Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (14 page)

* * *

‘Twas a few hours later, after quite a bit
of laborious, physical work, that Robert finally felt calm again.
He stood back and examined all that had been accomplished since his
return to his holding.

Scanning the outer wall and gatehouse, he
noted that the repairs were going well—better, even, than he’d
first expected.

He had only been back here a handful of
times these past years as he’d done all he could to raise the coin
needed to keep the land in their family. And in those years, and
clearly for many years prior, very little monies had been allotted
to the maintenance of the fortress and keep. A thing that, now that
he’d been given a reprieve from paying the remainder of the debt so
quickly, he intended to change.

His earlier unease regarding his reactions
to his bride had, thankfully, and at last, receded back from whence
it had sprung. And now that it had, he was determined that ‘twould
remain there. For, he was now convinced, those reactions were
merely some strange and temporary madness brought on by his elation
and profound relief regarding his not losing his clan’s holding.
Aye, he was back to his old self, he was sure.

He could not, however, ignore the fright
she’d taken the night before—nor her ethereal song as she
slumbered. For, as her husband, ‘twas his duty, his avowed duty, to
keep and protect her. And for her own safety, he must not only
learn why she’d been so afraid, but if, as well, it had aught to do
with her loss of speech.

The bells began to toll and all work came to
an end for the time being as everyone turned toward their own
hearths to partake of their dinners. Robert did the same.

* * *

An hour later, after their meal, Robert
placed the sheet of parchment down on the table and lifted his eye
to his bride. “So. You remember naught of your youth prior to your
life at the nunnery.” He turned his sights back on the curving
lines of writing. All at once, he recalled his liege’s words to him
the eve before their wedding.

He sat forward a bit, drilling Morgana with
a steady gaze. “King William said there was some horror in your
youth. What could he have meant?”

Morgana’s heart began to thud and her palms
grew moist. She shrugged and shook her head.

“No one has told you?” Robert’s brows drew
together even more when Morgana shook her head again. As he
scrubbed his fingers across his chin, he stared at the hearthfire.
“ ‘Tis strange, I trow.”

Morgana could do naught but shrug again and
nod.

After another moment, Robert whipped his
head around and said, “Think you that
Vika
knows the
tale?”

Morgana had avoided learning of her past
since first arriving at the King's court. But somehow, now that she
had Robert's strength behind her, she felt better able to delve
into that time. She shrugged, motioning that she could send her a
missive to query her.

“Aye, do that.” He picked up the second
sheet and quickly read it. His eyes grew round, then narrowed when
he read the part where she’d seen
Ankou
at the
Bealltainn
fires the night before and that it caused her to
see a recurring image of him carrying a dead woman in his arms.
This was something she had not been able to explain well the night
before with her usual means of communication. He’d only understood
that she’d been frighted by the rough and noisy fire rituals, that
it had reminded her of something she didn’t like.

He looked up and studied her troubled visage
for a moment. “
Ankou?
” He shook his head in confusion.

Morgana lifted the quill and dipped it in
the vial of ink. Taking the sheet of parchment from his hand, she
then wrote out who the creature was. With a bit of a shaking hand,
she gave it back to him.

Robert read the newly-writ words. “A death
god?” He shook his head again. “I’ve ne’er heard of this
creature.”

‘Twas Morgana’s turn to be confused.

She took the parchment again and wrote a bit
more detail.

After Robert had scanned her newest
addition, he said, “I’ll ask Dugan and some of the others if they
saw anyone about the fires last eve that fits this description.” If
a stranger had been amongst them, he needed to know. Not only for
Morgana, but for the safety of his clan and his fortress.

He shuffled the pages together and rolled
them up as he stood. “Go about your chores. I’ll see you at
supper.” He strode out, his mind already on his coming conversation
with Dugan, his lieutenant.

Morgana sighed as she watched her husband’s
determined departure. She supposed ‘twas wishing for the moon to
think he’d e’er give her a kiss—even a pat on her hand—before he
left her side. With a small shake of her head, she rose to her feet
as well and walked toward the door leading to the spinning and
weavers’ chambers. Time to find Modron and learn what progress she
and the others had made this day.

* * *

Morgana awoke that night to the feel of the
blunt pad of her husband’s long finger wedged between her closed
thighs, strumming the sensitive bud of her sex. “Open, I’m going to
fuck you now,” he murmured against her ear. She felt the weight of
his engorged manhood rubbing against the crease between her
buttocks. She curved her back, pressing her swollen labia against
it and lifted one leg, draping it back and o’er his own.

His breath was harsh, bathing and buffeting
her ear canal as he positioned himself at her entrance and pushed
high and deep. There was some resistance, but by the third thrust
he was all the way in. “God, I love fucking you. Your cunt is so
tight. Hot. Slick.”

The words sent her into a spiral of ecstasy.
He didn’t always speak to her while they made love and it thrilled
her to hear his voice, no matter how ribald the speech, while he
was mating with her. For, somehow, she understood, that when he
spoke, if he spoke, it meant that he was in the throes of such
pleasure, he could no longer keep silent.

She moved against him, pressing herself down
on him, forcing him within her so high it hurt. She wanted to
please him, to give him all of herself. And she’d learned these
past moons what did please him: He liked burying himself inside her
as far as he could go; he liked even more when she helped him do
so. What e’er he wanted from her, she would give him. She wanted to
bring him delight, bring him contentment, bring him joy. She
wanted...she wanted to make him love her.

As she loved him.

R
OBERT STRODE
TOWARD his bedchamber the next day in search of Morgana. He’d
spoken to most of the revelers of two nights past and had not found
one who’d seen the stranger described by his wife in her
writing.

He wondered if the man, this
Ankou
creature, had been some phantasm of the mind brought about by the
mixture of liquor, smoky air, and revelry.

He flung the door wide and took two long
strides inside before he realized his wife was on their bed with
her back to him.

Not at all where he’d expected to find
her.

“What ails you?”

She shook her head and waved her hand in a
shooing motion.

He ignored her decree and marched over to
the bedside. ‘Twas then that he heard the unmistakable sound of
weeping
. His skin crawled. Blood of
Christ
! What the
hell was he supposed to do now?

He looked first here, then there,
desperately searching for something to offer her.

Why him? He had no idea how to deal with a
wet-eyed female. His sights finally lighted on the ewer of water on
the washstand. He took the several steps over to it and quickly
poured some out into the pewter cup that rested next to it. When he
was once more standing at her back, he thrust the vessel under her
nose. “Drink.”

She shook her head and sniffled. When her
shoulders began to quake with great sobs, he felt a panic rise up
inside him the likes of which he’d ne’er known. Not even the time
he’d ridden out alone on the border and been ambushed by a band of
freebooters when he was a lad of only eleven summers had he
experienced such a dread as this, so profound in its compass as to
render him utterly frozen with it.

Another long moment passed as his mind spun
with disjointed thoughts about how he should handle this. Finally,
he set the cup on the table next to the bed and, after taking more
than one very deep breath, he sat down next to his distraught
bride. Having absolutely no idea how to calm her, he did the first
thing that came to him. He patted her head. “You’re all right. You
can stop weeping now.”

Morgana turned and looked at the big hulking
man that was her husband through the tears pooled in her eyes. The
expression on his face would have made her laugh if the pain of her
heartbreak wasn’t so acute. He looked lost and highly uneasy. A
first for her—and no doubt for him as well.

Then he did something that startled her,
broke her heart a bit more and, miraculously, began to mend it as
well: He leaned down and kissed her on her mouth. The kiss was so
gentle, so dulcet. There was more behind that kiss than comfort and
she exulted in it.

She lifted her hand to the short stubbled
beard that covered his jaw and stroked her fingers through its
somewhat coarse, dark mass.

When he broke away at last, he did not move
his face far from her own. His eyes showed less alarm now, showed
that familiar spark that she’d come to know so well these past
moons. “What ails you?” he asked again, softer this time, but with
just as much steel behind it. She would not—could not—refuse to
answer this time.

She lifted her skirts and showed him what
she wore beneath. Her face crumpled once more as a new flood of
tears gushed from her eyes and down her hot cheeks. She flung the
skirts back o’er her legs and flipped over on her side, hiding her
face in her hands as she silently bawled her heartache away.

Robert cleared his throat and darted a look
at the exit.
Where the hell is Modron?
She was much better
equipped to handle these female doings than he. “Do you need an
herbal for the pain?”

Morgana stopped crying. She did laugh then,
snorted actually, so he had to know she was laughing at him, which
made her feel contrite. She turned her head and, looking at him,
shook a negative.

Then, seeing how distressed, how awkward, he
truly was, she crossed her arms and mimed cradling a babe in them.
Then opened them and shrugged, shaking her head.

His eyes widened with understanding—and not
just a bit of relief.

Robert’s hand trembled as he lifted it to
his wife’s hip and softly stroked the rounded curve of it. His mind
churned. “So—you are sad because you aren’t childing yet?”

She nodded.

Again, the image flashed in his mind of her
in that very state, with his babe in her arms. But this time, there
was also an ache attached that squeezed his heart like a vise.

Mayhap next time.

He cleared his throat again. “My sister,
Isobail—she died near the time of
Samhainn
two years past—it
took near a half a year after she was wed before
she...umm...did.”

That made Morgana’s heart sing. Not just the
tidings that it could take a bit longer than she’d hoped to
conceive a babe—for Modron had told her the same thing this
morn—but that Robert had again revealed something about his family
which had naught to do with his father’s ill-desired legacy. She
smiled and asked him, as best she was able, to tell her more about
his sister.

To her great surprise and e’erlasting
delight, he did just that. He scooted her over and settled on the
bed beside her, wrapping her in his arms. He spent the next hour
telling her about the elder sister he’d loved so dearly, but whose
life had ended much too soon. He also told her about David,
Isobail’s son. That he was being cared for by, and fostered as page
to, his best childhood friend, Callum MacGregor and his wife,
Branwenn. That the lad’s father had died not long before Isobail
and that Robert had been in no position to care for his nephew at
that time. It had been a necessary arrangement, Robert said, for
which he would forever be grateful to his friend.

Morgana wanted to meet David, now that she
knew of him. The cogs in her mind began to turn, but every thought
scattered when she felt her husband’s warm lips and teeth nip and
suck the tender skin just under her ear.

“I’ve questioned my clansmen,” he said
against her earlobe, then took it between his teeth and tugged. A
tremor of pure desire traveled through her. Its destination: Her
eager portal. “None saw this creature you described.” He ran the
tips of his fingers along the bare skin just beneath the neckline
of her chemise. Her nipples puckered and she tried to turn onto her
back. He wouldn’t allow it.

“God, I wish I could fuck you right
now.”

Her heart tripped. Eyes wide, and brows
lifted in question, she turned her head and looked into his heated
gaze. Would he think her base? Vile? She had to know, had to take
that chance, for she wanted him inside her just as badly as he
claimed a desire to be there.

With a pounding pulse that worked in both
anticipation and fear, she loosened and lowered the neckline of her
chemise and gown, pushing it down until she was giving him a full
view of her breasts. When his eyes heated and his breath came more
rapidly, and he said naught to stop her, she lifted her skirts,
unlaced the undergarment beneath and draped her leg back o’er his
own, opening her thighs to him.

Her husband’s nostrils flared, the
steel-gray of his eyes disappeared as the black centers opened
wide. She didn’t even blink as she reached around and lifted his
tunic, then ripped at the linen that covered his loins. When his
erection sprang free, she stroked it, bringing up a bit of seed as
she did so.