Highland Charm: First Fantasies

by April Holthaus

  They had finished eating and were sitting with their goblets of wine in hand when Alex and two other Gypsies took their instruments and moved toward the fire. Every night since Alex's return, he and his friends had entertained the men after supper.

  "Ye didn't say the Gypsies had come back," John said, turning to his wife in surprise. "'Tis glad I am to see them. No others understand music as they do." Smiling down at Muriella, he asked, "Will they be staying long?"

  His wife shook her head in regret. "I don't think so." Just that morning, as she knelt in the solar finishing the binding on the tapestry of the loch, she had felt Alex's gaze upon her and turned to see the sadness in his eyes. "Ye won't be here much longer, will ye?" she'd asked quietly.

  Alex had shaken his head. "No. Soon enough we'll be on our way."

  With an effort, Muriella kept her voice steady. "When?"

  "I can't say for certain," he told her, "but I promise ye this. Ye'll know when the time comes."

  She stared down at her hands. "Once ye go, will I see ye again?"

  The Gypsy smiled. "I don't think ye can help but do so."

  Muriella reached out to touch his arm. "Alex—"

  He stopped her with a single glance. "'Tis the way with us, isn't it, to hear things that haven't been said?"

  Muriella looked into his eyes and saw there all she wanted to say and all she wanted to hear. "Aye."

  "So be it. We've said enough." She'd thought there was a quaver in his voice, but could not be certain.

  Now she watched him settle by the fire, strumming his harp softly. When John recognized the notes of a familiar song, he rose. At the question in his wife's eyes, he explained, "I miss the magic of the clareschaw and would find it again tonight."

  His voice was low and husky with promise. Muriella smiled as he brushed his lips over her cheek. "Soon," he told her. Then he was gone.

  As John made his way toward the fire, Muriella felt Alex's gaze upon her and looked up. There was a message in his gray green eyes, but she could not guess what it meant.

  When a servant had brought John his harp, he sat by the fire with the hollowed gray stone at his back. He listened for a moment, then began to move his fingers over the strings. Eyes closed in concentration, he played the notes as if they were a part of his blood and bone. Muriella locked her hands together on the tabletop and leaned forward listening. Then, softly at first, her husband began to sing.

  An thou were my own thing, I would love thee, I would love thee. An thou were my own thing, How dearly would I love thee.

  Muriella bit her lip. She had heard the song before—she could not remember when. Resting her head on her braided fingers, she let the sound of John's voice enwrap her.

  To merit I no claim can make, But that I love; and for yer sake, What man can, more I'll undertake, So dearly do I love thee.

  John looked up until his eyes met hers across the crowded room. All noise ceased: the chatter of the men, the scratching of the dogs beneath the tables, and the clatter of pewter on wood as the servants removed the last of the meal. The clinging notes of the clareschaw were all that was real. In that moment, John's clear blue gaze drew her back in time to a distant memory; the dark passageway, the flickering candles, Alex at the harpsichord, and her husband singing in a voice that had made her shiver with its beauty. She realized then that the Gypsy had chosen this song in order to make her remember.

  An thou were my own thing, I would love thee, I would love thee. An thou were my own thing, How dearly would I love thee.

  John's eyes never left his wife's face. With his song and his voice and the sensual movement of his fingers on the strings, he seemed to echo her thoughts and her need. Muriella rose at last to make her way toward him.

  While love does at his altar stand, Have thee my heart, give me thy hand, And with this smile thou shalt command The will of him who loves thee.

  Her heart beat in time with the slow, enticing cadence of the song as she moved between the tables without knowing she did so. She knew only that her husband's voice was calling her, mesmerizing her as it had done once before. Without so much as a touch of his hand, he was drawing her toward him, weaving an invisible web of notes with which to bind her.

  How dearly would I love thee.

  She reached the place where John sat and knelt at his feet, one hand on his bent knee.

  My passion, constant as the sun,

  Flames stronger still, will ne'er have done,

  till Fate my threads of life have spun,

  Which breathing out,

  I'll love thee.

  Slowly, slowly, his music dispelled her fears, scattered them like dry forgotten leave in the October wind. John's fingers lay still on the strings, yet the notes seemed to linger in the air for a long moment. Muriella leaned closer, her fingers warm against his knee, her thick braid falling over her shoulder.

  "I think—" he began.

  "Aye," she murmured.

  Without another word, he set his harp aside. They rose together, joining hands. Muriella felt an ache in her throat when she looked up at her husband's dark, bearded face, touched now with shadows, now with light as he guided her out of the reach of the fire. At the foot of the stairs, Muriella stopped and turned to Alex with a smile of gratitude.

  But the Gypsy was gone. She did not look at the wide oak doors that opened into the starless night, for she knew he would not be there. Ye'll know when the time comes. Too soon, it had come. She felt his loss in the painful dragging of her heartbeat and the tears that burned behind her eyes. Yet as John slid his arm around her waist to draw her close, she smiled, if a little sadly. For days Alex had been beside her, trying to ease her sorrow and make her understand her fears, but now, she realized, he'd done all he could. In the end, inevitably, he'd turned away, delivering the choice back into her hands.

  * * *

  John and Muriella did not speak, not even when her chamber door was closed behind them and they stood alone. For a long moment, palms cupped around her flushed cheeks, John simply looked at his wife—at the luminous green of her eyes, the soft curve of her parted lips, the graceful lines of her neck. He caught his breath in admiration and wondered how he could have believed, even for an instant, that he could live without her.

  The stillness whispering around him like a wordless invitation, he reached for the leather thong that bound Muriella's hair. She stood, eyes closed, face tilted towards the light as he worked the thong free, then slowly, one long gleaming strand at a time, began to unbind her heavy braid. When her hair hung rippling down to her knees, he ran his fingers through it again and again, kissing the curling tendrils as they fell across his callused palms.

  Then, with his hands still caught in her hair, he moved so near she could hear his shallow breathing in her ear. Muriella opened her eyes and took his face in her hands, burying her fingers in his beard. Without a sound, she drew him closer until their mouths met and clung together, warm and moist and fierce with need. The tangle of his beard brushed her sensitive cheeks and she sighed with pleasure as he slipped his tongue between her parted teeth. Unexpectedly, John drew away, smiling a promise that needed no words. As slowly as he had unbound her hair, he now untied the laces of her gown.

  Muriella could feel the movement of his fingers, kept from her skin by the soft barrier of fabric. She shivered at the need that rose within her, a bright white heat that stopped her voice in her throat. She had never wanted John so much before, never known how bright an agony her yearning could be. She dug her fingers into his shoulders in a silent plea, but he would not hurry.

  When the laces came free in his hands, he lifted the gown over her head, then drew the kirtle up an inch at a time. The cool satin clung to her, caressing her hips and thighs like the mist curling softly through the night beyond her window. She groaned and reached for him, but he only smiled as he knelt and began to brush aside the strands of her hair with the movement of his lips over her naked skin.

  The spinning began deep
within her—the hot whirl of colors that stole her breath away—while John kissed her thigh tenderly, then trailed his tongue upward to her hip, the curve of her waist, her stomach and, finally, her small white breasts. He was torturing her with a pleasure too sweet to bear. When his warm, circling mouth reached the hollow of her throat, she cried out, pulling him to his feet. He caught her in his arms and held her, but she was not satisfied. With her hands curled against his shoulders, she guided him back toward the curtained bed. Somehow he lifted her onto the furs, and, pausing only long enough to discard his own clothes, moved up beside her.

  Skin to skin, he kissed her recklessly, his lips as searing and demanding now as they had been gentle before. With a gasp of pleasure, he slid his hands over her back, seeking the quivering of her body that told him her need was as great as his. With her tongue, she followed the line of his neck to his ear, then touched her lips to his again.

  She was shaking from the white darkness that whirled within her, from the paths of liquid heat John's hands traced over her bare skin, from the wild, tender pressure of his mouth. With willing hands, she traced the curling hairs on his chest. Drawing her close, John intertwined his legs with hers and they rolled across the mattress, while her hair wound itself around their bodies, binding them together in a fine, soft web. Sinking her fingers into his flesh, Muriella cried out, knowing her desire was too great, that the spinning would grow so bright and hot within her that, eventually, her heart would burst. But she did not care.

  With a groan, John entered her at last. He began to move against her, rocking, rocking, tangling himself in her rippling hair. He was with her everywhere; no part of her remained untouched. As she gasped and closed her eyes in wonder, the bright darkness shattered and fell in glimmering fragments, filling the aching emptiness inside her.

  Muriella sighed as John shuddered once more, then drew her into the curve of his arm while his rasping breath caressed her damp forehead. When he closed his arms protectively around her, her eyes filled with tears.

  Her husband felt her tremble and looked up to see the shimmer of moisture in her eyes. Leaning down to trace the path of a single teardrop with his tongue, he whispered, "Why?"

  "Because I'm so happy to have ye back."

  He felt a constriction in his throat that would not let him speak. Almost, it was enough to make him forget.

  Chapter 49

  They awakened to a morning that, for once, was free of storm clouds. Muriella lay in her husband's arms while they talked of Andrew and Kilchurn and Colin's return to Edinburgh. They talked of Elizabeth and her husband and the changes in her since the wedding. By unspoken consent, they did not mention Muriella's fear or what it would mean when they left the warm safety of her chamber for the cool misted brilliance of the world beyond.

  When at last they fell silent, John drew away from his wife so he could see her face. "I've been thinking a great deal about Cawdor," he said.

  "And so have I."

  He brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. "We don't really have a choice," he said. "We have to go back. We've lived on my brother's sufferance for too long, and Cawdor is where we belong. Besides, the keep has been too many years without a master."

  "I know," his wife agreed. "'Tis not only Cawdor that's suffered from our neglect. I need to go back, though 'tis not a pleasing thought. But mayhap there..."

  "Mayhap what?"

  Muriella contemplated John's face, cloaked with morning shadows. "Mayhap there I can begin to understand."

  John nodded but did not trust himself to answer. He was thinking how lovely she was in the gray morning light. Her hair was a splendid, glittering web across the pillow—a woven net that enwrapped him and would not set him free. She was not human, he thought. She was of some other world—a Kelpie, a witch who bound him with the magic that glowed in her hypnotic eyes.

  Muriella's gaze met his—dark with secrets, bright with desire—and in that instant, he felt they were frozen in time. They could not go back, because they knew too much. Yet they could not move forward until she was ready to do so. In a way he was glad. The waiting would give him time. Time to prove to her what he now knew with certainty: whatever his wife had seen, whatever she feared, whatever she believed, he could not hurt her—ever.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, John stood in the center of the crowded courtyard amidst a melee of stamping horses and excited men. The servants came and went with bundles and baskets, hanging them from the backs of the animals and trying to avoid the hooves of the restless horses. The morning mist had not yet burned away; it clung in the corners and draped itself over the rough cobblestones, making the servants, still half asleep, stumble about, laughing and shouting when they blundered into one another. The cool, damp air rang with curses barely muffled and the panting of horses long past ready to be moving.

  John surveyed the scene with a shake of his head. It was a good thing he had sent the bulk of their possessions to Cawdor beforehand or the confusion would have been worse now. He glanced up when he heard Richard's familiar voice.

  "Out of my way, ye fool, before yer horse tramples me underfoot. Yer bags are secure. Ye should be waitin' outside the gate where ye aren't in danger of takin' several lives at any moment."

  "Besides," Adam called down from the back of his restive animal, "I prefer the dangers of overcrowdin' to the sound of yer naggin' voice."

  Richard snorted and turned away to bully a servant who had dropped a basket at his feet.

  John smiled to himself. He had been touched when Richard and Adam and several others had asked if they could accompany him to Cawdor. Even Andrew had insisted he would not be left behind. The men could have stayed at Kilchurn where they were comfortable and secure, but they had chosen instead to go to a place where the people would not welcome the Campbells, where their lives would be a struggle for more than a little time to come.

  "Ye could have ordered us to go, but ye didn't do it," Richard had explained with a shrug. "Besides, we can't leave ye alone at the mercy of the Calders and Roses. Then again," he had added, grinning, "there hasn't been a battle here for weeks on end and the men are cravin' some excitement. We thought we just might find it at Cawdor."

  John had grasped the man's hand firmly. "Thank ye," was all he'd said, but it had been enough. Now he looked up sharply when he saw Duncan leading his cousin's saddled horse.

  "He's more than eager for a long ride, m'lord. I can't keep him still any longer."

  "I'll take him now. Ye should see to yer own animal. We'll be leaving soon."

  "Not soon enough for me," Duncan called over his shoulder as he headed back toward the stables.

  John smiled after him. Apparently his cousin was also hoping for some excitement. "Have ye seen my wife?" he called to Megan when she drew her animal up beside his.

  "She said she was goin' to bid farewell to the loch."

  Nodding, he told her, "All is nearly ready. Richard will tell ye when 'tis done and then ye and the others can follow. I'll go find Muriella now."

  "Aye, m'lord. We'll be along soon," Megan called after him.

  * * *

  Muriella sat on the ridge overlooking the wide expanse of Loch Awe, where swirling mist hovered above the water, wrapping the wooded islands in drifts of cool white magic. In that moment, the woods, the water full of shifting secrets, the silver-touched leaves of the trees all around made her shiver with their mysterious beauty. Beyond the trees she could see the jagged mountains, their sides streaked with streams of silver white that shattered the brooding blackness. Frightened and enthralled by their magnificence, she turned to see the hills reflected in the shimmering surface of the loch.

  She tilted her head, listening, and peered at the softly undulating water, but today there was no lovely face captured in the waves. Today there was no high, lamenting voice, too beautiful and piercing to be real. Today, in the stillness of early morning, there was only a whisper of memory to tell her the face had ever been there.
<
br />   "Muriella!"

  The sound of her husband's voice broke the spell that held her in its grasp. With the ache of parting strong within her, she pulled the reins, guiding her horse down the ridge the way it had come an hour since. Moving slowly but without hesitation, she turned her back on the woman of the loch and started back in time toward the nightmare that was Cawdor.

  * * *

  Muriella had lost count of the hours. As they rode through the woods for mile after wandering mile, she'd grown more and more withdrawn. She'd been grateful for Megan's lively chatter, which had kept her mind off the stillness within her.

  "Look at the hills, m'lady," the servant exclaimed. "They're so gentle and low they don't frighten me like the mountains near Kilchurn."

  Muriella nodded but did not speak. It was all so painfully familiar—the hills, the green moors, the groves of oak and hawthorn and pine. Strange that she should remember so well what had passed in a flurry of terror that afternoon four years ago.

  "Och, 'tis so lovely and peaceful here," Megan continued, undeterred by Muriella's reticence. "Why didn't ye tell me there was such a world outside of Kilchurn?"

  Her mistress smiled at Megan's obvious delight. The servant's enjoyment helped ease Muriella's mood a little.

  Long before the horses came upon the river, she sensed they were nearing Cawdor. Her heartbeat quickened then slackened, and her hands grew clammy. She would see it again—the wall, the tower, the river. She could see them now inside her head in every vivid detail. It was as if the violence of her emotions that day had burned these landmarks forever into her memory.

  The riders followed the river as it wound through the rolling hills and disappeared beneath the thick canopy of trees. When they came at last within sight of the castle, Muriella slowed her horse so the animal fell behind the others. Oddly, she felt nothing; her feelings were cloaked in a protective veil that left her numb. Then John was beside her, leading her wordlessly under the gate toward the huge, square tower that was Cawdor Castle.