Legends

by Deborah Smith

  You’ll drink my tea, she vowed silently, gritting her teeth. And before I’m done with you, you’ll learn to be civil and listen.

  Still, he reminded her of Jonathan, and that brought the worries. Jonathan would have been unconquerable in a situation such as this. Of course, her husband’s strength had been of a quieter brand, a shy kind where women had been concerned. And he had been gentle and good humored, a big, sweet ox of a man, not a quick-tempered wolf like Kincaid.

  She rose wearily and went to the cottage’s front room, where she set a pot of beef stew to simmer on a small gas stove. Stuck here in the highlands with only the electricity from a gas-run generator—and that only to work the well pump—Elgiva longed for the bare comforts of her little apartment over her clothing shop in Druradeen. Without the stove, the gas heater in the other room, and the oil lamps hanging from the ceiling beams, life here would have been a bit too rustic.

  Of course, she and Rob had grown up in worse, living in a crofter’s cottage as outcasts from Angus MacRoth’s hearth. He had treated them as if they were strangers, not his kin, his brother’s orphans. He didn’t care if the other MacRoths despised him for turning his back on his nearest blood; Angus had never asked for the love of his kinspeople or his tenants, even when many of them were one and the same.

  Douglas Kincaid’s dog padded into the room and nuzzled her hand. The unexpected comfort weakened her defenses, and tears stung her eyes. After she set Kincaid free, she’d have to go into hiding. It might be years before he stopped searching for her. He was the kind of man who would crave revenge. No matter. She’d run, if she had to, and leave the MacRoth holdings in Rob’s control.

  Rob would make a good laird. He wanted to write his historical novel, not manage an estate, but as the other rightful heir, it was his duty. Elgiva had been the best candidate to lead the kidnapping. Douglas Kincaid had an eye for the ladies. A woman might win his cooperation.

  The evening wind whipped around the shingled eaves outside. Elgiva gazed wistfully through a small window set deep in the stone wall. A vista of craggy, heathered moor spread into the distance, with thick forests and clear, deep streams skirting its hollows.

  They were shadowy and wild, these moors, and it was no wonder that the old ones still believed that they were populated by beautiful fairies and shaggy brownies, mischievous elves and merry fauns. The Good People, such as they were called, could be very helpful. She loved their legends and the heritage that had birthed them; she loved her country, and she loved the land that had belonged to her clan for seven centuries.

  Elgiva craned her head anxiously when she heard movement from Kincaid’s cell. She hurried back into the big room. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring angrily at the floor. His dog trotted to the cell and sat down as close as he could, pushing against the bars.

  The big, sweet dog considers Kincaid a saint, Elgiva noted. But it didn’t mean that he was one.

  She went to her own bed, a large oak antique with angels carved into the headboard, set in the corner across from the fireplace. She sank slowly onto bright quilts covering a plump feather mattress. Then she clasped her hands in her lap and simply waited to see what would happen next.

  Douglas Kincaid swung his head toward her. He scanned her from head to foot with narrowed, mocking eyes. “Do you have a name?” he asked sharply. “Or should I just call you whatever comes to mind? I can think of several unpleasant choices, at the moment.”

  “I’m sure you can. For my part, I’ll call you what suits you best. Braggart. Show-off. Thief.”

  “Don’t forget ‘Innocent.’ I haven’t done anything illegal or immoral.”

  “It’s not immoral to take what isn’t yours?”

  “I wanted a home in Scotland! Angus MacRoth offered to sell me a home. I don’t understand why his heirs would protest. As soon as I sign the agreement, they’ll get one million pounds. That’s a lot of MacMoney.”

  “The money won’t go to them. Angus willed it to the Bank of Scotland.”

  “Why would he do a pointless thing like that?”

  “Because he was a hateful old man who liked to hurt people. Angus’s heirs don’t want the money, anyhow. They want their homes and their lives left in peace. You’re planning to kick everyone out.”

  “I simply want my privacy. I’ll pay to help everyone relocate.”

  “And close the village down? What would you do with the village?”

  “I won’t get rid of the village. It’s cute.”

  “It’s not cute! It’s home!”

  “It’s got potential. I might build a hotel there; put in a golf course—”

  “We don’t play golf! We fish for a living, and raise sheep, and farm, and run little shops, and go to church, and send our children to school, and—”

  “Tourists play golf,” he said in exasperation. “Tourists bring money.”

  “Tourists come to gawk! They make the locals feel like actors in an amusement park!”

  “Any country that has the Loch Ness monster is already an amusement park, as far as I’m concerned. Legends are worth a fortune on the open market, and this country is crawling with ’em.”

  Elgiva hummed an old tune and reached over to her spinning wheel. She wrapped one finger around the bobbin thread. “I have wound you with my strongest work, Douglas. I have you prisoner. I’ll keep you prisoner. I’ll let you go the day after your sneaky little option is up. By law, a laird’s unclaimed estate goes to his nearest heirs. MacRoth Hall is by rights their home!”

  “And I’ll be very, very good to it. I’m going to put in a swimming pool and a helicopter pad.”

  Years of anger welled up inside her, along with a reckless urge to tell Douglas Kincaid sad stories he wouldn’t care to hear. Elgiva went to the hearth and pulled a black cape from its peg by the fireplace. “I’m going for a walk now. I’ll be doing this every afternoon.” She whipped the cape around her and fastened it at her throat.

  “I hope you like beef stew, Douglas. Can you smell it simmering on the stove? We’ll have supper just as soon as I get back. You can break your bowl on the floor. What fun! Come along, dog.”

  Kincaid jumped up and threw himself at the bars, grabbing them and jerking viciously. The violent power of his body and hands was an unnerving sight. “Who are you?” he yelled. “What personal stake do you have in this?”

  As she strode from the room with his dog at her heels, she called calmly, “Angus MacRoth stole from his own kin, Douglas. His holdings will go back to his heirs, and there’ll be naught you can do about it. No Scottish court will heed your protests.”

  “I’ll own that land, and I’ll own you!”

  Elgiva shivered. She had read that Douglas Kincaid never made idle threats.

  Douglas prowled his cell. He shoved the table and chair aside so that he could pace. When he heard the heavy door creak open in the outer room of the cottage, he stepped to the bars and gazed out with pure animosity.

  His kidnapper swept into view, her cheeks rosy from the cold, the magnificent black cape swirling around her. The sight was so affecting that he couldn’t speak for a moment—damn her, she was incredible to look at, and the spirit that gleamed in those golden eyes drew him despite his fury. Sam, tongue lolling, bounded over to the cell without the least bit of shame.

  “Sam, you damned traitor,” Douglas accused, but stroked his head.

  “ ‘Sam,’ is it?” the woman asked. “Good! I’ll call him Shom. Short for Shomhairle. That’s the Gaelic form of Samuel.” She clapped her hands. “You’re a good Scottish dog now, Shom!”

  Sam thumped his tail as if he understood. Douglas glared from him to the woman. “You left without giving me a chance to ask more questions,” he protested. “Coward.”

  “I thought you needed a wee bit of privacy to mull things over.” She shrugged the cape off and hung it on a wooden peg beside the hearth. “Besides, I had a fierce need for my evening stroll. The moors called to me.”

  “They probab
ly said, ‘Run for your life. You’re in deep trouble.’ ”

  She shrugged, but he was surprised to see her shoulders slump a little. “So be it.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me your name?”

  “No.” She fluffed her long plaid skirt then knelt on the stone hearth to stir up the fire. “I’ll not make it easier for you to track me after you’re set free. Your hired hounds will sniff out my identity quick enough.”

  “What keeps you from just murdering me?” he asked nonchalantly. “Wouldn’t that be simpler than keeping me—rather, trying to keep me—penned up for a month?”

  “Aye. If I were an evil person. But I won’t be turned into a killer, even by the disgusting likes of you. So rest easy.”

  “And I suppose that you won’t explain how you managed to crash my New Year’s Eve party and carry me off without getting caught.”

  “I have a drop or two of fairy blood. I enchanted you and spirited you away. Don’t be surprised if the world seems different when I send you back from Elf-hame.”

  “Elf-hame?”

  “Elf home. The kingdom of the Good People.”

  She smiled at the dancing fire, and shivers ran up Douglas’s spine. He thought again of her power over his senses back in New York. He watched Sam, who lay near her on a hearth rug, looking content. Enchanted? Get a grip on yourself, Kincaid.

  “You’re the biggest fairy I’ve ever seen,” he noted, and made sure it didn’t sound like a compliment. “But then, with your height, you can carry so much extra weight.”

  She twisted to study him with stern eyes. “You didn’t seem to think I was too much for you back in New York.”

  “I was hoping for a one-night stand. You looked easy. Big and easy. Six feet of easy.”

  Even in the shadowy firelight he could see her face tighten. “I’m not too big for a real man,” she retorted. “Nor easy, you slobbering cretin. And I’m a perfectly respectable weight for my height.”

  “Oh? You must wear four-inch spikes when you step on the scales.”

  She smiled thinly and stabbed a poker into the fire. “It’s not wise to insult the person who’ll be bringing your meals to you. The only person who’ll look after you.”

  “Your co-conspirators wouldn’t want me starved, I’m sure.”

  “There’s only me, Douglas. It was a one-woman plot. I’m the self-appointed representative of the people who stand to lose if you take over Angus MacRoth’s holdings.”

  “Don’t waste your breath telling me a fairy tale. One person working alone couldn’t have circumvented my security people. They’re the best. In fact, they’re probably halfway to finding this little torture nest of yours already.

  “No one but my executive staff will ever know that I’m missing. You and your pals will be hunted down by experts who make government investigators look like Boy Scouts. You and everyone who helped you will end up in American prisons for the rest of your lives. If you’d like to know what’ll happen to you there, I’ll be glad to go into detail.”

  “Shush, Douglas, you’re sounding like a character in one of those silly gangster movies you watch all the time. ‘Come out with your hands up, or I’ll send Father O’Brien in to get you!’ Threaten all your want. It’s no difference to me. But there’s only me to hate. Maybe you’ll get tired of your ranting and speak to me as a gentleman would.”

  She stood, shot him a baleful look, then stretched languidly, as if taunting him. Under her bulky white sweater her breasts rose with magnificent effect. The flowing skirt clung to her tapering stomach and the proportioned flair of her hips. Douglas knew that many men must have told this woman how beautiful her curves were, and his petty insults hadn’t bothered her a bit.

  “Look, doll, if I’m going to be stuck with you for a while, at least make up a name. Otherwise I’ll make up my own. And I don’t think you’ll appreciate it.”

  “All right. Fair enough.” She clasped her hands behind her and rocked back and forth, thinking. After a minute she told, “Your Ladyship will do nicely.”

  Douglas growled in frustration. “Jumbo,” he announced, then nodded with satisfaction. “Jumbo. It’s perfect. Bring me some dinner, Jumbo. Waddle as fast as you can.”

  She glowered at him for a moment, then sighed. “Are you nearly starving, you poor man?”

  “I could eat. It’s been at least a day since I had anything, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  She went to the other room and returned a minute later with two bowls of stew but only one spoon. “Poor, poor Douglas.” She set one bowl on the floor for an eagerly waiting Sam. Then she carried the other one to her chair by the hearth and began to eat.

  Douglas scowled at her. “Very funny. I said I’m hungry.”

  “You were speaking to some fat phantom named Jumbo, not to myself.”

  “You wouldn’t let me go hungry out of spite, would you?”

  She put a succulent-looking spoonful of beef and carrots into her mouth and savored it for a long time before she swallowed. “Apologize,” she ordered calmly. “Or do without supper.”

  “To hell with it.” He lay down on his bed and flipped the blanket over his legs. “Good night, Jumbo.”

  “Starve because of your bad temper, Kincaid.” Above the sound of his stomach grumbling, Douglas heard her soft, infuriating laughter.

  Elgiva couldn’t help herself. She edged closer until she was near enough to reach through the bars if she wanted and touch Kincaid as he slept.

  From a window near the fireplace a long block of morning sunshine poured across the cottage, bathing his chest and stopping short of his face. He had wrenched his sweater up during the night, and his blanket lay around his knees.

  Hot-blooded he was, like all of his Kincaid ancestors, Elgiva thought. Black-haired and dark-eyed the legends said; the men of the clan had been lordly, handsome warriors with a reputation for stealing the prettiest women from their rival clans. She and Douglas Kincaid most likely shared a bloodline, in some distant and convoluted way.

  She moved an inch more. She had dared fate in a similiar fashion as a child, when, during a family picnic by the ocean, she had explored the windcarved cliffs of Arragowan. She had heard that each time the surf pulled back, a brave watcher could peek down and see An Uamh Ghabhach, the Danger Cave.

  In 1417 her ancestor Malcolm MacRoth had been cornered there by a dozen Kincaid swordsmen. During the centuries since, the sea had crept closer to the cave, hiding it. Legend said that anyone who could glimpse the place in modern times would see Malcolm MacRoth’s ghost fighting the spectres of the Kincaids.

  She had wanted so badly to see that. Her horrified parents had found her stretched half-over the cliff’s edge, craning her neck to watch the rocks below the surf.

  Now she had a Kincaid to watch in the flesh, and she felt as she had when she was six, her heart pounding with fear and elation, her body refusing to move from a place of danger, her instincts telling her against reason that she would be all right.

  Elgiva gazed at his exposed stomach, and she was mesmerized by the slow rise and fall of hard masculine muscles furred with black hair. A streak of silver hair grew down the center of it, disappearing under the waistband of his trousers like a guideline to his navel and parts beyond. It was definitely silver, not gray, and very attractive.

  Elgiva pressed her face between the bars, her eyes searching the thick hair on his head. There was no silver there, but perhaps he dyed his hair. No, she decided, recalling that he was only thirty-seven years old. Only three years older than herself. One of the youngest billionaires in the world. Certainly one of the least lonely ones, considering what she’d read about his ladyfriends.

  Almost all had been blondes. Small, delicate blondes. That was why she’d worn a blond wig to his party. She hadn’t been able to fake the small and delicate part, of course, but she’d won his attention anyway. Apparently, when Douglas Kincaid was in great need, any blonde in a low-cut gown would do.

  Feeling absurdly
hurt, she turned her back. The dog came up, dipped his muzzle into the pocket of her long white robe, and snuffled for the piece of biscuit she’d hidden there. He and she had already developed this game of hide-and-seek. What a wonderful, intelligent animal he was, and so loving. How could a man such as Douglas Kincaid deserve him? Elgiva leaned against the bars and distractedly watched Shom munch his treat.

  By the time she registered the creak and bump behind her as the sound of Kincaid launching his large body from the bed, it was too late to escape. One of his arms stabbed through the bars and circled her neck.

  Elgiva shrieked with fury and struggled, clawing at his arm and then trying to elbow him, a tactic which backfired because she smashed her elbow into the bars. Pain shot up her arm.

  “Stop it, Jumbo,” he commanded loudly. “Or I’ll squeeze you until your eyes pop.”

  Despite the threat, his grip was tight but not painful. Elgiva forced herself to be still and breathe normally. “You won’t get anything for your mischief. If you strangle me, you’ll still be trapped. And there’s naught you can do to make me open the cell door.”

  “Unless you’ve got the keys on you.”

  “Would I be such a fool?”

  “You kidnapped one of the most powerful men in the world. I’d say you rank right up there with the major fools of all time.”

  “Faith! What glory you give yourself!”

  “Let’s see if I’m right.”

  She yelped with anger when his other hand reached around her and clasped her hip. He exposed the pocket where she’d hidden Sam’s treat. “Great, Sam,” he muttered. “Thanks for the slobber.” He casually wiped his fingers on the front of her robe, just below the thick belt.

  “Frumpy,” Douglas Kincaid taunted, his breath warm on her neck. “I liked the green dress better.” He drew a finger back and forth.

  Elgiva’s belly shrank from the pressure, and she breathed faster. “Go ahead and enjoy yourself, Douglas. It’ll be the last good time you have.”