Chieftain By Command Read online

  He cut in, “Scarred.”

  “Aye, yet they don’t distract frae the whole man. I never saw you in sunlight before. I’m glad you suggested we swim.” Her secret, womanly smile made him want to read her thoughts.

  Gavyn caught her wrist, and her fingers slid up his length as he pulled them off his straining shaft. He hoped the water was cold. She gave a wee squeal as he swung her up into his arms, laughing like the young lassie she had been until fate tumbled a boatload of troubles over her and Dun Bhuird. He revelled in the carefree sound as he stepped down from the grassy edge of the lochan into the water. Aye, it was cold, but not yet enough to cool his desires as her breast pressed into his chest and her arm wound around his back, stroking, tempting.

  As the water reached his thighs, ripples spread out across the surface—late summer sunlight caught in circles of gold. He fixed their liquid reflections in his mind, a memory to take out and look upon should he ever have to leave her behind again. Her shift trailed in the water; he felt her shiver as it spread up the fabric and touched her skin. “It’s cold,” she murmured, and it sounded like pleading to take her back to shore.

  He kept walking, up to his waist in water that flowed through the mountain, cold until kissed by the sun. “It must always have been cool. Mayhap you’ve forgotten. Let’s see if you still remember how to swim, he said, letting her sink into the chest-high water.”

  She rolled onto her stomach the instant the water took her and began to swim towards the middle of the lochan then turned onto her back, floating, laughing at him. “Come now, Laird, have you forgotten how to swim?” she teased, and in a swirl of bright water droplets hanging in the air she was off.

  Never yin to refuse a challenge, Gavyn gave chase, would have made a race of it, until his heart decided he would rather watch. She was like an otter in the water—sleek, smooth turns, her woman’s body naked and visible through the linen clinging to her skin.

  Three lengths away, she stopped and faced him, hands circling the surface and feet treading the water. “What,” she called, “are you a lass then, unable to catch me?”

  “I can assure you I’m a man and, manlike, I was merely enjoying the view.” He grinned widely and she returned it, both of them smiling like loons in the middle of an ice-cold lake. It made him feel young again, less knowing of the crimes one man can commit against another.

  He swam closer. She floated a hand through the water until they touched. “It is very cold in here.”

  Kathryn had the right of it, aye it was cold but the sight of her naked and beautiful made him burn. He pulled her up against him, taking on the responsibility of keeping them afloat. “Oh,” she gave a little yelp as he wrapped her legs around his hips and she felt him still as hard as he had been before he strode into the water.

  “Surprising, isn’t it. I was surprised as well, but that’s the power you have o’er me,” he said, the words somehow more boast than submission, even to his own ears.

  She flattened her breasts against his chest, and her trembling aroused him further. “You feel so warm yet I’m so cold, how can that be?”

  As he trod water, he rubbed his hands over her buttocks as if to warm her. He could feel tiny cold bumps mar her smooth, creamy skin and knew they should swim to the edge and let the sun warm them, but before he did, there was one irresistible urge he had to give into. Pressing her tight against his chest, he skimmed his big palm over her tight wee arse and between her thighs and dipped inside where he received a hot clingy welcome. Her moans shuddered through him. “Come sweeting,” he said. “Lets lie in the sun and make love.”

  He was inside her as his feet touched the bottom of the lochan, and he stayed there, her woman’s flesh teasing, clutching, releasing, and then the grass was under them. He rolled onto his back, feet still in the water as she rode him to completion, hands thrown over her head in ecstasy, like a goddess sparkled in gold sunshine, her breasts swaying above him. He’d never seen such a beautiful sight, and his roar as he climaxed shot the birds from the trees around them in fear. Never had every particle of his being felt such elation, and he owed it to Kathryn.

  Chapter 19

  Dressed in all but her shift, Kathryn sat on the rocky seat drying her hair in the sun. Still unclothed, Gavyn let the sun dry his skin while he released her hair from the braid Lhilidh had plaited its long length into that morning. Gavyn had described her as a wee Scottish wildcat, and at this moment, that is how she felt—relaxed like a cat sunning itself on a rock. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so comfortable, and never within arm’s length of a man.

  She stretched her neck and eased her shoulders with a slow shrug, loosening her muscles. “What will the lads think if you’re still naked when they return?”

  “They’ll think we’ve been swimming. Your hair is wet,” he said lazily winding a length of gold strands around his fist and pulling her down towards him for a kiss.

  “Mmmh, do that again and yon rascals definitely won’t believe you.”

  Gavyn took that as an invitation, and she didn’t mind at all. In truth, she found herself pouting when he stood and dragged his shirt over his head. And when they heard a horse crashing through the trees and another smaller yin, Nhaimeth’s, coming up behind Rob’s, he was fully dressed, up to his chieftain’s bonnet with the feather she had pinned to sit above his right eye, away frae his scar.

  Nhaimeth spoke first, seeming less winded than Rob. “Ye have to come, Farquhar. We’ve found a body.”

  “What,” Gavyn grinned, “Is it a boar and you need my help to get it on your horse?”

  “No!” “Nae!” Rob and Nhaimeth answered in unison, their tones and expressions twin images of having been insulted. Rob took up the story “It’s a man. And frae what I remember when we rode with your men frae Cragenlaw, it’s Finlay.”

  Gavyn’s face blanched. “Do you know how he died?”

  Rob was younger than Nhaimeth, but when his nose narrowed and the lines either side of his mouth darkened as he looked at her, eyes as narrow as his lips, Kathryn knew her presence was holding him back. She leapt forward and stood at her husband’s shoulder. “God’s teeth, tell him and don’t try to save my sensitivities. I’m the wife of a chieftain. Tell him.”

  He spoke to Gavyn. “He’s hanging frae a tree and he’s been eviscerated. It’s not bonnie. Not a sight for a lassie’s eyes.”

  Gavyn turned to her, laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Go back to the Dun with Nhaimeth. I’ll go with Rob.” She opened her mouth to protest and received another squeeze for her trouble. “Nhaimeth, accompany Kathryn. Look after her. Keep her safe.”

  Kathryn didn’t know where the surge of anger came from, but when she replied it was through gritted teeth. “I can look after myself. This is my home, and until you brought your mercenaries here, I never had to worry about being safe.”

  She was panting by the time she finished and Gavyn looked at her as if she were a stranger. And mayhap she was. Or mayhap he saw the lass he had married—the one she could have sworn she had grown out of over the two years he had been in France. Within moments, a bout of nausea swamped her.

  The Bairn…

  Keeping her lips tight, she managed, “If someone will fetch my horse, Nhaimeth and I can be off.” Without saying another word to her, Gavyn fetched her bonnie white mount—the gift he had brought her. Why did she always do that, why did she spoil everything?

  Hands round her waist, he lifted her into the saddle. He was so tall there wasn’t so much distance between them, and when he raised his face, his eyes were dark as a storm—a storm she had caused—and when his lips parted, lips that had kissed her so sweetly, it was as if the cold water of the lochan poured from his mouth as he asked her, “What kind of a man would it make me If I didn’t have a care for my wife’s life. And, aye, all this has started since I came back frae France, but if they want to hurt me,” his voice became lower, more intense, and she had to lean closer to hear him, “the easiest way
to do it is to hurt you, my wife.”

  He drew himself up, became brusque. “Tell Magnus to join me. Nhaimeth will know where. Ask him to bring two housecarls and an extra horse for the body. There will be a lot to attend to, so best not expect me home tonight.”

  That said, he looked at Nhaimeth and told him, “Mayhap one of the mastiffs wouldn’t go amiss. Send a handler to Magnus, and you stay with Kathryn. Sleep outside her door.”

  They reached the edge of the trees with the hall in sight and the waterfall flowing from high on the cliff, the ravens circling a flow diminished by a dry summer. It was enough to start Kathryn off. “Nhaimeth I have to get down.”

  Immediately, he dismounted his wee mottled brown pony and held up a hand to steady her. The moment her feet hit the ground, she ran to the cover of the trees and lost the contents of her stomach. When she was finished, Nhaimeth came up with a flask of ale and handed it to her. “Does Farquhar ken?”

  She raised her brows at him as if she hadn’t any notion what he meant, but she was still grateful for the ale to wash out her mouth, and when she finished he said, “I was with Astrid through all her travails after she got with child. It didn’t take much to set her off.”

  She gave a sigh that felt as if it came from her belly, “How long does it last?”

  “With Astrid it was the early months. She was mightily relieved when it died away, but she didn’t take well to riding, and the McArthur made sure to keep her feet on the ground,” he told her as she returned the flask.

  “Thank you that feels better.” She decided there was no point in denying the truth. “I haven’t told the Laird as yet. I wanted to be certain. There’s been so many upsets, so many things going wrong. You must have noticed how Dun Bhuird has changed.”

  “Not so much. It’s quieter, but the Bear was the kind to be always shouting his demands and ready to punish anyone who didnae fall in with them. He wanted more for the Comlyns, more land, more power. Alliances were his lifeblood. You probably saw another side of him,” he said, as if apologising for speaking the truth.

  “You forget he would have married me off to Gavyn’s brother, and he didn’t care for women. In truth, the King has done better by me, though at the time I was young enough to believe I could do everything myself.” Walking back to the horses, they gathered up the reins and began to walk the short distance to the gate towers Gavyn felt were necessary for the safety of Dun Bhuird.

  “And talking of alliances, the King chose well for ye. Rob’s mother being Farquhar’s sister, the connection is one the Bear would have approved. Yon murders are another matter. I must admit that, like most others at the Dun, I’d begun to relax since my instincts naturally thought the finger pointed at Finlay, but now what are we to think? I dinnae blame Farquhar having a mind to yer safety.”

  They were silent again until they walked inside the palisade. “If you take care of the horses I’ll go straight to Magnus.”

  “I’ll do that and see about that big dog. I’ll be up to the hall as soon as I can; however, I suggest ye keep Lhilidh with ye all the time. If anything happened to ye and the bairn—” She put her fingers to her lips and looked around. Remarkably, there was nobody to hear.

  Dinnae worry, I’ll keep yer secret. I just wanted to say, yer the last of the Comlyns ye ken, and I wouldnae like to think of the line to dying out. Harald and Brodwyn dinnae count, for that pair are more Norse than Comlyn—greedy, never thinking of anyone but themselves. And that bairn, he might be a Farquhar by name, but he’ll still be the future of the Comlyns.”

  “This is quite a surprise, Nhaimeth. I had no notion you thought so much of the clan.”

  “Och, aye. I always have,” he told her as he walked off to the stables.

  Nhaimeth was a weird little man, but likeable. It was no wonder her sister had taken him with her to Cragenlaw.

  Jamie had waited near the body, but with his back to the tree where it hung, obviously, so that he didn’t have to look at the horror it represented. A sublime form of repulsion, the second in less than a month. And, aye, when he discounted what the birds had done to him, he recognised Finlay. It didn’t make sense. He along with everyone else had thought this man had killed Grogan. Yet here he was, mouldering at the end of a rope, and even if he could be persuaded that he had hung himself, naught would convince him that the man had opened himself with a knife as he hung from a tree.

  “So-o,” said Rob, “this confounds everything we believed about the other murder. I look at this and ask what the McArthur would do—”

  “Better to ask what your uncle would do, since your father is two days distant. Firstly, we’re not going to touch him until Magnus arrives. Jamie, I hope you didn’t touch anything.”

  “You jest surely. I can hardly bear to look at that … that abomination. I’ve half a mind to return to Ruthven where folk are—”

  Rob’s mouth flattened as if he sucked his teeth to hold in his anger. “Go on, Jamie, say it. Say where folk are civilised instead of barbarians. I don’t know why you came with us in the first place. You’ve spent most of your time in the stables … sulking I suppose, because Lhilidh prefers me to you.”

  “God’s blood, she’s a wee dot of a lass—hardly more than a bairn. I’ll have you know I prefer women to bairns. Someone with a bit of sophistication,” Jamie sneered. “I can give you four years.”

  “Ach, I know what this is—your harking back to the time you spent at court, as if I’d want to.” Rob snarled.

  “Will you listen to yourselves?” snapped Gavyn. “If Nhaimeth were here he would make you kneel down and knock your heads together.”

  The lads looked at each other and Rob, followed by Jamie, began to laugh—realising how ridiculous they had sounded.

  “Remember, I can teach you a lesson without having you bend your knees.” They nodded to him and looked at their feet to hide their embarrassment at having their host call them to account, so he took pity on them. “All these squabble are exactly what the murderer wants. If he could see us now he’d be laughing.”

  Gavyn thought for a moment and decided that the lads were old enough now to be blunt with. It wasn’t that they hadn’t seen death afore, still… “Listen to me, lads. You’ve never been in a battle, but when you are it won’t take long to realise what you’ve seen this day is naught compared to some of the gruesome sights that are left behind when the partakers leave the battlefield. However, what we have here … this callous act is meant to shock because it is obvious to any observer that the killer took pleasure in the act, in the brutalisation of a human being.

  “Ach, it isn’t a first. When you travel, you hear about all sorts of weird folk, ones who are sick in the head, for no sane man could have committed such an act. In fact it may be more than one. Rob, much as I hate to say it, my brother and your uncle and his catamite were just such a pair.”

  He watched Rob nod. Jamie on the other hand looked shocked. Obviously, their friendship wasn’t as close as Nhaimeth and Rob’s. He knew for a fact those two told each other everything. “Come, lads, let’s move away and leave the ground undisturbed until Magnus gets here. As constable, he might have a better notion of what needs to be done.”

  Head down, Kathryn left Magnus and scurried to the Chieftain’s apartments, her purpose simply to reach their bedchamber, throw herself across the huge bed’s width and sob her heart out. Her emotions were as unstable as a stool with two legs, wobbling under the weight of her regrets. He was never going to forgive her.

  Never.

  She didn’t know what foible inside her brain made her want to blame Gavyn for every wee mistake, every change he made that removed part of her childhood memories, put her father farther away than the cairn on the mountain.

  Nhaimeth was right. She was the last of the Comlyns and no matter how much Harald and Brodwyn wanted to pretend, folk would never look for them to lead the clan. She placed her hand on her belly, willing through both thought and heart for the bairn curled inside her body
to be a lad, not for the Farquhar line, for the Comlyn one—for her Father, for Astrid and mainly for Alexander, her brother dead too young. Gavyn had been there and was, by association, guilty.

  Knowing her father’s vaunted ambitions—God’s teeth she had actually admitted the truth of why Alexander died, and she was wed to Gavyn. … Her father…

  She mopped her eyes on the end of her sleeve, tucked a loose fist under her chin and tried to let her thoughts fade away and her mind go blank.

  Magnus and the housecarls arrived much earlier than Gavyn had expected, and thank God the horses and dogs made a racket, for Gavyn was sitting under a tree deep in thought while the lads argued about something new and avoided speaking about Lhilidh, which he found unusual. When the lads and Nhaimeth first arrived, he could have sworn that, young as she was, Jamie and Rob would end up competing for her favours. It would pay, he decided, to keep an eye on Jamie. It wouldn’t do to let the lad get caught in the toils of a lassie his father wouldn’t approve. The Chieftain of the clan Ruthven had high-flown plans for his son. His daughter Iseabel might have married Graeme McArthur, now leader of a McArthur Sept, but he had bigger plans for Jamie.

  Another father with huge ambitions.

  “Whaur’s the bastard’s body,” yelled Magnus frae the saddle. He had no qualms about blaspheming or yelling. Aye, Magnus was no great respecter of the dead.

  “Follow me,” he said, “Finlay is hanging over here. A sight to turn yer stomach, or should I say his stomach. I want you to take a good look, Magnus, at Finlay himself and the area all around him. Look for anything out of place. We have to find out the yin responsible. Slaughter is understandable on a battlefield, but these are too close to the hall. Before we know what’s happening, there will be rumours of ghosts and ghoulies. Lasses will be scared to walk near the rim, and a lot o’ men will be willing to take advantage of that.”

  They walked over and stood in front of Finlay. “Easy seen he didnae take his own life. He walked underneath the tree and checked out the rope. “I’ll ask if any rope is missing, for it looks fairly new and of guid quality. It would have cost a wee bit o’ silver.”