Sophia James: Knight of Grace

His life had been turned upside down, yet some things stayed exactly the same, and the betrayal that had dogged his years from boyhood was as repellent in this wife as it had been in the last one.

A gap in the trees allowed him another glimpse of the new Lady of Kerr as she tried to wipe the marks of dust from her costly gown, the fine wool of her skirt drawn tight across the generous outline of her bottom.

Heat rushed into his loins and he felt an odd unbalance as the forest and his men melted away into nothingness. Lord, what was happening? Had she placed some tonic in the wine at Grantley, some potion to mask his reasoning and raise his lust? His mistress was full-blooded and well endowed, the wares on show offered without condition, but he had not felt this…excitement with her.

Not once.

Grace Stanton with her fire-red hair and welt-roughened skin should have run a poor second to Rebecca’s charms and yet…dressed in a high-necked gown with little showing save the top of her hands and the curve of her throat she was…sensual. The thought amazed him.

How?

How did she do that?

How did a woman with so little in the way of obvious endowments manage to be alluring? Had his brother felt it too?

He refused to follow further down that particular track, though he was niggled by the question of whether the Kerrs were to be for ever cursed by the words of Alec Dalbeth.

‘ Your keep shall be a ruin and any love thatyou foster will be as dust in the darkening daysof your clan .’

It had been years since his father had banished the priest from their lands, one arm around the mistress that had caused the chasm and the other on a bottle. Clutching. Tight. But the words shouted back into the space between the departing horses and the front portal of Belridden had stuck. Darkness had come in the form of strong drink, and his father, on seeing the sins of his ways too late, had taken the easy path out.

It was Malcolm and he who had found him dangling from the middle beam of the chapel roof, a half-finished tankard smashed beneath his feet, as if he had taken one last sip to see him through the gates of Hell.

He cursed, hating the weakness of a man whom he had once admired, when a noise to one side of the stream slowed his movements. Bending down, he scoured the far-off bank. A group of men were creeping through the undergrowth, metal glinting from the first rays of the sun. The Elliots or the Johnstones, neighbouring clans whom the Kerrs had no reason to trust. From this distance he could not quite make out the muted colours worn.

Three minutes, he guessed, till they rounded the slower part of the river and crossed. Unsheathing his claymore, he backtracked with care. Twenty against forty. The odds were good if it came to a head and he’d be hard pressed to find a better group of soldiers around him.

Would that be enough? He refused to think about it not being so even as he began to run, a branch swiping hard against his face and another slashing his shins.

Grace was standing against the bough of a tree to one side of the camp as he fled through the last saplings and she turned towards him as the others did, eyes bright with fear. He knew she was trying to say something, but could not quite get the words out. Dragging her against him, he placed her in the middle of the circle his men were forming.

‘Shield your head and shut your eyes,’ he shouted at her as he took his own place between Con and Ian, the outlines of the other group now visible between the thinning forest. More than forty. Lach’s grip tightened on his sword and he made himself breathe.

Grace watched Lachlan Kerr’s back and saw the way he brought in breath. Once, twice, three times and then stillness, the echo of a malevolent danger harnessed with a steely control.

Magnificent . The thought burst from nowhere as he raised his sword, the strength of his knotted muscles rippling free. Waiting. Wanting. A man tempered in war and killing and fear. She could see the lines where blades had cut against the solid muscle of his forearm when the fabric in his shirt fell back, white against the brownness of his skin, tense, honed. All the forest still as the party from across the river gained the clearing.

‘Who goes there?’ Her husband’s words held no inflection of fear. She felt calmed by his very equanimity.

A big man facing them stepped forwards. ‘Alistair Elliot. And I dinna remember giving ye invite to cross my lands, Kerr.’

‘You had no word from David?’

‘The King?’ Uncertainty shallowed out the other’s voice and the glances of the men behind sharpened.

‘I have it on David’s authority to collect my wife from her home in England.’

Grace knew in the hollow lack of humour the truth that such an admission must have cost him.

A wife who looked like her and English, and a battle that could easily cost the lives of some of his soldiers.

The man opposite shook his head, catching sight of her at the exact same moment that he did so, arrant disbelief in his eyes. The tensing of the muscles in Lachlan Kerr’s jaw was worrying as all around her the men closed ranks, drawing in on the spaces between them, a solid wall of protection for a woman that they could feel no allegiance to, no favour for. The thought stunned her. They would fight and die to keep her safe just because Kerr willed it.

‘Your wife looks as though she may be ailing. Are ye sure it’s the right woman ye have picked?’ The offence was measured and Grace tensed, the heavy mantle of insolence falling between them, a breathing living thing that smote good sense and reason.

Lachlan gestured his men back and the space in the clearing widened. ‘Ye’d be willing to sacrifice your men for the slur you have just offered or are you man enough to stand and fight me alone?’ His glance was pale-blue-cold and for the first time the other man stepped back, hand running to the sword at his side, testing the grip. Waiting.

Time quivered and the whispers of those who began to question snaked over silence.

‘I’d give my word that if you were to fight me and win, every blade we harbour would be yours to keep.’ Lachlan Kerr’s voice held the bland edge of indifference, as if his death was but a trifling consideration and the cache of armoury a greater prize.

‘And I could take your word on it?’

‘My word, or your men’s lives, it worries me not. Or are ye afraid?’

When the newcomer pulled up his sword and slashed suddenly, shiny slick steel missed Lachlan Kerr’s throat by a matter of mere inches and Grace had to rise on tiptoes to see over the shoulder of the man in front, her heart beating so hard that she was certain that the sound of it must be heard.

If Lachlan Kerr was killed, what then?

Would she be taken back to Grantley or would someone else here claim her? She doubted the men from Belridden would want to let go of her money so easily and doubted too the fineness of their morals. Lord, the man who even now circled his adversary, waiting for a chance to strike, was becoming her protector, even given his lack of caring.

The hollow sound of steel against steel rang so loud that she found herself placing her hands across her ears just to dim the noise. Not pretty. Not easy. No dainty practised fight this one, but the raw lunges of two men who would kill each other should the chance present itself. And it nearly did as Lachlan parried, his feet hitting the roots of an elm behind and tipping him off balance, the wicked sharpness of his opponent’s blade making him pay for the mistake in a deep slash down his left arm. The soldiers near her mumbled, and Lachlan bade them back.

‘Nay. Be still. It’s a scratch and my word has been given.’

He did not look at her as he said it, did not in any way include her in the moment. Grace tried to catch his glance to show him that she was at least grateful for his protection, but he allowed her nothing. His very indifference to his fate angered her, made the whole basis of this marriage even bleaker. She wondered how much longer she would have a husband, so careless was he of his life?