Seducing a Scottish Bride (34 page)

H
is tomb?
”

Ronan nearly choked on his surprise. “Then, sweet lass, your gift has lied to you. “Or” — he waved away her protest — “you’ve
falsely interpreted what you saw.”

His lady huffed and set her own hand to slashing the air.

“I do know what the inside of a tomb looks like,” she minded him, her tone fringing on indignant.

High color stained her cheeks and, as so oft, her braid had come undone. Her hair tumbled to her hips in a welter of red-gold
curls, each glossy strand gilded by fire glow and tempting him beyond reason.

There were things a man could do with such tresses.

Things that had scarce little to do with long-dead ancestors and their hoary resting places.

Ronan shoved a hand through his hair and bit back a groan. He didn’t want to talk about old bones and burial grounds. Not
with her looking so fetching in his plaid that he couldn’t think straight.

She, however, seemed determined.

And she’d definitely taken up Maldred’s torch.

Her sparking eyes and the jut of her chin proved it.

“I once crept inside the family tomb at Eilean Creag.” She started walking around the room, her steps making her breasts bounce.
“I was young, and — and I wanted to see bogles. They hid from me, as ghosts are known to do, but I
did
get a good look at the tomb.”

Ronan folded his arms. “That changes naught. Maldred wasn’t buried in a tomb. He —”

“I know what I saw.” She halted in front of him. “He was in a small stone chamber, dark, cold, and airless,” she said, emphasizing
each word with a finger-jab in his chest. “It could only have been his tomb.”

Ronan drew in a great breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve seen the man’s grave, lass. ’Tis a table grave in the family’s
oldest burial ground. All that remains to mark where Maldred lies is a broken stone slab. It ne’er was a tomb.”

“He’s in one all the same,” she insisted. “And his Raven Stone is there with him. That, too, I saw. He held it out to me and
told me to ‘free the raven.’ ”

“He what?” Ronan’s heart stopped.

He’d never told her the full tradition of the stone.

And he could tell she didn’t know.

If she did, her triumph couldn’t be contained.

“He told me to ‘free the raven,’ ” she repeated, pacing again. “I think he was assuring me that by loving you, I will free
you of the curse you think you carry. That Dare will then be —”

“He didn’t mean me, sweetness.”

Ronan turned to the nearest window, hoping the chill night air seeping through the shutter slats would restore the color to
his cheeks.

He was sure all the blood had drained from his face.

He’d felt it happen.

Just as he could no longer deny his lady had truly seen Maldred, wherever the knave held himself.

Even more alarming was the soul-piercing possibility that the maligned old goat wasn’t quite the malefactor everyone thought.

At the very least, if his bogle did exist, the centuries might have made him a bit repentant.

There seemed no other explanation.

Not that this one wasn’t enough.

Already, the weight of it made the floor dip and roll beneath his feet.

“Ach, nae, lass.” He shook his head, the words coming hard as gravel dredged from a burn-bed. “I’m no’ that raven.”

His chest oddly tight, he stepped closer to the window and reached for the shutters, needing air. But before his fingers could
close on the latches,
she
nipped into the space between him and the window arch.

“I don’t understand.” She grabbed his arms, her fingers strong. “You are the Raven, are you not?”

“I am one of many Ravens.” He looked down at her and immediately wished he hadn’t.

He hadn’t done as fine a job of knotting the plaid as he’d thought. And now, with all her stalking about, the fool knot had
loosened and he could see right down the gaping edge of the tartan.

The whole of her breasts gleamed for his delectation, luscious swells, the shadowed cleft between, chill-puckered nipples
and all.

Worse, her dusky rose scent cast its usual heady magic on him. Each inhaled whiff shot straight to his vitals, squeezing fast
and enflaming him.

Truth be told, he’d run rock- iron hard.

So he blew out a breath, tried to ignore her scent and her breasts, and fixed his gaze on her ear. A delicate ear, yet less
a distraction.

“There have always been Ravens in the family,” he explained, his voice as strained and uncomfortable as his man-piece. “But
there is only one
raven
. A living bird trapped inside Maldred’s Raven Stone, sealed there for all eternity. The raven’s great power serves whoe’er
holds possession of the stone, or so tradition claims.”

“Then we must find it and set the bird free.”

“Would that it were so simple.”

“It might not be a bairn’s game, but it must be possible.” She beamed at him. “Were it not, there’d have been no point in
his beseeching me.”

From his place by the fire, Buckie barked once as if he agreed with her.

Ronan ignored him and broke free of his lady’s grip. Stepping away from her, he flung open the shutters to stare out at the
cold, rainy dark.

“For truth, lass, do you no’ think MacRuaris have been trying to do the like ever since the scoundrel and his stone vanished?”

“He vanished?”

Ronan grunted. “So it is said, aye.”

He breathed deep of the chill night air, his gaze on the great Caledonian pines beyond the curtain wall. The trees swayed
and tossed in the wind, misty curtains of rain blowing past their crowns. Closer, the broad expanse of the bailey lay dark
and still, though he knew its quiet concealed a score or more of guardsmen.

Dare never slept. Not even on the longest winter nights.

He frowned.

She’d
edged in closer behind him. He could feel her warmth on his back and her attar of roses scent was swirling around him, filling
the window arch before slipping away on the rushing night wind.

His entire body stiffened.

She was up to something.

He could feel it clear down to his toes, including the aching ones.

“To think your family has been searching for him all down the ages . . .” She let her voice tail off, the fading words full
of sympathy and well-meaning.

“Aye, they have,” he agreed, bespelled by the soft, feminine heat of her, the knowledge that she stood naked beneath his plaid.
“At the latest, since the first glimmer of his curse blighted us —”

He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late.

He could see her eyes lighting even without turning around.

“ Ah-hah!” Her voice rang with excitement. “How can you say he disappeared and MacRuaris have searched for him and still claim
he’s buried beneath a collapsed table grave?”

Ronan set his jaw and kept staring at the wind-tossed pines.

She persisted. “Wouldn’t his grave be the first place to search for him?”

“It was.”

“And what did they find?”

Ronan braced his hands on the stone ledge of the window and drew a deep breath. Far below, a dog fox trotted along the edges
of the trees, cloaked in deep shadow one moment then reappearing into a slant of pale moonlight.

“Well?”

He closed his eyes. “If the clan talespinners are to be believed, the grave proved empty.”

“I knew it!” She clapped her hands. “He
is
buried elsewhere and we need only find the tomb.”

“The talespinners also say that his evil was so great and his power so infinite that the devil himself envied him.” He turned
to face her. “ ’Tis said the Horned One seized the mortal remains and the stone, taking them with him into hell where he tossed
both into a bottomless pit.”

“ Pah- phooey!” She laughed. “I tell you, he —”

Ronan didn’t let her finish. “He used the last of his power to curse the family, damning us even in death as the devil carried
him away. His capture was our fault, he railed, furious that we’d buried him in such an easy-to-find spot, or so tradition
claims.”

Gelis shook her head. “I do not believe a word.”

Nor do I
, Ronan owned, though he kept the sentiment to himself.

“Be that as it may, whether he once slept in the table grave or no, his final resting place has ne’er been found,” he admitted,
speaking true. “What does remain is his curse. It strikes —”

“I do not believe that either.” Her eyes flashed. “I told you at Creag na Gaoith what I think of your curse.”

She whirled and started pacing again, his plaid swinging about her knees. “Never in a thousand lifetimes did you
think
a rockslide into happening and —”

“Think you that is all of it?”

Ronan unlatched his sword-belt and laid it and his brand on a chair. Then he removed the large Celtic brooch holding his plaid
at his shoulder and set it on the chair with his belt and his sword.

“What happened to Matilda at the Rock of the Wind was only one horror in a long history of family tragedies,” he said at last,
pulling off his plaid. “Numberless heartaches have visited us, lass. The kind of pain I strove so hard to keep from touching
you.”

“Then tell me of it — from the beginning.” Gelis claimed a chair beside the hearth and clapped her hands on her knees. “If
you think I shall cower and tremble, you are sore mistaken.”

He frowned at her, his plaid still bunched in his hands. Turning away, he shook it out and carefully folded it before placing
it atop the large iron-banded strongbox at the foot of the bed. When he straightened to face her again, she knew she’d won.

But the hesitancy still clinging to him made her heart clench.

“Please.” She leaned forward, letting her eyes plead. “I truly want to know.”

He appeared to consider. “As you wish, but it makes grim telling,” he finally conceded, looking at her as if he expected her
to start quaking any moment.

Or worse, leap to her feet and bolt from the room.

So she leaned back in the chair and forced a calm expression. Never yet had she felt so close to him and it wouldn’t do for
him to note her quickened pulse and mistake her hope for fear.

Her device apparently worked, because he blew out a great breath and went to stand at the open window again, at last looking
ready to speak.

He cleared his throat. “You asked me once if I’m plagued by the
Droch Shùil
and I told you of Matilda’s death. How rather than the Evil Eye, my own thoughts sometimes manifest in horrible ways.”

Gelis opened her mouth to object, but he waved a staying hand.

“Enough of my kinsmen — and a few kinswomen — have suffered thus,” he continued. “Though the instances I know of with surety
lie some hundred years or more in the past. Either way, those sad souls had but to glance at a cow and its milk would dry
up or curdle. If they crossed a field, its crop withered behind them.

“Their woe was great for they meant no ill and did their best to avoid causing such disasters.” He paused, his mouth twisting.
“I know of at least one such kinsman who took his own life because of his malady.”

“There are many tales of the
Droch Shùil
in these hills.” Gelis didn’t know what else to say. “So long as the stricken do not use their power to work ill on others,
they cannot be blamed. Besides” — she sat forward again — “there are ways to counter the Evil Eye.”

Lifting a hand, she counted them on her fingers. “Rowan is one of the surest talismans against the like. Then there are charmed
stones, amulets, and a wealth of incantations. Even if you did have —”

“Ach, sweetness. I have told you, what plagues me is far worse.” He rammed both hands through his hair and closed his eyes
for a moment. “Would that such counter-charms as walking three times sunwise around a milk-blighted cow or drinking silvered
water would cure it.”

Gelis balled her hands on her knees. “Even so . . .”

He shook his head. “ ’Tis no good, lass. The MacRuaris have been damned since time uncounted. Some of us, like myself and
others who have gone before me, must carry a greater share of Maldred’s burden.”

“Maldred wishes to ease that burden.” Gelis’s fingernails dug into her palms. “I could feel it when he appeared to me. He
hasn’t damned you. I know it!”

“Then I shall prove it to you.”

Striding across the room, he went to another of his strongboxes. This one sat near the untidy pile of her own coffers. A bit
dented and battered, and with its iron strapping showing signs of rust, the chest appeared much older than any of her own
or the large one he kept at the foot of the massive oaken four-poster.

His face grim, he bent to lift the coffer’s lid. “See you this,” he said, pulling out a long quilted leather war-coat of ancient
style. “It belonged to my father. And this” — he thrust a hand deeper into the strongbox and retrieved a high conical helm,
equally tarnished — “was his as well.”

Holding up the objects for her to see, he continued. “They are two of the very few treasures I have of him. Valdar ordered
most of his possessions destroyed, so great was his pain when my father died. I hid these at the time and have kept them all
these years.”