Kiss of the Highlander (40 page)

But sitting didn’t happen, because the moment Gwen entered the Greathall, she froze, gaping at the portrait that hung above the double staircase facing the entrance.

It was her.

Six feet of Gwen Cassidy, clad in a pale lavender gown, blond hair tumbling about her face, graced the wall at the landing between the two staircases. “Me,” she managed to say, pointing. “That’s me.”

Maggie laughed. “Aye. It was painted in the sixteenth century—”

But Gwen didn’t hear the rest. Her attention was caught and held by the family portraits covering nearly every inch of the walls in the Greathall. From ancient times to modern day, they stretched from chair rail to ceiling.

Eager to see who Dageus had married, and what kind of children he’d fathered, she hurried past the modern paintings. Dimly, her mind registered that Maggie and Christopher were trailing behind her, now watching in silence.

At the section displaying the sixteenth century, Gwen drew to a stunned halt. She stared for a moment, unable to believe what she saw, then smiled as tears misted her eyes. She fancied she could hear faint strains of Silvan’s laughter in the air. And Nell, making some saucy response. The patter of children’s feet on stone.

The painting that held her captivated was eight feet tall. A full-length portrait, Nell was seated on the terrace, Silvan was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Nell held twins in her arms. “Nell?” she finally said, turning to look at Maggie.

“Aye. The lot of us descend directly from Silvan and Nell MacKeltar. He wed his housekeeper, so the records say. They had four children. We have twins an uncommon lot in this family.”

“He looks pretty old to be having kids to me,” Colleen said, wrinkling her nose as she bounded back into the Greathall, followed by her siblings. “The tea’s ready,” she announced.

Gwen’s heart swelled. “He was sixty-two,” she said softly. And Nell hadn’t been a spring chicken either. Dear Nell had gotten her babies back after all, and it had been Silvan who’d given them to her.

She moved to the next portrait, but two empty spaces followed. The wall was darker where portraits had once hung. “What was here?” she asked curiously. Had they taken down portraits of Drustan to give her?

Christopher and Maggie exchanged an odd glance. “Just two portraits being touched up,” Christopher said. “There’s Nell and Silvan again,” he said, pointing farther down the wall.

Gwen eyed them a moment. “And Dageus? Where is Dageus?” she asked.

Again, the couple exchanged glances. “He’s a mystery,” Maggie finally said. “He wandered off somewhere in 1521.”

“Is there no record of his death?”

“No,” Maggie replied tersely.

How very odd
, Gwen mused. But she would come back to that later, for now thoughts of Drustan consumed her. “Do you have any portraits of Drustan?”

“Mom!” Colleen cried. “Come on, you’re killing me! Let’s get on with it!”

Christopher and Maggie grinned. “Come, we have something more for you.”

“But I have so many questions,” Gwen protested. “How do you—”

“Later,” Maggie said gently. “I think we need to show you this first, then you can ask whatever questions remain.”

Gwen opened her mouth, shut it again, and followed.

When Maggie stopped at the door to the tower, Gwen took a slow, deep breath to calm the racing of her heart. Had Drustan left something for her? Something she could give her children, from the father they would never know? When Maggie and Christopher exchanged a loving glance, she nearly wept with envy.

Maggie had her MacKeltar; Gwen longed for some small token to remember hers by. A plaid with his scent, a portrait to show her babies, anything. She shivered, waiting.

Maggie withdrew a key from her pocket, dangling on a frayed and threadbare ribbon.

“There is a…legacy handed down over the centuries at Castle Keltar. It has been the source of many young lasses’ romantic dreams”—she arched a brow at her eldest daughter—“and Colleen here has been the worst—”

“Not true. I’ve heard you and Dad mooning over it tons of times, and then you both get that disgusting look in your eyes—”

“Might I remind you, that disgusting look heralded the advent of your wee life,” Christopher said dryly.

“
Eww
.” Colleen wrinkled her nose again.

Maggie laughed and continued. “Sometimes I think the sheer love of it has blessed all who’ve ever lived within these walls. The tale was carefully told from generation to generation as they waited for the day to come. Well, the day has arrived, and now the rest is up to you.” Smiling, she handed Gwen the key. “It’s said you’ll know what to do.”

“It’s said you’ve done it
before
,” Colleen added breathlessly.

Perplexed, Gwen inserted the key with trembling hands. The lock was old and gritty with time, and it took her a few minutes to work the lock.

As she opened the door, Christopher handed her a candle. “There’s no electricity in there. The tower hasn’t been opened in five centuries.”

Suspense growing, Gwen accepted the candle and gingerly stepped into the room, dimly aware that the entire MacKeltar clan was hot on her heels.

It was too dark to see much, but the glow of the candle fell upon a pile of old fabric and the silvery flash of weapons.

Drustan’s daggers!

Her heart lurched painfully.

She bent over and fingered the fabric upon which they lay. Tears stung her eyes when she realized it was his plaid, and atop it lay a small pair of black leather trews that would probably be a perfect fit.

He’d never forgotten that she’d wanted a pair.

“That’s not all,” Colleen said impatiently. “That’s the least of it. Look up!”

“Colleen,” Christopher said sternly. “In her own time, lass.”

Blinking back tears, Gwen glanced up, and as her eyes adjusted completely, she noticed a slab in the center of the circular room. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she surged to her feet.

“Oh, my God,” she choked, stumbling toward the slab. It couldn’t be. How could it be? She glanced frantically at Maggie, who smiled and nodded encouragingly.

“He waits for you. He’s waited five hundred years. It is said you know how to wake him.”

Gwen began to hyperventilate. Spots swarmed before her eyes and she nearly collapsed where she stood. For several moments she could do nothing more than stand there and stare in shock. Then she thrust the black trews she hadn’t realized she was clutching at Maggie and scrambled up onto the slab.

“Drustan,” she cried, raining kisses on his slumbering face. “Oh, Drustan! My love…” Tears slipped down her cheeks.

How had she awakened him? she wondered frantically, unable to believe that he was really there. She touched him with shaking hands, afraid he might just melt away, afraid she was dreaming.

“I’m not dreaming, am I?” she whispered weakly.

“No, lass, you’re not dreaming,” Christopher said, smiling.

Gwen stared at Drustan, trying to recall exactly what had happened in the cave. She’d fallen down the ravine and landed squarely on top of him. She’d been fascinated, had touched him, shamelessly running her hands over his chest. Then she’d leaned back so the sun could fall on him, so she might get a better look at the devastating man.

“The sun! You must help me get him outside,” she said urgently. “I think sunlight has something to do with it!”

It took their combined strength to carry the enchanted Highlander down the winding stairs, through the library, and out onto the cobbled terrace. They were huffing by the time they deposited her mighty warrior on the stones.

Gwen stood for a moment, just gaping down at him. Drustan was
here
! All she had to do was figure out how to wake him! Dazed, she slipped astride him and placed her palms flush to his chest, exactly as she’d done in the cave. The sunshine was falling directly on his face and chest.

But nothing happened.

The symbols remained, etched clearly upon his chest. Back in the cave, they’d begun disappearing. Why?

She narrowed her eyes and peered up at the sun. It was brilliant and clear, a cloudless day. She glanced at Maggie. “He didn’t leave any instructions?” She needed him awake
now
.

The MacKeltars shook their heads.

“It was thought he feared someone might wake him before it was time,” Maggie said. She cast Colleen a wry look. “Like my daughter who’s been infatuated with him since she first peeked through the slit in the tower and saw him slumbering.”

Closing her eyes, Gwen thought hard. What was different? She opened them again slowly and gazed down at his chest. Everything was the same: the sun, the symbols, her hands….

Blood
. There had been blood smeared on the symbols from her cutting her hands up when she’d fallen through the rocks. Could it be that elemental? Human blood and sunshine? She knew nothing about spells, but blood figured prominently in myths and legends.

“I need a knife,” she cried.

Colleen dashed into the castle and returned swiftly, clutching a small steak knife.

Mumbling a prayer beneath her breath, Gwen lightly ran the edge over her palm so drops of blood welled up. With trembling hands, she smeared it across the symbols on his chest, then sat back anxiously, waiting.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then one by one, the symbols began to fade….

She sucked in her breath and glanced up at his face.

“Good morrow, English,” Drustan said lazily, opening his eyes, his silvery gaze tender. “I knew you could do it, love.”

Gwen’s eyelids fluttered and she fainted.

         
28
         
 

When Gwen regained consciousness, she was lying
on the bed in the Silver Chamber. Drustan was bending over her, gazing down with so much love in his eyes that she gasped and began crying.

“Drustan,” she whispered, clutching at him.

“She’s awakened, Maggie,” Drustan said over his shoulder. “She’s all right.” Gwen heard the door shut as Maggie left, giving them privacy.

She stared up into his silvery eyes wonderingly. He was looking at her as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

“How?” she managed to ask, cupping his face in her hands. She traced her fingers over every plane and angle, and he kissed them repeatedly as they passed his lips. “How?”

“I love you, Gwen MacKeltar,” he whispered, catching her hand and planting a kiss in the palm.

Gwen laughed through her tears. “I love you too,” she whispered back, flinging her arms around him and holding him tightly. “But I don’t understand.”

In between dozens of kisses, quick sips, long leisurely ones, he told her.

Told her how he’d watched her disappear as he’d lain on the ground, the battle raging all around. Told her how the arrow had been deflected by the metal disc on his leather bands and had been but a flesh wound. Told her how they’d discovered who the “enemy” was.

“That old woman,” Gwen murmured. “She said she’d hired the gypsies.”

“Aye, Besseta. She made a full confession.” He kissed her again before continuing, sucking gently on her lower lip. “Besseta claimed she scryed in her yew sticks that a woman would bring about the death of her son. Since I was soon to wed, Besseta decided my betrothed must be the woman in her vision. She warned Nevin, but he laughed it off and made her promise not to harm me. To her ailing mind, bespelling me wasn’t harming me, so she purchased the gypsy’s services to enchant me so she might prevent the wedding. In the first reality, when Anya was killed by the Campbell, Besseta must have thought the threat had passed. I suspect, however, that sometime shortly after Anya’s death, Besseta must have had her vision again, and realized that as long as I was alive and might yet wed, the danger would never pass. So she proceeded with her original plan to have me enchanted.”

“So she drugged you and sent the message bidding you come to discover the name of the man who’d killed Dageus.”

“Aye. I was enchanted, you found me, and I sent you back.”

“But in the second reality,” Gwen exclaimed, “since Dageus and Anya weren’t killed, she must have heard you were coming home with your betrothed—”

“—and stepped up plans to have me abducted. Unwilling to take any chances; she wanted my “betrothed” gone too. As you were in my bedchamber, they assumed you were Anya.”

Gwen shook her head, amazed. “It was her belief in her vision that made everything happen, Drustan! If she hadn’t believed in it, she would never have enchanted you, I would never have been sent back, and Nevin would never have given his life to save me.”

“Aye. ’Tis why the gypsy are o’ercautious of fortune telling. They make it clear that any future they scry is but one possible future: the most likely one, yet not writ in stone. For Besseta, driven by lifelong fear, it was indeed her most probable future. Fear drove her to have me enchanted. Having me enchanted resulted in me sending you back. Once you were there, Nevin gave his life to protect you. Her fear drove her to fulfill the possibility.”

Gwen rubbed her forehead. “This hurts my head.”

Drustan laughed. “It hurts mine too. I’ll be most happy to ne’er muck with time again.”

Gwen was silent a moment, thinking. “What happened to Besseta?”

Drustan’s eyes darkened. “After you disappeared, she plunged into the battle, and though the men strove not to harm her, she was determined to die. She impaled herself on Robert’s claymore.” He frowned. “She confessed before she died, and we were able to piece the story together.”

Fresh tears gathered in Gwen’s eyes.

“You would weep for her?” Drustan exclaimed.

“If not for her, I should never have found you,” Gwen said softly. “It’s sad. It’s sad that she was so afraid. But at the same time, I’m so glad I found you.”

He kissed her again, then told her the rest of it. How he’d grieved, how he raged. How he’d stormed to the stones and stood arguing with himself for hours.

Then his mind had struck upon an idea—so temptingly possible that it had taken his breath away.

The gypsies. They’d made him sleep once for five centuries. Why not again? And so he’d tracked down the wandering tribe and commissioned their services. The gypsy queen herself had performed the spell for a pouch of coin.

“For a pouch of coin!” Gwen exclaimed. “How dare they charge you? They were the ones who—”

“Who sold a service, nothing more. The Rom hold themselves to a strange code. They maintain that blaming them for Besseta commissioning them to enchant me would be akin to blaming the blade for drawing blood. ’Tis the hand that wields the dagger, not the dagger itself.”

“Fine way to evade personal responsibility,” Gwen grumbled. Then she sucked in a shallow breath. “Your family! Silvan and Nell and—”

He cut her off by kissing her. “My choice was painful to them, but they understood.”

He’d not once wavered. He’d spent several months saying his good-byes before being enchanted. And implementing plans that would bear fruit five centuries later, plans to ensure a fine life for him and his wife. But there would be time to tell her of that tomorrow, or the next day or the next. “They bid me give you their love when we were reunited.”

Gwen got misty-eyed again, then thumped his chest with her fist. “Why didn’t you leave instructions for Maggie to find me weeks ago?” she cried. “My heart broke. I’ve been back for over a month—”

“I wasn’t certain when you would return to your time. I couldn’t decide if the month would pass for you in both centuries.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“And I wasn’t willing to take any chances of summoning you before you’d met me. Och, but what a fankle that would have been. You wouldn’t have known how to wake me. You wouldn’t have even
known
me if we’d sent for you too early. Seemed safer to let you come.”

“But what if I hadn’t come? What if I’d never come back to Scotland?”

“I left instructions that if you hadn’t arrived by Samhain, my descendants should find you and bid you come. They were to look for you in America and bring you here.”

“But—”

“Are you going to talk me to death or kiss me, wife?” he asked huskily.

She opted for the kiss.

When his lips claimed hers, her body quickened with desire. He paused only to strip off his linen shirt, while Gwen made short work of his plaid.

“Lay back,” she commanded when she had him completely naked. “I think I should like to be on top.” He complied, flashing her a sexy grin that dripped promises of fantasies about to be fulfilled. She sat back on her heels, gazing at him, sprawled across the bed. His bronze skin and silky dark hair gleamed against the white linens. Six and a half feet of Highland warrior lay before her, awaiting her pleasure.

Yum.

Years of not understanding the equation of life culminated in one perfect moment of clarity—life equaled love plus passion squared. Loving and being passionate about what one did was what made life so precious. She would be perfectly content to devote the rest of her life to the proof of that equation.

“Touch me,” he purred.

She touched. Lightly, gliding her hands up his muscular thighs. Tracing each muscle, each ridge, then lowering her head to taste in her hand’s wake. She cupped him and swept her tongue up the underside of his hard shaft, delighted when he bucked beneath her.

“Gwendolyn!” he thundered, cradling her head with his hands. “I willna last a minute if you do that!”

“Och, nay, my braw laird,” she said in a lilting Scots accent. “Be still. ’Tis my pleasure you serve—ack!” She burst into laughter when in one swift motion he rolled her onto her back.

“I bid you recall I’ve been needing you for five hundred years, whereas you’ve been waiting only a month.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know time was pass—” she began, but he kissed her words away. He covered her body with his own, sliding her shirt up, kissing each breast as he bared them. Alternately returning for a searing kiss to her lips, then moving lower.

When at last he buried himself inside her, he groaned with ecstasy. He’d have waited a thousand years, nay, eternity, to have this woman as his own.

Much later, Drustan held her in his arms, marveling at how she completed him. She’d had her way, and had the top—the third time—informing him he was her “own private playground,” then explaining what a playground was. He had much to learn to fully integrate himself into her century. He suffered no fear on that score; rather, was exhilarated by the challenge.

Emotion flooded him, a sense of rightness and completion, and he kissed her, putting all his joy into the kiss. He was surprised when she pulled away, but then she took his hand and gently placed his palm over her belly.

He shot straight up in bed, searching her eyes. “Are you telling me something?” he exclaimed hoarsely.

“Twins. We’re having twins,” she said, bubbling over with joy.

“And you waited till
now
to tell me?” he roared, then threw his head back and whooped. He swept her into his arms and danced her about the room. He twirled her, kissed her, danced her more, then stopped and gently placed her back on the bed. “I shouldna be tossin’ you about like that,” he exclaimed.

Gwen laughed. “Oh, please, if our loving didn’t jostle them, a little dance certainly won’t hurt. I’m a little over two months along.”

“Two months!” he shouted, leaping to his feet again.

Gwen beamed; he was so elated. It was what every woman should get to experience when she told her man she was pregnant—a man utterly ecstatic to be a father.

He stood grinning like a fool for a moment, then sobered and dropped to his knees before her. “Will you be weddin’ me in a church, Gwendolyn?”

“Aye, oh, aye,” Gwen sighed dreamily.