Free Only For A Knight by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

to be sure, but enough to gild the sleeping forms of her daughters.
     
But her two precious girls were not alone.
     
A closer look revealed that nigh every four-legged beast to populate Eilean Creag had deigned to join them!
     
Linnet’s heart lifted at the sight and, at once, the droning buzz of bees withdrew from her ears, and even the chills sliding up and down her back began to recede. And beneath the table, the tensed muscles of her feet and legs slowly relaxed.
     
She drew a shaky breath. This night, at least, the flame-haired beauty she knew could only be Robbie’s meant-to-be bride would not be making an appearance.
     
Nor would any other harbingers her gift might have attempted to visit upon her.
     
Sighing with inward relief, warmth flooded her as she stared at her slumbering girls.
     
They, too, had kept a long vigil, waiting in vain for their brother’s return. The older lass, raven-haired Arabella staring morosely at the hall’s massive, iron-shod door the whole night through. And the younger Gelis, a lively girl with the same bright coloring as her mother, had forgone her supper in favor of brisk, ceaseless pacing.
     
Untiring and determined, she’d turned deaf ears on all pleas to return to the dais and had stubbornly made one circuitous sweep of the hall after the other, until the lateness of the hour finally wore down even her quick-thrumming exuberance.
     
“They have their hearts in the right place,” Sir Marmaduke said, following her gaze. “You will not punish them?”
     
“Punish them?” She laid a deliberate lightness to her tone. “Chide them for staying below? For seeking and giving warmth and comfort when, of late, such . . . disquiet has surged into their world?”
     
Picking up a horn-handled table knife, she shook her head as she cut herself a thick slab of brown bread, smeared it with sweet, heather-flavored honey.
     
“Nay, I shall not chastise them, nor shoo them to their bed. I would sooner toss plaiding o’er the lot of them and scatter handfuls of comfits for them to find upon waking.”
     
“Reward for their fortitude?”
     
“Aye, that would be the way of it,” she admitted, touching the rim of her wine cup to her friend’s.
     
Truth be told, she’d ordered the girls abovestairs hours before—but to no avail. Should she waken them now, they’d simply claim they’d had to stay where they’d fallen asleep.
     
To move would have meant disturbing the equally slumbering canines and hadn’t the poor beasties been trod upon enough of late?
     
And Linnet would not have been able to argue otherwise.
     
Besides, she, too, would relish snuggling in the cozy confines of one of the hall’s deep window embrasures, a brace of soft, embroidered pillows and warm, adoring-eyed dogs to shelter and soothe her into a good night’s sleep.
     
Something she’d missed in recent days with her lord husband spending his nights stalking the ramparts, no doubt repeatedly scanning Loch Duich’s eastern shore and the enclosing, hills rising so close behind the loch’s long-curving, shingled strand.
     
“Your stepson will show no less fortitude than your bonnie daughters,” Sir Marmaduke said into the stillness, his deep voice so soft Linnet wasn’t certain she’d caught the words aright.
     
“Beg pardon?” She blinked, hoping she’d misheard the ill ease in his tone.
     
“Robbie did not spend all these years away to return a spineless cockerel. He will do his duty by the MacLeod maid, seeing himself honorbound to marry her,” he said, looking at her. “And that, dear lady, is what plagues me this night.”
     
And those very concerns trouble me, too, Linnet’s heart cried in response.
     
She simply nodded and gave him her most sincere smile of commiseration.
     
’Twas the best she could do.
     
That, and pin all her hopes on the maid of flame.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
     
H OME .
     
Robbie’s first real glimpse of Eilean Creag Castle lanced his soul. His heart slammed hard against his ribs