Amber (Jewel Trilogy, Book 3) (24 page)

"You do that. It's a difficult day for him."

He started to leave, but she snagged him by the sleeve. "It's a difficult day for you, too, Trick."

When he shrugged and pulled away, she let him go.

"How is he doing, dearie?"

Startling from a doze when Hamish's old friend Rhona came into the room, Kendra bolted upright on her chair. "He slept the whole hour I was here." For the hundredth time since she'd entered the chamber, her gaze darted to the bed and she was relieved to see Hamish still breathing.

Rhona touched a hand to her shoulder. "I thank you for sitting with him. It was a welcome respite."

"I can stay longer."

"Nay, you run along now," she said, settling to her embroidery. "Down at the
draidgie
, all the young people are telling ghost stories."

Kendra slowly rose. "If you're sure, then." At Rhona's nod, she slipped out the door and closed it quietly behind her.

She didn't want to hear ghost stories—this bleak castle gave her shivers as it was. Deciding to check on her husband, she made her way up the dozens of winding stone stairs.

He wasn't in their chamber.

Someone had made their bed after they'd left, and it was clearly undisturbed. He hadn't come up to rest at all. Disappointed that he'd apparently fibbed to get away from her, she wandered to the room's only window, deep in an alcove set into the wall. Resting her palms on the cold stone sill, she leaned out and looked up at the sky.

Gray, to match her mood. The clouds were moving swiftly; rain was on the way. A blackbird fluttered from the heavens and down to the garden below, spreading its wings to make a graceful landing on a stone bench.

Right next to a figure clad in a bright red kilt.

He was hunched over something in his lap. Something white. Paper. The man who'd told her he never wrote anything was outside scribbling up a storm.

She hurried downstairs, huffing and puffing by the time she reached the bottom, and headed for the door.

Niall caught her on her way out. "Why such a rush, lass? Is something amiss?"

"N-no." Of course nothing was amiss—in the midst of catching her breath, Kendra wondered for a moment just exactly what she'd been rushing out to do. Yell at Trick for not taking a nap? Or for pouring his heart out on paper? He was a grown man, entitled to do as he pleased, especially on a disturbing day like this one.

She forced a smile for her brother-in-law. "Nothing is wrong. I thought I'd just go out and take some air."

The bagpiper was warming up discordantly, and a fiddler was busy tuning. "The dancing is about to begin," Niall told her.

She looked around, noticing the tables and chairs had been pushed against the walls. "There's really going to be dancing?"

"Aye, there is. Mam would have expected us to celebrate her life rather than the death that ended it." The musicians launched into a jaunty tune, and Niall made an incongruously solemn bow. "Are you dancin'?"

She could see that he was trying very hard to keep what he considered to be the proper
draidgie
outlook, although she was sure he ached deep inside. Her heart went out to him. No matter that dancing today seemed wrong to her, she dropped a curtsy and gave him the answer he was expecting.

"Are you asking?"

With a low laugh that reminded her of Trick's, he twirled her into the center of the room.

The dance was performed by four couples in a circle, and it took all of Kendra's concentration to follow it. Halfway through the complicated pattern, she was already breathless and realized she had little time to think on her troubles, and neither did Niall.

Perhaps dancing on a day like this wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

When the tune ended, he took her by the elbow to draw her from the floor. "My father wants to talk to you and your husband," he said conversationally.

Surprised she hadn't lost it, she resettled the shawl on her shoulders. "He's sleeping."

"Patrick?"

"No, Hamish. Trick is out in the garden."

"Ah, then it was him you were rushing out to see." The music started again, and couples began forming a double line down the middle of the chamber. "Why do you call him Trick?" Niall asked.

"A childhood name. His father called him that."

"But Mam didn't." He sighed. "So much I don't know about my brother."

"He doesn't know you, either. But he'd like to, I'm sure."

He gave her a sad, gentle smile. "He won't be staying long enough to get to know me."

"Not this time. But he'll be back. I'll make certain of it."

"Now, that I don't doubt." The low laugh rang out again. "I saw you two kissing earlier, and I'd wager you could make him do anything."

She felt her face heat. She'd never thought of herself as a woman who could persuade with kisses. With words, yes—having been raised a Chase, she could argue with the best of them. But she'd never been much of a flirt, let alone a seductress.

Pleased at the thought, she grinned. "Thank you for the dance, Niall."

"My pleasure." The second dance was ending, but another would start soon. "Will you do me the honor again?"

"Maybe later. I've a man to meet in the garden." And hopefully persuade to open up and share himself with her...with kisses, if necessary.

"Trick."

Her voice was gentle, but he still startled, quickly flipping the paper facedown on the bench beside him. He'd been so entrenched in his thoughts, he hadn't heard her approach.

Her soft sigh belied her smile. "You shouldn't chew on your quill."

He swept it from his mouth. "I know," he agreed shortly, helpless to stop the annoyance he felt at being caught writing—something he'd hidden all his life. He took a calming breath. "It's how I chipped my tooth. What are you doing out here?"

"What are
you
doing out here?"

"Nothing." Fiddling with the quill in his hands, he looked up at the sky. "I couldn't sleep."

"Did you try to sleep?"

He was silent a few beats before dropping his gaze to meet hers. "Not really. I...I was writing." Silly that it seemed hard to admit, but there was no point in lying, seeing as she'd found him in the act.

Her expression seemed wary, reserved; then her gaze went to his kilt and she licked her lips. Remembering what she'd said earlier, he bit back a smile as she met his eyes.

Her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. "May I read some of what you wrote?"

His hand moved protectively to the thin stack of paper. "Why would you want to?"

"What you write is part of you, Trick."

True, but not the best part. What spilled out onto paper was often the parts of himself he didn't like.

"Is it poetry?" she asked.

"Aye. It's just poetry. Pretty words that sound good together. Meaningless."

"It wouldn't be meaningless to me."

Hurt dulled her eyes, and he looked away, wishing he had it in him to give her what she wanted. Rolling the sheets into a narrow tube, he tucked it into the pocketed front of his kilt. "Come, let's walk. The garden is quite whimsical."

He took her down a path where dozens of tiny model castles nestled in the shrubbery on either side. "The castle garden," she said with a smile, brightening with a determination that didn't fool him. "How very clever."

"It was my mother's doing. When I was a lad, she spent hours out here every summer. And when winter kept her inside, she designed and built the little castles. Sometimes she let me help." Their footsteps crunched on the gravel path. "Of course, Father thought it was a waste of time."

"What did he want her to be doing instead?"

"I don't know." He'd never wanted to know; not knowing had felt safer. "I was but a child, and I never did understand them or the way they were together."

"Was he a difficult man to live with, your father?"

Difficult
didn't even begin to describe the late Duke of Amberley. "I cannot say what living with him was like for her, but for me, it was a living hell."

She slipped her hand into his. "He had high expectations for you, did he?"

"No. At least not in the way you're thinking." He felt as tired as he knew his voice sounded, drained and numb. "I was naught but a means to an end. A pawn in his game. It's safer to send a child to do the dangerous work, you see. Nobody would expect a child to be smuggling goods in his clothing. Nor would they see a child alone on a hill with a lantern, night after long, cold night, and suspect he was there to signal in ships."

"He had you do those things?"

"Those are the tamer examples." Her question sounded so innocent, the sympathy in her eyes so acute, he couldn't bring himself to burst her naïve bubble with any details. Besides, he didn't have the energy to go into it. Or the will.

"And when you were older?"

"He found different ways of using me." He stopped on the path. There were some things best left unremembered. "Must we talk about this now?"

There was a long pause while she seemed to come to a decision. "No, of course not," she said with a smile he suspected was forced. "Your mother's castle garden is charming. It's quite secluded back here, isn't it?"

"Aye, it is that." The trees made a leafy avenue, shielding them from prying eyes. "No one has ventured back here for an hour or more."

"Hmm..." she said speculatively, the smile turning real.

"Hmm? What do you have in mind?"

"Only this." And she backed him against a poplar, leaning up on her toes to crush her mouth to his.

After a stunned moment, he responded, gathering her into his arms, letting her lips and body comfort him the way words never could. She'd rejected him for so long that he found himself wallowing in her sudden acceptance. Her soft fragrance surrounded him, more potent than aged whisky.

A long, intense minute later, he drew his head to the side, still holding her close. "You've never kissed me first before. What's gotten into you,
leannan
?"

Silent save for the uneven sound of her breathing, she searched his eyes. The wind came up, sending the poplar's white-bottomed leaves into a silvery dance, and she leaned back in his arms. "It's this kilt, Trick. It drives me wild."

Though he was sure it was something more than that, he grinned and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. "I will have to ask Niall if I can keep it."

"The idea is not displeasing."

"But only if you kiss me again," he added, then lowered his mouth to hers before she had a chance.

This new passion of hers made him desperate and demanding. He kissed her again and again, trying to lose himself in her. She leaned into him, slipping her hands under the plaid to rest against his shirt. Beneath her fingertips, the beat of his heart matched hers that he could feel through her gown. Frantic.

Pulling away, he pressed his forehead hard against hers. "Is this wrong?" he asked in a whisper. A strangled whisper, because he knew the answer.

Another gust of wind sent the brown shawl flying, but she let it go. "No, of course it's not wrong." Scant inches away, her eyes looked confused. "We're married, Trick."

"That's not what I meant." How the hell could he keep her at arm's length for the sake of respect, when after all these weeks she'd finally come around? He wanted her to understand. He wanted to understand, himself. "I buried my mother today. And now I want...I want only to be with you. To have you. As though her death, her life, didn't matter."

"Of course she mattered." Her hands clenched on his shoulders; her eyes cleared of the confusion and filled with concern instead. "It's natural, Trick. To want to reach out, reconnect. With people, with living. Like the
draidgie
, don't you see? Niall said it was to celebrate your mother's life, rather than dwelling on the death that ended it. It cannot be wrong."

She made a sort of sense, and he wanted to be convinced. Powerless to resist, when she touched her lips to his, his shoulders relaxed beneath her fingertips. The kiss turned from sweet to devouring, and for a long, euphoric minute, Kendra was the center of his world.

The only person, it seemed, who had ever really cared.

"I don't deserve you," he whispered, wondering when this would end. Because everything good in his life always did.

A soft smile on her lips, she went on tiptoe to kiss him again.

"Patrick! Kendra!" Niall's voice slashed through the leaves overhead.

Trick tightened his hold around her waist. "What does he want?" he muttered against her mouth. When his brother appeared on the tree-lined path, he dropped his arms and groaned.

"Da is awake," Niall said. "And this seems to be one of his good days. He wants to talk to you both."

"Elspeth wasn't dying." Though Hamish was still in bed, he was sitting up for the first time since Kendra had met him. "When she wrote that letter, she was in perfect health."

His voice was strong and sure, which Kendra hoped meant he was getting better. Seated at his bedside next to Trick, she reached to touch one of his hands. "Perhaps she was already ill but didn't want to tell you."