Cursing his unawareness, or rather his irrational absorption with Marsali, Duncan dragged the sputtering girl into his arms and ran, carrying her outside in a wild race against the next wave. With an agility that he had sharpened on foreign battlefields, he splashed around a bank of submerged rocks and tumbled her down to a secluded inlet overshadowed by a cliff. To his amazement, she was grinning impishly at his efforts to save her, amused by a misadventure that could have swept them both out to sea.
He grunted and stretched out flat on his stomach, grateful at least that the cold sea water had dampened his absurd desire for the brat.
“It’s very nice to be appreciated,” he said wryly.
She burrowed up next to him; he tried to elbow her away and rolled onto his back. “Stop doing that. It’s annoying.”
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m wet and cold.”
“Do you often ride alone at night?” he asked, scowling up at the sky.
“I do in summer.” She sat bolt upright, flinging sand in his chest. “The horses—”
“—had the sense to seek higher ground.” Damn if she didn’t roll against him again, the position all the more arousing because she’d initiated it. “You’re going to have to obey a curfew like everyone else,” he said, wiping off his shirt. “No more riding alone.”
“Hmmm.”
Duncan cursed softly as he felt her wet little body relaxing against his, soft curves seeking a haven in the hard contours of his flank, tempting him all over again to take advantage of her drowsy vulnerability. “Look, I’m sorry you lost the man you loved,” he said in a desperate bid to break the dangerous intimacy between them. “When Abercrombie finishes the accounts, I’ll see if I can manage to dower you. God knows I’ll probably only be able to scrape up a chicken or two.”
She twisted around slowly, her dark tangled hair falling against Duncan’s arm. “But I don’t need you to dower me,” she said in confusion. “I just need you to stay here and make sure there’s no more killing. As soon as my brother’s back is a little better, we’re all going to Virginia to raise tobacco. I expect I’ll find a husband there.”
“You’re what?” Duncan stared at her, the statement so patently absurd and yet sincere he couldn’t help bursting into loud insulting laughter. “Virginia, Marsali. You’ve heard too many fairy tales, the romance of the red Indian, the wealthy planter’s wife. Didn’t anyone ever warn you of the dangers you’ll face?”
She dribbled a handful of sand through her fingers, pursing her lips in annoyance that she’d revealed her private hopes, only to have him laugh in her face.
“There are dangers enough here,” she said steadily.
He raised up on his elbows to look at her, his face sardonic. “You didn’t exactly strike me as a woman who avoided danger this morning on the moor. You’re courting it, Marsali. Someone is going to get killed.”
Marsali’s delicate features tightened in resentment. “The idea is to humiliate and discourage the English, not to kill them. You know there will be bloodshed enough once they finish that road on the coast and install their troops in the old fort.”
“You ought to be at home raising babies, not chasing soldiers around the moor.”
“Perhaps I could raise babies if there were any decent men left to have them with,” she said heatedly, the subject a sore spot. “But I won’t have to run around the moor now that you’re here to keep the English under control, will I?”
Duncan lapsed into noncommittal silence, studying the sea to avoid her hopeful gaze, which pricked his conscience. He ought to tell her he’d been sent to do exactly the opposite, but he wasn’t in the mood to shatter her naive faith. Let her believe in her silly dreams. He’d be gone before disillusionment dimmed the stars in her eyes.
“Talk to me,” he said restlessly, aware that those eyes were riveted to his face. “Silence can be a dangerous thing.”
Talk? Marsali flexed her fingers, suddenly wide awake. What a strange man he was. “What shall we talk about, my lord?”
“I don’t care. Anything.” Anything to distract him from the raw ache she had raked alive in him, a craving that had nothing to do with seduction, but a need to let the brightness of her unblemished spirit into the dark, cobwebbed corners of his own. Anything to delay returning to that castle where memories of grief and rejection mocked every success he had struggled to achieve since his banishment.
“Will you make the English go away?” Marsali asked, her voice so earnest that he could not bear to look at her.
“I don’t want to talk about politics, lass,” he murmured, flicking a bit of sand onto her knuckles with a self-mocking smile.
Marsali stared down in perplexity at his compelling profile. “Your clansmen won’t respect you if you don’t take a strong stand against the Sassenachs. You should know that.”
Duncan lifted his broad shoulders in a nonchalant shrug, pretending indifference. “They only have to respect me the length of the summer. After that, the chieftain who replaces me can worry about how to handle them. Johnnie shows possibilities, don’t you think?”
An unpleasant chill of apprehension darted up from the base of Marsali’s spine. For a moment she’d tricked herself into believing in him again. Now she couldn’t believe how cold, how uncaring he’d become. “Johnnie? Standing an oath on the white stone? He’d be laughed right into the sea. Johnnie would never make a chieftain. He doesn’t own a single sheep.”
“Hell, that doesn’t matter,” Duncan said, warming to the idea. “I’ll deed him the castle. It’s not as if it holds fond memories for me.” He eased up higher on his elbow, lifting his free hand to tug at the black silken cord that disappeared into the cleft of her breasts. Yes. Anything to divert the conversation from the painful topic of his past.
“What’s at the end of this thing then?” he asked in amusement, oblivious to the confusion that gripped her. “No, let me guess. It’s a peat-bag crystal you wear for luck. Or a chicken bone blessed by your mystical uncle.”
Marsali held her breath, her emotions churning, as he slowly drew the cord from between her breasts. The nerve of him. The slow glide of silk began to tickle her skin. The length of the summer. The words surfaced through the fog that had invaded her mind, cold spears prodding her into tense expectancy. That was what he had said. He had no intention of staying at all. His beauty had betrayed her. The corrosion that had eaten away at his soul years ago had destroyed every last bit of decency in him. Clearly she could not count on him to save the clan.
He sat up, unaware of the emotional battle she had fought in the space of a few seconds, his face intent on the silver object that hung on the end of the cord.
“Ah, it’s a Celtic cross. My God, these are real rubies.” Incredulous, he practically yanked her neck off trying to get a closer look. “I’ve seen this before, haven’t I?” he said slowly, sounding puzzled.
“How should I know?” she said through her teeth, annoyed at his stupid preoccupation with a piece of jewelry.
He raised his head, suspicion burning in his eyes. “Where did you get it?” he said coldly.
Marsali refused to answer him, too enmeshed in her own misery to bother. She couldn’t understand the fuss he was making over a family heirloom, and at the moment, her personal disappointment in him overrode the urge to care. Let him think she had stolen it during a raid. He didn’t give a damn about the castle or his clansmen, which he treated as unwanted possessions. The years had only hardened him. She did hate him, after all. She hated everything he represented.
“This necklace belonged to very dear friend of mine, Marsali.” His eyes bored into her like strands of blue ice. “In fact, he was the only man I left behind whom I could call friend. He carried this cross with him everywhere because it had belonged to his young wife.”
Marsali looked up slowly, his words penetrating her anger. “The wife he mourned,” she said, intrigued by the depth of emotion in Duncan’s voice when only a moment earlier he had been
so detached she could scream. Aye, there were feelings in him, all right, but he guarded them behind a thorny wall of indifference, which a person might never pierce. She could not understand why he had spoken of her father with an astonishing affection, even reverence.
“How do you know about his wife?” He nudged her face into the moonlight with his knuckles, the cross pressing into her chin. “How did you come to be wearing this?” he asked gruffly.
Again she was tempted to let him believe her a common thief, but the bruised anguish in his gaze stopped the impulse. “It… it was my mother’s.”
“It wasn’t.” He swallowed, his eyes searching her face in stark denial, almost a plea. “Tell me you’re lying. You are lying.”
“Papa asked me to wear it always when he went off that last time with your father,” she whispered dryly.
Duncan slowly drew his hand away from her face, stricken by the truth he saw in her defiant loveliness, unprepared for the joke that Fate had executed at his expense again. To seduce the orphaned daughter of the one person who had helped him salvage what scrap of human dignity his stepfather had not thrashed out of him. He took a breath, the self-contempt that rose in his throat thick enough to suffocate him. Why had he come back? Even a damned dukedom wasn’t worth the price of this emotional torture.
His embittered laughter broke the silence that had fallen. “Now I know why you seemed so familiar, Marsali. Now I know who I saw every time I looked in your face. Sweet wee Marsali. Dear Jesus, Andrew Hay would be rolling over in his grave if he could see what you’d become.”
“What have I become?” Marsali asked in guarded fascination, realizing that by an accident of birth she had suddenly been elevated to a position of mysterious importance in Duncan’s eyes, wondering what it would mean to her, her cunning mind plotting how to make the most of it.
“A criminal. An outlaw. A…” He frowned down into her enrapt face, alarmed to discover he had slipped his other arm around her waist while they were talking. “Respect for your father prevents me from saying the word aloud,” he finished grimly.
“What word?” Marsali asked, curiosity more compelling than propriety.
He wrenched his hand away, afraid to imagine what might have happened in another moment. “Never mind. It doesn’t bear saying.”
“How dare you,” Marsali said, her back stiffening at the insult, which had taken on graver proportions for being unspoken.
“How dare you, Marsali Hay.” His heavy black eyebrows drew together into a reproachful scowl. “How dare you ambush and undress men on the moor, only to let them take advantage of you on the beach like a—Well, it’s that word again. God, when I think about what we almost did.”
“What you almost did,” she said indignantly. “I didn’t do a damn thing. I was only trying to get warm.”
His smile was merciless. “In another minute I would have had you lying beneath me with your skirts pulled up, and you would have liked it too.”
“You hypocrite,” Marsali exclaimed, her temper flaring. She sprang to her feet, wanting only to escape him before she could give him the pleasure of watching her break down like a bairn, accusing her of something she barely understood. He gripped her wrist and drew her back down onto the sand. But this time stark distrust replaced the mood of playful seduction that had built between them.
“I gave you a chance, my lord,” she said, breathless with anger. “But you are a black demon.”
“Yes.” He stuck his forefinger under her nose, his face unrepentant. “Hypocrite, bastard, demon, murderer, I’ve been called every dirty name under the sun, but let me tell you one thing, Marsali: You were the apple of your papa’s eye. Yes, I remember the day you were born. Andrew was already planning to marry you off to a Danish prince. ‘My daughter is descended from Olaf the Black,’ he told any poor idiot who would stop to listen after your birth.”
An unwilling smile eased the taut line of her mouth; she missed her father so much. “Really?” she whispered distrustfully.
“Yes, really. And no one was allowed to so much as breathe on his precious little princess. That old wizard uncle of yours drew a charmed circle around your cradle and stood vigil until your christening to prevent an evil fairy from claiming your soul. I should have made the connection. Damn it.”
Moisture glistened in Marsali’s eyes. “Papa always protected me,” she said, her heart aching with a pain she rarely allowed herself to acknowledge, a pain she avoided by filling her life with dangerous distractions.
“He protected me too.” Duncan ran his hand through his long disheveled hair, his mind still reeling from the shock. “Of course I never appreciated him at the time, but you, well, it would break his heart to see you now.”
Guilt crept into the hurt and anger building inside her. “I wouldn’t be whatever it is you claim I’ve become if the heir to the chieftainship had not been off fighting wars for other countries.”
“Banished, lass,” Duncan said, his own voice rising in self-defense. “And don’t fault me for the life you’ve chosen. But all right, Marsali. All bloody right. I’ll accept some of the blame because your loved ones were blown up accompanying my father on his fool’s mission.” He gave her a chilling smile. “I’ll atone for my past sins and repay my debt to Andrew by assuming responsibility for you.”
Marsali subsided into a brief resentful silence, unconvinced she wanted this dark volatile warrior dictating her future, good motives notwithstanding. “I’m going to have to decline your kind offer,” she said, tossing back her mop of tangled hair to glare at him.
Duncan shook his head, his voice mocking. “But you weren’t given the choice, my dear. We’re going back to the castle together. I’ll have you installed in the turret bedchamber. From now on, I’m going to shadow your every move.”
“The turret is haunted, my lord,” she said in genuine alarm, “by the ghosts of your ancestors.”
“Well, then at least they’re family ghosts, aren’t they?” Duncan looked her over with a cold appraising criticism that made Marsali shiver. “My God, you’re a mess. Your father wouldn’t know you.” He paused, his face reflective. “My betrothed is due to arrive at the end of the month. I didn’t want her to come, but now I think I’m glad of it. She can decide how to manage you. I’m certainly not up to the chore.”
Marsali blinked, incredulous, her brain struggling to absorb the unexpected blow. “Your… betrothed?”
“Lady Sarah Grayson. Well, we’re not officially engaged yet, but we will be at the end of summer. The woman is a walking treasure trove of social trivia. If anyone can turn a sow’s ear into silk, it’s—”
Marsali slapped him then, not the light stinging palm across the cheek of a woman insulted, but a forceful crack against the jaw that jerked his head back several inches.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked in astonishment, his hand lifting to his face.
“Your betrothed, my lord,” she retorted self-righteously. “And for calling me a pig’s ear.”
He scowled. “My betrothed is perfectly capable of slapping me herself.”
“And you’ve given her plenty of reason to practice, I’m sure.”
He gripped her hands in his, dragging her toward him, but Marsali refused to budge, digging her heels into the sand and reasoning that Duncan as a friend might turn out worse for her than as an enemy. A merciless task maker who would shadow her every move. A man in love with another woman—a prissy English noblewoman at that. Marsali cringed in horror at the prospect of being bound up in a corset and shipped off to a boarding school, her speech mocked, her heritage sneered at. Wasn’t she gentry in her own right?
“Get up, Marsali.” He pulled her to her knees. “My patience is wearing out, and there’s a storm moving inland. I’ll be damned if I’m riding back in the rain because of you.”
She fought a sense of panic, a black terror that if she did not fight to retain her freedom she would never own herself again. She needed help. This man’s pow
er would imprison her. In the course of a day he had forced her through a dizzying gamut of feelings, leaving her wrung out and bewildered. The wild hope of wishing him a hero. Humiliation. The bittersweet stirrings of desire. And now the fear of losing her freedom, the nebulous future he had planned for herself. She needed Uncle Colum more than she’d ever needed him in her life.
“I can’t go back to the castle yet,” she said desperately. “I have something important to do first.”
“Not in the middle of the night.” His face unyielding, he knelt and tightened his hold on her wrists. “From now on you don’t ride anywhere without a bodyguard, and then only on my approval. Now get up. We—”
He heard the faint crunch of a footstep in sand a second before Marsali’s face whitened in startled recognition. He glanced around at the same moment she made a frantic effort to rise, wrenching her hands from his. And something inside Duncan, the same infallible sense of intuition that told him when to charge and when to retreat on a military campaign, told him that his fate had just been irrevocably sealed.
Chapter
8
The regally tall figure of a white-haired man in a blue robe stood behind them in the surf. The hawk Eun sat on the man’s shoulder, its hooded yellow eyes fixed keenly on Duncan.
“Oh, dear,” Marsali murmured, going very still. “Now there’s going to be trouble. I do hope you can swim, my lord.”
Duncan ignored her, jumping halfway to his feet, only to freeze with an involuntary yelp of pain. “Damn it,” he said under his breath, sinking back down beside her, “let go of my hair, Marsali.”
“I haven’t touched your blessed hair,” she retorted in an indignant voice, giving it another hurtful yank.
Duncan spared her a glance, aware that the peculiar robed man was rapidly striding through the surf toward them. He got to his knees. “Stop pulling my—”
He saw the problem in an instant; Marsali was trying desperately to stand, unaware that several strands of Duncan’s hair had become entangled in the silver claws of her cross.
Fairy Tale Page 8