, Janet signaled to us—” he broke off, wheeled to face Colin and Janet.
“I saw you at the rail, waving to us.” He stared hard at his shivering cousin, not missing how she quaked all the more beneath that stare.
He also noticed that her hair was plaited and not loose and trailing seaweed. He noted, too, that the odd green-glowing sea foam had vanished from the deck. Along with the strange flotsam of curiosities that had spilled from his lady’s cloak.
All of it had vanished—or been claimed by the sea and rain. Almost as if, now that he had found her, such charms, or whate’er they’d been, were no longer needed.
A chilling mix of confusion and comprehension washing over him, he narrowed his eyes at Janet. “I saw you, I swear it—yet you were bound and tied to the oar bench. How—”
“Not now, my heart. There are things in this world we may ne’er understand, but they can be good things . . . so good,” his love silenced him. She pressed cold fingers to his lips, looked at him as if he were the whole of the world for her.
And he was her world. The entirety of it—all her light and gladness. “Now, this moment, I just want to look at you,” she declared, her voice breaking. “I so feared I would ne’er see you again.”
That after aching for you forever, we’d been damned to have but one night of heaven.
But then she’d heard him calling to her, reaching for her through the mists that had claimed her, and she’d somehow managed to climb up out of its swirling dark and answer him, half-afraid her heart had conjured his beloved voice.
Shuddering, a great sob escaped her and she clung to him, her body trembling, rivers of tears coursing down her cheeks. The warmth and safety of his arms around her was a sweet bliss so stunning it took her breath.
“Shush, lass, I am here now,” he said, wrapping a fold of his plaid around her, enveloping her in the tightest of hugs. “As are you, sweeting. Naught else matters.”
But it did.
He’d lost the only two galleys his men had finished, and from what she’d seen of the storm damage to the half-built ones on the strand, many of those ships would never see completion. Not with his pride keeping him from dipping into her coffers to pay for more supplies.
She looked aside, sniffed. “You err, my love,” she got out on a wobbly breath. “So much matters. . . . Your fleet has been ruined again and—and even if you wish the rebuilding of it had not yet begun, there are some who have needed . . . otherwise. Your da. Your brothers. Many others.”
Pulling a bit away from him, she pressed her hand to his chest, stroking, as if her touch, there where his heart beat, could persuade him.
“Will you not reconsider using my dowry coins to order more supplies?” she urged, prepared to beg if necessary.
“Can you . . . can you not push past your pride just this once? For your da? For me?”
He angled his head at her. “Pride, you say? Sweet lass, what is pride to a heart that loves?”
“It would mean so much to your da, in especial. He—” Amicia’s heart stopped, brilliant light and joy bursting through her darkest cares and worries. She stared at him, so afraid she’d imagined the words. “What did you say?”
Magnus drew a long breath, sating himself on the beauty of her shining eyes, the sweet quiver of her lower lip, before he answered her—savoring yet again how damned good it felt to be free of his fool pride.
How endlessly glorious it was to hold her, know her safe.
“I said, what is pride to a heart that loves,” he admitted at last, loving the comprehension spreading across her lovely face, the wonder of it.
“You are full right, my lady, and have been e’er long.
And I—I have been a fool.” He lifted a hand to her cheek, caught a spilled tear on his fingertip.
“But I have made amends, never you worry. I have assured my father, and any other long-nosed louts who cared to know, that your dowry coffers can and shall be spent to the fullest—to the good of us all.”
She blinked, her chest rising and falling with greater and greater rapidity. “And the last part of what you said? The love part?”
For one wee instant, Magnus’s pride clamped an icy fist around his heart, squeezed so tight he could scarce draw breath. But then a great wave of stunningly bright happiness surged up from somewhere deep inside him and swept away that last stubborn bit of cold and dark.
Feeling almost giddy, he caught another of her tears, slid a glance at Colin. As he’d suspected, the knave’s flapping ears were aimed straight at him. As was the worst sort of gloating I-told-you-so stare.
Not that Magnus cared.
He blew out a breath, straightened his shoulders. “The love part, lass? Well . . .”
Letting his words tail off, he crushed her to him, and cradling her beloved face with his hands, he kissed her deeply. A fierce, soul-slaking kiss, thorough and searing. A kiss that should show her without words what was in his heart.
What had always been there.
But in case she needed the reassurance, he told her. “Aye, my minx, that love part was my way of admitting that I love you,” he said, heedless of whether Colin-of-the-big-ears heard him and laughed or nay.
“Y-you love me?” The tears were streaming now. “Truly?”
Magnus nodded. “I have done since I first laid eyes on you. At the very latest, that long-ago day when I followed you onto the moors and found you injured and stalking about in the heather, all long legs, raven hair, and delightful indignation.”
“Oh!” That came out on a gusty breath and she flung her arms around his neck, twining her fingers into his hair, and holding him with such ferocity he feared she might never let go.
“Shush you,” he soothed, stroking the back of her head, more pleased than he would have believed that his admission of love brought her such happiness, feeling as if his heart might burst with his own joy.
The rush of emotion consuming him, he tightened his arms around her, slanting his mouth greedily over hers, drinking in all the warmth and bliss she brought him.
Pulling back at last, he looked deep into her eyes, hoped every beating ounce of his love shone in his own.
“All will be well, my precious,” he said, gentling his fingers over the knot on her brow.
“And you shall be fine. I will ne’er let even a shadow of harm come near you again.
Soon we will have you settled by the hearthside, warm and dry.
We will speak of all this and more . . . later.”
“She will be even more fine if you cease trying to crack her ribs,” Colin put in. “And I fear there will be no later, if we do not hie ourselves to shore before this galley slips beneath the waves. The way it is tilting, I vow we shall taste the sea any moment.”
And as usual—but not always!—the lout was correct.
“Saints, but you are right,” Magnus admitted, “we must be gone from here at once—so soon as we have cut free Dagda. We cannot take her back with us for a due and decent burial, but we can release her to the sea. She deserves at least—”
“S-she tried to kill us!” The words burst from Amicia’s lips with such sudden heat, Magnus blinked, certain he’d misheard.
But a violent shudder racked her body—he’d felt it run through her. Then she was staring at him, the remembered terror in her beautiful, dark eyes telling him he had not misunderstood.
“Dagda was mad. . . . She was the one who’d been causing s-such havoc and grief. . . . She told us ev-everything,” she babbled, the words spilling forth in a torrent as if a dam had broken.
Only Janet remained silent.
Wrapped securely in Colin’s arms, Janet looked on as Amicia stammered the details of their ordeal. His cousin’s pretty face was twisted into such a pale-faced mask of horror, Magnus reached for her hand, squeezed hard.
“You will be fine, too, Janet,” he said, hoping to take some of the pain from her eyes. “If I am not wholly without my wits, I vow you will soon be a bride after all—dowry or no.”
He winked at Colin and smiled at his cousin, but to his horror, his well-meant words caused a great sob to wrench from Janet’s throat.
She lowered her head, dashed frantically at dripping tears. “He will not be having me now,” she wailed, looking up to fix a panic-stricken stare on Amicia. “No one will. Not after—”
“She is weary, pay her no heed,” Amicia cut her off, her voice firm, surprisingly strong.
“Of course, he will want you, Janet. And think how proud your grandchildren will be someday when the bards recall how valiantly you fought against Dagda when she attacked me. Och, aye, Colin Grant will have you and be proud to do so.”
A watery gasp and a tear-glazed look of stunned appreciation answered Amicia, warming her heart.
But she wasn’t quite finished.