Chieftain By Command Read online

  Kathryn stood. “I’ve been sitting here long enough. I think I’ll take a walk outside. Mayhap I’ll take my husband a bite of something to eat,” she said, wondering what it would take to make him take a bite out of her the way he had the night before.

  She felt torn in a hundred different directions, as if standing at a crossroad with too many choices, unable to decide which was best, which of the paths would make her happy. The echo of the notion she’d had when Gavyn first came into her life lingered at the back of her mind, though she knew that would never happen. Any ambitious attempt on her part to claim ownership of the clan and their lands would be for naught. The king would have sent her to a nunnery, the way her father had threatened.

  Gaining a portion of Gavyn’s power by making him fall in love with her was proving harder than she had imagined. How could he come to love her if he did not know her? If all he remembered was the lass he had married acting like a termagant, and refusing to let him bed her. Ach, she could make excuses aplenty but not if he never listened to her.

  Lungs heaving, Gavyn leapt backwards. Avoiding the weight of the heavy slashing blade aimed at his head, he caught it on his shield. Harald wielded a broadsword, the reach enormous, though no longer than the sword Gavyn grasped in his right hand.

  Dressed only in kilted plaids held by thick leather belts, they had both begun by going through a standard set of exercises. Gradually the routine had become more intense—lethal. Harald was trying prove himself to the audience of striplings, who had stopped trying to emulate their elders and settled in to watch and learn.

  The sun had reached its zenith before they began. It poured heat over both the half-naked swordsmen. Sweat ran down Harald’s forehead into his eyes. He blinked as if they stung. Gavyn was aware of the moment Harald decided to dance backwards and make an attempt to swipe sweat away with the back of his sword arm. In much the same case, Gavyn shook his head like a dog to rid himself of the worst of it. Every muscle ached, just as it did in the height of battle when it was give in or die.

  Gavyn grinned through the worst of his pain, knowing he had the most to gain, knowing that this practice fight had become more, become a challenge, and if he didn’t best Harald this time, he might never get another chance. He wasn’t a fool. In this lethal age it was easy to segue from play into kill or be killed, no quarter given.

  Fine particles of dirt rose underfoot, floating like eddies in a burn as the men skipped through the dust. Arm muscles bulging, he lifted his sword to clash with the blade hanging dangerously loose from Harald’s sword arm while the yellow-haired giant dealt to the sweat on his face. The blow drove Harald to his knees and Gavyn stood over him sword at Harald’s throat. “Yield,” he demanded even as he saw a flicker of surrender cross his opponent’s face.

  Somewhere above and to his right he, heard Kathryn call, “Gavyn!”

  Preternatural instinct should have made him ignore the sound of her voice and instead accept his opponent’s submission. However, this being in fact a training fight, he turned his head to see his wife. The quick smile he made in greeting was swiftly wiped off his face as the edge of Harald’s blade slid along the side of his ribs, making him bend at the waist with the shock of it. He dropped his weapon and clenched his fist against his side as blood spilled over his fingers into the dust.

  Kathryn ran the last few steps from the hall, heart pounding like a wild thing in her throat as she saw Gavyn’s blood start to flow. Her gaze widened, taking in the whole scene in an instant, though it felt as if she were the only one moving in it.

  Harald, on his feet now, moved back pleading, “Accident,” while everyone else did naught but stare. Kathryn was aware of her mouth hanging open, her breath harsh, her face pale as if it she too bled from Harald’s sword. Heart’s blood.

  She could tell Gavyn didn’t want to scare her from his expression as he flung his shield away and held up his palm as if to stop her panicked flight.

  “Don’t fret lass, I’m all right. It’s not deep, just messy.”

  She fell to her knees to examine the wound as Rob reached him from the other direction, ducking his head under Gavyn’s arm to take part of his uncle’s weight. Where Rob was, Jamie and Nhaimeth were sure to follow. “How can we help?” they asked in unison.

  She hesitated but an instant—a fraction of one. She could see it was, as Gavyn had said, a shallow wound but long, winding its way around the side of his ribs. “A shirt, that’s what I need to bind the wound—if not Gavyn’s then one of yours.”

  “Ye could have mine and welcome,” said Nhaimeth, but there’s nae chance it would go round him.” He looked at Jamie who told her, “You can have mine, but I have to warn you I’ve spent the day in the stable tending to the horses.”

  “I don’t care what size it is or where it’s been, someone lend my wife a shirt,” Gavyn growled. She could see from his face that the shock was beginning to pass.

  “Here, take mine.” Harald thrust forward a hand overflowing with linen. “If anybody should lose their shirt it is I. Although not deliberate, the fault was mine.”

  “Aye, take his,” snarled Rob. “The way he is going he soon won’t be needing any shirts.”

  “Enough!” Gavyn’s voice silenced them. “I’m not a bone for you lot to fight o’er. Any shirt will do till we get up to the hall.”

  Kathryn snatched the shirt from Harald’s hand. It was only fair, as he had already been the source of trouble on the night Gavyn and his mercenaries returned. That night she had pleaded Gavyn let him stay—for Bronwyn’s sake. No, that was a lie—for her own. She dreaded the thought of Brodwyn’s nagging and whining if Harald was again banished.

  She whipped the shirt from his hands. At least it was of a good size and quality, made of fine linen. Its folds soaked up the blood as she wrapped it tightly around Gavyn’s torso and tied the sleeves at the cuffs.

  “That will do for now. Rob, you help Gavyn up the slope to my stillroom while I run ahead to the hall to gather herbs and suchlike to help seal the wound.”

  She was surprised when Nhaimeth piped up. “Would you like me to fetch Lhilidh? I saw her but a moment ago.”

  He was wee, aye, but his voice was as deep as Rob’s, more man than laddie, and more man than Fool. For the first time, she wondered whether Astrid had truly done right by Nhaimeth by using him for her own amusement. “If you please, Nhaimeth. I’ll probably need her help.” With him on his way, she looked at her husband and said, “I’m sorry, for it was I who distracted you.” Then she looked at Rob. “He’ll be fine now with a little support from you while I gather up what’s needed.”

  Gavyn gave her a smile. “Not to worry lass. I’ve had much worse in my years as a mercenary, and that was without someone such as yourself to tend to me. I’ll be fine. You’ll see lass, you’ll see.”

  Kathryn turned tail and ran to her stillroom before she broke down and revealed that she cared for him, which wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was meant to start falling in love with her, not she with him. And she wished it to be for more than the use he made of her body.

  She felt less of herself for that.

  The stillroom had always been her refuge, as it had been her mother’s before her. After the Bear’s and Alexander’s deaths, it hadn’t seemed so necessary. She had gone there for the pleasure of making ointments and potions and tending to the garden outside that her mother had started. After her mother’s death, it had felt good to be necessary. Then Astrid had wed the McArthur and Brodwyn had attended her at Cragenlaw. One day, she had thought, it would be her turn.” Her father would make another alliance and find her a husband as fine as the McArthur.

  Then Doughall Farquhar had arrived.

  Pretending to be happy about the arrangement hadn’t been easy, but she had put a good face on it, escaping to her stillroom as often as her father would accept her excuses. Ach, she knew now—had known then—that Doughall would never have been a husband to her. Had been glad of that truth, for Baron Wolf
sdale had made her skin crawl, though she had been too naïve to realise why.

  Then the King had presented her with his brother.

  Was it any wonder she had been frightened?

  But no longer.

  In the stillroom, she began gathering up and placing on a table every small pot and flask she might need to use as well as a small basin. A small birchwood box contained linen strips, cut and folded away to keep them clean. There was but one essential to acquire when Lhilidh arrived, pushing the door wide for the others to pass through. Carrying the jug of water into the room and placing it beside the basin, she picked up a flask, poured a little of a herbal decoction it held into the bottom of the basin then filled it up with water from the jug.

  Kathryn acknowledged her maid’s efforts with a nod as she pulled out a stool for Gavyn. “Come,” she murmured, her throat tightening as she saw the large amount of blood staining the shirt she had pulled tight around his ribs—though seemingly not tight enough to halt the flow of his life’s blood. “Sit him on the stool.”

  “I don’t need leading. I can find a stool on my own,” Gavyn grumbled, shrugging off Rob’s arm. “My thanks for your assistance, but I expect Kathryn would appreciate the space that would be made available by your departure.”

  Kathryn glanced at his companions. “If you lads would care to wait outside, I’ll call if the Laird needs your help to reach our apartments.”

  “I won’t, but if it gives Kathryn ease of mind, you may wait until she is finished tending my wound.” Gavyn reiterated as if they hadn’t understood her.

  She brushed off the subtle insult with a shrug. He was in pain. Why else would he believe her incapable of ordering his companions from her stillroom?

  As soon as they left, she poured out water to cleanse the wound. “Lhilidh, would you mind?” Kathryn looked up at the corner where a nice fresh cobweb hung. She didn’t mind spiders. Her mother had taught her that their webs helped clot blood from a wound more quickly than anything else, and Kathryn had never questioned the knowledge her mother had handed down to her the way some families passed on traditions. She had learned not to mention that she applied webs. Some folk could get it into their heads that they might turn into spiders or have them grow inside them. Another lesson learned.

  “You will have to lift your arm for me.”

  He lifted an eyebrow instead, but his arm remained pressed to his side.

  So she copied him and lifted an eyebrow at him, saying. “I won’t hurt you, but that shirt must be removed.”

  For a moment his jaw dropped, but then he grinned. “It is a wonderful change to listen to you ask me to remove my shirt. Do you intend to reciprocate?”

  Her face heated, “Whist. We are not alone. Try not to embarrass the lass.”

  He lifted his arm so she could undo the knot. As she leaned closer he whispered close to her ear, “Is this the same lass who cleans our chamber, picks up your clothes and changes the bed?”

  “Aye, but not while you are in there with her,” she answered hoarsely, keeping her voice low as she unwrapped the shirt—slowly, careful not to open the slice in his skin. She instructed him, “Hold the shirt in tight against your ribs to stop it bleeding again. I must wash the wound before we move on.” As Kathryn moved the basin closer, she took note of Lhilidh’s efforts in the corner where she gently manoeuvred the web onto two sticks to prevent it rolling up in a useless grey mess.

  She ripped a strip of linen in two and dipped half into the basin and, after easing the shirt away she began to wash the wound. “You should lean towards me to prevent the wound opening,” she commented as she worked with the cloth. “It’s not deep, but then you have little fat on your ribs.” She looked at him. “Little fat anywhere…”

  His eyes met hers, hot, knowing. “It is all muscle.” His gaze said she should know that, should have felt the texture when her hands stroked his body. “I’ve yet to meet a fat mercenary, not after they’ve been on the road a few months.”

  “So, I can expect you to fatten up soon.”

  He grinned again, and it pleased her to have distracted him from what she was doing. The bleeding had slowed, and when Lhilidh stood beside her with a web stretched between the sticks she gently took them betwixt fingers and thumbs. “At least two more,” she told her and proceeded to cover part of the wound. The blood began to clot even as she watched.

  Twice more she draped webs across his wound until it was totally covered. “I’ll wait a little longer and cover it lightly to keep it clean. In a day or two it will feel like new, but until then, no fighting—friendly or otherwise.”

  Kathryn closed the small chest and returned the tiny pots and flasks to their correct places while Lhilidh emptied the basin and took soiled linens away. “You lasses work well together. I had no notion you had a stillroom back here, or a garden.”

  “Consider yourself fortunate that I do. Cuts that big can be difficult to mend. On the field of battle it could be deadly.”

  “It would be a cruel blow if Harald succeeded where you failed.”

  He was never going to let her forget she had tried to shoot him.

  Chapter 12

  “Ye just couldn’t hold yer hand, could ye? Ye had to cut him.” Brodwyn’s anger had been simmering since she heard of the incident on the practice ground—another innovation Farquhar had insisted upon. He was making more changes to Dun Bhuird than the Bear had in his whole lifetime.

  “‘I told ye, it was an accident, why can’t ye believe me?’ Harald protested.

  She could hear the whine in his voice, had expected it. The way she always expected to be annoyed by the contrast in his looks and attitude. He was a muckle lump of a man, handsome as all get-out but with as much gumption as a newt. She could take her anger out on him because it was safe here to shout—safe because even in daylight few came to this place where the dead were buried outside the palisade, a place that could be reached only through a gate kept for those of the family leaving this world.

  Brodwyn walked away a few paces. “I don’t believe ye because I ken ye, Harald. Ye thought ye saw an opportunity and ye leapt for it. Always the easy road with ye…” She whirled around and snapped at him.

  She lifted her hand and slapped him across the face, hard.

  The sound of her palm meeting his cheek echoed through the dusk.

  In the thick, heavy darkness, she looked up at him and filled the silence with, “Because of yer laziness, ye almost spoilt my plans for both of us.”

  “Aaaarghh.” The sound erupted from deep in Harald’s despair as he grabbed her by the arm, one hand circling her throat as he pushed her roughly against the bark-stripped tree trunks that formed the palisade. “Ye dare lift yer hand to me? The man who will be Chieftain of Dun Bhuird and will hold yer very life in his hands?”

  Harald’s voice came low and guttural, filled with spite and ire. She revelled in its power as he pressed closer. “O-o-ch, Harald,” she crowed, “this is the man I ken best.” She wrapped an arm about his neck and bit down on his ear lobe until he moaned. Hitching her kirtle till her leg was bared, she captured him with it, held him close in the cradle of her hips. “Lift me, Harald. Take me. Stab me with your sword,” she slurred the words, overcome by lust as the hard length pressed into her belly—a passion more than fuelled by their surroundings, this place filled with darkness and death.

  She moaned her pleasure as he stabbed her without care or pretence, just the way she liked it, and rode her to completion against the wall with her clawing his back, sharing the pain as well as the pleasure. Och aye, she thought, this is the man she could share Dun Bhuird with.

  Later, as they returned to the hall, she retold the story of Grogan and Kathryn at the session in front of the high board and finished by saying “I’m sure yon’s a disgrace he’ll not be inclined to keep to himself.” Brodwyn looked up at him in the torchlight before she slipped inside the hall. “I think Grogan is a man who should be encouraged. What say you, cousin?”
/>   Gavyn leaned back in the chair Kathryn had ordered moved into their apartment. His feet bare, he curled his toes in the thick fur of the bear skin that Kathryn had tried to make him believe had belonged to her father—the one, so Magnus had told him, Erik had been buried in. Mind you, it added a kind of perverse pleasure to imagine that he was standing on the Bear’s cloak.

  Kathryn sat at his feet, adding wood to the fire as needed—unusually silent though. He found he didn’t like this quiet, contemplative wife and decided to stir the coals.

  “It must have gone against the grain today to have to save your husband’s life.” He flattened his lips against his teeth and waited for her response.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Gavyn, but it wouldn’t please me one bit to see you killed, not when I’m just getting used to you,” she chuckled. A sound he’d come to like. “Besides,” she sighed with a hint of melancholy then went on, “Malcolm Canmore would just send another lackey to take your place and I’d have to start all o’er again.”

  “Lackey.” He sat up in the chair and winced from the pain in his side before demanding, “Are you implying that I’m one?” Leaning back with a broad tanned hand to his ribs, he let out a slow whistling breath.

  “I was only teasing and never meant you to hurt yourself again. Didn’t anyone tease you afore now?” The question was accompanied by a flutter of eyelashes. Obviously, she wasn’t of a mind to abandon her playful mockery.

  He growled, felt the threatening sound scrape the sides of his throat and ground out his reply to show her that two could play her game as he informed her, “None who lived to tell the tale.”

  Kathryn pouted, and he wanted nothing more than to take that full plump lower lip between his front teeth, nip it then suck it better; but there was no use starting something he couldn’t finish. “It was obvious from the first you weren’t one of the King’s pets. As a fighting man you’re useful to him.” A smile played around her lips as if she were deciding whether or not to say more. “He gave me to you as a reward, wouldn’t you say?”