Sue-Ellen Welfonder

by Master of the Highlands

  But he didn’t. He’d sooner yank out his tongue.

  Answering the dastard’s questions would be to damn his daughter to certain death.

  Abercairn Castle did hold a considerable cache of pilfered Sassunach jewels. And it was true enough that they’d been taken with the late Good King Robert’s blessing.

  But as war booty.

  Due and just reward for Drummond swords and loyalty at the Battle of Bannockburn, the Hero King’s most shining triumph over the English.

  And once Silver Leg discovered the hiding place of such a treasure, he’d have no reason to keep Madeline alive.

  Sir John drew another quivering breath, licked his dry lips.

  With the exception of him, only his daughter knew Abercairn’s secrets.

  So John Drummond kept silent.

  And prayed to every saint in heaven to let him live long enough for his daughter to get as far away from Abercairn as her feet could carry her.

  Chapter Eleven

  IAIN STARED AT THE OAKEN PANELS of the heavy wooden door, his fingers clenched around its substantial drawbar, and reached deep inside himself for the courage to slide the greased bar into its socket-hole.

  Doing so would mean locking himself in the chamber with Madeline Drummond… locking her in the room with him.

  The latter being the reason for his hesitation.

  The ale-draper hadn’t lied about the room being well-appointed. Beaming with pride, he’d ushered them inside, even patted the bed’s plump feather mattress, again; claiming it stuffed with swan down. Iain doubted that, nevertheless, its sumptuous dressings and great size made the bed seductively inviting.

  The entire chamber proved inviting.

  Firmly latched shutters held back the worst of the night wind and lashing rain, though enough of a draught whistled through the slatting to ruffle the wall hangings and tease the flames of whate’er candles had been lit.

  A great branch of them flickered on a sturdy table by the bed… along with a platter of oatcakes, honey, and tasty-looking cheese. Two drinking cups and an earthen jug of what the ale-keeper insisted was fine Gascon wine rounded out the tempting array.

  And each one of the unexpected comforts banded together to thrust a cruel hand straight through Iain’s rib cage to squeeze his heart and freeze his feet to the floor, there before the closed door, where he’d been standing, his back to the room, ever since the proud ale-draper’s departure.

  Iain MacLean, the great Master of the Highlands, was afraid to turn around.

  He winced, closed his eyes briefly. The luxuriously outfitted chamber could have been at Baldoon. Not quite as fine as his own, but similar enough in amenities to hold more than the chill of the storm-harried night and all its inky shadows.

  The room was full to overflowing with reminders of his past.

  Grim ones dark enough to unleash his demons, even as the undoubted luxuries—the great curtained bed and round wooden tub filled with steaming water—ripped at the thin veneer of his manly restraint.

  Squaring his shoulders, he drew a deep, shuddering breath. Damp and heavy with the smell of rain, the cold night air also carried the scent of the thyme and meadow-sweet someone had scattered across the floor rushes… and a very light hint of heather.

  Her scent.

  And saints help him, he could so easily drown in it.

  His fingers pressed harder against the smooth wood of the drawbar, the throbbing need he’d suppressed for hours swelling to a painful degree.

  He almost groaned aloud.

  He did adjust the fall of his plaid.

  In a welter of emotion falling somewhere between fury and regret, he counted off the reasons he couldn’t— shouldn’t—keep the lass with him.

  Beyond the silly style she’d given him, he had naught to offer her. Too many pain-fraught memories resided at Baldoon for him to take her there, and he worried, too, that he was somehow cursed.

  Damned by long tradition to bring grief or death to anyone he cared about.

  In particular the women he cared about.

  The young lass he’d thought to wed before the Council of Elders pressured him into marrying Lileas perished of a fever not long after his wedding, and Lileas lost her own life not long thereafter.

  Feeling very much as if he teetered on the edge of a black and bottomless abyss, he gulped back the hot lump trying to lodge in his throat and wished with the whole of his heart that he were a less troubled man.

  Madeline Drummond carried enough burdens of her own.

  He couldn’t allow himself to add to them.

  But with a determined effort and a smattering of good fortune, he might be able to rid her of a few of them.

  That admirable purpose strengthening him, he slid home the drawbar and turned to face her.

  “And now, my lord?” she asked, her tone and the slight lifting of her brows indicating she meant far more than how they’d pass the night.

  The most masculine part of him jerked in immediate answer, for she stood in charming disarray near a brazier of glowing coals, her fingers deftly unbraiding her red-gold hair.

  “Now?” Iain echoed, well aware his ungentlemanly stare and monosyllabic retort marked him as either a dim-wit or a callous-minded rogue, interested in naught beyond how the pulsing red glow of the brazier gilded her tresses and flattered the smooth cream of her skin.

  He’d thought to query her about the ex-voto, pull it from the leather purse hanging from his belt, brandish it at her, and demand an explanation, but the words withered on his tongue, the pulsing heaviness at his groin pushing him to the brink of madness.

  He clenched his hands, determined to ignore the insistent throbbing, and hoped she wouldn’t notice the rise in his plaid… just as he strove not to notice she’d discarded Amicia’s plaid.

  His sister’s arisaid lay carefully folded atop a three-legged stool, and the lush fullness of Madeline Drummond’s breasts strained against her torn bodice.

  Naught but watery darkness leaked through the shutters, but the brazier cast enough illumination to clearly define all the luscious curves and planes of her tall, slender body.

  Especially her breasts.

  Iain cursed beneath his breath, molten heat pounding through his veins. Thanks be she hadn’t yet removed the two brooches holding the gown together.

  Sore damaged as the bodice was, he could already see more than half of one coral-tinted nipple peeking through a tear in the cloth. He stared at it, his blood running ever hotter as the well-sized areola drew tight beneath his gaze.

  A ragged moan, husky and low, rose in his throat, and his carefully clipped fingernails dug half crescents into his palms. Prudence chided him, warned him to avert his gaze, but he couldn’t.

  Not on his life.

  Candlelight and the brazier’s pulsating glow bathed her in shifting patterns of soft golden light and gilded her hair. Her beauty and something else—something too elemental, too compelling, for him fully to comprehend— bespelled him, searing him to the roots of his soul.

  So he continued to stare at the beautifully puckered nipple, looked on transfixed as its hardened peak thrust through the ripped cloth as if to greet the chill night air.

  Or, were he more free—or maybe less caring—the warmth of his lips.

  But he did care, so he tore away his gaze, contenting himself with the sweet glimpse she’d unwittingly given him.

  His tongue, though, ached to lave that nipple and, as if possessing a mind of its own, displayed mutinous frustration by affixing itself firmly to the roof of his mouth.

  He tried not to scowl. Wished he could flash her a dazzling smile. Or at least a comforting one.

  Instead, he looked directly into her green-gold eyes, hoping to regain some semblance of control by focusing on a less blatantly suggestive part of her.

  She peered back at him just as intently, wearing a heart-clutching expression the sennachies would surely call haunted longing. The look wreaked as much havoc on his he
art as her pertly-ruched nipple let loose in his nether parts.

  “Aye, now.” She broke the taut silence. “I would not overhurry you… but the hour grows late,” she said, her gaze straying to the wooden bathing tub.

  Steam rose off its heated water, curling wisps fragrant with bay leaf, rosemary, and another pleasing scent he couldn’t identify.

  She looked back at him. “We are both tired, and the bathwater will not stay warm overlong.”

  “To be sure,” he blurted, mentally kicking himself the instant the words sprang from his tongue.

  He winced, expelled an agitated breath.

  The fool words hung in the damp air, jeering at him, so he turned quickly to the brazier and thrust his hands toward its warmth.

  Anything to hide the color he knew must be creeping clear to his hairline.

  The two louts belowstairs who’d seemed so interested in her wouldn’t stay in place long either, he’d meant to say. Their path would be cold by first light lest they were addled enough to lurk around after seeing her in his company.

  To be sure, indeed.

  He rammed both hands through his hair. Ne’er he had spouted more insipid tripe than since sliding the wretched drawbar in place.

  Now he did scowl.

  He’d ne’er possessed his brother’s silver tongue, but neither was he wholly inept at stringing words together.

  Until now.

  ’Twas the lass, he knew.

  She robbed him of his ability to control his body’s reaction to her and limited his capacity to form coherent sentences.

  “Sir?”

  “Aye?” he jerked, whirling back around, away from the softly hissing brazier.

  “The bath,” she said, her gaze steady on his as she removed the last pins from her hair, freeing its wealth to tumble down her back in a curling spill of glossy, red-gold curls.

  Iain’s breath snagged in his throat, his hands suddenly burning, tingling to know the cool silk of her bright-gleaming tresses sifting through his fingers.

  “Bath?” he repeated, his voice thin, wheezier than a graybeard’s.

  She nodded and slid another gaze at the wooden tub. “I am wondering which of us ought partake first?”

  “Why, you, milady.” This time the words fair shot from his lips. Not at all ashamed of his nakedness, he was shamed o’er its current state.

  Naught under the broad, starry heavens could persuade him to remove a shred of clothing until his man-hood no longer resembled a tent pole.

  His plaid in particular was going to stay right where it was.

  “I do not mind waiting if you’d rather go first,” she offered, apparently forgetful of how much of her the ruined bodice displayed.

  “Nay, nay, nay.” Iain raised his hands, palms facing her. He waved them back and forth in a gesture of un-mistakable refusal. “While you enjoy your soak, I shall prepare the sphagnum moss tincture I promised you.”

  Her eyes went cautious… wary. “You promised you’d keep your back turned, too.”

  “Aye, so I did,” he confirmed, “and you needn’t fret yourself, for I ne’er break my word, lass.”

  “Nay, I imagine you do not, Iain MacLean,” she said, seeming to accept that.

  And because she did, and so unquestioningly, Iain strode to the end of the bed, where his leather travel satchel rested atop an ironbound coffer.

  He kept his promises to himself, too, and he meant to get to the bottom of many unanswered questions this night… even if his unruly tarse grew so rigid it snapped in two.

  Scowling, he undid the fastenings of his satchel and searched through its depths until his fingers closed around a small silver flask.

  Uisge beatha.

  Fine Highland spirits.

  Going to the table by the bed, he filled one of the drinking cups with a wee measure. He’d meant to offer her the fiery drink to soothe her nerves and take the sharp corners off any edginess she might feel upon being alone with him.

  Now he needed the potent brew to ease his nervous state!

  He strode back to her, handed her the cup. “Drink,” he encouraged, when she only peered at it, her nose wrinkling at its sharp smell.

  “Please,” he tried again, his voice a mite softer this time.

  She took a small sip.

  “I’faith!” she spluttered, thrusting the cup at him, her face turning bright pink, her eyes watering.

  “’Tis finest uisge beatha—water of life.” Iain gently pushed the cup back toward her. “Finish it. The heat it brings will lessen the ache in your muscles,” he improvised, the half-truth smearing another layer of dirt onto his honor.

  Saints, but his lies were growing legion!

  While the drink would surely relax her body, it was the loosening of her tongue that concerned him.

  Feeling extraordinarily unworthy of the fancy title she’d bestowed on him, Iain took the empty cup from her hands and returned to the bedside table where he’d left the flagon.

  He poured himself a much greater portion and downed it in one throat-burning gulp.

  And a good thing, for when he turned back, she was working the clasp of his cairngorm brooch… trying to undo its simple clasp with badly shaking fingers.

  Iain began to shake, too, a sick feeling spreading through his gut.

  He knew what was coming.

  It was writ all o’er her prettily flushed face.

  In the way she worried her pleasingly full lower lip.

  Though he wouldn’t have believed it, that part of him sprang even harder. Granite hard and so much so, even the generous folds of his plaid could no longer be counted on to shield his pathetic condition.

  “Oh, bother!” she cried then, and the floor pitched and swayed beneath his feet.

  She looked at him, her green-gold eyes just a bit glittery from the uisge beatha. “I cannot undo the brooches,” she said, just as he’d dreaded she would. “You must help me.” Iain died. Or would have if doing so were that easy.

  Instead, he suppressed a silent groan and started forward. And he prayed every step of the way that her gaze wouldn’t drop below his waist.

  He reached her in a few quick strides, the wild beat of his MacLean heart hammering so loud in his ears, its heavy thudding rivaled the night’s thunder rolls and the hollow pounding of the ceaseless rain.

  “Be at ease, lass, I will help you,” he murmured, forcing a calm tone he didn’t feel. Then he set his hands to the brooch. Quickly, before he could heed his better judgment and whirl away to sleep outside the chamber door.

  “I shall help you in every way I can,” some still-there shadow of his honor added, the gallant-sounding words in nowise reflective of the turmoil inside him.

  Save that he did wish to help her.

  But who would help him?

  Not a damned soul, he answered himself, and the clasp sprang free, his own cairngorm brooch dropping into his palm.

  “Thank you,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice.

  “I could scarce do otherwise—lest you wish to bathe fully clothed,” Iain managed, his own voice tight with strain.

  He near flinched at the images conjured by his words, cursed himself for splashing them across his mind.

  He did shudder.

  A great, rolling shudder that roared down his spine with such force, he fisted his hands so tightly the pin clasp jabbed into his palm.

  Clamping his teeth, he quelled any outward show of pain—in truth, welcoming the distraction from the growing urge to push apart the edges of the torn bodice and bury his face deep in the valley between her breasts.

  Or at the very least, take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.

  But he just kept his jaw set and lowered his hands before his fingers could brush against the creamy silk of her bared skin even one more time.

  Then he extricated the pin from the fleshy part of his palm as unobtrusively as he could.

  But maybe not inconspicuously enough, for her eyes narrowed, and something in h
er expression told him she was just as mindful as he of how wide her bodice now gaped.

  How much it revealed.

  Not all… but enough of her sweet bounty to buckle his knees.

  The gold flecks in her irises had gone deep amber in the candle shine, and the intensity of her perusal seeped beneath his skin, filling him with keenest awareness of her.

  Awareness, recognition, and an irrefutable sense of rightness.

  Belonging.

  But a wee flicker of doubt—or confusion—clouded her eyes, hovering almost out of sight at the very backs of their green-gold depths, and seeing it made him ache to reassure her.

  To draw her close not just for more heated kisses, but to tell her who she was and what they were to each other.

  If the MacLean bards were to be believed, she’d belonged to him, and he to her, since time beyond mind.

  And would for the rest of their days… whether he left her at the Bishopric of Dunkeld or nay.

  Legend declared the bond between a MacLean male and his one true love could ne’er be severed. Not even by death itself.

  They’d simply come together again in the Celtic Otherworld, then repeatedly seek each other until the fateful moment of recognition in as many lives as were to bless them.

  But at the moment, Iain MacLean, the latest of the clan to be cast adrift on the runaway tide otherwise known as the Bane of the MacLeans, felt more cursed than blessed.

  Unlike other clansmen, long since blissfully mated, his tide of destiny hadn’t run a smooth course.

  Or even a straight one.

  He struggled to find other soothing words, ones to calm her without making her think she’d have to add lunacy to his long list of faults. “You needn’t feel ill at ease with me, lass,” he said at last, opting for simplicity over eloquence.

  A sad smile lit across her lips. “But I do not,” she said, and touched a hand to his cheek. “At least not in the way I believe you mean.”

  “Then why do you remind me of a cornered roe-deer ready to bolt at soonest opportunity?”

  “I have told you, it is my own self I fear, not you.”

  “And why do you fear yourself?” he jerked, not at all sure he wanted to hear the answer.