His mouth crooked. “Very notorious, was she?”
Each new thrust sent Maggie’s heart spinning. “Terribly. Left her husband and ran off to join a traveling circus in France when she was a spry seventy-two. My father said she had a string of men who would have given every franc for one night with her.”
“So Kincade women don’t like to be bored.” His eyes darkened. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Something tells me—” she gasped as his hands parted her “—that boredom won’t be a problem. If I were bored, it would be hard to miss.” She shuddered. “Under the circumstances.”
“Impossible to hide.” Jared’s body tightened. He poured out praise in rough words of Gaelic, moving deep, driving her into the heavy old tartan, so close that their very souls brushed. He wooed her, possessed her, until their skin was slick and their breathing labored.
He groaned when he felt her tighten sleekly around him.
Beautiful, he thought. Fearless and passionate in body, mind, and spirit. All those he had touched, and all had claimed him in equal measure.
He blinked when she twisted with sudden determination and was surprised to find himself turned, caught beneath her sleek thighs. “You’re hurt, Commander. I think you need some help,” she said in a silky whisper.
“Help with what?”
She moved. The other remaining part of Jared’s brain blew cleanly away.
“Oh, that,” he said hoarsely.
“You’re staring, MacNeill.”
“Most men would.” His voice was thick as he met her sweet heat with muscles pushed beyond every endurance.
Hold me here, she thought. Fill all of me.
Her unspoken words were the final goad.
Jared drove deep while pleasure coursed between them and joy bound them in blinding waves of color. He would give her diamonds, he swore. He would give her jade and pearls and laughter, along with his name.
But first this. First the pleasure beyond any she’d ever known.
The castle and its green hills could wait.
Nicholas Draycott’s grand exhibition would wait.
Now he meant to love her as no other man could. In the candlelight he gave his soul to hers, and there old curses fell to rest. Home was here, Jared realized, anywhere that he could see Maggie’s blinding smile. The years seemed to fall away at the realization.
The man in box 225 was finally free to walk out of years of shadows.
He shuddered as she kissed the silver scars along his shoulders with infinite tenderness. Her mouth was sweet, but her thoughts were even sweeter.
“Take me,” she whispered. “There’s nothing I want more.”
No words left.
No memories that mattered now.
Nothing to do but follow her, down into the rippling light, down toward paradise found. Her pleasure grew, wave by dark wave, and Jared speared home, hard and deep. She moaned his name and his hands dug into her hips as pleasure raced and snapped.
Maggie gave a broken gasp when he muttered a phrase of dark praise, then spilled his hot seed deep within her, joined now in ways neither yet imagined nor understood.
Downstairs sparks gleamed within the fireplace, spinning up in flecks of gold and rippling purple. Angels danced on the corner Christmas tree. Snow hissed against Glenbrae House’s tiny leaded windows, and the whole house took up the glow, filled with a joy that had waited too many cold centuries for this night of perfect completion.
And an ending became a beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Lochmohr House
Lochmohr, Scotland
One week later
The castle stood at the foot of stark woods, a twisting mass of pink sandstone towers with slate turrets and eighteenth-century battlements, the home of generations of MacNeill warriors. History lay heavy in every corner, from the clipped yew hedges to the narrow overhung tower windows.
Destroyed half a dozen times by fire, rival clans, and English attack, the house was an architectural hodgepodge with three different roofs and an imposing Victorian wing. Rugged and grand, it dominated a lane of beech trees that twisted down to the loch.
Jared stood, Maggie’s hand clasped in his as he stared at the home of his birth for the first time in almost two years. The huge oak door was well oiled and opened at a single touch. He peered into the gloom of the front hall, expecting the smell of must and mold.
But there was none. Even without direct light, he could see that the floors were well polished. As they climbed the great turnpike stairs up the tower into sunlight, he saw that there was no hint of neglect anywhere.
Though Jared had turned his back on his legacy, Lochmohr House had been well attended by the staff in his absence
At the top of the stairs sunlight spilled over parquet floors, pristine as the day Jared had left for Thailand. Beneath Jared’s arm, Max yipped sharply, pleading to be set free to explore the intriguing shadows of this new place. Jared set him carefully on his feet, smiling. “Mind you don’t go far, wretch. You might not care to meet one of my ill-tempered ancestors making his ghostly rounds.”
“Is the house truly haunted?” Maggie demanded.
Jared shrugged. As a boy he’d heard footsteps in empty rooms and doors close when no mortal hands were present. “I suppose that depends. My mother thought there were ghosts here. My father swore there weren’t. The jury is still out on the question.”
Intrigued, Maggie drew his hand through hers. “I wouldn’t mind a dashing Highlander seeking me out in some dark corridor with conquest on his mind.”
“Good,” Jared muttered. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Maggie’s eyes took on an answering gleam as he pulled her to him and cradled her face. “Bored yet?” he whispered.
“Nowhere close.”
“I’m vastly pleased to hear it, mo chridhe.” Sunlight spilled through the great tower, casting flecks of amber and gold through her tousled hair. She wore a simple sweater of heather gray and above it a single linked chain of beaten silver.
The necklace, Jared thought, was almost as exquisite as her smile.
“Are you certain you’d consider staying here?” he said uncertainly. “It’s an hour to the village and there will be no end of work to bring this place truly into the twentieth century.”
Decidedly ironic, he thought. The job would be done when the rest of the world was entering the twenty-first century.
“I couldn’t think of a better home.” Her voice filled with emotion. “It’s like walking back in time.” She ran a hand over the six-foot-thick stone windowsill and brushed the velvet curtains. Above her head Jared’s ancestors glared down in silent splendor from dimly lit canvases.
Atmospheric or not, living here would have its problems. It was only proper that Jared warn her of them. “There will be no running out for milk at midnight. Everything will have to be thought through and ordered in advance. The phone service is unreliable in stormy weather, and the chimneys are inclined to smoke.”
How bleak it sounded, enumerated that way. Perhaps it was wrong of him to even think about staying here.
Of course, they would soon be heading off for Draycott Abbey, and after that would come the weeks of preparation for Maggie’s exhibition.
But first they planned a wedding in full splendor at the abbey’s nearby church.
Maggie caught his face and drew it down to hers. “As a very wise man once said to me, I’ve never wanted anything else more.” With their bodies touching, she could not deceive him, and Jared read the full truth shimmering in her mind.
Her passion, as always, left him awed.
For an hour they rambled through the old house, beneath the Great Hall’s heavy beams, across an ocean of Oriental carpets to a drawing room that was vintage Victorian. In a different wing of the house, a weathered tower climbed up to overlook the wave-tossed gray loch. There Maggie stood in the sunlight, with Jared’s arms around her.
As she looked fa
r out to sea, the room seemed to blur.
Images spun through her head, and the silence suddenly took on sound.
~ ~ ~
From the cold north they came, ten men on fleet horses. Gwynna watched them atop the abbey’s granite parapets while her heart raced like thunder in her chest.
She told herself there was no need for fear.
The man she loved was safe at the coast by now, or even midway to France. Far too late for the Queen’s soldiers to catch him—or the jewels sewn in the lining of his rough cloak.
Jewels that would stir a kingdom and raise an army for the north.
But for armies and crowns, Gwynna of Draycotte cared little. ’Twas only the man she remembered as lightning clawed over the abbey. Only the warrior on his way to safety across the gray, churning sea.
Tears streaked down her face.
She shoved them away with shaking hands. No tears when he was safe, carried where his duty called. No tears when she felt his gift stir inside her, where his child grew even now.
“Someday,” she whispered to the stormy wind and felt the word snatched away in the same breath. In truth one day she would cross the water and bring him his child.
Her eyes closed. She was lost in the joy of imagining when hoof beats echoed. A single horse and rider pounded out of the night.
She knew that horse.
Equally well Gwynna of Draycotte knew that rider.
“No,” she cried. “Not here.” Her hands closed on the cold stone. Why did he return when they bayed like hunting dogs at his heels?
Down the abbey’s winding steps she raced, through the shadowed marble halls, so long devoid of joy or laughter, while the house lay silent around her. She cared not for what her father wished, or even for her country. Not when her heart strained to different loyalties.
His horse stood spent and sweating by the moat, and boots rang over the stone bridge. Then his arms, strong and warm. His kisses like spring rain on face and hair and neck.
“No more could I leave than breathe,” he whispered hoarsely. “Another ship will do fair for my passage.”
“No,” she said, desperate in her fear. “Even one more hour may be too late. They know your plan.”
The shot rang out before she’d finished, smoke pluming from the musket of a soldier atop the hill. She felt a burst of fire at her shoulder and a buzzing in her head.
“Too late,” she tried to say. “Be gone.” The pain clawed into her head and became a snarling darkness. “Now.”
Her hands reached out to broken dreams and empty air.
The man she loved caught her as she fell.
Fell.
Fell.
~ ~ ~
“Maggie? Can you hear me?”
Cursing, Jared pulled her to his chest. Her face was pale as death, her breathing nearly imperceptible. As before, she’d slipped away from him without any warning, whispering brokenly.
He was steeled to race for the hospital when she shuddered and blinked. She stared up at him, disoriented. “Jared?” she whispered.
“Right here. What is it, love?”
A breath hissed from her lungs. “A dream. Maybe something more. I’m not sure.” She gripped his broad shoulders, desperate to feel his heat instead of the clinging cold of the place where she had been lost. “Sorry,” she said raggedly. “Did I talk?” She sat up awkwardly.
Jared pulled her back against his chest. “You did. And you’ll stay right here until you catch your breath.”
As he spoke, images churned through Maggie’s head, dim and cold. Slowly, with Jared’s arms around her, they retreated.
Jared followed their flow back to a past that finally closed its doors forever.
As they touched, Jared felt the final ripple and sensed when her nightmare was truly gone. “So much sadness.”
His hands shook as he pulled a thick tartan around her shoulders. “You’ve done too much all this week. First the wedding plans and then that exhibition. I won’t have Nicholas run you ragged, friend or not.”
She put a gentle finger on his lips. “No one runs me ragged except myself,” she said firmly.
“You’re not sleeping half enough.”
“I want you to be proud of me.”
“Sweet heavens protect us, I couldn’t be prouder or I’d explode. Nor, I expect, could that impossible father of yours.” Jared glared down at her. “I don’t want you collapsing at our wedding.”
Maggie’s lips curved in a wicked smile that made his heart skip a beat. “That would give them something to talk about, wouldn’t it? ‘Criminal’s daughter overcome by honorable offer.’”
“He’s no criminal. Now he’s a hero.” Jared’s fingers slid into her hair. “You’re certain you’re feeling better?”
She nodded, her head slanted against his shoulder. “Have you noticed how beautifully everything has been kept? Someone has been taking very good care of Lochmohr House for you, my love.”
He’d noticed, of course. He should have realized that the fact wouldn’t escape her keen eye either:
“I think they knew you’d change your mind and return. I think they want to show you how much they need you here.”
By the time they made their way down the great turnpike stair, her color had returned. As Jared pushed open the front door he caught the scent of pipe smoke.
A dozen hampers lined the stone steps.
A folded pile of tartans, fresh from the process of waulking.
A jar of preserves wrapped in red ribbons.
A carved walking stick of preserved bog wood.
A crate of home-smoked salmon from the loch.
Welcome back, it all meant.
Jared touched one of the plaids and nearly stumbled beneath a wave of strong, warming emotions.
An old man sat on the stone bench near the drive, puffing at a homemade pipe. His craggy features curved in a smile as he stared at Jared and Maggie. He came slowly to his feet and said a phrase of soft Gaelic.
“Welcome home, MacNeill of Lochmohr.”
Gravely Jared thanked him for the wish.
“She is the one you will marry?”
“As God will have it.”
“A fine choice. She will bring the light to this grand house again and the sound of laughter.” William Campbell’s keen eyes narrowed. “I think she will bring the necklace home too, even after all these long years.”
Jared went very still. The memory of the tarnished stones hidden in the abbey’s wine cellar teased his mind.
“You mind well that long ago another MacNeill rode from this loch.” He used the soft tones of a man recounting a beloved tale passed down from mouth to mouth. “He’d gathered the riches of a county, hoping to raise French aid for troops against a coming English attack.”
The sense of history weighed on Jared’s shoulders.
The pain of an old betrayal.
The old man puffed slowly on his pipe. “But it might have been just a story. Every generation makes its own legends. Clear it is that you two will make your share.” His aged body stood strong and tall in the wind. “I’ll be off to the village now. A thousand questions they’ll have about the laird and his fine wife to be.” Then Campbell frowned and slowly held out his hand to Jared.
Both men knew the significance of the gesture.
Both men remembered their meeting months before in the village.
Jared had been gaunt and mute, newly returned from the hells of his jungle captivity. He had been unable to bear any touch when the MacNeill gift lay new upon him. He had rejected the handshake then.
He would not do so now.
Without a word he reached out and gripped the old fingers tightly. A granite wave of affection surged through him in response.
Welcome home, MacNeill of Lochmohr. These old stones have waited for you.
Snow danced through the air, dotting Maggie’s hair and cheeks. As the old man wound his way back down the hill, Jared caught her tight, filled with immeasurable peac
e. It was only then that he sensed a difference. A new, shimmering light played through her.
The glow of a different consciousness wrapped around her.
Gently his hand fell, opening over her waist.
Again it came, subtle and elusive. Something burned at Jared’s eyes as he realized what he was touching.
The miracle of a new life.
The next MacNeill, fragile cells already stirring beneath his hand. Still too soon for any medical tests, but not too soon for the gentle probe of Jared’s gift. He would tell her soon, but not yet.
Not until they were in a private spot, where he could show her all the joy her gift had brought him.
He took her hand. Together they walked beneath the towering beeches down toward the sea. Happiness left no room for words as the snow fell, soft and silent and very beautiful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“She’s beautiful. I told you she would be beautiful.” Faith Kincade blinked back tears as she watched Maggie enter the church, clad in a dress of antique Battenburg lace and a veil of seed pearls.
“Of course she’s beautiful. She’s madly in love,” Chessa Kincade whispered, her own voice suspiciously watery. “With a man like that, who could blame her?”
Organ music swelled, and Faith made a muffled sound, caught between laughter and tears. “I absolutely swore I wouldn’t cry.”
Chessa linked their arms, “It’s a wedding. You’re entitled to a few tears.”
Neither spoke as Maggie moved past, pale but radiant on the arm of her beaming father, who looked surprisingly hale for a man who had come back from death.
Only the family and the authorities knew the real story. Everyone else had been told the carefully prepared tale of how Daniel Kincade had plunged from the sky and lain unconscious for months in a remote jungle village until a search team stumbled on him only weeks before.
The theft charges had been dropped. Government sources explained the whole business was a grave mistake. He had protected the jewels and brought them back safely. Now they were calling Daniel Kincade a hero instead.
As the music swelled, Faith watched the man in black velvet and splendid MacNeill plaid who waited for Maggie at the altar. His joy shimmered, nearly tangible. No one could have smiled harder than Ishmael Harris Teague, his best man.
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