Page 10 of Revenge (Clan Fraser #2)

Chapter

Nine

T hey sat together at the log, staring across the enormous fire that lit up the evening sky as the minstrels began to sing in the Gaelic about a lost love.

They continued to listen as the minstrels finished their music then began another with a young man singing a mournful tune in the old language.

Alix saw Ruari's frown, and realized he did not know the story in the Gaelic. He had traveled far, outlawed from the land he called home, spoke other languages--French, Latin, even words she could hardly pronounce in some other language--but knew little of his own.

"It tells the story of a young man who lost the girl he loved," she translated from the old language.

"She was stolen away by the kelpies as she gathered stones along the shores of the loch. All he found was a blue stone that she had dropped." She looked over at him as she told the story.

"When he returned at eventide, he glimpsed her there in the last hours between day and night before she slipped away, her tears falling into the dark water. He returned every night for just those few moments with her, holding the blue stone that was all he had of her."

"Tales told to frighten children," Ruari replied. "But I thank you for the telling of it. You have a gentle voice."

Gentle? She laughed. How many times all those years before had he told her she sounded like a noisome crow, telling him to make the next move at the game board, or teasing him when he forgot to lace up his brecs?

And only weeks before when he had wakened from fevered sleep and cursed her for pestering him with the noise she made?

"Tis not what you said when you threw the wash basin at me."

He ducked his head. She would not let him forget that.

"I was in a fevered state, at death's door."

"Aye," she threw back at him. "Ye verra nearly were dead for that. But I decided to let it pass considering your condition at the time. I'll not be so forgiving the next time."

She was aware of the stares that came their way, the whispered comments, then the way their kinsmen turned their attention back to the minstrels and the story telling.

Ruari reached inside his tunic with his right hand and brought out a medallion that hung from a leather cord. She recognized it as one of the medallions that others had won at one of the contests that day, a piece that had been hammered from a coin by Brian, then given the winner of a contest.

Ruari reached out and lowered it over her head until it hung about her neck. She looked up at him with a surprised expression.

"It was for accuracy with the bow," he explained. "Although Gabhran may have lied about it at the time. He's been known to do that."

She couldn't help the smile that suddenly appeared. "Aye, he has, but always with good intentions."

He shrugged. "It should be yours. You said I was no less a man, unless I chose to be. You've a sharp tongue, Alix. I would have turned you over my knee for it that day, if I could have. But I hadn't the strength."

"You might have tried," she replied, her chin lifting slightly. She glimpsed the half smile that appeared again.

"You are a sassy girl. Pity the poor man who asks to wed with ye."

She did look at him then.

"I am not a girl Ruari Fraser, just so ye know. And I'll have a say in who I wed."

He shook his head. "I believe you will, and the man will need to be a master at the chess board or you'll soundly thrash him without mercy," he said remembering years before when, as a young spit of a girl, she had beaten him soundly--more than once.

The memory was a strong one, that she had held close all these years, the hours at the board game with Ruari lost in some strategy that she soon defeated, the emotions at his handsome young face--not the least was that fearsome temper that she always saw through. The smile slowly faded now.

"Yer grandmother has said that Eben McGinley will be asking for you."

Her fingers closed around the medallion. It was not worth much. But it was precious to her, more precious than she could have explained for the feelings it brought.

"I'll no wed Eben McGinley," she said softly as a story ended across the encampment, and children begged for more as mothers rocked their bairns, and men filled their tankards.

"Another has caught yer eye then."

She looked at him then.

"Another, aye. But I think he doesna know it... Or want me."

"Not want ye?" Ruari shook his head, the light from the fire gleaming like fire at his tousled mane.

"The man must be a fool," he replied. "Does he already have a wife, or has he hand-fast with another?"

Another wife? She had heard it was not unusual for a man to have several wives in the places he had been. Had Ruari taken a wife in one of those places, someone who offered comfort during the months he was gone? Possibly a family in that far place?

Who was the fool now? she wondered, suddenly standing even as she tried to push the thought away.

She couldn't sit there with him, with all the feelings that she'd held so long, feelings that hadn't changed but had only deepened even when he had been angry with her after he returned, even when he threw the water basin at her, even as he sat there so near she could touch him and spoke of such things.

If she stayed, she would just make more of a fool of herself, and in front of everyone including their chieftain, one she would not dishonor for the home and care he had provided for her and her grandmother.

A kinsman nearby threw a large log on the fire. Mothers pulled young children back from the edge of the fire as it exploded in a shower of sparks and embers. Alix softly cursed as one stung at her cheek, and another at her eye.

She rubbed at it and cursed again. It felt as if the entire log was in her eye.

"Be still, woman," Ruari gently scolded her. "Would you blind yerself with your thrashing around?"

Her head came up, tears streaming from her reddened eye.

"I can take care of it myself!"

"Not if you can't see!"

His gut tightened. The thought of her blinded was like a sharp blade thrust between his ribs.

The day had been warm and he had worn only the linen shirt over his brecs. He seized his knife in his good hand, and efficiently sliced off a strip of cloth at the tail of his shirt.

"Hold still," he ordered, tipping her face toward the light of the fire with his artificial hand. He found the small cinder and gently wiped it away with the linen.

"You ruined your shirt."

Not 'thank you' , or some other expression of gratitude, but that he'd ruined his shirt.

God in Heaven! She was a rare lass, standing there with burn marks at her tunic, her cheeks tear-stained, so near... He had only to reach out and touch her, as he longed to touch her since returning to Lechlede.

Not just her hand that he'd felt on his fevered skin dozens of times, not just the brush of her hair at his shoulder as she had bent over him to change the bandages at his arm.

He wanted to touch her .

Not the child she had once been, but the young woman she had become, with her sass and stubbornness, and with the curses he'd heard more than once that no young girl should know much less repeat lest she be punished for it. But like him, she'd grown without the stern rebukes of her mother, or punishment handed out by a father.

Yet, she had strength and courage -- strength enough to bandage his wounds when even the priests at the abbey at Mont St. Michel had shrunk away at the sight of his mangled arm, all but leaving him to die; and courage to face down his anger and the fierce dreams that haunted his nights, her voice reaching through the fever and his wish for death.

"I'm here, hold onto me. I wilna let ye go."

"Alix! Are ye hurt?" Eben McGinley called out as if he suddenly sprouted up out of the earth. He was standing beside her, pulling her around to face him, his hands at her shoulders.

"If he hurt you... !"

He was like a maddened crow, squawking at her, pecking at her.

Hurt her? Ruari? And like a pesky crow she tried to swat him away.

"I'm fine and well, Eben!" She glanced over her shoulder at Ruari.

Was she the only one who saw the vast difference between them? Eben with his lanky awkwardness, his large hands clamped over her shoulders, the immaturity in the hasty words that were foolish in the least, dangerous in the extreme spoken so at the chieftain's brother--a boy in oversized boots.

Taller by a hand span with the width of shoulders that came with maturity, and the thickness of muscles from countless hours wielding a sword and shield, Ruari Fraser was like an oak beside a sapling, more imposing with the metal that encased his lower arm and provided a hand that held the linen cloth--an oak that bent slightly toward her as he handed her the strip of linen.

"Your friend has come to rescue you."

"That's not the way of it," Alix protested, but too late. Ruari had taken a step back, his expression unreadable.

This was as it should be, Ruari told himself. Eben was the sort who could provide for a wife and family, not the sort who had been outlawed and carried a death sentence on his head no matter the man he'd killed those long years before had deserved it. If he had it to do again, he would not hesitate--not if it spared just one young boy the pain and degradation he'd witnessed.

Made bolder by his apparent withdrawal, Eben angled a glance toward the man beside her.

"Will ye walk with me then, Alix?"

She looked to Ruari for some objection, some outward indication that he wanted her to remain with him. He simply shook his head, his expression unreadable.

Ruari glanced around the campfire. "Stay close to our kinsmen," he said by way of leaving.

"Too many of my brother's guests have had much drink."

Eben puffed up like a cock in the hen yard.

"I can protect her well enough," he sullenly replied. He glanced at the fake arm and hand at Ruari's side, his expression going from sullen to disgust.

"Come, Alix." His fingers closed around her arm as he pulled her away.

She glanced back once, her gaze meeting Ruari's. He swept her a bow, then his expression was once more closed, his mouth thinned into a hard line, his eyes icy blue. At that moment she could have gladly smacked the triumphant expression from Eben McGinley's face.

"Ye are a fool to speak so to the chieftain's brother. He could snap ye like a twig for insulting him, or run ye through with his sword."

"Him?" Eben said incredulously. "He can barely lift a spoon to eat his soup without spilling it. He'd best return to the abbey as the old chieftain intended. Perhaps he'd make a fine monk. Tis certain that is all that is left to him now."

Alix walked on ahead, determined to be rid of him.

"I was wrong," she told him. "Yer not a fool, yer a pathetic pile of horse dung, not fit to wipe his boots."

"Yer defending him? You heard the rumors. Tis said he left because he was outlawed for murder. Tis only a matter of time before the king sends others for him. If they don't take his head, he'll rot in the bowels of Edinburgh castle."

She refused to waste words on him. She had heard the rumors since she was a child. Lady Brynna refused to believe them while the chieftain had simply said it was best Ruari leave for France. The day he had ridden out was seared into her memory.

"Alix!" Eben called out, grabbing her by the arm. "Don't be runnin' off, with you and I havin' an understanding and all."

"An understanding?" she replied furiously, even as she tried to twist away from him.

"Ye are mistaken. There is no understanding between us."

"Yer grandmother spoke to me father just the other day."

She turned on him. She didn't believe it for a moment. Morna would never have done such a thing without telling her of it. He was stretching the truth for his own advantage, and she was having none of it.

"She spoke to him about needing a new grate for the kitchen cook fire," she flung back at him, knowing the exact reason Morna had gone to the village. She would not have left out something like this.

"And I would never have an understandin' with one who stretches the truth for his own purposes. Ye are a liar, Eben McGinley."

Ruari watched them leave. They disappeared in the shadows as Alix started back through the gates of the keep, impossible to hear their conversation over the minstrels and the singing. Then he caught sight of them in the light of the torches just inside the entrance. Whatever the words between them, he knew her well enough, to know that she was furious at something the boy said.

"Let go, Eben," she warned him as she tried to pull free.

"Liar, is it? Ye have time for Ruari Fraser, murderer that he is. But no time for me? Would ye bed him, but not me?"

There was something in his voice, something different that sent a warning that this was not like other arguments between them. He had been drinking. She could smell it on his breath as his hand tightened and he pulled her against him.

"Let go!"

"I'll no let go, Alix. Ye are mine!"

His arm tightened around her waist as his other hand held onto her wrist, twisting her arm behind her.

She might have been better served if she was afraid. She wasn't as she struck at his face with her free hand, nails scraping across his cheek.

He howled in pain, his hold on her other arm suddenly free. She wedged both hands between them and pushed hard at his chest, the sleeve of her gown ripping in the struggle. His howl of pain suddenly became a strangled gasp as Ruari stepped out of the darkness.

Alix was pushed behind him as the light from the torch glinted off the blade in his right hand, he closed his left hand around Eben's neck in a bone-crushing grip.

Eben dangled from that powerful grasp, both hands now flailing at Ruari in an attempt to free himself even as he fought to breathe past the hold at his throat.

She glanced at Eben, pinned against the wall at the entrance to the keep, hanging helplessly several inches off the ground. The expression at Ruari's face was an expression she had never seen before.

Gone was the handsome young man who had stood with her by the camp fire earlier, laughter in his voice once again. Gone were the shadows that had haunted that gaze since his return weeks earlier. His expression now was cold, void of any compassion or feeling, except the murderous rage she saw now.

In those few moments, he had gone someplace else. He would kill Eben, of that she was certain. Reckless and foolish as he had been, it was not something to die over. Holding her gown together, she pulled at Ruari's arm.

"Twas only a prank, Ruari."

When that didn't seem to break through the cold rage she saw at his eyes, her hand tightened at his arm. Even then, Eben's struggles slowed. He no longer thrashed about, his eyes rolled back in his head.

"Do not!" she begged him. "No harm is done! Tis no cause for killing him!" Though moments earlier she had considered doing so herself, now she was afraid for him.

"Ye mustn't do this!" She had to break through the cold, brutal anger. "Ruari, please! "

Something seemed to reach him. There was the slightest change in his expression as if he had come back from that place where he had gone for those terrifying moments.

He took a deep breath as the images that had come over him slipped back into the shadows, an enemy that was always there, a bloodied field and the memory of slain men around him.

The change was visible, that moment when he returned, when he seemed to finally recognize Eben and he slowly lowered the blade in his right. He flung the boy away from him.

Eben stared at him, a hand at his throat, eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and fear in the light from the torches. Then he staggered away and fled into the night.

Ruari turned to find her staring at him with very near the same expression, and he silently cursed himself for what she had seen--that dark side that haunted his nights like a demon. He thrust the dirk into his belt and went to her.

He half expected her to shrink away from him and run screaming to the hall. She did not, but gathered herself. She grabbed at her torn sleeve and attempted to hold the front of her gown together.

Strong. Brave. But the faint trembling of her hand gave away the emotions she hid behind that brave expression.

"It will need mending," she said, her hand shaking.

And he heard it in her voice, that faint tremble that went straight through him and took away the anger. Fear, when he had never known her to be afraid of anything, and the thought that she was afraid of him tore at him.

"Come with me," he told her, gently taking hold of her other arm and pulling her with him toward the stables. As they encountered two more kinsmen, he wrapped his left arm with that metal hand around her shoulders and pulled her against him, shielding her from their crude comments and laughter.

The horses of the Fraser clan were the only occupants of the stables this night. The keeper of the stables was nowhere to be seen. He had no doubt gone to join the feasting and celebrations.

She shivered in the dark as he moved with ease in the darkness, several of the horse nickering in greeting. She heard him say something gentle to calm them, then the sound of something striking metal. A spark glowed briefly then caught at the large candle set in a metal bowl suspended by chains from the ceiling. The light glowed faintly, then brighter as the flame was fed by the smoky tallow of the candle.

Ruari guided her to a wood bench where woolen blankets had been laid out, along with coils of leather harness that had been mended.

"Drink this." He handed her a metal cup. "It will warm you."

It smelled of the amber drink she had smelled on Eben McGinley.

"I'm fine," she informed him, pushing the cup away.

"No, yer not. Yer hand is shaking, and yer teeth are chattering to wake the dead. It happens when ye get yer blood up." For that was what he had seen in her eyes, and blazing across her cheeks.

"A few sips will steady ye."

She did drink then, almost spilling it in the process, as the aftermath of her encounter with Eben refused to go away. She handed the cup back to him as the liquid warmed into her belly.

Her eyes were dark pools, the blue almost gone, with the emotions that swept through her. That would haunt him too, the fear he had seen there.

"Ye could have killed him," she whispered, her throat still burning from the fiery liquid.

He didn't look at her then. It was true, and she would know it.

In those moments when he first came upon them, so great was his rage and the dark place it had taken him too, that he could have killed Eben McGinley and thought no more of it. That was what he had become.

Celebrations, feasting, drinking were rare times for the clan to come together. Young men of the clan were always trying to prove themselves, like young bucks at rut. Many a hand-fast followed the celebrations, often with bairns born a scant few months later, with the monk or priest summoned for a formal ceremony, as if that somehow was more important or made it more binding than the old ways.

Bile rose in his throat at the thought of the robed men of God with their tonsured hair, pious words, and their sins. And his own sins that they would sit in judgment against him.

"It seemed you were not agreeable to the conversation," he pointed out as he pushed old memories away.

"There wasna much time for conversation," she replied. "But that was no reason for you to near choke him to death. I can well take care of myself."

"I know."

He reached out and touched the torn fabric of her sleeve.

" Courageaux. Comme c'est beau ," he replied. And then when her slender dark brows drew together in confusion at a language she did not know.

"Brave," he translated. "Beautiful."

She didn't quite meet his gaze, and instead concentrated on trying to hold her gown together.

"Eben meant no harm."

Ruari watched the way her mouth thinned with impatience. "No harm, except to take what a man would take, but if ye have some understanding with the lad... "

"No!" she replied adamantly. There was that word again.

"He assumes that because we are friends, that he has some right to say these things when I have told him before that I do not have those feelings for him." She shook her head wearily.

"He thinks to change my mind."

"Or force ye to it?"

Her head came up. "I've not laid with him, if that is yer meaning. Tis not the way of it."

"He may not be of the same mind. The next time... "

"Next time, I will carry a blade, and I'll cut him so that he will never lay with a young woman!"

He smiled then, relieved as her spirit returned. He grabbed a worn mantle from a hook at the wall and wrapped it around her, hiding the damage to her gown. He fumbled as he tried to tie it--not a task he had mastered yet with the damned limb Brian had built for him. Instead, he closed one side over the other, with his good hand, fingers brushing her throat where the pulse beat there. That blue gaze met his.

A dozen feelings swept through her, not the least was regret when he pulled his hand away.

He had touched her before, when she was a child, rescuing her from a dung heap at the practice yard, once when he came upon her at the edge of the river and she would have fallen in, the stones slippery where she stepped, his arm around her waist, or his hand brushing hers as he contemplated a move at the chess board. But that was when she was a child.

She was a child no longer, nor her emotions those of a child.

"Ye have mastered the thing," she commented, with a glance at the metal hand.

Ruari laughed, not an amused sound.

"It will take some getting used to. I can't make a fist, I have to bend the fingers first." He showed her how he had moved them about into a grip.

"But it serves to hold my reins when I reach for the sword, or to hold a shield."

She took his hand then, tracing the smooth metal over leather, the place where the joints of his fingers would have been and now moved with stiffness into a powerful grip that had held the life of Eben McGinley in their grasp.

"It plays the devil with dressing myself. But I thank you for the thought of it just the same. I suppose tis better than a helpless stump."

She shook her head as she moved each metal finger, then closed her hand over as if taking his hand.

"Not helpless."

"Yer not afraid? You not revolted by the sight of it?"

She shook her head. "Tis only a part of you. It is not who you are." Who he had always been to her.

But was the man who had returned the same as the young warrior she had once known?

She rubbed her cheek against the cool metal and leather. There was strength there, she could feel it in the restrained resistance as if he would pull away, and as strong as the arm that had once saved her from dunking in the river. As strong as the hand that had closed over hers more than once in silent warning as she made a move at the chess board and eventually took the game.

What did she see there now in his sky blue eyes? Did he see only the young girl she had once been? Rescued from the dung heap? Rescued from Eben McGinley?

She laid a hand at his chest.

"I am not afraid of you, Ruari Fraser," she said.

"You should be. The things I've seen, the things I've done. And ye shouldn't be here now. You should go back to the hall. I'll make certain yer not followed."

"No."

"Alix... "

She ignored the warning in his voice.

"No," she said softly.

She reached up and touched his cheek. His beard was only a dark shadow now since he had lost the tangled growth he'd returned with. It was faintly prickly beneath her fingertips, his skin warm.

She had never touched him this way, nor any man except to close or bind a wound, but she wanted to touch him, to trace those high cheekbones, to ease the lines at the edge of his eyes that had not been there before, to smooth away the frown lines at the corner of his mouth, to find the smile that she remembered.

He brought his right hand up and gently brushed her neck. The bruises he'd caused were gone now, but there would be new ones after her encounter with McGinley.

He lowered his head and pressed his forehead against hers, the softness of her moving through him in a way that opened something deep inside that he couldn't even name, that had lain cold, empty, and lost since the choice he made long ago. His fingers gently stroked her throat and his eyes closed at something that was almost a physical pain.

"You should go," he whispered.

But even as he said it, he held on, tilting her chin up so that she was forced to look at him, see him for what he was.

She laid her hand over his. She shook her head, her gaze locked with his.

His mouth came down on hers, crushing, bruising. It as an invasion of the senses, forcing her lips open and stroking past, his right hand closing around her hair that had come undone, bringing his other hand up, metal glinting in the light from the candle as he laid it against her cheek and held her imprisoned. She didn't cry out, didn't cringe or struggle at the touch of his fake hand.

Instead, he tasted heat. Courgeaux. Comme c'est beau .

What started as a fierce storm, ended gently, tasting all of her, tasting her like a man dying of hunger, breathing her as if she was the very air he breathed, wanting, needing more, yet slowly pushing her away.

Her eyes were wide, dark, color high at her cheeks. He could still taste her, as if she had slipped inside him. He had set out to prove to her that she should not be with him, that there were things more dangerous than Eben McGinley.

"Go!" he told her, before he did more than just kiss her.

She should have run back to the hall, as far as she could get from him. He'd wanted to frighten her. But she wasn't frightened, not when he touched her, nor when he kissed her.

Instead, she simply stood there, brave, beautiful, while the mangled, wretched thing he had become wanted her to touch him, wanted to feel the warmth of her skin, to taste all of her.

"Ruari... "

He shook his head, and as if it was torn from some place deep inside him, said simply, "Please, go."