Until the Knight Comes Read Free Page B

the holding’s isolation.
    Its lack of women.
    But Sir Lachlan, like the others, stared at him as if he’d grown the devil’s own horns.
    “It
is
peace I crave,” Kenneth insisted, pushing to his feet. “Precious solitude unmarred by female skirlings and chatter. Wifely or otherwise.”
    But as he strode away, the seed of an echo followed him. Dim, distant, and alluring, its tendrils wound through him, fragmented images of hopes long extinguished, annoying remnants of shut-away dreams.
    Nonsense he would not let plague him.
    Foolery he had no intention of heeding.
    And one thing he knew with surety—he would ride for Cuidrach sooner than planned. Nary a pig had crossed his path in recent days, but he did not want to press his good fortune.
    He was, after all, a prudent man.
    Chapter Two
    D eep in Drumodyn’s dungeon, Mariota shifted on her lumpy pallet, her splitting head not keeping her from wondering whate’er foolery had possessed her to think Hugh’s men would listen to reason. A false hope it’d been, and one that mocked her now, firing her indignation and calling her back from the merciful oblivion she’d been whiling in for the saints knew how long.
    But waking only plunged her into a black mood the likes of which hadn’t plagued her since the day her father had disowned and banished her, sending her from their home at
Dunach
Castle
for consorting with Hugh the Bastard.
    A man Archibald Macnicol had deemed an up-jumped swellhead, an insolent cur unworthy to sweep the ground beneath his only daughter’s feet.
    Wincing at a pain that went deeper than the pounding at her temples, Mariota swiveled her head to the side and opened her eyes.
    Not that much could be seen in the murk greeting her.
    Damp walls and shadow pressed near, the small stone cell proving dark save for the glow of a tiny coal-burning brazier. The only stretch of comfort she could distinguish before swirling black mist closed about her again.
    Mist and, amazingly, the faint strains of the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. A lute or harp if she could trust her dulled perception. And such sweet singing. . . .
    Almost angelic.
    At once, icy chills swept her. Sainted holy hosts or nay, she wanted naught to do with angels. Weakened, shivering, and hungry she might be, she was nowise ready to exit this world.
    The angel, however beguiling her song, could return whence she’d come. Or seek out someone more amenable to her visit.
    That decided, Mariota raised herself on an elbow and tilted her head toward the distant music.
    Or what she’d thought had been music.
    For now, even straining her ears, she heard only the rushing of her own blood.
    No other sounds reached her, apart from the snoring of her guard and, through the high slit in the wall that served as a window, the light patter of rain.
    Night sounds by no means as enchanting as angelic song, but infinitely sweeter for their normalcy. Stinging heat pricked the backs of her eyes then, the grimness of her surrounds hitting her like a hard-toed kick in ribs.
    Equally distressing, the wretched little cell began to spin again, a great wave of weariness washing over her, urging her to let the darkness reclaim her.
    The darkness and . . .
furtive sounds.
    Awake again at once, she heard a scuffle and a thud, hurried fumblings at the iron bar of the door. An overloud
creak
as the door swung open and a figure appeared in the torch-lit doorway. Soberly garbed and generous of girth, the woman bore no trace of misty glitter or gauzy wings.
    But she did look familiar.
    “Nessa!” Mariota’s brows shot upward, her nose recognizing her friend despite the unaccustomed ampleness of the other’s form.
    And for all her big-heartedness and charm, Nessa Mackay smelled.
    Not unappetizingly, but . . . distinctly.
    Of peat smoke and salted herring, the good rich earth and the sea.
    Widowed some years now, she plied her late husband’s trade, drying what fish and eel kindly valiants brought her, and