Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (26 page)

He had little doubt that Vika had simply
strayed off to meddle and pry into things that were of no business
of her own, as was her way and, ‘twas almost certain, out of her
own boredom. He’d wager she was even now not far from where they
stood. However, Morgana would not be eased, as she evidently
believed it a much too rare occurrence for Vika to not at least
return from her wanderings to join them for the meal.

And now, he’d been sent on the mission of
finding her. He ground his teeth, but did as his wife bade, for he
was more concerned for her and their babe’s health than he was
worried for Vika and what e’er mischief she might brew by poking
her nose where it didn’t belong. Let the meddling creature miss a
meal for her misbehavior. ‘Twould serve her right. Especially after
the mortifying lyrical affair she’d teased him into performing for
his wife last eve. He felt a flame of humiliation spread from his
gut to his cheeks. Aye, it had not been long into his awkward song
and his wife’s dancing eyes and pursed, amused lips, that he’d
known for sure he’d been deviled and tricked by his trouble-making
ex-lover for her own wicked amusement.

Although…. Now that he thought more on the
matter, his wife
had
slept much more peacefully, with barely
a stir against his side the remainder of the night, so ‘twas
possible
, he grudgingly supposed, that Vika had, in fact,
given him good advice, even if ‘twas not her original intent.

Robert blew out a gruff sigh and shook his
head as his feet moved down the steps of the keep and into the
courtyard. He scanned the perimeter, but all was quiet. Everyone
else
was having their meal.

But not him.

Nay. Not him.

His stomach growled.

Then
he
growled.

Vexing woman!

But. He loved his wife, and she was awaiting
her meal as well. Which both spurred him onward, and angered him
even more at Vika’s antics.

Dark clouds had rolled in o’er the last
minutes, hiding the sun, and turning the daylight to dusk, but
again, he looked all about him, this time making a slow turn as
well. The wind whipped at his face, and he felt the first drop of
rain splash upon his cheek. He gave it a rough swipe and growled
low in his throat.
Where in the name of Christ the Lord and all
his disciples would she have wandered away to?
That was when
his gaze snagged on the original keep his great-grandfather had
built in, so the legend told, only a day, to stake his claim and
fortify his position as King David’s proxy in this region.

* * *

Somewhere between dream and waking, Vika
struggled to free herself from the torpor in her limbs and eyelids
that held her, like leaden weight, unmoving and unseeing. She
floated, yet she knew she touched the cool ground, for it pressed
into her cheek, her hip, her thigh and knee. Trying to think around
the ache in her head, and knowing in her very center that she must
not stay much longer as she was if her babe had any hope of
surviving—if
she
had any hope of surviving—she at last
captured and clung to a word, a phrase:
Help me!

It took all the strength, the will, she had
to form the words on her tongue, to force the sound from her
throat, and after several tries, she was at last successful.

Unfortunately, what erupted was no more than
a mere whisper and moan.

After lying silent, after forcing her
muscles to relax, chiding her throat to do so as well, in another
moment, she rallied her vigor once again and this time, her voice
was much stronger. Now understanding what she must do, she relaxed
again, built her strength again, and waited, again, to send up
another cry for aid.
Surely, ‘twould not be long now.
Surely.

* * *

Robert almost didn’t find her. In fact, he’d
made the decision as he trudged toward the scarred and crumbled
opening to the old keep that this would be his last stop on this
bootless errand his wife had sent him on. For Vika was a woman full
grown and, if she wanted to skip a meal, so be it, but he would
not. Nay, he would not. And neither would his breeding wife. So,
after an irritated and perfunctory scan of the unlit, dusty
interior in which only dank and dark met nose and eye, he’d swung
back around and taken no more than a step when his keen warrior’s
hearing registered a distinctly distressed, yet nearly silent,
moan.

He skidded to a halt and listened. In the
next moment, a strained, but recognizable cry for help emerged from
the doorway behind him. A rush of alarm surged in his chest,
tripped, like ice-cold fingers, up his spine and neck. He wheeled
around, jogged through the door and, this time, looked more
closely. “Vika! What hap—”

“Ro—a-ow!”

“Be still,” he said in a rush, hurrying to
her and coming down on his haunches. “You fell down the
stairs?”

“Mmm? I-I know not...I-I remember not...”
she said with little breath and winced with the effort.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked, at the same
time, running his hand o’er her limbs, her frame, looking for
breaks. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

“ ‘I—I’m so glad—” She sucked in a sharp
breath, then, in a pained voice said, “My head. ‘Tis my head. It
pounds so, and I feel wobbly, and quite sick.”

Robert’s lips pressed together in worry.
She’d clearly swooned from the injury, and with as many years of
warrioring and tournaments as he’d had, Robert was quite versed in
the dangers that might come from a sound strike to the noggin.
“You’ve hit your head, and ‘tis no doubt jumbled your brain a bit.
I’ll carry you to your chamber, then I’ll fetch the clan’s
healer.”

Vika nodded, then rested back, closing her
eyes.

“Nay!” He tapped her cheek several times
with the pads of his fingers. “You mustn’t sleep, else you may not
waken again.”

She took in a deep breath and gave him a
slow nod. When her eyelids lifted more slowly than they had before,
he knew she was struggling to comply, struggling to do what she
must to survive.

* * *

“Nay, Wife Deirdre, there is no need, I tell
you, to burden my hosts with this worry o’er my childing,” Vika
pressed again, this time, grasping the old woman’s arm, keeping her
beside the bed, where Vika reclined. ‘Twas nearing sext, almost a
full day since the fall, and tho’ her head still pained her, she’d
at last been allowed an uninterrupted night’s sleep, and was now
only mildly sore, with no churning stomach to contend with any
longer. “My babe is well! Even now, it moves within me.” She
splayed the healing woman’s gnarled hand o’er her belly. “Do you
not feel him kick?”

“But m’lady, ye ‘ave ‘ad a very bad tumble,
a hit ta th’ pate, an’ there’s still a danger ta yer babe. I mest
tell me laird o’ yer condition, as was ‘is behest, and as is me
duty ta ‘im.” She pulled free of Vika’s death grip on her hand and
marched toward the door.

“Bu—”

“Rest, m’lady,” Wife Deirdre said o’er her
shoulder as she pulled the door wide, “an’ I sh’ll return wi’ yer
broth in no’ more’n a ‘alf-‘our’s time.”

“B-Bu—” The door closed with a decided snap,
and Vika fell back more fully against the pillows.
Bedevil the
woman!
After seeing Robert’s tender care for Morgana, the way
he doted on her, the way he puffed up like a cock in the roost at
his coming fatherhood, Vika was sure now that once he learned of
her condition, he would storm ‘round like an angry bull, and no
doubt grind into a fine dust her will to keep the identity of the
babe’s father to herself. And Morgana. Vika’s heart sank. Morgana,
who would be the perfect mother—already was, as far as Vika could
see—would ne’er understand Vika’s need to be free of any bond that
would keep her under a man’s control, to give her babe away, into
the gentle care of its fierce and loyal father.

She rolled her head to the side and a sharp
pain pierced her skull. Wincing and squeezing her eyes shut, she
rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. She simply would not tell
them that bit. Opening her eyes, she curled on her side and stared
at the hearthfire. Aye, that would do. And all that would be left
would be for her to dodge Robert’s (and no doubt Morgana’s)
questions. For she knew, she
knew
that if Robert discovered
her plan, he’d conspire with Grímr to hie her back to that damnable
island inhabited by the bold, the possessive, the sometimes raging,
the ofttimes brave and true, summer wanderers of the far north.

* * *

Smoothing her palm o’er Robert’s rigid,
broad back as she climbed the stairs behind him in an effort to
calm his temper, Morgana worried and wondered again what the healer
had said to him regarding Vika that could have put him in such a
fury.

He’d slammed the door to the keep, stormed
toward the stairs, and begun the climb, leaving the poor healer
gawping on the front steps, and putting Morgana in such a shock as
she’d watched his progress across the antechamber to the stairs,
that it had taken her a moment to rush to follow him.

The healer had inquired after Robert’s
whereabouts near a quarter-hour past, and Modron had advised that
he would be found on the training field this morn. Clearly, what
e’er tidings she bore him were not good.
Had Vika not been
following the healer’s advice?
If so, Morgana would stand firm
with her husband, even in his anger.

She had no time to wonder further, for in
that instant, Robert came to Vika’s chamber door and nearly knocked
it off its hinges flinging it open.

Morgana scurried around him and positioned
herself a bit to the side, and several paces from both Robert’s
scowling countenance and Vika’s stunned, yet mutinous, one.

“Is it mine?” he barked, arms akimbo and
feet spread.

Huh?
Morgana’s brows drew together
and she shifted her gaze to her cousin.

Vika’s eyes widened, then narrowed on Robert
before she relaxed back with a slight smile curving her lips,
crossed her arms over her chest, lifted a brow, and returned
Morgana’s gaze with a speculative one of her own. “Why my dear
cousin-in-law, do you not think this a subject we two should
discuss in privy first? I’m sure this is not the way you would have
your breeding wife learn of your bastard bairn.”

Morgana’s breath caught and would not
release, her heart raced, her knees buckled, her head spun. As the
wood-slatted floor sped toward her, darkness enveloped her.

* * *

Vika pulled the comb through her long, black
tresses and gave a small defeated sigh. She felt very bad for
Morgana. Truly, she did. ‘Twas rotten fortune all around that her
childing state had been discovered, and rottener fortune still that
she had been enticed to use Robert’s masculine conceit in his own
virility against him.

In spite of her sore conscience, she
smiled.

Aye, she should have known the man would
immediately jump to that conclusion upon hearing she was breeding.
In truth, the thought that he would do so had ne’er crossed her
mind. Nay, she’d been much more fearful of either her father, or
worse, Grímr, learning of this babe he put inside her before she
could have it and ship it off to him, while keeping herself clear
from both their clutches.

But, now that the idea had been formed, it
seemed the best and surest way of keeping Robert’s infernal,
arrogant meddling at bay long enough for her to heal from her fall
and
get as far away from them
all
as possible.

Recalling the crushed look on Morgana’s
countenance in the brief moment before she fell into a swoon, the
bellowing of Morgana’s name that burst from Robert’s lips as he
rushed to catch her before she hit the unyielding surface, the soft
thud that followed when he was not successful, the evil look he
sent her as he lifted his wife in his arms, and the parting retort
he made upon his swift departure,
“This is not the end of
it,”
sent a spike of guilt into her belly and tingle of cold
dread down her spine.
No matter what he says, what he does, no
matter the misery I’ve caused Morgana, I must not relent.

* * *

Robert leaned forward on his stool when
Morgana’s lids fluttered and her lips parted e’er so slightly in
her sleep. Her cheeks had more color now, which sent a sweep of
relief through his veins and allowed the muscles in his aching
shoulders to relax at last. Clearly, she was dreaming. He only
hoped ‘twas a pleasant repose, and not filled with what e’er
images, whether of the current circumstances they’d found
themselves in, or her violent past, that would distress her and,
therefore, their babe, even further. When she’d roused from her
swoon not long after he’d arrived with her in his arms and settled
her on their marriage bed, and been anxious and upset to the point
that Robert worried for her and his babe’s health, even after he’d
assured her that all would be well, he’d bade the healer give her a
sleeping draught.

Now, he brushed a soft kiss o’er her warm
brow, then, because he felt his own need for comfort as well, he
settled a brief kiss on her parted lips also. After a prolonged
moment, he rested his palm o’er her silken pate, moved his lips
just above her ear, and began to gruffly sing again one of only two
songs he’d e’er learned, and those o’er multitudinous cups of
ale:

“
Nay, young rascal, fondle me
not!

Fer I’ll not share yer lowly cot

Ye—”

The sweet caress of Morgana’s breath blew
against his neck and his heart melted. Without realizing he was
going to do it, his voice, his words changed to a song he’d heard
at court, but had no notion he’d learned, tho’ he altered them a
bit to fit his lady:

“
O! Lovely wench,

Methinks I am lightheaded from love;

Thine locks, the color