by Hazel Hunter
He blinked, convinced now that he was dreaming. “Lily?”
Her eyes slowly opened, and she looked at him as if puzzled. “Cade.” She slid a glance to one side of them and then the other. “Is this Dun Mor?” When he nodded, she frowned. “You chaps need a housekeeper. I only cook, you know. My father always had servants for the rest.”
Cadeyrn kissed her, laughed, and kissed her again. The taste of her lips made him feel drunk, and the soft sounds she made against his mouth rammed desire through him until his cock felt as if it might burst.
“Where are you going?” she demanded after he pulled away and vaulted from the bed. She sat up and watched him as he began barricading the door. “Or not going, then?”
Outside in the passage, the thuds of running boots drew close, and someone hammered on the door and shouted in a deep voice for Cadeyrn.
“We’re fine, and my lady’s awake,” he called back. “Leave us alone for the day. And the night. Fack no, we’ll come out when we want food.”
Lily climbed off the bed and was holding out the much-longer tresses of her hair. “Good God. What’s happened to me?”
Cadeyrn took her hands in his and told her everything that had happened since he’d taken her and their ladies from the pool at the falls. He told her of Coig’s end, and what that had revealed. Finally, he spoke of the apoplexy that had put her into an endless sleep, and how he’d refused to kill her even when he thought it might awaken her to immortality.
“So, you told the Gods to sod off when it came to killing me,” she said once he’d finished. “Yet you knew I wouldn’t come out of the coma.”
“I couldnae take your life from you.” He drew her down on the mattress beside him. “So much of it has been stolen from you by your father, and the mad druids, and Coig. How could I take what little you might have left?”
She thought for a moment. “Maybe they brought me back because this time you made the sacrifice.”
“I dinnae care why you awakened, only that you have.” He kissed her brow. “You’ve been made immortal by it as I was. We’ll no’ grow old together, Lily, because we’ll never grow old. But if you’ll have me, we’ll be together always.”
She laced her fingers through his. “I think I’ve got you already, boyo. Since I love you madly, that’s settled.” She glanced over her shoulder at the splinters of wood covering most of the blanket. “But we need a new bed, I think. I don’t fancy shagging on a stone floor.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
RUADRI KEPT TO the shadows as he came out of his chamber and into the great hall. Althea sat speaking softly with the healer. The sisters had gone, likely to bed. For a moment he simply watched Emeline, and the way the firelight etched shadows on her pale face. She had eyes like jewels, and hair as fine and dark as jet, and a tongue like a skinning blade.
Since she could not see him Ruadri allowed his gaze to wander. Beside Althea’s tall, willowy form the nurse looked lush and exotic, like a goddess from another land. He could see her McAra blood in her coloring, and the stubborn set of her jaw, but there was so much more to admire and yearn to touch.
No’ that I’ll ever put a finger on her, the shaman reminded himself.
Without warning Brennus arrived, and Althea hurried over to greet her husband. She ushered him and the others over to the hearth to warm themselves, and called for Kelturan to bring hot brews. No one but Ruadri noticed Emeline hobbling away.
Following her made him feel foolish, but he told himself that she knew nothing of the stronghold and might become lost. She limped all the way back to Kanyth’s forge, where she stood studying the large table covered with tools and stacks of iron bars.
“I can feel you there,” Emeline said without turning around to face him.
Moving cautiously, Ruadri joined her. “I didnae mean to frighten you.”
“I’m no’ afraid.” She regarded him. “What do you want?”
Being this close to her made him feel as if he were basking in a spring sun. “To ken why you’ve taken such a dislike to me.”
“I dinnae dislike you,” Emeline said, smiling a little. “I’ve been rude to you, and I’m sorry for that.”
Here now she was as he had dreamt her, a lovely, kind lady who had been stolen from her home. He knew her to be hurt and frightened, and yet she pretended the opposite. She had suffered greatly, but she would not show it to him.
“I want only to help with your wound.” He nodded at her side. “’Twill need cleaning and bandaging. I should see to your foot, and mayhap your jaw.”
“I’ve bruised the jaw, broken the ankle, and the side wound still bleeds.” All the emotion left her face. “But I ken what you truly want, Ruadri Skaraven, and you cannae have that.”
He frowned. “What do you believe I want, my lady?”
“Me.” She turned and hobbled off.
Chapter Twenty-Six
IN THE FRONT room at the Aviemore inn, Oriana sat watching for the skinny lad who delivered scrolls from the town’s dovecote. Since releasing the Skaraven shaman from his duty as Watcher, the messages between Bhaltair Flen and Ruadri had abruptly stopped, only to begin again in a flurry, some arriving every two hours.
“Here you be, young mistress,” the innkeeper’s wife said as she came into the room with a tray and placed it on the table beside her. As she straightened she swayed a little. “Do me a kindness again and take this meal up to your master. My knees arenae wanting to traipse up the stairs today.”
Oriana looked up at Mistress Moray’s broad face, and saw the thick veins distended in her forehead. She could almost hear the rapid pounding of her pulse, and noted the faint bluish color around her lips. She knew that the mortal’s stout body, poor diet and lifetime of hard work had worn out her heart. She would not survive another year.
In another time Oriana might have even cared. Now it just provided her with some mild amusement. What would the mortal do if she knew she had such little time left? Would she cry and beg, and waste precious days mourning all that she would never do?
Not that she would ever do more than cater to strangers for a few coins.
“Master Flen sleeps now, my lady,” Oriana said. She always made sure to call her that, as it pleased her. Keeping beguiled those who served her purpose had required much of the same simpering and flattering. “But I shall carry it up and leave it by his bedside.”
“My thanks,” Mistress Moray said and gave her a tired smile. “I’ve yours in the kitchen when you want it.”
Oriana tarried for another few minutes, and then stood as she saw the rail-thin lad hurrying to the inn’s door. She met him there, bobbing impatiently to his clumsy bow, and held out her hand.
“No, I cannae, Mistress,” the lad said.
“But you must. My master has gone abed,” she told the messenger. “I shall hold the scroll for him.”
“There’s two this time.” The lad dug in his pocket for them, and then held them out of her reach. “My da said I shouldnae give them to you again. They arenae meant for your eyes. He said that I should put them in Master Flen’s hands.”
“Shall I tell your da what you made me do behind the milkshed?” Oriana smiled at his confused expression. “Och, you dinnae recall it? ’Twas very bad. He’ll whip you for putting hands on so young a lass as me.”
His eyes widened. “I never did the like.”
“Oh, aye, but I’ll make him believe it. Such shocking things.” Before he could move, she reached out and dug her nails into the back of his hand, dragging them down. “And I’ll tell him I scratched you while you held me down.” She showed him the blood under her nails. “Now give me the facking scrolls.”
Going white, he thrust them in her hands and fled the inn.
Oriana carried the scrolls into the front room, where she sat and sipped some of the brew intended for her master as she deciphered the coded messages. The first stated that the druidesses taken from the future had been rescued and moved to Dun Mor. That infuriated Ori
ana, as she had hoped to use one or more of the females once they had been delivered to the druids.
The second message invited Bhaltair Flen to the McAra stronghold to consult with the laird and the Skaraven Chieftain on an urgent matter concerning the famhairean.
Tugging on a piece of her hair, Oriana read the message a second time. Brennus despised Bhaltair, and had made it plain that he would not permit him near his clan or their stronghold. Now he bid him to attend him as a guest of the McAra. In one sense the invitation completely ruined her plans, but in another it offered a simpler alternative.
Oriana looked at the circlet of hair she had pulled out of her scalp, neatly wound around her purpled fingertip. A vague throbbing at her temple told her she’d pulled too hard again. She tugged off the hair ring, tossing it into the fire to watch it burn.
Gwyn had caught her in the act once, and warned her to cease the habit before she plucked herself bald. That had been the day she’d so wanted to tell him the truth, and show him what she had hidden from him for so long. At the time her body had not yet fully matured, however, and she could not tell him until she stood as his equal in form as well as heart. She knew once she revealed the truth that he would no longer be able to hide his desires.
Two years shy of her maturity, Gwyn had been murdered.
It had nearly gutted her to see what the famhairean had done to him, but Oriana had to see. She memorized every wound, every indignity. She’d gone back to their cottage, and crawled into Gwyn’s bed, and buried her face in the hollow his head had left in the pillow. As the madness came over her she’d screamed into it and wept upon it. By dawn when the headman came to see her, it had become soaked through with her tears.
Rising from that bed had taken all of her strength, but by then she had come to know what she had to do. She spoke to the headman like the girl he thought her to be, and begged to be permitted to take the news to Gwyn’s old friend, Bhaltair.
Oriana carefully rewound the scrolls, adding them to the meal tray before she took it upstairs to the room she shared with the old druid.
Bhaltair lay on one of the narrow beds, his face slack and his breathing deep and regular. Oriana had known better than to dose his drinks, as he remained paranoid about how they tasted since being poisoned by a renegade druid. Instead she put her sleeping potion in his evening meal. Since she prepared most of his food, or carried it up from the inn’s kitchen, she could assure he slept soundly every night, allowing her to slip away and do as she wished.
She did much that would have shocked the old druid. She’d used the groves to search every place she thought Dun Mor might be, to no avail. She’d stolen coin from rich mortals to give to those who had seen the Skaraven, although none of them offered anything but wild tales of battling warriors who vanished into lochs and rivers. She’d even eavesdropped on the McAra laird while he bedded his wife, but the man only spoke of his proud cock and his love for his lady, two things that bored Oriana so much she’d nearly dozed off.
As if he knew her thoughts Bhaltair muttered in his sleep.
Oriana set the tray aside, and took the long ritual dagger from the false bottom in her satchel. She had honed the double-edged blade herself, murmuring under her breath as she worked it against the whetstone. It gleamed in the firelight, cold and razor-sharp, and when she stood over the old druid’s bed she could see herself choosing a vein to slice open. His pudgy neck had several and, if she cut deeply enough, she’d make him choke on his own blood.
You who might have saved him. You selfish bastart.
Bhaltair Flen would die by her hand. She had absolutely no doubt of it. When she ended him, he would be wide awake and gazing up at her. He would see the dripping dagger in her hand, and she would tell him why. He would know how richly he deserved his murder before he went into the well of stars. There he would stay in shame for what he had done to her and Gwyn.
If he didn’t care to remain there, and returned in another form, she would simply kill him again, and again, and again. She would end Bhaltair Flen in every one of his lives, until he understood that she would never again allow him to dwell in the mortal realm.
At that moment Oriana’s fury nearly drove her blade into his neck. Then she remembered the second message, and the rare opportunity it presented.
“Sleep well, old fool,” she whispered as she turned her back on him. “You may deny me my vengeance today, but soon I shall have it of you and the Skaraven. Very soon.”
THE END
• • • • •
Another Immortal Highlander awaits you in Ruadri (Immortal Highlander, Clan Skaraven Book 3).
For a sneak peek, turn the page.
Sneak Peek
Ruadri (Immortal Highlander, Clan Skaraven Book 3)
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
STANDING ALONE IN the medieval highland forest, Emeline McAra didn’t see snow drifts. Somehow winter had transformed the world into a bridal boutique stuffed with wedding dresses. Dozens of them surrounded her, all big, beautiful confections of white satin and lace waiting to be donned and admired. Ice and frost became ruffled hems, beaded trains, and crystal-sequined headpieces. Beyond the gowns the river had frozen into an ivory carpet of sparkling light, down which wand-thin beauties might solemnly saunter as they modeled the latest gown trends: off-the-shoulder bodices, plunging V-necks, side cutouts, and statement sleeves.
Winter, Emeline decided, hated her.
“Healer McAra?”
Emeline might ignore the dark beauty of Shaman Ruadri Skaraven’s impossibly deep voice, but she couldn’t escape his presence—or the emotions he brought with him. Even before Emeline became a nurse she could sense other people’s feelings, probably from the years she’d spent caring for her taciturn elderly parents. Since being taken with four other women to fourteenth-century Scotland, the dial on her gift had been turned up to full blast.
Time traveling had turned Emeline’s natural, gentle empathy into a nightmare.
Since she’d arrived in the Middle Ages, the emotions of others came to her in a synesthetic jumble of colors, textures, sounds and scents. Depending on who projected the feelings, their anger could be a bright red hammer pounding inside her head, or an icy black torrent drenching her skin. Another person’s worry enveloped her in a too-small straitjacket of stifling, damp wool. Fear tasted metallic and sharp, like licking a honed knife, while pain smelled of the aftermath of such a foolish act: tears and blood.
During Emeline’s first week as a prisoner of the mad druids and their bizarre inhuman guards, the bombardment had never let up. Every time one of the other four women panicked, Emeline had been jolted and pummeled and smothered by their terror. Their situation had grown so desperate that the cacophony of fear from the others had made her constantly retch. She’d only just learned how to block the worst of the sensory attacks to protect herself, but she first had to be prepared for them.
Emeline had never been ready for anything about this man. To look at him wrenched at her heart, just as it had the very first moment he’d walked out of the shadows last night.
“Do you want for something?” Ruadri asked from behind her.
That question almost made her laugh out loud. How she wanted for something—so many things. To be held, comforted, and loved. To know if she would survive this insanity. To discover what it was like to be kissed. To tell him that she had never believed in love at first sight.
To punch the shaman square in the nose for making her a believer.
“No, thank you,” she said.
The words hurt her tight throat as she built the blockade in her mind to keep out his emotions, while keeping a tight grip on her own.
Emeline had no intention of making a ninny of herself, so she went back to her memory of the bridal shop in Inverness. All the magnificent, snowy gowns there had resembled an army of delicate, unsullied confection. They seemed silently smug, too, as if they knew she’d never have a reason to wear any of them. The mist around
her combined with the pale sunlight glittering on the tree branches to become veils adorned with crystals and silk flowers, also forever out of her reach. The air in the shop had smelled of roses, but here every breath felt so cold and clean, so pure. Almost too beautiful for her to breathe.
“But why can’t you try on the bloody dress?” Meribeth Campbell demanded from her memory of that last day in the twenty-first century. As always, her gleaming blonde curls had lovingly framed Meri’s pretty face, even when it went rosy with temper. “The blue is perfect for you. I even got the high neckline you fancied. Really, Em, there’s nothing wrong with it. You’ll look lovely.”
“I ordered a size eighteen, Meri,” Emeline said, eyeing the sapphire bridesmaid’s dress brought in for her fitting. Judging by the dimensions, she might be able to squeeze one leg or arm into it, if she first starved for another month and then buttered herself. “I think they missed a digit.”
The shop clerk checked the tag and grimaced. “It is a size eight, Miss.”
“Of course, it is,” Meribeth said, throwing her hands in the air. “How long until you can get the right size?” She scowled as the clerk went to consult with the seamstress who was waiting to do any needed alterations. “I can’t believe this. My bloody wedding is next week.”
This might be her last chance to get out of making a spectacle of herself, Emeline thought.
“You have four other bridesmaids, Meri. You’ll not need me.”
“What I need is… Oh, damn, I know what happened.” She retrieved her mobile and pressed some buttons. “Lauren, it’s me. Did Bride’s Blush deliver your gown? What size is it? Och, the wallapers. No, don’t send it back, it’s Emmy’s. She’s yours here.” She dropped her voice to a fierce whisper. “No, she hasn’t tried it on, you goose. How could she?”