After all, hadn’t he had enough women?
And yet, it hadn’t merely been the hope of another conquest. It had been the idea of being a hero.
The witch’s accusations had shamed him. They weren’t words hurtled at him, easily deflected; it was the truth ringing in his soul and the realization the consequences could not be refuted. He had let his mother and the sorceress she kept as a lady’s maid die because he’d wanted to be a hero.
Evina watched him, her eyes a stormy gray and sharp with intelligence. She did not press him to continue despite the weight of silence filling the space between them.
“I was charged with escorting my mother and her lady’s maid home from a neighboring castle,” he said finally. “The woods outside were always rumored to be thick with outlaws and thieves. I left them alone for only a bit of time, but…” he trailed off, unable to say the words aloud.
The last time he had shared the grisly details, it had taken years to loosen his tongue.
“…But it was enough for harm to befall them,” Evina surmised.
Relief eased some of the tension from Duncan’s shoulders. Evina was a warrior. She understood the ugliness of death, and Duncan expected she would not press him for details of gore. Surely she’d had her fair share in her life.
He nodded. “It was too late to help them, and the men who had attacked them had fled. I was aware my mother’s maid was a witch, but I hadna expected her to ever curse me.”
“What was the curse?” Evina crossed her long legs under the heavy skirt of her kirtle. Duncan tried not to envision the way they looked beneath the cloth. A feat not easily done when the garment draped over the outline of her shapely legs.
It was far easier to observe Evina than to answer her. For this was where explaining the spell became difficult. If Gillespie was right, and somehow Evina might possibly be a daughter of Morrigan, telling her of the enchantment would strip away her freedom to fall in love of her own choosing.
Not that Duncan believed Gillespie. He didn’t possess the strength to hope. Not again. Not when it was so debilitating to have it shattered.
He looked up and out the window several feet away in time to catch a leaf spiraling from the tree. He didn’t see it land, but knew regardless how it would crumble to ash upon its landing and blow away on an unseen breeze.
The tree. He had been its prisoner. He was so damn obsessed with watching it, ticking off every leaf to fall, he’d never once left the castle. Even when faced with Evina leaving, with the threat of her not returning, stripping away what might be his only prospect at living in his miserably short life - even then he could not bring himself to leave that accursed tree.
“I canna leave the castle grounds,” he said. It was not a lie. There was far more truth in his words than he wanted to admit.
“And the rowan tree…” Evina gestured to the window. “It’s to deflect any powerful countering enchantment, I assume. Rowan trees are difficult to curse or imbue with magic. Anyone attempting to thwart the spell would have to be quite formidable.”
“Exactly,” Duncan agreed. Truthfully, he hadn’t considered it. Magic had been a fascination of his mother’s, even Gillespie’s, but never had it held his interest. Especially after having been on the receiving end of it. The very thought of enchantments and spells repelled him.
Evina swung her gaze to him. “And people can come in, like me and the servants. But ye canna leave.”
She was filling in all the pieces for him. He couldn’t have planned the story better himself.
“Aye,” he said simply.
Evina eased deeper into her seat in apparent contemplation. “It must have been hard to lose your mother and your freedom on the same day.”
Duncan swallowed, unable to reply. What could he say? That regardless of the passage of time, the pain was as raw, the guilt as weighty? “What of yer mother?” he asked.
It was not only a way to direct the conversation from the emotional wound he did not want ripped open anew, but also a chance to find out more about this mysterious woman. Surely it was not by coincidence that she was able to find the castle when not one soul in over fourteen years had managed to do so.
“I dinna know my mother.” Evina’s answer came with indifference.
Duncan straightened in spite of himself. “Yer father raised ye?” If she didn’t know for certain, her mother could be anyone.
Even a goddess.
Mayhap even Morrigan.
“I didn’t know my father either,” Evina said. “I was found by a monastery when I was a girl. I dinna remember anything before then.”
“How old were ye when it happened?”
“Too old to be forgetting my prior life,” she replied. “The monks assumed I was nearly ten.”
The hair on his arms rose on end. “What monastery?” The question came out too hard, too desperate. “I only ask as there are many near here.” He hoped his amended response came out more smoothly. Less suspicious.
Her gaze sharpened and he realized he hadn’t been clever enough. “It actually was near here,” she said slowly. “A place so small, the monks dinna bother to give it a name.”
“How were ye found?” This time he didn’t bother to hide the tension from his voice.
“I was left for dead on their doorstep with no’ more than a ratty dress and a fine ring.”
A fine ring.
Duncan’s world spun. “May I see it?”
Evina tensed.
“I—yer story is familiar to me.” He breathed in slowly in an attempt to control the tremble in his limbs. “I believe I know the owner of the ring. I need to be certain.”
She dug something out from her pack and thrust it toward him without ceremony.
There, sparkling in a stream of enchanted sunlight and resting in the palm of Evina’s hand, was the ruby ring Duncan had slipped from his hand and placed on the girl that fateful day.
She had been the reason for the curse.
Evina was the source of the entirety of his pain.
CHAPTER 5
“IT WAS YE.” Duncan world blazed with a bestial rage. “It was ye.”
Evina leapt to her feet, her body tense, eyes alight. “What are ye talking about?” A dagger showed in her hand, drawn with such haste, Duncan had not had time to see.
“I saved ye,” Duncan bit out.
She drew back her weapon and regarded him the way a hawk eyes its prey.
All the years of anger and hurt and loss welled up inside him, wild and uncontrollable.
“I saved ye,” Duncan bellowed, loosing every emotion he’d held within him for half a lifetime. Duncan lifted the chair Evina had abandoned and threw it across the room. The heavy piece hit a painting and punched into the soft canvas before they both crashed to the floor.
Evina did not flinch away from him. “Ye’re mad.”
“Aye,” he snarled. “Ye’re damn right I am, woman. I wouldna have ever left my mother alone in the woods had I no’ heard ye scream. I’d have been at her side when she was attacked. I’d have protected her. But ye had to scream. Ye needed to be rescued and I left them to help ye.”
Evina’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“I lost everything because of ye.” He caught the corner of a large cabinet and flung it from the wall. It careened to the floor and sent the contents scattering. He reached for a painting, intent to tear it from the wall and hurtle it into the air.
A pair of small hands gripped the frame, stopping him.
He snapped his glare down at Evina who stared up at him without fear, despite his size and the force of his ferocity.
“I dinna believe ye,” she said.
He tensed and she squared her jaw.
“If ye intend to hit me, prepare to be struck in return.” The skin around her eyes tightened. “And dinna say ye’ve no’ been warned.”
His ire spiked at the implication he would strike a lass. “I wouldna ever hit a woman,” he snarled.
“Aye, a
nd most of us wouldna have behaved in such a tantrum, tossing fine furniture about as though they were cabers.”
Duncan grunted, but released his hold on the painting. It was an ugly thing anyway, a gilded frame of a sour-faced woman in ancient clothing. Its destruction would have been no loss.
Evina put a hand on her hip. The action only accentuated the slenderness of her waist, the curve of her hip. Duncan’s awareness focused in on her, noting the flush to her face, the spark of her eyes. Battle enhanced what was already lush. The extreme pull of his attraction served to further heat his churlish temperament.
Evina didn’t appear to notice his distraction, or if she did, she didn’t care. “What was I wearing when I was found?”
He heaved a sigh. “A dress. It was blue. Dirty. Only reached yer knees with ye being such a waif of a thing. I put the ring on yer finger when…”
“When what?” The hard expression on her face softened.
If she’d been lovely fighting, she was exquisite in her vulnerability. The shield lowered, and her heart was exposed in her wide-eyed stare, revealing the soul-deep hurt he’d never taken the time to contemplate. He had considered only himself and his torment. It had never occurred to him that she too had suffered loss.
“When I worried they might send ye away for being a lass.” Duncan scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “I dinna want ye to be without coin and starve. I regretted it as soon as I gave it to ye,” he confessed. “It was my da’s.”
She bent and lifted something from the smashed fragments of wood and glass on the ground. It caught the sun and glinted with brilliant red. “Ye should have it. Since it belongs to ye.”
Evina drew in a shaky breath and shoved her hand toward him. She had nothing of value save the armor and weapons on her body. And his da’s ring. She held it out to him without asking for coin or favor in return. How he hated himself for reaching for the piece of fine jewelry, accepting her offer.
The stone was warm against his palm, as if it had locked in her heat.
She curled her empty hand into a fist and lowered it to her side. “Tell me about when ye found me.”
“Ye were lying by a dead man. I assumed he’d endeavored to protect ye. I dinna see who he’d been fighting.”
“Who was the man?”
Duncan shook his head. “I dinna look at him. I thought ye were both dead, but ye groaned and I knew I had to get ye somewhere safe.”
Her face hardened. “And then I ruined yer life, aye?”
A ghost of his former fury flickered through him. “Aye. That’s when ye ruined my life. If ye never cried for help—”
“Ye wouldna have made the choice to come?” She arched her brow.
“I wouldna have had to make the choice to come,” he growled, his ire returning.
“It was still a choice.” Evina lifted her head and met his eyes.
She was a tall woman, but nowhere near his height, and certainly not as large as his muscular frame. Regardless, she regarded him with reproach, a fearless mercenary, this warrior woman.
“I thank ye for saving my life,” she said in a tone that bespoke of no gratitude. “But I willna allow ye to put the blame on me when it was ye who made the decision.”
He opened his mouth to argue, and closed it. Damn her. She was right. It had been his decision. Much as he wanted to put the blame on her, and as much as his mind screamed for him to be blameless, she was right.
“This was yer decision as well.” She waved a hand over the destruction. “Ye held onto yer anger these years and let it fester into this, turning ye from a man into a beast.”
She walked away from him and bent to retrieve her cloak.
“Are ye leaving?” he asked.
She scanned the chaos of tossed furniture and did not answer.
“My lady.” Gillespie darted in, his hand waving frantically in the air. “Dinna go, please. I beg of ye.” He bent over the fallen cabinet and strained to lift it. “We will…clean this…”
The massive wooden structure rose a sliver before crashing down once more. He frowned down at it. “It will be cleaned. Please.”
Evina gave a small smile. She set down her cloak, crouched beside Gillespie and lifted the cabinet to its rightful place against the wall with surprising ease. Duncan’s own eyes widened with Gillespie’s.
The lass was certainly different than any other Duncan had ever met. Not that he’d met many in some time.
Evina turned back to Gillespie and considered him. “I’ll think on it.”
Gillespie remained wordless, his gaze darting first to the upright cabinet, then to her. “Of course, my lady. Take yer time. We’ll be here.” His words rambled out with haste and he gave a nervous laugh. “If ye need us. Or wish to talk. We’re here, the both of us.”
Evina smiled again at him, scowled at Duncan, and marched away in the direction of her bedroom. The ring weighed heavy in Duncan’s palm. He had been an arse. He’d said cruel, selfish things, and launched into a tantrum - aye, a tantrum as she’d said - and he’d stripped away the one item of value she possessed.
“Evina.” He called her name more quietly than he’d intended, but she stopped. He strode toward her, and held out the bit of jewelry. “Take it. It’s been gone from my hand for longer than it’d been there. I dinna need it.” And it was true. In less than a fortnight, the ring, the rowan tree, all of it - nothing would matter.
Her face remained solemn. “I dinna need it anymore either. It doesna mean what I once thought.”
“What was that?”
She met his eyes and turned slowly away to make her way down the hall once more. “Hope.”
EVINA WAITED until she was alone with the door tightly closed before she curled into the burning sensation in her chest. While she might be invincible to injury, she was not immune to the pain of a broken heart.
The ring.
She gritted her teeth and shook her head. Her eyes prickled and her throat welled with tightness, as if the pain in her heart was trying to burst out of her.
What a fool she’d been to assume the ring belonged to her father. She’d spent too many days and nights letting her fingertip graze the cool, smooth surface of the stone while imagining the man it had belonged to. A good man with a castle who would take her from the abbey she’d been sent to, away from the abbess who’d pinched and criticized until Evina had run away at the age of thirteen to hire out her sword.
All she had wanted was a home, a family. Love.
Now it was gone.
The ring was not her father’s and she was nowhere nearer to discovering who she was than ten years ago when she awoke with no memory.
A choked cry broke from her lips. A weak, pathetic mewl no warrior should make. She shoved her fist against her mouth, heedless of how her teeth scraped at her knuckles, and tried to heave away the hurt of her grief for the loss of a man who didn’t exist.
She was an orphan, a girl whose past was as lost as her parents. A nobody. A simple mercenary for money whose luck would pass and who would eventually die unknown on the battlefield.
Everything in her blackened with despair and she crumpled into the desolation of it. A wet heat trailed down her face. She touched her fingers to her cheek and they came away wet. With tears.
She blinked.
Blood. Tears. This castle elicited more from her than she’d had in the last fourteen years. She hadn’t known who she was, and she’d been alone, but at least she had hope to cradle in her heart.
Now, she had nothing.
She glowered at the looming bed in front of her with its ridiculous tower of mattresses. Such frivolity for such discomfort.
Anger took hold of her, as fierce and as ugly a display as the one Duncan had shown. The very anger she’d chastised him for now reared up within her. She climbed the stairs, gripped the first mattress and flung it to the ground.
She glared down at the limp bit of stuffed linen with malicious satisfaction. It had been an uncomfortable thing that drew bl
ood and left her brain foggy with exhaustion. She grabbed the second mattress and sent it joining the first. Victory soared through her.
She tugged the third, then the fourth, and kept grabbing until she had only one mattress left. The discarded stack lay in a useless pile beside the bed like a heap of bodies, and it brought her immeasurable satisfaction.
She regarded the single remaining mattress, still grander than what she usually slept atop. Exhaustion took her then, beckoning her onto the bed to close her eyes against the emotions ripping at her, promising the slumber she had gone without the night before.
Evina found a corner of the blue velvet blanket buried beneath the discarded mound and yanked it free. She carried it against her body as a child might do, bypassed the empty stairs jutting uselessly up the side of the bed, and fell upon the bed.
She sank into the blissful softness and the linen pressed cool upon the heat of her cheeks. She rolled over several times, testing out the surface she lay upon. No pokes or jabs or anything sharp.
She breathed out a long, grateful sigh and gave in to the caress of the bed. Sleep slipped over her body and welcomed her into a wonderful, numb darkness.
But it did not last long.
A searing heat tore down her back, an explosion of blinding pain unlike anything she’d ever felt before. This time it did not stop when her eyes flew open, it raked and it sliced and it stabbed. Then Evina did something she had not done since the day Duncan had found her - she screamed.
CHAPTER 6
THE SCREAM PIERCED Duncan’s soul and chilled him from the inside out. He dropped the chair he’d been pushing into place and ran. The cry did not come again, but he knew exactly where it’d come from, and who had done it.
Evina.
Gillespie’s shoes slapped on the hard ground behind Duncan, but he didn’t slow to wait for his servant. Evina needed him. Duncan had to get to her.
He stopped in front of her door and threw it open without bothering to knock. The coppery odor of blood hit him before anything else. Chills raced down his skin and left his hair standing on end. Mattresses lay in a heap beside the bed, shielding it from his view.
Her Highland Beast: A Scottish Medieval Romance with a Fairytale Twist Page 4