“When did you leave, originally?”
He paused at the entrance to another tunnel and looked back at her. The torchlight cast his face in harsh relief. “Right after the last MacKinnon fell. I wasna going tae be a conquest of no bluidy Claren.”
He turned away and headed off to their left. Cailean stood for several seconds, unable to follow, unable to do much more than breathe. There had been hatred in his voice, and worse, in his eyes. Three hundred years was an awfully long time to nurse a grudge.
For the first time she questioned her safety. Would he drag her all the way in here to exact some sort of revenge? She hadn’t thought so. Hadn’t felt that. Her vision had said the harm he’d bring to her wouldn’t be physical. In fact the only physical thing he’d wrought on her was pleasure—hot, sweet, dizzying pleasure.
She stared down the passageway, his frame cast in shadow from the flame held above his shoulder. “Tell me what happened,” she said, suddenly needing to know before she went another step. “What happened that day, Rory?”
“I fought beside them. Calum was one of the first to die.”
She drew in her breath.
“I was their Laird, then. They fought for me, Cailean, for the memory of my father. They gave their lives for me. But the Clarens—they kept coming … and coming. I was but one man. I couldna kill them all.” His voice grew hoarse with emotion. “But God himself knows tha’ I tried.”
Vivid images of the battlefield that day blazoned bright and bloody in her mind’s eye. She felt her stomach pitch and roll as she saw him, an immortal warrior filled with rage against his mortal enemies, and yet unable to claim victory against them.
“Rory—” She stopped as her voice broke.
He reclaimed the distance between them. “No. You will know it all now, Cailean, before we go one step further. I didna believe her, you know. I didna believe she could cast the curse of immortality upon me. She was possessed of the sight, as her older sister had been before her, but she also claimed she’d held forth with the sithiche and shared in their faery druidheachd, their sorcery.”
“But—”
“She sent word that she wanted to meet me the night before we were to be wed. She wanted to tell me what had really happened between my brother Alexander and Edwyna. That we could not wed until I understood.”
“Edwyna was dead by then,” Cailean murmured.
“They blamed the MacKinnons but we did not slay her. Though there were many who would gladly have done it.”
“What did Kaithren say?”
“She claimed Edwyna had given her heart to Alexander. She said Edwyna had seen his future and that whatever she had done, was done to save him from a far more horrible fate. She claimed she wanted to make sure the same horrible fate would not befall us.” Rory scowled. “There was no love between us, but there was lust. She wanted us to commit our hearts to one another and I told her what she wanted to hear.”
“She didn’t believe you?”
“I didna think it mattered what she believed. She knew I did no’ trust her. The loss of my brothers was a festering wound inside me and in my clansmen. I would have her commitment tae me, whatever it took.”
“So you made love to her?”
“It was what she sought and I wanted to make sure the wedding took place. The future of my clan depended on it. Her talk of hearts bound and love meant nothing to me.”
“She thought otherwise.”
“Aye.”
Cailean began to tremble, as she recalled his words to her when he held her in thrall. This time I will be the conqueror.
“I was deep inside of her when she put her curse upon me.”
“Oh, Rory.”
“It was revenge. For Edwyna and Mairi’s deaths.”
Rory’s face was a mask of pain and rage, made more fearful by the rigid control he was exerting over both. “I did no’ believe her faery spells and I demanded the wedding take place. She had to marry me now, her virginity was lost. She could have had a MacKinnon bairn already growing inside her. I thought I would have the final victory.”
“You would still marry her, when you knew she hated you to the point of putting a curse on you?” While you were still inside her? Cailean could not fathom such manipulation.
His voice shook. “I would see our clan survive no matter what. Our union was our last hope.” His control began to crumble. “She renounced me on the altar, claimed I’d raped her to avenge my brothers’ deaths, even held up the bloody sheet we’d lain on. She cursed our union to eternal hell and called her clansmen to arms. They were prepared. They had been forewarned of her intentions.”
“My God. What happened to her?”
“She died in battle.”
“By your sword?”
He shook his head. “I dinna know which of my clansmen cut her down, but I saw her face as she fell.” He began to shake. “She knew I understood her true power then. As men fell all around me and I remained standing, she knew I’d realized the curse was real. She smiled as her last breath escaped her.”
The horrific images flooded her mind. Without realizing it she found herself reaching to stroke his face.
He caught her hand before she touched him. “I didn’t believe and I have paid the price.” He looked into her eyes. “I won’t make that mistake again, Cailean.”
“But I don’t—”
“No.” The word, sharp and commanding, rang against the stone walls, echoing until it faded into silence. She saw him clearly now as Laird of his clan, commanding men twice his age into battle, commanding them to their deaths.
“Understand this,” he said softly. “I have no love for the Clarens. Hatred burns in me for what she did, for what her sisters did. But you are not here to pay for the sins of your ancestors. I want only for you to free me, so that I may join my clan, my father and my brothers. So that I may be finally free of this cursed earth.”
He stepped closer and held her hand between them. “You will give this to me and I will use any means necessary to achieve my goal. I will not be thwarted nor tricked this time.”
He turned abruptly and pulled her behind him. He wasn’t hurting her, but his grip was firm.
They moved along at a swift pace that kept her almost at a trot. Then he turned into a tunnel lined with torches. He slowed and lit each one as they passed until he came to a stone wall. He reached for a sliver in the rock to his right. The sound of stone grinding on stone came again and the wall facing them shifted to the right. A gaping blackness lay beyond. The torchlight penetrated no more than a foot of it.
He turned to her, blocking the entrance. “We’re here.”
She tried to quell the trembling of fear and anticipation. “How do you remember all those twists and turns?”
“I grew up in them. Of course, we took the scenic route.”
Cailean wasn’t surprised. He would take no chances with her. He would do whatever was necessary to maintain full control of what would pass between them. She understood why, even if she didn’t like it.
“Well, let’s not stand here all night,” she said at length.
“As you wish.” He leaned in to light torches on either side of the portal.
Cailean stepped inside and her mouth opened in amazement. Rory moved along the walls, lighting torches as he went.
They were in a great hall of massive proportions. One wall was lined with huge inset fireplaces, big enough to roast an ox. Or two. And they likely had. The opposite end of the room was raised up several levels higher. Broad stone stairs, each the width of a man, led up to that area. There was no furniture of any kind, only piles of rubble and rock where parts of the ceiling and walls had caved in over time. All in all, it was amazingly well preserved.
She turned, gaping. The walls were bare, but she imagined them as they once must have been, hung with tapestries and shields, armaments perhaps. She looked up. The ceiling was so far overhead, it faded into darkness.
Rory came to stand several yards
away from her.
“How far beneath the ground are we?”
“Not as far as you’d think.”
The depth of this hall alone put them a fair distance below the earth’s surface. “How did you—your clan—carve this room out of stone?”
“These caves and caverns were mostly formed naturally, by the melting ice floes that created the Trotternish. There are other stories, of course, some legend, much of them myth, but even I don’t know the full truth of the origins of Stonelachen.”
“How far back do you know for certain this existed?”
“Is this Cailean the scientist asking?”
His question startled her, because she hadn’t been thinking at all about the scientific import of this. She’d been thinking of the man in front of her, that this was his heritage and that she could well understand to what lengths he would have gone to save it.
She stood here and for the first time in her life she wasn’t an awed observer. She felt connected this time. Personally connected. To something larger, something more important than the sum total of her own short life. It filled her with an entirely different sort of awe, and with a pride that stunned her. “No. I’m asking because this is my heritage too.”
She’d expected the fury and she wasn’t disappointed. She spoke before the rage in his eyes could spew forth. “I’m not my ancestors, Rory. I didn’t betray you or slay your men. But like it or not, my heritage is mixed up with yours. My people—” Her voice broke on that word and she had to pause as the wonder of that truth washed over her. “My people were here too, even if their time of occupation was brief. Even if their occupation was ill-achieved.”
He looked away and shrugged. “I hear what you say, Cailean Claren, but you will have to forgive me if I dinna like it much.”
“I’m not asking you to like it. Neither of us is particularly thrilled with our current circumstances,” she said pointedly.
He took her face in his hand and held her chin tilted up. She could have pulled from his grasp, but she did not. Her breath had deserted her like a traitor at his touch and she found she had no will to break the connection.
“Your heart beats faster when I touch you. Your pupils dilate and your skin warms.” He moved closer to her and she vainly tried to moisten her throat. “You say you are not thrilled, yet you thrill easily and swiftly to me. Isn’t that true, Cailean?
“The past between Claren and MacKinnon blood has been brutal and ugly. It doesna have to be that way this time.”
His touch on her skin, the way the burr slipped in and out of his speech, his commanding presence … and the fact that she wanted more of all of it, combined to leave her trembling.
He stepped in closer, reaching over her head and shoving the torch he held into a stone sconce on the wall behind her. He leaned in to her, trapping her in the space between the cold stone and his very warm body. “Do ye tremble in fear, lass, or anticipation?”
“It won’t matter,” she managed.
He merely raised one brow.
“It will end badly,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Unions of any sort between a Claren and MacKinnon always have.”
“Ah yes, Lachlan and his legendary curse.” He lifted his head, but did not step away.
Cailean was torn between the need to move away from his overwhelming presence and the desire to step forward and curl into the warmth and protection he could certainly offer her.
Protection? She blinked at the idea. How insane was it to want protection from the only man she’d ever needed protection from?
“How can you question it after what you told me of Kaithren?” Her head began to throb now, and she looked down, away from the light as she pressed her eyelids shut. “The curse on you is real, as is the curse on our clans. It all began back then—with Kaithren, with Edwyna, we may never know. But it exists.”
He gently lifted her chin up to him. “All the more reason for us to find the answer, to end it once and for all. And I don’t speak only of the curse on our clans. Do you not wish to end your curse as well?”
As the Key, she was an integral part to it all. She reached up a shaky hand and covered his as he caressed her cheek. He would guide her to the end of the curse; his, the clans’, and hers. He would guide her to the solution.
“Maybe I will be the death of you after all, John Roderick MacKinnon.”
TWENTY-ONE
Because he did not want to, he pulled his hand from beneath hers.
“Then we have an agreement.” He wanted to know that he would be in control of everything that passed between them, and yet he could already feel her faery sorcery at work on him. Why else did his heart beat so strongly at the mere touch of her?
“Yer tired and hungry,” he said, more gruffly than he’d intended. She stiffened and pulled away from him. “Come,” he ordered, willing his body to cool, his pulse to slow.
“Yes, master.”
His lips quirked at the sarcasm. She had a a sharp wit. And an innocent heart.
His pulse thrummed hot and heavy at the mere thought of how she reacted to his touch. Her kiss had been one of inexperience, which made no sense for a woman who was surely past her first quarter century. Was that the secret of her power? Was it her naiveté in that realm that called to him? He wouldn’t have thought so. Innocence had never been attractive to him. He preferred to be partner, not teacher.
He grabbed a torch and headed across the hall, not looking to see if she followed. Another button pressed, another stone moved, and they were in another passageway. “Stay close, this area hasn’t fared as well as others.”
“It must have been hard to live like this.”
“Everyone who lived within the castle knew their way.” He turned sideways to shift around a pile of stone that had fallen in and caught himself just in time, reaching for her hand. She was in fine shape, fatigued though she might be. She had no need of his assistance, and still he felt the loss of the warmth he’d have gained from holding her hand in his. Conversation was a wise diversion and an easy one given her innate curiosity. “If you mean supplies, that wasn’t as hard as you’d think.”
“I figured that much. Those fireplaces in the main hall weren’t designed for roasting marshmallows. I was referring to being underground. It’s like living in a cave. A huge cave, but still. No sunlight, no way to mark the days from the nights.”
“There are places of sunlight and moonlight.” He turned another corner. “It is not entirely an underground fortress.” He turned again and the passage became narrow.
Cailean followed closely behind him, staring into the succession of door-size openings they passed, but unable to see anything inside them but inky blackness. She was so intent on her surroundings, she almost walked right into him when he stopped at a wooden door.
She ran her hand over the cut planks. It was obviously newly made, the planks measured and cut specifically to fit in the misshapen stone doorway. They had been sanded and stained to a beautiful finish, all fastened together with broad brass straps. “You made this?”
“It’s just a door.”
If she wasn’t so exhausted, she would have been amused by the nonplussed look on his face. “Does it work?”
“What? Of course it does.”
“Then, can we go in?”
His face actually colored. The door swung soundlessly open. “Your chambers, madam,” he said darkly, then swept an arm in front of him.
“I don’t need much,” she said as she quickly stepped inside the dark room. “A mat on the floor will do.”
“I think I can accommodate you.”
He swung the torch up and lit the sconces on either side of the door. “I’ll get the fire going.”
The sudden brightness made her blink, and once again, she was shocked into speechlessness.
She’d been expecting a medieval version of a bachelor’s pad. A stone bench or two, some hay on the floor maybe, a fire and a cot or something.
Instead she felt like she�
��d fallen into a sultan’s harem. There was a stone bench, which was actually a part of the opposite wall, and there was a rather large fireplace. Beyond that, nothing was as she’d expected.
Furs covered the area in front of the fireplace, but it was the amazing array of Persian, Oriental, and Turkish rugs, with their rich jewel tone colors and variety of sizes and plushness that caught her immediate attention. They were spread around the room, overlapping here and there, and simply rolled up in places where the stone walls weren’t squared off properly, the intent being insulation, not affected décor. But the result was that of opulent decadence, which was topped only by the bed.
It sat in the middle of the room and aside from an armoire shoved over in the far corner, and a heavy wooden chair near the fireplace, it was the only piece of furniture in the room.
It had four thick posts that rose toweringly overhead, draped with layers of sheer silks that hung to the floor on three of the four sides. Through the filmy layers, she could see a massive carved headboard filling the remaining side. Pillows of all shapes and sizes, fashioned in a variety of colors and fabrics, were heaped on the bed, spilling off to one side where several lay on the floor.
“How on earth did you get that thing in here?” she said, her gaze fixed on the monstrous bed.
“Scots ingenuity is legend,” he said, without looking up from the fire he was building. “I dismantled it, carted it in, and built the thing again. Not so tricky.”
“But those posts …” She thought of the lattice work of passages they’d been through and it seemed an impossibility. Yet here it stood. “It’s an awful lot of work for a place to sleep.”
She turned to face him. He’d taken his duster off and she found herself short of breath again as she looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time. It hadn’t been the coat making his shoulders seem broad, they were indeed wide enough all on their own. His chest was deep without being massive, made more so by his lean hips and long thighs. He wore a cream colored shirt tucked into dark pants, both of which looked impossibly modern on her centuries-old warrior.
The Legend Mackinnon Page 19