Ronan stood by the hearthside, adjusting the fall of his plaid as surreptitiously as possible. His mind was a careful blank and his expression as stony as he could make it. Both talents he’d been honing for years. Unfortunately, he was less skilled in tempering his more lustful urges.
But a man’s plaid was good for many things.
The voluminous folds perfect for hiding any unwanted problems that might arise.
Determined to avoid such a problem, he squared his shoulders and drew a long breath. In the time he’d needed to steel himself against Lady Gelis’s charms, he’d come to a very important decision.
When the sad day arrived that Valdar was no more and Ronan took his place at the head of the clan, his first chieftainly act would be to forbid the wearing of low-bodiced gowns within Dare’s walls.
A decree against full bosoms — in particular, those with fetching nipples — would be even more pleasing, if impossible to enforce.
He almost smiled at the notion all the same.
Leastways until Lady Gelis took another dangerously deep breath and her decidedly pert and rose-hued nipples threatened to pop into view.
Ronan scowled at the prospect.
His plaid stirred.
Lady Gelis’s breasts swelled even more.
“So-o-o . . .” She picked up her glittering green temptress bauble and fingered the thing as she eyed him. “Are you saying I now have two MacRuari men who wish me gone?”
Ronan blinked. She’d distracted him with all her deep breathing and bauble fingering.
“Two MacRuaris?” He wasn’t following her. “Wishing you gone?”
She nodded. “You, by your own admission” — she flung out an arm to indicate the room — “and if I am to understand your suspicions about who was behind the ravaging of this chamber, your archdruid forebear. Mordred the Dire, may the saints rest his soul.”
“Maldred.” The bedside night candle hissed and guttered on the utterance. “Such was his name and I’d be surprised if you could find a saint — any saint — who’d deign to bless the dastard.”
“Then I say he is to be pitied, not reviled.”
Ronan’s jaw slipped. “Pitied?”
Her head bobbed again. “Och, for sure, and I’d say so.”
Entirely certain, she tilted her head, well aware that the golden light of a well-burning brace of candles was playing advantageously on her fiery tresses.
When the Raven’s mouth tightened, she knew he’d noticed.
Pleased, she let her eyes twinkle.
She also looked at him, wondering when he’d notice that his oh-so- carefully-donned plaid was slipping down his shoulder. And what a fine shoulder it was. Broad, well-muscled, and gleaming in the firelight, its manly allure made it all too difficult to concentrate on some hoary MacRuari ancestor and his centuries-old curse.
Even so, she wanted to try.
“In the great hall this e’en, your druid sang that MacRuari bairns are fed a spoonful of clan earth, sealing their love for kith and kin, the home glen,” she began, watching him carefully. “Is it true?”
“So true as the morrow, aye.”
“Can it be Maldred did not receive one?”
“For certes he was given such a token. Not heeding the practice would have seen the banishment, or worse, of the hen wife who helped birth him.” He scowled, and the plaid dipped a bit lower, this time revealing an equally fine bit of hard, naked chest.
Something inside Gelis squeezed. Everything in her world seemed to sharpen and then recede until she saw only the fire-gilded expanse of the Raven’s bare, beckoning skin. Looking at it set off a tingling flurry of warm, delicious flutters deep in her belly.
There, truth be told, and lower.
She shivered.
Her mouth went bone dry.
He was frowning at her, clearly mistaking the reason for her silence. The flush, she knew, was spreading across her breasts and inching slowly up her throat, soon to flame her cheeks a bright, glowing red.
She took a strengthening breath, forcing her mind off his chest and back to his maligned ancestor. “Could it be that bairns in Maldred’s day were not yet given such spoonfuls of earth?”
He shook his head. “The ceremony is a clan bonding ritual older than the ringtailed lout himself.”
“And it works?”
“You have already heard that it does.” He yanked up his plaid, his scowl going even blacker.
Almost as black as the whirls of decidedly masculine chest hair she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of before he’d jerked his plaid back in place.
That accomplished, he pushed away from the table and began to pace. “The clan earth runs in our blood,” he said, slanting a glance at her. “A MacRuari would be skinned, spitted, and roasted before he’d leave these lands.”
“Then” — Gelis laid on her most triumphant tone — “it follows that a MacRuari wouldn’t sunder them either. Not the glen or its people.”
Ronan stopped in his tracks.
He almost choked.
“Maldred the Dire was no ordinary clansman. He cannot be measured against the rest of us. His legacy —”
“His legacy is a broken grave slab.”
Every muscle in Ronan’s body tensed and his mouth compressed into a hard, firm line.
Across the room, bright amber eyes flashed hotly.
Ignoring their heat, he picked up the fire poker and jabbed at the peats.
“Once, my lady, when I was too young to know better, I tried to do something about Maldred’s cracked grave slab.” He kept his attention on the softly glowing peats. “Spurred by clan pride and a boy’s innocence, I marched into the overgrown burial ground, determined to wedge the two pieces of weathered stone back together again.”
“But you couldn’t.” She spoke the obvious.
“Nae, but that is no’ the purpose of my tale.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, not surprised to see her jaw set stubbornly again.
“See you, I needed only three bold strides on that weedy, tainted ground before my right foot plunged knee-deep into a rabbit hole. The thing was hidden beneath a clump of tussocky deer grass.” His fingers tightened around the fire poker. “I broke my ankle that day. The injury kept me from accompanying my father on a long-anticipated journey to Inverness.”
He paused, remembering. “There were some amongst the clan elders who felt I’d been punished for daring to try to repair Maldred’s gravestone. My own concern was more with losing out on the adventure of a foray into a bustling township. To a wee laddie who’d ne’er yet left this glen, it was a bitter disappointment.”
Even more damning, when the break did not heal well, he was left with a painful limp that took him nearly a year of steely willpower and hard training to banish.
That, of course, he kept to himself.
And that, to this day, the ankle plagued him if he forgot himself and stepped wrongly. Almost feeling its dull throbbing now, he propped the fire poker against the hearth and turned to frown at his bride.
“Be it a broken tomb or a proud stronghold such as your father’s Eilean Creag, men make their legacies,” he said, blotting his mind to his wretched ankle. “Most times, they reap what they deserve.”
“Say you?” Lady Gelis’s eyes glittered all the brighter.
Indeed, were she a less prickly female, he might even suspect his tale had made her a bit misty-eyed.
Dewy-eyed for the lad he’d been.
Not the man he was.
A distinction that only worsened his mood.
Buckie chose that moment to prudently push himself to his feet and shuffle away, disappearing into the shadows of the fusty-smelling corridor.
Ronan scowled.
Would that he might escape so easily.
Behind him, one of the peat bricks popped with an uncharacteristically loud crackle. A shower of fiery, orange-red sparks puffed into the air, several of them finding the backs of his naked calves.
“Eee-ow!” He jerked, twisting to swat at his legs and almost losing his plaid in the process. He grabbed at the downward-slipping folds, certain he heard a burst of feminine laughter.
Hearty laughter, with no attempt made to stifle it.
But when he straightened, Lady Gelis was simply watching him.
The soft, doe-eyed look was gone. In its place, her lifted- chin, set-jawed look was fixed steadily on him.
“If your clan talespinners speak true, and as your own tale implies,” she declared, twirling her bauble chain, “your ancestor sleeps in an untended tomb in a forgotten burial ground overrun with nettles and bracken.”
Ronan’s jaw tightened. “His grave is hardly forgotten, my lady.”
It was a scar on the land.
“But it is neglected.” She strode forward, not stopping until they stood nearly toe to toe. “As is the half-ruinous stone crest above the keep door. I saw it when we arrived, recognizing its age.”
Ronan’s fingers froze on his half-refastened plaid-knot. He’d forgotten the crest.
Ancient, cracked, and moldering, the thing was barely recognizable as a one-time heraldic shield. Wind, rain, and cold, along with the sheer weight of the ages, had blurred its details, leaving only worn and crumbled stone.
A forever remembrance of the destruction and ruin Maldred had wreaked upon the clan.
Upon him.
Him, and all those he’d foolishly allowed a place in his heart.
“Was the crest Maldred’s?” Lady Gelis was peering up at him, her fingers doing a deft job of finishing his plaid knot. “It looks old enough to have been his.”
Ronan expelled a slow breath. “Aye, it was his. He built this tower. Leastways the oldest parts of it. If clan tradition may be believed, he chose this site because an earlier pagan sacrificial circle once stood here.”
“Indeed?” She patted the plaid knot, her fingertips just brushing his shoulder.
Ronan nodded, relief flooding him when she lowered her hands.
“Some clan elders believe the crest is carved on one of those ancient stones,” he said, still feeling her warmth on his skin. “If their suspicions are true, the sacrilege may have been what originally brought Maldred into conflict with the Old Ones, earning their eternal wrath and damnation.”
“Eternal damning is harsh.”
“Misusing a sacred stone — for whate’er purpose — is an affront to the ancients. Only one as brazen as Maldred would have dared seize such a relic for a crest stone. I’m surprised you even noticed the thing.” He looked at her, making certain his face showed no emotion. “Not many do.”
“Perhaps they do not look clearly.”
“And you do?”
She tilted her chin. “I see much, aye.”
Ronan arched a brow.
An odd prickling at his nape warned that she meant more than his ancestor’s age-pitted heraldic shield.
“There are things here you might prefer not to see, my lady. Glen Dare folk are cautious. They prefer not to stick their hands in wasps’ nests.”
“Wasps’ nests?”
“So I said, aye.”
He wasn’t at all surprised when her expression went even more stubborn.
“Most hereabouts wouldn’t cast an eye on Maldred’s crest if their lives depended on it. Not even if you threatened to thrash their naked flesh with a switch made of thorny wood and stinging nettles.”
“Be that as it may, I still find it a great sorrow to hear an ancestral grave likened to a . . . a wasp’s nest.” Her eyes still sparking, she leaned close.
So near that her breasts — and the infernal bauble and its slinky, double-looped chain — pressed into him. Her rose scent assailed him as well, the heady fragrance addling his wits and wearing down every last one of the shields he’d thrown up against her.
Clearly bent on bedeviling him, she remained where she stood, not budging an inch.
“There are things we must discuss, Raven.” Her eyes gleamed and a swirl of rose-scented warmth seemed to slide around him, almost a caress. “Matters of great import that have naught to do with Maldred the Dire or the state this room was in when I came up here.”
Ronan drew a breath, tried hard not to move.
Speech was out of the question.
His most damnable bits were reacting to her.
Mere stirrings, praise the saints, but if she kept taunting him, a full-fledged river of heat would soon pour into his loins and then he’d be hard-pressed to resist her.
Seemingly oblivious — or perhaps not — she lifted a hand to his face. “Look,” she urged, “see what I can show you.”
“Show me?”
She nodded. “You know my mother has the taibhsearachd? I —”
“You have the same gift.” He made the words a statement. “Torcaill said you did.”
“He spoke true,” she admitted, her chin lifting. “And sometimes, if a taibhsear touches someone, that person can see what the seer does.”
Ronan swallowed, quite certain he didn’t wish to peer into any such image.
Not now, not on the morrow, and not even next year.
Perhaps never.
But already she was pinning him with her gaze and resting her palm against his cheek. Her fingers slid down to touch his mouth, lingering there as the room suddenly darkened around them and he lost sight of her, seeing instead Maldred’s blight of a crest stone.
“By glory!” He stared, but the thing was truly there, hovering before him.
No longer cracked and crumbling, the stone shimmered with a brilliance that hurt his eyes. The sculpted raven, its proud outline barely visible on the stone as he knew it, looked almost alive. Glistening feathers seemed to ripple in a distant wind, and two curving horns that he’d ne’er before seen appeared to rise from the bird’s head.
But before he could focus on this wonder, she took her hand from his face and the fleeting image faded, disappearing as if it’d never been.
Ronan blinked.
He put his own hands to his head, pressed his fingers against his temples.
“I canna believe you did that.” He looked at her. “How —”
She gave a light shrug. “I do not understand how or why such a wonder is possible. My mother warned me that it is so. ’Tis a marvel to be accepted, not questioned.”
“I should like to speak of it!”
She smiled, her eyes glittering with some wild, inner fire that put two spots of red on her cheeks. “Och, aye, we need to discuss many things” — she glanced at her hand, then back at him — “though I vow Maldred wishes —”
“That cloven- footed he-goat is naught but moldering bones. He is beyond wishes.”
“Has he told you so?”
“Nae. And I have no desire to ask him.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Ronan felt his brows shooting heavenward.
The notion of asking his long-dead ancestor anything was too preposterous to contemplate. Catching a glimpse into Lady Gelis’s vision was one thing. Conversing with his forebears — especially Maldred — was something entirely different, and he wanted naught to do with the like.
Resuming his pacing — and at a clip that would keep even a fleet-footed MacKenzie damsel at bay — he shoved a hand through his hair and strove to find the best words to explain things to her.
“Be glad he is naught but bone and bad memories.” He tossed her a glance as he marched past the windows. “His wishes, if you knew them, would —”
“All souls have wishes.” She looked more peeved than enlightened. “Hopes and dreams never leave us, even when our bones are no more.”
“Humph.”
“ ’Tis true.” She’d moved to stand by the hearth, her chin still stubbornly set and her arms folded. “If you call yourself a Highlander, you must know it.”
Ronan bit back another snort.
He was more Highland than she knew. Frowning again, he increased his step, not about to tell her. Such things didn’t need proving. Nor did he care to reveal that he’d seen more than his share of every string she harped on.
Hopes and dreams enough to fill a score of lifetimes. And bones — bones of loved ones — in such number he could scarce count.
“Do you think Maldred’s heart didn’t quicken to the same things you hold dear?” she persisted, proving she wished to torture him.
Bending, she snatched up a plump black peat brick from the creel by the hearthside and waved it in his direction. “The reek of peat smoke or the scent of heather, the howl of a winter wind and the crash of waves upon the shore, mist on the braes or a Highland moon sailing through wind-torn clouds.”
She tossed the peat onto the fire and dusted her hands. “All those things filled his days just as they do yours. Enduring, beautiful things capable of squeezing the hearts of the most hardened amongst us. Such are the things that bind Highlanders to those that have gone before. Not our great dignity and pride, but our deep love of these hills. Maldred surely felt it, too.”
“I am sure he felt a great many things.” It was the best Ronan could do.
His head was beginning to pound.
“And” — she drew a breath, clearly not finished — “without doubt, he had wishes. Perhaps one of them was to be remembered more kindly.”
Ronan smothered a word he’d not utter in front of a lady.
“You would think otherwise if you knew more about him. Greed and an unquenchable thirst for power were his only concerns.” A gust of wind rattled the window shutters. “He believed he was immortal. Truth is, he was a malevolent old sorcerer who —”
One of the shutters came loose and cracked loudly against the wall.
Ronan went long-strided across the room and secured the banging shutter.
A task he executed too hastily, for when he yanked on the rain-soaked shutter, slamming it into place, the wretched thing pinched two of his fingers.
Gritting his teeth, he resisted the urge to howl in pain.
“Leave Maldred in the remote past where he belongs,” he said as soon as he trusted himself to speak. “He is undeserving of your sympathy and” — his gaze lit on his leather bag, the neatly folded piles of his journeying gear lining the great four-poster bed — “if you would hear the truth of it, I was packing for a journey. But days —”
“A long one and far from here — judging by what I have seen.” Disappointment flickered in Lady Gelis’s eyes. “I knew it was true.”
Ronan started toward her, one hand raised in denial. “ ’Tis no’ what you think, lass. I packed — and unpacked — days ago. My travel goods were returned to yon strongbox long ere you arrived.”
Doubt creased her brow. “But —”
“I cannot explain why my gear was strewn about the bedchamber.” He grasped her upper arms. “I can only swear that I had no hand in it. And” — he drew a breath, not liking how the brightness in her eyes was making his chest hurt — “I will get to the bottom of it and ensure the like doesn’t happen again.”
He glanced at the empty table. “None of it.”
“I believe you. Nor am I frightened here.” She looked down at his hands holding her, then back up at him. “I also know you wouldn’t intentionally hurt me.”
Ronan released her at once and turned aside before she could see him wince.
The odd ache in his chest grew hotter, tighter.
She should be frightened.
Very frightened.
Instead, she slipped around him, her attar of roses scent floating about her like a fragrant cloud, her damnable green bauble glittering in the soft glow of the hearth fire.
Ronan reached to curl his hands around his sword belt, only to remember he wasn’t wearing one.
He frowned, folding his arms instead.
She smoothed her skirts. Then, putting her hands on her hips, she placed herself just so that she effectively blocked his way to the door.
“Well?” She angled her head.
“We have naught else to speak of this e’en,” he said, knowing it wasn’t the answer she’d wanted. He knew, too, that the words would cut deeper than any sword.
But if he stayed any longer, he’d regret more than her mere presence.
Wishing it were not so, he turned to leave. “I’ll order the house guard to patrol the corridor outside your door. Your night rest will not be disturbed.”
“Wait.”
The word fell between them, an iron weight around his ankle.
“I will not have any night’s rest unless you tell me where you meant to go.”
Ronan frowned.
She flicked a glance at his travel gear. “I am a curious woman.”
An iron yoke seemed to settle onto Ronan’s shoulders, joining the shackle at his foot.
He cleared his throat, risked one answer-seeking glance at the ceiling.
But the age-blackened rafters remained mute.
“It is the least you owe me.” Lady Gelis was looking at him, her eyes intent. “If you have a lady love and were perchance setting off to be with her, then I would understand much.”
“A lady love?” Ronan almost laughed.
She nodded.
“Nae, for truth, lass, you err.”
“A woman is behind most things a man does.” Her tonedared him to deny it. “A woman or land gain and wealth.”
This time he did laugh.
If such a rusty-sounding grunt could pass for laughter.
“Ah, well,” he owned, “you might just have the right of it. A woman was behind my travel plans, though no’ for the reason you suspect.”
One red-gold brow lifted, her amber eyes all attention. “Oh?”
“Aye.” He spoke true. “Leastways in that the death of my second wife spurred my decision. It was after her passing that I began to consider making the journey to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, shrine of Saint James. I’d finally decided to go the day Valdar told me about you.”
“You wanted to go on a pilgrimage?”
“To kneel at the shrine and collect my scallop badge, aye.”
“I have seen such men. My mother is known for welcoming them. She offers a fresh pallet for the night and a warm meal to those who pass through Kintail. But you . . .” The words tailed away on a tinge of skepticism. “You do not have the look of such a man.”
“Be that as it may, I was committed to going.” He started toward the door.
She followed. “Why?”
Ronan hesitated, ran a hand through his hair. “I thought — hoped — that if —”
“Ahhh, now I understand.” Something that sounded like pity shaded her voice. “You believed such a pilgrimage would ease your grief.” Her eyes went all soft again. “How you must have loved your wife to suffer her loss so deeply. An arduous journey to the ends of the world . . .”
Ronan stiffened, the words piercing him.
He did not deserve her sympathy.
“There are few things a man will not do when his heart makes the demand.”
“I am sorry. I wish —”
He raised a hand, staying her when she moved to step closer. “You have had a tedious journey yourself. Rest now and we shall talk on the morrow.”
Just not about the late Lady Cecilia.
Looking as if she meant to do exactly that, Lady Gelis drew a breath to speak, but Ronan turned and left the bedchamber before she could.
He closed the door behind him, striding no more than six paces down the dimly lit passage before pausing beneath a high-set arrow slit. Chill night air streamed through the narrow opening and he leaned his back against the wall, lifting his face to the welcoming draught.
Feeling worn and empty, he flattened his hands against the cold damp of the tower stones, seeking strength from their solidity.
Lady Gelis’s words still rang in his ears.
His head throbbed with the way she’d looked at him, her unwanted compassion echoing even here in the shadows of the corridor.
For a maid so gifted as a taibhsear, her perception had failed her sorely where his late wife was concerned.
He hadn’t loved Lady Cecilia.
Not even a shred.
His hands clenched against the wall. Try as he had, theirs was a match forged in hell, and he’d despised her almost from the first.
Even more damning, he’d killed her.