Highlander’s Curse

by Melissa Mayhue

  Abby, meanwhile, curled on the rug, cocooned in her blanket, thinking dark, spiteful thoughts about life in general and Colin MacAlister in particular.

  Fine. He could sleep in his stupid little coffin box of a bed all by himself. There wasn’t enough money on the face of the planet to get her back into that dark hole. She had enough crap in her life at this moment without adding another round of suffocating claustrophobia into the mix just to try to appease him.

  Who else but she could be unlucky enough to find maybe the one man in the entire world who seemed to fill all the empty holes inside her, only to discover that he was also possibly the only man in the whole world who insisted on commitment before sex?

  Worse yet? In spite of all her big talk to the contrary, she was pretty damn sure she’d been stupid enough to let herself fall in love with the guy.

  That she’d had to travel seven hundred years into the past to find all this out only added insult to the injury.

  Thirty-one

  Colin awoke in a foul, gray mood, more than ready to growl at anyone who crossed his path. He shoved back the heavy, dust-laden draperies with much more force than was necessary to greet a morning that was equally as foul and gray as he felt.

  The shutters on the high windows had blown fully open during the night and rain sprayed in, soaking the entire room in a fine wet mist.

  It would seem the dry spell had ended.

  He rounded the bed to check on Abby and found her still asleep, curled up in a tight little ball with only the thin blanket he’d pulled from the bed last night to provide her protection.

  And precious little protection it had been. A fine mist beaded on her hair, and as he approached, he could see that her body shivered with each breath.

  Little wonder, since the fire had long ago burned itself out.

  Some fine protector he was turning out to be.

  He had made the fire his first priority, building it back to flaming warmth before he pulled another blanket from their bed to drape over her body, tucking it close. He’d briefly considered carrying her to the bed and slipping in beside her.

  But that would have awakened her, and she needed all the rest she could get.

  One last tug to cover her properly and then he slipped into his clothing and quietly out the door, pausing in the hallway to gather his thoughts, doing his best to beat back the guilt that washed over him in waves.

  If he managed to get her through this journey and back to Dun Ard in one piece, it would truly be a miracle beyond even the power of the Fae.

  Or maybe in spite of the Fae.

  Halting his steps, he closed his eyes and dropped his guards, reaching out. He pushed away the cries battering his aura from within the castle, stretching out, far out into the countryside, until he found the one soul he sought.

  Black, ragged, stained with evil, it pulsed, taunting him with its nearness.

  Flynn. The Nuadian was here.

  He’d debated whether to tell Abby that it had been no hallucination she’d suffered in the forest, deciding at last it would only give her one more thing to fear in this world. Instead, he’d spent the rest of that night, sword at his side, daring the Fae to step into the light of his campfire.

  Somehow, someway, the bastard had managed to follow them here. And now Colin had no doubt that he hunted Abby.

  Too bad for the Nuadian that he didn’t understand Abby belonged to Colin. She was indeed his Soulmate and as such, no one would ever lay hand on her without going through him.

  “And that I promise, you black-hearted bastard, will be no easy task,” he vowed aloud.

  Emotional walls firmly back in place, Colin stomped downstairs wearing his anger and the unshakable guilt like a heavy moth-ridden cloak, his mood growing darker and fouler by the moment.

  With a great shove he threw back the doors to the laird’s hall and swept inside to be met by the ancient chatelaine. Her face a mask of anger, she ran the length of the hall to meet him, her keys jangling at her side even as she lifted a finger to her lips, angrily shushing him.

  “What?” he demanded as she reached his side.

  “I’d thank you to keep yer voice down,” she hissed. “Our poor laird’s only just managed to nod off and we dinna need you to wake him.”

  “I’m no sleeping, you old scold,” Roderick called from the table where he sat without lifting his head from his folded arms. “Leave my guests alone, woman. Be off with you now and send back some food for my friend.”

  “What ails you, Roderick?” By the morning’s gray light, it was clear something did. His friend’s face was drawn and haggard, his hair pushed up on one side of his head as if matted there. This was not the same man he’d seen only the evening before. “You look as if you’d spent the night in yer cups rather than in yer bed.”

  “Fine observation, MacAlister.” His host lifted his tankard, his eyes narrowing in disgust when he found it empty. “They’ve stolen away my drink again.”

  Colin sat down next to his old friend, asking him yet again, “What ails you?”

  In their youth, this man had ridden with him and Dair. Then Roderick’s father and older brother had died and he’d been called home to take over as laird. In short order, he’d married and settled down to the business of running his clan.

  “My heart,” Roderick confessed, his voice breaking as he pushed back in his chair. “It’s my heart, MacAlister. It’s broken and will never be right again.”

  “I dinna understand, old friend. Are you ill? Where’s yer wife that she’d let you spend yer time wallowing in self-pity and whisky as you have this past night?”

  “That’s it exactly!” Roderick slammed his hand down on the table, sending empty cups toppling over as the chatelaine returned with a serving girl and two large trenchers. “I’ve lost my Karen. She and the wee bairn she carried, both dead, what is it now, Madeline? Six months?” He turned his bloodshot eyes to the old chatelaine as she placed a trencher filled with a thick paste of oats in front of him.

  “Aye, yer lairdship, as well you ken. Half a year, today.” Madeline patted the man’s shoulder, casting a reproachful eye toward Colin.

  “I’d no heard of yer terrible loss, Roddy. I’m so sorry.” No wonder his friend drank through the night. He remembered the delicate, smiling woman his friend had married. He also remembered the way Roderick’s face had softened whenever he’d looked on his wife.

  “You ken the worst of it, Col? It’s what a poor excuse for a husband I was while my Karen lived.” He shook his head, pushing away the comforting hand Madeline offered. “Off with you, woman. Leave me to my misery this day.”

  “How can you say that? I saw the two of you together with my own eyes. I never heard tell of you lifting a hand to her or even allowing a negative word to pass yer lips where she was concerned.” Roddy had always been the model of calm and patience.

  “That may well be true, but there’s worse a man can do to his wife. It’s in the things I dinna do, Col. The things I thought but never said, the things I meant to do and never did. And now it’s too late.” Roderick dropped his head to his hands.

  “I’m sure yer Karen kenned the way you cared for her. How could she not?”

  Roddy looked up, his eyes suspiciously glassy. “Because I never said the words. Dinna you make my mistakes with yer own lovely wife. Dinna you wait for the perfect moment to declare yer love. Tell her often. Tell how her laughter brightens yer day or how her touch comforts when you need it most. Dinna you wait as I did. Dinna you let her slip through yer fingers never hearing from yer own lips that which your heart holds most prized. Dinna you waste one precious moment together. It’s the lost moments that will burden my heart for the rest of my days.”

  Meeting his friend’s gaze, Colin knew there were no words he could offer to ease the man’s pain. Not on this day. No platitudes would lessen the loss for Roddy. Time was the only magic that would help him. Time and perhaps, one day, the love of a good woman.

  Abby�
��s face filled his thoughts then, followed by an empty pang of longing to return to her side upstairs. It wasn’t just a need to protect her that squeezed his chest. It was a need to see her, to be with her. An unreasonable need to reassure himself, in the face of his friend’s overwhelming sorrow, that his own love yet lived.

  “I thank you for yer advice, my friend. I will take it to heart.”

  That seemed enough for Roderick, who pushed back his chair and wobbled unsteadily to his feet. “I’m off to bed, then. It’s sorry I am to miss yer departure, MacAlister, but I’ve no stomach for facing this particular day alone.”

  By the time he reached the end of the table, two young boys had appeared through the back doors as if they’d been waiting for this moment. One on either side of him, they assisted their laird into the hallway and out of sight.

  Colin pushed back from the table and stood, his appetite vanished. Pain such as he’d just witnessed could not easily be forgotten.

  At least there would be no fires chasing them today.

  Abby wiped the mist from her face and tugged the heavy plaid lower over her head exactly as Colin had shown her to do when he’d helped her to put it on.

  She’d labored a good hour to come up with something even vaguely approaching a positive thought for this day’s ride, and lack of fire was still the best she could manage. Miserable had taken on new proportions on this day when the long-absent rains had returned to the Highlands. The constant precipitation, ranging from heavy drizzle to a fine, face-stinging mist, wore her down. Thank goodness the plaid was more water-repellent than it looked.

  “That’s two,” she muttered. Two positives she’d managed to find in this oppressively gloomy day.

  “What’s that you say?” Colin pulled his mount closer to hers and tilted his head in her direction.

  “Nothing,” she countered, maintaining the unspoken battle of wills between them this day.

  He might have shaken his head at that; she couldn’t be sure, considering the plaid wrapped around him like a cocoon. She liked to think he had, anyway.

  With no further word, he pulled his horse ahead of hers again, picking up the pace once more.

  It had been this way between them all day long, the tension from last night’s unresolved conflict hanging over their journey as heavily as the gray skies above them. Had they said more than twenty words to each other all day? She very much doubted it. But it wouldn’t be she who broke down first. Colin was the one who needed to make amends, not her.

  Hours passed, one blending into another in the silence of the gray rain. Abby’s mind had glazed over, as numb as her bottom by the time Colin dropped back beside her on the trail again.

  “We’ll leave the road here. No too far through the woods there’s a place where we can seek shelter for the night. It’s long deserted but with nightfall approaching, it will offer some protection.”

  Silence returned as they rode forward, weaving their way through forest and underbrush that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years. Rain beat down on them, spattering against the woolen draped over Abby’s head. Each drop landed with a wet plopping noise that grated on her raw nerves. After what seemed an eternity, she opened her mouth to point out how very different her view of not too far must be from Colin’s, but stopped when she saw the structures looming in the clearing ahead of them.

  Surely those burned-out remains of what had once been someone’s home couldn’t be their destination, and yet Colin appeared to be slowing his horse.

  “That’s it?”

  She could hardly believe her eyes when he nodded his answer. How in the world did he expect them to stay dry in that place? It was little more than rubble and charred wood. Even the forest they’d ridden through would likely provide better shelter.

  “It’s no the castle where we’ll stay for the night,” he called back to her as he dismounted and began to lead his horse forward on foot. “It’s the stable beyond that offers shelter.”

  “Right.” Abby drew her own animal to a halt, her dismay multiplying. “I guess that would be the burned-down stable?” Did he not see the same thing she saw?

  “There’s more of the building still standing than you might think.”

  Through the murky light of dusk and gray drizzle, she finally spotted the area he intended. It looked like little more than a shed left standing, backed up against a large outcrop of rocks. Once she dismounted and approached it, however, she could see that it was, as he had said, larger than it appeared. It likely had been a storage area for the original stable, carved deeply into the earth it backed up against.

  She untied her wet bundle from the back of her mount and handed over her reins to Colin to allow him to see to the animal’s care. After a day spent in this relentless rain, she wanted only to be out of the wet, even if that meant nothing more than a cold hovel dug into the earth.

  Thank goodness half of the front was open. If the whole wall still stood, she doubted she’d be able to remain inside, no matter that it was the only half-dry place around.

  A fire pit made out of stacked stones sat near the opening, making it obvious even to her that she and Colin weren’t the first travelers to seek shelter here. It was equally obvious that no one had been here in a very long time, so this likely wasn’t some slightly off the trail well-known stop.

  “This seems rather out of the way. How did you even know this place was here?” she asked as Colin joined her.

  He stopped at the entrance to shake the rain droplets from the plaid he’d worn over his head and shoulders before he answered.

  “The MacBrydes who lived here had ties to my own clan, the MacKiernans. My mother knew them from her childhood.” Colin disappeared into the far, dark corner, returning with an armload of wood and tossing it into the fire pit.

  Abby leaned against the opening, peering out to study the remains of the once large castle. Such devastation set her imagination loose trying to picture what could have led to such ruin. There must have been large numbers of people here at one point in the past.

  “What happened to them?”

  “War, disease, breeding.” Colin grunted and coughed, scooting back from the smoke of their newly started fire. “Or lack of breeding, I should say. The last laird of the MacBrydes sired naught but female offspring and when his wife died, he went mad from grief and ended his own life. His only surviving daughter refused to take a husband and instead allowed the castle and its lands to fall into ruin. Gradually their people drifted away, aligning themselves with other clans. Time and any number of battles raging through here have left MacBryde Hall as you see it now.”

  “I’ll give you this much: one thing you Scots never seem to lack for is a tragic story.”

  “ ’Tis all too true,” Colin agreed, his eyes unfocused as he stared out into the ever-worsening rain. “Tragedy steals the dreams of even those who dinna deserve it.”

  Flames licked upward from the fire he’d coaxed to life, like yellow arms wavering in a ghostly dance, spreading their heat with intensity.

  Abby backed away, the heat so overwhelming after a couple of minutes, she was sure she could see the steam coming off her plaid. Only feet away from the fire, the chill hit her, seeping through the wet clothing she wore.

  She unwound the woolen from her head and shoulders and draped it across the rails at one end of the shed. If she was lucky, it just might dry by morning.

  To her surprise, the top of her shift and overdress where the plaid had covered her were only lightly damp, though the skirts of both, along with her riding underpants, were completely soaked up to her thighs.

  That little fact gave her some hope for her extra bundle of clothing. She dropped to her knees feeling there was a chance that she might be able to find something dry in the center of the roll. As she worked at the wet, swollen laces holding the bundle tight, her fingers shook, as much from impatience as from the chill.

  “Let me do that.” Colin placed a hand under her arm, gently pulling her
to her feet. “Go and sit by the fire until we can get you out of those wet things.”

  She considered protesting but decided against it, the lure of the fire too great to be ignored.

  In no time at all, he was lifting her things from the unrolled bundle and shaking them out before he draped them over the fencing that separated the storage area from the original stalls in their shelter.

  “It’s all wet?” She didn’t even try to keep the disappointment out of her voice. The prospect of the long, uncomfortable night she faced loomed large in her thoughts.

  “Dinna fash yerself over it, wife. I’ve a dry tunic and plaid in my bundle.”

  “How?” The rains had fallen on him equally hard as they had on her.

  “Because I carry our provisions, I wrapped them first in an oiled leather. Here.” He crossed over to where she sat, stopping to scoop up an ivory-colored shirt, which he handed to her. “You can change over there. I promise no to watch if that makes you feel better.”

  An uncharacteristic grin broke over his face as he teased, causing her heart to beat a little faster than it had a moment before and forcing a smile to her lips in return. As if his seeing her in any state of undress made a difference anymore.

  Shirt in hand, she hurried behind the stable wall and worked her way out of her overdress and shift, letting them drop to her feet before slipping his shirt over her head. It hung down past her knees while the sleeves draped several inches past her fingertips.

  Last, she wiggled out of the wet linen underpants, balancing on one foot after the other to pull them off. She then located a spot on the rail to hang them to dry before heading back to the fire.

  She brushed a hand down the soft linen of the tunic she wore, surprised at the case of nerves that suddenly afflicted her. How stupid was that? She’d never met a man, never met anyone, with whom she felt as comfortable as she felt with Colin. And yet, when she stepped around the fence, she felt her face color with embarrassment as he watched her approach.