Until the Knight Comes by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read Free Book Online Page A

darkened alcove and clearly meant for his own bathing pleasure as well as his captain’s.
    “You needn’t offer to bathe me,” he said, noting her flush. “I will leave such niceties to my captain. A dipped bucket from the castle well will suit me fine.”
    “I thank you, then—and for everything,” she said, the color in her cheeks deepening. “But your men, will they not look askance at me after I’ve . . . now that I’ve—”
    “Named yourself lady of the keep?” he supplied, his gaze on the band of white skin at the base of the third finger of her left hand.
    A revelation that sent heat pouring into his loins.
    “Och, nay, they willna mind,” he said, certain of it. “They’ll relish your presence, my lady or no.”
    He took her arm then, guiding her back into the hall, a scene now rife with warmth and domesticity, the very air gilded by the bare-bottomed brawn and muscled flesh of his weary but grinning men.
    “Oh!” Her eyes widened on Jamie. Full naked and beaming, he was accepting a drying cloth from Nessa’s outstretched hand. “He is—”
    “Aye, that he is,” Kenneth agreed, smiling for the first time since glimpsing
her
nakedness limned so seductively in the tower window.
    A vision still tormenting and rousing him.
    “Tell me,” he began, stopping to adjust the fall of his plaid, “did those poltroons in Assynt choose you as their Each Uisge’s victim because you are widowed?”
    She blinked. “Widowed?”
    He glanced at her hand, indicated the place where, until her flight from Drumodyn, Hugh the Bastard’s ring had adorned her finger.
    Mariota swallowed, cast about for an explanation. One that wouldn’t brand her as a light-skirt. But then men began gathering at the fireside, flagons of ale in their hands, sweet ballads on their lips.
    “Come you,” urged the new Keeper of Cuidrach, dragging her toward the merrymakers, “we shall speak of your travails later—for the nonce, my men will entertain us.”
    But Mariota held him back, tugged on his arm. “Your men? Do you not sing then?”
    “Me?” He flashed her a disarming smile. “Fair lady, I could not compose verse if my life depended on it. The moon would sooner tumble from the heavens.”
    Mariota eyed him, her pulse holding still. “Most knights are well skilled in spinning poignant song, seducing with their words.”
    “Not this knight,” he assured her. “You will see I am less practiced in the usual chivalric niceties.” He paused, cocking a brow. “Does my lack of a silvered tongue bother you, Lady Mariota?”
    “Bother me?” She shook her head, her pulse now racing. “Nay, I am glad. Indeed, I say it a boon.”
    A blessing that both relieved and unsettled her.
    Several hours later, even as long, rough swells broke upon the rocks below the Bastard Stone and lashing rain swept Cuidrach’s cliff-girt shore, a gentler night curled round distant Drumodyn Castle. The soft mist drifting past its thick walls and stout towers at stark contrast to the turmoil gathering within.
    And at the center of that storm, one man, Ewan the Witty, held court, his scowls sharp as the razor-edged steel of a sword, his deep voice booming.
    “A red fox?”
he snorted, no trace of humor on his rough-hewn features. “Och, saints alive—I do not trust my own ears!”
    Garrison captain to the recently murdered Hugh Alesone, he fisted his hands and frowned—as did every other bearded, plaid-hung follower and erstwhile companion-in-arms of the late, great Bastard of Drumodyn.
    His still-faithful minions crowded the smoky, black-raftered great hall, their dark stares and fury aimed at one hapless member of their number.
    Wee Finlay—the unfortunate soul whose supposedly light task it’d been to watch over a simple lute.
    Albeit a priceless one.
    A gold and gem-encrusted instrument of untold worth, come only shortly into their hands. Left behind, or forgotten in haste, when its owner, the conniving bardess who’d brought them such