Page 50 of The Hawk Laird
“He does not fight it,” she said, watching the tiercel.
“Hawks are quieted by darkness. Hoods help to calm them,” James explained. “Falcons tolerate them more easily, but they can be used sparingly with short-winged hawks. Some hawks resist hooding, but Gawain has obviously been hooded before.” He glanced at her. “’Tis not cruel.”
“I know,” she murmured. “’Tis necessary sometimes.”
“We cannot tend to his shoulder unless he’s calm. I would not mistreat a bird. They only accept gentleness and patience. They cannot be forced.”
She felt her cheeks warm under his gaze. “Other creatures cannot be forced either.”
“Och, I expected you might say so.” She wondered if his affectionate tone was meant for the bird’s benefit or directed at her. “I have not shown you cruelty or forced you to my will,” he pointed out.
“You have been kind. For a brigand,” she added.
His eyes twinkled. “I have learned well from hawks.”
“Aye.” She smothered a smile. James watchd the goshawk, scratching the bird’s puffed-out breast with a fingertip.
True, she thought. His calm, patient manner, his low, soothing voice, even the agile way he moved had all been influenced by years of caring for hawks. Her father’s falconers, and her father, too, had that same way about them of purposeful, gentled strength. She watched as James adjusted the tiny strap of the hawk’s hood with nimble fingers. All the while, he murmured soothing phrases.
“My father sometimes said that falconers would make excellent mothers,” she said.
He huffed low. “’Tis like mothering in a way. We must care for a young thing with endless patience, and we must put its needs before our own.”
He began to hum again. The notes of the chant rose and fell in mellow, creamy nuances. Isobel leaned her head against the rock wall and listened, succumbing to his deliberate magic. Yesterday, he had waved his hand in languid patterns over the hawk’s head, seducing Isobel, too, into a dream-like state. Now he wove the spell with his beautiful voice. As the hawk surrendered, so did she.
“Ah,” James whispered. “He is calm. Place the bread over the top of his wing, if you will.”
If he had asked her to set the loaf on her own head, she might have done it without question. She stirred out of her reverie and raised the bread toward the bird.
James lifted his free hand to guide her, long fingers warm over hers. Together they eased the warm bread over the joint of the wing and shoulder. Gawain shifted beneath their combined touch.
“Easy, bonny gos,” James said softly. Isobel kept her hand on the bread and James let his hand rest over hers. Steamy heat gathered between their fingers.
He sang thekyrieagain. The melodic drone thrummed through her body, as soothing as the heat and gentle pressure of his fingers over hers.
She closed her eyes. When he stopped, she looked at him in the silence. He leaned against the wall, flexed his fingers over hers, and lifted his hand away. She missed its comfort as she held the warm compress on the bird’s wing.
“You have a beautiful voice,” she said. “Like spiced wine, warm and cozy somehow. Your aunt said you sang for a king.”
“I did, as a lad. I was in the choir at Dunfermline. I sang hymns when King Alexander came to mass. No terror could quite compare to that,” he said wryly. “Knees knocking, hands shaking, a ten-year-old lad standing alone before a king and his court, singing. Later, when I went to the seminary schoolin Dundee, I sang in the monks’ choir there. My singing voice survived the journey into manhood, as it happened.” He smiled.
“Seminary? Did you study to be a priest?”
“My father wanted that. But I met William Wallace at Dundee and John Blair too, who became a Benedictine, though he fought at Wallace’s side and acted as his confessor. When Wallace left Dundee and became a rebel, I stayed at the school, hearing more and more stories of his deeds. I stole away one night and went to join him. I was sixteen.”
“Was your father angry?”
“My father,” he said, “was a rebel himself, hiding out from the English because he refused to sign an oath of fealty to the English king. They killed him.” He watched the bird, and murmured to it. Then he glanced at Isobel. “My older brother inherited our father’s castle, but died at Falkirk. Shortly after that, the English took Wildshaw by treachery and fire.”
“And they kept it ever since?”
“Ever since.”
“You could not win it back?”
“I could not,” he said, so quietly she hardly heard. He reached up to adjust the bread on the bird’s wing, his fingers dry and warm as they glided over hers. As he took over balancing the bread, she lifted her hand away.
She wanted to hear more about his life as a rebel and how he lost Wildshaw, but she sensed he did not want to talk about it. “You have spent half your life fighting and hiding,” she observed.
