Chapter Eight

 

 

 

Niall glanced at the sky for the third time that afternoon. Roiling charcoal clouds had been building in the west all day. They promised a fierce storm, and from the bite to the air, it would be snow and not rain that would fall within the hour.

And now that they were approaching the Borderlands, there were no more towering rock outcroppings or dense stands of trees under which to take shelter.

All the better, for Niall had a plan.

Over the last sennight, he and Mairin had fallen into a comfortable pattern—or, as comfortable as it could be, given that his skin hummed with awareness and his blood ran hot in such close quarters with her.

They made the most of the short daylight hours, riding as hard as they could push the horses and themselves—and the pigeons dangling from Mairin’s saddle.

Each evening when dusk began to draw near, they would find a suitable place to make camp. Mairin would see to the birds while Niall tended to the horses and started a fire. After that, they’d share a simple meal—the bannocks, dried meat, and a few root vegetables they’d brought from the training camp had seen them through thanks to their unexpected boar feast that first night. Then Mairin would bed down while Niall took the first watch.

He often let her sleep beyond the halfway point in the night, leaving her only a few hours close to dawn to keep watch. She’d narrow her eyes at him when he did that, yet she seemed to overlook his transgression whenever he built up the fire to a roaring blaze before waking her.

Blessedly, there were no more encounters with wild animals as they rode into the Lowlands. The rough, rugged landscape of the Highlands melted into rolling moors sprinkled with lingering patches of snow as they continued southward.

They’d ridden through a few soft drizzles, but today’s skies threatened a proper storm. Just the opportunity Niall needed.

He cleared his throat, which felt rusty from disuse this last sennight.

“That storm’s nigh upon us.”

Mairin swept her dove-gray eyes over the sky. “Aye.”

“And no shelter to be had in sight. Mayhap…” He paused as if considering. “Mayhap we ought to stop at an inn.”

She cast him a sideways look, her brows lowering.

“The animals will fare better in a barn than out in the open,” he went on, willing his voice to be casual. “Hell, I wouldn’t mind a roof over my head and a warm meal in my belly, either.”

Mairin glanced over her shoulder uncertainly, eyeing the pigeons. The birds seemed content enough in their woven cages, yet from the way she pursed her lips, she was no doubt deliberating on the risks of going without shelter in a snowstorm.

She squinted off to the east, where the road they’d been avoiding cut a faint line across the winter-brown moor.

He knew what she was thinking. It was easy to avoid people in the sparsely populated wilds of the Highlands. They’d hardly had to try to avoid roads and villages farther north. But as they’d ridden toward the Borderlands, Mairin had suggested that they skirt towns and farms in favor of the uninhabited moors.

Niall could understand why. The closer they drew to England, the tenser Mairin seemed to become. Her gaze restlessly darted over their surroundings, and she jumped or flinched at the mere snap of a branch or rustle of underbrush.

And the last few nights when Niall had returned from watching over their camp to rouse her, he’d found her tangled in her plaid and muttering uneasily. He couldn’t make out all the words, but knowing what he now did of her captivity, it was obvious the memories haunted her in her sleep.

He hadn’t confronted her about how tightly wound she was becoming. Mairin was a guarded, private person. That was why he imagined the last thing she wanted was to enter a village filled with Borderlanders she’d feel the need to keep a wary eye on. Nor would she wish to risk her nightmares being overheard by others at an inn. Yet he feared that without a chance to rest and have a proper meal, she would only continue to grow more frayed around the edges.

“Just for the night,” he urged quietly. “We’ll leave at first light tomorrow morn.”

Mairin took one last longing look at the emptiness surrounding them before nodding reluctantly. “Aye, verra well.”

She must have been more tired than he’d thought if she relented so easily. Aye, she was strong and capable, but she was battling more than just their difficult traveling conditions. With every step they took toward England, she was also facing a deep-rooted fear.

Silently, they guided their horses toward the road off to the east. As if to hasten them along, the wind picked up and several fat snowflakes began to fall, twisting in flurries around them.

By the time a huddle of buildings emerged in front of them an hour later, the snow fell hard and fast, sticking to the road and forcing them to hunch into their cloaks.

The little village was battened down against the storm, with all the shutters tightly sealed and not a single ray of light slipping under a door or through a window. By the last gray-blue light of the day, Niall made out a wooden sign hanging from one of the buildings. The Lamb and Thistle Inn.

“Wait here,” he said to Mairin, swinging down from his saddle. He strode on stiff, cold legs to the stables attached to the side of the inn. The stable door was shut tight, but he banged on it anyway.

Thankfully, the door opened quickly. A young lad peeped through the crack he’d made, warm light and the smell of hay and animals spilling out around him.

“Aye, sir?”

“We need shelter for our animals.”

“Only for guests at the inn, sir.”

“Aye, my…my wife and I are staying there.”

Surprise flooded him at how easily the word slipped out. They hadn’t discussed it, but posing as a married couple was the safest way for them to travel in more populated areas. It would allow them to avoid suspicion, at least for the night. Here in the Borderlands, a young, unmarried man and woman, one Scottish, one English, would raise far too many questions.

To Niall’s relief, the stable lad didn’t even bat an eye at Niall’s reply. Instead, he nodded and opened the door wider, ushering him inside. Mairin, who waited close enough to see but not to have overheard, dismounted and followed him into the barn.

The lad stared curiously at the pigeons, but nodded as Mairin delivered instructions for their care. They were to be put into the hay loft above the horse stalls to keep them out from underfoot. Mairin handed the boy a pouch of their feed, then watched for a moment as he went about his tasks seeing to the horses and birds.

Seemingly satisfied that the lad would follow their directions, she caught Niall’s eye and nodded toward the stable door. They hurried through the slanting flurries of snow to the front of the inn, darting inside in a whirl of snowflakes.

They were met with a toasty-warm, small, yet tidy common room. A few curious eyes landed on them, but the handful of tables and chairs in the center of the room were nearly empty. A fire burned cheerily in the hearth to the right. At the back, an open doorframe revealed a cramped but clean kitchen.

A short, slim woman of middling years emerged from the kitchen with a steaming meat pie balanced on a wooden tray.

“Good evening to ye,” she said, nodding at Niall and Mairin as she moved through the tables. She set the tray onto the table in front of one of the other patrons, then faced them. “I’m Gwen, the proprietress of the Lamb and Thistle. What can I do for ye? A hot meal, mayhap?”

“A room, if you have one,” Niall replied. He didn’t bother trying to hide his English accent. This close to the border, he wasn’t as out of place as he was in the Highlands. If aught, Mairin would stand out more, her lilting Scottish inflection far more pronounced than Gwen’s soft Lowland accent.

“Aye, we do indeed,” Gwen replied, wiping her hands on her apron and patting down her light brown hair. Her keen brown eyes moved over them. “Would that be one room, or two?”

“One,” Niall replied quickly. “My wife wouldn’t have it any other way.” He gave Gwen a smile and slipped his arm around Mairin’s waist. She stiffened but didn’t pull away from him.

“Dearie,” Mairin muttered through clenched teeth. “Dinnae embarrass me.” Niall hoped Gwen took her sharp-edged tone as the reprimand of a modest bride rather than a warning from a trained warrior.

At Mairin’s voice, Gwen blinked and glanced between the two of them once more. “An Englishman and a Highland lass, wedded?”

“Aye,” Niall said before Mairin could answer. He pulled her closer still. “Sometimes not even the greatest obstacles can stand in the way of love.”

Niall slid Mairin a surreptitious look, silently willing her to continue playing along. To his surprise, though, he found her gray eyes clouded with confusion.

Was she as shocked as he was that he’d used the word love so casually? He had never let himself form those letters, not even in the privacy of his own mind, when it came to Mairin. Yet he’d be damned if it didn’t feel good to stand beside her, tuck her under his arm, and call her his wife. Mayhap too good.

“That is a lovely sentiment,” Gwen said, drawing Niall’s attention. Her crisp, matter-of-fact demeanor had melted slightly and she was smiling kindly at them. “Gives me hope, it does. We could use more of that here in the Borderlands, especially in trying times like these.”

“Aye,” one of the other patrons said, raising his mug of ale at them.

“Hear, hear,” a second man called in an accent that was more English than Scottish.

At the sound of the man’s voice, Mairin jumped and pressed into Niall’s side. A flash of warmth shot through him at the fact that she’d moved closer to him on instinct. Quickly, though, he smothered the longing that followed. It was time to get Mairin out of this common room.

“Thank you,” Niall said smoothly. “It is good to be among people who see the virtue in our union. I would linger and share a mug of ale with you all, but my wife is weary from our travels.”

Gwen caught Niall’s pointed words quickly.

“Of course. A room. And mayhap a meal brought to ye as well?”

“Aye, that would be perfect.”

She waved for them to follow her and headed toward a hallway tucked into the back corner of the common room.

“We’ve left our horses with your lad in the stables,” Niall commented as they walked down the dim hall.

Gwen nodded over her shoulder. “Samuel will take good care of yer animals. I’ll have him leave yer saddlebags outside yer door so that ye neednae head into the snow again.”

“Thank ye,” Mairin murmured. She cast a glance back toward the common room as if assuring herself that no one was following them.

Niall thought quickly. “If it is available, could we have the room at the end, away from any others?”

Gwen gave him an amused look before continuing on all the way to the end of the corridor. “Newlyweds, are ye?” the proprietress commented with a barely repressed grin.

Niall cleared his throat to avoid having to answer. Was it a trick of the low light, or was Mairin blushing?

When they’d reached the end of the hallway, Gwen halted and pushed open the door. She stepped aside to allow them in.

Like the rest of the inn, it was small but clean and well-kept. A bed just wide enough for two was pushed into one corner. Opposite the bed was a hearth with a fire laid and ready to be lit. A table, chairs, and a washbasin and matching pitcher filled out the furnishings.

“I’ll bring a tray shortly, but I’ll leave it outside so that I dinnae disturb ye,” Gwen said with a wink.

“Thank you.” Niall pressed several coins into the proprietress’s hand before the woman slipped out, closing the door softly behind her.

When he turned to face Mairin, he girded himself for her anger, or at least a narrow-eyed glare for passing them off as married without so much as proposing the idea first.

Instead, she was crouched before the hearth, fumbling with two flint stones as she tried to light the fire. With the room’s single shutter closed against the storm outside, once Gwen had closed the door, they’d been cast in near-darkness.

There was still enough light for Niall to make out the tautness of Mairin’s shoulders and the trembling of her hands, however. In two swift strides he was to her. He knelt, closing his hand over both of hers.

“Let me.”

“B-be quick about it,” she said. “It…it is freezing in here.”

But Niall knew her voice hadn’t hitched from cold. It was yet another crack in Mairin’s armor, one which she’d fought to hide over the last sennight. If they hadn’t been forced into such close proximity, he likely never would have noticed.

She was afraid of the dark.

Niall plucked the flint stones from her shaking fingers and deftly struck them together. A shower of sparks rained down on the dry kindling laid in the hearth. Several splinters caught, and flames bloomed and spread quickly.

She rocked back onto her heels, exhaling. When he handed her the flint stones, her eyes lingered on him, guarded and assessing. He carefully kept his face neutral under her scrutiny. It was obvious she didn’t want him to know, didn’t want him to notice what she likely considered a weakness or a flaw. Aye, she was too proud to admit it, but she was afraid.

Pretending interest in their room, he rose and looked around once more. He found a candlestick in a holder on the mantle over the hearth and decided to light it as well. Between the candle and the fire, the room was now cheerily bright.

He turned to find her cast in a soft golden glow. She’d taken off her cloak and draped it over the end of the bed closest to the fire. Without it, he could make out her lithe, gently curved figure.

Her eyes were a nigh-translucent gray in the flickering light. The centers were dark with uncertainty as she watched him, waiting.

It wasn’t until then that it truly hit him.

They were to share this room, which held little more than a bed.

Alone.

Niall swallowed. Aye, this had been his plan. And he’d apparently made a grave miscalculation.