There they lay, naked and skin on skin, but unmoving, holding each other as night closed in on them, guiding them to sleep where their minds might be cleansed of the horrors of James’s battle, and where the world would be bright and new with the rising sun.
They did not make it to the hall to break their fast the next morning.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Shabib
Lena wasn’t in thehall when they returned, or in the inner bailey. He shouldn’t have hoped for her to be, but why should she?
Shabib left his horse in the hands of a stable lad, and rather than heading for the hall with the Bruce as most of the returning warriors did, he retreated back out of the palisade, searching for the MacMillan crofts.
Many of those who flocked to the Bruce’s banner during the summer had been settled in small crofts around the keep with plenty of land for tents so the lairds and their men, and any women who traveled with them, might be well set whilst attending the king and fighting for Scotland.
Some women elected to work in the keep directly and sleep in the maid’s quarters instead of sleeping in a drafty tent on the hard ground.
Lena was not one of those women. She kept close to her cousin and mistress, feeling a deep sense of obligation to her. And since where the king went, so did the MacMillan, they were destined to linger at Auchinleck, or wherever the women of the clan were assigned to be.
Shabib wrapped his blood-stained robes tight around his lean frame as he moved like the wind among the tents toward the croft. She wasn’t outside, and he didn’t think she’d sleep in one of the tents.
No, most likely she’d be by her cousin’s side. Lena’s sense of obligation and responsibility was unrivaled. It was one of the traits about her that he noticed.
And it made a stark impression on Shabib.
That, and her understated, dark-haired beauty. She reminded him of the all the good from his homeland, but her skin and dress were different enough to help him forget the bad. His heart had been locked away in iron since the slaughter of his betrayed wife and son, locked away so much that he didn’t believe it could be revived again.
Then came Lena, in her russet kerchief tied over her lush blackish-brown waves, her soft voice and attention to detail, and Shabib lost himself in her.
He made it to the croft and froze, his hand aloft, ready to bang on the warped oaken door.
Aye, as Douglas would say, Shabib had lost his heart to her, but did Lena feel the same? She behaved properly around him, never getting too close or spending a scandalous amount of time with him. And he was a Moor, which brought a wealth of complications to the pale northern land.
Yet she wasn’t of this land either. She was French, with hair as dark as the night and a bronze undertone to her skin, and a way of smiling at him where her lips barely moved but her eyes crinkled and narrowed and sparkled.
Shabib threw his shoulders back and pounded at the door.
Hesitation be damned!
There was only one way to find out if Lena’s heart turned toward him, and that was to ask her.
