The Kissing Stone Read online

  Having tired of tracking and long since assured himself that Finlagh had no watchers out that day, he was heading home through the forest below the southern crag when he heard a feminine cry from above, followed by a dog’s bark.

  Curious, he strode uphill with deceptive speed in near silence until he saw a female, likely the same one he had seen earlier, on the west side of the crag with her skirts rucked up nearly to her bottom, revealing shapely, young-looking bare legs spread far apart in a clearly futile effort to find toeholds.

  The foolish lass had evidently got herself onto one of the crag’s slick spots and was holding herself with one outstretched hand while the other one, like her feet, gently and carefully sought anything to which it might cling. Well below her on the slope two large, visibly nervous wolf dogs watched her.

  The larger one turned its head then with a suspicious look at Will.

  Well acquainted with the ridge, Will knew the danger that lay below her to the east. If she lost her grip, she could fall a few hundred feet.

  As these thoughts and others sped through his mind, he maintained his silence and quickened his pace, keeping a wary eye on the dogs but fearing to speak lest he startle her into losing what purchase she had.

  At least she had had the sense to spread herself out widely against the rock.

  The dog that had been eyeing him began to wag its tail as though approving of his swift approach to its mistress. The other had not shifted its gaze from her.

  A stone slid from under one of Will’s feet and rattled downward.

  Both dogs raised their ears at the sound, but if the lass heard it, she gave no sign. The dogs stayed put, apparently tense yet content to watch him.

  Her legs were very shapely. If her skirt were to shift just an inch higher—

  Briefly shutting his eyes, collecting his wits enough to speak calmly, he looked up at her and said, “I am below you to your left, lass. I’ll not let you fall, so relax into the rock as much as you can and keep patient for a few moments more.”

  She stiffened at his first few words but did not speak. Her head was tilted upward, and she made no attempt to move it, but when he saw her body sink closer to the rock, he knew she was doing her best to relax.

  “Good lass,” he said. “My name is Will, and I’m climbing toward you. Soon I’ll be near enough to get my right foot under your left one.”

  “Stop talking then, and hie yourself,” she said clearly.

  Will grinned, glad to learn that she had spirit.

  She was muttering something else, but he could not make out her words. Nor did he care what they were. He cared only about getting one foot solidly under hers.

  “Mercy, my skirts!” Katy muttered as she heard him coming closer. “Just how much can he see?”

  The man’s voice was calm, though, as if he removed impulsively rebellious young damsels from precipitous granite slopes every day. His voice was soothing, too, making it easy to relax into the rock. Even as that thought crossed her mind, she became aware of shaggy brown hair and broad shoulders a short way to her left and felt the firmness of his much larger bare foot beneath her left one.

  It was warm against hers, comforting. She felt herself going limp with relief.

  “Dinna move yet,” he warned. “I’ve got only my one foot there. If you’ll tilt your chin down some, though,” he added with a touch of humor, “you’ll see me more clearly. When I decide the best way to proceed, I’ll help you come down.”

  “But I don’t want to go down,” she protested, now looking right at him. “Faith, sir, I’ve got this far, I want to see what I can see from the top.”

  She knew nearly everyone for miles around Finlagh by sight, and she could see him well enough now to know he was a stranger. Noting the determined look on his handsome face, and his clear, dark hazel-green eyes and thick, dark lashes, she was certain that, had she seen him before, she would remember him.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I told you, my name is Will, and you have not yet told me yours.”

  “I’m Katy.” She felt a tingling thrill at his wanting to know but hoped he would not ask for more, since he had offered her only one name for himself.

  To her relief, he nodded and said lightly, “Well, Katy, if you do want to get to the top, I’d be fain to help you. It may even prove easier to make our way down the northwest side than to get you safely down off this slope from here. I’m coming right up alongside you now, so dinna take offense when I touch you.”

  “Good sakes, sir, I am not stupid,” she said, wondering why the thought of him touching her had stirred more tingly feelings inside her. “If you can get me off of this devilish slippery rock, I shall be indebted to you forever.”

  “Nae, then, not forever,” he said with a chuckle. “Lasses, in my experience—lads, too, come to that—rarely maintain any such feelings forever. You could easily decide that you want my head on a charger within a sennight.”

  “I could never be so ungrateful,” she retorted.

  “We may just learn the truth of that, given time,” he said, meeting her gaze—nae, capturing it and warming her all through.

  Even so, she was astonished that he could think such a thing of her. Various people—mostly family—had called her thoughtless, impulsive, even rebellious, but she could not recall anyone ever calling her ungrateful, even for small favors.

  And, much as she would hate to admit it to anyone else, considering likely repercussions, this chap had already done her much more than a small favor.

  Watching her, Will knew he had surprised her, but the plain truth was that, if he told her his surname, he was certain it would alter her opinion of him.

  Her manner of speech indicated that she was wellborn and accustomed to getting her own way. Therefore, she had likely come from Castle Finlagh, but whether she was a guest or a family member he could not know. Instinct would plump for her being family were it not for one detail.

  Put simply, the likelihood was small that Fin of the Battles would encourage any daughter of his to wander off by herself, let alone to climb granite peaks. However, as small as that possibility seemed, Will thought it less likely that Fin of the Battles would allow a female guest or servant to do such a thing. Nevertheless, he dared not ask for her family name lest she press him for his.

  Now was no time for unnecessary talk, in any event. She seemed content with silence, so he focused on helping her reach the peak, gently gripping an arm to steady her when necessary and feeling a bit disappointed that she needed help only until they were above the dangerously polished area. She moved deftly then and with confidence up onto the craggy peak, where she cushioned herself with the hinder bits of her kilted-up kirtle and smock underneath her as she sat on a boulder and gazed raptly at the admittedly splendid panorama below.

  Her bare calves were smooth and shapely, and the tops of her bare feet were, too. Their soles were doubtless as tough as his own, though.

  Will scanned the area for Finlagh watchers. His cousin Dae, visiting from the Lowlands, had walked with him along the ridgetop for a short time that morning but had headed home much earlier. So, while de Raite did often keep watch on Castle Finlagh and other estates held by the Mackintosh—or “the Malcolmtosh,” as de Raite and other Comyns, of Badenoch and elsewhere, called him in disdain—Will was confident that he, himself, was the only Raitt man currently on the ridge dividing Raitt lands from Finlagh’s.

  “It is beautiful from here today, is it not?” she said quietly, gazing eastward.

  “Aye,” he replied, studying her. She was older than he had first thought, at least sixteen or seventeen. Her face was smudged, her clothing tattered, but the tatters were, he thought, due mostly to the predicament into which she had got herself. She seemed remarkably composed, considering that he was a stranger.

  She, or likely a maidservant, had plaited
her long, thick, wheat-colored hair into two long plaits, but strands had come loose, and a light breeze across the ridge fluttered the wisps around her oval face.

  She seemed unaware that she might be enjoying the view with an enemy.

  Turning her head toward him, she said, “That is a lovely loch yonder, with the forested islet in it, but I had hoped to see Raitt. Do you know that castle?”

  “Aye,” he said, firmly controlling his tone and expression. “You cannot see it from here, for it lies farther northward,” he added, gesturing. “Undulations of the eastern slopes below conceal it from us.”

  “Can one see it from that higher crag yonder?” she asked, pointing toward the peak a mile or so north of them.

  “Likely, one can,” he admitted. “But you would be a greater fool to climb that one on your own than you were to climb this one today. That other crag is both higher than this one and more precipitous.”

  “I am not a fool,” she said, shooting him a fierce look. “I can take care of myself and have been able to do so for quite a long time. I know the terrain and the people around here as well as anyone.”

  Suppressing an urge to grin at the irony of that statement, he said, “Then you do know that, had I not come along, you’d likely have fallen to your death, aye?”

  “Aye, but look at those mountains far to the west of us,” she said, pointing at the still snowcapped range in the distance. “If this one had had snow on it …”

  He shook his head, “Dinna think about that, lass. Had it been snow-covered, you would have had common sense enough to stay off of it.”

  Her lovely, dark-lashed gray eyes suddenly twinkled. “Art sure of that, sir?”

  He wished he had nerve enough to steal a kiss, but the plain fact was that they were still precariously positioned on the rugged peak, so if he were to startle her or she resisted … He did not even want to think about possible consequences. However, perhaps as they walked more safely through the forest below … On that thought, he said, “Do you not think we should head back down now, Katy?”

  Grimacing—for Raitt Castle or none, she was enjoying the view and the company—Katy looked away. As she did, she abruptly remembered Eos and Argus. “Good sakes!” she exclaimed. “Did you chance to see my two wolf dogs below?”

  “I did,” he said in the even tone he had used before. “They wait in that wee clearing you can see where the shrubbery ends. I hope you were not thinking that you had only to call them up that polished slope to rescue you, though.”

  “Nae,” she said, wishing she could tell him not to be so daft and that his voice did not have that purring note in it that sent tremors through her body and irked her, all at the same time. “It would be too dangerous for dogs on that slick granite. Had I fallen, though, I do fear that they might have tried to run down to me. Come to that, I am surprised they did not bark at you.”

  “They heard your cry, just as I did. When I came along, the big one—”

  “Argus,” she interjected. “He was a huge puppy, so Mam named him after a mythical giant with a hundred eyes. He does see very well, but Mam doubts that it has aught to do with his name. Eos is named after the Greek goddess of the dawn.”

  “I see.” He smiled as if his choice of those two words had stirred his sense of humor, and it was a nice smile, so she smiled back, and he added, “As I approached, Argus watched me rather grimly and then began to wag his tail. It might seem odd to you, but I think he knew I meant to help you.”

  “’Tis not odd at all,” she said. “They understand much about people. My mother has trained them since they were pups. She had a wolf dog when she was a girl, and she wandered all over the hills around Rothiemurchus with him.”

  “Will they try to follow us if we disappear over the top?” he asked.

  “If I command them to follow us, they will seek a way to do so,” she said. “Not over the peak but round through the forest, until they see, hear, or smell us.”

  “Then you are ready to go down?”

  Realizing that she had been gone much longer now than anyone would expect, Katy gave a regretful sigh and nodded. “I must,” she said.

  “I’ll stay with you until you are safely down.”

  “Sakes, sir, you should go home with me. Supper will be nearly ready by then.” She made the offer by habit, only to realize that although his presence might delay recriminations, questions put to him by her family would prove awkward.

  His train of thought evidently followed hers, for he raised his eyebrows and said, “How would you explain me? Do you think your parents will approve of your having come up here alone, as you did, to climb such a crag?”

  “But I don’t mean to tell them all of that,” she said. “To do so would only worry them to no purpose. I shall tell them we met when I was on my way back from visiting tenants I visited earlier. That is scarcely even a falsehood. That is”—she paused—“it isn’t unless you deny it and tell them where and how you found me. But you are not a talebearer, are you?”

  His lips tightened, sending a short but undeniable sensation through her body, warning her that she had taken another misstep.

  “Do you frequently tell people only what you want them to hear?” he asked.

  “But we did meet when I … well, after I took bread from our bakehouse and some other supplies to a few of our tenants. So it isn’t …” Pausing when he raised his eyebrows, she added with a sigh, “Do you mean to tell them the whole tale?”

  “Nae, lass, but I fear that I cannot accept your generous offer of supper,” he said more gently than she had expected. “Sithee, I, too, will be late getting home.”

  Surprised by an unexpected surge of disappointment, she said, “How far from here do you live?”

  “Some distance yet.”

  “Where is your home, then?”

  “Nearer the Moray Firth, and we had better start down now, I think.”

  Agreeing, she let him lead the way, and finding the descent much easier than she had expected, she made a mental note to explore all sides of the higher peak to the north as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

  When they were off the granite, she whistled for the dogs, and they soon came bounding toward them.

  “I can find my way now,” she said to Will, looking up some distance to meet his gaze. He was as tall as her father and her uncles. Oddly, his presence beside her felt as comfortable as her father’s or one of her other close kinsmen’s would feel.

  “I’ll walk with you until we see Castle Finlagh,” he said.

  “So you think you have guessed where I live, do you?”

  “Am I wrong?” His gaze caught hers again.

  Impulse stirred to tell him that he was wrong, that she lived in a woodland cottage west of the castle. But the impulse fled when she recalled that she had admitted delivering supplies to their tenants. Still, he could not know exactly who she was. In her old kirtle, thin already and more damaged by her climb, she could not match his likely notion of a renowned knight’s daughter. Without knowing his rank, she shied away from relating hers, lest it somehow daunt him.

  “I do live at Finlagh, and the dogs know the way,” she said. “I have only to tell them to take me home.”

  “Nevertheless, I mean to see that you get there safely.”

  Feeling another wave of gentle warmth at the thought that he did not want to leave her, she fell in beside him and signaled the dogs to follow them.

  As they walked on, they chatted comfortably, one or the other pointing out sights along the way. Bracken ferns grew taller in woodland than on the strath, and Will grinned when Katy expressed her delight at finding some delicate lady ferns, the bracken’s translucent cousins, peeping from beneath their protective fronds.

  Shaking his head, grinning, Will gestured toward a nearby rill, where a stray sunbeam added iridescence to the wings of three blue
butterflies fluttering over two-foot spikes of tiny yellow-green woodland orchids rising from a nest of flat leaves.

  “How beautiful!” Katy exclaimed.

  Moments later, he put a finger to his lips and motioned toward the dogs.

  Understanding easily, Katy signaled Argus and Eos to sit where they were.

  Taking a few silent steps forward, Will gently parted tall wands of a chestnut stub in a hollow under the tree’s outflung branches just far enough to let Katy make out the grayish brown hen pheasant staring back at them from her nest deep within its shadows. Her more colorful mate was nowhere in sight.

  “How did you know?” Katy asked quietly as they moved on.

  “I saw those pheasant feathers,” Will said, gesturing to a few red and brown ones nearby that Katy had not noticed. “It seemed a likely place for its nest.”

  “The castle is just ahead,” she said a short time later. “You should g—”

  “Nae, lass, I must be certain that you are safe. Truly, you were unwise to come so far or to attempt to climb that crag alone.”

  “I am grateful to you for coming to my rescue, sir,” she said, giving him look for look, “but I like adventure and often seek adventurous things to do.” She saw no reason to admit that she often suffered after such adventures. Instead, she added, “Moreover, I do not answer to you. Nor do I seek your approval of my behavior.”

  “’Tis just as well, then,” he said lightly, “that I have not offered approval but only kindly advice, because I believe that had you recognized the danger, you might have been wise enough not to go so far or climb so high.”

  Why did she suddenly have the odd sensation that she had known this man for years? Collecting her wits, she said, “You should perhaps know that I dislike hearing persons I scarcely know, and who would likely do as I have just done, offer me advice about my actions.”