Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (49 page)

Morgana wanted naught more
than to argue, to tell him she’d been wrong, to tell him she did
not wish to have her bonds to Robert broken after all, but
recalling the childing Vika, and the joyful words Robert had spoken
the eve he’d felt beneath his palm his babe move within Vika’s
womb:
“Aye, he’s a strong, bold one, is
he. A fine MacVie,”
she forcefully
refrained, instead bowing, giving reverent assent.

* * *

Robert slammed the door of
his bedchamber, stormed first to his satchel, yanked the skin
of
uisge beatha
from it, took several long pulls on it, swiped the back of
his hand across his mouth, then dropped the half-f skin to the
table next to the bed and stomped over to the window, crossed his
arms over his chest, and glared out at the courtyard below. A brief
period of time passed with him standing there, stoic, his mind
blank, his heart in shreds, before he unfolded his arms and stared
at the crushed scroll in his sweaty fist. With hands that shook
with pent-up anger and heartache, he unfurled the parchment. At
first, the words swam before him in a tangle of fragmented curves
and lines, but after a moment of vigorous effort, he was again able
to put meaning to symbol.

Finally, he looked up,
thoughts racing.
The first thing to do
would be to...no, that will not work...but after...aye,
then….

T
HE NIGHT WAS warm, and there was a full moon gleaming
silver-bright through the window. Morgana stripped herself bare for
sleep—a thing she’d not done since losing her babe—and pulled the
fur blanket from the bed, then climbed atop the mattress and curled
on her side, away from the shining moonglow.

The linen sheet beneath her cooled her skin,
and it brought, unbidden, a memory of the second painful night
after the loss of their babe, when she’d failed in her attempt to
seduce her husband. ‘Twas the last time she’d lain in bed thus, and
after he’d bolted, she’d attempted to assuage her humiliation and
grief by turning back to the remembered ritual she’d lived so long
with at the convent—and that she’d gleefully (and rebelliously)
ignored from her first night at King William’s court—of covering
her body with a chemise. As if it had only just happened, again the
shame, the hurt, pummeled her heart, clogging her throat with
unshed tears.

Without realizing she was
doing so, she bit the side of her finger, her thoughts, a chaotic
tumble. She had made the right decision. Or...mayhap she hadn’t.
For Robert had been so angered, seemed to have felt at least some
twinge of jealousy, at Guy’s petition to wed with her.
Was
she making the right
decision? Again, an image of the childing Vika swam to the forepart
of her mind, and she thought resignedly,
Aye, I am.

A jagged sigh slipped from
her throat, followed by a lone tear burning a long trail o’er her
cheek, and she closed her eyes tight against more.
I must turn my thoughts on
something—
anything
—else.

She began to sing:

“
Nay, young rascal, fondle me
not!

Fer I’ll not share yer
lowly cot—
”

Argh!
She sat up and beat her fists into the mattress.
He
will not
leave my thoughts!
She
dropped her head into her hands and sat there breathing deeply for
several prolonged moments. Finally, with renewed determination, she
lay down on her back, closed her eyes, and mentally began to recite
the third psalm by rote...

“
Et erit tamquam lignum quod….”

Feeling drowsy at last, Morgana rolled onto
her side again, softly translating,

“And he shall be like a tree which...,”

...as she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

His soft kiss brushed her lips, then turned
greedy as, with a virile groan of pleasure, his tongue plundered
her mouth. The taste, so familiar, so longed for, brought his name
forth in a whisper. Suddenly, warm, calloused hands cupped her
face, tangled in her hair. One grasped the back of her head, urging
her into a deeper embrace, as the other trailed down her frame,
gliding o’er her breast in a feather-like touch, then o’er her
belly, o’er her hip, o’er her thigh. She whimpered, lifting her
hands to clutch at his shoulders, to cling in his hair, and brought
her hips off the mattress in a quest to give his hand purchase
where she most craved.

* * *

Robert breathed deep the intoxicating scent
of her hair, of her pliant flesh. Her hips rose up, bringing her
mons under his hand, and he slid his fingers o’er her labia, then
pressed one, then two, deep inside the warm, wet, throbbing cushion
of her womb. He broke the kiss. “What do you want, Morgana? Say
it.”

“I want you! I want you, Robert!”

His tarse, already turgid, grew another
inch. The sound of his own hammering pulse beat in his ears. “Then
you shall have me,” he said, and devoured her mouth once more.

It had been too long since last he touched
her thus. Since last he’d heard the passion in her voice as his
name tripped from her tongue. He wedged a knee between her limbs as
he positioned himself above her, and she spread herself wide for
him. The head of his cock found her center. “I am going to love you
until you swoon,” he rumbled next to her ear as he prepared to
plunge.

“
Laird MacVie!”

From somewhere far off, the sound of a fist
pounding on a door jarred Robert, turned his mind from the woman in
his arms.

“Nay! Answer him not,” she murmured.

“Aye,” he growled, bending
down to drop another kiss on her lips as he began pressing forward
again. “
Ahhh!
Christ’s Bones, I’ve missed this.”

“
Laird MacVie! Are you in there? My
pardon, but the King requests your presence forthwith!”

This time, the pounding
became louder, more urgent, and again, Robert’s thoughts were
yanked from the sensual to the mundane, and with it, Morgana, his
lover beneath him, shifted from earthly to ethereal.
Not now! Not now!
He
tried holding her to him, but ‘twas as impossible as embracing the
mist on the moor.

Nay!
A tide of despair washed o’er him, and the searing pain of
unfulfilled passion gripped his groin in a vise.

“
Laird MacVie?”

Robert struggled to swim up from the warm
splendor of his dream into the cold temporal world that waited
him.

The pounding continued,
followed again by a disembodied voice coming through the heavy wood
door.
“Laird MacVie?”

“Aye,” he managed to croak, rolling into a
sitting position and dropping his head into his hands. As he rubbed
the sleep from his eyes with the base of his palms, he called out,
“Enter!”

* * *

Morgana’s eyes shot open. Her heart pounded
in her chest, and an unbearable yearning throbbed in her womb.
Blinking, she rolled her head on the pillow and scanned the
chamber. She’d not closed the heavy drape o’er the bedframe the
night before, and she could see much of the area in front of the
hearth and window. The chamber, praise be, was empty. There were
none to hold witness to her vocalized pleasure in her phantom
lover’s caresses, no court gossip would be spouted of her fleshly
dreaming.

On a desolate sigh, she rolled out of bed.
She’d allow herself no more naked slumbering in future, for it
clearly brought on sensual longings for the man she could not
have.

If only...

Another sigh escaped her lips as she tugged
a clean chemise o’er her head from the chest of borrowed clothes
given her upon her arrival this day past, and walked to the
washstand to do her ablutions of the morn. She needed to speak to
Guy. If she could not speak to Robert about his false belief—and
she could not will herself into doing so, no matter the desire to
part ways without rancor—she at least needed to inveigle Guy to do
so. And if the two were earnest in their threats to battle the
other on the tourney field, then she hoped to quell that as
well.

They’d not faced the other before, at least
not as far as she knew, and Morgana had little doubt that Robert
would be victorious, tho’ she’d seen Guy win more than he lost, and
‘twould be a close match, she knew. But Robert needed Guy as an
ally, for they were neighbors, and Guy’s forces were strong, so
this malice between them needed quashing. It meant defying the
King’s edict, and she prayed his wrath, if he learned of it, would
be mutable, even allayed, once she explained her reasons for such
uncommon rebellion.

In another quarter-hour, she slipped from
her chamber without being spied, and went in search of Guy de
Burgh.

* * *

“This is truly your wish as well?” the King
asked Robert later that morn as they walked side-by-side around the
edge of the apothecary’s herb garden, his hands behind his back,
his eyes perusing the landscape as they moved.

“ ‘Tis what Morgana craves, and I will not
stand in her way, if she wishes to return to the nunnery.”

The King gave him a sidelong glance. “I
thought you were set on believing she plotted to cuckold you with
your neighbor, Guy de Burgh.”

“ ‘Twas a fleet idea. I know now, could not
be true.”

“Why e’er not? He is a strong and powerful
warrior, holds titles in both Alba and England, is well-liked by
the ladies, and has a considerable fortune as well.”

Robert’s shoulders tightened. “Aye, and even
so, they had no opportunity to plan such an end.”

“But he wants her now. Has petitioned me
twice for her hand. And, I confess, ‘twould be a beneficial
alliance for me as well, as the marriage of one of my Norman
subjects to a native Gael would more strongly tie him to my
will.”

“She will not wed him.”

“You are so certain?” the King said, turning
away from him and bending down to smell the purple blossoms on the
cluster of lavender next to the path.

“Aye. I am. She will return to the
nun...”—Robert glanced to his left, and a lightning bolt of need
near eviscerated him—“...ery….” There she was. Frozen in place, as
a doe facing an arrow, staring at him. Their eyes met, and he felt
his cheeks flush. A look flashed in her eye, and her visage went up
in flame as well. Then she blinked, whirled, and fled.

His palms dampened, his brow moistened. His
heart would not stop racing. ‘Twas as if she’d known of his carnal
dream. Nay. Nay. ‘Twas impossible. A wish his heart made, that
would ne’er be fulfilled. Slowly, he surfaced from his thoughts and
realized the King was speaking again.

“...the marriage was not, at first, desired
by you, but I did believe ‘twas a good match.”

“Aye, I believed so as well, sire.”

“But still, you do not love her.”

For some reason, the King’s certainty
bothered Robert. Vexed him. “Aye, sire, I do.” And, on the chance
that King William was still not clear of Robert’s meaning, he
added. “Love her.”

The King grinned, and Robert squirmed
inside.

“Your wife believes ‘tis her cousin you
crave.”

“Nay, sire. ‘Tis Morgana. Only Morgana.”

“Yet you tupped her cousin, even still, and
made a babe with her?”

“Wha?—Nay. Nay, I did not.”

“But ‘tis what your wife believes. She seemed
quite certain.”

Robert’s heart began
to
glub, glub, glub
in his chest.
God’s Bones!
‘Twas the reason for her flight. He was a true
buffoon, a prime idiot. Even tho’ it had been at Morgana’s urging
that Vika stay, ‘twas before...and he should have
known….

“Nay, ‘tis not my babe her
cousin carries. ‘Tis Grímr Thorfinnsson’s. What is more: She has
left with him to return to the isle of
Leòdhas
.”

“But your wife knows not of this?”

“Nay, sire. For Vika left the same day
Morgana was taken by Donnach’s minions.”

“And you have not told her this.”

“Nay, there has been no time.”

“Grímr Thorfinnsson, you say? The husband’s
nephew?”

“Aye.”

“Hmm. I must think on this….”

In a rush of renewed conviction, Robert
stated, “I will not allow this annulment.”

The King lifted his gaze to Robert’s. “You no
longer wish to grant her what she desires?”

“Nay, I’ll not.”

“Even tho’ by our laws you are no longer wed,
now that you have both stated before me your desire to end your
marriage? ‘Tis only the matter of the gaining the church’s
agreement now, and Richard was a clerk of mine before he rose to
the Bishopric of Dunkeld. I have little worry that he will speed
the matter for me, if I wish it so.”

“Aye, but if I contest the annulment, and I
will, and ‘tis delayed, then ‘tis only a matter of the both of us
stating the opposite again, by those same laws.”

The King grinned at him again. “Excellent!”
He clapped him on the shoulder. “Even tho’ she’s worth more to me
without the cumbrance of marriage vows to you, I am pleased to hear
it. For, I’d not have given her back to the church, no matter her
wish.”

“Then that makes me doubly eager to curtail
the annulment proceedings.”

“Good. Good.” The King resumed his previous
posture, folding his arms behind his back once more. The two walked
without speaking several paces more, until the King broke the
silence saying, “You’ve not told Morgana your true feelings for
her? That you love her above all others?”