Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] Read online

  She wanted him to want her.

  To love her with the same fierce intensity her brothers loved their wives.

  Reaching for her wine, she tilted back her head and downed it in one great, throat-burning gulp. She looked around the table, half-expecting to see disapproving glances aimed her way, but saw only well-loved and expectant faces.

  “Well, lass?” Donall reached across the table and nudged her arm. “Will you wed MacKinnon?”

  Amicia looked down at the sapphire ring in her palm. It had the same deep blue color as Magnus MacKinnon’s laughing eyes. Dashing a fool trace of moisture from her own, she leveled her most earnest gaze on her brother and prayed to all the saints that her voice wouldn’t crack.

  “Aye, I will, and gladly,” she said, her heart falling wider open with each spoken word.

  And if by chance he didn’t want her, she would simply do everything in her power to make him.

  Many days later, on the mist-cloaked Hebridean isle known as the MacKinnons’ own since time beyond mind, Magnus MacKinnon paced the rush-strewn floor of Coldstone Castle’s once-grand laird’s solar, sheerest disbelief coursing through him.

  Crackling tension, tight as a hundred drawn bowstrings, filled the sparsely furnished chamber and even seemed to echo off its pathetically bare walls.

  An even worse tension brewed inside Magnus.

  His brows snapping together in a fierce scowl, he slid another dark look at his hand-wringing father. “I will not have her, do you hear me?” He seethed, pausing long enough in his pacing to yank shut a crooked-hanging window shutter. “Saints, but I’d forgotten how draughty this pile of stones can be!”

  “But, Magnus, she is a fine lass,” his father beseeched him. “Mayhap the fairest in all the Isles.”

  Magnus swung back around, and immediately wished he hadn’t because the old man had shuffled nearer to a hanging cresset lamp, and its softly flickering light picked out every line and hollow in his father’s worry-fraught face.

  Magnus’s frown deepened.

  “It matters not a whit to me how bonnie she is,” he snapped, and meant it.

  The saints knew he’d had scarce time for wenching in recent years. And now, since the horrors of Dupplin Moor, he had even less time and inclination for such frivols.

  In especial, wifely frivols.

  Setting his jaw and feeling for all the world as if someone had affixed an iron-cast yoke about his neck, he strode across the room and reached for the latch of another window shutter. This one kept banging against the wall and the noise was grating sorely on his nerves.

  Truth be told, he was tempted to stand there like a dull-witted fool and fasten and unfasten the shutters the whole wretched night through.

  Anything to busy himself.

  And help him ignore the sickening sensation that he’d been somehow turned inside out.

  That the sun might not rise on the morrow.

  His father appeared at his elbow, his watery eyes pleading. “The MacLeans—”

  “—Are well-pursed and rightly so,” Magnus finished for him, turning his back on the tall, arch-topped window and its sad excuse for shuttering. “They ken how to hold on to their fortunes.”

  “’Fore God, son, set aside your pride for once and use your head. Her dowry is needed, aye, I willna deny it. Welcome, too, but that isn’t the only consideration.” Clucking his tongue in clear dismay, his father set to lighting a brace of tallow candles, his age-spotted hands trembling.

  Magnus glanced aside, ran an agitated hand through his hair. He would not be swayed by pity. And ne’er would he take a wife to fatten coffers he’d failed to fill.

  Not Amicia MacLean.

  Not any lass his stoop-shouldered da cared to parade before him.

  And if they all came naked and bouncing their bonnie breasts beneath his nose!

  The back of his neck hotter than if someone held a blazing torch against his nape, he strode across the room and snatched the dripping candle from his father’s unsteady fingers.

  “Mayhap your father’s idea isn’t such a bad one,” Colin Grant broke in from where he rested on a bench near the hearth, his wounded leg stretched toward the restorative warmth of the low-burning peat fire. “I wouldn’t have minded going home to have my da tell me he’d procured a fine and comely lass to be my bride.”

  At once, sharp-edged guilt sliced through Magnus, cutting clear to the bone. Colin, a friend he’d made on the tourney circuit and who’d fought beside him on the blood-drenched banks of the River Earn, didn’t have a home or family to return to.

  The Disinheriteds and their Sassunach supporters had burned the Grants’ stronghold to the ground . . . and Colin’s kinfolk with it.

  Naught remained but a pile of soot and ash.

  That, and Colin’s unflagging determination to rebuild it as soon as he’d recovered his strength. But even if he could, which Magnus doubted for Colin’s coffers were as empty as his own, Colin’s loved ones were forever lost.

  They couldn’t be replaced by all the coin in the land.

  “’Tis well glad I am to be home, Da, make no mistake,” Magnus said, deftly touching the candle’s flame to the remaining unlit wicks . . . without spilling melting tallow all o’er the table and onto the floor rushes. “But I see you’ve gone a mite addlepated in my absence. I do not want a wife.”

  “I pray you to reconsider,” his father said, his tone almost imploring. He tried to clutch Magnus’s sleeve, but Magnus jerked back his arm.

  “There is naught to think over,” he declared, laying a definitive note of finality onto each word. “I’ll have none of it.”

  Resuming his pacing, Magnus tried not to see Colin’s sad gaze following his every angry step.

  Nay, Colin’s reproachful gaze.

  He also strove not to notice the chamber’s sparseness, tried not to remember how splendidly outfitted it’d been in his youth . . . or think about how much of its former glory he could have restored had the fortune he’d amassed over the last three years not been stolen from its hiding place whilst he’d fought a vain battle against the English on Dupplin Moor.

  He slid a look at his father as he marched past Colin, and hated to see the old man’s misery. But it couldn’t be helped. With time and hard work, he’d set things aright again.

  He’d also rebuild his da’s proud fleet of galleys . . . even if he had to work his fingers to the bone and scrape the very sides and bottom of his strongbox to make it happen.

  “You need heirs. I . . . I am not well, son.”

  His father’s voice brought him to an abrupt stop.

  Magnus swore beneath his breath, squeezed shut his eyes. “I will take a wife and sire bairns after I’ve regained our fortunes,” he said, thick-voiced. “You have my oath on it.”

  “Well you say it, but I . . . I fear—”

  “You fear what?” Magnus’s eyes flew wide. He wheeled toward the old man, found him hovering on the solar’s threshold, his rheumy gaze darting between Magnus and the gloom-chased corridor yawning beyond the solar’s half-open door.

  Gloomy and shadow-ridden because the once-great Clan MacKinnon could no longer afford to keep their stronghold’s many passageways adequately illuminated.

  A sorry state made all the more glaring by the light, hesitant footfalls nearing from the distance.

  His father blanched at the sound and crossed himself. “Oooh, sweet Mother Mary preserve me,” the old man wheezed and pressed a quavering hand against his chest.

  Magnus shot a glance at Colin, but his friend only shrugged his wide-set shoulders. Whipping back to face his father, he was alarmed to note that his da’s face had gone an even starker shade of white.

  “What is it?” Magnus demanded, the icy wash of ill ease sluicing down his back, making his words come out much more harsh than he’d meant. “Are you taken sick?”

  Purest dread, nay, panic, flashed across the old man’s stricken face. “Aye, ’tis sick I am,” he said, raising his voice
as if to overspeak the fast approaching footsteps. “But not near so much as I’m about to be.”

  Magnus cocked a brow. Something was sorely amiss and he had a sinking feeling it had to do with his father’s determination to marry him to the MacLean heiress.

  Almost certain of it, Magnus folded his arms and fixed the older man with a stern stare. “Does your illness have aught to do with my refusal to wed the MacLean lass?”

  A sharp intake of breath from just beyond the doorway answered him.

  A feminine gasp.

  And an utterly shocked one.

  But not as shocked as Magnus himself when the most stunning creature he’d e’er seen stepped out of the vaulted corridor’s gloom.

  ’Twas her.

  Amicia MacLean.

  He hadn’t seen her in years, but no one else could be so breathtakingly lovely.

  Even as a young lass, the promise of her budding beauty had undone him. Saints, her presence at an archery contest had once distracted him so thoroughly, his arrow had missed its target by several paces.

  Her presence now, here in his father’s threadbare solar at Coldstone, undid him, too, but for wholly different reasons . . . even if some boldly defiant part of him fair reeled with the impact of her exquisiteness.

  “Christ God and all his saints,” his father found his voice, and promptly crossed himself again. “I meant to tell you, son, I swear I did.”

  “Tell me what?” Magnus demanded, though deep inside he already knew.

  The pallor and shock on Amicia MacLean’s bonnie face told the tale . . . as did his mother’s sapphire ring winking at him from the third finger on her left hand.

  The lass herself squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  She met his stare unblinking and her courage in a moment he knew must be excruciating for her did more to soften Magnus’s heart toward her than if she’d thrown open her cloak and revealed all her dark and sultry charms.

  Stepping forward, she reached for his father’s hand, lacing their fingers. “I suspect your father has not told you that you already have wed me, Magnus MacKinnon. We were married by proxy a sennight ago,” she said, just as he’d known she would.

  Magnus’s jaw dropped all the same.

  His heart plummeted clear to his toes.

  Her heart stood in her eyes and seeing it there unsettled him more than any deadly arcing blade he’d e’er challenged.

  The image of serenity and grace, she’d wield her weapons with even greater skill. That he knew without a shred of doubt.

  And worst of all, his damnable honor wouldn’t let him raise his own against her.

  Chapter Two

  “WIFE.” Magnus MacKinnon spoke the word as if its mere utterance might bring jeopardy to his soul. Looking anything but a man renowned for his charm and wit, he rammed a hand through his hair and muttered a curse. “Saints cherish us—married by proxy.”

  Disbelief almost visibly coursing through him, he did not so much as glance at Amicia. Instead, he looked up at the water-stained ceiling for a long, uncomfortable moment before leveling the whole of his astonishment at his father.

  To Donald MacKinnon’s credit, he met his son’s stare unflinching. “Aye, by proxy—to . . . to lend ease to your homecoming,” he faltered, the waver beneath his words spearing Amicia’s heart. “’Tis as binding and valid as any other marriage unless—”

  “Unless it is not consummated. And let it hereby be known that I have no mind to—” Magnus broke off, his color rising. He blew out a quick breath. “God’s bones, did you think these tidings would gladden my heart? A wife? Now, when I have nary a siller to my name and naught to credit me save a badly notched sword and a well-dented shield?”

  Listening to him, Amicia struggled to ignore the rush of shivers spilling down her spine, but the bitterness in his tone, so different from the husky-sweet voice of his youth, sent edges of empty cold spreading through her as one by one his objections extinguished the light and warmth of her carefully nurtured hopes and dreams.

  I have no mind to. . . .

  The words hung like ice chips between them, chilling her every indrawn breath. Mortification spinning turmoil in her breast, she rubbed her thumb over the heavy sapphire ring on her left hand. His mother’s wedding band, and now hers.

  Her ring, and her comfort.

  Her strength through all the long nights she’d lain awake, awaiting his return.

  His return, and his pleasure.

  Not repudiation.

  Yet it was repudiation that poured off him in waves. And each damning surge made her heart clutch, threatened to undo her best efforts at remaining calm.

  Faith, but the backs of her eyes burned—so badly that her face hurt with the effort to suppress the stinging. Surely he would not deny their union? Refuse to make her his? Her blood froze at the very thought, even as a hot-pulsing heat began throbbing at her nape.

  She blinked.

  Hard, for MacLean women did not cry.

  From time immemorial, they braved the sorriest plights, faced their most formidable foes, and weathered darkest nights of wind and rain, dauntless and unwavering.

  And she, Amicia MacLean, would be no different.

  So she swallowed the thickness in her throat, held fast to the old laird’s hand, and was careful to keep her chin proudly raised. Thus steeled, she centered her most unflinching gaze on the hard-set face so irreconcilable with the bonny, smiling-eyed countenance she’d carried in her heart for so many endless, stretching years.

  Since the day in the summer of her thirteenth year when she’d strayed from the tourney ground at a gathering of the Hebridean clans, only to lose her footing on a slick patch of peat moss and turn her ankle. Not wanting to heed her pain, or admit she’d lost her way, she’d hobbled about fighting tears until he’d loomed up before her and gallantly tucked a sprig of bell heather behind her ear to make her smile.

  His own smile dimpled and bright, he’d bent to place an arm behind her knees, then swept her high against his chest and carried her across the rough moorland to her family’s tent. But upon arriving there, he’d been recognized as a MacKinnon, her clan’s then-time foe, and Iain, her quick-tempered brother, had promptly called him an up-jumped lout who did not know his place in the world.

  A slur that earned her brother a split lip and bloodied nose; Magnus, a swollen eye; and Amicia, the distress of losing her youthful heart to a bonny bronze-maned lad her clan would ne’er deem worthy.

  Hoping he would not see her distress now, either, she stared at him, determined to ignore the skitter of nerves fluttering in her stomach and praying she only imagined the slick clamminess damping her palms.

  Taller, wider of shoulder, and more powerfully built than in younger years, Magnus MacKinnon could no longer be described as merely bonny. Nay, he’d grown full magnificent.

  Achingly so, as every shred of her yearning acknowledged.

  Almost as if he knew her mind, he looked at her then, his clear blue gaze locking deep on hers, and she melted, the whole of her running liquid despite the awkwardness beating all around them, the disappointment squeezing her heart.

  She waited, fixing her attention on him rather than her own mounting ill ease. At some point during his time away from MacKinnons’ Isle, he’d abandoned the wild, wind-tossed mane of his youth and now wore his hair clipped. The glossy locks did not quite skim his shoulders, but the color was the same rich chestnut she’d e’er admired. Indeed, each strand gleamed with remembered luster and still made her fingertips tingle with the urge to touch and relish.

  But nary a spark of good-humored light danced in his eyes, and the dimples that had so captured her girlish heart had deepened into twin creases that now bracketed the tight, forbidding line of his unsmiling mouth.

  Moistening her own, Amicia gave him her bravest smile. “I rejoice to see you, Sir Magnus. Praise God you are returned well and whole,” she said, dipping in a polite half-curtsy.

  The best she could mana
ge, clinging as she was to his father’s hand and with her knees so jellied, she wondered her legs didn’t buckle and land her sprawled on the rushes at his booted feet.

  Under different circumstances, she would have appreciated the irony of such ungainliness. Her awkwardness would be an oddly fitting reminder of the long-ago day they’d first met—if he even remembered.

  But to her dismay, her hard-met attempt to crack his stony expression only brought a further darkening of his handsome features.

  “Whole, you say? And well?” He eyed her, his hands fisted at his sides. The entire imposing length of him, rigid. “My lady, do you not ken there are wounds that even the most discerning eyes cannot see?”

  “I see much, my lord.”

  He quirked a russet brow. “Truth tell?”

  Amicia inhaled to speak, intent on asserting that not only did she speak true, she also knew much of such wounds. The saints knew she bore a few herself—ones he’d inflicted on her, however unwittingly. But before she could form any such rebuttal, he stepped back, edging ever away from her until the sleeping bulk of Boiny, the old laird’s equally ancient mongrel, stayed his retreat.

  Caught off guard, he near tripped headlong over the calf-sized beast.

  “Saints of mercy!” he called out, arms flailing. “Forby, but here is something I should have expected.” He cast a dark scowl at Boiny, readjusted the plaid slung so casually across his mailed shoulder. “That wretched beast e’er reveled in bedeviling me.”

  But some of his ire slipped away even as he said the words and he reached down to scratch the dog’s scruffy gray-tufted head. Boiny, not to be disturbed, peered up at him with one milky but adoring eye and thumped his scraggly tail against the floor.

  Looking more than a little defeated, Magnus straightened, but kept a keen eye on the dog until the tail thumping ceased and soft canine snores once more filled the looming silence. Then he dragged a hand down his face and released an audible sigh.

  A ragged, weary-sounding one.

  “May the Fiend take me, lass, but I swear my ill humor has scarce little to do with you. To be sure, it doesn’t.” He came forward to brush his fingertips down the curve of her cheek, a decidedly regretful expression in his eyes. “Pray put any such thought from you and forgive me if it appears otherwise.”