To Tame a Highland Warrior (40 page)

“Just doona go looking down the central hall, Jillian,” Balder said quickly, regarding her intently. “He rarely goes there, but if he does, it’s because he’s wishin’ for some privacy.”

“The central hall?” Jillian’s brow furrowed. “I thought this was the central hall.” She waved her arm at the Great-hall, where they’d dined.

“No, this is the front hall. I mean the one that runs off the back of the castle. Actually, it tunnels right into the heart of the mountain itself. It’s where he used to run to when he was a boy.”

“Oh.” She inclined her head. “Thank you,” she added, but had no idea what she was thanking him for. His cryptic comment seemed to have been issued as a deterrent, but it sounded suspiciously like an invitation to snoop. She shook her head briskly and excused herself, consumed by curiosity.

After she left, Ronin grinned at Balder. “He never went there when he was a boy. He hasn’t even seen the Hall of Lords yet! You’re a sneaky bastard, you are,” he exclaimed admiringly.

“I always told you I got the lion’s share o’ brains in the family.” Balder preened and poured them both another glass of cider. “Are the torches lit, Ronin? You left it unlocked, didn’t you?”

“ ’Course I did! You dinna get
all
the brains. But Balder, what if she can’t figure it out? Or worse, can’t accept it?”

“That woman has a head on her shoulders, brother. She’s fairly burstin’ with questions, but she keeps her tongue. Not because she’s meek, but out of love for your boy. She’s dyin’ to know what happened here fifteen years ago, and she’s waitin’ patiently for Gavrael to tell her. So we’ll be givin’ her the answers another way to be certain she’s prepared when he finally speaks.” Balder paused and regarded his brother sternly. “You dinna used to be such a coward, Ronin. Stop waitin’ for him to come to you. Go to him as you wish you had years ago. Do it, Ronin.”

Jillian made a beeline for the central hall, or as much of a beeline as she was capable of given that wandering around inside Castle Maldebann was akin to roaming an uncharted city. She navigated confusing corridors, proceeding in the direction she hoped led back toward the mountain, determined to find the central hall. It was obvious Balder and Ronin wished her to see it. Would it give her answers about Grimm?

After thirty minutes of frustrated searching, she looped through a series of twisting hallways and around a corner that opened into a second Greathall, even larger than the
one she’d breakfasted in. She stepped forward hesitantly; the hall was definitely old—perhaps as ancient as the standing stones erected by the mystical Druids.

Someone had conveniently lit torches—the interfering brothers, she concluded gratefully—for there was not one window in this part of the structure, and how could there be? This Greathall was actually inside the belly of the mountain. She shivered, rattled by the idea. She crossed the huge room slowly, drawn by the mysterious double doors set into the wall at the other end. They towered above her, wrapped in bands of steel, and above the arched opening bold letters had been chiseled.

“Deo non fortuna,”
she whispered, driven by the same impulse to speak in hushed tones that she’d suffered in Caithness’s chapel.

She pressed against the massive doors and held her breath as they swung inward, revealing the central hall Balder had spoken of. Wide-eyed, she moved forward with the dreamy gait of a sleepwalker, riveted by what lay before her. The flowing lines of the hall commanded the eyes upward, and she pivoted slowly, arching her head back and marveling at the ceiling. Pictures and murals covered the vast expanse, some of them so vibrant and realistic that her hands begged to touch them. A chill coursed through her as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing. Was she gazing up at centuries of the history of the McIllioch? She dragged her gaze downward, only to discover new wonders. The walls of the hall held portraits. Hundreds of them!

Jillian glided along the wall. It took only a few moments for her to realize she was walking down a historical genealogy, a time line done in portraits. The first pictures were chiseled in stone, some directly into the wall, with names carved beneath
them—odd names she couldn’t begin to pronounce. As she worked her way down the wall, the methods of depiction became more modern, as did the clothing. It was apparent that much care had been given to repainting and restoring the portraits to maintain their accuracy over the centuries.

As she progressed down the time line toward the present, the portraits became more graphically detailed, which deepened her growing sense of confusion. Colors were brighter, more painstakingly applied. Her eyes darting between portraits, she moved forward and back again, comparing portraits of children to their subsequent adult portraits.

She must be mistaken.

Incredulous, Jillian closed her eyes a minute, then opened them slowly and stepped back a few paces to study an entire section. It couldn’t be. Grabbing a torch, she moved nearer, peering intently at a cluster of boys at their mothers’ skirts. They were beautiful boys, dark-haired, brown-eyed boys who would certainly grow into dangerously handsome men.

She moved to the next portraits and there they were again: dark-haired, blue-eyed, dangerously handsome men.

Eyes didn’t change color.

Jillian retraced her steps and studied the woman in the last portrait. She was a stunning auburn-haired woman with five brown-eyed boys at her skirts. Jillian then moved to her right; it was either the same woman or her identical twin. Five men clustered around her in various poses, all looking directly at the artist, leaving no doubt as to the color of their eyes. Ice blue. The names beneath the portraits were the same. She moved farther down the hall, bewildered.

Until she found the sixteenth century.

Unfortunately, the portraits raised more questions than they answered, and she sank to her knees in the hall for a long time, thinking.

Hours passed before she managed to sort through it all to her satisfaction. When she had, no question remained in her mind—she was an intelligent woman, able to exercise her powers of deductive reasoning with the best of them. And those powers told her that, though it defied her every rational thought, there was simply no other explanation. She was sitting on her knees, clad in a disheveled plaid, clutching a nearly burned-out torch in a hall filled with Berserkers.

G
RIMM PACED THE TERRACE, FEELING LIKE A FOOL
. H
E
’
D
sat across the table and shared food with his da, managing to make civil conversation until Jillian had arrived. Then Ronin had mentioned Jolyn, and he’d felt fury rise up so quickly he’d nearly lunged across the table and grabbed the old man by the throat.

But Grimm was intelligent enough to realize that much of the anger he felt was at himself. He needed information and was afraid to ask. He needed to talk to Jillian, but what could he tell her? He had no answers himself.
Confront your da
, his conscience demanded.
Find out what really happened
.

The idea terrified him. If he discovered he was wrong, his entire world would look radically different.

Besides, he had other things to worry about. He had to make certain Jillian didn’t discover what he was, and he needed to warn Balder that the McKane were on his heels. He needed to get Jillian somewhere safe before they
attacked, and he needed to figure out why he, his uncle, and his da were all Berserkers. It just seemed too coincidental, and Balder kept alluding to information he didn’t possess. Information he couldn’t ask for.

“Son.”

Grimm spun around. “Doona call me that,” he snapped, but the protest didn’t carry its usual venom.

Ronin expelled a gust of air. “We need to talk.”

“It’s too late. You said all you had to say years ago.”

Ronin crossed the terrace and joined Grimm at the wall. “Tuluth is beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked softly.

Grimm didn’t reply.

“Lad, I …”

“Ronin, did you …”

The two men looked at each other searchingly. Neither noticed as Balder stepped out onto the terrace.

“Why did you leave and never come back?” The words burst from Ronin’s lips with the pent-up anguish of fifteen years of waiting to say them.

“Why did I leave?” Grimm echoed incredulously.

“Was it because you were afraid of what you’d become?”

“What
I
became? I never became what you are!”

Ronin gaped at him. “How can you be sayin’ that when you have the blue eyes? You have the bloodlust.”

“I know I’m a Berserker,” Grimm replied evenly. “But I’m
not
insane.”

Ronin blinked. “I never said you were.”

“You did too. That night at the battle, you told me I was just like you,” he reminded bitterly.

“And you are.”

“I am not!”

“Yes, you are—”

“You killed my mother!” Grimm roared, with all the anguish built up from fifteen years of waiting.

Balder moved forward instantly, and Grimm found himself the uncomfortable focus of two pairs of intense blue eyes.

Ronin and Balder exchanged a glance of astonishment.
“That’s
why you never came home?” Ronin said carefully.

Grimm breathed deeply. Questions exploded from him, and now that he’d begun asking he thought he might never stop. “How did I get brown eyes to begin with? How come you’re both Berserkers too?”

“Oh, you really are dense, aren’t you?” Balder snorted. “Come on, canna you put two and two together yet, lad?”

Every muscle in Grimm’s body spasmed. Thousands of questions collided with hundreds of suspicions and dozens of suppressed memories, and it all coalesced into the unthinkable. “Is someone else my father?” he demanded.

Ronin and Balder watched him, shaking their heads.

“Well, then why did you kill my mother?” he roared. “And doona be telling me we’re born this way. You may have been born crazy enough to kill your wife, but I’m not.”

Ronin’s face stiffened with fury. “I canna believe you think I killed Jolyn.”

“I found you over her body,” Grimm persisted.
“You were holding the knife.”

“I removed it from her heart.” Ronin gritted. “Why would I kill the only woman I ever loved? How could you, of all people, possibly think I could kill my true mate? Could you kill Jillian? Even in the midst of Berserker-gang, could you kill her?”

“Never!” Grimm thundered the word.

“Then you realize you misunderstood.”

“You lunged for me. I would have been next!”

“You are my son,” Ronin breathed. “I
needed
you. I needed to touch you; to know you were alive; to reassure myself that the McKane hadn’t gotten you too.”

Grimm stared at him blankly. “The McKane? Are you telling me the McKane killed mother? The McKane didn’t even attack until sundown. Mother died in the morning.”

Ronin regarded him with a mixture of amazement and anger. “The McKane had been waiting in the hills all day. They had a spy among us and had discovered Jolyn was pregnant again.”

A look of horror crossed Grimm’s face. “Mother was pregnant?”

Ronin rubbed his eyes. “Aye. We’d thought she wouldn’t bear more children—it was unexpected. She hadn’t gotten pregnant since you, and that had been nearly fifteen years. It would have been a late child, but we were so lookin’ forward to havin’ another—” Ronin broke off abruptly. He swallowed several times. “I lost everythin’ in one day,” he said, his eyes glittering brightly. “And all these years I thought you wouldn’t come home because you dinna understand what you were. I despised myself for havin’ failed you. I thought you hated me for makin’ you what you are and for not bein’ there to teach you how to deal with it. I spent years fightin’ my urge to come after you and claim you as my son, to prevent the McKane from trackin’ you. You’d managed to pretty effectively disappear. And now … now I discover that all these years I’ve been watchin’ you, waitin’ for you to come home, you were hatin’ me. You were out there thinkin’ I killed Jolyn!” Ronin turned away bitterly.

“The McKane killed my mother?” Grimm whispered. “Why would they care if she was pregnant?”

Ronin shook his head and looked at Balder. “How did I raise a son who was so thickheaded?”

Balder shrugged and rolled his eyes.

“You still doona get it, do you, Gavrael? What I was tryin’ to tell you all those years ago: We—the McIllioch men—we’re
born
Berserk. Any son born of the Laird’s direct line is a Berserker. The McKane have hunted us for a thousand years. They know our legends nearly as well as we do. The prophecy was that we would be virtually destroyed, whittled down to three.” He waved his arms in a gesture that encompassed the three of them. “But one lad would return home, brought by his true mate, and destroy the McKane. The McIllioch would become mightier than ever before.
You
are that lad.”

“B-b-born Berserk?” Grimm stuttered.

“Yes,” both men responded in a single breath.

“But I turned into one,” Grimm floundered. “Up on Wotan’s Cleft. I called on Odin.”