The Legend of Lady MacLaoch

by Becky Banks

  We were quiet for some time. I warmed up to just plain cold.

  Rowan was actively quiet behind me. I had many things to review before I could speak, though it seemed that my mind wouldn’t let me in just yet. I stared blankly ahead at the opposite stone bench.

  “Are ye feeling better?” he asked tentatively.

  “Warmer or less likely to fight?”

  “Less likely to fight.”

  “Yes,” I answered, and then cut to the chase: “You’re probably wondering why in the world Eryka was on the ground defending herself.”

  “Actually, no.” I heard him sigh and lean against the wall behind us. “I’m wondering how it felt to punch that bloody woman.”

  I smiled to myself. “Been wanting to do that for a while, huh?” Thinking of my fight with Eryka reminded me of how I’d come to be alone on the terrace. “Gregoire,” I said. “I’ll tell you what, how about you tell me in detail everything that drunken ass said to you tonight, and we can blame him for putting me in Eryka’s sights.”

  Rowan shifted uncomfortably behind me and settled once again against the wall. “Well, there’s nothing to tell. He was drunk.”

  I scoffed. “How is that a detailed description? You’re dodging.” I added, for encouragement, “He was no doubt talking about power and gold, from what you said in English to him, but why did he keep rolling his eyes at me?”

  MacLaoch was silent for a while. “Ye don’t speak Gaelic, aye?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because ye shouldnae know what he said.”

  “Is Gregoire Kelly’s father?”

  “Aye, he is,” MacLaoch said, offering nothing more.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling suddenly queasy. I sat forward with my elbows on my knees. “I hope, somewhere in your conversation, you told him to stay away from me.”

  “I told him as such but, Cole, he’s an old man and a permanent drunk. It’s hard to say what he thinks is serious, since much of the time he does not know it himself. I wouldn’t worry yerself about it. He’s harmless.”

  We were silent again as I chewed on that bit of information and then remembered, “But if that’s the case, why’d you send me out to the balcony? And,” I exclaimed, remembering more, “told me not to leave with anyone but yourself?” I felt like I needed to stand up and face him, but I didn’t trust my cold legs to keep me upright.

  Rowan sighed. “When a drunken man is discussing absconding with your date while she’s standing right next to ye, a smart man will send her to a safe place to wait while he disposes of the drunken man.”

  A little chill ran up my body. “And I suppose Gregoire has a black eye, too?”

  “Had I been given a moment alone with him on the balcony, he’d have more than a blackened eye.” Rowan was quiet for a few moments, no doubt fantasizing a world where he did have Gregoire alone on a balcony.

  “Aye, now I want to hear about Peabody,” he said. “Tell me what ye two discussed.”

  I thought about all that Peabody had told me and retold it to the best of my ability. I left out the part about Peabody taking Rowan’s energy reading and the horrific thing he must have seen to have a reading so high.

  “Then, I assume, to prove his point, he pinched the back of my arm. A few moments later you show up, and he thinks his theory is true, but no doubt you either heard me yelp or saw him pinch me.”

  “He’s a very smart man, Dr. Peabody,” Rowan said. “Do ye believe his theory?”

  “I don’t know, Rowan, you tell me.” I turned to look him in the eye.

  The distance was small between the chieftain and me, though at any distance, it would have been easy to tell that the invisible wall that he held up in defense against the world was gone. He was just Rowan. And I was just me, sitting between his muscular thighs. He reclined, arms relaxed. His fingers ever so slightly pulled at the wool wrapped around me as if gathering me in bit by bit.

  I felt my heart squeeze and my stomach flip-flop at this recognition.

  Rowan was looking me straight in the eye, closing the distance between us further as he spoke. “I did not feel a pinch to my arm as he had done to ye, so nae, it was no’ that which pulled me tae ye. It was your reaction to it tha’ I felt like an ocean wave, Cole. Low and powerful, plowed right through me.” He paused, then continued, “The part tha’ was unbelievable was tha’ I knew it was ye. Clear as a bell calling my name—as if ye’d been standing right next to me and whispered it in my ear.”

  Rowan’s hands made their way slowly up my arms, leaving the hair standing on end under my wool blanket.

  “But what I cannae figure out is why when I wake in the morn, to when I lay down at night I can’t stop thinking of ye. And even then,” he said softly, “I think of ye when I’m asleep.”

  Rowan’s fingers moved to my chin where they had been earlier in the night in the back of the darkened car. “We have unfinished business to settle,” he said softly before brushing his lips against mine.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the soft tingle in my lips pour down into my belly and light my very soul on fire.

  CHAPTER 27

  Rowan had me on my back on the wide stone bench, the wool blanket under me, in a single move. I made swift work of his clothing, sliding his evening jacket off, pushing in blind lust at his tartan, buttons, and tartan pins—all gave way to my demands.

  Rowan looked as if he’d strode out of the pages of a historical novel, an ancient Scottish warrior who’d thrown down his sword and was having his way with me. His physique told me much of him. His musculature, lean and lithe, moving under his skin, spoke volumes about the vigorousness with which he exercised against his demons. Power and need poured into me as our skin connected. His breathing quickened and mingled with soft Gaelic oaths.

  His mouth against mine once more, he slipped his tongue in, tasting, sampling, and moaning with the tightening pressure that held only one release. It was in that moment, when the mind takes a backseat to the body, that I felt that Minory legend. I felt it like a heat wave move through him and into me, reverberating to my very core. The one-letter difference I’d so doggedly stood by became a moot point in an instant. There was no Iain Eliphlet Minary—it was Iain Eliphlet Minory, and I was his great-great-great granddaughter. The final recognition of this let loose a floodgate of emotion, so overwhelming and electrifying that I groaned, knowing that I never wanted this feeling between us to end.

  Rowan’s hand slid down to my toes, taking in the feel of all of me, then moved up under my dress, pushing it up my thighs. The wide palm of his hand caressed my hip and then gripped it, and he groaned.

  “Aye, god. Ye aren’t wearing anything under this . . . ” he said, breath catching in his throat.

  Wrapping my legs around his waist, I arched, discovering I wasn’t the only one without undergarments. As my fingers dragged along his skin, they bumped over something the size of a dime, uneven on his skin.

  As quickly as I felt it, I didn’t.

  Rowan broke away from me. In the same instant, I realized that my hand stung. I looked to find it pinned against the wall, crushed under Rowan’s.

  He laid his forehead against mine and breathed in deep. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  I licked my lips and let myself fall back down to earth, fast. Like lights flicking on in a darkened room, my mind began to piece together what had happened. I had physically touched something that had made Rowan shut down. My mind recalled the feeling under my fingers, and I suddenly knew what I had felt but not immediately recognized: a scar.

  My brother had been in the National Guard and spent time abroad; he had friends who had come back from war with stories in the scars on their bodies. The scars that bullets left were distinct, especially the clean-hit ones.

  “Rowan,” I breathed, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Fuck,” was all he said as he pulled himself up off of me. I watched as his internal wall shuddered back down and slammed firmly in place.

  “What h
appened?” I whispered.

  Rowan couldn’t even speak; he just shook his head.

  My head swam with emotion, feeling sorrow for the brutality he’d seen and experienced. Peabody was right. Rowan had seen violence and, from the shape of the scar, had met it full on. My mind supplied the rest. The other bullets had hit and killed the man Rowan had served with, the man he considered a brother. I burned with curiosity to know those dark details, to pull him back to me and soften those memories.

  Rowan raked his hand through his hair in frustration, went over to a cabinet, pulled out a dry fleece and jeans, and dressed. I sat up and wrapped myself in the blanket. He sat back down opposite me. He looked like he was struggling with his words, but he did speak. “I should not have let it get this far.”

  The anguish in his words made me stumble for some of my own. No words could erase the pain he felt or what had been done to him, and yet I needed to say something. I had no real experience to draw on to soothe him. Even though I simply wanted to go to him, sit beside him and wrap him in my arms, I had not known him long enough to even dream of attempting it. For all I knew, he would toss me to the floor and stalk from the room—it was cowardly, but that image kept me from going to him.

  The silence became too long.

  “The scar on your side . . . ” I started hesitantly. “Did that hap—”

  “Rowan! Ye down ’ere, ye prick!?”

  Rowan stood, looking almost relieved for the diversion of his ill-mannered cousin, and stalked out the lower door. I cursed Kelly liberally as the door swung shut.

  CHAPTER 28

  I found a small Castle Laoch–logoed, fleece-lined windbreaker, and someone’s forgotten yoga pants in the cabinets. With an absent-minded touch to the diamonds I was somehow still wearing and without shoes, I walked out to find Rowan.

  A fog had rolled in off the ocean, moving quietly, as I had learned it does, in tall, softly materializing fingers up the rocky shore to the cliff.

  Kelly’s snarl hit me just a few paces from the cliff face. “Eryka is in bad shape, black eye and all, and we called the emergency services. They’ve taken her to hospital to be looked at—ye need to warn that woman she needs to be careful, no’ the other way around, Rowan. Eryka will want punishment.” Kelly turned at the sound of my approach.

  “What’s that around her neck?” he yelled at Rowan. “Oh! And at her ears? Bloody fucking diamonds!”

  “Ms. Baker,” Rowan said, detached. “Head back to the castle—I’ll meet ye on the back balcony and take ye home. I need to speak to Kelly alone.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Kelly beat me to it.

  “Aye, ye bet we do! Ye have some explaining tae do.” He pointed dangerously at Rowan. “Ye think that ordering me awa’ to some training is going to teach me respect, aye? Well, I’ll teach ye some respect—”

  “Kelly!” I yelled in surprise at Kelly’s foolishness as he took a swipe at Rowan.

  Rowan grabbed the offending fist, yanked his cousin forward, and took Kelly down. Rowan held him on his knees on the rocks, his palm shoved in his shoulder and Kelly’s arm pulled backward awkwardly.

  “Ow!” Kelly yelled.

  “Ye done?”

  “Fu—” Kelly choked as Rowan tightened up.

  “I asked if ye were done,” Rowan said again.

  Kelly seethed; the tint of his skin had gone beet red.

  “Good,” Rowan said. “We are done ’ere.” Rowan released him.

  Kelly stood and rotated his shoulder, making a face, then turned and walked back up the cove. Rowan simply watched him, waiting. It felt like they’d done this before and, in those instances, Kelly had come back for more.

  Kelly had gotten a few paces away when he indeed pivoted and walked back, shouting to Rowan, “Maybe in officer training school, cousin, I can become just like you! Yeah, that would be great—then I can have my war stories, too, and go crazy with my nightmares, just like ye.”

  I must have had a confused look on my face because Kelly threw his arms in the air and continued, “Oh! I see, ye haven’t told her everything, aye? Maybe not anything? Were ye hoping that she’d never ask and ye would never have to tell? Or were ye waiting till ye woke up one morn to find that ye had strangled her in your sleep?”

  Rowan took one step forward, and Kelly turned, running away for all he was worth.

  After Kelly disappeared, Rowan, smoldering, turned on his heel away from both the direction his cousin had gone and the place where I stood. Hands in fists, he walked toward the far hillside—but I felt that he needed to hear from me before he sank deeper into his personal darkness.

  I jogged behind him, feeling the rocks dig at my bare feet. “Rowan, stop,” I said. “Please.”

  He stopped walking but didn’t turn around to face me. The white tendrils of fog eddied and swirled around him.

  “I just need space, aye?” Before I could respond he continued walking.

  “Rowan,” I said, catching up to him once more. “Is that what gave you that scar? The war, the same battle when your friend was killed?”

  Rowan stopped again and looked up into the night sky as if praying for mercy. “What is it tha’ ye want from me, Ms. Baker?” I felt the impersonal blow of him using my formal name. “Haven’t I told ye enough for ye to understand tha’ the bed I lay in is one of thorns?” Looking back at me, the demon knife twisting in his gut, he asked, “What will it do for ye, knowing my darkest moments?”

  Reeling from his aggressiveness, I remembered back to when he had met me—his tone and countenance were just the same. The same way that blackberry thorns worked to keep the soft fruit protected behind the spines. Steeling myself against his rebuke, I responded quietly, “It will do nothing for me, Rowan, but don’t you think it will help you? That’s what I want. I want to help you.”

  The fog, it seemed, grew thicker, like a cocoon, a gentle protection from everything around us, allowing us to focus on just here, and now. Rowan simply lifted a finger to my hair, gently brushed a curl off my shoulder. He looked me in the eye. “No one can help me,” he said, and simply walked away into the mist.

  That time, I let him.

  CHAPTER 29

  Exhaustion came quickly for me that night, and just as quickly came the dream. As if it had been hovering all along, waiting for the shutdown of my conscious mind.

  The Isle of Lady MacLaoch was once again beneath my feet—cool waters lapped at the cove rocks, and the dusky evening breeze played with my hair. I was just as I was in the last dream, only this time I recognized the ring upon my finger immediately, and knew that it was mine. Closing my eyes, I described the ring to myself as if it were a game, the simple act of concentration pulling me deeper into the dream.

  I remembered what came next—the man in my dream, the one I could not recognize but loved with an aching heart. I looked back down at my ring and then up to the shoreline where he had been before. He wasn’t that far away this time. He was standing next to me, wearing what he had the day I met him in real life.

  Rowan turned as if he was just discovering that I was standing next to him as well. A slow smile spread over his lips—it was one of relief. In that very moment, the cove dissolved into a hot desert, sandstone mountains jutting up in the distance surrounding us. Rowan was dressed in a drab olive flight suit and suddenly, he hunched over in pain, grasping his side.

  In the distance, there was a skirmish—to my untrained eye, I could only make out parachutes fluttering. Then gunfire riddled the air, and fear tore through me. I was in Rowan’s nightmare.

  I looked back at Rowan. “Cole,” he whispered. “Help me.” Behind him the firefight raged on.

  “Rowan, what’s happening? What happened?” I said, reaching for him.

  Rowan pulled his hand away from his side. Blood had saturated his flight suit and still oozed from the small tear under his hand. His hand, too, dripped blood. “Help,” he said again.

  I thought of Dr. Peabody and what he had said about
the two descendants of the curse, and about reciprocity. If Rowan could pull me into his nightmare, I could pull him into my dreams. Hugging Rowan to me, I thought of home. I thought of my family and our orchards in South Carolina, the pecan and peach fields I’d run through in late summer, filling my shirt with the last of the season’s dropped fruit, and the sweet smell of ripe peach juice as it clung to my arms and dripped off my elbows. I opened my eyes within the dream—juice was indeed streaming down my arms, and the heavy, warm air was South Carolina, not the Middle East. I looked over—Rowan was with me. He held a large peach in his hand and stroked the fuzzy surface with his thumb. “Peaches?” he asked simply.

  I could feel myself smile. “Yes, why do you sound surprised?”

  He gave me a wicked smile. “Aye, I was thinking tha’ it would be your breast. Seeing tha’ ye have come to me in a dream.”

  In the next moment, Rowan and I were on the ground, both of us naked, and he was indeed gently cupping my breast. Then he lowered his mouth to it.

  “Holy shit!” I gasped and sat straight up in bed.

  I sat there in the dark, breathing deeply, looking around my chilly room at the bed-and-breakfast. “That wasn’t real. It was just a dream,” I said out loud to myself, and repeated it once for good measure. Then once more.

  But it wasn’t the last portion that had me doubting—rather, it was the vividness with which the desert battle had replayed itself for me.

  CHAPTER 30

  The next morning Carol hovered while I picked at my breakfast. Finally she pulled out a chair and sat across the table from me.

  “Och, now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Tell me all the details! Who was there last night, and what is all this commotion about someone getting struck, and the MacLaoch chieftain himself saved the day??”

  Oh god.

  I did my best to reenact the entire night for Carol over my porridge. Omitting the pinching, the punching, the sexual lusting, and the emotional trauma. I was sure Rowan would thank me.