Seducing a Scottish Bride (10 page)

“Now is not the time to speak of that one.” Sir Marmaduke placed a hand on his arm. “Be glad Gelis has an admirer in the lad.
His merriment will prove a greater talisman than any child’s miniature dagger.”

The Black Stag shook his arm free. “She shouldn’t have need of a talisman! By all the saints, I shall be glad when —”

“It will gladden you even more, Kintail, to hear that she has no need of such a token.” Ronan set down his eating knife. “No
harm shall touch her.”

Gelis put aside her own knife. The way he’d said “no harm shall touch her” made her chest tighten and the tops of her ears
burn.

Something told her he meant he wouldn’t touch her.

Not harm, but him.

His hands, and in all the ways she’d dreamed of being caressed by a husband.

Caressed and loved.

Her heart thumping, she lowered her lashes, eyeing him as surreptitiously as possible. Unfortunately, the truth of her suspicion
stood etched all over him. Never had she seen a man so determined not to notice her.

Not wanting to believe it, she shifted in her chair, deliberately pressing her knee against his thigh, a ploy that made him
jerk away faster than if she’d jabbed him with a white-hot fire poker.

She frowned and withdrew her knee, opting for another tactic.

“Perhaps you should try the sugared almonds.” She nudged the bowl in his direction. “Their sweetness might improve your mood.”

His expression darkened. “There is naught under the heavens capable of such a feat, my lady. Not sugared almonds. Nor one
so fair as you.”

“So you find me appealing?”

“You would take any man’s breath.” He looked at her, his gaze piercing. “As well you know.”

“You do not look very breathless.” She had the boldness to jut her chin at him, her amber eyes glittering with irritation.

His own annoyance riding him, Ronan ignored her pique. The uncomfortable way her very presence made him suspect that one wee
slip in his dealings with her might see the course of his life changing.

And in ways he couldn’t control.

His grandfather’s jollity as he jested with her father proved equally bitter. Valdar’s every hooted laugh and eye twinkle
twisted his innards, as did the hope brightening the faces of Dare’s guardsmen, the bursts of good cheer rising from the trestle
tables.

Such gaiety wouldn’t last.

One glance at the tightly closed hall windows proved it. Already, threads of mist slipped in through the shutter slats. Long,
slithering tendrils hushed along the hall’s outermost tables, dousing candles and causing the hanging crusie lamps to splutter
and extinguish.

As did Ronan’s brief and mad hope of seizing his unexpected fortune and risking another chance at love.

So he did what he could, reaching for a rib of fire-roasted beef, then drawing back his hand to pull his earlobe instead.
At once, a stir and racket ensued at the next table as Torcaill the druid pushed to his feet.

“I, Torcaill of Ancient Fame, do bless the Raven and his lady!” His strong voice rising, he lifted his walking stick, shaking
it heavenward. “May they prosper in the name and glory of the Old Ones!”

Cheers rose and the mist wraiths withdrew, disappearing back through the closed shutters whence they’d come.

Torcaill made one last flourish with his
slachdan druidheachd
, the great druidic wand seeming to shimmer and glow as he lowered it.

He looked round, the spread-winged raven decorating his robe gleaming in the torchlight. “I wish you a fair night — one and
all!”

Valdar half-rose from his chair. “Ho, Torcaill!” he yelled when the druid turned and strode away. “The night is no’ yet by
with. You must bless the bridal bed.”

“All has been said.” Torcaill paused, one hand clutching his staff, the other pressed against his berobed hip. “My bones are
aching and I seek my own bed. Your grandson and his lady have my fullest sanction and the goodwill of the Ancients. ’Tis enough.”

“Word is you dinna even have a bed!” Valdar hooted, slamming down his wine cup. “Or did I have bog cotton in my ears all the
times you’ve sworn you canna be bothered by sleep?”

“I will see he reaches his cottage safely.” Ronan stood. “The mist is thick this night. I’d no’ want him to stumble ere he
reaches his door.”

Then, before the stunned faces at the high table could sway him, he strode from the dais, leaving kith and kin to think what
they might.

If he’d planned rightly, Lady Gelis wouldn’t be so eager to press her knee against him again.

Her knee, or any other part of her delectable, rose-scented self.

Much as he’d regret it.

“She’s one of the chosen, I tell you.” Torcaill stepped from the dark of the trees almost as soon as Ronan let himself out
a little- used gate in the castle’s outer walling. “The brilliance of her nigh blinded me.”

Ronan suppressed the urge to snort. “She is a bright one, aye.” He looked at the druid, almost adding that the great green
bauble glittering at the vee of her thighs all night had near blinded him.

That, and other things.

Not to mention the effect of the top crests of her nipples. Pert and crinkly crescents of a fine rosy hue, they’d peeked above
her bodice each time she deigned to draw a particularly deep breath.

Which, he’d observed, she’d done far too often.

He frowned, his jaw and other places tightening.

Even now, in the chill dark of the wood, he could see the creamy fullness of her breasts, the sweet press of her nipples against
the edge of her low-dipping gown.

He also remembered the silky huskiness of her laugh and the way she seemed fond of sliding a slow finger up and down the hilt
of her eating knife.

“You err, my friend.” He reached to flick a fallen leaf off the druid’s cloak. “Lady Gelis is earthy, not chosen.”

Earthy in ways that weren’t good for a man.

He was sure of it.

A sense of doom circling round him, he bit back a groan and shoved a hand through his hair, so distracted he wasn’t sure if
he’d blurted out his woes or kept them to himself.

Not that it mattered.

Torcaill of Ancient Fame, as all addressed the white-maned wizard, wasn’t a man to hide secrets from.

“She has the third eye.” He gripped Ronan’s arm, squeezing. “I saw its light shining like a lodestar. She —”

“The sight?” Ronan couldn’t help his surprise. “That canna be. My grandfather knows her as well as if she’d grown up beneath
his over-long nose. He would have told me if she was a
taibhsear.
”

Torcaill made a dismissive gesture. “I
do
have the third eye, and I’ve never known it to lie.”

Ronan released a breath, too aware of that truth to argue.

“You still mean to follow your plan.” Torcaill looked at him, his eyes seeing all.

“I have no choice.”

“There are always choices.”

“And you no longer approve of mine.”

“I did not expect her to be gifted.” The druid pulled on his long white beard, his gaze thoughtful. “She has great power,
that one. Even the cold flames of Dare’s torches responded to her. Did you not feel their bursts of warmth?”

“I felt Lady Gelis’s heat and naught else!”

Ronan scowled. The old wizard’s ability to loosen his tongue was almost as vexing as his own inability to ignore his bride’s
charms.

Her siren charms, the saints preserve him.

Gelis MacKenzie was the meaning of seduction.

It scarce mattered whether she had a third, fourth, or even a fifth eye.

She affected him.

He swallowed a curse. His head was beginning to hurt and a hot throbbing ache between his shoulders threatened to drive him
mad.

“She needs your protection.” Torcaill’s voice didn’t hold a jot of sympathy. “Her gift —”

“Hell’s bells!” Ronan glared at him. “Why do you think I began this mummery if not to keep her safe?”

“You mishear me, lad.” Looking annoyingly sage, the druid raised a hand, one gnarled finger aimed at a sliver of mist snaking
across the ground toward their feet. When the mist wraith rose and curled back into the trees, disappearing behind the moss-grown
trunks, the old man lowered his arm.

“Your bride,” he continued, “needs to be safeguarded from more than shadows and yon creeping menace.”

“Say you?” Ronan wrenched out his sword and thrust its business end into the dark, peaty ground. “I say such menaces ought
to beware.”

He’d no sooner spoken the words before the pounding between his shoulders worsened. The night now thoroughly ruined, he tightened
his grip on his blade’s hilt. Somewhere a high-pitched wailing broke the silence. Choosing to ignore it, he deliberately let
his sword slide deeper into the soft, leaf-covered earth.

His earth, as some souls might need to be reminded.

He also glowered.

Just for the sheer pleasure of it. And as fiercely as any riled Highlander can.

At once, the weird keening faded. Even the nearby mist shrouds quivered, then withdrew. Whether from his fury or his blade,
each billowing curtain slid away, finally settling over a tumbled gathering of ancient burial mounds and standing stones.
The resting place of Clan MacRuari’s hoariest forebears and the tainted ground whence such thick fog often came.

Giving the crumbled relics one final glare, he knew a moment of triumph when the mist disappeared into the ground, leaving
only the light haze of the moon. The wind dropped as well, though he’d swear the air went colder.

Either way, he’d made his point.

Or so he thought until he turned back to Torcaill and saw a look on the old man’s face that he hoped wasn’t pity.

“Your blade and your scowls will not aid the lass,” the druid warned, shaking his head. “Not when they realize the prize beneath
your roof.”

“They?” Ronan tossed another glance at the ancient burial ground. “Why do I think you don’t mean the mist wraiths? Or the
moldering bones of my ancestors.”

“Because I do not.” Torcaill followed his stare, his long white hair blowing in a wind Ronan didn’t feel. “You ken who I mean.
I’ve seen it in your eyes. Just as I know their return is why you wished to journey to Santiago de Compostela.”

Ronan yanked his sword out of the earth, cleaned its tip with an edge of his plaid, then jammed the thing back into its sheath.

He looked at the druid. “Is there aught you do not know?”

“I know all that I am meant to know.”

Ronan folded his arms. “Might that include the whereabouts of that which my enemies seek?”

“The Raven Stone?” The druid looked at him as if he could scarce believe his ears. “Think you I would not have destroyed it
years ago if I did? Rendering the stone worthless is the only way to break the curse and stop the Holders of the Stone from
returning.”

“They have not been here since I was a lad.” Ronan frowned, remembering. “Valdar banished them. The battle near broke him,
as you’ll recall. And now —”

“And now” — Torcaill tapped him on the chest with his walking stick — “you must fight them. Soon, they will show themselves.
They will hide behind their mist and shadows only so long. Then they will seek your lady, believing her gift can be used to
lead them to the stone.”

“A curse on the wretched stone. If I had it, I would smite it in two, proving its worthlessness.”

The druid said nothing.

“ ’Twas Maldred’s own wickedness that cursed the MacRuaris,” Ronan argued. “Not his foul stone. The Holders are fools to desire
it.”

“Be that as it may, it is a treasure that is theirs by right, as well you know,” Torcaill said, looking unhappy all the same.

“To be sure, I know.” A chill passed through Ronan, even as the back of his neck flamed.

Every clansman of his name knew that Maldred the Dire was said to have stolen the Raven Stone from the Holders, thus acquiring
his great powers, along with the eternal enmity of the magical stone’s true holders.

The dark souls believed to have originally trapped a living raven within the stone’s hollowed center, forever granting the
stone’s holders all the power and wisdom of that ancient and sacred bird.

Ronan frowned.

His gut twisted and he drew his sword again, needing its weight in his hand.

Lady Gelis in the clutches of the Holders was unthinkable.

If the fabled band of wizards even existed.

Maldred the Dire’s bitterest foes, legend claimed they’d vowed to sweep into Glen Dare again and again, their warrior descendants
wreaking havoc and vengeance all down the centuries until the Raven Stone was returned to them.

Fireside ramblings Ronan had never truly believed.

Even when, in tender years, he’d hid from their rampages, taking shelter in Dare’s kitchens behind his grandfather’s pile
of wine casks as the red-eyed devils scoured the glen, searching for the Raven Stone.

A horror he’d later decided had only been a vengeance raid by a long-forgotten enemy clan.

An excuse he’d had to set aside some days ago, having thrown open his bedchamber window shutters only to see a shadowy figure
peering up at him from the edge of the woods beyond the curtain walls.

Dark-robed, cowled, and with eyes like two red- glowing coals, scorching hatred had burned in the Holder’s stare.

A fiery-eyed glare that melted the window’s iron hinges.

Ronan set his jaw, his gaze once again on the silent burial ground and the deep ring of pines sheltering the time-worn stones.
Autumn-dead bracken choked whatever paths had once wound between the ancient cairns and monoliths. Maldred’s desecrated grave
slab lay broken, its two halves covered with lichen and a drift of fallen leaves.

Nothing stirred.

But when the moon slid behind the clouds, plunging the wood into darkness, he couldn’t help but shudder.

He looked at the druid, a man he called friend and had trusted since birth, as had his father and grandfather before him.
Many more MacRuari chieftains as well, if one could believe the clan tongue-waggers.

“Tell me, Torcaill,” he began, not mincing words. “The Holders are men, are they not?”