Page 96 of Rebellion's Fire

Alys’s eyes spat as they’d done the day Adam MacHeth had fallen on their bodyguards and defeated them. “He chose me! He did not wrong me!”

Christian held her gaze, almost with pity. “He took you, an orphaned girl of good family, into our household where he might have been expected to hold a position of trust and care for you. And he kept you openly as his mistress. We’ll never know whether or not he would have cast you off in time, but the point is, you are ruined for the respectable marriage your parents presumably wished for you. A tiny dowry and my friendship might change that a little. Or you can seek some other form of occupation elsewhere. Go south, go to England or France. If you prefer, the Lady of Ross will find you a husband. Or you may stay here and work for me. There are no free places in Tirebeck anymore.”

“Since you married Adam MacHeth the day after he killed Sir William.”

Christian said nothing, but nor did she lower her gaze. It was Alys who did that.

“You had no choice, did you?” Alys said dully. “I used to tell myself it was all right, what I did with Sir William, because you didn’t care for him nor he for you. Because you were a poor thing, disfigured and barren. And he lovedme.”

Maybe.Oddly, Alys’s words didn’t hurt her, though they might later, and they certainly would have before she came to Tirebeck and began to realize her worth. And Adam didn’t find her disfigured or poor. He called her rare and beautiful and pleasured himself in her every night and many mornings, too. He was trying to make heirs, of course, but even Christian recognized there was more to it than that. As she was drawn to him, so was he to her, for however long it lasted. He’d said so on their wedding day, during that brief, urgent interlude between the ceremony and the feast.

“Then think,” Christian said, standing up and gathering her work, “what is best for you now. I don’t care, either way.”

She’d said much the same thing to Adam just a few days after the wedding when his erratic gaze had fallen on Alys, eating at the women’s table.

“Do you want her here?” he’d asked abruptly.

“I don’t care,” she’d replied with truth. She hadn’t for a very long time.

“Send her to my mother, if you like. She might be able to find her a husband. Or I’ll take her south with me if you prefer.”

Something had clawed at her heart then. It felt remarkably like the moment she’d first learned that Alys shared William’s bed when she herself did not, only this was both more intense and less certain. But the idea of Alys having the opportunity to takethishusband was not to be borne.

And yet if not Alys… Men were, by nature, unfaithful. Adam would not insult her as William had, but she didn’t delude herself about his celibacy when he left her hall. Like women the world over, she could live with that, though she didn’t have to like it.

Dinner was well past, and she was preparing for bed while the extended sunshine of the long, northern summer day still seeped in under the shutters, when she heard the commotion that could only mean one thing. Adam had returned.

Suddenly her heart was galloping, her insides twisting. She hastily redressed with clumsy fingers and hurried out into the hall, which had been cleared for sleep although the men were refastening clothing and weapons as they pushed their way outside to greet their young lord.

A passage miraculously cleared for her, and she stepped outside the hall just as a single horseman rode through the open gate at a gallop. His head uncovered and his wild black hair blowing free in the wind, he wore a familiar red-brown cloak that was looking the worse for wear. But she saw no obvious signs of blood, no stiffness or staggering as he dismounted. But then, he’d learned to cover the signs so that his men never suspected he was ever wounded.

He threw himself off his horse, acknowledging the men with one raised hand while his head turned and his eyes searched and came to rest, finally, on Christian. She might have imagined the relaxing of his shoulders, for the rest of him seemed all restless motion as he strode across the yard to her—or at least to the hall door—expressions flitting across his unquiet face far too fast to be read. And his eyes, when he finally passed in front of her, were wild and intense enough to catch at her breath.

She couldn’t move, though at least her mouth automatically formed some formal words of greeting. He took her unsteady hand in his large, rough one and kissed it, before bending and pressing another brief kiss on her lips, making her heart surge.

“Everything is well?” he asked abruptly, fixing her with that gaze that had so terrified her on their first meeting.

She nodded, opening her mouth to ask a thousand questions of her own, but already he was tugging her inside, striding so quickly that she had to trot to keep up with him. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk, or at least not to her.

She saw him seated and left the hall to find him food and ale, while the men all sat on the floor and demanded to know what had happened since they’d left him. The kitchen maid, who would have slept through a battle in the hall yard unless it was her normal early time to rise, was snoring on the floor. Christian stepped over her and found the cold remains of a chicken, some cheese and oatcakes, and sweet, dried fruit and carried them with a jug of ale back to the hall, where she placed the tray in front of her husband.

He murmured thanks but didn’t look at her. He was listening to the jointly told tale of the men’s return to Ross, suitably embellished, no doubt. Christian sat quietly beside him as she should, not even touching him, and yet his heat seemed to flow into her. For some reason, the man at her side, ignoring her for his men, brought her something very like happiness just by his large, overwhelming presence. And yet amid that happiness and excitement was a churning anticipation, a dread that this, now, would be all she ever had of him.

For a little, she merely sat, absorbing him as he munched his ravenous way through the food, occasionally pausing for a draught of ale. Part of her wanted to sit there all night, as long as he did, but if Christian had learned anything in her previous marriage, it was when she was de trop.

At least when she rose and murmured good night, he noticed, for he rose with her, though she gave him no time to do more. By the time she closed the bedchamber door, he was seated again with his back to her, hurling an amused question at Cailean.

She undressed once more and climbed between the cool sheets. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on that inner part of her that was soothed by his return, ignoring the silly, jangling nerves that didn’t matter. It would be a long night if she didn’t sleep, and tomorrow would then be twice as difficult.

It took time, but she was finally about to drift off when the bedchamber door opened. Although it wasn’t quite dark, she’d left the lamp burning low for him. Its glow shadowed his still figure as he stood just inside the door gazing toward her.

She said, “I’m not asleep. Are you hurt?”

He shook his head, unfastening his belt and dropping it on an open chest as he walked to her. He sank down on the side of the bed, staring down at her, focused but unreadable, still every inch, it seemed, in his warrior persona.

“I thought you might be injured,” she said, mainly to cover his silence. “When you first arrived, you seemed to be looking for me.”

His lips parted and closed again as if he’d decided that he wouldn’t respond to that either. Then he said, “I thought you might have gone.”

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