Margo Maguire - Bride Of The Isle

He turned and glanced at the birds she wondered about, then looked back with an expression that reminded her of her father’s, when she’d said something incredibly foolish. “Why, they’re swans,” Lord Bitterlee said, as if he were stating the obvious. “Two parents and their brood following.”

“Parents?” Cristiane asked. They began walking through a thick stand of woods, toward the campsite. “You mean, these birds rear their young? Together?”

“I believe so.” He shrugged. “I’ve never really thought much on it.”

“Ah,” she said, glancing back at the swans. She would have to remember everything about them, for she doubted such birds were very common.

Cristiane realized how hungry she was when the delectable aroma of cooked trout assailed her nose. She hurried up the path toward their camp, but stepped on a sharp stone that threw her off balance. Lord Bitterlee kept her from falling by quickly throwing an arm about her waist.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice deep and caring.

“Aye,” she replied, more breathlessly than she liked. She pulled away once again, and nearly ran up the path.

Adam could not imagine that the woman had never heard of swans till now. Her life must have been even more parochial than he’d first thought. Which would account for her coarse clothing and bare feet, as well as the unkempt mop of her hair—glorious though it was.

He watched Cristiane as she ate with her fingers, pulling tender meat away from the bones adroitly, delicately licking the juice from her fingers. She tipped her mug and drank slowly, the muscles of her throat working as she swallowed. Adam lowered his eyes against her unconsciously arousing display and tried to ignore the tightening of his body in response. He concentrated on his own meal before him.

These intemperate reactions would have to stop. They had at least two more days of travel before they arrived at Bitterlee, and they would be sharing close quarters until then. Very close quarters. He’d made a solemn promise to Cristiane’s mother either to wed her or to see her safely escorted to her uncle in York. Since he’d already decided he would not wed her, lust had no part in this.

When he looked at Cristiane Mac Dhiubh again, she was standing. She had taken the tin plates from Raynauld and Elwin, and was coming toward him.

The stride of her legs, and their movement against the coarse cloth of her kirtle, aroused him in ways he refused to consider. She was just a young girl, he told himself. Inexperienced, untried. His masculine appetites may have suddenly returned unbidden, but Adam knew he had no business centering them on Cristiane Mac Dhiubh. She was not at all the kind of wife he needed or wanted. Nor was she some cheap strumpet….

He would set Charles Penyngton the task of finding a more appropriate wife—an English lady—as soon as he returned to Bitterlee.

“Your plate, m’lord?” Cristiane asked quietly. “I’ll rinse it with the others in the stream.”

The setting sun was at his back, and it illuminated her eyes as she spoke. Her lashes were thick, dark near the roots and sun-kissed gold at the ends. Though her gaze was direct, she looked at him almost shyly, as if she knew how unsatisfactory he considered her, while she waited for him to reply.

He stood and handed her the plate, then stalked away with his ungainly gait into the woods. He had more important things to consider than the length of Cristiane’s eyelashes or the berry-red softness of her lips.

As Penyngton had repeatedly said over the last few weeks, Bitterlee needed a mistress. Little Margaret needed a mother. Adam knew that no one could replace his wife in that respect, even though Rosamund had never been very attentive to their daughter.

However, common sense told him that the little girl needed someone who would care for her in the manner of a mother—accepting her faults, disciplining her with kindness and tolerance. And until he found the right person, Adam intended to become more of a parent to his child.

He knew that Margaret’s life depended upon it.

She had become little more than a silent skeleton since Rosamund’s death, with wide, hollow eyes. Her nurse, Mathilde, could not seem to draw the child out of her cocoon of grief. Little Margaret scarcely left her chamber, except to venture into the castle chapel to spend excessive amounts of time in prayer.

Adam did not need to know much about children to understand that this was not typical behavior for a five-year-old child. He would do something about all that when he returned to Bitterlee.

Preoccupied, Adam limped back to camp, where the men were setting out their bedrolls near the fire.

“Has Lady Cristiane returned from the river?”

“Nay, my lord,” Sir Raynauld replied. “I was just thinking of going down there to see if all is well.”

“Never mind,” Adam said. “I’ll go.”

He walked quietly down the path toward the river, caught up in his thoughts about his daughter and his unwelcome attraction for Cristiane Mac Dhiubh, until he caught sight of Cristiane near the water. She stood perfectly still, facing the sunset, the skirt of her kirtle rippling slightly in the breeze. One hand held back her hair; the other was outstretched.

And at the end of that hand stood a red deer, touching Cristiane’s fingers with its nose.

Adam did not move.

Stunned by the sight before him, he stood stock-still and watched as the doe sniffed Cristiane’s hand and then licked it. Cristiane said nothing that Adam could hear, but soon turned her hand and gave the deer a gentle rub on the underside of its chin.

The animal suddenly looked up and saw Adam. He watched as panic spread through the doe’s body and it dashed away.

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Ah, m’lord,” she said, turning to see what had frightened the deer. “I was just about to—”

“Lady Cristiane,” he said, flustered, “that was a deer just now. A—a deer standing next to you, touching your…”

“Aye.” Cristiane nodded as she crouched down to wash her hands in the stream. “Too young to know any better, though she’s a bonny one.”

Adam was thunderstruck. The doe had known well enough to flee when it had seen Adam. Besides, young or old, he’d never heard of a wild deer approaching a person in this manner. How had Cristiane done it?

“My lady,” he said. But then she stood and looked at him with those clear blue eyes and he forgot what he was going to say. Or ask.

’Twas ever so pleasant to have a man—a handsome, well-bred man—come to escort her back to camp. The knights had set up a lovely, spacious tent for her, and Lord Bitterlee explained that they had expected to be escorting both her and her mother to Bitterlee, then to York.

And so it was that Cristiane Mac Dhiubh settled down for the night, comfortably, with thoughts of her mother and better times running through her mind.

Morning dawned bright and sunny. They rode again as they had the day before, with Cristiane seated sidesaddle ahead of Lord Bitterlee. She was certain that every time he looked down, he noticed her bare feet protruding from the edge of her kirtle. At least they were clean now, she thought, still embarrassed to be without shoes.

They’d been taken from her in St. Oln, along with most of her other meager possessions. Cristiane would not have cared, except that now she would arrive in Bitterlee looking no better than the poorest villein. She had never thought of herself as overly proud, but this lack of shoes was one thing she could not abide. Yet there was no way to remedy it.

The day passed uneventfully, though rain threatened as they traveled farther south. Part of the time they rode along the cliffs above the sea. Sometimes the track took them through wooded lands, where Cristiane made note of the new green growth everywhere, and the small animals that darted and scurried to hide from the human intruders.