Until the Knight Comes Read Free

the empty chamber, the threat behind them giving Mariota the strength to clamber to her feet.
    She staggered forward, intent on reclaiming her dagger however mean the task, but the moment her fingers curled around the blade’s jeweled hilt, the sudden clamor of pounding feet stayed her hand. Harsh male voices, raised in outrage and disbelief.
    Hugh’s men.
    A half score of them pushed into the room, ready anger flaring on their bearded faces, hot fury thrumming along every inch of their brawny, plaid-hung bodies.
    Her own body chilled to ice, Mariota faced them. “God as my witness, I did not kill him. ’Twas—”
    “Whore! See whose blade pierced his heart!” The nearest man pointed at the dagger hilt thrusting from Hugh’s chest. The dirk’s jewels sparkled, each colored stone screaming her guilt. “Think you we do not have eyes?”
    “And lo! See the handprint on her cheek,” another yelled, seizing her arm. “They fought and she slew him in his sleep!”
    A third man spat on the floor.
    “Hear me, you err . . .” Mariota protested, but her tongue proved too thick, the agony in her head and arm too laming.
    With the last of her strength, she jerked free and threw a glance at the window. But nothing stirred save a thin smirr of rain.
    Elizabeth Paterson may well have been a moonbeam—a figment of Mariota’s imagination.
    But the blade lodged in Hugh the Bastard’s heart was real.
    And it was hers—as all at Drumodyn knew.
    She
knew she was innocent. And that Hugh the Bastard was a bastard in more ways than one.
    A murrain on the man and all his perfidy!
    Her peace so won, she offered her arm to the guard who’d seized her only moments before, let the fire in her eyes dare him into escorting her from the chamber.
    Mariota of Dunach, proud if misguided daughter of the far-famed Archibald Macnicol, would be double damned if she’d tremble and cower before any man.
    And she’d be thrice cursed, and gladly, if ever she fell prey to love again.
    “Pigs will sing from trees the day I take a wife.”
    His mind spoken, Kenneth MacKenzie glanced around the dais table of
Eilean
Creag
Castle
’s great hall, looking for understanding. Perhaps a sympathetic nod or, at the very least, a companionable grunt to acknowledge the wisdom of his views.
    He received neither.
    Worse, he was almost certain he’d caught one or two looks of pity.
    Having none of that, he fixed his gaze on the high, vaulted ceiling. Just long enough to swallow the snort rising in his throat. Dear to him or nay, the menfolk of Clan MacKenzie had addled wits when it came to the lasses.
    He
knew the dangers.
    Not that he ne’er appreciated the amiable sweetness of soft, well-rounded and acquiescing females. Their warm loveliness and other such intoxicating accoutrements.
    He relished suchlike indeed.
    But only with a good measure of caution and when mutual need and satisfaction could be assured, hearts and emotions unfettered.
    A wife was a wholly different matter.
    And utterly out of the question.
    “Singing pigs? And in trees?” Elspeth, Eilean Creag’s female seneschal shook her gray head as she plunked down a platter of oatcakes in front of him. “Tut, tut, laddie, here is no way to talk.”
    The only woman in the hall this early of a morn, and the most free-spoken one at that, she dusted her hands on her skirts and looked at him, her merry eyes displaying how little she thought of his declaration.
    Her certainty that he’d unsay the words.
    But Kenneth made no reply.
    Nor did he regret the sentiment.
    Indeed, were it not for the respected old woman’s bustling presence, he would have spoken more boldly. Told every gog-eyed, woman-crazed fool who called the loch-girt castle their home exactly what he thought of their jabber. As it was, he simply pressed his lips together and reached for an oatcake.
    Not that the sternest look he could muster or even stuffing his mouth with Eilean Creag’s finest baked delicacies might spare him the