Not that this one wasn’t enough.
Already, the weight of it made the floor dip and roll beneath his feet.
“Ach, nae, lass.” He shook his head, the words coming hard as gravel dredged from a burn-bed. “I’m no’ that raven.”
His chest oddly tight, he stepped closer to the window and reached for the shutters, needing air. But before his fingers could close on the latches, she nipped into the space between him and the window arch.
“I don’t understand.” She grabbed his arms, her fingers strong. “You are the Raven, are you not?”
“I am one of many Ravens.” He looked down at her and immediately wished he hadn’t.
He hadn’t done as fine a job of knotting the plaid as he’d thought. And now, with all her stalking about, the fool knot had loosened and he could see right down the gaping edge of the tartan.
The whole of her breasts gleamed for his delectation, luscious swells, the shadowed cleft between, chill-puckered nipples and all.
Worse, her dusky rose scent cast its usual heady magic on him. Each inhaled whiff shot straight to his vitals, squeezing fast and enflaming him.
Truth be told, he’d run rock- iron hard.
So he blew out a breath, tried to ignore her scent and her breasts, and fixed his gaze on her ear. A delicate ear, yet less a distraction.
“There have always been Ravens in the family,” he explained, his voice as strained and uncomfortable as his man-piece. “But there is only one raven. A living bird trapped inside Maldred’s Raven Stone, sealed there for all eternity. The raven’s great power serves whoe’er holds possession of the stone, or so tradition claims.”
“Then we must find it and set the bird free.”
“Would that it were so simple.”
“It might not be a bairn’s game, but it must be possible.” She beamed at him. “Were it not, there’d have been no point in his beseeching me.”
From his place by the fire, Buckie barked once as if he agreed with her.
Ronan ignored him and broke free of his lady’s grip. Stepping away from her, he flung open the shutters to stare out at the cold, rainy dark.
“For truth, lass, do you no’ think MacRuaris have been trying to do the like ever since the scoundrel and his stone vanished?”
“He vanished?”
Ronan grunted. “So it is said, aye.”
He breathed deep of the chill night air, his gaze on the great Caledonian pines beyond the curtain wall. The trees swayed and tossed in the wind, misty curtains of rain blowing past their crowns. Closer, the broad expanse of the bailey lay dark and still, though he knew its quiet concealed a score or more of guardsmen.
Dare never slept. Not even on the longest winter nights.
He frowned.
She’d edged in closer behind him. He could feel her warmth on his back and her attar of roses scent was swirling around him, filling the window arch before slipping away on the rushing night wind.
His entire body stiffened.
She was up to something.
He could feel it clear down to his toes, including the aching ones.
“To think your family has been searching for him all down the ages . . .” She let her voice tail off, the fading words full of sympathy and well-meaning.
“Aye, they have,” he agreed, bespelled by the soft, feminine heat of her, the knowledge that she stood naked beneath his plaid. “At the latest, since the first glimmer of his curse blighted us —”
He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late.
He could see her eyes lighting even without turning around.
“ Ah-hah!” Her voice rang with excitement. “How can you say he disappeared and MacRuaris have searched for him and still claim he’s buried beneath a collapsed table grave?”
Ronan set his jaw and kept staring at the wind-tossed pines.
She persisted. “Wouldn’t his grave be the first place to search for him?”
“It was.”
“And what did they find?”
Ronan braced his hands on the stone ledge of the window and drew a deep breath. Far below, a dog fox trotted along the edges of the trees, cloaked in deep shadow one moment then reappearing into a slant of pale moonlight.
“Well?”
He closed his eyes. “If the clan talespinners are to be believed, the grave proved empty.”
“I knew it!” She clapped her hands. “He is buried elsewhere and we need only find the tomb.”
“The talespinners also say that his evil was so great and his power so infinite that the devil himself envied him.” He turned to face her. “ ’Tis said the Horned One seized the mortal remains and the stone, taking them with him into hell where he tossed both into a bottomless pit.”
“ Pah- phooey!” She laughed. “I tell you, he —”
Ronan didn’t let her finish. “He used the last of his power to curse the family, damning us even in death as the devil carried him away. His capture was our fault, he railed, furious that we’d buried him in such an easy-to-find spot, or so tradition claims.”
Gelis shook her head. “I do not believe a word.”
Nor do I, Ronan owned, though he kept the sentiment to himself.
“Be that as it may, whether he once slept in the table grave or no, his final resting place has ne’er been found,” he admitted, speaking true. “What does remain is his curse. It strikes —”
“I do not believe that either.” Her eyes flashed. “I told you at Creag na Gaoith what I think of your curse.”
She whirled and started pacing again, his plaid swinging about her knees. “Never in a thousand lifetimes did you think a rockslide into happening and —”
“Think you that is all of it?”
Ronan unlatched his sword-belt and laid it and his brand on a chair. Then he removed the large Celtic brooch holding his plaid at his shoulder and set it on the chair with his belt and his sword.
“What happened to Matilda at the Rock of the Wind was only one horror in a long history of family tragedies,” he said at last, pulling off his plaid. “Numberless heartaches have visited us, lass. The kind of pain I strove so hard to keep from touching you.”
“Then tell me of it — from the beginning.” Gelis claimed a chair beside the hearth and clapped her hands on her knees. “If you think I shall cower and tremble, you are sore mistaken.”
He frowned at her, his plaid still bunched in his hands. Turning away, he shook it out and carefully folded it before placing it atop the large iron-banded strongbox at the foot of the bed. When he straightened to face her again, she knew she’d won.
But the hesitancy still clinging to him made her heart clench.
“Please.” She leaned forward, letting her eyes plead. “I truly want to know.”
He appeared to consider. “As you wish, but it makes grim telling,” he finally conceded, looking at her as if he expected her to start quaking any moment.
Or worse, leap to her feet and bolt from the room.
So she leaned back in the chair and forced a calm expression. Never yet had she felt so close to him and it wouldn’t do for him to note her quickened pulse and mistake her hope for fear.
Her device apparently worked, because he blew out a great breath and went to stand at the open window again, at last looking ready to speak.
He cleared his throat. “You asked me once if I’m plagued by the Droch Shùil and I told you of Matilda’s death. How rather than the Evil Eye, my own thoughts sometimes manifest in horrible ways.”
Gelis opened her mouth to object, but he waved a staying hand.
“Enough of my kinsmen — and a few kinswomen — have suffered thus,” he continued. “Though the instances I know of with surety lie some hundred years or more in the past. Either way, those sad souls had but to glance at a cow and its milk would dry up or curdle. If they crossed a field, its crop withered behind them.
“Their woe was great for they meant no ill and did their best to avoid causing such disasters.”
He paused, his mouth twisting. “I know of at least one such kinsman who took his own life because of his malady.”
“There are many tales of the Droch Shùil in these hills.” Gelis didn’t know what else to say. “So long as the stricken do not use their power to work ill on others, they cannot be blamed. Besides” — she sat forward again — “there are ways to counter the Evil Eye.”
Lifting a hand, she counted them on her fingers. “Rowan is one of the surest talismans against the like. Then there are charmed stones, amulets, and a wealth of incantations. Even if you did have —”
“Ach, sweetness. I have told you, what plagues me is far worse.” He rammed both hands through his hair and closed his eyes for a moment. “Would that such counter-charms as walking three times sunwise around a milk-blighted cow or drinking silvered water would cure it.”
Gelis balled her hands on her knees. “Even so . . .”
He shook his head. “ ’Tis no good, lass. The MacRuaris have been damned since time uncounted. Some of us, like myself and others who have gone before me, must carry a greater share of Maldred’s burden.”
“Maldred wishes to ease that burden.” Gelis’s fingernails dug into her palms. “I could feel it when he appeared to me. He hasn’t damned you. I know it!”
“Then I shall prove it to you.”
Striding across the room, he went to another of his strongboxes. This one sat near the untidy pile of her own coffers. A bit dented and battered, and with its iron strapping showing signs of rust, the chest appeared much older than any of her own or the large one he kept at the foot of the massive oaken four-poster.
His face grim, he bent to lift the coffer’s lid. “See you this,” he said, pulling out a long quilted leather war-coat of ancient style. “It belonged to my father. And this” — he thrust a hand deeper into the strongbox and retrieved a high conical helm, equally tarnished — “was his as well.”
Holding up the objects for her to see, he continued. “They are two of the very few treasures I have of him. Valdar ordered most of his possessions destroyed, so great was his pain when my father died. I hid these at the time and have kept them all these years.”
“To be sure, and you saved them.” Gelis stood. “You were only a boy and needed your memories —”
He made a choked sound, its bitterness spearing her.
“Memories, aye, but I also kept them as a warning.” He put the quilted armor and the helm back in the chest and lowered the lid. “I wanted a reminder to keep me from e’er again thinking ill of another soul.”
He looked at her then, his eyes dark. “Especially a soul I dearly loved.”
Gelis dropped back into her chair. “I don’t understand.”
“Nae?” He arched a brow. “Then perhaps you will if I tell you that the day my father rode out hunting and plunged o’er a cliff when a swift black fog descended was a day we’d had a terrible argument. I’d —”
Gelis gasped. “Dinna tell me you —”
“Aye, I did.” He took a ewer from the table and splashed a measure of ale into a cup, gulping it down before he went on. “We’d been at odds for some time. I wanted to join his squires at their swording practice and he forbade me, saying I must wait another year. The morning he went hunting, I took an extra sword from his solar and joined the squires anyway, telling them he’d given his permission.”
“But he hadn’t,” Gelis guessed.
Her throat tightened and her heart wrenched for the boy he’d been, the darkness he’d carried so long.
“Nae, he knew naught of it — until he returned unexpectedly, having forgotten to strap on his sword, of all things.” He poured another cup of ale, this time bringing it to her and thrusting it into her hands. “Needless to say, he found me in the midst of his sword-practicing squires, swinging a blade nearly as long as I was tall.”
He paused, motioned for her to drink.
As soon as she took a sip, he went on. “Ne’er had I seen him so furious. He flung himself from his horse and flew across the bailey to grab me by the collar and drag me into the keep in front of all and sundry. I was shamed and — at the time — vowed that I hated him. When at last he rode out again, I wished he would ne’er return.”
“And he didn’t.” Gelis finished for him.
He nodded. “No one e’er saw him again. Not alive anyway.”
“Ach, Ronan.” She sprang to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. “You canna — absolutely canna — think it was your fault. ’Tis tragic, aye, but —”
“It was but the beginning, sweetness.” He disentangled himself from her arms. “You know of Matilda. My second wife, the lady Cecilia —”
“I know of her, too!” She hastened after him when he paced away. “Anice told me —” She broke off at once and clapped a hand to her lips.
But it was enough.
She knew.
Ronan released a breath. “Anice spoke true, I am sure,” he said, seeing no point in lying. “Lady Cecilia was ill content here. She loathed the glen and she hated me. And” — he went back to the opened window, once again needing air — “she ne’er missed a chance to remind me of her unhappiness.”
“But why?” His new lady bristled. “How could she not have been glad-hearted to be yours? You —”
“You do me proud, lass.” He looked at her, her indignation warming a cold place inside him. “But Lady Cecilia was no’ wholly to blame. She was a city lass, a sea merchant’s daughter from Aberdeen on the distant North Sea coast. Our dark hills and the quiet of the glen frightened her. Nor did she understand our ways.”
“Then why did she wed you?”
“For the same reason you did. She had a father whose debt placed her in my arms, only his debt was not one of honor.” He glanced at the fire, remembering. “The man had lost two shiploads of cargo at sea and when a storm claimed his third and last ship, he found himself facing ruination.”
Gelis’s brows lowered. “Unless he sold his daughter for a high bride-price.”
Ronan nodded. “I . . . needed a son. It’d been years since Matilda’s death and Dare deserved hope.” He leaned back against the window arch, his hands gripping the cold ledge. “Some traveling Highlander had made his way to Aberdeen and somehow crossed paths with Lady Cecilia’s father. The man was told of a well-pursed Highland clan unable to find a bride for its heir.”
“You.” She slid a hot glance at him.
“Aye, me.” Ronan watched her pace, some detached and surely debauched part of him not missing how his plaid gaped a bit each time she finished her stalk across the room and whirled around again.
He balled a hand to a fist, then unclenched it as quickly.
The whipping of her hips and the flashes of her smooth, shapely thighs were making it increasingly difficult to concentrate.
He cleared his throat, trying anyway. “Lady Cecilia’s father sent word to Valdar, claiming his daughter was eager for the match. We were told the fumes of the sea and the city made her ill and she looked forward to coming here. Unfortunately, that was not so.”
“Then why didn’t she return to Aberdeen?” Gelis wheeled about again, this time giving him a quick glimpse of the bright, red-gold curls topping her thighs.
“Och, saints!” The curse slipped out before he could stop it.
She shot him an odd look, but he rushed on before she could question him.
“She couldn’t return because she had nowhere in Aberdeen to go,” he explained, half of him wishing she’d stop her pacing while the other half willed her to step even more quickly so he’d be treated to such an eyeful again and again.
He bit back a groan, the pull at his loins almost unbearable.
“What do you mean ‘she had nowhere to go’?” She spun around and the plaid dipped, revealing a tightly ruched nipple. “Was her father not there?”
Ronan ran a hand down over his chin, caught between bad memories and the worst rutting-lust he’d ever known.
His h
eart began to pound as hotly as the heat flooding his groin. “Her father took the coin from her bride-price and rather than repaying his debtors, he caught the next ship to France.”
The words seemed to hang in the air, someone else’s explanation, while his own voice silently shouted his need, his thoughts centering on her.
The comely, sparkling creature eyeing him so heatedly, all bouncing bosom and riotous dishevelment.
She jammed her hands on her hips. “Lady Cecilia blamed you.”
“Aye, she did. For that and many other things.” He could scarce speak. Blood was beginning to roar in his ears. “Her last words were that ‘now she’d be free of me and I’d be rid of her.’ ”
“And you silently agreed.”
“I did.” The memory rushed him, guilt damping his lust and cutting off his air. “And it was after we buried her that I vowed to ne’er wed again.”
“But you did and I am . . . other!” She flung herself at him again, this time locking her arms tight around him and pressing close.
Her warmth and all her soft, pliant womanliness chased all else from his mind and his need returned, the force of it tilting his world. He whipped his arms around her, pulling her even harder against him, almost drowning in the wonder of her.
The way she made him feel.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, needing her scent, the essence of her, to cleanse him. A great weight began sliding off his shoulders, but when he looked at her again, it was the brightness in her eyes that undid him.
“Sakes, lass, ’tis naught to cry o’er,” he blurted, his voice gruff.
“I am not crying.” She pulled back, blinking furiously. “But I might if you don’t stop telling me such sad tales and — and admit that you need me!”
“I do need you. More than I would have believed.” The admission fell with surprising ease from his lips.
Even more startling, it made him feel good.
Almost giddy enough to shout with the joy of it.
He did tighten his arms around her, but when an unblinking canine stare from the direction of the hearth fire caught and latched onto him, he let go of her.
“Stay here.” He put a hand to the small of her back and guided her into the shelter of the window embrasure. “I’ll be back in a wink.”
Seducing a Scottish Bride Page 26