Prepared for the worst, Ronan burst into his bedchamber only to come to a skittering, undignified halt. Far from requiring rescue, Lady Gelis knelt calmly on the bearskin rug in front of the hearthstone, her delectably rounded bottom bobbing in the air as she jabbed an iron poker at a tidy pile of just-beginning-to-smolder peat bricks.
Ronan’s eyes widened. He stared at her, well aware his jaw was slipping. His breath lodged in his throat, making it difficult to think. Worst of all, her flame-bright hair caught the fire glow and his fingers itched to touch the gleaming strands.
A man could lose himself in such silky, glistening tresses.
Lose himself and much more.
He frowned.
Praise the saints she hadn’t yet undressed.
Even so, it took all his strength to tear his gaze from her jigging buttocks.
When he could, his pent-up breath left him in a great, gusty rush.
“What goes on here?” He strode forward, his stare pinned on the iron poker in her hand. “Who —”
“We both know who is responsible.” Cool as spring rain, she set aside the fire poker and stood. “One glance was all I needed” — she made a sweeping gesture, turning — “though I vow anyone would have guessed upon seeing . . .”
She froze, her extended arm poised in midair. “Mercy!” she gasped, her eyes widening. “You’re naked!”
“Bah. I —” Ronan started to deny it, but clamped his mouth shut instead.
He was naked.
He firmed his jaw and squared his shoulders, opting for a show of dignity. With each breath, he became more aware of the heavy plaid still clutched in his hand, the dry bits of rushes and herbage tickling the bare soles of his feet.
Lady Gelis was staring at him.
He could neither move nor speak.
Great folds of tartan dangled from his fingers to pool on the floor. Rather than throw the plaid around him, he’d simply snatched it up and run, so great had been his urgency to reach her side and ensure her safety.
Now he looked the fool.
“You forgot to don your plaid,” she said, quite unnecessarily.
“Nae,” Ronan lied, “I did not wish to waste time with such trivialities in my haste to see what was amiss here.”
Her eyes twinkled. “There is naught amiss here that cannot be easily rectified.”
Something in her tone warned him.
Against his better judgment, he glanced down, his worst dread confirmed.
Her jigging buttocks had affected him more than he’d realized.
Heat shot up the back of his neck. His vitals caught flame. After all, it wasn’t every day such a desirable female stood staring at his man piece.
Nor could he recall having ever seen a more amused-looking female.
Or one who looked quite so triumphant.
Ronan cleared his throat, pride not letting him sling on his plaid too hastily. “Fair lady, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Heilander who doesn’t sleep naked as the good God made him.” He held her gaze as he spoke, forcing himself to use slow and careful movements as he covered himself.
The plaid finally in place, he dusted his hands, blessed composure his once again. “Anice woke me,” he began, doing fine until he perceived a certain canine stare boring into him from the door.
Buckie lay sprawled across the threshold, his shaggy head resting on his paws, his milky eyes keener than Ronan had seen them in years.
Definitely unblinking, and perhaps even a wee bit accusatory.
Ronan let out a long breath. “Anice and my dog, Buckie, woke me,” he started again, the correction earning him an appreciative tail swish. “Anice said the victuals I’d sent up for you went missing and that —”
“So you admit they were meant for me?” Gelis pretended to examine her fingernails. She had him now. “Not for the two of us?”
“I hardly see how that matters.” He brushed at his plaid, looking more trapped than if she’d pinned him in a corner with a twelve-foot lance.
“It matters to me.”
He lowered his brows, but said nothing.
Gelis felt her lips quirk.
“You needn’t glower so,” she said, allowing the quirk to flash into her brightest smile.
If anything, his mien darkened.
“I am not wroth with you. Even if I am not accustomed to discovering my evening repast has been tossed out the window.” She gave a light shrug, willing her smile to blaze. “Truth be told, I am quite content.”
The Raven humphed.
“That, sweet lass, I find hard to believe.” He looked at her, his brows arcing. “ ’Tis impossible for you to be at ease. Here, in this place” — he planted his fists on his hips — “and with me.”
She gave a soft laugh. “Nae, especially with you,” she declared, her breath catching.
Her heart leaped, some wild devil inside her making her close the distance between them and poke a finger into his proud, plaid-draped chest.
“Truth is, I welcome challenges,” she announced, jabbing her finger harder on each word. “I wouldn’t be my father’s daughter if I didn’t. So-o-o” — she lifted a fold of his tartan, ran her thumb over its soft warmth — “I’ll start by asking where you were going?”
“There are challenges here that would daunt even your redoubtable sire.” He narrowed his eyes at her, deftly ignoring her question. “Were the window shutters bolted or opened when Anice brought you up here?”
“They were flung wide, the wet wind gusting into the room.”
“And you shut them?”
“I did.”
From the door, his dog shifted and resettled his bulk with a grunt.
The Raven shot him an irritated look. “The shutters,” he continued when the beast stopped his scuffling, “did you notice anything unusual when you closed them?”
“You mean besides the whirling mist, denser than any I’ve ever seen, and my smashed feasting goods spread across the cobbles?”
“I mean . . . anything.”
“Perhaps the staves of what appeared to be a broken bathing tub?”
“The bathing tub as well?” His brows lowered. “You are certain?”
Rather than answer him, Gelis lifted her chin and fixed him with her best so-you’ d-doubt-me stare. A look that she’d learned at her father’s knee and that would have made a man of lesser mettle tremble in his boots.
The Raven remained unperturbed.
“You have peat ash on your face,” he said, reaching to brush his thumb across her cheek.
A grave mistake, for as soon as he touched her, her attar of roses scent wafted up to befuddle him. He swallowed hard, tried not to breathe until he’d wiped away the smudge.
But the scent was too seductive.
He bit back a groan, the heady fragrance thrusting him right back into his dreams until he could feel her melting against him, lush, warm, and pliant. As if they still kissed, he could feel her lips parting beneath his and the hot silken glide of her tongue over and around his.
The scorching heat that had whipped through him, burning away his defenses until all that mattered was the wild frenzy of their passion.
As in the dream, he could hear the soft lapping of the wavelets on the shingled strand and feel the afternoon breeze lifting his hair. The sweet warmth of spring sunshine, and a blaze of desire such as he’d never known.
Not even with his long-dead first wife, Matilda.
Horrified, he jerked his hand from Gelis’s cheek and wheeled away from her. His gaze fell at once on the great four-poster bed across the room, his anguish complete when he spied the piles of his folded clothes mounded on the bed’s luxuriant furred coverings.
His grand black cloak and his opened, half-packed leather travel bag.
Rose attar perfume and lusty dreams forgotten, he spun back around, not at all surprised to find his bride standing with her hands braced against her hips, her amber eyes alight with challenge.
“Your money purse and wine skin are there.” She flicked a hand toward the shadows behind the door.
Glancing that way, he saw more of his gear gathered in a neat little pile. His hauberk had been laid carefully over a chair, the mail shirt’s silvery links gleaming softly in the candlelight, while his extra sword and sword belt rested on the floor, half-hidden in deeper shadow.
He refused to goggle.
And under no circumstance would he acknowledge the cold, hard knot beginning to pulse between his shoulders.
He did clench his hands.
With the exception of the wispy more-an-annoyance-than-a-threat mist wraiths that were wont to slither across window ledges and sometimes probe into the great hall, slinking along the tops of the trestle tables, none of the unholiness associated with Maldred the Dire’s curse had ever dared to actually penetrate Castle Dare’s walls.
Until now, he owned, the certainty of it tightening his chest.
“Those clothes and gear are my travel goods.” He looked at her, some foolishly optimistic corner of his soul hoping she’d put his suspicions to rest, proving him wrong. “They were locked in my strongbox, my extra sword hidden beneath the bed.”
“So Anice said when we found them strewn about the room.” She held his gaze, her words taking his hope. “She also said that only you have a key to your strongbox.”
A truth that made the matter all the more damning.
Not about to tell her so, he folded his arms. “And if I do?”
“Then you were in here before I came abovestairs,” she informed him, sliding a glance at Buckie, who now occupied the entire threshold.
The dog’s fluting snores indicated he slept, but a single eye, cracked no more than a sliver, followed Ronan’s every move. One somewhat tatty-looking ear was lifted as well, craftily poised to catch every word.
Ronan’s mouth twisted.
Gelis was watching him just as carefully, and he didn’t doubt her ears were equally sharp.
“So you do not deny it?” She narrowed her eyes. “You were in here.”
Ronan made a dismissive gesture, not trusting himself to speak.
He had been in the room earlier.
But only long enough to ensure that all her comforts were met. A fire laid, the bedding freshened, and his carefully planned feast- for-one spread upon the table.
An insult he’d hoped would see her riding away with her father at the morrow’s first light.
A fool plan he now regretted, wishing he could simply tell her the whole fell truth. But even voicing such darkness could be dangerous, his thoughts too easily led down paths he didn’t dare to tread.
“Well?” She raised a single red-gold brow. “At least admit that you were packing for a journey.”
“Have a care . . .” He let the warning trail off, knowing it was too late.
The j-word had been spoken.
And Buckie had heard, as a glance at the door proved. Already, the old dog’s other eye had popped open and his tail was thumping against the floor.
Ronan ignored him.
Lady Gelis flashed the beast a smile.
“Do not encourage him.” Ronan frowned. It wouldn’t do for Buckie to become attached to her. Or look forward to excursions he could no longer enjoy. “His hips are bad, so his days of adventure are over. His legs don’t always support him and he falls. Buckie ne’er leaves the keep.”
“Indeed?” She gave him a look that could’ve been interpreted as implying that Buckie’s plight was his fault and had nothing to do with the beast’s wobbly back legs.
Fighting the ridiculous urge to defend himself, Ronan wondered how everything had slid out of his control. He’d come abovestairs to see what had happened, possibly to defend Lady Gelis against whoe’er or whate’er had ravaged the bedchamber. Instead, he’d found her tending the hearth fire and the room already put to rights.
Worse, she asked questions he didn’t care to answer and shot him looks that made him feel like a gangling, beardless laddie who’d just been caught with his hand down a kitchen lassie’s bodice.
As if she knew it, she smiled at him.
Not a warm, adoring kind of smile as she’d given Buckie, but a smug one.
“Talking about your dog and that-which-you-don’ t-wish-mentioned-in-his-presence doesn’t change that I know you were preparing for one.” Her words explained the smugness.
Walking briskly to the bed, she picked up one of his folded tunics and placed it with a touch too much care in his opened travel bag.
“Eilean Creag is a busy place,” she mused, reaching for another tunic. “There are comings and goings through all seasons. Some men wish my father’s advice or to trade with him, while others plead aid or offer an alliance. The stream of visitors never ends.”
She dropped the second tunic into the leather bag. “Do not think I am some light-minded creature unable to recognize a man’s I-daren’ t-say-the-word kind of gear. Or” — she looked at him meaningfully — “when someone is in haste and must rush away before a task is completed.”
Ronan’s brows snapped together. “A MacRuari ne’er leaves any task unfinished. Nor do we run from aught.”
He stepped closer to the bed — to her — a flash of pride whipping through him.
Glen Dare and his family might be blighted and cursed, but he loved both fiercely.
Nor was it for naught that each newly born MacRuari babe was fed a spoonful of clan earth as his first nourishment. As Torcaill had sung earlier, during the feasting, the tradition sealed the child’s lifelong bond to his home glen.
Such as it was.
It remained theirs.
And there wasn’t a MacRuari living, dead, or yet to be born who’d deny its pull. From the clan’s dimmest beginnings, their ties to Glen Dare were unbreakable; their love of the dark woods, bog and moor, and the steep, mist-hung hills, deep and abiding.
Sacred.
As was their honor, something that seemed to weigh more heavily on him the longer he dallied in his new bride’s fetching, rose-scented presence.
He shut his eyes, drew a tight breath.
Then, knowing he shouldn’t, but unable not to, he seized her by the shoulders. “Hear me, lass, and I will tell you of Glen Dare’s MacRuaris.”
“Ooh, aye?” Her voice was a purr, soft and honeyed. “Mayhap there are things I could tell you!”
Ronan blanked his emotions, more than sure that she could tell him things.
Certain, as well, that he did not wish to hear them.
He let his gaze bore into hers, willing her to understand. “Anything a MacRuari does is done with deliberation and purpose, and always for the good of the clan.” He tightened his grip on her, hoping to strengthen the truth of his words. “You err if you believe otherwise.”
“Say you?” Her eyes sparked. “We both know there isn’t a Highland chieftain in all these hills who wouldn’t claim the same. I am more keen to hear why it is MacRuari custom for their men to shun their brides.”
“Nae, that is no’ the way of —” Ronan broke off, guilt sweeping him.
He was shunning her, albeit for her own good.
“ ’Tis true I stayed away of a purpose this e’en,” he admitted, frustration and remorse crowding him, making him speak as true as he deemed wise.
“Even so” — he strove for his most persuasive tone — “I had naught to do with the shambles you found upon entering this chamber.”
Naught save having wished her gone.
A departure he’d still greet with gladness.
But a regret that made him release her as quickly as if she’d turned into a writhing, two- headed viper, eager to sink venomous fangs into him.
He choked back a bark of bitter laughter.
He was the carrier of poison.
He paused.
The room’s increasing cold circled up his legs and higher, snaking ever tighter around his chest until he could scarce breathe.
“I suspect,” he began, using a strength born of long practice, “that your arrival has stirred whate’er of Maldred’s malignancy yet lingers.”
Lady Gelis waved an airy hand.
“ ’Tis common knowledge there’s a touch of darkness in every clan and glen in all broad Scotland,” she returned, leaning close again. “The sweetest glade gives way to the blackest peat bogs and some of our bonniest lochs are said to be the haunts of the most ferocious water horses and bulls.”
She drew a great breath, making her breasts swell. “Even my own fair Kintail is no stranger to ill-wishing and the evil eye! Many are the tales — would you care to hear some of them?”
Ronan sidestepped her, taking up a stance beside the hearth fire.
“Glen Dare’s darkness is different, my lady.”
She swung in his direction. “Perhaps not when viewed from another angle. My father says Robert Bruce once told him that any trap can be sprung — any ambush averted — if a man uses his wits and the land to best advantage.”
Ronan’s brows drew together.
She had him there. He wasn’t about to argue with the wisdom of Scotland’s greatest king.
Even so, he’d spoken the truth.
Leastways as much of Dare’s sad truths as he wished to share with her.
Unfortunately, she looked anything but satisfied.
She looked ready to clamp her fist around his heart and squeeze hard until he revealed all his secrets.
Her every curve beckoned and enticed. The sweet tilt of her lips, plump and reddened, begged for kisses. And one of her braids was coming undone, leaving a welter of rippling, unruly red-gold curls to spill over her breasts, so tantalizingly displayed above her gown’s deep-dipping bodice.
Ronan’s jaw locked and his hands clenched at his sides.
His deepest self ached for her, filling him with a need that bordered on feral. He swallowed hard, his entire body tense and his heart thundering. Hot blood roared in his ears, blotting even the fierce howl of the wind.
Ne’er had he seen a more desirable female.
And ne’er had he wanted one less.
Even if the shunning of her would haunt him all his days.
So the lad wanted her.
There could be no denying it.
A dark-cloaked figure standing outside Dare’s walls gave a great, gusty sigh, well pleased he’d lingered long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
It hadn’t been easy for one of his years to work a spell powerful enough to send not only feasting goods but an entire, brimming bathing tub sailing out a tower window.
The task had cost him greatly.
But he’d managed, and his immense satisfaction even stirred the midnight boughs of Glen Dare’s dark pines and silent alders. The proud hills, so loved by Clan MacRuari, pretended not to hear, turning disapproving ears to the gloating wind.
And in the empty trough of the moon-washed glen, the late-night waters of the burn swirled and frothed, roiling with a cold deeper and more biting than the ancients e’er intended.
Ancients so old, their names had long been lost.
Save a venerable, persistent few.
He was one such, and he stepped out of the cloaking mist now, drawing as near to Castle Dare’s walls as was prudent. He hadn’t reached his sage and hoary age by being foolish. His earlier feat had taxed him, the powerful jolt of Maldred’s saining spells still strong after so many centuries.
More debilitating than he or any of his followers would have believed, the pain sat deep in his bones, slowing his gait and dulling his senses.
Tiring eyes already red and burning from exertion.
Not that it mattered.
The buffoons and drolls who called Dare their own would soon pay for their vices. Naught but soot and ash would be left to them, their sojourn with the treasure of others ended by their own unwitting hand.
The figure almost smiled.
At long last the MacRuaris possessed a prize they’d fight to keep.
The old man, because his heart was soft. And the younger, their only true threat, because he desired the girl.
If that one lost his heart as well, the possibilities for leverage were endless.
He need only bide his time.
This time the figure did smile.
Reveling in it, he lifted a bony long-fingered hand and adjusted the cowl of his robes. The night was chill and wet, the racing wind not good for one of his indeterminate years. And despite his many powers, he’d yet to master a spell against the elements.
Though that, too, would soon be possible.
As would . . . anything.
Once the Raven Stone was his again.
For the now, he angled his head to peer through the gloom until his gaze found the dark bulk of Dare’s tower. As arrogant as the race, it soared high above the castle’s machicolated walls. Mist — in great part, his mist — curled around its impassive stones while the craftily narrow windows were shuttered and black against the night.
All, that was, but one.
It, too, was tightly closed, but faint yellow light gleamed through the shutter slats.
Focusing on those narrow slivers of soft, flickering light, the figure felt his heart begin to thud with anticipation. He breathed deep, his sharp sense of smell letting him catch a whiff of attar of roses even here.
That, and the stronger musk of man.
Clearly, they were still together.
More than pleased by the implication, the figure didn’t even blink when a wind gust snatched his hood from his fingers and blew his long, white-maned hair across his face, the whipping strands stinging his eyes.
He’d enjoyed too many successes this night to pay heed to such a little nuisance. So he shoved back his streaming hair, smoothed his robes, and turned away from Dare’s walls, eager to seek his bed.
He had a feeling his dreams would be most pleasing.
The doom of the MacRuaris was assured.
It was only a matter of time.