Oh no—not the dog killer!
Standing on the bottom step of the great staircase leading down to the courtyard, Ellie watched with a sinking heart as the big man strode purposefully toward her, leading two horses in his wake. In the light of day he appeared even larger and more imposing than he had last night. With his plaid wrapped around his body and the hilt of his sword peeking up over his shoulder, he looked like some determined warrior straight off a Hollywood movie set, intent on destruction.
Hold on, maybe that was a slight overreaction.
In fairness, he hadn’t killed the dog; he’d only threatened to kill the animal. At least, she didn’t think he had. He’d promised he wouldn’t.
She studied him as he approached.
His hair, waves of deep burnished copper, was neatly pulled back and tied at his neck, though a couple of unruly curls had escaped their binding.
Her breath caught in her throat as he drew near and met her gaze. The liquid brown of his eyes immobilized her, holding her captive as if something in them beckoned to her, causing her to miss whatever it was he’d just said.
“Wha…what? What did you say?” She gave herself a mental shake. This was not like her.
Concern and doubt shone on his face. “I asked naught but if you were ready to go, Elliedenton. Are you sure yer up to traveling? That yer recovered enough to sit yer mount? If you canna even hold a simple conversation…” He left the thought hanging as he reached for her arm.
His words, softened by the deep, melodic burr of his brogue, caught at her, blanketed her senses, disoriented her.
No, this was not at all like her.
“Of course I am,” she huffed, jerking away before he touched her. If the man could fluster her with a look and render her speechless with nothing more than the sound of his voice, she didn’t want to find out what his touch might do.
He ducked his head and backed away a step, but not before she saw the smile that lit his eyes.
How dare he laugh at her? Wasn’t it bad enough they were holding her prisoner here?
Okay. Stop. She was letting herself get carried away again.
After all, he was preparing to take her into town. Still, she saw no reason for his amusement. At least, no reason that wouldn’t be completely humiliating.
“And my name isn’t all one word like that. It’s Ellie. Short for Eleanora. It was my mama’s name. Eleanora Ann. Denton. Just like you’re…”
What the heck was his name anyway? She couldn’t remember. And why she had rattled through that ridiculous explanation of her whole name and where it came from like some nervous teenager meeting the school’s star football player was beyond her.
She huffed out an irritated breath. It was so hard to be haughty when she didn’t have all her facts. And when she couldn’t control her own words. Or her rapidly beating heart.
He straightened, the smile still there, and tilted his head in a little bow. “Caden. It’s no short for anything. MacAlister. Son of Duncan. Next laird of the MacKiernan.” He stopped, a small frown wrinkling his brow as he abruptly turned to adjust the straps on his horse. “Yer ready, then?”
Ellie gritted her teeth. He was making fun of her! Stepping down off the last stair, she moved toward him, crossing both arms under her breasts.
“I told you I was ready. And where’s that poor dog? Did you go ahead and murder him even though you promised me you wouldn’t?”
Caden’s smile had disappeared when he faced her this time. “There are many a thing I’m no in this life, but one thing I am is a man of my word. I’ve no broken any promises to you or to anyone else.”
Though her goal hadn’t been to anger him, Ellie’s embarrassment spurred her to continue when she would have stopped.
“Oh really? If that’s true, then just where is he?” She stumbled back a step at his glare.
“You doubt me? The damned beast is…”
Caden’s words were cut short as he grabbed Ellie and swung her up off the ground, enclosing her in his arms and whirling about, just before a great shove knocked them forward.
“EllieEllieEllie!”
The excited voice echoing in her mind immediately alerted her to the source of the great shove.
The object of her concern had arrived. And only Caden’s inserting himself between her and the great dog had kept her from being the main recipient of all that happiness and affection.
The four-legged beast was fine, but the look on the face of the two-legged beast told another story altogether.
An apology might be in order.
Quickly.
If Caden hadn’t given his word to his mother, he would be on the far side of the MacKiernan lands by now. Alone.
Instead here he was, plodding along on horseback at the side of a daft Fae and a slobbering murderous beast.
“I don’t understand. None of this is right,” Ellie murmured for perhaps the hundredth time. As she had each time before, she brought her horse to a stop, scanning the countryside around her.
When his mother had come to him asking that he escort their unusual guest down to see the village, he could think of nothing but how the woman had felt in his arms last night.
No! his self-protective mind had roared. Keep yer distance from the lass. But his internal warning had been swept away by the traitorously meek “As you wish,” he had uttered out loud.
He’d no more than begun to speak to her when he’d proven he should have listened to that inner voice, babbling about himself as if trying to impress her. It had taken all his will to simply stop his flow of words.
Since that initial embarrassment, he’d kept himself in check. Watching. Waiting to see what she would do. It didn’t take long for him to reassess his plans.
Ellie’s openmouthed reaction as they’d ridden out the gates of Dun Ard had given him cause to reconsider their destination before they’d hardly begun.
Instead of the village, he’d turned them toward Sithean Fardach. Though his family home had fallen into disrepair over the years, that in itself would ensure the place deserted, and he wouldn’t have to deal with explaining this woman and her strange behavior to anyone.
He glanced back at her now, still motionless in the center of the trail, the great deerhound on guard at her side.
At this rate it would take all day for their short trip.
Still, he held his tongue.
When he’d seen her waiting on the steps this morning, she’d fair taken his breath away. Oh, there’d been no mistaking her womanly form when he’d gotten a good look at her last night. Or when he’d held her in his arms. But today, dressed as a proper lady, she was extraordinary. Her long dark curls, pulled back and tied low at her neck, only served to emphasize the green of her eyes.
She’d been flustered and then angry, each emotion racing across her face in quick succession, coloring her cheeks and lighting her eyes. Clearly she had no gift for artifice, no ability to conceal her feelings, for which he was grateful. That would be a rare find in a woman if it were genuine.
And now?
Now she looked bewildered. Frightened. Vulnerable.
She could be pretending. Trying to lure him in for some purpose all her own. Certainly his past experience with women had taught him to be wary of their plotting ways. Yet this Ellie didn’t seem to be acting for his benefit. In fact, for most of the ride she’d hardly seemed aware of him at all.
It was for that reason more than any other he held his irritation in check and quietly asked the same question he’d been asking for the last couple of hours. “Do you want to go back now or do we continue on?”
She shook her head as if waking from a dream and lightly tapped her heels to her mount’s sides, signaling him to forward movement.
“Let’s go on, please,” she responded quietly, as she had each time he’d asked the question.
He stole a quick glance her direction as she pulled even with him, catching her chewing on her bottom lip as she studied her surroundings. Not that he could blame her for her confusion. His mother had told him last night this woman had been sent by the Fae.
From the future.
Caden didn’t for a minute doubt what Rosalyn claimed. He was all too familiar with his family’s heritage, his own mother’s gifts. And though it had been nine years, he remembered clearly watching the Fae magic take his cousin Mairi and her betrothed back to their own time.
The magic of the Fae was very real to Caden, as was his understanding that the Fae did nothing without motive. And certainly nothing without a price. The last time the Fae had touched their lives, the price had been dear, changing his whole world. He’d nearly lost his youngest brother and his sister in the incident. He had lost the woman he’d thought would be his wife and, along with her, the future he’d envisioned for himself.
If this woman had been sent here by the Fae, there was, as his mother had said, a reason for it. A reason he intended to discover before his family again had to pay such a price.
Onward they continued, riding side by side until at last they reached the top of the hill and entered the open gates of Sithean Fardach.
A wave of sadness washed over Caden as it always did when he entered the deserted, decaying courtyard. The smaller sheds where he had played as a child had fallen into disrepair, some of them no more than mounds of rubble.
“What is this place?”
Ellie’s question drew him from his melancholy thoughts.
“Sithean Fardach. I was born here.” Had his father lived, this, not Dun Ard, would have been his home. “Though this is the MacKiernan ancestral home, the last laird built Dun Ard and moved the family seat there. My mother is a MacKiernan by birth. When she married, she stayed here with her husband and raised her family until my father’s death when we were but children. After that, the current laird of the MacKiernan, my cousin Blane, insisted we join him at Dun Ard so that he could see to our welfare and safety. That’s been our home ever since.”
Ellie slid down off her horse and approached the great stairs, pausing to run her hand over the wood of the railing before turning back to him.
“It’s real, isn’t it?” she asked in a shaky voice. “I don’t know how, but all of this is real.”
Caden dismounted and moved forward, keeping his focus on the woman in front of him. She sank to the stairs, sitting down like someone who’d had the air knocked from her.
Instinctively he reached out for her, his hand lighting on her shoulder before he’d even had time to consider the movement.
“I’m sorry. I ken this must be difficult for you.”
“Difficult?” She lifted her head, her eyes the damp sparkling green of fields in summer. “You can’t imagine. It’s sheer madness. I don’t have a clue as to where I am or how I got here. And I’m left with no alternative but to accept the idiotic ramblings of some insane woman.”
Caden tried unsuccessfully to stop the smile her rant inspired, knowing she didn’t find any of this amusing.
“I can only assume the insane woman you speak of is the lady Rosalyn, and that being the case, those idiotic ramblings must be what she’s told you of the Fae.”
A look of exasperation crossed Ellie’s lovely face. “Exactly. The lady Rosalyn. She has this bizarre theory that I’m descended from Faeries, for God’s sake. She apparently thinks that she is, too.” Ellie shook her head incredulously, looking down at her feet. “That woman is a full-on nutcase.”
“That woman is my mother.” Caden paused, enjoying the effect his words had.
Ellie met his eyes slowly, the red of her embarrassment creeping up to color her face. “Your mother?”
“Aye. My mother. And if she says yer a Daughter of the Fae, then without a doubt, you are.”
“I’m sorry.” Ellie rose to her feet, ducking her shoulder to slip out from under his hand as she turned. “I didn’t mean to be insulting about your mama.” With that quick apology, she lifted her skirts and ran up the stairs.
“No insult taken,” he called after her. Now that was more the behavior he expected from a woman. Run away rather than face up to what she’d said or done.
Ellie had made her way to the top landing before he thought of his last visit to the keep. “Mind yer step up there, lass. The wood in this staircase has weathered over many a generation of my family. It’s no so sturdy these days. Best you come back down where it’s safe.”
He started up after her, scanning the steps for which ones carried the splintered cracks he had noticed the last time he’d been here.
She pushed open the great door but didn’t enter. Instead she backed up to lean against the rail of the landing, tilting her head as if listening to something. Suddenly she whirled and yelled, “Don’t come any closer!”
It wasn’t her words that held him in place so much as the look of sheer panic on her face as the railing under her hands gave way.
Ellie pitched her body back toward the doorway, hitting the landing with a hard thump as she watched the railing she’d had under her hands only seconds before smash to the ground far below. She rolled to her hands and knees, scooting toward the edge of the landing to peer over.
Stop! Too big! Danger!
A high-pitched reedy voice echoed through her mind, as insistent in its message as it had been the moment before the rail collapsed. She had known instantly it wasn’t the big deerhound. This voice was different, more commanding somehow. Besides, she could feel the big dog’s presence at the bottom of the staircase, his worry transmitted freely to her.
Too big! Danger!
A cracking sound froze her to the spot, but the frustrated grunt that followed had her on her feet and moving. Five stairs below her, Caden’s foot had gone through the rotted wood.
“Are you hurt? Didn’t I tell you to not to come any closer? Now look at you.”
Damn the man. He’d been coming up after her. She’d warned him, but of course he hadn’t listened. She should have known he wouldn’t. Just like every macho farmhand she’d ever known. Unless an order came from a man, it was ignored.
“I’m no hurt. My boot’s absorbed the scrape. But you stay put. Dinna you move even a hair. I’ll be right there to get you.” Caden jerked at his foot, attempting to pull it from the wood.
The stairs wouldn’t hold his weight. She knew from the feelings and pictures flowing through her mind. She couldn’t allow him to come up after her. It was bad enough his foot had gone through the stairs. If she hadn’t dashed way up here in the first place, none of this would have happened.
But she’d let her pride get the best of her. When she’d stuck her foot in her mouth and insulted his mama, right after he’d been so nice to her, well, the only thing she could think of was to put some distance between them.
So the next move was hers.
“I’m coming down.”
No, no! Too big. Don’t move!
The warning sounded too late as the board beneath Ellie’s foot splintered, pain searing up her calf as her left leg plunged through the rotted wood.
“Damnation, woman! Dinna I tell you stay as you were?” Caden bellowed, wrenching his own foot free.
Ellie didn’t think it would take much effort to pull out of the hole, but with even a tiny shift of her weight she could feel the board that held her giving way. She remained absolutely still, crouched on the step with one leg dangling through the hole as Caden slowly crawled up the stairs separating them.
Though he stopped two steps below her, their eyes were nearly level. She wondered at the determination she saw there, especially since all she felt at the moment was mind-numbing fear.
“Can you pull free?”
It might be unreasonable to think the sound of her own voice could shatter the wood and send her hurtling down, still, she only shook her head in response. The vision of that rail splintering as it crashed into the ground over a story below her was too fresh in her mind.
“Is yer limb wedged in tightly, then?” Caden reached out, his fingers grazing over and around her knee where it disappeared through the opening in the step. “It feels as though you’ve room,” he murmured.
“Not wedged.” She felt breathless and she could hear her own heart pounding. “But the wood seems to give way with every little movement.”
He nodded thoughtfully, capturing her gaze with his own. “Dinna you fear, lass, I’ll no allow you to fall. I swear it.”
His voice curled about her, comforting her and somehow bolstering her courage. When his fingers tightened in a reassuring squeeze around her knee before he drew his hand away, she had to fight the gasp that threatened to escape. Surely it was only her desperate fear of falling that caused her heartbeat to speed up.
“When I lift you,” he began.
“No! It won’t hold your weight, too.” What was he thinking? They’d both be lying down there with the smashed railing if he tried that.
A look of irritation swept across his handsome face as he leaned in closer.
“You’ll be listening to me now, Elliedenton, with none of yer blether. You’ll do as I say and I’ll have you safely out of there, you ken?”
Her eyes locked on his and she nodded, meekly enough, she hoped. There would be plenty of time later to discuss that attitude of his. Right now she’d simply trust that he could do what he said.
“Verra well. When I lift you”—he paused briefly, as if testing whether or not she might interrupt again—“you’ll push up with all yer strength. Ready?”
At her nod, he rose slowly to his feet. She ignored the cracking sounds around her, keeping her gaze focused on his face.
“That’s it, lass. Yer doing fine,” he murmured a second before he leaped past, grabbing her under her armpits and lifting up.
It felt almost like an amusement park ride as she flew up into his arms. He pushed off with his legs, sending them into the air as the wood that had been under her seconds before fractured and crashed to the ground below.
She hooked her arms around his neck as the force of his leap propelled them across the corner of the landing and through the old castle’s dark, gaping doorway. They hit the stone floor with a mighty thud, knocking Ellie’s breath from her lungs even though Caden had managed to cushion her fall, once again, with his own body.
A body she now lay gratefully huddled into, his powerful arms holding her tightly to him. A strong, solid, all-male body that made her feel small and feminine and fluttery and—
“By the Fates,” Caden groaned. “I dinna believe I’d care to go through that again anytime soon.”
His words drew her up short. What was wrong with her? She was having the most bizarre twenty-four hours of her life and yet she could lie here mooning over some guy just because he had a velvet voice and big biceps?
“Yeah. Exactly. Me either.”
But she didn’t lift her head from his shoulder and he made no move to dislodge her.
At least, not until he roared, “Rat!” and rolled her protectively under his body, curling around her, encasing her in his embrace.
With Caden’s warm breath feathering over the top of her head, Ellie was almost tempted to change all her prior negative opinions about rats. How could anything be all bad if its mere presence resulted in this? Though with her nose jammed into the wall of muscle that passed for Caden’s chest, she was finding that breathing had become a challenge.
She managed to shift her head just enough to find a spot where she could get some air, but the tiny opening she’d located was quickly filled with a small, furry head. A light, warm breath feathered over her face. Followed by a small, warm tongue.
“No rat. Big One stupid.”
The deliverer of all the earlier warnings had arrived.
“It’s not a rat.” Ellie’s muffled voice reached Caden’s ears as her hands slid up his chest.
“Looked like a rat to me,” he muttered, scanning the area around them in the musty gloom, hunting for any sign of the creature that had darted past his face as he tried to ignore the feeling of her hands moving over his body.
“Well, it’s not, trust me.”
The sigh that followed her words was deep, the heat of her breath penetrating his shirt, seeming to crawl inside his chest, sparking awareness of her throughout his body. The cushion of her hip fit perfectly under the leg he’d thrown over her, the soft, silky texture of her hair rubbed against his chin, and her small, delicate hands burned into his chest as she pushed harder….
“Maybe you could get off me now? I’m suffocating here.”
Sensibility returned in a rush and Caden jerked away from her. “My apologies. I d-dinna mean to…” He stuttered to a stop. “I was only thinking to protect you from the rat.” He stood, straightening his plaid to busy his hands. What the devil was wrong with him?
“I already told you it’s not a rat. And she doesn’t appreciate your calling her that one little bit.”
He looked down to find Ellie sitting up, cuddling some small, mangy, furry thing.
“She doesn’t appreciate…What in the name of the Fae is that thing?”
“It’s a dog, of course.” Ellie shook her head. “Poor little thing is half starved, abandoned out here.”
“Well, put the wee beastie down and come along.” He walked to the door and gazed out over the landing and the fractured staircase beyond. There would be no going back that way.
“No can do, big fella. This little lady saved my neck out there. I’m bringing her with us.”
“What nonsense is this?” The woman collected pathetic creatures like most women collected jewels.
Her only response was a groan that had him at her side in an instant. He very nearly groaned himself as she pulled her skirt above her knees, baring two very shapely legs.
“Now what are you…” he bit back any further comment when he saw the streak of deep red trailing down the back of one of those lovely appendages. “Yer bleeding.”
“Yep. It’s not bad, really. But I bet I’ll have one beauty of a bruise there tomorrow.”
She looked around as if hunting for something before using the tail of her dress to wipe along the cut. The long jagged tear oozed red once again, forming little drip lines.
A stomach-wrenching blow of guilt rolled through him. His fault.
Her beautiful skin was torn and bleeding and it was all his fault. He and Andrew had been to Sithean Fardach just last summer. He had seen the damage to the stairway then. Drew had even warned him there could be a danger. He should have done something then. He could have sent someone over from Dun Ard to replace the rotted timbers. He should have stopped her from running up the stairs.
Too late now.
He hadn’t listened to his brother last summer just like he hadn’t listened to him nine years ago about Alycie. He’d never learn. And now another woman had paid the price of his refusal to hear a warning.
“Let’s get you back to Dun Ard. My mother will have salves to help with yer healing.” He leaned over and swept her up into his arms. Carrying her seemed the least he could do.
She threw one arm around his neck, but held on to the ragged bundle in her lap with the other.
“Yer no going to leave the little vermin behind, are you?”
She shook her head, a smile lighting her eyes as she tightened her hold on the creature. “Nope. And she’s not too fond of your calling her names, either.”
Caden stepped over a pile of rubble as he made his way down the hallway toward the kitchen. “And I suppose you ken that because the hairy rat there told you, did she?”
“Exactly right,” she responded, and then laughed.
The sound echoed off the high stone walls like music played by a traveling minstrel, stopping Caden in his tracks. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh, the first time he’d seen the beauty of happiness reflected in her face.
Laughter was the music of life to Caden. There had been a time when he sought its melody in everything he did. But that had all changed nine years ago.
Now he stood in the crumbling shell of his childhood home holding a woman in his arms whose laughter soothed that part of his soul he’d feared lost.
If his mother was correct and this woman was here to be wife to one of his brothers, all he could think was that one of them had damn well better lay claim to her quickly.