Seducing a Scottish Bride (39 page)

Or of endangering what he now knew they had together.

“Return to the keep and turn a braw face to my people.” He pulled back to smooth his hands over her hair and rain light kisses
across her face, neck, and shoulders. “Show them what a brave lassie you are,” he urged her, nipping the soft skin beneath
her ear, then nuzzling her neck again. “Do it for me, for us.”

“I would rather ride out with you.” She remained defiant.

Ronan shook his head, unrelenting.

Then he stepped back and folded his arms. “Go now. Away into the keep with you or” — he gave her his fiercest look — “I will
carry you back inside and chain you to one of the hall pillars.”

She bristled. “I will not wait gently,” she vowed, but spun about and strode through the gates. “Don’t forget I’m a MacKenzie,”
she called back as she disappeared into the gatehouse arch.

“See that she doesn’t leave the keep!” Ronan tossed the order to the guards, then swung up into his saddle and spurred toward
the trees, not stopping until the prickles down his spine told him that he’d ridden into the midst of his foes.

He’d no sooner reined in than they stepped from shadows, a band of gaunt, sunken-eyed old men, their dark robes lifting in
the morning breeze, their faces solemn.

They didn’t look anything like MacKenzies, and Ronan knew a swift surge of hope that they didn’t try to cozen him with such
a ploy.

“So we meet again, Raven. I greet you.” Dungal Tarnach came forward, leaving the others in a quiet circle behind him. “Have
you brought our stone or” — he lifted his staff and it glowed orange-red — “must we take it?”

Ronan ignored the threat. “I will bring the stone and —”

“I am rejoiced to hear it.” The Holder smiled, his wand sparking. He lowered it at once, his expression almost benevolent.
“ ’Tis overlong that one of your race —”

“And,” Ronan continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “you may attempt to take the stone, but in a fair trial of strength and will.
And not here —”

“So! You would challenge us?” The other’s smile faded. His voice rose. “And for that which is rightly ours?”

Ronan lifted his own voice, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I would challenge you on your honor, if it means aught to
you. And” — he raked the company with his stare — “for the safekeeping of this glen and we who dwell here.”

Withdrawing his blade, he offered it blunt-end first to the Holder.

“My blade in exchange for yours,” he said, following Torcaill’s advice to gain the other’s steel before his own could be charmed.
“We meet in single combat at the Tobar Ghorm before the light fades — unless you fear an honest fight.”

The Holder scowled, but took the blade, grudgingly handing over his own.

For a beat, his eyes flickered a faint, faded blue and he looked worried, but he caught himself as quickly. “The Tobar Ghorm
is an odd place for —”

“The Blue Well is the only place for honest men to settle a matter of such import.” Ronan fixed him with a stare, encouraged
when the older man looked away first.

“I can think of fairer ground . . .” The Holder pulled at his beard.

“You know it must be the well.” Ronan broke the quiet when the other man fell silent. “We spoke of the like the last time
we met there.”

Dungal Tarnach’s brow creased.

Ronan waited.

He closed his hand around the hilt of the strange blade, the deep lines in its owner’s face and the stoop of the man’s shoulders
bothering him more than it should.

Even worse, he felt a concession forming on his tongue.

“If you feel unable to accept my challenge yourself,” he heard himself saying, “then I will face your best sworder in your
stead.”

Dungal Tarnach hesitated, but his gaze flicked to a younger man standing nearby. Stocky, fierce-eyed, and ruddy of complexion,
the man strode forward now and took Ronan’s sword from Tarnach’s hands.

“I will cross blades with you,” he announced, his voice ringing.

“Then so be it.” Ronan nodded. “If I better you, you tell me how to destroy the stone and then you leave our territories forthwith
and forever. If I lose, you take your stone and leave as well, ne’er again setting foot in these hills.”

“It is agreed.” Dungal Tarnach returned the nod.

The other Holders looked on in silence, but finally inclined their heads as well.

It was enough.

And more than Ronan had hoped for.

H
ours later, in one of Glen Dare’s darkest corners, on a wooded islet in the middle of Loch Dubh . . .

“The stone, if you will, Raven?” Dungal Tarnach stood beside the Blue Well, his hands outstretched. “I will hold it the while.”

He indicated a cleared circle of deturfed ground not far from the well. “As you see, we have made preparations for your challenge.”

Ronan nodded, not about to show his relief.

He’d forgotten the wild tangle of dead heather and blood-red bracken crowding the well’s little clearing.

But he wasn’t about to relinquish the Raven Stone.

“The Tobar Ghorm can safekeep the stone.” He crossed the naked, hard-packed earth and stepped around the Holder to set a heavy
leather pouch on one of the tumbled stones guarding the well shaft.

Straightening, he looked round. “I trust it won’t be touched until we finish?”

Dungal Tarnach frowned. “How do we know yon sack holds our stone?”

Another spurt of hope shot through Ronan. “I would think you’d sense its power.”

“You doubt our strength?” The older man lifted an arm, pointing at the leather pouch.

At once its ties came undone and the pouch fell open, its sides slowly peeling back to reveal the Raven Stone before disappearing
completely.

More shaken than he cared to admit, Ronan placed a hand over the top of the stone, its sudden glowing blue heat almost blistering
his hand.

He kept it there anyway, certain the pain would vanish when he broke the contact.

Just as he was certain — or hoped, at least — that the Tobar Ghorm’s brilliant blue water, so deep below the earth’s surface,
and undeniably blessed, would keep the Raven Stone from the Holders’ hands if he failed.

“You are a brave soul, MacRuari.” Dungal Tarnach’s gaze lifted from the stone. “A shame Nathair will defeat you.”

Ronan almost choked.

How appropriate to take up a blade against a Holder named
snake.

Oddly enough, the irony undid his ill ease on seeing his leather pouch vanish. He threw off his plaid with an eagerness and
speed that surprised him, then looked on as his challenger shrugged off his robes with equal relish.

Ronan’s own steel already gleamed in the man’s hand and a criss-crossing of scars on his broad, muscular chest revealed that
he’d held his own in more than one swordfight.

Knowing himself equally branded, Ronan tested Dungal Tarnach’s steel, swinging it round, then spinning and dipping, lunging
and feinting until the sword felt comfortable in his hand.

Almost sneering, Nathair simply waited.

“Come, have at me.” Ronan beckoned him, raising the blade in earnest now. “Show me your best so the devil will be proud of
you.”

“Save your breath, Raven.” The man lifted Ronan’s blade. “You will need it.”

Ronan beckoned again, eager.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Tarnach and the others move to the edges of the cleared turf ring. They formed a silent,
watching circle.

For one horrible moment, he was whisked back into Dare’s hall, facing Sorley again. But then Nathair sprang, Ronan’s own steel
slicing the air to clang loudly against the strange blade in his hand.

The other’s strength jarred him, the force of the swing almost knocking him aside. Nowhere near as tall as Ronan, the man
was nevertheless built like a steer and, apparently, possessed a stirk’s muscle.

Again and again, his steel clashed against Ronan’s in a fury of vicious stabs and slashes. They circled and swiped, blades
windmilling and drawing back, the shriek and clank of steel on steel loud in the cold morning, though the roar of Ronan’s
own blood muted the clatter.

Then Nathair spun, first feinting and then springing back around to make a vicious sidelong slash at Ronan’s middle. Seeing
the arcing flash, Ronan ducked and rolled to the side, the other’s blade just missing him.

But something flared in the man’s eyes and Ronan saw his intent. Nathair meant to seize the Raven Stone now, using its power
to win the fight. Already he’d maneuvered himself near the well’s edge, using furious windmilling slashes to keep Ronan at
bay.

“It won’t work, snake! You’ll ne’er get it!” Ronan lunged, his own blade arcing with even greater speed. “Not you, your brethren,
or anyone!”

“Bastard!” Nathair sneered. “The stone is ours.”

“Nae,” Ronan hissed, “it is no more!”

Leaping forward, he brought down his sword in one ferocious sweep, the force of the blow cleaving the stone in two perfect
halves.

“No-o-o!” Nathair roared as the shattered stone shot across the well lip, plunging at once into the Tobar Ghorm. Whipping
round, the Holder glared at Ronan, his steel raised high for a deadly strike.

“Yesss!” Ronan blocked the attack with ease, the other’s blade whistling harmlessly over his head while his own sword — or
rather, Tarnach’ s — sliced through Nathair’s left arm to drive deep into his side, splitting his ribs.

The
snake’s
eyes bulged and he toppled forward, Ronan’s sword falling from his hands.

It was over.

Another debt of honor paid, if a centuries-old one.

Ronan dragged the back of his hand across his brow, only vaguely aware of the movement around him. The stumbling rush of a
score of thin and stoop-shouldered old men toward the edge of the ancient sacred well.

“ ’Tis over.” A relieved-sounding voice, aged and weary, cut through the red haze. “The stone has truly split in twain.”

Dungal Tarnach’s voice.

But sounding more like the benign-grumbling graybeards who gathered round Dare’s hearthside on dark winter nights than any
Holder
he’d ever known.

“MacRuari! You not only destroyed the stone, you’ve freed the raven.” Tarnach glanced up at Ronan’s approach. “Come, lad,
see for yourself.”

His brow lifting at the friendly tone, Ronan joined them, these bent and frail men who knelt to peer down into the Blue Well.

He saw at once the shattered Raven Stone. He’d destroyed it indeed. Its two halves rested on a jagged ledge deep in the heart
of the well shaft.

He also recognized the reason for the old men’s wonder.

The awe in their voices and their surprising turn of heart.

Peering into the well, Ronan saw that the split stone revealed the skeletal remains of some kind of ancient, long-moldered
bird. But what truly stilled his heart was the raven. Black-winged and full of life, the bird was slowly spiraling upward
through the shadowy well shaft.

“ ’Tis as I knew it would be.” Dungal Tarnach pushed to his feet and stepped back, one hand pressed to his berobed chest as
the raven crested the stones lining the well’s edge to whir away on glossy, blue-black wings.

The raven circled back once, half-closing his wings to dive at them and sail past in a fast glide before soaring upward again,
speeding away across the hills and moors before Ronan and the Holders — a pathetic clutch of stooped, withered old men — could
even acknowledge what they’d seen.

“Sakes!” Ronan breathed, running a hand through his hair. He could scarce believe it himself.

More shaken than he cared to admit, he turned to retrieve his sword, but it appeared in his hand before he could. He blinked,
not surprised to find Dungal Tarnach at his elbow.

“We will see to Nathair,” said the Holder, his gaze flicking over to where a few of his brethren already knelt beside the
body. “Though I’d ask your permission to bury him here.” He spread his hands and Ronan noted they were gnarled and age-spotted.
“Unlike Nathair, the rest of us do not have the strength to carry him far.”

Nor, Ronan was sure, did they have the stamina to journey very far themselves.

Their druid wands might work a bit of flummery for them, but their bones were old.

And though he couldn’t be sure, he suspected much of their magic had lain with their now-broken stone, whether it’d been in
their possession or no.

“ ’Tis true,” Tarnach said then, proving he could still read thoughts, regardless. “The stone fed our power. ’Twas the life
force of the sacred raven trapped within. Each beat of its heart craved its stolen freedom and its sorrow bled into the stone,
drenching it with the bird’s power. Now . . .”

He looked aside, then back at Ronan. “Two wrongs have been righted. Maldred no longer holds the stone he took from us, and
the raven has regained the freedom we took from it. There are many among us who will be gladdened that our craft is now reduced
to” — he held out his hand and Ronan’s empty leather pouch appeared in it — “a few simple wizard’s tricks.”

Ronan took the pouch, an uncomfortable tightness beginning to spread through his chest. “You —”