Page 88 of My Warrior
The season ripened, and summer-burnished leaves began to litter the forest floor. Heather splashed across the hill in muted golds and crimsons and purples. Berries swelled round and red in the wood, and the world glowed with the mellow light of autumn.
Cambria should have been happy. After all, she grew new life in her body. But Holden’s inexplicable withdrawal diminished her joy like dense fog clouding the sun. He avoided her eyes. His touches became less frequent. And once Blackhaugh’s new tower was completed, he decided to take up residence there. Alone.
The worst of it was he wouldn’t tell her what troubled him. Everything else they could discuss. They argued at length about the virtues of acquiring cattle by payment instead of by stealth. They spoke together about the purchase of land and fortification of the castle. They conferred about the idea of holding a tournament come spring. But whenever she mentioned his heir, it was as if a helm closed over his face, and he’d offer no explanation for his cool detachment.
A million ridiculous possibilities crossed her mind. She was fat. She was ugly. He didn’t love her anymore. He regretted marrying her. And in her condition, foolish tears came as readily to her eyes as dew on a spider web.
But Holden wasn’t around to witness them. He used every excuse to distance himself from her—practicing till dark in the lists, fishing half the morning, hunting with falcon most of the afternoon.
He was already up and about this morn, well before the sun. Peering through the narrow window, she could barely make out the dozen night-shrouded figures below, stamping their feet on the frozen ground and hoisting long poles over their shoulders. But she could hear them—Malcolm’s soft chuckle rising on the mist, Guy’s grumbling, their shivers as they blew into their cold hands, and above it all, the gentle commanding tone of the Wolf as the men set off to try their luck in the nearby snow-fed stream that ran through the Gavin holding.
She backed away from the window and pulled the coverlet closer about her. Ordinarily she’d balk at the thought of donning cold chain mail on a morning like this. It was still mostly night. But she had demons to battle, fiends for which she had no name, and if Holden wouldn’t stay to help her vanquish them with words, then she’d slay them the only way she could—with the sword.
If Holden had cared to notice, he would have discovered that she’d never stopped practicing with her sword, despite her condition. Though he’d likely have forbidden such rough activities because of the babe, she felt as hale as ever, and she intended to spar until she no longer fit into her hauberk.
No one seemed to miss her anyway. The servants assumed she lay abed, and the squires she sparred with she swore to silence. She always stole back in at midmorning, and by then the castle was buzzing with activity. Aye, she was as free as a meadowlark. She should have been happy.
But she wiped a tear away as she dragged her chausses up over her gently rounded belly. She wouldn’t cry, she told herself. She must be strong now. She carried the laird of Gavin in her womb. She must be strong for herself and the babe who would one day rule the clan land, with or without his father’s blessing.
CHAPTER 18
“And I tellyoumy eyes arenotthe color of emeralds,” the lady argued, although a pleased twinkle crept into those eyes. “They’re more the hue of pond frogs.”
The handsome giant beside her grinned and swept her up off her feet in a swish of russet skirts, eliciting a gasp from her.
“Duncan de Ware!” she scolded, her eyes sparkling in mock disapproval. “Put me down this instant!”
Duncan ignored her struggles, and with a wicked grin, perused her boldly until a blush stained her cheeks. How beautiful she was, he thought. Her eyes were indeed as clear and green as emeralds, her skin milky and soft, and her cheeks like twin roses. But her hair—ah, her hair was perhaps her best feature. It was the colors of wheat and sunshine and moonlight all blended, and at his request, she wore it in loose curls to her waist. He tangled a hand in it, reveling in its silkiness.
“Put you down? On the forest floor?” he teased. “Nay, good lady. It’s not fit soil for your dainty feet.”
Linet rolled her eyes heavenward for what seemed the hundredth time that day. Her husband could be a buffoon at times, but she couldn’t help but love him. He lightened her spirit with a wit and charm that had been absent from her dreary life of looms and ledgers before she met him. She still found it hard to believe that the tall, striking, azure-eyed heir of the de Ware family had marriedher, a wool merchant’s daughter with little patience for his frivolity. Of course, that was the case no longer, she reflected. Now she had trouble keeping a lovesick grin off of her face.
“My dainty feet have served me well enough for the past ten miles,” she answered pointedly.
It had been Duncan’s idea to abandon his retinue this morning. He was anxious to surprise his brother and this new Scots wife of his, the inimitable lady of whom Garth told the most amazing tales. So he and Linet had stolen ahead before the others, in peasant’s garb and on foot. What Duncan had assured her was a few miles had turned into a very long walk indeed, but she’d certainly not been bored on the journey. He regaled her constantly with tales of heroism, snatches of bawdy songs, and shameless flattery.
As her champion carried her through the temperate wood, nestled against his broad chest, gazing down at her as if she were some treasure he’d discovered, she found herself wishing there were always only the two of them in the world.
Suddenly, the sound of distant swordplay caught their attention. Duncan’s manner changed abruptly. He let her slip gracefully to the ground and set her behind him as he reached under his cloak and drew his sword.
They crept forward, their eyes alert, until they topped the crest of a rolling, sycamore-covered hill. Above the leafy limbs of the forest stretched the tower of a great castle of blue-gray stone, perhaps three hundred yards away. And in the dense wood surrounding the keep was a large clearing in which a small group of warriors exchanged blows.
“Blackhaugh,” Duncan whispered, standing upright and gesturing grandly, as if he owned the castle himself.
They skirted the edge of the clearing, watching unobtrusively as a half-dozen armed lads surrounded a single fighter who assaulted them savagely. After a moment, Duncan sheathed his sword. Theirs was obviously a friendly exercise.
Linet continued to watch. There was something about that fighter…
“That knight, the one in the midst,” she murmured abruptly, “is not a man.”
Duncan lifted a brow and whispered, “You think it’s a ghost?”
“Oh, the knight’s real enough, but…it’s not a man. It’s a woman.”
He sighed good-naturedly. “Linet, my dear, you find intrigue in the simplest things. I suppose it comes from living such a boring life before you met me.”
She chided him with a glare.
