The Wolf and the Highlander (Highland Wishes) (6 page)

Refusing to dwell on the excited flutter in her stomach, she turned down his bed and climbed beneath the animal hides. Their weight settled on top of her.
Odd, but with Riggs’s scent of pine and loyal, dusty dog surrounded her, she found herself not fashing over returning to Ackergill. In fact, she was curious about Riggs and his world. What was he? Were all the people in this place like him? Could she possibly belong here?

Sleep beckoned. Her quest
ions would wait for the morrow.

The scent of baking bread
woke her. It felt as though mere moments had passed, but morning light peeked from behind the closed shutters. Across the cabin, Riggs crouched near the workbench, stuffing supplies into a large leather sack with more straps and buckles than she’d ken what to do with. He was working quickly, almost hurriedly.

“Are
you going somewhere?” she asked around a yawn.

He stopped and looked at her. He didn’t answer.

“Going somewhere?” she repeated.

His brows pinched until a hard line appeared between them. He rose
from his crouch, and his head came nearly to the roof of the cabin. The sight of him before her so large and virile made her toes curl beneath the animal skins.

He said somat, but she didn’t understand.

“Pardon?” she said.

He said it again, this time with a shake of his head. She still couldn’t make sense of it. ’Twas no more than a lilting rumble of meaningless syllables.

She sat up, clutching the skins around her. “I must be half asleep. Could you say it again?”

He spoke again,
this time more urgently, and it made as little sense as what he’d said a moment ago. He kept trying to tell her things, and she kept not understanding.

They stared at each other. Outside one of the windows, a pair of squirrels chattered, having a meaningful conversation while she and Riggs stared at each other with furrowed brows.

Before her nap, they’d understood each other perfectly. Now, it seemed, they spoke different languages. What had changed?

Riggs
looked all around the cabin, as if he’d had a similar thought. His gaze landed on the fire dancing happily in the grate. His eyes widened with alarm.

Muttering
unintelligible things, he dashed to the hearth and grabbed a set of tongs. A quick reach into the flames produced somat that looked like charred fabric. The blackened heap dropped to the hearth. Riggs poked through it with the tongs, then with his fingers as the fabric cooled. Odd, some bits were faded blue, like her overdress. And a scrap of sooty linen looked suspiciously like her linen shift.

She
searched the hearth for the bundle of clothing he’d instructed her to leave there, finding nothing but the flask and flint box she never traveled without.
Och,
he didn’t. He wouldn’t.

“You burned my dress!” She threw off the skins and hoisted herself out of bed. Her legs cramped. Cursing them, she fell back on the
furs.

Using the tongs, Riggs plunked something he’d pulled from the fabric into a bucket of water
, which emitted a hiss. After a moment, he reached into the water and withdrew the object. His large hand obscured her view, so she couldn’t identify it. Whatever ’twas, it caused a look of wonder to pass over his face.

“What is it?” Her voice sounded angry, betraying the pain she was trying to ease with her kneading hands. Damn her legs.

Riggs met her eyes, then looked down to her massaging hands. His gaze darkened. “Let me,” he said, and she understood him.

He knelt by the bed, took one of her hands, and placed in it the amethyst gem Gravois had given her. It was hot as a cake from the oven. She rolled it between her fingers so no one bit of her skin got burned. It must magically allow people of different tongues to understand each other.

“That barmy tink.”

“What’s a barmy tink?”

She became aware of Riggs’s strong fingers kneading her most painful spot, below her left knee. He was touching her beneath the nightshirt. Learning how deformed she was.

She swatted his hand away and tucked the shirt tight around her legs. “You vowed
you wouldna touch me.”

Hurt flashed in his eyes. He hid it by rising with a grunt and turning away.

She remembered his tusk wound, now hidden by fresh trews, and regretted her harsh words. He’d only been trying to help, not taking liberties as he had before. Though to be fair, she’d been the one to bring that jar close to her breasts, kenning full well his hand had still been holding it.

“A barmy tink is an interfering, mysterious man who gives magical stones to maidens in distress and fills their heads with foolish talk of destinies. I’m sorry.
You were only trying to help. But I doona like my legs being touched.”

He inclined his head in a nod, not looking at her. His face was in profile. He had a strong nose, straight and masculine in its broadness. Firelight danced over his beard, making it shine like the richest sable.
Saints above, he was an attractive man.

“My apologies,
” he said.

“Best
you keep to your word and no’ touch me at all.”

“Of course, lady.”

“And cease calling me lady.”

His eyes glinted at that. It seemed there was one command he didn’t intend
to obey.

* * * *

Riggs stoked the fire and glanced at Anya over his shoulder. She sat on his pallet, pale and small in his shirt. She’d bathed and washed her hair, which had dried in thick, chestnut waves that shone in the firelight like silk. He couldn’t look full at her. It hurt too much. She was too beautiful. Too precious.

Even more precious now that he understood just who she was. Anya was so much more than he’d first assumed.

His mind went back many years, to when he’d been little more than a pup and King Magnus had been newly crowned.

He followed his sire into the pub in Figcroft feeling like a
man, carrying his very own axe and standing as tall as any other in the place, taller even than some.

His sire thumped him on the back while he addressed the barkeep. “A full draught for my son, and another for me. Your reward for a hard day’s work,” he said to Riggs.

The barkeep slid two tankards their way. “Heard about the king’s latest scandal? News just come from Chroina by way of a traveler last night.”

His sire lifted the tankard to take a sip, eyeing the barkeep coolly.

Riggs mirrored him, sucking down the foamy beer. Behind them were the sounds of men conversing at the tables. A boy sang with the voice of a lark and strummed a lute by the fire.

Licking his lips and setting the drink down, his sire said, “I prefer to get my news from the messengers who bring the monthly reports.”

The barkeep made a dismissive noise. “A little gossip keeps things interesting, don’t it?”

His sire’s friend, Vorish, appeared at their backs, dropping a token onto the bar. “Usual,” he said to the barkeep. Then he greeted Riggs and his sire with slaps on their shoulders. “Let Rolf have his fun. He only feels important when he’s got rumors to distribute.”

“He’d do better to distribute booze,” his sire grumbled, but he did so with a grin.

Rolf pushed out his lower lip, pretending offense, but his eyes gleamed with whatever news he couldn’t wait to share. Leaning over the bar, as if the news were for their ears only, he scratched his beard and said, “Apparently, Glerick’s finished the portrait the king commissioned.
His Majesty unveiled it two nights ago at a big to-do at the palace. Get this. When the curtain parts to reveal the long-awaited portrait, the ladies and gentlemen gathered in the great hall gasp as one. The subject, it’s not Himself, as tradition holds. It’s a lady.” Rolf’s eyes went wide. He looked between the three of them, waiting for a reaction.

Riggs failed to see how this was interesting. Everyone knew King Magnus honored the ladies. It was probably a portrait of Diana or something. He drank some more and turned his attention to the boy, wondering how close they were in age and who his mother might be.

He caught snippets of the conversation at the bar, but was trying to listen to the boy’s lyrics. He sang about a world where women ruled and men fought each other to the death for the right to breed with their queen. Riggs lost himself in the fantasy, imagining himself a full-grown warrior, wielding a battle axe, wearing a breastplate and armor on his arms and legs, winning exclusive breeding rights to his queen.

“But not just any lady, I heard,” Vorish said.

“A dark-haired beauty,” Rolf piped in. “Visited the king’s dreams the night of his coronation, I heard.”

Riggs’s ears perked up. His mother had dark hair, like him. And she was lovely enough to dream about.

“Not overly dark,” Vorish said. “The color of roasted chestnuts. If you’re going to gossip, be specific, man.”

Not Hilda then. Riggs tried to return to his fantasy. His queen welcomed him into her bedchamber. She waited for him on her bed of fine furs, naked and glorious.

“Yes, yes. Chestnut hair,” Rolf was saying. “But that’s hardly as notable as the fact her breasts were hairless. Pink little nipples in the center of smooth ivory orbs, like twin moons.”

Riggs abandoned the fantasy. Hairless breasts deserved his undivided attention. He turned back to the bar to find Rolf cupping his hands before his apron.

“She’s not wolfkind,” Vorish said.

Rolf slapped his dishrag on the bar. “Who’s telling the story?”

“Sorry. Go on. What else was remarkable about the lady?” Vorish exchanged grins with his sire while Rolf recovered his rag and tucked it into his belt.

“Tell us more about her breasts,” Riggs said.

His sire smacked the back of his head to the laughter of the other men.

“Fine, round, succulent things, I heard,” Rolf said, showing his yellow teeth. “Smooth and tasting of honey.”

“Tasting of paint, more like,” his sire said.

They all laughed at that.

“Tell them about her markings,” Vorish said.

Rolf leaned in again, conspiratorial. “On her cheek, the lady in the painting
bears the brand of the goddess, the paw-print of Danu in her wolf form. And around her neck she wears a gemstone. King Magnus says it’s a gift from the goddess, a sign that she’ll be the savior of our people.”

Riggs rolled his eyes and pushed away from the bar. Nonsense. Either the king was as batty as half the country seemed to think, or Rolf got his news from Chroina’s most imaginative drunks.

Before joining a table of men to listen to the boy’s next song, he heard his sire say, “When is this savior supposed to come?”

“No one knows,” Vorish said. “Not even His Majesty.”

He’d scoffed at the barkeep’s gossip then, but over the years, he’d wondered. His sire had always believed Danu would not forsake them. He’d scolded Riggs for suggesting King Magnus was mad for the vision he’d claimed to have.

Now the king’s vision sat on his pallet, claw marks like a paw print on her cheek, and a magical gemstone that could very well be a gift from the goddess in her hand. Beneath his shirt, her breasts would be bare. He could tell from how smooth her arms and legs were. The hairs there were as fine as wood dust.

He’d fantasized about bare-breasted women for years after that visit to Figcroft. Never in his wildest imaginings had he imagined his own shirt would conceal such rare treasures.

He’d known he would need to take her to Chroina because it wasn’t safe for females outside the city gates. But now he understood just what had been entrusted to his care. Anya was the king’s lady. The one whose portrait the king had hung in the throne room and commanded Marann to anticipate. Each report from the palace ended with the charge:
Hope is alive. Danu has not forgotten her people. A savior comes.

Apparently, he would be the one to bring that savior to the place where she belonged. Not just Chroina, but the palace.

King Magnus had never taken a queen or a concubine, claiming he waited for his special lady. He attempted to breed, of course, not discounting the possibility of creating an heir with one of Chroina’s fine ladies. But he claimed no woman for his own, denied no woman access to other men, other chances to conceive.

The king would take Anya as his pledgemate, his queen. Of all women, she alone would belong to one man. Why should that burn a hole through his chest?

“Why did ye burn it?”

He looked sharply at her. Did her gemstone give her the power to read minds as well as speak his tongue?

She widened her eyes impatiently. “My dress. Why did ye burn it? I could have mended the tears. Did it occur to you ’twas all I had to wear?” She spread her arms, indicating herself in his shirt.

His chest swelled with pride. The king’s lady wore
his
shirt. When he delivered her to the palace, she would smell like
him
.

“Had to destroy it. It carried your scent.”