Mairi took a deep breath, steadying herself against the wild beating of her heart, the racing of her blood. The warrior was almost upon her, his strides purposeful. Whoever he was, his eyes were deeply shadowed, their grimness leaving no doubt that he came as a miracle seeker.
Like so many before him.
All that set him apart from the others was the huge dog at his side. A massive brute, the beast could’ve been a wolf-or-deerhound, though a strain of something more savage gave him the look of a war-dog capable of tearing out a man’s throat at a single command.
Mairi felt only a surge of love for him.
He could have been her own beloved Clyde, her much-missed companion who had indeed once been a war-dog, until she’d found and nursed him back to health. Clyde’s years with her had been far too short, but he’d taught her that the softest heart could beat beneath the fiercest exterior, so she didn’t fear the stranger’s dog.
She was wary of the warrior.
So she straightened her shoulders and started forward, not wanting him to reach her door. She didn’t brandish her sword at him. Like as not, he’d flick it aside as easily if brushing lint from his sleeve. But it didn’t hurt for him to see that she was prepared to defend herself.
She just chose to do so with a casual tone and an unconcerned mien.
“Are you lost, sir?” She knew he wasn’t. “Not many wayfarers come this way.”
“I am no’ a traveler, my lady, nor have I erred direction.” He stopped before her, fixing her with his intense, dark eyes. “I am Sir Gare MacTaggert of Blackrock Castle on the other side of this fair realm, and I came to your Glen of Winds to seek the aid of its banshee.”
That I knew, good sir, and you can leave now.
The glen’s banshee cannot help you.
“There is no such being here.” Mairi gave him a third version of the truth. “You have journeyed for naught. I dwell in this glen with my husband,” she allowed herself the lie. “He will return anon-”
“Lady Mairi.” A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I was told you’d attempt to send me away, and I ken you aren’t married.” He glanced down at his dog, then back at her, his smile now gone. “Troll and I come in peace and mean you no harm. Your chieftain’s captain of the guard, Sir Marmaduke, and his men, granted us passage across their lands and into this glen.
“I spoke with them only a short while ago.” He glanced up at the cliff-tops, now thick with lowering mist and clouds. “They were good enough to take my horse back to your chief’s Eilean Creag Castle for stabling and care while I am in the Glen of Winds.”
“You cannot think to stay here.” Mairi tried to look away from him, but couldn’t. His gaze was too compelling. “I dwell alone, my broch too small for a guest.” She waited as the dog rubbed against her, bumping his great head at her hand. “Besides, you’ve truly come in vain. There isn’t a banshee to aid you or anyone.
“The banshee is me.” Mairi stood straighter, ignoring his dog. “She is a tall tale spun to keep intruders from disturbing my peace. No more, no less, see you?”
“So I was told, my lady.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment, another slight smile curving his lips. A sad one this time. “In truth, it was you who drew me here, no’ a myth. Your reputation as a healer is great, reaching even to my lands in Scotland’s distant northeastern bounds. I believe you can help me, leastways I have prayed to the gods that is so. If you will but give me your ear, I swear to depart at first light should you decide against aiding me.”
Mairi frowned, her heart beating wildly again.
The dog, Troll, was leaning into her, staring up at her with friendly, hopeful eyes. His master, Sir Gare, towered over her, a terribly appealing flicker of hope in his own gaze chipping away at her resistance.
Mairi folded her arms, every protective instinct she had screaming caution.
She didn’t want to find any man appealing.
For sure, not one who would turn on her as soon as it became clear that she couldn’t restore life to his loved one.
“I must ask you to leave.” There, she’d said what she must.
Go before my heart yearns for you as fiercely as my woman’s body already does.
Dear heavens, he smelled of sandalwood, clean wool, leather, cold air and man, and the heady blend was fuzzing her wits, making her vulnerable. Worse, he had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if he’d actually touched her, and in intimate, sensual ways!
Mairi’s pulse quickened, a tingling, long-forgotten warmth pooling low by her thighs.
No virgin, she’d once loved well and had never denied herself passion. She recognized the danger of this man, with his alluring scent and potent virility. His tall, well-muscled body, surely hard as iron. His strong, beautiful hands that reminded her of the pleasures a skilled lover’s questing fingers could give a woman.
Joys she hadn’t known in so long.
“See here, I can do nothing for you,” she started again, sure she was glowering. “Nor can you sleep here.” She indicated the rock-sided glen, the boulder-strewn ground. “Even if I wished you to stay, there isn’t enough bracken to make the thinnest pallet.”
His gaze locked with hers, and something in his expression told her she was losing. “Troll and I can sleep on the ground.” He spoke as if everything was settled. “We have done so most nights of our journey. I need no more than my plaid, and Troll is well-furred enough to no’ feel the rocks beneath him.”
“Very well.” Mairi nodded, sure resistance was futile. “But you’ll leave on the morrow.”
“If you say you cannae help me, aye.”
“I’m telling you that now.”
“It is said you have brought back the breath of life to the coldest of the damned.” His words pierced her heart, making her soul ache. “Your fame is on every bard’s tongue, the wonders you have wrought, the miracles-”
“The tales are untrue.” Mairi tucked her hair behind an ear, kept her chin raised. “No one can bring the dead back to life.”
“Yet you have done so.”
“Aye, but-”
He stepped closer and gripped her arm, his touch sending ripples of awareness through her. “I wouldn’t be here if my request wasn’t dire, my lady. All I ask is that you restore-”
“I regret you’ve lost someone.” She did, especially that she couldn’t do what he wanted.
She knew the pain of heartache.
So before she could think better of it, she lifted her hand to his face and touched his cheek, slid her fingers along his beard. “I do wish I could help you, but all I can offer is my sympathy.”
“You misunderstand.” He caught her hand, lacing their fingers, squeezing tight. Determination burned in his eyes. “The dead I want you to revive is a man who hasn’t truly died. He stands before you.”
“You?” Mairi blinked. “Now I am quite confused.”
“You willnae be.” He glanced aside, drew a deep breath. “My lady, I have lost all feeling inside me. I would that you use your skill to rekindle my will to live.”
Mairi didn’t know what to say.
“I would be whole again.” He turned back to her, the look on his face making it impossible to refuse him. “Dinnae deny me.”
“I won’t.” Mairi couldn’t believe her consent. “I’ll do what I can,” she added, making it worse.
She didn’t know where to begin to help him.
She just knew she must.
***
About the same time, but high on the windswept peaks above the glen, a tiny black-garbed woman stood as close to the cliff edge as she dared, and peered down at the ill-starred pair beneath her.
She was Devorgilla of Doon, the Highlands’ most far-famed cailleach and wise woman, and she’d plied her formidable skills since before time was. She worked tirelessly for the greater good, and rarely had two souls needed her more than her latest charges: The tall warrior with his broken sword and the lass who shouldn’t sleep alon
e, only the wind to say her goodnight.
Such loneliness was unnatural.
And the man should have a warm and loving woman at his side, not cold, sundered steel.
Tsk’ing, Devorgilla hitched her skirts and inched a bit closer to the drop-off. She swatted at the whirling mist, mumbled a few words to dispel enough for her to see more clearly. Satisfied, she set her hands on her hips and leaned forward, studying the couple.
Theirs was a hard path, she knew.
Gare MacTaggert, for he’d lost so much. Mairi MacKenzie because she’d never had a lot to begin with. Such misfortune had drawn her to them for she was a born matchmaker, though some called her a meddler.
Either way, she did as she pleased.
Few could deny she was aye right in the end.
Hoping to keep it that way, she slid a glance at her companion and helpmate, Somerled, a little red fox standing close beside her.
“I do believe the lass saw our warding sparkles,” she mused, certain of it. She’d seen Mairi narrow her gaze on the silvery glitter in the air about the warrior; the sparkles all that remained of the goodwill charm she’d cast over him. A caution, no more; a quiet way to make certain that the Black Stag’s men not only allowed him entry into the Glen of Winds, but also received him as a friend.
Someone they could trust, the wards letting them see him as he truly was.
A good and valiant man.
“By all the fates, she saw.” Devorgilla nodded sagely. “Do you no’ agree, laddie?”
Somerled blinked in response, his gaze earnest.
“She is more gifted than she knows, eh?” Devorgilla reached down to stroke her friend’s silky red fur. “Thought it was the gleam of his mail, she did! No bother. The last bits will be gone anon,” she added, pushing back her sleeves and cracking her knotty knuckles.
“Now look closely,” she urged the fox. “Show me any lingering sparkles.”
It pinched her pride to need such aid, but given her years, her eyes weren’t what they’d once been.
Understanding, Somerled again fixed his attention on the warrior. He eyed him carefully, and then raised his foot, pawing the air and pointing at each wayward glint of floating silver.
Devorgilla responded in kind, wriggling a gnarled finger at each sparkle. She only had to will it so, for the charm residue to vanish.
She counted twenty glitter-dots. Then they were gone, nary a shiver of magick remaining.
“Our work is done, laddie.” Mightily pleased, she stepped away from the cliff edge and gave a little cackle of glee. “They are on their own now. We have only given them a wee nudge. Whether they do aught about it is up to them.”
That Devorgilla knew with all the wisdom in her grizzled head.
Somerled apparently agreed, for he was already sending expectant glances at the plaid-covered basket packed with their dinner – a fine roasted gannet, the succulent seabird one of the crone’s favorites, green cheese, oatcakes, two cooked eggs, and a flagon of heather ale.
“They be good victuals, eh?” Devorgilla hobbled over to the basket, rewarding her friend with a tasty gannet tidbit. “Lady Linnet aye treats us well.”
Somerled angled his head and tapped the basket with his paw, in clear accord.
Before Devorgilla could give him another piece of gannet, the little fox looked aside to peer at the greatest of Kintail’s hills, massive, rock-bound heights as mist-cloaked as the cliffs above the Glen of Winds. The intensity of his gaze and his perked ears warned that he saw more than the blowing mist.
“So we’re yet needed, are we?” Devorgilla glanced at the rugged peaks, wariness spreading through her ancient bones.
As always, her wee friend was right to be concerned.
Trouble brewed on the horizon, and its darkness was drifting near, making its way to the Glen of Winds, its purpose pure and deadly evil.
“Ach, laddie, you’d best tell me what you ken.” She bent to tighten her red plaid bootlaces, flashing a look at the fox as she did so. “I ken fine ye see more than I do,” she admitted, somewhat grudgingly.
Somerled blinked and twitched his tail, a nod to his own pride.
When Devorgilla straightened, he did as she’d bid him, fixing her with his deep and piercing gaze. Ever her talebearer, he used their special bond to rely what he’d gleaned on recent roamings. He also shared what he’d learned just now, peering into the distance.
Grateful, Devorgilla pressed a hand against her hip, giving him her fullest attention, listening not with her ears, but her heart.
What she heard worried her.
Yet fate was inexorable, all things happening for a reason. Nudges and the dash of a charm here and there were fine, harming no one and aiding many.
But every man had to walk his own path, choosing well or otherwise.
Bad things happened to those who sought to bend that rule.
And she hadn’t reached her impressive number of years by behaving imprudently.
So she dusted her hands, brushed down her skirts, and adjusted her new black woolen cloak, Duncan MacKenzie’s parting gift to her; the proud chieftain’s thanks for telling him about the man with the broken sword.
“Come, laddie, we have done all we can here.” Devorgilla retrieved their food basket, hooking it on her arm. “It is time for us to return to Doon, for thon pair down in the glen must fight their dragons alone.”
Somerled, wise soul that he was, agreed.
But he also cast one last meaningful glance at the cliff edge, now almost hidden by thick, curtaining mist.
Devorgilla understood.
“The gloom willnae help them, my little one,” she told him, shaking her head. “No glen is hidden enough, no fog so dense, that wickedness willnae find a way.
“So will goodness if certain ill-starred souls trust their hearts.”
But for the first time in her long and illustrious career, Devorgilla had doubts.
Gare’s heart truly was as dead as he claimed.
Mairi’s had been broken beyond repair.
THE TAMING OF MAIRI MACKENZIE
CHAPTER TWO
Gare ducked his head to enter Dunwynde’s low-set doorway, astonished that Lady Mairi allowed him the privilege. He’d expected her to walk away, leaving him and Troll in the glen’s cold, inhospitable gloaming. Instead, she’d cast a glance at his dog, her face softening before she’d turned back to him with the invitation.
“You’re fond of dogs?” He stopped inside the door, allowing his eyes adjust to the broch’s dimness.
“I care for all animals.” Mairi MacKenzie went to a small table, poured water from a jug into an earthen bowl. “But, aye, I have a special liking for dogs.”
“Yet you dinnae have one?” Gare glanced about the humble room, seeing no sign of a pet.
What he did see, hit him like a fist in the gut.
Dunwynde was spotlessly clean, the hard-packed dirt floor, well-swept, while the walls appeared scrubbed and free of moss and cobwebs. But there, all hints of comfort ended. The smoldering peat fire and a few sputtering torches illuminated the circular, windowless room, while a pallet of furs was clearly where Mairi slept.
Gare frowned, rubbing the back of his neck as he took in even more. He doubted the makeshift roof of branches, scraped hides, and heather would keep out a hard rain. Blessedly, the blackened cook-pot on its chain over the fire, and a string of dried herring stretched across the far wall, indicated the lass wasn’t hungry. She needn’t freeze either, for a woolen cloak hung from a peg near the door. He hoped a lidded basket nearby held more clothes. Even so, a broch was what it was, a centuries-old, long-crumbling stone tower so grim it shouldn’t be occupied by more than damp, mice, and the wind-blown scattering of dead leaves.
His mood worsening, Gare felt his hands clench, his chest tighten.
Images of Blackrock Castle flashed across his mind, the sumptuousness of his well-appointed home so at odds to the broch’s desolation.
No woman should d
well so sparsely.
That many did, grieved him.
Seeing this one in such straits outraged him, though he couldn’t say why her plight affected him so gravely. There was just something about her.
He’d felt it the moment their gazes had met.
“No, I do not have a dog,” she said then, setting the water bowl against the far wall. She placed a second dish beside it, a delicious-smelling stew that Troll was already devouring as if Gare never fed him.
“The Glen of Winds is no place for an animal.” She turned to face him at last. “There may not be a banshee here, but the souls of the damned do pass this way. Their wails would distress a dog.”
Across the room, Troll finished eating, seemingly unaffected by the threat of troubled spirits. Far from it, he went to the low-burning fire, circled three times, and dropped into a deep sleep, his immediate snores proving his ease.
“Troll is no’ bothered by your ghosties.” Gare frowned at his dog, surprised that he could rest in such a dank, dreary place.
Mairi came over to him, her long raven hair shining in the torchlight. He watched her with interest for he’d heard of the great beauty of MacKenzie women and she proved the truth of their fame. Rarely had he seen such glossy tresses and he surprised himself by feeling a powerful urge to reach out and touch her braid. The thick plait reached to her hips and he was stunned to find he wanted to undo it, see her gleaming hair spill free about her shoulders, an image that stirred him in ways that weren’t good for either of them.
She glanced at Troll, then back to him. “Your dog is brave to feel at ease here. I do not fear bogles either, though I do notice oddities. You, sir, are no common journeyer.” Her chin came up, her tone challenging. “Why do you carry a broken sword?”
“The rent blade is my penance.” Gare told her true. “This sword,” – he patted the offensive steel –“is aye at my side, reminding me of deeds that should ne’er have happened, the wrong caused by my hand.”
She angled her head, her eyes narrowing slightly. “So that’s the reason you’re here? You hoped the Glen of Winds banshee could undo an old regret?
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