Gwendolyn blinked in confusion before realizing that Kitty couldn’t have been talking about her Dragon. Tupper’s sheepish confession was suddenly beginning to make sense.
Nessa and Glynnis were gaping at her as if they’d never laid eyes on her before. Gwendolyn searched the crowd for Izzy, hoping to find at least one ally, but saw no sign of her. The loyal maidservant must have remained at the side of Gwendolyn’s papa.
Ailbert separated himself from the crowd, flanked by his burly sons. “Step aside, lass. We’ve no quarrel with ye.”
“Then it may surprise you to learn that I’ve a quarrel with you. After all, you were the ones who left me here to die in this very courtyard a little over a fortnight ago.”
“Ye seem to have done all right for yerself,” Ross snarled.
As his gaze lingered on the swell of her breasts spilling over the square-cut bodice of her gown, Gwendolyn suddenly recognized the contempt in his eyes for what it had always been—lust. All the times he’d tripped her, pinched her, called her cruel names, he’d simply been trying to punish her for making him want her.
“I suppose I’ve done better than you, Ross,” she said gently. “Since I’ve never felt so small inside that I had to belittle others just to make myself feel bigger.”
There were several gasps. Ross took a threatening step toward her, only to find himself restrained by his younger brother.
Lachlan tossed his dark hair out of his eyes, keeping one muscular arm wrapped around Ross. “Surely ye can’t mean to defend this Dragon fellow!” he cried. “Why, he’s been helpin’ hisself to all the lasses in the village. Like young Kitty over there and God only knows how many others!”
“He wanted to make me his wife,” Kitty wailed.
Nessa snorted. “If I had a shilling for every time I’ve heard that…”
“You probably do have a shilling for every time you’ve heard that,” Glynnis retorted, sending an uneasy ripple of laughter through the townfolk.
Ailbert’s gaze was no longer stern, but imploring. “Ye’ve always been a good girl, Gwendolyn Wilder. A sensible lass.” At the sound of those familiar words on his lips, Gwendolyn felt a muscle in her jaw begin to twitch. “Surely ye must see that this scoundrel has made fools of us all, includin’ ye. He’s lied, stolen, and cheated us out of all the things that were rightfully ours.”
“He had his reasons,” she said, wishing she knew what they were.
“P’r’aps he did,” Ailbert conceded. “Just as we’ve got our reasons for comin’ here tonight. We’ve come for the Dragon’s head, and it’s his head we’ll have. Now step aside, woman, before I’m forced to do somethin’ we’ll both regret.”
Gwendolyn did not know whether she’d bought Tupper and the Dragon enough time to make it to the longboat, but her own time was running out. When Ailbert started forward, expecting her to stand aside and let him pass, she darted down the steps and grabbed the pitchfork out of Granny Hay’s hands. Ignoring the old woman’s startled cry, she jabbed the pitchfork at Ailbert’s chest, forcing him to dance a merry jig to keep from being impaled on its tines.
“Damn ye, lass,” he whined, retreating into the arms of the villagers. “Have ye well and truly lost yer mind? “
“I’d wager it’s not her mind she’s lost, but her soul.” Ross’s words sent a ripple of fear through the crowd. “Just look at her! Is that the same sweet Gwendolyn Wilder we all grew up with?”
As a hush fell over the villagers, Gwendolyn remembered that Ross had never been smart, but he’d always been cunning.
He swaggered forward, taking care to keep just out of reach of the pitchfork. “Why, the Gwendolyn we knew was fat and plain! She kept her head down and her nose buried in a book. She would’ve been perfectly content to spend the rest of her miserable life lookin’ after that daft father of hers.”
“My father is a hero!” Gwendolyn cried. “His sanity was the price he had to pay for your father’s cowardice and the cowardice of every man in Ballybliss!”
Ailbert blanched, but made no effort to defend himself.
Ross’s sneer only deepened. “And what was the price you had to pay to win the Dragon’s favor? Your virtue? Your mortal soul? “ He swung around, appealing to his fellow villagers. “Just look at her—with her hair unbound and her breasts spillin’ out of her dress as bold as any harlot’s. She dares to defy us only because she knows the Dragon has given her the power to inflame the lust of every man here.” Ross lowered his voice, forcing the villagers to strain to hear him. And strain they did, their eyes devouring Gwendolyn as they considered his words. “As she herself pointed out, she’s been alone with the beast for o’er a fortnight. Why, there’s no tellin’ what ungodly acts he’s taught her to perform.”
Lachlan swallowed hard, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbing from the effort. Even the stoic Ailbert had to draw a kerchief from his pocket and mop his brow, drawing a glare from his wife.
“The Dragon is no beast!” Gwendolyn shouted, hating Ross for making something so sordid of the tender encounters she and the Dragon had shared. “Why, he’s twice the man you’ll ever hope to be!”
“See!” Ross exclaimed. “It’s exactly as I feared. The monster has bewitched her!”
“How could he have bewitched her,” Kitty cried, “when you yourself admitted that he was only a mortal?”
Unexpected tears stung Gwendolyn’s eyes. If she lived long enough, she was going to give her baby sister a great big hug.
Ross shrugged. “I could have been wrong about that, you know.”
“Or perhaps you were bewitched,” Gwendolyn suggested, inciting a wave of nervous laughter.
The laughter quickly died beneath Ross’s sweeping glare. “I say we burn the lass.”
“Aye, burn her!” his mother echoed, shooting Ailbert a triumphant look.
The crowd took up the cry, their shouts sending an icy chill through Gwendolyn. The stake they’d tied her to the night they’d left her at the Dragon’s mercy was still rammed between the cobblestones in the center of the courtyard. It would be easy enough for them to bind her to it, pile some debris around her feet, and set it alight with their torches.
Gwendolyn backed up one step, then another, waving the pitchfork in a broad arc. If they rushed her, she was done for.
“The Dragon didn’t bewitch me!” she cried, fighting to be heard over the rising din. “He’s not a monster! He’s a man! A kind and noble man!”
The villagers began to surge toward the steps, torchlight glinting off the blades of their weapons. Glynnis and Nessa hung back helplessly. Kitty finally succeeded in freeing herself from Niall only to be swallowed by the mob as she tried to reach her sister’s side.
As Gwendolyn reached the top of the stairs, she looked up into the moonlit sky. There was no echo of a roar to be heard, no winged shadow darting its way to her rescue. If she hadn’t been so foolish as to believe in something as impossible as a Dragon, she wouldn’t be standing here on these steps, waiting to be taken by the mob. But she didn’t regret any of it, not a single kiss or touch.
As Ross moved in, flanked by his father and brother, Gwendolyn backed into the shadows of the doorway.
A strong arm circled her waist from behind, enveloping her in a warm cocoon. Gwendolyn breathed in a fragrant rush of sandalwood and spice, and exultation surged through her veins.
The Dragon had come back for her. Just as he had promised.
As he stepped forward, bringing them both into the light, the villagers fell back, gasping with shock. Gwendolyn could hardly blame them. The gleaming pistol in the Dragon’s hand made all of their rusty swords and ancient daggers look like nothing more than the toys of petulant children playing at soldier.
When he spoke, it wasn’t in a clipped English accent, stripped of emotion, but in a lilting burr, rolling with passion. “You’d best leave this courtyard now if you wish to leave it alive, for there’ll be no beheading of dragons or burning of witches as long as a MacCullough is la
ird and master of Castle Weyrcraig.”
Chapter Eighteen
GWENDOLYN FROZE in the Dragon’s arms, trying to absorb the shock of hearing a voice she’d thought never to hear again. Too many late nights and too many cheroots might have deepened its timbre to a stranger’s smoky baritone, but its inflections were as familiar to her as the beating of her own heart.
Ross had paled as if he’d seen a ghost, but there was nothing spectral about the muscular arm wrapped around Gwendolyn’s waist.
The hours seemed to swirl backward, returning her to that elusive flicker of time when she had first stood in this very courtyard only a fortnight ago. The Dragon had emerged from his hiding place, his cloak billowing about his broad shoulders, smoke streaming from his nostrils. Gwendolyn had watched, unable to look away, as his face—that beautiful, terrible, impossible face— had melted out of the shadows.
It was a memory her logical mind had refused to trust. A memory denied her until this very moment.
Gwendolyn slowly turned in his arms.
Instantly she saw how foolish she’d been to mistake Bernard MacCullough for a mere mortal. Despite the spark of devilment that lit his emerald green eyes, his face possessed the rugged purity of an archangel’s. His strong brow was softened by a disheveled tumble of dark hair carelessly bound at the nape in a black velvet queue. His uncompromising jaw was compromised by the rueful humor of a mouth sculpted not for piety, but for pagan pleasures certain to tempt even the most virtuous of women.
His face bore no birthmark, no scar, no hideous deformity to mar its compelling planes, yet sun, wind, and dissipation had left their mark upon the boy he had been. Unable to stop herself, Gwendolyn touched her fingertips to the lines that furrowed his brow, the crinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes, the harsh grooves carved around his mouth. Instead of diminishing him, those hints of vulnerability only made him more beguiling.
She jerked her hand back, feeling betrayed to the very depths of her soul to discover that her beloved Dragon was no beast, but a beauty. She had always fancied herself smart, but he’d played her for an utter fool.
Unable to bear looking at him, yet unable to tear her gaze away, she began to back out of his arms.
He was no longer the slender boy she remembered. He was lean of hip, but taller and broader than she had ever envisioned him becoming. Although he was still bootless, and his shirt was hanging open over the impressive expanse of his chest, his dishevelment only seemed to emphasize the power coiled in his taut muscles. The loaded pistol fit into the cradle of his hand as naturally as if he’d been born to wield it.
As she continued to back away from him, seeking to escape the inescapable, he caught her wrist with his free hand, wary now not of the mob, but of her. His eyes darkened as they searched her face. “I couldn’t leave you,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I had to come back.”
It was almost more than Gwendolyn could stand, hearing the Dragon’s voice emerge from that treacherous mouth of his. “At least I didn’t have to wait fifteen years this time.”
As she tried to twist away, Bernard yanked her against him, betraying a flash of temper. He spoke through clenched teeth, keeping one eye on the gawking villagers. “I’m deeply sorry if my being alive offends you, Miss Wilder, but we’ve more important matters to attend to at the moment. Such as saving our hides.”
“And just what if I’m no longer sure yours is worth saving? What are you going to do then? “ She glanced at the pistol in his hand. “Shoot me?”
She almost wished he would. She hadn’t felt so humiliated since she’d tumbled out of that oak tree to land on his chest. She was beginning to wish she’d smashed him flat, sparing her the agony of falling in love with him, not once, but twice.
Before he could reply, Tupper came stumbling out of the castle, rubbing his jaw. “Criminy, man, you didn’t have to ambush me. If you’d have just asked nicely, I wouldn’t have tried to stop you from jumping out of the longboat.”
Gwendolyn looked down. Bernard’s stockings and the lower half of his knee breeches were soaked with seawater and clinging to the already sinfully defined muscles of his calves and thighs.
“Dragon!” Every head in the courtyard jerked around as a lithe, dark-haired beauty came flying up the stairs to throw her arms around Tupper’s neck.
“Kitty!” Although a blush stained Tupper’s fair cheeks, he returned her embrace with touching fervency.
“Would that be your Kitty or his? “ Bernard murmured in Gwendolyn’s ear.
“I’m not sure anymore,” Gwendolyn said stiffly, watching Tupper nuzzle Kitty’s hair.
“How can that fellow be the Dragon?” Granny Hay jabbed a finger at Bernard. “I thought he was the Dragon.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Auld Tavis croaked, shuffling to the foot of the steps. “Anyone can see that he’s the MacCullough hisself returned from the grave to heap vengeance upon all our heads.”
At the old man’s dour pronouncement, several of the villagers sketched hasty crosses on their breasts while others began to retreat toward the courtyard gates. Until that moment, Gwendolyn had failed to fully comprehend why the villagers had been so taken aback by the Dragon’s appearance. She, too, was shaken to realize that he had grown into the very image of his father.
“Ye’re the fool, auld man!” Ailbert shoved Tavis back into the crowd. “ Ye were with the rest of us when we climbed this very hill the mornin’ after Cumberland’s attack. The MacCullough was barely clingin’ to life even then.”
Gwendolyn stole a look at Bernard’s face. Its rugged planes had been wiped clean of all expression. The effect was chilling.
“The MacCullough couldn’t be alive.” Ailbert wheeled on the villagers, the passion in his voice mounting as if he sought to convince not only them, but himself. “We saw him draw his last breath! Heard him utter his last words!”
“May the dragon’s wings spell yer doom.” Bernard’s rich voice poured over the villagers, mesmerizing them where they stood.
And his fiery breath seal yer tomb.
May vengeance be upon yer heads
‘Til innocent blood be shed.
He finished his recitation with an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders. “Although my father always thought of himself as more of a scholar than a poet, it wasn’t a bad effort.” His glittering gaze swept the courtyard. “Especially when you consider that his life’s blood was seeping from his heart at the time he composed it.”
“Not the father, but the son,” Granny Hay breathed, clutching at the tarnished crucifix she hid beneath her shift.
“But we found yer body, too, lad,” Ailbert whispered. “All burned up in the corner o’ the great hall. I wrapped it in a shroud myself, draped it o’er the back o’ yer pony…. How… ?”
“Yes, how? “ Gwendolyn demanded fiercely.
Bernard shot her a loaded glance before stepping forward.
“I suspect the body you found was one of Cumberland’s scouts, mistakenly killed by the blast. By the time you discovered it, I was long gone. Taken prisoner by the English.”
With those five simple words, Bernard described a fate beyond any of their imaginings. Gwendolyn tried not to envision what that innocent, bright-eyed boy must have endured at the hands of his father’s enemies.
“It’s a miracle!” Shoving aside anyone unfortunate enough to be in her path, Ailbert’s wife came barreling up the steps. Throwing herself on her knees at Bernard’s feet, she snatched up his hand and began to press adoring kisses on the back of it. “At long last, God has rewarded us for our patience! Our laird has come back to us!”
As Bernard retrieved his hand and wiped it on his breeches, she backed away, all but genuflecting. Although her performance set off a chain of agitated murmurs and halfhearted cheers, most of the villagers still looked more petrified than pleased. Except, Gwendolyn noted with a cynical snort, her older sisters. Glynnis’s eyes held the unmistakable glint of avarice while Nessa was eyeing
Bernard as if he were the most succulent of beef briskets and she’d had nothing but potatoes to warm her belly for a very long time.
“He’s lying!” Ross stepped in front of his mother, his broad face ruddy with emotion. “Everyone knows the English took no prisoners. Not at Culloden and not here! He’s an imposter, aye, that’s what he is!” He gave Gwendolyn a contemptuous look. “And that whore over there is in league with him.”
One minute Ross was sneering up at her; the next he was plastered against the courtyard wall, the mouth of Bernard’s pistol jammed into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. Bernard’s voice was low, but clearly audible to every soul in the courtyard. “It astonishes me that in fifteen years you still haven’t learned how to address a lady. How many times do I have to warn you that I never forget an injustice done to one of my own? “
Ross’s eyes widened as he gazed up into the implacable face of the man who had been born to have absolute dominion over his fate. “ I never meant… I’m turribly sorry, sir…. F-f-forgive me… m-m’laird,” he stammered much as he had on that summer day so long ago.
It shook Gwendolyn to realize that Bernard must remember that day as keenly as she did. But why shouldn’t he? It had been his last day of freedom. The last day he had roamed these Highland hills as master of his own destiny.
A dagger of grief twisted in Gwendolyn’s heart. As long as he had been a man without a past, she had been able to believe that they could share a future. But now that was impossible. The castle might have been spared the wrath of the mob’s torches, but her precious Dragon had died a fiery death, burned to ashes along with the rest of her dreams.
Ignoring Tupper’s and Kitty’s quizzical stares, she slipped down the steps and tapped Bernard on the shoulder. He slowly turned, allowing an ashen-faced Ross to scramble away.
Gwendolyn was caught off guard by the way he towered over her. She forced herself to meet his wary gaze, although she was more than a little afraid of catching a disarming glimpse of the boy she had once adored.
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