Kat felt like she could drown in Toren’s deep blue eyes.
He let her chin go and stepped back. Kat nearly fell forward, his pull like that of a small moon sucking in an orbiting object. In one swipe he pulled off his tunic and stood naked from the waist up.
“Most of my scars were earned in battle,” he said. Kat stared at the nicks and little puckers of skin of his muscled torso and chest. The fire glowed on his skin, making it look warm. He turned then. “But not all of them.”
Kat stopped the gasp she knew would sound like pity or horror as she surveyed the deep lash marks across Toren’s back. He’d been whipped terribly, probably within an inch of his life. The scars looked old, healed but not forgotten.
Kat reached out and touched one with her fingertip. Toren remained still, like a scarred statue of strength.
“You’ve known pain, too,” Kat whispered.
Toren turned and pulled on his tunic. A hollow feeling of regret collected in Kat’s chest. Where was it coming from? Toren?
But on the outside, he smiled, though it didn’t make it to his eyes. “Brianag says that the scars on the inside are more painful, which is why my sister continually tries to get me to talk about them.”
Kat thought about her children at the orphanage. Some of them had come to her and Lisa in so much emotional pain that all they could do was stare or cry. It had taken months to reach Clara and her brother. “I think your sister is a wise woman,” Kat said.
“I think she would agree with ye, lass.” He grinned. This time the smile reached his eyes, warming them with a flirtatious spark.
Toren looked toward the door, and Kat could hear the faint footsteps in the hallway beyond. “Even though we are not at court,” he said, “ye should bar yer door at night.”
“Should I?” Kat asked, although the words sounded more like a passionate whisper. She cleared her throat and tried to smile.
“If ye wish to keep someone out,” Toren replied and took a step closer.
“Is there someone I should keep out?” Kat continued, as if her tongue was apart from her brain. Was she actually flirting? Lisa would be so proud.
Toren stood close enough that she could feel the energy. He was full of humming power, magic. But he didn’t touch her. Instead he looked down into the flames.
“Fire gives off heat, draws people to it,” Toren said suddenly changing the subject. Not what Kat was expecting. She followed his gaze to the dancing flames, but didn’t say anything. “But when the fire is fed.” He looked at her. “It can consume ye.”
Kat swallowed. “Am I being warned?”
Toren paused. “I lived in yer century for five years, Kat.” Toren’s gaze washed down her body, still clad in the tight fitting shirt and pants. His face grew serious.
The man’s emotions could change with the wind, she thought. Within a heartbeat he’d gone from flirtatious to dangerous.
“I figured out quickly that women do not wait for marriage to let a man into their beds in yer time.”
Normal women, perhaps, Kat thought. But she was anything but normal. Where was he going with this? Was he waiting for her to agree? “I suppose so,” she answered.
His eyes reflected the flame as he stared into her face. “We started something at court, something we could finish,” he said and looked at her sideways.
Kat’s eyes had grown wide under raised eyebrows. She forced herself to blink because the fire’s heat was drying them out. A loud rap on the door made her jump.
Toren turned toward the door, but leaned closer to her ear. “Ye’re playing with fire, Kat,” Toren said low. “Embrace it and ye may be consumed.” His gaze bored into her own. “Otherwise, squelch it quickly else it burn ye.”
“I thought pain made one strong,” she replied on the end of a breath.
He raised one eyebrow. “As long as ye survive it.”
Kat’s tongue went dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“Oh, Chief!” Winifred stepped in the door as Toren turned away. He strode past the woman as she dipped briefly into a curtsey.
Little stars floated before Kat’s eyes and she leaned into the heavy stone blocks of the wall. Was that his answer to whether she should bar the door? The giddy restlessness in Kat’s stomach flipped into nervous nausea. Oh, Lord, how she needed a hot bath. Although perhaps a cold shower would serve her better.
****
Toren grabbed a bar of Brianag’s soap which she kept by the back door that let out into the side yard. He shook his head. Five years and he still remembered the little details of his normal life. Normal life, his grin was more like a sarcastic sneer. Normal life was over, even before he’d been sucked out of his time, forced to live as a twenty-first-century man, and thrown back home again. And now he had an auburn haired temptress messing with his loyalties. Toren strode across the bailey, nodded to one of the guardsmen and jogged toward Loch Melfort.
It had been five years since he’d bathed in the icy mountain run off of Craig Beinn. It was April, far enough into spring that the ice had melted on the top of the loch. As he neared the familiar shoreline, Toren unbelted his plaid, unraveling it as he slowed. Last off, his tunic. Completely nude, Toren dove through the glassy surface. The frigid water slammed against his skin and his muscles contracted. He surfaced. Bloody hell, it was cold!
“Damn twenty-first-century hot showers,” he cursed and threw himself into a broad stroke. Five years of hot showers and central heat had thinned Highland blood. Time to toughen back up. Toren pumped arms and kicked long legs across the loch. Turning, he headed back for the soap. Perhaps he should start with short, daily swims to recondition. At least the cold had cooled the blood that simmered close to boiling whenever he found himself alone with Kat.
Toren grabbed the soap and lathered its pine scent into the hair across his chest and down between his narrow hips. Ahh—good old pine and lye, no moisturizers and aloe extract. No strawberry and candy smelling scents he’d accidentally bought early on during his exile. Steam rose from Toren’s hot skin. He refused to shiver as a Highland wind whipped across the lake, raising the hairs across his body.
“Her century makes men weak,” he growled and dove back under the water to rinse the soap and dirt away. He pushed off the bottom, surfacing, and threw wet, shoulder-length hair back with a flick of his head. He yelled as he willed his leg muscles not to cramp. He flexed toes up and walked out of the lake.
Toren wrapped the dry tartan loosely and grabbed his shirt and the soap. He glanced up at the window to Kat’s room. How did he know that without first counting them? He stopped to count. Aye, it was her window, but he’d known immediately, as if she had some beacon. Or like the binding he’d placed on the dragonfly necklace. Odd. He frowned.
As he walked toward the gates of Craignish, he saw a flicker beyond the slit window of her room. Kat should have a warm bath by now. She’d be sitting in the tub of hot, steaming water up to her lush breasts, her hair over the back rim. Brianag would surely give her some flower smelling soap. His sister was partial to them. Kat’s skin would smell of honeysuckle or lilac. It would be soft after years of pampering in her century, not rough and wind parched.
He’d have to find a way to import some lotions and oils from France to protect her skin, especially during the winter months. If the bloody cold didn’t kill her, Toren thought and felt his stomach tighten. He’d read about resistance to invisible creatures, called germs, when he’d been so sick that first year in Kat’s century. His immune system wasn’t used to the onslaught of new germs that were apparently everywhere. And Kat’s body wouldn’t have any resistance to the unsanitary conditions of his century. He’d talk to the cook about washing and cooking Kat’s food longer than typical and he’d speak to Winifred about boiling water to wash Kat’s things.
“Bloody cold to be bathing,” Eadan called down from the wall.
Toren frowned and trudged forward. He nodded to a few other men as he walked. For a moment he paused outside the
keep, his hand resting on the rough gray stone. Craignish needed him. The history books in the twenty-first century had barely a word about his family’s demise after he’d left. True, he’d returned and saved his sister from a deadly marriage, but was that enough to save his clan? Could that small change effect history? His eyes moved upward, straight toward the tower Kat inhabited with lilac-smelling warm skin. “I’m sorry, lass,” he said and ducked inside. “I must stay here, and I’m not letting ye go.”
Kat sat in the cooling water, unable to fully breathe. The water had felt wonderful and the flowery soap was pure bliss, but then suddenly she’d felt turmoil roll through. A tug of war, regret, resolve. She closed her eyes, fingers touching the dragonfly birthmark on her upper arm. There was no tingling. She touched her right jaw line and felt the puckered skin. “I’m not using any magic, not even thinking about it,” she murmured and lowered further into the water. Yet somehow she was picking up on emotions, strong ones.
“Toren,” she said, her lips hovering above the waterline. The emotions she felt were hard, as hard as the walls, rugged yet beautiful in their sharp lines. Like Toren. Kat closed her eyes, letting the feelings float along her consciousness. She held a hand under the water against her chest. Sadness, longing, anger, regret. And then like that, the feelings dissolved like the minute bubbles along the surface of the water.
A rapping on the door caused her to gasp and cough up the scented water she’d accidentally inhaled. Instead of Toren, Winifred walked in with her sunny smile and a sleeping garment. The sun had set. Kat’s muscles ached from days of riding. Perhaps it would be best to just go to sleep.
Outside the watery glass window pane, Kat saw the full moon rising. Would the full moon have as much effect on her cycle in the sixteenth century as it did back home? Perhaps that’s why her abdomen kept cramping. It wasn’t the venison, it was her period. And not a tampon in sight.
For three days after the full moon, Kat was held prisoner in her room with a rolled up cloth for a pad. Food was brought up and Brianag, Margaret, and Winifred came in and out for entertainment. Apparently menstruating women were confined. What would have happened if the moon had been full during their journey? Kat was torn between irate annoyance at the sexist world she’d been thrown into and the pure pleasure of studying the tapestries around the room and the gloriously authentic gowns Winifred kept bringing by for her inspection.
With legs clenched together to prevent the cloth pad from slipping, Kat stood while Winifred pinned and gathered and cut old seams from a beautiful day gown of the Elizabethan era. There were almost no examples of this type of gown left in her century. Only the costly court gowns remained.
Kat smoothed her hand down the soft woolen weave of medium blue. Small flowers and of all things, butterflies, were stitched in yellow and green threads. “Was this one of Brianag’s dresses?” she asked Winifred, who shook her capped head.
“Nay, it was made for her mother, though the Lady MacCallum never wore it.”
“Why?”
“She always said it belonged to someone else.” Winifred looked up and smiled past the two pins perched between her teeth. “The lady had a touch of sight,” she whispered as if the walls could hear.
Kat ran her finger over the yellow threads stitched into a butterfly. “Toren’s mother?”
“Aye, milady, but she was a good Catholic, though,” she said, nodding vigorously. “But she ken things that would happen sometimes. And she said this dress belonged to another lady who would come one day.”
Kat felt the chill of prophecy spider up her spine.
“Perhaps that lady is ye,” Winifred said, and looked back down, her fingers flitting along the hem with a tiny, flashing needle.
Kat rubbed her upper arm at the knowledge that Toren’s mother had magic of her own. Was that why he was so accepting of her powers? Was that why her magic didn’t work on him? He’d used a binding spell for the necklace so apparently he knew something of magic. Kat’s arm tingled and she scratched through the fabric.
A breeze blew through the room, making the flames in the hearth lie flat and then surge. Winifred looked at the fire and then at Kat. Kat shrugged and Winifred bent her head again just as Drakkina’s misty image coalesced above the stone mantel. Kat gasped.
“Oh.” Winifred jumped. “Did I prick ye with the needle?”
Kat watched as the witch’s image hovered, her long finger drawn to her lips. “No, I...” Kat looked down at the anxious Winifred. She smiled. “I just...” Think Kat, think. “I just had a cramp.” She cupped her abdomen where the kirtle opened to show a green forepart.
Winifred frowned. “I’ve pushed ye too much,” she said, and stood up. “Let me help ye from the gown. I can finish the rest in my rooms and let ye rest.”
Kat nodded her thanks and let Winifred remove the outer parts of the gown. “It will be done on the morrow. I would think yer courses would be finished by then,” Winifred said at the door.
“I’m certain they will be.” Kat answered, trying hard not to glance at Drakkina’s floating image. As soon as the door shut, Kat turned.
“Drakkina.”
Drakkina’s body floated down until she nearly touched the floor. Her hair moved as if a gentle wind blew, and several dragonflies flitted about, alighting on the veil that sat on her shoulders. “You look well, child,” Drakkina said. Her voice seemed much too solid to be coming from her ethereal form.
“Thank you.” What to say to a great Wiccan spirit that was obviously there for something you didn’t have?
“Have you wed your Highlander yet?”
“What?”
“That frowning, rugged brute of a man who’s your soul mate, child.”
Kat didn’t answer.
“Have you at least mated with him, then?”
“Excuse me?” Kat’s eyebrows rose and her hands propped on her hips, although it was difficult to look like a woman with attitude in a loose sixteenth-century kirtle. “You’ve only been gone for a week and a half.”
Drakkina waved a hand in the air, scattering the little dragonflies. “Yes, yes, I’ve learned that it takes time. Frustrating, that part.” Drakkina’s eyes seemed to solidify more, giving them an odd disembodied look. “So did he retrieve my necklace in that week and a half? I don’t feel it here, but he’d probably cloak it. He’s most likely still angry about me sending him to your century.”
Irritation rallied Kat’s bewilderment. “Of course he’s angry, furious, as he should be,” Kat said in her best lecture tone. “You have no right to just pick people up from their lives and fling them to other times.”
“I have every right,” Drakkina said with calm precision. “Saving the worlds from the evil that stalks you is more important than any individual lives.”
“You could have at least given him directions to me, not just let him wander around for five years building hatred towards you.”
“I’ve been told I meddle too much,” Drakkina said. “I thought I’d let you two find one another.” She smiled. “And you did.”
Kat rolled her eyes and ran fingers through her hair. She shuffled over to the bed with the roll of cloth between her legs and sat down. Drakkina narrowed her eyes in question.
“Don’t ask,” Kat said and leaned back on her hands.
“So does he have it?” Drakkina asked, floating along the floor to stand before Kat.
Kat swallowed down the nervous tension and cleared her throat. “No, but he knows where it is and we’ll get it,” she spat before Drakkina could react. “Just give us some time.”
“Don’t you retrieve it,” Drakkina said. “Don’t touch it and don’t use your magic. I’ve just spent the last week flying around the temporal web to confuse those bloody demons. Don’t call them back here by using magic.”
“I know, no magic,” Kat said, her hand absently touching her right jaw line.
Drakkina’s gaze followed her hand. “Your sister, Merewin, could heal those,” Drakkina said. �
��Make your skin smooth and perfect.”
“What?” Kat breathed, her gaze snapping up to Drakkina’s, her chest pounding. “My sister…she could make these go away?”
Drakkina nodded. “I’ve seen her heal worse.”
“How…when? Can I meet her now?” Kat could hardly draw in a full breath of air. Her stomach tightened and flipped. The thought of forever ridding herself of the scars, being normal, smooth was more than enticing, it was life altering. Never to hide again, never to worry if someone could feel anything odd when she allowed them to touch her. Kat sucked in air past the tightness pressing in on her whole body. “Can she do that right now?”
Drakkina stared and shook her head. “Not now, child. I can’t risk magic around you here. When I have the dragonfly I’ll take it far from you and then the demons won’t hear the magic vibrations the healing will cause. It’s your proximity to the dragonfly that allowed them to find you.”
Kat’s heart sank, but she wasn’t finished trying. “I could catch my soul mate better if my skin was flawless,” she said, as a last effort. Toren seemed to appreciate her scars, but still…Kat had always wished them away and one conversation wouldn’t change her mind. She’d like herself better without the scars and one must love oneself before allowing anyone to love them.
“Hmmm.” Drakkina considered, her eyes soft. It wasn’t pity in them, but something else, something almost motherly, like concern. “Perhaps if we go to the stone circle.” Her lips tightened. “Yes, the ancient magic there would shield us.”
Kat’s heart rate catapulted. “Where?”
“The stone circle you were born in.”
“Is it near?”
Drakkina smiled and the dragonflies danced as if they were an outward show of Drakkina’s cheerfulness. “Do you not feel my pull?”
Masquerade (The Dragonfly Chronicles Book 3) Page 18