Seducing a Scottish Bride (15 page)

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.

R
onan 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.”