Bride For A Knight Page 0,71

and Lady Juliana were already spreading a healing salve onto the newly-branded flesh and Gelis and Arabella stood close by, strips of clean bandaging in their hands.

"Come, you, let us be away abovestairs."

Jamie turned and found Aveline peering up at him, an indefinable promise in her sapphire eyes, a pleasing curve to the sweetness of her lips. She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers with his bloodstained ones. Her gaze went to Munro then back to Jamie. "You can do no more for him. Not this night,"

she said, leaning into him, her words for him alone. "I would see to your needs. If you will come with me."

"My needs?" Jamie cocked a brow, wishing he hadn't let show how deeply branding his father's flesh had affected him. "It had to be done, lass. Sorry though I am to have hurt - "

"You misheard me. That is not what I meant, though I know the searing cost you," she said, her gaze dipping just enough to let a heat of a very different sort begin flickering across a certain sensitive part of him. "I am thinking you might favor a bath?"

The flickering heat became an insistent throbbing. Jamie cut a glance at the hall's large double-arched hearth fires, the heavy iron cauldrons of steaming water suspended above the crackling flames.

Water heated in vain for a siege that wasn't.

He looked back at his bride, his pulse quickening even when his conscience balked at leaving his father.

"He will not waken until the morrow," Aveline said, making him think she'd peered into his mind. When her gaze then slid to the steaming cauldrons, he was sure of it.

"The water is already heated," she added, the soft huskiness of her voice convincing him. "There is surely enough for a long, leisurely bath."

Jamie nodded. He agreed entirely.

His lady smiled and Jamie was well pleased to let her lead him toward the stair tower. He could use a bath. The morrow would be soon enough to renew his efforts to root out the mysterious bogle .

Neill's bogle. And a few other things weighing heavily on his mind. But one of those things resolved itself halfway up the winding turnpike stair, the answer hitting him in the gut with all the punch of a well-aimed fist. As if someone had reached out and ripped blinders from his eyes, he knew why he'd felt such a wrench when he'd seen the fear in his father's eyes. That fiery squeezing sensation had been more than mere sympathy. His heart had heard what he hadn't.

Tell me, Da, was Neill wearing his wet plaid ...

His own words came back to him and he paused to press a hand against the cold stone of the stair tower wall lest his knees buckle beneath him. A crossbow bolt and a red-hot searing knife were not exactly the means he would have chosen to come to such a stunning pass. The result was earth-shattering all the same.

And so utterly amazing he was tempted to whoop for joy. Under any other circumstances, he would have.

As it was, he simply gave himself a much-needed shake before grabbing his bride's hand again so they could resume their spiral ascent to Kendrick's bedchamber.

He didn't need whoops and chest-thumpings to celebrate. Nor even a night of revelry and free-flowing ale. What he'd learned was more than enough. In truth, more than he'd e'er expected.

For the first time since he could remember, he'd called his father Da . And even more astounding, his father had called him son.

Chapter 12

That same night, Baldreagan's kitchen lads filled buckets of hot water from great iron cauldrons and lugged their sloshing burdens abovestairs to the linen-lined bathing tub in Kendrick's bedchamber. And as they went about their task, another very different cauldron simmered and bubbled elsewhere. Across darkening peaks and silent glens, dubiously scented steam rose from this second cauldron. A fine, black-sided cauldron, this kettle's murky waters weren't intended for any lairdly son's leisurely bathing pleasure. Nor were the nameless objects floating on the water's surface meant to fill anyone's hungry stomach.

A scrying cauldron, the kettle served one purpose and one indomitable soul. And its keeper, Devorgilla of Doon, the most far-famed cailleach in the Highlands, had already made use of its powers earlier that night. Just as she had every e'en for some while, hoping to catch a glimpse of a certain faithful friend. A valiant, true-hearted friend who'd been away on a special mission, and was overdue to return.

She'd tried to