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And so rarely gave.
Sean hoped he didn’t hurry to the loch, though. The druid king’s body fit so well against his own, and he soaked in the heat. He couldn’t remember anything feeling so incredible.
Besides…he hadn’t been warm in over a hundred years.
Malcolm did his best to keep his stallion’s gait even. If the lad were concussed, jostling him overmuch could do irreparable damage. The mist seemed to thicken as they plodded toward Loch Doineann, which was more of a pond, in truth, surrounded by lush forest. He tried to keep his awareness on their surroundings in case brigands were about. If he didn’t, he’d focus on how the willowy body fit against his, or how supple and tantalizing the grooves and etchings of his lean muscles stretched over long, elegant bones.
But the forest whispered warnings through the mist that unsettled Malcolm.
Beware. It said. Enemies are near.
If his enemies were near, then the Grimoire was too. The scrying stone had told him thus. So what was he doing escorting a peasant home when he should be searching for it?
“I’ve not seen you here in the forest before, how do you know where the loch is?” the lad asked, pulling his cloak tighter around himself and pressing his shoulders against Malcom’s chest with a tremor of chill.
“I know every inch of these lands,” he answered simply. They’re my responsibility.
For some reason, he didn’t want the lad to know who he was. Didn’t want him to treat him with the deference he’d show the King of their Pictish people. For all he knew, Malcolm was a woodsman, doing another man a kindness. There was no Grimoire, Wyrd Sisters, Berserkers, or impending war. For just a moment, there in the mist, they were two men, making their way through the fragrant, loamy autumn forest.
“Do yer people hie from these woods?” he asked. “Do they live close by?”
“My people are all dead.” This was said without much inflection. “I’ve been alone for many years.”
It unsettled him how curious the man made him. He wanted to press, but knew the telling of a story would be painful. How did he come to be alone in these woods with nothing but a threadbare shift? Did his people die in the Lowland wars? Or by the hands of the English? Perhaps illness took them. Or plague. What family did he belong to?
Who had put the wounds and wariness behind his lovely, amethyst eyes?
“There.” He pointed. “Just past that copse of trees.”
Malcolm spotted the structure—if one could call it that—and frowned. Due to the lack of clothing, he hadn’t expected much, but the rotting, dilapidated dwelling leaning against a few ancient trees was uninhabitable.
The roof, for lack of a better word, had rotted through and fallen on one side. The door was a bunch of green branches lashed together and propped against the entry.
Malcolm tensed as they approached, stopping on the narrow sandy beach of the loch and gaping in silent protest for several minutes. When the lad began to squirm, Malcom dismounted from behind him. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll make certain no one is inside.”
He nodded, his eyes growing rounder in his face, as though he hadn’t considered intruders.
The interior was cozier than Malcom expected, but only just. The lad had been using the collapsed part of the roof as a chimney, with an old empty cauldron and cook fire laid, but unlit. A pallet of worn furs and a tattered blanket was the only protection from the chill of the dirt floor. A pestle, knife, tankard, wooden bowl, and a long-handled spoon were neatly lined up against the wall opposite the—well he couldn’t rightly call it a bed, could he?
Forest fauna and the loch could sustain one person, he supposed, but surviving out here on one’s own would be mighty difficult. Malcolm felt a pang slice through him at the thought of the poor lad shivering alone on the dirt floor at night. He had to be over five-and-twenty, but he was much too underfed.
A tender squeeze of his heart produced a cough Malcolm covered badly.
“I mean to mend the roof before winter sets in,” the lad said from behind him.
Malcolm turned, unable to straighten to his full height in the cramped space. “Ye… live here?”
From the flash in his eyes, Malcolm could tell he’d said the wrong thing. “Aye, I live here, and it’s a palace compared to where I was before.”
At the words, his heart broke, but he tried to keep the pity from his eyes, lest it be interpreted as condescension. “I didna mean to offend ye. It’s only that this place seems…” cold, dark, broken, not fit for a forest creature’s den, let alone a delicate man. “Lonely,” he finished. He didn’t belong in this place, either. No one did. He prided himself on the prosperity of his people, upon the procedures he had in place to economically buoy those who were vulnerable.
“It does get rather lonely here.” The voice lowered to a husky rasp of honeyed suggestion. “Most especially at night…in the dark.”
The lad sidled closer to him, his cloak sliding down his shoulders to his elbows. Lavender eyes glittered like gems in the fading light against the dreary surroundings. Ebony hair gleamed like silk and velvet.
Malcolm’s body’s reaction was instantaneous. Suffused by lust and awareness, he hardened beneath his kilt. A spell seemed to make the evening darker, and the pale youth brighter. It was as though his body was no longer his own. He couldn’t even swallow, let alone step away as a nobleman in his position should.
It was invitation he read in the uncommon eyes, there was no mistaking it. But something else lurked in their depths, a hesitancy, a vulnerability maybe, that kept him in check.
