The Highlander's Honorable Savior (Iron Of The Highlands Series) Page 9

  “I see,” he said. “Well…you reckon we have enough mushrooms for today?”

  “I think so,” Bonnie murmured, feeling grateful to him for having changed the subject so swiftly.

  “Well, then,” Arthur chuckled. “We should clean them and take them back to our pious brother there, and then we’ll be able to set off on our journey. I hope that he’s packing some of that bread for us to take along.”

  Bonnie distracted herself with washing the pickings, clearing the dirt from around the delicate gills beneath the wide brims of the mushrooms. She could smell the damp scent of them and it reassured her, calming her nerves. Here in the forest, there were no sounds except the noise of the stream and, sometimes, the soft call of a bird.

  Glancing over at Arthur, she found that he, too, was busy with his work. She snatched the odd glance at him, wondering about his past. He must, she guessed, be about three and twenty years old, maybe a bit more. He was broad-shouldered and muscled in a way that was unusual even in soldiers. She found herself wondering what he had done for all those years in France.

  “What did you do?” she asked, surprised to hear her own voice asking the question. “When you reached France, I mean?”

  “Well, got onto the same ship and sailed back,” Arthur chuckled. “I was accepted in the crew of the ship I sneaked away in. They let me work my way up to position of second-mate. I stayed there for a year, then changed to another ship. After a few years, I decided to settle myself down.”

  “In Scotland?” Bonnie raised a skeptical brow. He seemed a stranger to the country, despite the fact that he was obviously born here to judge from his ease with language.

  “On the Continent,” Arthur jerked his head towards the trees, which lay to the East of them. “I reckoned it would be better there. Better wages, more work…another way of living.” He sighed. He had a faraway look in his eyes, and it seemed he was recalling details of the life he’d had so far away from here.

  “What’s it like?” Bonnie asked, feeling curious. She would never have imagined being this far from Lowfield, never mind another country! The thought of it seemed as if he was opening doors in her mind, possibilities she would never have known about before.

  “Noisy,” Arthur chuckled. “Busy. Merchants everywhere. You wouldn’t believe it. On market day, it made the monks singing prayers look like they were whispering.”

  Bonnie giggled. “Really?”

  “Yes. The markets…so big. You could spend a day walking around the stalls and not have seen everything,” Arthur told her. “The colors! Silks from so far east it takes two years to reach them. And the smells. Roasted chestnuts, covered with ginger.” His voice was wistful.

  “Ginger?” Bonnie frowned. She didn’t recognize the word.

  “A kind of spice,” Arthur said airily.

  Bonnie shot him a look, trying to let him know that this was hardly helping. She didn’t know what a spice was, either. She was about to ask him if it was an herb of some sort, when he smiled at her.

  “You look so beautiful, right now,” he said.

  Bonnie gaped at him. She felt her jaw drop open and she closed it, feeling shy. Had she really heard him correctly? She felt a strange creeping sensation over her skin, a response to something so wholly incredible that she didn’t know if she could fathom it.

  Beautiful? Me?

  It made no sense. Bonnie had never actually seen herself in a mirror – such things were far too costly, the premise of nobles and priests. The only time she had ever caught a glimpse of herself was in a pool of water on a windless morning. She guessed that was about two years ago. She cast her mind back, trying to remember what the reflection had looked like. All she could remember was dark eyes.

  And I hate my nose.

  Mrs. Marlaw had always said she had a nose like a misshapen beetroot and she had believed her for her whole life. She remembered the last time she’d looked at herself, but she couldn’t recall what her nose really looked like. This reflection showed only an uncertain blob in the middle of her face and she reached up to touch it, feeling her cheeks get hot with shame.

  When she caught his gaze, Arthur was staring at her. He had a hesitant smile. “What, lass?” he said.

  “Nothing. Brother Pious will be waiting.”

  Her voice scratched in her throat. She lifted her bag, getting uncertainly to her feet. Her eyes filled with tears as she suddenly realized he was probably just playing with her, telling her she was beautiful when she really wasn’t. That would be horrid!

  She sniffed, wanting to cry. He had never made sense to her, and now he was confusing her all the more. She wanted to get out of here and back to the Highlands as soon as she possibly could, away from him.

  “Lass?” he said gently. She looked up into his kind eyes.

  “It’s getting late,” she said firmly. “The carter will be leaving soon. He reminded us of it at least twice, so if we miss the chance, we’re the ones who’re just stupid.”

  “Lass,” Arthur said gently. “Why did it upset you so much, what I said? You are beautiful. You are, that’s all I meant to tell you.”

  “I’m not.” Her voice sounded petulant, even to her ears. She sniffed, frightened that she was going to cry. “I’m hard and pinch-faced and I have a nose like a beetroot.” She covered her mouth with her hands. Just saying that made her start to sob.

  To her astonishment, Arthur started to laugh. “Lass,” he said gently. “You are beautiful. Have you ever looked at a reflection of yourself?”

  “Once,” Bonnie muttered. “I don’t really remember.” She turned away, feeling impatient. Strode off ahead to the place where they’d come down the hill into the clearing. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder.

  He said nothing.

  When he didn’t follow her to the head of the path, she turned around, shooting him an impatient stare. “We’re going to be late.”

  “We have half an hour before midday, I reckon,” Arthur replied easily. “Lass…there’s a pool here, still enough to see. Go and take a look in it? Trust me. Please?”

  Bonnie looked up at him suspiciously. He looked back and she could see no dissembling in that gentle gaze. She took a deep breath.

  “Very well,” she agreed. “But only to make you hurry back. I don’t want to miss the trip.”

  “Very well,” he agreed.

  Bonnie went to the pool and looked in. The surface was still, and she could see the sky reflected at her, a strange mix of watery green and gray. Her face floated there, too, wavering at first and then static, as the wind dropped. She stared.

  Brown eyes, deep and soulful, looked back at her from a pale face. Her cheekbones were high, her chin firm. The face was thin, that much was true, but it was full-lipped, small-boned and delicate, the eyes softening the expression it wore. She stared at the face, feeling something twitch in her heart.

  That isn’t me. I don’t look like that.

  She had once seen a face that looked a little like that in a painting on a wall. Her face was delicate, refined. It wasn’t anything monstrous or repellent, the way Mrs. Marlaw had made her feel.

  “Is that me?” she whispered.

  “It’s not me, sweetness,” Arthur teased. He was kneeling beside her, his own reflection a watery blur.

  She shot him a firm look. He laughed and then grew serious again.

  “It is you,” he said. “You are beautiful, Bonnie. You are.”

  Bonnie swallowed hard. Her eyes were watering – it must be the herbs in the grass, affecting her and making her nose run. It certainly wasn’t that she was crying.

  No, she thought, biting into her lip to stop the tremble of it. She wasn’t going to cry. Not for that.

  “Lass?” Arthur said beside her.

  “Come on,” she said gently. “Let’s go back. The monks are waiting for us to bring them mushrooms for dinner.”

  “Yes,” Arthur said gruffly. “Let’s go.”

  Together they walked up the hill t
owards the priory.

  The Way Ahead

  Arthur glanced behind him to where Bonnie stood in the doorway. They had given Pious the mushrooms and were now loading their meager possessions onto the cart. Dust rose from the floor as they worked, and the scent of hay got in his nose, making him cough. Arthur and Bonnie worked side-by-side without talking. Bonnie had been silent since their discussion at the water’s edge. Arthur wondered why.

  I suppose I must have said something wrong.

  He felt his heart sink into his boot tops. For the life of him, he had no clue what it was that he’d said. All he knew was that the trust that had briefly flowered between them had vanished. Bonnie was as cautious as she had been the previous afternoon.

  He racked his brains for something to say. She was ignoring him, intent on tying her cloak. Her fingers were delicate and tapered, and she tied the knot neatly under her chin.

  “Our friendly carter doesn’t seem to wary of the monks,” Arthur commented to Bonnie. He indicated where the carter stood, just outside the door. The carter, of them all, was far from silent. He was more or less heckling one of the novices who was counting out the wares he’d brought with him.

  “Och, you numbskull! Do they no’ teach monks to count? I brought ten loads of wool,” the carter rebuked loudly. “Why can you no’ reckon my due up properly?”

  “But, sir…two of the bales were spoiled, and…” the novice remarked nervously.

  “Spoiled? Well, that be a matter for you and Mr. Harris, not me.”

  Arthur chuckled at the rage on the carter’s cheerful face. He looked like the sort of man who usually laughed easily and was slow to anger, but every copper coin was clearly a battle worth waging. “A fearsome salesman, that,” he commented.

  Bonnie didn’t seem amused, as Arthur had hoped – glancing over to the scene and then back again, she went back to twisting her fingers in her cloak. “I know.”

  Arthur could sense how upset she was and wished he could do something about it. He looked over at Bonnie’s drawn face and fought the urge to stroke her cheek.

  She’d probably startle like a horse, and who would blame the lass? You have no idea what happened to her.

  He made his hand into a fist, fighting the urge to touch her. He wished she would confide in him, but he knew that was impossible. She barely trusted him as it was.

  He heard booted feet clumping up to the door and looked up at the carter, who hopped into the cart. “Are we ready to go?” he asked.

  Arthur lifted one shoulder. “I reckon.”

  Bonnie was staring at the cold stone floor under their feet. He stood closer to her, hoping that she wasn’t too afraid of Miller to make the journey feasible. She hadn’t seemed like she was, but now he wasn’t sure.

  “Well, then.” Mr. Miller continued. “We’re heading down into the valley. I reckon, if the weather holds, we’ll reach McDowell’s farm before nightfall.”

  “Good,” Arthur nodded. He turned to Bonnie, ready to lift her up into the back of the cart, but she was already climbing on. Her booted foot wedged in the slats around the side, she hauled herself over the boards and onto the flat boards of the back. Her body was lithe and she slid up and into the back swiftly, her neat buttocks poised a moment at the edge of the cart and then over, before he could even register the motion. She looked up at him, chin tilted.

  Well. That’s all well and good.

  Arthur wanted to laugh at the swift, neat movement and her defiant face. He didn’t want her to see his smile, lest she interpret it as a mocking grin. It was far from it, but he wasn’t about to risk offending her again.

  “Let’s go,” he murmured to nobody in particular.

  “Hurry up,” Miller said by way of reply, jerking on the reins and waiting for the horse to move forward. The cart moved fractionally closer to the gate and Arthur hoisted himself up into the back.

  Bonnie was sitting in the corner and he was an inch away from her, close enough to feel the exciting warmth of her body against him. The back smelled of hay and the slight musty scent of uncured sheep’s wool. He breathed in and felt his nose tickled by the smell and tried not to sneeze.

  “Alright, lass?” he said gently as the cart jostled down the slope toward the rutted track.

  “Aye,” Bonnie whispered.

  She looked only a little more relaxed than she had, Arthur noticed. He felt a pang of worry and resisted the urge to rest a hand on her shoulder. Sitting this close to her gave him the opportunity to study her more closely. She was, he noticed, dressed in a new gown. She had been wearing the gray cloak over the top, so he hadn’t noticed it. Now, his eyes drank in the beauty of her eagerly.

  The gown was gray or dark blue. It was stretched across her small bust, a little tight for her he thought. Nevertheless, it served to accent the sweet curve of her chest and the narrow plane of her waist. Arthur fought the urge to hold her firm against his body, his lips pressing eagerly to hers. He wanted her with an aching longing that gripped every part of his body.

  She makes me want her as nothing has ever done before.

  Arthur made his hands into fists by his sides, trying to resist the urge to touch her. He had known several women when he lived on the Continent, but he had never felt the overwhelming longing that Bonnie made him feel. More than that, he felt a closeness to her that made longing into a new feeling, something complex and beautiful.

  Almost as if she guessed he was thinking about her, Bonnie turned to look at him. He felt his heart stop. The depths of her brown eyes drew him in, as if he could fall into them. Her face was chiseled sharp with maltreatment, which marred her beauty only a little. Her lips were twisted in an ironic smile. He guessed that, with a few days of good food, she would blossom into truly breathtaking loveliness.

  “Arthur?” she said, her voice a puzzled whisper.

  “Yes?” he frowned. There was, he thought tenderly, no need for whispering. The carter was friendly enough. He was certainly not the sort of man to betray them to the soldiers. Only that morning, Arthur had listened while he regaled the monks with tales of the terrible English folk and how the conflict was ruining his sales.

  “I think perhaps we should leave at the first stop.” Bonnie indicated the driver with a brief nod.

  Arthur frowned. She looked afraid. He cast a glance over at the driver, wondering if she had noticed something that he hadn’t.

  Miller was leaned forward in the seat, the reins loosely gripped, his posture utterly at ease. He had a faint smile on his face, as if he was amused at his companions’ expense. He was a vaguely annoying sort – full of big smiles and ingratiating ways. Yet dangerous? Arthur couldn’t see that.

  Whist, lad…you ought to know better by now – she guessed those men were soldiers, you know.

  He sighed inwardly. He had to acknowledge that Bonnie’s suspicions had been right thus far. The men in the forest had been their enemies, exactly as she had suspected. He nodded to her.

  “I reckon you’re right,” he mouthed.

  He was pleasantly surprised when Bonnie smiled. Brief, the flash of grin was gone before he could have said he’d seen it. All the same, it warmed his heart as nothing else had done.

  He waited as the cart rolled down the track, heading out of the dense forest and down a slight incline.

  “We’re going downhill now,” the driver informed them as they rattled and bumped along the pathway.

  “Aye,” Arthur said, gritting his teeth at the self-evident news. “I reckon I noticed.”

  The driver chuckled and Arthur sighed. Given this or being a stowaway on a trading boat, he’d have chosen the ship as soon as sneeze. He hated land travel at the best of times, and being confined to the back of a wool-scented cart was as ignominious a way of moving overland as he could imagine. He wished he could ride.

  That’s a fine hope, lad.

  The thought was its own amusement. Riding took years of training, and only people rich enough to have a horse or ready to spend their li
ves becoming squires and then, if they survived the training to become knights, would learn it.

  Arthur glanced over at Bonnie, but she was sitting upright, tense and nervous, and he decided not to disturb her with a comment on the state of the roads. He amused himself instead with imagining what life might have been like, had he done as Brewer, one of the village boys, had done, and sneaked off to become a squire.

  If you’d done that, you wouldn’t have been in Dunbar. And then you wouldn’t be here.

  He smiled to himself, glancing sideways at Bonnie. She was looking down at her skirt, hands resting on her knees. She had gone pale, and he could see the delicate blue touch of veins at her throat. His mouth went dry and he longed to kiss her.

  There were no knights, he thought, in all of Europe, who were as lucky as he felt in this moment.

  “Knights can hang,” he muttered to himself. “They don’t have her so close.”

  He hadn’t realized he spoke audibly, until Bonnie turned around and looked at him, an odd expression on her face.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I said…not long before we stop, now.” He saw her give another odd look but bent his head and hoped that she couldn’t see the warm blush that flooded his cheeks.

  “Aye,” Bonnie said, but her skeptical glance told him that she didn’t actually believe that was what he’d said. “So it is.”

  They stopped a few minutes later. The day was darker than it had been, the clouds low and promising rain. Arthur looked at Bonnie, and she nodded.

  “Thank you,” Arthur said politely to the carter. “We’ll be getting off now.”

  “No, you won’t,” the carter said, fixing him with a hard look. “This isn’t McDowell’s place.”

  “I know,” Arthur said softly. “But we want to get off now, since we’ve stopped here.” He kept his tone relaxed, but he saw that his words made the driver angry. His face puckered with a frown. His smile stayed in place, but it was less than engaging now.

  “The monks paid me to take you to McDowell,” he said stubbornly. “That’s what I’m doing. I know your sort. You’ll go straight back to the monks and tell them I didn’t do my job and you want the money. That’s your game, aye?”