Her Knight in Tarnished Armor: A Medieval Romance Collection Read online

  The Laird threw his bronze lion’s mane back and laughed so hard he fisted his hands in his blue and green plaid. “It’s quite the story,” he choked out between guffaws. “But the long and short of it is I married her.”

  Daroch gaped. Perhaps the Laird had gone mad.

  “Moved their mother and the entire lot next door for the time being.” Rory wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye.

  “Ye… jest?” Daroch asked dubiously.

  “Serious as a Banshee’s curse.” The Laird still chuckled as he took his seat again and regarded Daroch over long, steepled fingers. “I’m assuming Kylah’s been yer unwelcome companion these past couple of days.”

  Daroch nodded, squirming at the word unwelcome.

  “Her mother’s been worried.”

  “I thought ye were after some black magic by marrying the Frasier witch,” Daroch recalled. “How did ye end up married to a Banshee?”

  “I had no idea Kathryn Frasier was a witch when we married. To be fair, both women tried to kill me,” he said good naturedly. “But Katriona couldna because I’ve already died once and came back so I was immune to her Banshee powers.”

  “Ye’re An Dioladh,” Daroch observed.

  “Aye. But Kathryn attempted to poison me on our wedding night and ended up poisoning herself. Katriona took advantage of an empty body and...” he waved his hand, as though that explained the rest.

  Daroch gaped for a second time in as many minutes. “So Katriona is now Kathryn.”

  “To everyone but her family.” Rory confirmed. “And ye now, though I canna ken why I told ye.”

  “Do ye love her?” Daroch’s question surprised them both.

  “Aye,” Rory’s lips curved into a secret smile. “I always have.” His smile disappeared as quickly as it had materialized. “Kylah took the news of our marriage understandably hard, though, if ye’ll excuse my saying so, I doona understand why she sought ye out.”

  Daroch ignored his question. “Kylah disapproves of yer marriage… because of who yer brother was?”

  Any sign of good humor abandoned the Laird’s face as shadows encroached. “Because of what he did to her.”

  “Ye mean, burning her and her family alive?”

  The Laird’s eyes darkened and the skin around his lips turned white.

  A sick, heavy dread landed in Daroch’s chest. “Tell me,” he breathed.

  Rory winced. “What has she told ye?”

  Daroch shook his head. “Nothing. I only know what I saw in the ruins. Her bones. The ashes… They never put her in the ground. She was just… left there. Bound and discarded.”

  The Laird closed his eyes for a long moment, and when they opened again, the pain and shame in their depths shaped the dread in Daroch’s chest into a sharp, jagged point.

  “I loved Katriona MacKay since I was a boy,” the Laird admitted. “And Angus he… he loved Kylah because she was such a beauty. But Angus didna love like a man should love. His love was possession, nay, oppression and dominance. He was a covetous, violent, and sick man.”

  Daroch’s hand tightened on the birch staff until it was white. His teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. His mind refused the Laird’s words, shunning where they were about to take him.

  “Kylah and her mother rejected his offer of marriage on numerous occasions, but once my father died and Angus became Laird, he offered one last time. Ordered it, more like.”

  “Nay,” Daroch whispered.

  Rory’s throat worked over a difficult swallow before he continued. “Upon receiving her rejection, he took his two closest friends with him to the washhouse. Only Kylah and her mother were home…

  “Nay,” Daroch shook his head violently, rejecting what came next.

  “From what I could tell, Angus and his men were there for an hour or so before Katriona and Kamdyn returned. Before… the fires were set. My wife told me she didna see anything, but they had Kylah and her mother in the back room with the forge and they made her mother watch while they—”

  A roar crawled up Daroch’s throat and he surged upward, grabbing the heavy table and tipping it over, reveling in the sound of splintering wood.

  Rory was also on his feet, hand at the hilt of his sword but surprisingly, the Laird made no move to stop him.

  Daroch grasped the chair he’d been sitting on with both hands and hurled it at the stone wall. It shattered as though made of glass instead of oak.

  “Angus was brutally slaughtered by the Berserker Laird, Connor MacLauchlan.” Rory insisted, putting a staying hand out. “They all were. They didna die… well.”

  “Good!” Daroch barked. “I will curse their bones. I will submit their names to the Gods and mark the rest of my flesh to pay for their eternal suffering.”

  Rory jaw worked over raw emotion and Daroch realized for the first time he truly spoke of the man’s brother. His twin. The Laird’s shame made sense now. And, though he pitied the man, he was glad to see it.

  “Ye care for her,” Rory murmured.

  The Laird’s statement stunned Daroch into silence. He looked at the destroyed table. The shattered chair. Down at his own trembling hands.

  Fuck.

  “They should have had their vengeance,” he growled.

  “I know.” Rory put his hand on Daroch’s shoulder, his first human contact in a hundred years. Daroch didn’t shrug him off, but took a strange, surprising comfort in the gesture. “Angus is eternally burning in hell for what he’s done. But the pact is struck, and the two younger lasses will belong to the Banshee Queen come the Solstice. Unless there’s something ye can do.”

  Daroch choked on his own impotence. “There is naught I can do unless the Queen breaks her pact first.” He let out an exhausted sigh, the entirety of his day catching up with him in a single moment.

  Rory nodded in understanding and for an added first, Daroch had to fight another feeling he’d thought had deserted him a millennia ago.

  Embarrassment.

  “I’m… sorry about yer table.”

  “It was my father’s table.” Rory shrugged, but his voice held a curious dark note. “Better suited to firewood anyway. It’s high time I crafted my own legacy as Laird of this clan.”

  “Aye,” Daroch agreed and turned to the door, wondering if Lorne lurked behind it.

  “Katriona is afraid to lose her sisters to the Fae,” Rory admitted.

  Daroch turned to him, his intent deadly serious. “She should be.” He plunged into the night, which was empty of angry stewards or glowing, inquisitive Banshees. Looking around the dark streets of Durness, he noted the changes in the village since last he came. Roofs were newer, structures reinforced, and the energy of the place had changed from one of fear and strife to one of hope and careful optimism. Rory was a good man, a good Laird. Different than his brother had been.

  A blue glow from the window of a cozy, thatched cottage caught his eye. Right next to the castle. Kylah’s home.

  He had to see her.

  Daroch found himself in front of the door before he remembered the strides it took to get there. He knocked louder than he should have this time of night.

  “Who- who’s there?” a brittle voice inquired.

  “The Druid. I need to see Kylah.”

  Daroch jumped back when a wee young face burst from the sturdy wood of the closed door followed by slender shoulders. “What do you want with Kylah?” the young Banshee’s voice demanded with a shake of her strawberry curls.

  “I need to speak with her,” he hedged.

  “She’s not here, you may go.” The girl disappeared back behind the door.

  Daroch frowned. Being dismissed felt… well he felt a little ashamed for how many times he’d uttered that command to Kylah. And with much less civility. He put his palm on the door. Then his forehead. “I-I put her bones in the ground.” He didn’t recognize the husky voice as his own. “Will ye tell her that? I removed the chains… and she rests next to her father.”

  Afte
r a quiet moment, several latches released and the door swung inward. Instead of the young Banshee, a stooped creature draped in soft robes and furs appeared.

  “You did what I could not bring myself to do.” A gnarled hand pushed the hood back from a face so disfigured by scars Rory could barely stand to look at it. Soft green eyes flooded with tears that rolled down ribbed, mangled cheeks. “I couldn’t make myself go back in that room.” She clutched at his robes as she fell to her knees, burying her face in them and sobbing. “And I hate myself for leaving her there!”

  “Oh, mama.” The young Banshee drifted into the entry, hovering helplessly.

  Daroch bled for the woman. He could not condemn her weakness. Not after what she’d suffered. He leaned his staff on the cottage and scooped the lady up, carrying her inside. The house was small but comfortable. A fire lay prepared, but not lit, in the large stone hearth. No lanterns glowed. The only light provided by the blue glow of the youngest MacKay sister.

  “Kamdyn, is it?” he asked.

  “Aye, ye can put her here.” She gestured to the large bed, likely brought down from the castle.

  Daroch bent and set the frail woman down gently and covered her with a mountain of furs.

  “I thank ye, Druid, for putting my wee one to rest.” the old woman touched the silt on his face, then brought a hand to her own face.

  Daroch didn’t trust his voice, so he only nodded. Straightening, he looked around. “She’s really not here,” he noted with disappointment.

  “Hasn’t been for days.” Worry glimmered in Kamdyn’s eyes. A familiar green turned aquamarine by her blue glow.

  “She’s been with me,” he informed her.

  The freckled nose wrinkled. “On purpose?”

  A wry laugh wrung from his heavy chest. “No one’s more mystified by it than I. I made it abundantly clear her presence wasna wanted.”

  Kamdyn smirked, wisdom beyond her years shone behind her pretty features. “Perhaps ‘tis why she sought you out. Everyone wants Kylah.” Her face fell. “Wanted, that is. Also, she may have been drawn to the pain and loneliness in your heart. For I think ‘tis what she needed to feel.”

  Daroch found himself in front of the door, ready to flee from a harmless wee ghost. “What do ye know of my heart?” he thundered.

  “Not a thing,” she admitted gently. “But we are Banshees. We’re drawn to sadness, anger, and loss. Thus is our nature.”

  Daroch couldn’t think of a thing to say, so he turned from the young girl who saw too much and shut the door quietly behind him.

  “Thank you, Druid, for what you did,” the wee Banshee called after him.

  He didn’t turn to acknowledge her, but melted into the moonless highland night.

  9

  It took Kylah until the next evening to gather the courage to see him. She stood for untold hours staring at her grave, at her name so meticulously carved into a marker with strange and lovely runes surrounding it.

  Daroch had found her remains. He’d laid her bones to rest. He’d visited her home and comforted her mother. He’d fascinated and excited Kamdyn, who’d vigorously regaled her with every detail of their short interaction.

  “You must go to him, Kylah.” After a hearty and warm welcome home, Kamdyn had rushed her out the door so fast it left Kylah slightly dazed. “He needs you.”

  Needed her? Her youngest sister obviously knew nothing about the man. But even so, the pull to see him again was almost magnetic in its inevitability.

  Kylah lurked in the small crevice that opened into his cave, masking herself from his notice. He wore a vest-like leather tunic that bared his arms to the shoulders and fell to his feet. It split at the waist in many different places, allowing for movement and showing the stag skin trews he wore beneath as he purposefully strode from one place to another. His skin was free of silt and glowed in the firelight like honey poured over iron beneath the ancient markings. His long hair fell clean to the middle of his back in a thick, ebony braid.

  Kylah gawked as he carefully poured what appeared to be liquid metal into a clear bowl of water and marked the change in water level.

  “I can see ye, Banshee,” he informed her, though he’d never once looked in her direction.

  “How?” she asked, incensed at being caught staring.

  “Shamrock, remember?”

  Drat. Kylah scowled. She’d forgotten.

  Drifting toward him, she watched as he recorded his findings on a parchment with ink and quill. Kylah wished she’d learned to read, but they’d never had the time whilst running the washhouse. Katriona learned her figures to keep track of the money, but Kylah had never been bothered to.

  “What are you doing?”

  He still didn’t look up. “I’m measuring mercury.”

  “You’re what?”

  He moved back to the clear bowl. “Everything that exists on this planet is made up of tiny, invisible particles of material,” he explained. “An object with the same mass might still have more or less of those particular materials than another. By measuring how a submerged object displaces a volume of liquid equal to the volume of the object, one can calculate the density of this material.”

  Kylah studied the clear bowl and frowned. “Then I no longer exist.

  “Doona be ridiculous, of course ye do.”

  “I don’t have this— material. I don’t displace anything. Not air. Not water. Not even you.” She reached out and passed a hand through his thick arm to make her point. “Therefore, I no longer exist. Not really.”

  He looked up at her then and his eyes widened, snagged by a major change in her appearance.

  “Blue.” She held her hands out for inspection, casting her soft new glow wider against the black stone of his cave. “Your doing, I think.”

  The Druid remained silent, setting his parchment and quill down and picking up a large shell from an adjacent table.

  “I want to show ye something.” He walked to the fissure and disappeared into it.

  Kylah barreled right through the stone. She followed him to the edge of the grotto, her light reflecting off the softly lapping water. Something about the way he fit his lips around the opening of the shell and blew caused a curious tightening of everything beneath her belly button. Two long calls and one short emitted from the shell, echoing in the cavern and yet muffled by the water. He lowered the shell and listened.

  Kylah remained utterly still. What was he showing her? What was she supposed to infer?

  His arms flexed as he raised the shell again, but a high-pitched whistle followed by a series of ticks exploded into the cave. A smooth grey body jumped from the grotto, glistening as it executed a perfect flip and dove back into the water with barely a splash.

  Daroch turned to Kylah, his lip curling in a devastating half-smile as he waded in to the knee and greeted the dolphin who came up to him with a welcoming cry.

  He ran his large hand over the smooth skin and the creature chattered and groaned in obvious pleasure.

  Kylah bet her soul the dolphin was female.

  Entranced, she moved to lurk just behind his shoulder and was startled to find the dolphin noticed her.

  “Hello,” she whispered, awed by the rare moment. A gift from the Druid she’d never be able to return. The dolphin’s ever-present smile seemed to widen as it rolled and nodded, spouting water until she laughed.

  “Impressed as I am by your animal ken, I have to admit I don’t understand what you’re trying to express to me,” she murmured, watching Daroch launch the incredible creature back into the deeper water of the grotto.

  “Did ye know sound is one of the most powerful forces in the Universe?” he asked. “In fact, most of my Druid ancestors believed sound was the material by which the Universe was created.”

  Kylah shook her head, though he wasn’t facing her.

  “It’s actually a wave. A mechanical vibration that can travel through any form of matter,” He gestured around them. “Air. Water. Stone. It leaves not
hing untouched or unaffected.” He turned and waded back toward her, his wide shoulders turning with the effort of walking through the water. “Creatures like the one I just summoned use sound to navigate and to detect danger. We all use sound to communicate. To perceive. To identify. To seduce.”

  He didn’t stop until he loomed in front of her, and Kylah could only stare at his deep chest, a curious lump in her throat and an even more perplexing heat in her loins.

  “Every powerful force produces its own identifiable sound. The wind, the sea, a storm… And ye, Kylah, ye are a creature of pure, dynamic resonance.”

  She turned from him, her heart surging beneath her breast. Something in his words resonated, all right, and she thrummed with the power of it.

  “To a Druid, the understanding of it goes even deeper than that,” he murmured.

  “Deeper?” she breathed, catching her lip in her teeth.

  “Every soul, every scream, every emotion leaves an echo in this world. Every conscious being is made of energy. Every heart beats with it. Every thought is shaped by it. And that energy canna be created or destroyed. Not by magic. Not by death. Not even by the Gods. It can only be manipulated or changed. Therefore, everyone who ever existed still continues to do so, in one way or another.”

  Though they weren’t touching, Kylah could feel the energy he spoke of leaping off his potent, vital form and melding with hers. The sensation was like no other, arcing between them as though charged with lightning. His tattoos glowed blue in her light, seeming to rise off his skin and pulse with magic.

  Kylah tilted her head back to look into his eyes and what she saw in their brindled depths caused her to jump away from him.

  “You know,” she gasped. She didn’t have to clarify. He’d somehow found out about Angus, about her darkest and most terrifying shame. About the violent loss of her innocence and the hour of hell she’d endured before her death.

  His eyes closed in a protracted blink, and when they opened she saw none of the pity she feared. She couldn’t feel it, either. But she did feel the anger, the sorrow, the helpless, masculine rage that burned within him, searching for the absolution of retribution and finding none. It roared at her from his aura, from his eyes, from the tension in his dangerous body.