To Love a Highlander (15 page)

And Rosalind was sure Lady Mirabelle was a walker, a strong and proud lass who’d not let the winds of destiny buffet her.

Rosalind wished she’d been as bold.

At least, she’d had manners and still did.

For that reason, she begin to shimmer as fast as she could, allowing the lovely pink haze that surrounded her to lose its glow as she slipped ever deeper into the shadowy world she now called her home.

Lady Mirabelle was undressing, preparing for the steaming, herb-scented bath castle servants had just prepared for her. Rosalind didn’t wish to intrude on the maid’s well-deserved privacy.

Not that the girl’s bared flesh or the intimacies of a bath embarrassed her.

But she’d caught a snippet of thought from the girl’s troubled mind and deemed it best to leave her alone to dwell on the problem.

Rosalind smiled as she faded into nothingness.

“How to please a man of insatiable desires”
truly wasn’t a hardship.

Rosalind was sure such matters would come naturally to the girl.

She decided to watch her from afar, eager to see the man she so fervently wished to entice. If the gods were kind, and she knew they could be for some, the young man would be worthy of her.

She already knew the girl was a treasure beyond telling, and that her life would touch many.

Dashing a tear from her cheek, for such as she could cry when deeply moved, Rosalind cast one last look at the maid, catching her just as she lowered herself into the fragrant water of her bath.

Then the dark mists of her own realm spun faster, claiming her as they always did. And if anyone had noticed a faint glow of pink in the bedchamber’s deepest corner, it was no longer there.

Although some might sense what remained behind…

A blessing of love.

L
ady Mirabelle was a bad influence.

Sorley scowled darkly as he nipped around behind the chapel. Because of her, he preferred the longer, more circuitous route to the castle tower that held his privy quarters. He didn’t care to cut across the courtyard. The shorter, more direct path no longer suited him. Not after being with a certain flame-haired minx in the candlelit confines of the chapel. She’d melted against him, returning his kiss and setting him ablaze with her passion.

Now he needed air, the night’s chill damp to cool the fire inside him.

She made him burn that hotly.

Her voice alone roused him. Soft and honeyed, each lilting word stirred him like an intimate caress. In truth, as pleasing as it was to listen to her, she didn’t need her enchanting Highland accent to render him witless. She could do that simply by standing near him, silent. In her presence, everything else ceased to exist, no longer mattering because he only thought of her. Having a woman affect him so powerfully was a new and discomfiting experience.

He didn’t like it.

Nor did he care for the increasing surety that she was a female unlike any other.

He’d aye believed one lass was good as the next, especially once they were naked in his arms, writhing beneath him in the throes of carnal ecstasy. At such times, he couldn’t much tell a difference. He took care to tumble only jaded court women and the saucy tavern lasses at the Red Lion, females who enjoyed the glories of the flesh with the same gusto he did. He also kept watch over them even after he’d lost interest in their favor, aye ready to lend support if ever his seed bore fruit. He was not his father.

He didn’t despoil innocents.

He’d also come to suspect he was incapable of appreciating a woman for more than the hot, silken delights nestled betwixt her thighs.

Yet he knew from their kiss that Mirabelle’s loving would sear him to the soul. She’d do more than slake his desire and deplete him. She’d leave him with a fierce longing to claim her again and again. She’d consume him with the need to sink into her sleek, heated womanliness as often as possible. He’d crave her always.

If he were fool enough to touch her.

Which he wasn’t.

Still, she was a disruptive, disconcerting distraction. A bane he didn’t need in his well-ordered and most enjoyable life. Even the brief time he’d spent with her in the chapel had given him a raging ache in the head. Elsewhere, too, though he was trying to ignore that particular pounding.

Nor did he appreciate how easily her silly blether about castle ghosts was influencing him.

God’s bones, she was turning him daft!

Sure of it, he stopped before the low stone wall of the chapel’s once-pagan burial ground and pulled a hand down over his face. Pink ladies, bog beasties, headless pipers, Highland
bogles, and who-knew-what-all she believed roamed and moaned about Scotland’s fair countryside.

He was having none of it.

Yet…

He
had
seen something.

And what better place for a Scottish ghost to float through the mist than among the tilting, moss-grown gravestones of an ancient Celtic sacred site?

Although the two white-glowing orbs he’d spotted hadn’t exactly glided eerily along as he’d have expected such spirits to do.

They’d bobbed up and down, appearing and then disappearing in the darkest corner of the age-old burial ground. It was an uncanny spot, dreary, cold, and full of shadow, even on the brightest summer day.

Some folk swore it was a
thin place
, a spot where the veil between the spiritual and earthly worlds stretched transparent, allowing a communion between the realms of the living and the dead.

Sorley believed that as much as he trusted the moon would fall from the heavens.

Even so, he felt his body tense, his gaze narrow. Especially when the two glowing orbs surfaced again, gleaming through the swirling mist. As before, they rose and fell in ghostly rhythm, perhaps paying homage to a broken grave slab not far from where they kept appearing.

“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” He borrowed an oath said to have been the favorite of a great Highland chieftain he’d always admired, Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail. Curious, he stepped over the low stone wall, so worn and crumbled it scarce resembled one. Then he headed for the mysterious bobbing orbs.

It was rough going.

While the holy chapel basked in the King’s favor, the interior sumptuous and in excellent repair, the wee bit of ground
that held hoary pagan graves didn’t enjoy such care. If the truth were known, it was hard to find someone brave enough to tend a spot of ground many believed was still ruled by the old gods. Folk feared the long-buried Celtic dead might rise and take vengeance on the living Scots who now worshipped another God on their sacred land.

Sorley harbored no such worries.

He took care not to step in a rabbit hole or worse. He didn’t want to plunge to his waist in the wormy earth of a collapsed gravesite. Grass and nettles grew thickly between the slanting and tumbled tombstones. He wouldn’t know he’d stepped wrongly until he’d done so.

O-o-oh…

The thready, high-pitched cry came from nowhere and everywhere, echoing through the mist. Piercing enough to have been a banshee, the wail froze Sorley where he stood. He wouldn’t wager on it, but he was fairly sure the mist distorted the sound, making it seem to ripple the air.

He also suspected one of the strange white-glowing orbs had issued the blood-chilling call.

It was a possibility he didn’t like at all.

But if he didn’t confront the ghosts, seeing for himself if they were or weren’t real, he wouldn’t sleep that night.

Unlike Lady Mirabelle, he wasn’t keen on meeting spirits.

But a man should be a man always, even in the face of the long-departed. Like as not, he’d discover that the shrieking banshee was only an owl.

So he kept on, carefully picking his way through the knee-high grass and around broken graves.

He was almost upon a split grave slab that raged up out of the weeds like a crooked, beckoning finger. It was the stone that hid the two glowing white orbs when they weren’t popping up from behind the slab’s angled, age-pitted surface to shine through the mist.

At once, the orbs loomed into view.

“God’s wounds!” His eyes rounded. He could scarce believe what he was seeing, but there could be no mistaking the bright white forms. Or that they moved with a steady, bouncing rhythm, as if dancing.

Sorley shuddered, half worried that if he took another step he might be swept back in time, finding himself in an older, darker age, right in the midst of a pagan ceremonial circle.

He knew suchlike held human sacrifices.

He also knew they enjoyed orgies, an activity he wouldn’t have minded.

But he wanted nothing to do with Druids’ darker rituals.

Still…

If Lady Mirabelle was man enough to chase after the pink lady, he could take the last few steps across the grassy ground to the broken grave slab.

A strangled noise rose from behind the stone before he could. It was a sound he recognized. He’d made the same noise often enough, always when on the edge of a thunderous release.

“Ahhhh… Aye, lass, aye…”
a man’s deep voice lifted to the night, confirming his guess.

Sorley nearly choked, trying to hold back his laughter.

Just then, the mists thinned enough for him to get a better look at the two glowing white orbs. There was nothing mysterious about them at all. They were the white-gleaming buttocks of a naked man.

A lusty sort, to be sure. And one who was enjoying himself immensely.

That, too, Sorley knew with surety because the soft sighing he’d believed to be wind through the grass was none other than the excited gasps of a woman on the verge of her own stunning climax.

Sorley’s lips twitched and he felt a surge of manly
camaraderie with the fellow responsible for giving the wench such pleasure. Her breathless pants indicated her lover was highly skilled.

A quick tryst on a cold, misty night and in a place of ancient legend wasn’t a bad idea.

Sorley might have to try it himself if he could persuade one of his favorite bed partners into risking damp grass and nettle stings.

This night, he’d leave such joys to the fun-seeking pair.

Deeming they deserved their privacy, he started backing away, hoping to leave as quietly as he’d arrived.

One, two, three steps, he made with ease.

Then the rustling behind the slanting grave slab became louder, a touch more frenetic. Sorley froze again, not wanting to disturb a special moment.

He did smile for them.

“O-o-oh, Lyall, I knew you loved me,” came the woman’s shuddery gasp as she no doubt reached her peak. “And I love you! Only you, Lyall. Oh, o-o-oh…”

Sorley’s smile faded as dark, simmering annoyance twisted his gut.

He knew Lyall.

There was only one man by that name at Stirling. He was a good-looking, strapping lad who worked in the stables. More randy than a rutting stag, Lyall tupped as many lasses a night as he could. Some claimed every hour, though Sorley knew that was kitchen blether. It was also rumored Lyall exerted no effort in attracting his conquests. A crook of his finger was enough, a glance, or a suggestive smile that, by all accounting, drew women almost magically.

Sorley knew such tricks.

He was also aware that while Lyall’s name meant loyal, the lad aye forgot the lasses even before he flipped their skirts back down.

Sorley pulled a hand over his chin as he looked up at the
cloud-torn sky. Lyall’s lusty adventures didn’t concern him. The lad’s hot-bloodedness and his apparently unquenchable thirst for landing between a woman’s thighs were none of his business. Still, an oath rose in Sorley’s throat and he bit it back, frowning.

Wasn’t he guilty of the same transgressions? Hadn’t he tumbled more women than he could begin to count, much less remember?

Still, there was a difference.

He never let them believe he loved them.

If they ever mentioned the word, or gave him the impression they even
thought
it, he backed away, never to seek their company again.

He aye made clear his amorous activities were all about the physical release and pleasure.

No more, no less.

The poor lass beneath Lyall’s thrusting hips thought the lad cared for her.

Even now, she was panting more words of love. They stung Sorley’s ears as he hastened through the little pagan burial ground. He no longer cared if the pair heard him, knew they’d been observed.

Devils rode him. Hell fiends that stabbed his back with spears of flaming agony, dredging up hurts he preferred to keep hidden deep down in his soul.

But they weren’t there now.

Every last one was clawing its heinous way upward, reminding him of the heartless man who’d sired him. Sorley knew the scoundrel was of the same ilk as Lyall-who-raked-muck-from-horse stalls and allowed hapless, trusting kitchen wenches to fall in love with him.

The only difference was that he remained certain his father hadn’t been a Stirling man.

He’d bet his sword, his most prized possession, that the blackguard was a Highland chieftain.

He had always felt that in the pit of his gut.

Such feelings never lied.

He didn’t either. Well, except in Fenris matters, and then only for the greater cause of the King’s will and desire, and Scotland’s own weal.

So his demons bit hard as he made for the stair tower to his privy quarters. The orgiastic cries and lovesick words of Lyall’s latest tumble-mate followed him. The girl’s breathy pants and pathetic avowals of devotion plagued him more with each step he climbed up the winding stair. By the time he reached his landing and gained the refuge of his bedchamber, his night was well and truly ruined.

Kissing Mirabelle in the chapel had been disaster enough.

Being reminded of his nameless father and his callous deeds had given him the rest.

He wouldn’t think of the poor lass who’d soon realize her folly. Lyall wasn’t a lad worthy of a maid’s heart.

And love was nonsense to be avoided at all cost.

He doubted the like even existed.

Sure of it, he strode across his room—grateful that a servant had lit the wall sconces—and poured himself a healthy measure of uisge beatha, knocking down the fiery Highland spirits in one long gulp.

Perhaps he’d treat himself to another.

Descending into a senseless, mindless sleep appealed greatly. His demons were loose this night. He could feel their talons shredding his resistance, their fiery breath scorching his nape. They wanted blood and usually took a pound or two of flesh as well.

Sorley ignored their snarls and started undressing. He tossed his cloak over the arm of a chair beside his fireplace. His doublet followed, landing on the floor. Not caring, he shrugged out of his shirt, welcoming the room’s chill on his bared skin. Anger coursed through him, heating him from the inside out, and not in a pleasant way. He blazed as hotly
as if someone had lugged the huge, double-arched kitchen hearth into his bedchamber, complete with a raging, bright-burning fire. And as he rid himself of the rest of his clothes and yanked off his boots, naked at last, he would’ve sworn he saw his demons dancing in the flames.