The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karen Marie Moning

  Then she wondered no more, for Drustan turned with her in his arms and loped up the stairs into the castle. To make immediate, passionate love to her, she was quite certain, and her entire body quickened with anticipation.

  “Wait!” Silvan called after them. “I thought we could dine together as a family.”

  “Give over, Da. I doubt they’ll be leaving the bedchamber till morn,” Dageus said dryly.

  Silvan sighed, then glanced at Nell. His gaze grew heated.

  When Silvan took Nell’s hand and hastened her toward the stairs, bidding a good night over his shoulder to his son, Dageus shook his head, smiling faintly, and withdrew a flask of whisky from his sporran.

  Dageus sat on the steps for a long time, filled with a strange restlessness that even whisky couldn’t mellow, watching the night sky twinkle with a smattering of brilliant stars.

  If he felt lonely, in the vastness of things, ’twas a feeling to which he’d grown long accustomed.

  Gwen welcomed her husband home in a time-honored fashion. They spent the evening in their chamber, where she lovingly bathed the dust of travel from him, then joined him in a fresh bath and showed him how very much she’d missed him.

  They lit candles and drew the velvet bedcurtains, alternately making love and stopping to feed each other tidbits from a scrumptious dinner delivered personally by Dageus.

  It was clear from the array of foods, Gwen decided, that Dageus had quite the erotic mind, just like his brother. For he’d brought them lovers’ food: juicy slices of peaches and plums, baked meat tarts, cheese, and a crusty loaf of bread. He’d also brought honey, with nothing specific to put it on, a thing she’d not understood until Drustan laid her back upon the bed, drizzled a dab on that most feminine part of her, then proceeded to show her just how long it could take to lick it off. Thoroughly.

  She’d peaked twice beneath his masterful, slightly sticky tongue.

  Then there were cherries from the orchard, and she’d eaten a handful while trying her own hand at the honey.

  Drustan had lain supine upon the bed for all of two and a half minutes before flipping her over on her back and taking charge of matters. She’d reveled in eroding his control. For such a disciplined man, he certainly came undone in bed. Uninhibited, passionate, his enthusiasm for sex was endless.

  She’d fed him slices of roast pig, then given him small drinks of wine from her own lips. And when he’d whispered to her the same base, primitive words back that she’d said to him their first night together in the stones, untamed lust had consumed them both.

  They’d rolled across the bed and tumbled to the floor, knocking over tables and candles and setting fire to the lambskin rug. They’d laughed and Drustan had doused it with the cooling bathwater.

  And when she finally slept—spooned, her back to his front—with Drustan’s arms around her, her last thought was heaven. She’d found heaven in the Highlands of Scotland.

  24

  “Mmm.” Gwen sighed contentedly. She’d been having a marvelous dream in which Drustan was waking her by making love to her. Dimly, the realization penetrated—at the same moment he did—that it was no dream.

  She gasped as, still spooned, he slipped into her from behind.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed as he increased the tempo. Deeper, harder, faster. He thrust into her, his arms wrapped tightly around her, and nipped the skin at the base of her neck. When he rolled her nipples between his fingers, she arched back against him, meeting his every thrust until they peaked in perfect harmony.

  “Gwen, my love,” he whispered.

  When, later, he’d gone to fetch breakfast, intent on serving her in bed, she lay back, a silly smile plastered on her face.

  Life was so good.

  Whistling a cheery tune, Drustan balanced a tray laden with kippers and plump sausages, tatties and clootie dumplings, peaches and porridge, on his arm as he fumbled with the door. All had been prepared by Nell herself, all tasted by Robert.

  Despite the fact that the threat loomed some distance yet in the future, he was taking no chances with his wife.

  “Sustenance is here, and you’re going to need it, love,” he announced, pushing the door open.

  The velvet bedcurtains were tied back, revealing a tangle of coverlets and linens, but the bed was empty. He glanced about the room, puzzled. He’d been gone a scant half hour, gathering food. Where had she gone? A quick visit to the garderobe? He had a delicious morning planned: a leisurely breakfast, a leisurely bath for his wife, who must be aching from so much bed play. More lovemaking only if she was able, if not, he would massage scented oils into her skin and gently minister to her tender limbs.

  A chill of foreboding kissed his spine as he eyed the empty bed. Dropping the tray on a table near the door, he walked swiftly through the boudoir and into the Silver Chamber.

  She wasn’t there.

  He pivoted and stalked back to his chamber.

  Only then did he see the parchment propped on the table near the fire. His hands shook as he snatched it up and read it.

  Come to the clearing by the wee loch if ye value her life. Alone, or the lass dies.

  “Nay!” he roared, crushing the parchment in his fist. ’Tis too soon, his mind protested. He wasn’t supposed to be enchanted for nearly a fortnight! He hadn’t even given the guards instructions to triple the watches and scour the countryside!

  “By Amergin,” he whispered hoarsely, “we’ve changed things somehow.” By preventing Dageus’s death, they must have altered the way subsequent events would unfold. His mind raced furiously. Who was behind it all? It made no sense to him. And what might the enemy want with Gwen?

  “To get to me,” he muttered grimly. They hadn’t drugged him this time. Rather—because Gwen was there—she’d been used as bait.

  Frantically, he crammed his feet into his boots and grabbed his leather bands, strapping them on. In the Greathall, he stuffed blade after blade into the slits as he raced to the garrison.

  Alone, my arse, he thought.

  I’ll walk in alone, while my men sneak up behind them and destroy every last one of the bastards who took my woman.

  Besseta cowered behind the lofty oak, watching the gypsies prepare to work the spell she’d commissioned. They’d painted a large crimson circle upon the ground. Runes she did not recognize marked the perimeter—dark gypsy magic, she thought, shivering.

  The moment Nevin had departed for his morning stroll to the castle, she’d hastened from the cottage and crept through the forest. She was determined to see the deed done with her own eyes. Only then would she believe her son safe.

  She narrowed her eyes, peering at her enemy—Drustan’s betrothed, who’d been plucked straight from his bed, she was fair certain, for the lass wore naught but a sheer nightrail. Soon the laird himself would arrive, the gypsies would enchant him and take him far away, to be interred underground, and her worries would be over. The gypsies had demanded extra coin to enchant the woman as well, forcing Besseta to pilfer from Nevin’s charity box. But no transgression was too great to save her son.

  A few yards away Nevin watched his mother with a heavy heart. For some time, she’d been worsening, her moods growing increasingly erratic, her eyes too bright. She watched him ceaselessly as if she feared a bolt of lightning might strike him at any moment. He’d done all he could to allay her fears that Drustan MacKeltar might harm him, but to no avail. She was lost in terrible imaginings.

  He murmured a soft prayer of thanks to God for guiding him. He’d awakened with a niggling foreboding, and rather than immediately striking out for the castle, he’d lingered behind the cottage. Sure enough, moments later, his mother had slipped out, wild-eyed, her hair mussed, half-dressed, pulling her cloak tightly about her.

  When she’d scurried off, he’d followed at a distance. She’d crept to the edge of the forest, where it opened into a circular clearing at the edge of the small loch. Now he watched, deeply uneasy. What was his mother doing? What involve
ment had she in gypsy affairs, and what strange designs were etched upon the sod?

  He scanned the clearing, stiffening when a small group of gypsies moved apart and one broke away from the rest, carrying a bound woman toward the crimson circle. It was the wee blond lass Nevin had seen about the castle of late. When the gypsy briefly glanced in his direction, Nevin ducked deeper into the brush, deeper into the shadows of the forest.

  What ominous events transpired? Why did his mother lurk here, and why was a woman from the castle bound? What terrible things had Besseta gotten herself ensnared in?

  Smoothing his robes, he reminded himself that he was a man of God, and as such had a duty to work in His name despite his slight stature and mild nature. Whatever was about to happen, it was clear no good might come of it. It was his responsibility to put a stop to it before someone was harmed. He began to step forth from his hidden vantage, but no sooner did he stand than Drustan MacKeltar, mounted on a snorting black stallion, burst into the clearing. He vaulted from his horse and, unsheathing his sword, stalked toward the gypsy carrying the lass.

  “Release her,” Drustan roared savagely in a voice that sounded like a thousand voices. His silvery eyes blazed incandescently. ’Twas no normal voice, Nevin realized, but a voice of power.

  Nevin ducked back again, blinking.

  The gypsy carrying the blond lass dropped her as if burned and backed away toward the loch. The lass tumbled and rolled across the rocky sod, stopping a few yards from where Nevin stood.

  And that was when all hell broke loose.

  Besseta keened low and long as chaos erupted in the clearing. She wiped clammy palms on her skirt and watched in horror as mounted guards burst from the forest.

  The gypsies, hemmed in by the loch at their back and guards on all sides, reached for their weapons.

  Wrong, wrong, it was all going wrong!

  She inched from the cover of the forest, creeping unnoticed in the tumult, toward the wagon that had been brought to cart off the laird’s slumbering body.

  The gypsies were aiming their crossbows.

  The guards were raising shields and swinging swords.

  Men were going to die and blood was going to flow, Besseta thought, grateful that Nevin was safely in the castle working on his chapel. Mayhap rather than being enchanted, Drustan MacKeltar would be killed in battle. Not by her hand at all. Mayhap.

  But mayhap was too weak a possibility to ensure her son’s safety.

  I will not harm the MacKeltar, she’d promised Nevin, and she was a woman of her word. If a son couldn’t trust his mother’s word, what could he rely upon?

  She’d carefully planned the enchantment so that not one hair on the laird’s head would be harmed. But now all her cautious plans were going awry. She had no choice but to try another option to save her son. If she could not remove Drustan MacKeltar before he wed his lady—well, she’d made no promises about that lady. And that lady was currently forgotten as the battle raged around her bound body.

  Lying on the ground, she may or may not get trampled by the horses. May or may not get struck by a stray arrow.

  Besseta was quite finished taking chances. If Drustan survived the battle, Besseta had to make certain there was no woman for him to wed.

  She narrowed her eyes, watching the lass struggle with her bonds, and inched nearer the wagon.

  With trembling hands, she plucked up a tightly strung crossbow and, summoning every ounce of her strength, leveled it at the lass.

  Nevin’s eyes widened in horror. His mother, his own mother would do murder! She was truly lost in her madness! Thou shalt not kill!

  “Nay!” he roared, plunging from the brush.

  Besseta heard him and started. Her hand slipped on the cord.

  “Nay! Mother!” Running, he catapulted himself through the air to shield the bound lass, and stumbled, landing sideways atop her. “Naaaa—”

  His cry terminated abruptly as the arrow slammed into his chest.

  Besseta froze. Her world grew eerily still. The tumult in the clearing receded and grew hazy, as if she stood in a dreamy tunnel, she at one end, her dying son at the other. Choking on a horrified sob, her knees buckled and she collapsed.

  Her vision swept over her again, this time in full, and she finally saw the fourth person’s face. The person she’d thought had meant naught since she’d been unable to see it clearly.

  She’d not been able to see the fourth person because it had been herself.

  She was the woman who would kill her son. It had never been the lass. Och, indirectly, in a way, for had the lass not come, Besseta would not have planned to abduct the laird, and had she not set such plans into motion, she would never have shot her beloved son.

  God’s will will be, Nevin had said a thousand times if once.

  But, trusting her visions more than God, she’d tried to change what she thought she’d seen and had brought about the very event she’d tried so desperately to avoid.

  She fancied she could hear her son’s ragged, dying breaths over the din of battle.

  Oblivious to the warfare all around her, the arrows flying, the swords swinging, she crawled to her son’s side and tugged him onto her lap. “Och, my wee laddie,” she crooned, smoothing his hair, stroking his face. “Nevin, my baby, my boy.”

  Gwen struggled to sit up the moment she was no longer pinned by the man’s body. A sob escaped her when she spied the arrow protruding from his bloody chest.

  She’d never seen anyone shot before. It was horrible, worse than the movies made it seem. She tried to inch away, but her wrists were bound behind her, her ankles tightly tied. Scooting awkwardly on her behind was painstakingly slow going. When a horse screamed and reared behind her, when she heard the chilling swish of a blade slicing through the air, she went utterly still, and decided moving might not be the wisest course of action.

  Drustan had been gone only a few minutes when the gypsies had slipped into the chamber and taken her captive. They’d subdued her with humiliating ease.

  She hadn’t seen it coming, but somehow, by preventing Dageus’s death, they’d changed things. Plans had been accelerated, and rather than a message bidding Drustan to come if he wished to know the name of the man who’d killed his brother, she’d been used as the lure.

  She stared at the weeping old woman, whose frantic, gnarled hands fluttered above the man’s cheeks and brow. As Gwen watched, his chest rose and fell, then did not rise again.

  “ ‘Twas me all along,” Besseta wailed. “ ‘Twas my vision that did this. I should ne’er have bargained with the gypsies!”

  “You arranged to enchant Drustan?” Gwen gasped. This gray-haired old woman with arthritic hands and rheumy eyes was their unknown enemy? “You’re the one behind everything?” But the old woman didn’t reply, merely stared at Gwen with loathing and madness in her gaze.

  “Gwen!” Drustan roared. “Get away from Besseta!”

  Gwen’s head snapped back, and she saw him running toward her, a horrified expression on his face.

  “Crawl, get away!” he roared again, dodging swords and ducking arrows.

  “Stay back,” Gwen screamed. “Protect yourself!” He would never make it through so many weapons.

  But he didn’t stay back, he kept running, heedless of the danger.

  He was no more than a dozen yards from her when an arrow slammed into his chest, taking him off his feet. As he collapsed on his back, suddenly she was…

  …on the flat rock, sunning herself, in the foothills above Loch Ness.

  “Noooooo!” she screamed. “Drustan!”

  “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  “The heart has its reasons—of which reason knows nothing.”

  —BLAISE PASCAL

  25

  Gwen lay on the flat rock for time unco
unted.

  She was mindless, wracked with grief. When a sip of reality finally returned, it couched an impossible pill to swallow—reality without him. Forever.

  How had she—the brilliant physicist—failed to see it coming?

  How could she have been so stupid?

  She’d been so thrilled to remain with Drustan in the sixteenth century, so lost in dreamy plans of their future, that her brain had gone on strike, and she’d failed to take one critically important factor into account: The moment she changed his future, she would change her own.

  In the new future they’d created, Drustan MacKeltar was not enchanted. Was not buried in the cavern for her to find.

  And so—in this new future they’d created—because Drustan was not enchanted, she’d not found him, and he’d never sent her back to him.

  At the precise moment the possibility of him being enchanted had reached absolute null, Gwen Cassidy had ceased to exist in his century. Reality had plunked her right back where she’d been before she’d fallen down the ravine. Right back when she’d been. No need for the white bridge. Sixteenth-century reality had spat her out, rejecting her very existence. An unacceptable anomaly. Drustan was never enchanted—hence she had no right to exist in his time. So much for the theories that claimed Stephen Hawking was wrong for advocating the existence of a cosmic censor that would prevent paradoxes from piling up. There was clearly some force keeping things aligned in the universe. God abhors a naked singularity, Gwen thought with a half-snort that quickly translated into a sob.

  She clutched her head, suddenly fearing her memories might melt away.

  But no, the scientist reminded her, the arrows of time remembered forward, and so her memory would remain intact. She had been in the past, and the memory of it was etched into the essence of her being.