Kiss of the Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  If he saved Dageus and became a dark Druid, what then would he do when Silvan grew ever older? Cheat fate again? A man could go crazy with so much power and no limits. Once he crossed such a line, there would be no turning back; he would indeed become a master of the black arts.

  And so he’d bid farewell to Dageus and resworn his oath to his father. I will never use the stones for personal reasons. Only to serve and protect, and to preserve our line, should it be threatened with extinction.

  As it was now.

  Drustan ran a hand through his hair, exhaling. Dageus was dead. Silvan was dead. He was the only remaining Keltar, and his duty was clear. For five hundred years the world had been unprotected by a Keltar–Druid. He had to return and do whatever was necessary to restore a concurrent succession of the Keltar. At any cost.

  And what about the price the woman will pay? his conscience chided.

  “I have no choice,” he muttered darkly. He plunged his hands into his hair and massaged his temples with the heels of his palms.

  He knew by rote the formulas for the thirteen stones, but he did not know the critical three, the ones that would specify the year, the month, the day. It was imperative that he return to the sixteenth century shortly after his abduction. Whoever had lured him beyond the castle walls would not be able to penetrate the fortress of Castle Keltar—even with a full army—for at least several days. The castle was too well-fortified to be taken easily. So long as he returned a day, or even two, after his abduction, he should still have time to save his clan, castle, and all the information within its walls. He would defeat his enemy, marry, and have a dozen children. With Dageus dead, he finally understood the urgency Silvan had tried to impart to his sons to rebuild the Keltar line.

  Drustan, you must learn to conceal your arts from women and take a wife—any wife. I was blessed with your mother; ’twas a miraculous and uncommon thing. Though I wish the same for you, ’tis too dangerous to have so few Keltar.

  Aye, he’d learned that the hard way. He rubbed his eyes and exhaled. He had a minuscule target at which to aim, and he’d never studied the symbols he now needed. He’d been forbidden to travel within his lifetime, so there had been no reason for him to commit to memory the symbols spanning his generation.

  Yet…in a dark moment of weakness and longing, he’d looked up the ones that would have taken him back to the morning of Dageus’s death—and from those forbidden symbols he could attempt to derive the shapes and lines of the three he needed now.

  Still, it would be a guess. An incredibly risky guess, with dire consequences if he didn’t get them right.

  Which brought him back to the tablets. If Silvan had been able to hide them somewhere on the grounds before he’d suffered whatever fate had befallen him, Drustan wouldn’t have to guess—he could calculate the symbols he needed from the information on the tablets, with no fear of error. He felt fairly certain that if he returned himself to the day after his abduction, the leagues between his future self and his enchanted body, coupled with the thick stone walls of the cave, would be enough distance between them.

  He had no choice but to believe that.

  Drustan glanced around the ruins. While he’d brooded, full night had fallen and it was too dark to conduct a thorough search, which left him tomorrow to hunt for the tablets and try to recall the symbols.

  And if the tablets weren’t there?

  Well, then, that was why there was wee, sweet, unsuspecting Gwen.

  Wee, sweet, unsuspecting Gwen perched on the hood of the car, munching celery sticks and salmon patties and absorbing the remaining warmth of the engine. She glanced at her watch. Nearly two hours had passed since she’d left Drustan at the ruin.

  She could leave now. Just hop in the car, slam it into reverse, and squeal off to the village below. Leave the madman alone to sort out his own problems.

  Then why didn’t she?

  Pondering Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, she considered the possibility that since Drustan’s mass was so much greater than hers, she was doomed to be attracted to him—so long as he was in her near vicinity—as much a victim of gravity as the earth orbiting the sun.

  Lost in thought, she hummed absently as she huddled on the hood, shivering as the indigo sky deepened to black cashmere, arguing with herself and reaching no firm conclusions.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was overlooking one or more critical facts that might help her figure out what had happened to him. She’d never given any credence to “gut instinct” she’d believed the gut controlled hunger and waste, nothing gnostic. But in the past thirty-six hours, something in her gut had found a voice, it was arguing with her mind, and she was baffled by the discord.

  She had remained in the stones and watched him for some time before she’d sought the warmth of the hood of the car. She’d studied him with the remote candor of a scientist observing a test subject in an experiment, but her study of him had only revealed more contradictions rather than resolving any.

  His body was powerfully developed, and a man didn’t get a body like that without extraordinary discipline, effort, and a mind capable of sustained focus. Wherever he had been before she’d found him in the cave, he’d lived an active, balanced life. He’d either worked hard or played hard, and she decided it was more work than play, because his hands were callused, and no stuffy, jock-type aristocrat had calluses on fingers and palms. His silky black hair was too long to be considered apropos on a twenty-first-century lord and gentleman, but it was glossy and well cut. His teeth were even and white, more evidence of care for his body. People who devoted attention to their physical health were usually healthy in mind as well.

  He walked with a gait that bespoke confidence, strength, and the ability to make hard decisions. He was reasonably intelligent and well-spoken—his strange inflection and vocabulary aside.

  He hadn’t known the way out of the cave, and when they had emerged, Gwen hadn’t missed the significance of the collapsed tunnel and the overgrowth of foliage.

  Och, Christ, they’re all dead, he’d whispered.

  She shivered. The engine had cooled, the remnants of heat gone.

  Occam’s Razor promulgated that the simplest explanation that fit the majority of the facts was most likely true. The simplest explanation here was…he was telling the truth. He’d somehow been put into a deep sleep five hundred years ago against his will, perhaps via some lost science, and she’d awakened him by falling on him.

  Impossible, her mind exclaimed.

  Tired of trying to coax the jury to deliver a consensus, she reluctantly accepted the hung verdict and admitted that she couldn’t leave him. What if the impossible was possible? What if tomorrow he offered her some concrete proof that he had been frozen in time for nearly five hundred years? Perhaps he planned to show her how it had been done, some advanced cryogenics that had been lost over time. She wasn’t vacating the premises if there was even a remote possibility of finding out such a thing. Oh, admit it, Gwen, despite having “dropped out” on the profession that has been eternally crammed down your throat, despite refusing to continue your research, you’re still fascinated by science, and you’d love to know how a man could somehow sleep for five centuries and wake up healthy and whole. You’d never publish it, but you’d still love to know.

  But it was more than just scientific curiosity, and she suspected it had something to do with his sock and her eggs and a desire she couldn’t attribute solely to the mandate programmed into her genes that clamored for survival of her race. No other man had ever incited such a response in her.

  Science couldn’t explain the tenderness she’d felt at the sight of tears in his eyes. Nor the desire she’d had to cradle his head against her chest—not to have her cherry once and truly plucked, but for his comfort.

  Oh, her heart was engaged, and it both alarmed and elated her.

  Tucking her bangs behind an ear, she slid off the hood and started up the hill. He’d had enough time alon
e. It was time to talk.

  “Drustan.” Gwen’s voice cut like a light through the darkness around him.

  He met her gaze levelly. The poor wee lass looked terrified, yet bristled with resolve.

  She looked directly into his eyes then and, if she felt fear, she rose above it. He admired that about her, that despite her misgivings she forged on with the valor of a knight entering battle. When he’d chased her off, he worried that she might simply jump in her metal beast and drive away. The relief he’d felt when he glimpsed her heading toward him through the stones had been intense. Whatever she’d decided to think of him, she’d resolved to stick by his side—he could see it in her eyes.

  “Drustan?” Hesitant, yet firm.

  “Aye, lass?”

  “Are you feeling better now?” she asked warily.

  “I have made a tentative peace with my feelings,” he said dryly. “Fear not, I doona plan to leap up and avenge the loss of my people.” Yet.

  She gave him a brisk nod. “Good.”

  He could tell that she didn’t wish to discuss it, and rather than accuse him of being deluded when he was clearly distraught, she was going to scuttle around it in some circuitous manner. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what she was up to.

  “Drustan, I memorized your poem, now it’s your turn to grant me a favor.”

  “As you wish, Gwen. Only tell me what you want of me.”

  “A few simple questions.”

  “I will answer them to the best of my ability,” he replied.

  “How much dirt is in a hole a foot wide, nine inches long, and three and a half feet deep?”

  “That is your question?” he asked, baffled. Of all things she might have asked…

  “One of them,” she said hastily.

  He smiled faintly. Her question was one of his favorite puzzles. His priest, Nevin, had agonized for half an hour trying to calculate exactly how much dirt would be in such a space before seeing the obvious. “There is no dirt in a hole,” he replied easily.

  “Oh, well, that was a trick puzzle and doesn’t tell me much. You may have heard it before. How about this one: A boat lies at anchor with a rope ladder hanging over the side. The rungs in the rope ladder are nine inches apart. The tide rises at a rate of six inches per hour and then falls at the same rate. If one rung of the ladder is just touching the water when the tide begins to rise, how many rungs will be covered after eight hours?”

  Drustan ran through a swift series of calculations, then laughed softly, at a time when he thought he might not laugh again. He suddenly understood why she had chosen such questions, and his regard for her increased. When an apprentice petitioned a Druid to be accepted and trained, he was put through a similar series of problems designed to reveal how the lad’s mind worked and what he was capable of.

  “None, lass, the rope ladder rises with the boat upon the water. Do my powers of reason convince you that I am not mad?”

  She regarded him strangely. “Your reasoning abilities seem untouched by your peculiar…illness. So what is 4,732.25 multiplied by 7,837.50?”

  “37,089,009.375.”

  “My God,” she said, looking simultaneously awed and revolted. “You poor thing! I asked the first question mostly to see if you were thinking clearly, the second to see if the first had been a fluke. But you did that math in your head in five seconds. Even I can’t do it that fast!”

  He shrugged. “I have always had an affinity for numbers. Did your questions prove anything to you?” They had proved something to him. Gwen Cassidy was the most intelligent lass he’d ever met. Young, seemingly fertile, an extraordinary mating heat between them, and smart.

  His certainty that fate had brought her to him for a reason increased tenfold.

  Mayhap, he thought, she might not fear him after tomorrow eve. Mayhap there was such a love for him as his father had known.

  “Well, if you’re a candidate for bedlam, you’re the smartest madman I’ve ever met, and your delusions seem confined to one issue.” She blew out a breath. “So, what now?”

  “Come, lass.” He held his arms out to her.

  She eyed him warily.

  “Och, lassie, give me something to hold in my arms that’s real and sweet. I will not harm you.”

  She trudged to his side and sank down in the grass beside him. She kept her face averted for several moments, gazing up at the stars, then her shoulders slumped and she looked at him. “Oh, bother,” she said, and stunned him by reaching out to cradle his head in her arms, pulling him to her breast.

  His slid his hands around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. “Lovely Gwen, ’tis thanking you once again I am. You are a gift from the angels.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she muttered against his hair. She seemed awkward holding him, as if she hadn’t had much practice. Her body was tense, and he sensed if he moved suddenly that she would jerk away, so he breathed slowly and kept still, allowing her time to grow accustomed to the intimacy.

  “I guess this means you won’t be able to prove anything to me tomorrow, huh?”

  “As promised, on the morrow I will prove to you my story is true. This changes nothing, or little. Will you stay of your own volition? Mayhap help me explore the grounds tomorrow?”

  Hesitantly, she slipped her wee hands into his hair and he half-sighed, half-groaned with pleasure when her nails lightly grazed his scalp. “Aye, Drustan MacKeltar,” she said, with as good a lilt as any Scots lass. “I’ll be stayin’ wi’ ye ’til the morrow.”

  He laughed aloud and pulled her closer. He craved her touch, wanted desperately to make love to her, but sensed that if he pressed her now, he would lose the comfort of her embrace. “That was fine, lass. Yer no bampot, and I’m thinkin’ we may make a wee douce Highland lass out o’ ye yet.”

  Gwen slept that night curled in the arms of a Highlander, in a field of sillar shakles and gowan, beneath a silvery spoon of a moon, peaceful as a lamb. And if Drustan was feeling wolfish, he bid himself be content merely to hold her.

  SEPTEMBER 21

  10:23 P.M.

  9

  They searched all day but didn’t find the tablets.

  When the sky darkened to indigo, pierced by glittering stars, Drustan gave up and constructed a bonfire within the circle of stones so he would have light by which to perform the ritual.

  If the worst occurred tonight, he wanted her to know as much about what had happened to him as possible. And her backpack would be an added boon. While digging in the ruins, he’d told her everything that had transpired just prior to his abduction.

  One disbelieving brow arched, she’d nevertheless listened as he explained how he’d received a note bearing an urgent summons to come to the clearing behind the little loch if ye wish tae ken the name of the Campbell who murdered yer brother. His grief fever-hot, he’d donned his weapons and rushed off, without summoning his guard; the thirst to avenge his brother’s death had overridden all intelligent thought.

  He told her how he’d grown light-headed and weary while racing toward the loch and that he now believed he’d somehow been drugged. He told her how he’d collapsed just outside the forest on the banks of the loch, how his limbs had locked, his eyes had closed as if weighted by heavy gold coins. He told her he’d felt his armor and weapons being removed, then symbols being painted on his chest, then felt nothing more until she’d wakened him.

  Then he told her of his family, of his brilliant and bristly father, of their beloved housekeeper and substitute mother, Nell. He told her of his young priest, whose nagging, fortune-telling mother was wont to chase him ceaselessly about the estate trying to get a look at his palm.

  He forgot his sorrow for a time and regaled her with tales of his childhood with Dageus. When he spoke of his family, her skeptical gaze had softened a bit, and she’d listened with marked fascination, laughing over the antics of Drustan and his brother, smiling gently over the ongoing sparring between Silvan and Nell. He deduced from her wistful
expression that, even when her family had been alive, there’d not been much laughter and loving in her life.

  Have you no brothers and sisters, lass? he’d asked.

  She’d shaken her head. My mother had fertility problems and had me late in life. After she had me, the doctors said she couldn’t have any more.

  Why have you not wed and had bairn of your own?

  She’d shifted and averted her gaze. I never found the right man.

  Nay, she’d not had much pleasure in her life, and he’d like the chance to change that. He’d like to make her eyes sparkle with happiness.

  He wanted Gwen Cassidy. He wanted to be her “right man.” The mere scent of her as she walked by brought every inch of him to attention. He wanted her to become so familiar with his body and the pleasure he could give her with it that a simple glance would make her limp with desire. He wanted to pass a fortnight, uninterrupted, in his bedchamber, exploring her hidden passion, unleashing the eroticism that simmered just beneath her surface.

  But it might never come to pass, because once he performed the ritual and she discovered what he was, and what he’d done to her, she would have every reason to despise him.

  Still, he had no other choice.

  Casting a worried glance at the arc of the moon against the black sky, he inhaled deeply, greedily, of the sweet Highland night air. The time was nearly upon them.

  “Let it rest, Gwen,” he called. He was moved that she refused to give up. Mad though she might think him, she was still digging about in the ruins. “Come join me in the stones,” he beckoned. He wanted to spend what might be his last hour with her, close to the fire, holding her in his arms. His druthers were to strip off her clothes and bury himself inside her, brand himself into her memory with what time he had left, but that seemed as likely as the tablets suddenly manifesting themselves in his hands.