The Shadow 0f Her Smile (Highlander Heroes Book 3) Page 11

  Annand gave the impression that he was a man who preferred to escape notice. While his eyes showed an intensity and, Jamie judged, an intelligence, he dressed with a mind toward blending in, rather than being noticed. Goody returned to his seat on the bench and Annand followed, only showing a minimal faltering, from which he recovered swiftly enough, as he spied Ada’s face.

  Roger handled much of the conversation with Annand, to gauge his willingness to abet the cause while Jamie observed, trying to ferret out the person he was. William Wallace just could not be too careful.

  While Ada had conversed rather easily with Roger, she was quiet now, her hands in her lap, the plentiful fare forgotten. It occurred to Jamie, surely as it had to her, which had her suddenly stiff and downcast, that she was drawing attention. The inn teemed with scores of people and pulling his gaze from Annand showed many of these casting what they supposed were hidden peeks at her. It was not to be avoided; from afar, one would be rather entranced by her shining hair and beguiling lips, perhaps the shape of her eyes as well. It was those who drew near, or sat close, that noticed the detail of her face. One woman, sitting across the aisle from them, had grimaced crossly at Ada before requesting that her traveling companion trade seats with her, undoubtedly so she wasn’t faced with Ada’s visage. Jamie gnashed his teeth together and wanted to get Ada out of there, though knew that he could not, yet. Completely ignoring their guest and this mission, Jamie reached his hand under the table and wrapped it around Ada’s in her lap. Uncaring who watched, he leaned over and put his lips directly at her ear, felt her stiffen more, until he whispered, “Dinna you lower your head, Ada Moncriefe. You are the most beautiful woman here.”

  With these words, Ada gave a nervous smile of appreciation, though she did not turn toward him. While he kept his hand clutched around hers, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head, attending again the conversation.

  His hand remained covering hers and he allowed his own shoulders to relax, but this was short-lived. George Goody was speaking to Annand, his head tipped to the side, his words muted. But Jamie heard them, saw him lift his hand and point to Ada.

  “Ye want that for all your womenfolk? That’s what the supporters of Longshanks do to ‘em. Likely more, that we canna see.”

  Roger, appearing nearly as furious as Jamie, his eyes stricken with some horrified expression, swiveled his head swiftly to Goody, while Jamie’s hand upon Ada’s tightened with his rage.

  “They hanged her, least some of the time,” Goody said, his eating knife suspended over one of the platters. He pointed again at Ada. “Show ‘im yer neck.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Roger of Balweny intoned, his voice chilly. “At any rate, we must wrap this up. MacKenna, would you mind collecting our mounts?”

  Unable to control the curl of his lip, knowing if he remained he would likely kill Goody, Jamie nodded tightly and rose, pulling Ada along with him. He made a curt farewell to Annand, supposing they would meet again, and steered Ada ahead of him with his hand at the small of her back. Bless the lass, but she held her head high as she navigated the many tables and benches and chairs. She even stopped at the door, so that Jamie moved forward and swung it open for her, as if only her minion. Good for her, he thought, even as he seethed still over the dastardly and unscrupulous tactic Goody had employed.

  Outside, she did not stop but walked across the well worn road, to where they’d left the horses with a lad.

  “Is that why you didn’t want me to accompany you to the inn?” She asked, even as she continued walking, her gait so stiff as to have Jamie supposing she might snap in two if he but touched her again. “Did you know he was going to use me like that?”

  “I did no,” he ground out. “Under no circumstance is that acceptable. I will address this with Goody.”

  Jamie flipped a coin to the barefooted and unclean lad as they neared him. Ada stopped just next to Jamie’s destrier. He was aware that she drew a deep breath before turning around to face him.

  “I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me, when Sir William proposed that I accompany you, that I hadn’t truly been in a public place since... Dornoch.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Lass, you ken, it’s only the people who matter who should be given any of your thoughts. You do no need to concern yourself with strangers and what they see or think or even say.”

  She surprised him by waving a hand at this, appearing more resolute than troubled. “I agree. Yet it was still awkward. I’d like not to repeat it, I think.”

  “Aye.”

  Roger and Goody exited the inn then and while Ada’s lack of proper distress had calmed him, Jamie still snarled at Goody as he neared.

  Roger pursed his lips as he strode past, toward his horse. “Imbecile,” he muttered, shaking his head, glaring at Goody even after he’d found his seat in the saddle.

  They rode almost a mile to where Wallace and the others waited. Roger dismounted quickly and strode to Wallace, to give him the details of their meeting with Annand. The man had an army of almost five hundred, and he was monied, to afford more if Wallace delighted. Thus, the meeting had proved fruitful. Jamie just wished it hadn’t come with such disrespect to Ada.

  Leaving Ada on the horse, Jamie swung down and approached Goody, who’d dismounted as well. Towering over the much shorter man, Jamie thumped his finger into Goody’s shoulder.

  “Never—never!—use Ada thusly again.” He hadn’t shouted, but his tone was chilling and his stance intimidating, that Goody rather recoiled, his face pinched with dread. “She is no a propaganda tool, to be treated so,” Jamie growled. “I’ll slit your throat if you ever dare mistreat her again. And keep your fucking eyes off her, do you understand me?”

  Goody’s mouth gaped, showing what lack of hygiene had done to his teeth, and he nodded with some fright, even as he dared to say, “But it’s so perfect, her face all messed up like that—”

  Jamie saw red and slugged him, threw his fist right across his face, and now roared, “I just fucking said you will no mistreat her!”

  The man hit the ground, scrambling away, one hand held up defensively. Jamie loomed over the little man until he nodded again, this time knowing better than to open his mouth.

  Still scowling, Jamie pivoted, brushing past Wallace, who’d likely come to intervene.

  He didn’t lift his gaze to Ada until he was almost upon her. Abruptly, he pulled her off the horse, ignoring her aghast expression, and took her hand to lead her away from the attentive onlookers. Jamie led Ada over a small knoll and down to the river, only releasing her hand when they stood just at the water’s edge.

  He pressed his hands onto his hips and said while he stared out over the muddy river, “I apologize for that—” just as Ada murmured, with the hint of a question in her voice, “Thank you.” This made him bark out a short laugh, though he found nothing funny, was still antagonized by his fury.

  He squatted and scooped up water in his hands, throwing it onto his face and swishing it around his mouth. He stood and flicked his hands and spit out the water, back into the river.

  With about as much levity as he supposed he’d ever noticed in Ada Moncriefe, he heard her say behind him, “Your knuckles will be scraped raw if you attack every person who stares at my face.”

  Jamie turned. The barest hint of a smile hovered about her, curving her very tempting lips. “’Twas no so much for the staring but for his performance at the inn.”

  She knew this, and nodded, leaving her serene expression to offer still her appreciation. She stood with one hand folded over the other at her front, her eyes riveting while they regarded him so thoughtfully. The scars did nothing, truly, to take away from the fact that she was exquisite, her skin otherwise creamy, her lips pink and full and inviting. She’d tied her hair up at her nape, showing her long and slender neck, where her cloak now fell away.

  Her lips drew his attention again and he strode with purpose toward her. She neither backed away nor showed a
ny sense of retreating, even as he did not stop until his boots met the hem of her skirt, even as his gaze surely alerted her of his intent. Without preamble, he placed a hand on each side of her face and drew his thumbs along the line of her scars, and he made no effort to diminish the smoldering desire of his gaze while she kept hers locked on his.

  And then he kissed her.

  ADA SUPPOSED SHE SHOULD have expected the kiss. Why else would he have put his hands on her as he had? And what else might she have read in that blazing look he’d given her? But no, she was still very shocked when his firm and warm lips touched hers.

  She gasped silently. He stopped but did not retreat. Waited. Ada swallowed and breathed again. His lips touched hers once more. It wasn’t intentional that her eyes fluttered closed; they seemed only to sigh and drift downward. He moved his mouth back and forth. She felt his breath against her face, was aware of a great turbulence inside her belly.

  She kissed him back and clung to his forearms.

  “Open for me,” he said against her lips, using his thumb to draw down her jaw while his tongue licked her mouth. She did open, not sure why, and then his tongue was inside her mouth, engaged with hers, and Ada felt her knees weaken. She’d had no idea that the tongue was involved with kissing and felt instantly that this was both carnal and exciting. He moved his mouth over hers, sending delicious sensations swirling about her.

  She liked it very much but was still fairly shocked at her own eager response, and then was quite sad when he stopped, when his mouth left hers, so that only their ragged breaths touched now.

  “I’ve never been kissed before,” she breathed.

  He set her away from him, letting his hands fall away from her, but with a look about him that said he didn’t want to let her go, perhaps only believed it was something he should do.

  “You can no say those words ever again.”

  It took Ada a moment, and a poor reading of his very handsome face, for her to realize he meant that now she had been kissed and the words were no longer necessary, or truth.

  “Yes,” was her very un-clever response to that. To her own ears, her voice, even raspy still, held a dreamy and delicate quality.

  This produced a smile in him, which shocked her nearly as much as his kiss had. Jamie MacKenna was indeed a very handsome man, but now, with his smile, he was absolutely beautiful. Ada had never seen him smile and was made almost breathless again at this sight. It transformed him, showed him as extremely approachable—almost boyish—removing all traces of hardness and sorrow.

  “You should do that more often,” she murmured, captivated by the change his smile had wrought.

  His lips curved more, looked downright devilish. “Kiss you?”

  She was innocent yet to understand the nuance of flirting, and answered honestly, “Smile. You should smile more.”

  He appeared unperturbed that she seemingly preferred his smile to his kiss and pressed, “Mayhap more kissing will instigate more smiling.”

  This, being so blatantly manipulative, made Ada blurt out a giggle. She covered her mouth with her hand and stared at him, realizing she liked everything about this circumstance very much. His kiss was splendid, and she hoped there might be more, indeed. She enjoyed as well how she felt right now, light and bubbly and rather carefree.

  Maybe it was the matching ease written so plainly on their faces, or the lack of the anger that had driven them away from the group, that lifted William Wallace’s brow upon their return. Or mayhap, it was only Ada shyly stealing glances at Jamie MacKenna that twitched the great warriors mouth with some pleased expression.

  Belatedly, Ada remembered the scraps she’d tucked away for the giant man, and presented these to him quite happily, having no idea that her lips, indeed her entire face showed very clearly that she’d been kissed quite spectacularly. She smiled at Wallace and accepted his thanks, assuming the smile he returned was borne only of appreciation and not also of awareness.

  Chapter Ten

  Because of his own lighter mood, and because the impression of Ada’s lips against his own was still unmistakably discerned, Jamie left off growling again at George Goody when they joined the group again. They would remain here, near Aberdeen, until Annand showed himself to meet personally with Wallace. Roger had assured Wallace of the man’s cleverness and fervor, which served as a suitable endorsement to Wallace.

  Ada excused herself to duck off into the brush quite a distance away from the lounging circle of men after she’d shared her bounty with Wallace. Jamie watched her leave, wondering at his complete lack of remorse for having kissed her—and then wondered at his questioning this lack. Why should he feel remorse? Remorse for what? The kiss had been brilliant, had stirred in him something he’d assumed long dead, something he’d thought he’d buried with his wife many years ago, mayhap even before that. He examined how long he might have been thinking of kissing her. It seemed not something that had crashed into him suddenly today, only something that had been building up, whether he’d recognized it or not.

  “Roger enlightened me about your cause with Goody,” William Wallace said.

  Jamie startled, caught unawares by Wallace, who stood just beside him. He’d not heard him approach. Jamie sighed. It had not been his intention to cause any dissention and he said as much to Wallace, but justified, “It was wrong, what he did.”

  “I agree, lad,” said Wallace, though he wasn’t more than a decade older than Jamie. ‘I’d not have insisted the lass go into Aberdeen had I’d known he would have used methods so disheartening.”

  Jamie waved off his concern. He would never suspect Wallace of being behind that sort of behavior. “’Tis done, and I’m sure he’ll no repeat it—I’ll no allow it.”

  Wallace shifted just slightly, to put his gaze onto the spot where Ada had disappeared. “Amazing—a woman scarred like that, all that violence so visible upon her person, and all a man can see is her beauty. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, she is,” Jamie responded automatically and glanced sharply at Wallace to see that he’d been caught in one of his little games, making a statement as such, to elicit the response he sought, which answered any questions he might have had. Jamie could not help but smirk at Wallace, who clapped a big hand on his shoulder and chuckled as he so rarely had cause to do.

  “Aye, Jamie MacKenna, if the lass’s eye strayed at all from you, I trow I’d give it my best.”

  Wallace was still chuckling as Ada returned, and even as Simon Annand showed himself in their provisional camp.

  First thing Jamie noted upon her return was that her gaze was shy now. She rolled her lips inward, and he was struck by the idea that she did so to keep from smiling. Holding back his own grin, in pleased reaction to this, he advised her that he needed to be at Wallace’s side now. At her nod, he followed Wallace away toward Annand.

  ADA UNDERSTOOD AT ONCE, as they mounted to ride again almost an hour later, that since Jamie MacKenna had kissed her, everything was changed. Simply riding with him, seated before him, was beheld in a completely different context now. Yesterday, she’d sat before him, happy for the security of his arm around her, and the warmth of his chest against her. She’d kept her hand atop his while they were on horseback, to steady herself. Today, the heat she felt at her back was more charged as Ada was aware of each part of her that was pressed against him. The hand around her middle was now familiar and intimate, it seemed; her hand settled atop his stirred with a fantastic awareness of his skin beneath her.

  That evening, when they camped again, Wallace outlined for everyone Annand’s commitment to their cause. “He will meet us in three months’ time,” said Wallace, pulling meat from the bones of a rabbit as they gathered around the fire, “with numbers in the hundreds.”

  “Where next?” Asked a man simply called Crumb. Within this group, Crumb talked the most. He was wiry, both in personality and appearance, his voice scratchy and his face and body bristly and muscular. Ada had never encountered a more chatt
y man, who never had so much to say, only liked to hear words, or his own voice, Ada reckoned. But she liked him, as he seemed always to be of good cheer.

  “North still,” Wallace answered.

  Roger expounded, “The MacBriar has agreed to meet with us.”

  Ada supposed this was how it was done, how Wallace had amassed supporters over the years, meeting face to face to rally patronage, using only his persuasive voice and his personal dogma that Scotland should only and ever be free, no matter the cost.

  When the bones of a half dozen hares had been tossed into the low burning fire, Ada excused herself and found her way to the river’s edge. She rinsed her hands in the water and then chose to sit a while, intent on watching the sun set across the river, over the gray and green capped hills in the distance. It did not compare to the beach at Stonehaven, but it was peaceful, the only sounds being the honks and hinks of some pink-footed geese floating upon the water.

  To her mind, it seemed it had been longer than only a couple of days since she’d left Stonehaven. She hoped that Jamie had spoken truth when he’d said they’d get back there one day. As if conjured by her very thought, Jamie came to the river then. As Ada had done, he washed his hands in the water and then sat beside her on the brownish-green grass, his palms on the ground behind him.

  “The MacBriars who were mentioned are within a day’s ride to Aviemore,” he told her. “I said to Wallace we’d part ways there. I need to call in my own army, to be ready for Wallace’s summons.”

  “Is the MacKenna army very large?”

  “Decent enough,” he allowed. “Half what it used to be, before Falkirk and all these years of warring.”

  “When was the last time you were home?”

  “Been almost a year, I guess.”

  “Do you miss being home?”

  He shook his head. “There is little to draw or keep me there.”

  “Is Aviemore very large? Don’t the people need their laird?”