The Chieftain's Curse Read online

  “As happened for Astrid, the birth was difficult, the child o’er large, and though I survived, it left me as I am now.”

  She made no mention of the baby. On another day, the omission might have begged the question, ‘what happened?’, but not today, not when they were burying Astrid and her baby on yonder brae.

  “Don’t be thinking I agreed merely to satisfy the McArthur’s lusts. We both have secrets, Nhaimeth, and I’ll share a portion of mine with you and trust you not to betray me, without demanding that you reciprocate in kind.”

  His heart swelled, filling his chest. “You may trust me, lady. You earned my silence with your tender care of Astrid.” No one, not even Astrid had paid him such a compliment before.

  “Rob and I are fleeing from danger. There is one … a brother, who is almost certainly casting about the countryside looking for us. If he finds us, Rob is a dead man, and maybe me along with him. During our travels, I heard of the McArthur, how strong he is, but fair, and a formidable enemy. More likely to spit in our brother’s eye than give us up. Being his leman had not entered my mind, but it must surely be to our advantage, if I can but keep him happy.”

  As she finished speaking, he noticed a far away look in her eyes and the memory didn’t appear unpleasant. “Aye, Morag, though my Astrid is gone, I can’t find it in me to blame you for trying to keep yourself and the lad here safe.”

  He shook his head. Its weight felt heavy on his shoulders, but in light of the events taking place, that was hardly surprising. Yet he spoke the truth, telling Morag, “If not for the curse, there are few who would deny the McArthur, for a finer looking man I’ve yet to see.”

  A sly thought entered his mind. Before he knew what he was saying, his lips shaped the words. “Be thankful ye decided to seek refuge at Cragenlaw Castle, not Comlyn.” As he shoved down off the bench, he said, “Death is surely preferable to Erik the Bear’s bed.”

  The long summer twilights meant it would be late before those in the great hall sought their pallets, but Euan had been in no mood to prolong the meal. He’d done Comlyn the courtesy of sitting him on the dais, but not given him the seat next to his. He had made sure Graeme occupied the space between them.

  The mood Euan was in, Comlyn could count himself lucky Euan hadn’t tossed him out on his arse—and even luckier that he hadn’t gutted him right there in the chapel where he stood, holding the other end of Astrid’s litter, making suggestions that had made the hairs stand on end at the back of Euan’s neck.

  His back teeth clenched at the thought.

  Marry Kathryn? Never! He would go without an heir rather than wed such a one as her. He had deliberately left Astrid’s space at the board empty, making a point that this was no celebration, reminding those who sat above the salt that they had just witnessed the burial of his wife and child. His own people didn’t need telling, but the dunderheads following in Comlyn’s wake were oblivious to the hint and paid it no mind.

  All the while he sat on the dais with Astrid’s empty place his conscience prickled with the knowledge that most of his thoughts centred on the woman he had left above stairs. Even her name, Morag, slipped out of the mists at the back of his mind with no clear reason for being there. He’d known many lasses with that name. The hunger burning in his gut was more earthy than spiritual and would never be satisfied by food alone. Uttering a quiet word in Graeme’s ear, he abandoned his guests to their drinking horns and trenchers and left the great hall.

  The raucous laughter and bawdy jests swiftly faded; the landing opening onto his apartments stood silent and empty by contrast. Was she even there?

  His heart sped up, a thundering drumbeat that could be likened to the one pounding on his breastbone at his first foray into Northumbria for Malcolm Canmore. Then, he had been facing the unknown, his first battle, at his father’s side.

  It had been weeks before he returned from that venture and found his father grieving, not only for the loss of a son, but for his people. A terrible time, and one that led to Euan making that vow to his father, who was certain his only son would sire a whole slew of wee lads.

  His apartments were just ahead, and tonight he needed no one but Morag. Needed her with an urgency he couldn’t explain. For certain, abstinence had been a hard master, though much of the pressure brought to bear on him was self-induced. He’d never admit it but, inwardly, he laid the blame on the younger cocksure McArthur, the one brought up to believe he could do no wrong. The curse and the death of three wives had set him straight.

  None of that hindered his stride as he crossed the solar, certain she would be there waiting for him. And there she was on the other side of the bedchamber, her back to him as she combed her hair in sweeping strokes that separated the smooth fall into narrow back ribbons that he wanted to run his fingers through. She turned as he reached her, dark strands swinging toward him as if reaching out.

  The way he wanted to.

  The way he did, without thought or intent. Her hair was as soft as the water in a mountain stream that smelled of peat and heather. He wound it through his fingers and when she opened her mouth to speak, he brushed the tip of his thumb across her bottom lip with a murmured, “Hush” when she would have spoken, then slid the pad under the point of her chin to tilt her face up to his.

  Her lips parted.

  She tasted better than he remembered.

  He touched her tongue with his and the last identifiable sound he heard was the comb falling to the floor as her fingers grew slack. Then he was with her on the bed, her kirtle gone, under-dress ripped aside, his bonnet and plaid beside the comb atop the rushes.

  His hands were big, but she filled them, lush creamy-coloured breasts tipped with the colour of ripening berries, waiting to be eaten. Euan’s mouth watered. He ducked his head, but her hands got in the way, loosening laces at the neck of his white shirt. Euan hauled it over his head.

  Nothing separated them now, skin rubbed against skin from breast to belly to thigh. He couldn’t wait. He dipped his head and suckled her breast, drew her nipple deep into his mouth and lathed it with his tongue. The sensation was so great Morag couldn’t breathe. Her heart fluttered in her throat and released sigh after sigh. Such pleasure. She wrapped her arms around him. The heat of his skin burned under her palms, her touch. So many years had passed since she had first loved Euan, she had forgotten what it was like when they came together.

  If only Euan remembered that time as well.

  Certainly, she didn’t look as she had at fourteen.

  She dragged in a breath and his cock pressed into the hollow of her belly. The length of him—long, hard, hot—made her shift restlessly against him. She wanted more, she wanted to touch him … and she did. Her palms skimmed slickly over heated muscles, hard as steel, sheened with the bloom of fresh sweat. Down over his ribs, she touched his navel, fingers combing through the rough hair low on his belly and lower still…

  She felt him shudder against her, his rough, ground-out moan vibrating across her skin, making it tighten around her bones as he imprisoned her hands, lifting them away and pressing them atop the fur bed cover until nothing lay between them. Her breast flattened under his hand. The feel of his hips flexing against her belly while he bit gently on the cord of her throat below her ear was a long forgotten dream.

  Her fingers curled into the fur.

  There was so much more to the man than the boy who had taught her how to love. What would he think if she told him he was the only man her body had known? But the thought dwindled away to nothing as his large hands slid lower, cupping her buttocks to lift her hips higher, closer, imprinting his weight and size on her skin as his breath came harsh and fast in her ear, harsher, faster, making her heartbeat speed up and her breathing echo his need and sent want rushing through her veins. She wrapped her legs around him and held on as if her life depended on it.

  “God’s blood, woman, I can’t wait. Are you ready for me?”

  Was she?

  For a heartbeat s
he stayed silent, her thoughts racing. Where would this end? Would history repeat, with her yearning for something she could no longer have, for Euan? Did she care?

  No.

  “Aye, McArthur, I’m ready for you, don’t wait, fill me now, fill me up.” Make me remember, make me forget.

  For a faltering second he’d thought she would deny him, then he was drawing back, tilting her hips, thrusting. “Aaah…” She was wet, hot, but tight. She felt like a touch of heaven in the hell his life had become since the curse.

  He thrust again, felt her hips lift to meet him, grip him with her internal muscles, when all thought left him, dissolved into a white radiance so far ahead of him he had to race to reach it.

  Fast, faster, he couldn’t stop. His head felt it might burst when his ears rang with Morag’s scream; and in defence he covered her mouth with his, swallowing her cries, capturing her breath as her body pulsed around his shaft. Suddenly, his race was run. It felt like he tumbled off the end of the world as it gave way beneath him.

  Euan’s arms lost their strength and he collapsed atop her, chest heaving, too spent to protect her from his weight. Yet, Morag seemed not to mind.

  Shudders segued into shivers he couldn’t control.

  Morag’s arms came around him, the brush of her hands gentling the back of his neck as she might a hurt child. A huge wave of sorrow broke inside his chest, crashing around his heart until it took all his control to bite back a sob.

  He breathed in deeply through his nose. He smelled of sweat and sex and the fragrance of Morag’s skin that had tugged at him in the great hall.

  So different from Astrid…

  The thought hit like a blow that sent him reeling from the bed, but his legs felt like water and wouldn’t hold him. “God’s teeth,” he bit out. He collapsed on the edge of the bed and gathered his wits about him. Stone cold anger swallowed the last skerrick of sadness, of failure. He was the McArthur, and that meant he dared show no sign of weakness, not even before Morag—especially not her.

  In a voice coated with ice, he said, “You’re a good ride, but I need to get out of here. Comlyn will be wondering where I’ve disappeared to, and I’ve no wish for him to find me fucking my leman. Not today anyway.”

  Deliberately avoiding Morag’s eyes, he sluiced himself down with water from the ewer and dragged his white linen shirt over his head. But by the time he kilted his plaid around his waist, she was kneeling at his feet, and he had an urge to drag her up, toss her onto the bed and take her again.

  It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t wipe the sensation of how it felt to be inside her from his mind. But should he take her now, it would be no gentle loving. All the anger inside him promised a rough ride, for no matter how Morag responded, the guilt roiling in his gut would take control, and if he lashed out at anyone, it should be Comlyn.

  Morag’s nakedness disturbed him. No matter what he had told her that morning, she shouldn’t be kneeling before him. No matter that she had come to him as one of the castle maids, her breeding showed, in her speech, in her features. She was too fine to grovel at his feet. “What are you doing woman? Get up off your knees.”

  Her expression gave little away. “I only thought to fasten your cross laces.”

  “Why? By this time, there will be few sober enough to notice such a measly state of undress. As long as my feet are covered I’ll do.” That said, he fastened his short sword, although he had banned Comlyn’s men from going armed, he would feel less dressed without a sword than without hose.

  “Don’t look for me till after nightfall,” he said and strode out of the bedchamber into the solar, which was tidy with few reminders of Astrid—Mhairi’s doing he had no doubt, and just as well if his reaction to Morag was anything to go by.

  Ah, well, time would tell, he decided as he left the solar, shoulders straight, expression set, out to deceive anyone who didn’t know him, and maybe a few who did, if he was so favoured.

  After the sun-dappled solar, the grey granite in the passage soaked up what little late sunlight had managed to invade the arched space. Was this yet another product of the fear the curse had generated within the castle. With the mood he was in, the iron brackets holding doused torches were yet another thorn in his flesh. If Duncan didn’t keep the maids in line, he would personally toss them all out on their arses.

  Thoughts darted through his mind like summer swallows chasing midges on the wing: some easily caught, others escaping to live another day.

  The hand reaching from the shadow of a buttress startled him. Small, grasping, the hand barely escaped being sliced as Euan drew his sword.

  “McArthur, ’tis I, Kathryn.”

  “Christ’s wine, you nearly met your death at my hands. Have a care who you stalk in the dark,” he growled, sheathing his sword.

  “You disappeared so soon from the board, I thought perhaps you needed comfort. Perhaps we both do, with Astrid now dead.” He felt her hand slip up his arm through the linen covering it, and shook it off with repulsion.

  “You mistake, I have no need of comfort from you; and you, Kathryn, must return to your family’s chambers, for this will not work.”

  “Is it Brodwyn, you want?”

  “I want neither of you, and you may tell your father that with my blessing. I will not remarry until I am rid of this curse. And even then it will not be to a Comlyn,” he snapped.

  He gripped her arm, not roughly, but intractable, immovable. “Now let me direct you to the Keep’s west tower.”

  Chapter 8

  How could a man give so much, take so much, and then turn away as if it had never happened, as if he had never laid her bodily on the fur bedcover and pleasured her with a shaft so thick and hard it was unsurprising he sired big bonnie babies.

  What he needed was a wife strong enough to give birth to them.

  Morag’s memory hadn’t misled her; Euan was all she remembered and more. How would she feel when he found another wife? Could she stand being put aside, now she had found him again? Was she willing to be given another chamber, far from his wife’s, willing to share him, to accept only a small part of him until that too dwindled away and Euan forgot her?

  Could she do that?

  Aye she could, come what may; for she had discovered her feelings for Euan hadn’t changed in any particular.

  Euan decided that the solution to his latest problem was Nhaimeth, if he could just discover where the Fool had hidden himself. No surprise, for the wee man’s dislike of Comlyn was well known.

  As for himself, had anyone witnessed his confrontation with Kathryn, they might misconstrue his departure from the castle as running away. Perhaps he was, but not for himself alone. Not even for Morag, though to be sure, she was the one most likely to suffer the edge of Kathryn’s spiteful tongue if the truth of the matter be discovered.

  No, it was Astrid’s name that would bear the brunt. Kathryn was as cunning as her sister had been sweet. Like her father, Kathryn had no shame. Both thought he could put her in Astrid’s place, as he had put Astrid in Fiona’s, and Fiona in Magdalene’s.

  No more, he had to get rid of the curse.

  So, he had given Kathryn the rough edge of his tongue, and that’s all she would ever have from him. She didn’t attract him enough to bed her, and never would.

  To marry again could be likened to cold-blooded murder.

  He could no longer take the risk without the certainty that the marriage wouldn’t end in death. Kathryn Comlyn aside, one day he might meet a lass he could love… In his mind’s eye he pictured Morag. An aberration, he could never marry a barren woman, no matter how comely he found her.

  Aye, until he was rid of the curse, he would take no other lass to wife. He would find some other way to make Comlyn feel his southern borders secure. He saw no profit in fighting with Comlyn, not when the Macintoshes of Braemar straddled both their borders and couldn’t be trusted.

  “Ach aye, McArthur,” the man shouted over the load of steaming horse dung on his
handcart. “Not an hour syne, ah laid eyes on yon Fool scampering about the stables.”

  Euan scowled, as if he hadn’t enough on his mind without scouring the Keep for Nhaimeth. Yet, he didn’t see whom else he could set to the task. The Fool had slept across the door of his apartments from the day Astrid arrived at Cragenlaw. Few would think anything of it.

  The stables backed onto the inner bailey wall, their roof, sloping high against the granite rampart, creating a loft for storing hay and cereals. His own horses were stabled separately at one end, in stalls befitting their size.

  The stables were crowded, quiet, except for the occasional whinny or snort. Erik the Bear’s company had taken up what space there was to spare under cover. The remainder of his visitors’ steeds trampled straw outside, tethered to rings set into the bailey wall, eating from makeshift biers in much the same way Comlyn’s men filled their bellies in the great hall.

  Euan’s gaze cast around the dim space searching for Nhaimeth and, beyond the archway that kept his mounts apart from those of his housecarls’, his gaze came to rest on his late wife’s Fool.

  God’s spine, what was Nhaimeth up to? The Fool seldom lived up to his occupation, but should he chance to stand closer to Diabhal, a devil well known for living up to its name… Perceiving the little man to be in grave danger of being trampled, Euan stalked towards him. To roar a warning would likely startle Diabhal, increasing the risk, for there was no denying the beast could be vicious.

  As Euan grew closer, Nhaimeth turned, eyes opening as wide as his gaping mouth.

  Euan spoke quietly, his voice as flat and cutting as a blade’s edge, “Are you intent on another funeral, little man?”

  The Fool soon recovered his wits. He jinked backwards, bells tinkling, and moved his person out of arm’s length. “Nae, Laird.” He pulled on his cap. “My intent in the stables is to stay away from Comlyn for as long as he’s in the Keep.”

  “All well and good, but I have work for you—” Euan broke off abruptly on discovering they weren’t alone. A pair of inquisitive amber eyes squinted down at him from under a mop of unkempt dark hair. “Who might you be, lad, and why are you taking your life in your hands?”