Gelis knew something was amiss.
The surety of it intensified with every step she took up Castle Dare’s winding stair tower — no, the glowering keep’s cold and dismal stair tower, chill, and with only the feeble light of a few hissing, sputtering rush torches to pierce the gloom. Not that the murkiness bothered her.
She had plans for remedying Dare’s dreariness.
Indeed, she secretly welcomed the darkness, hoping she’d be rewarded when she dispelled it.
At the very least appreciated.
Unfortunately, the soul she so wished to please hadn’t shown himself since he’d disappeared in the wake of his druid friend, claiming he’d see the ancient safely to his bed.
Gelis huffed and almost tripped on the hem of her skirts.
It was her bed that ought to be on Ronan MacRuari’s mind this night.
Not a graybeard’s.
However gallant the thought.
Hitching up her cumbersome swish-swishing gown, she quickened her steps. She also bit back another snort. Chivalry hadn’t sent the Raven hastening from the feasting table. He’d removed himself from her presence. And she had a fairly good notion that he had no intention of redressing the slight.
She tightened her lips. The shame of such a notion pulsed through her from the tops of her burning ears clear down to all ten of her tingling toes.
That was what plagued her.
Not his keep’s unsavory stair tower.
Nor that the men sitting around the high table had fallen into such a loud and windy discussion about the demands and intricacies of effective lairding that no one noticed when she pushed to her feet and walked away.
Not to hide and lick her wounds.
O-o-oh, no.
She simply needed time alone to decide her next move.
Thinking about seduction wasn’t easy with a good score of flapping male tongues blethering on about disciplining errant clansmen or what to do when a trusted friend and ally suddenly lifted a few prize cattle.
Or the virtues of expanding one’s lands by conquest and inheritance, followed by a heated discourse on the fine art of Highland feuding.
Or whose bard sang the sweetest harp songs.
Gelis straightened her back.
Harp songs, indeed. She had more pressing matters weighing on her.
Meaning to sort them, she tugged on the sleeve of the large-eyed serving lass leading her up the stairs. The girl halted at once, her slight form jerking as if a two-headed water horse had seized her.
Gelis blinked, certain she’d never seen such a fearful creature.
“Anice,” she began, wishing her own agitation wasn’t pressing her to ask what she burned to know. “Are you certain the Raven wished me taken to his chamber?”
“His explicit orders, aye.” The girl bobbed her head. “I readied the room myself and Hector carried up an extra basket of peats for the fire.”
But when Anice led her from the stair tower’s top landing a few moments later, taking her to the Raven’s oak-planked door, more cold and darkness greeted them.
The bedchamber, though vast and quite imposing, proved decidedly unreadied.
Of extra peat bricks, naught was to be seen. Nor even a stick of wood, or the merest twig, or even a bundle of dried bracken. Indeed, the hearthstone appeared swept bare with only a thin scatter of ash indicating a fire had ever burned there at all.
Gelis peered into the dimness, the insult making her face grow hot. The shutters were thrown wide, letting chill damp air pour inside, while the moon’s luminance shone cold on the room’s terrible disarray.
“Saints o’ mercy!” Anice stood frozen, one hand on the door handle, the other clapped to her throat. “The room was in perfect order. I swear it.”
Shaking her head, she stared at the clothes strewn across the floor, the mussed and tangled bedding. “We’d even brought up a bath,” she said, throwing a panicked look at Gelis. “Victuals and wine. Refreshments —”
“Never you mind,” Gelis halted her babble, sweeping into the room before the girl had a chance to swoon. “Someone” — and she was certain she knew who — “clearly forgot to secure the shutters, and the wind has done the damage.”
“Och, nae, I dinna think so.” The girl looked doubtful. “The wind —”
“Wind is naught but just that.” Gelis glanced at the sideways rain blowing past the windows. “Cold, gusting, and at the moment, quite wet.”
Anice bit her lip, unconvinced.
“I’ll own it was an unusually discerning wind,” Gelis allowed. She stepped deeper into the room, a dark suspicion making her cheeks flame even hotter.
Her chest tightened with annoyance, but she held her tongue, not willing to say more until she was certain.
Though, truth be told, she already was.
The wind had been more than discriminating.
It’d been revealing.
Her own coffers and travel bags remained untouched. Her carefully selected bridal accoutrements stared at her from across the room, the lot of her treasures stacked in a quiet and inoffensive pile in a corner.
The chaos was masculine.
An untidy swath of rumpled tunics and plaids, the messy jumble made all the more damning for the bulging money purse and wine skin peeking up from its midst. A handsome black travel cloak flung haphazardly across a bearskin rug on the floor banished any lingering doubts, as did the gleaming mail hauberk, sword belt, and brand tossed into a glittery silver heap near the door.
The Lord Raven had been packing for a journey.
An effort he’d abandoned in great haste.
Like as not, the very moment he’d heard her and Anice ascending the tower stairs.
Gelis almost blurted one of her father’s choice epithets, but caught herself. She did put her hands on her hips. “That table by the window” — she glanced at Anice — “is that where you placed the repast?”
Looking miserable, the girl nodded.
“Just there, my lady.” Her gaze went to the heavy oaken table. “And a right feast it was. A fine joint of roasted mutton, spiced salmon pasties, jellied eggs, and even a platter of Cook’s fresh-baked honey cakes. Heaped high, those were, and sprinkled with ginger.”
“A feast, indeed,” Gelis agreed, unable to deny it.
That the girl spoke the truth stood out all over her.
Puzzled, Gelis picked her way across the clothes-cluttered room to the empty table. Not so much as a crumb marred the dark gleam of its scrubbed, age-blackened surface.
There was a lingering aroma of roasted mutton.
Faint, but definitely there.
Gelis sniffed the air, now catching a delicate hint of ginger as well.
“Could it be,” she began, turning back to Anice, “that the castle dogs snatched the food?”
She’d seen the great furry beasts when she’d first arrived and they’d rushed down the keep steps to greet her. Her father favored similar dogs, and they’d been known to devour greater spreads of victuals than Anice had described. True masters at the art of food-snatching, they could wolf down the offerings of a well-laden table and be gone before even the most watchful soul took note.
But Anice was shaking her head.
“Och, nae, it wouldn’t have been the dogs.” She looked sure of it. “They ne’er set foot in this room. Nary a one. They’re afeart —”
“Perhaps of the room’s master?” Gelis lifted one brow. “No one could blame them for that,” she quipped, unable to check herself this time. “I have scarce happened across a more stony-faced, cold-hearted man.”
“Do not think too ill of him, my lady.” The girl took a few steps into the room. “To be sure, he gave you a poor welcome, but he had his reasons.”
“No doubt,” Gelis agreed, trailing a finger along the smooth edge of the table. “A man twice married always has reasons. Either to seek a new wife or to avoid one.”
Unbidden, the Raven’s own words about his previous marriages rang in her ears. As terse as when he’d said them, they haunted her now.
Likewise, the shuttered expression that had crossed his face when he’d uttered them.
Is it so difficult to think I am not desirous of a third marriage?
Gelis straightened, putting back her shoulders before thoughts of his former wives could sour her mood. Already, she could imagine blissful evenings in this bedchamber. Candlelit coziness and leisurely repasts enjoyed at this very table where she stood. Endless hours of raw and heated pleasure in the massive four- poster bed across the room.
Perhaps a tumble across one of the three great bearskin rugs gracing the bedchamber floor.
Lusty tumbles, all naked limbs and hot, breath-stealing kisses and sighs.
Sinuous, carnal pleasures of the sort she’d likely never experience.
Not with a man determined to shun her.
A situation she refused to accept, she decided, furious at the direction her thoughts were taking.
She’d come abovestairs to plan a seduction. Not to stalk about a cold and messy bedchamber, pricked by needless jealousy over two faceless, dead-in-their-graves females who deserved only prayers and pity.
“Dinna look so downcast, my lady.” Anice took a few more steps into the room.
Overbold steps for a maid so timid.
Proving it, she laced her fingers before her, twining them so tightly together that her knuckles gleamed white against the room’s shadow.
“The Raven’s not himself of late.” She lifted her voice, not looking at Gelis, but at the tall window arches, the rainy night beyond. Her gaze lingered there a few moments before she glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“His coldness has naught to do with you,” she finished. “His heart is good, I say you. Once you know him better, you will see —”
“I have seen more than you know.” Gelis flicked a speck of lint from her sleeve. “Truth is, I’ve seen enough to know him better than he knows himself.”
The girl’s eyes rounded and she looked about to say something, but before she could, a gusting wind swept in through the opened shutters. A chill burst of rain splattered across the tabletop, the icy spray stinging Gelis’s cheeks and dampening her gown.
“These shutters ought to be secured,” she said, leaning across the table to reach for them, her fingers closing around the cold iron of the latches in the very moment the shutters disappeared.
“A-ieeee!” She jumped back, one hand to her breast as the wind’s roar became a high-pitched buzzing in her ears and the tall window arch lengthened and widened, growing ever larger until the black, rainy night surrounded her.
From somewhere distant she heard a keening cry, a low moan that could have been her own. She slumped against the edge of the table, or something hard and solid, the cold iron of the shutter hinges shifting beneath her fingers, changing into the icy-wet, limpet-crusted rock of the great sea stones scattered along Eilean Creag’s lochside strand.
Heart pounding, she tightened her grip on the rock, her fingers slipping on the sleek wetness of sea-tangle. The buzzing in her ears grew deafening, then stopped, plunging her into silence as the blackness began to shimmer and ripple, slowly lightening to misty, luminous silver.
A glimmering and transparent curtain through which she caught glimpses of Eilean Creag’s stout curtain walls and postern gate, the shining waters of Loch Duich, and her beloved peaks of Kintail rising beyond.
He was there, too.
High above the loch, his great wings beating the air as he spiraled on the wind, his black eyes staring down at her. She lost her footing in the slippery rock pool, falling to her knees even as the raven vanished from the sky and her own words flew back to her.
I’ve seen enough to know him . . .
And then she did see him.
A raven no more, he strode out of a parting in the mist, his gleaming blue-black hair lifting in the wind, the glint of his sword and the bright golden torque about his neck commanding her attention.
I have seen . . . The words persisted, a repetitive hammering in her ears.
He crossed the strand with purposeful strides until he loomed above her, a man of fierce passion and heated blood, his dark eyes blazing.
Leaning down, he seized her arm, pulling her roughly to her feet. “You have seen what I wish you to see and you know naught of me.”
Gelis swayed, her senses whirling. “I —”
“Be glad it is so!” He jerked her hard against him, kissing her. A hot, demanding kiss as swift as it was savage, for he broke away as quickly, his grip on her shoulders the only thing that kept her standing.
His breath harsh, he looked at her, his gaze more piercing than ever. “Pray God you ne’er meet the truth.”
And then he was gone, Eilean Creag’s little strand and the rippled waters of Loch Duich with him.
Only the slippery cold wetness of the sea rocks remained. Hard and solid beneath her clutching fingers as the mist receded and the sea stones finally vanished as well. Their chill, seaweed-strewn surface no more than icy-wet shutter latches; the empty, rain-splattered table in front of Ronan MacRuari’s bedchamber window.
“ O-o-oh, mercy me!” Anice’s voice banished the last shimmers of the vision. “You’ve gone so pale,” she cried, clutching Gelis’s arm. “Are you ailing? Shall I fetch the hen wife? The Raven —”
“No bother. I am well enough.” Gelis drew herself up, her fingers still clenched around the shutter latches. “Only weary from the day. The long journey here and now this room,” she improvised, grasping for an explanation.
One that sounded halfway believable and wouldn’t reveal how very much she did need Ronan.
How much he needed her.
More sure of that need than ever, she kept her grip on the shutters. She looked out at the night, almost impenetrably dark with low, racing clouds. Beyond the castle walls, the dark Scots pines guarding Glen Dare were hidden in the deeper gloom, but the wild gusting wind was gone and only a fine rain was falling. The kind of soft misty rain all Highlanders knew and loved. Blessing its comfort and familiarity, she leaned closer to the window arch and breathed deep of the chill night air.
Her heart began to thump heavily and her throat thickened. Glen Dare was beautiful, its reputation as being blighted an unfair misconception she knew she could set to rights.
Almost feeling Castle Dare’s walls beseeching her to do so, she let her gaze wander, not seeing the stronghold’s forbidding gloom but imagining its heart calling to her.
Showing her the proud and great place it could be.
Across the bailey, quite a few men still patrolled the battlements, their tall, weapon-hung forms looming into view then disappearing again each time they passed one of the wall-walk’s torches.
Far below, mist swirled and eddied across the cobbled courtyard. There, too, guardsmen could be seen. Most stood gathered near the torchlit entrance to the gatehouse’s tunnel- like pend while others moved along the perimeters of the walling, clearly keeping a watchful eye on the silent byres and outbuildings.
Gelis shivered, her romanticizing forgotten. Her MacKenzie blood quickened, making her scan the battlements with an even sharper eye.
Watchmen were everywhere, those she’d first noticed and others who stood silent in the shadows, almost blending with the darkness.
She frowned. Her father didn’t send so many men on night patrol unless they were under serious threat of a siege.
She started to say so, but just then glanced beneath the tower window and all thought of sieges and night guardsmen vanished.
“Well then!” Her lips twitched and she leaned farther out the window. “There is the truth of the wind and the missing repast.”
Anice looked at her as if she’d sprouted horns. “The truth of the wind?”
Nae, the truth of a certain raven-haired, flashing-eyed devil who tossed feast goods out the window, Gelis almost blurted. Instead she reached for the younger girl’s elbow, pulling her to her side.
“There,” she announced, waiting for the girl to peer down into the bailey. “See for yourself.”
“By Glory!” Anice sprang back from the window. “The mist must’ve —”
“The mist is as innocent as the wind.” Gelis shoved a damp curl off her forehead. “I’ll be the last to rumple my nose at Highland magic, but I’ve yet to hear of mist or wind that would pitch perfectly good victuals out of a tower window.”
Only someone bent on ruining a wedding night would dare.
A handfasted wedding night.
From some wild-hearted corner of her soul, Gelis was seized by an overwhelming urge to laugh. But if she did, she doubted she’d be able to stop, and she didn’t want to frighten Anice. So she dashed yet another loose curl off her face and pretended to eye the mess below.
And it was a mess.
If she wasn’t mistaken, she’d also spied the splintered staves of a bathing tub.
Not to mention the remains of a small but sumptuous feast. Carefully prepared delicacies splattered across the wet- glistening cobbles. Two smashed wine ewers. She narrowed her eyes, squinting to see through the thick swaths of mist curling around the tower. Her efforts rewarded, she caught a glimpse of two jewel-encrusted wine chalices.
Treasures now scratched and dented beyond repair.
Drawing another deep breath of the damp night air, she lifted her chin, the chalices forgotten.
Her bond with the Raven was a treasure, too.
A far greater treasure; and she wasn’t going to see it sundered.
No matter how often he might ravage her sleeping quarters or how many times he chose to send an evening repast sailing out the window.
She wouldn’t be intimidated.
And she wasn’t going anywhere.
About the same time, but in a well-hidden niche just off the great hall’s darkest corner, Ronan lay on his back on a thin pallet of heather and bracken. A lumpy, somewhat damp-smelling pallet, its dubious comforts made all the more unpalatable by his conviction that something small and four-footed moved about within his bedding’s meager stuffing.
Even so, wrapped snug in his plaid and with the entrance to his hidey-hole concealed in deep shadow, he should’ve felt cozy enough to seize at least a few short hours of sleep.
A much-needed respite from his cares, however brief.
Instead, he found himself scowling up at the niche’s smoke-blackened ceiling.
Naught had gone as he’d planned.
Torcaill’s dire words rolled around in his head, robbing him of his night’s rest, while a persistent pinch in his gut warned that it’d been purest folly to order a sumptuous bridal feast carried to his bedchamber.
No good would come of his nonappearance at such an intimate table. He rubbed a hand down over his face, drew a long breath, and released it slowly. Trying to explain why he’d absented himself, both from the repast and from his dazzling bride’s bed, struck him as being as unwise as it was unpleasant.
His scowl deepened. He’d rather walk naked through a thorny bramble patch.
He’d suffer the same and worse if he could spare himself the occasional bursts of his grandfather’s laughter. Late though it was, Valdar’s gleeful hoots and guffaws still rang out from the opposite end of the hall.
Duncan MacKenzie’s voice reached him as well, deep and congenial, though the words were indistinct. Not that he needed to hear them to guess that now that the two old friends apparently conversed alone, the Black Stag’s animosity had lessened.
Few were the men who could resist Valdar’s gregarious charm.
Fewer still the men able to resist Lady Gelis.
Ronan folded his arms beneath his head, his gaze fixed on a crack in the ceiling. He needed to sleep. He would not, could not, spend the night’s remaining hours lying here thinking about her. Closing his mind, he concentrated on the cold wind racing past the hidey-hole’s narrow slit window. Turned his ears to the steady patter of rain against the keep wall, the granite cobbles of the bailey.
The sounds lulled him, bringing sleep nearer.
He turned on his side, weary now. His eyes drifted shut, but more than slumber sought him.
Something strange was happening.
Along with sleep, unaccustomed warmth stole into the musty little niche where he’d spread his pallet. A sensation that seemed to intensify each time his grandfather gave another bark of laughter.
The warmth of bright spring days when broom and whin cloaked the hills in a mantle of gold and the Highland air was softer, sweeter than the finest wine.
Days the like of which hadn’t graced Glen Dare since his earliest childhood and were best forgotten.
Even if he’d swear he could feel that warmth now.
Smell the wild Scottish roses growing in such profusion on his mother’s trellised arbor, her own personal challenge to the demons of Castle Dare: a tiny but well-tended garden nestled against a far wall of the bailey.
A boyhood refuge gone the way of all other bright and good things at Dare.
Nothing remained of his mother’s pride but a woody tangle of thorny root-stumps and a fallen jumble of moss-grown stones.
The memory — and the strange sensation of warmth — woke him and he flipped onto his other side. The wind seemed to have gusted in through the window slit, its icy passage stinging his eyes.
He set his jaw, glowering once more at the ceiling crack. Truth was, he intended to do so until all such mummery left his thoughts.
He had no business thinking about spring days alive with birdsong or a brief span of years when Dare’s hall was no stranger to soft chuckles and smiles.
Nor his grandfather’s agony when his current jollity turned again to tears.
Such ponderings served naught.
But he could feel the warmth.
And the scent of roses filled his senses on every indrawn breath.
Even more strange, the ceiling crack was suddenly gone and she filled his vision.
A dream, he knew, but she was there all the same.
His high-spirited bride, standing on a narrow shingled strand with what looked to be an imposing curtain wall looming behind her. All ardent woman and desirability, she watched him, her flame- colored hair bright in the autumn sunshine, her magnificent breasts and shapely hips more than apparent.
Sparkling as the glittering loch waters at her feet, she beckoned, her allure pulling him deeper into sleep. Somewhere inside him something twisted and cracked, freeing him of his usual caution.
Need, want, and an inexplicable urgency swept him. Then, his entire body tightened and he found himself standing only a hand’s breadth in front of her.
He drew a harsh, rapid breath, then seized her by the arms and pulled her tight against him for a hard, demanding kiss. A devouring, all-slaking, open-mouthed kiss full of tangling tongues and hot sighs.
The kind of kiss he’d been burning to give her ever since he’d seen her march so boldly up Dare’s steps, her wicked green bauble bouncing against the vee between her thighs.
Some lucid part of him wondered if her gift allowed her to invade his sleep, but his dream-self didn’t care why she was there, tempting him.
Only that she was.
Groaning, he jerked her even harder against his chest, his fingers tightening on her arms as he plunged his tongue ever deeper into her mouth. His heart thundered, his need near bursting as she swirled her own tongue seductively over his.
Heat swept him, her attar of roses scent enfolding him, bewitching him.
He thrust a hand into the silken mass of her hair, twining his fingers in the bright, glossy curls. Soft, nubby curls with a surprisingly familiar feel.
A feel that was just a wee bit worn, not nearly as soft as he’d thought, and decidedly woolly.
His eyes snapped open.
The illusion, dream, or whate’er it’d been spiraled away. An odd lurching disappointment shot through him and he pushed up on his elbows to glare at the bunched plaid clutched so tightly in his hand.
His own plaid, still wrapped snug around him save that he’d managed to pull it up over his chin. Its edge tickled his nose, the seductive scent of roses wafting up from each woolen fold, reminding him how often she’d leaned over-close at the high table.
How many times she’d endeavored to brush her breasts against his arm, her attar of roses perfume nigh undoing him.
His brows snapped together. “By all the living saints!” he cursed, lifting up just enough to fling the rose-reeking tartan into a corner.
When he tried to roll onto his side and found he couldn’t, he made another discovery.
The delicious warmth he’d been imagining hadn’t been imagined at all.
He was engulfed in warmth.
But not because his entirely too tempting, bauble-wearing bride returned his dream-kisses with such heated fervor. Nor thanks to the unexpected coziness of the muffled converse he’d caught from the dais end of the hall, his grandfather’s occasional bark of jolly laughter.
He was warm — overly warm — because his favorite hound, Buckie, was sprawled across his lower legs!
As if the great scruffy beast sensed Ronan’s ire, he opened one eye, giving him a long, steady look before shutting it again and continuing with his snores.
Ronan swallowed a curse. The dog wasn’t just warming him. His entire lower body beginning somewhere about midthigh tingled and burned as if the devil and his minions were jabbing him with red-hot fire needles.
He might not rid himself of the sensation for days.
It was that bad.
And ordering Buckie to move wasn’t an option.
The old cur was lame in his back legs and deserved his rest even more than Ronan. Nor would he budge if Ronan did glower and scold him. Unlike the other castle dogs, Buckie was wholly impervious to his dark moods.
Far from slinking away whenever that look came onto Ronan’s face, Buckie would simply shuffle over and lick his hand.
Something he’d done ever since Ronan had found him tied to a tree on the edges of Glen Dare, thin, half-starving, and covered in welts. Ronan had doubted the then-young dog would survive the night.
But he’d thrived, and to this day, Ronan could hardly take a step without Buckie trailing along at his heels.
Nor, it would seem, would he find undisturbed sleep this night.
Sighing, he lay back again, determined to try.
But he’d no sooner closed his eyes and drifted into the sweet bliss of a deep, dreamless sleep when the sound of hastening footfalls woke him.
That, and the renewed surge of red-hot fire tingles in his legs when Buckie stirred and pushed slowly to his feet.
Trying again not to curse, Ronan once more opened his eyes, this time staring up into the smoking, hissing flames of a handheld rush light.
A few sparks dropped onto his chest and he brushed at them, frowning.
Now he knew what had disturbed Buckie.
He blinked. Then he raised a hand to wave away the smoke from in front of his eyes, half wondering if he’d wakened in the fires of hell.
Before he could decide, the rush light moved and he saw Anice, the large-eyed slip of a serving lass, peering down at him. Her throat worked convulsively and her thin little face looked white as the moon.
“O-o-oh, sir!” she cried. “You must come at once! They’ve ravaged your bedchamber and —”
“What?” Ronan blinked again, the last dredges of sleep making it hard to think. “They who?”
The girl shook her head so rapidly that one of her thin black braids slipped from its pins. “I’m sure I dinna care to know,” she wailed, and then Ronan did know.
He leaped from the pallet. “Lady Gelis,” he demanded, snatching up his plaid. “Is she harmed?”
“Nae, sir, she’s fussing about the fine victuals having been tossed out the window.”
At the niche’s opening, Buckie dropped onto his haunches and whined.
Ronan’s eyes widened. “The repast I ordered? It was tossed out the window?”
Anice looked down at the rush light in her hand, unable to meet his eye. “Aye, that’s the way of it, my lord. The lady thinks it was you what did it.”
The Raven’s stomach clenched, an icy dread streaking down his spine.
Whipping around, he dashed from the little niche to sprint across the darkened hall, making for the stair tower. He raced up the winding stairs, taking them two at a time and not even bothering to curse when, almost at the top, a misstep caused him to slam his bare toes full into one of the unyielding stone steps.
Pain shot up his leg and made his eyes water, but he didn’t even scowl.
There’d be time enough for that later.
He hadn’t expected the Holders to move so quickly.
Nor, he realized, hearing Buckie clumping up the stairs behind him, would he have believed how much Lady Gelis’s safety meant to him.
Somehow, somewhere in the brief span of time since she’d first flashed him her brilliant smile and he’d dreamed of kissing her on some narrow strip of shingled shore, she’d become more than a well-born lass he wished to keep from harm.
She’d become important to him.
And that was a greater danger than the Holders and all their unholy mist wraiths combined.
A greater danger indeed.
And one he wasn’t at all sure he could conquer.
He just knew that he must.