The platemaker’s wife, along with several maids in the hall, shrieked. Grace stared at Keir. He stood ready for another attack, the polished steel of his sword streaked red. He swung around, but the room was frozen in shock. Normond’s blood seeped out to pool in the rushes, wetting the fragrant clumps of rosemary. Keir’s face was filled with the promise of death, making Grace’s head feel numb and stars blink around the edges of her sight. At that moment, Keir Mackinnon was the most frightening being she had ever seen, in life or in her nightmares.
Feeling the prickles of a swoon start, Grace forced her eyes down to Fiona, who seemed to be rousing. A bruise had begun to darken the left side of her face. A sharp crack behind Grace made her jump, her head snapping up. Rab sat in his seat, his large hands smacking together in a slow applause. The smile on his face was more frightening than the sight of Normond’s ragged, bleeding neck. “Slainte, MacInnes.” He laughed. “Good health to ye.” He looked to Keir. “Seems we’ve paid appropriate tribute to St. Valentine, since he too lost his head on this day for being a traitor to Rome as this man was a traitor to clan Mackinnon.”
“Brother,” Dara said, standing up to face Rab.
He held up a hand to stop her speech as his face slowly came around to her. Grace swallowed hard at the hatred she saw there. “Don’t call me brother,” he said low.
“I didn’t know,” she said and looked toward Keir. Brodie stood beside him as if ready to battle a horde, even though there were only half a dozen people in the hall, all of whom had abject fear etched into the lines of their faces.
Dara turned back to Rab as Grace helped Fiona off the floor, sitting her gently into a chair. The woman was dazed but seemed to be recovering. “Go to your room, Odara MacInnes,” Rab said. “Remain there until I decide your fate.”
Without a word, Dara squared her shoulders and marched toward the stairs leading above. Decide her fate? The words sent chill bumps along Grace’s arms, because the madman, who watched his sister walk away, had only death in his gaze.
…
Keir stood outside his room. Grace was inside, and she would have questions.
He ran a hand over his forehead, digging his fingers into his scalp through his hair. Cold. For the first time since he’d seen his mother, bruised and bloody on the floor of her bedroom, he felt the cold of death. It was different from battle. Battle and war, protecting his clan, it heated his blood to create a focused rage. This was different, and he shivered there, alone in the darkness of the corridor.
He always knew he would die with a sword in his hand, but he’d hoped that it would be his body’s death before his soul’s. He inhaled, pushing the chill down where his heart still beat, past the pain that had filled him inside Rab’s bedroom as he ranted and made his proclamations. The same room where Aonghus Mackinnon had brought down judgment on his wife, Keir’s mother. And once again, the Devil of Dunakin had been called into service, the service of slaughter.
He raised his knuckle and rapped on the door. “Grace?”
Without a word, the bar scraped along the inside, and she opened the door, standing in her smock. The light of the fire glowed behind her, and her hair was down, free to flow like water over tumbled rocks in the stream outside the castle. She moved aside, and he walked in, shutting the door behind him. If she didn’t want him, he would leave, even though this was his bedroom. In truth, nothing at Dunakin was his. It all belonged to the Devil who served the clan.
She gazed up into his face. Was she frightened by what she’d seen him do to Normond MacInnes? Her hand lifted, and warm fingers touched his cheek. “You are cold,” she said, concern tugging at her lovely arched brows. “You are never cold.”
She brought both hands up, placing them on his forehead and cheeks. The feel of her touch, the sound of her concern, for him…it was as if he were a normal man, not the evil he was becoming. “Keir,” she said. “What happened?”
“He’s condemned Dara to death,” he said, his words a whisper.
“But she’s innocent,” Grace said. “I feel it.”
“Rab doesn’t see it that way.” Keir walked to the bed and sat on the edge. He stared down at his boots, unsure yet if he should take them off.
Grace slid up onto the bed. “We will sway him.” Her hands flew up and down his arms, rubbing them, and she leaned in to hug him. The contact was almost his undoing. No one hugged him, not like Grace, giving him her warmth instead of trying to take something from him. He’d been raised to be the ultimate pillar of strength, a boulder to crush all those The Mackinnon found guilty as a threat to the clan. And yet now…Keir felt weak with regret for an atrocity he hadn’t even committed. Yet.
Keir caught Grace’s hand and met her worried gaze. “If…things turn badly, Brodie will get ye home to Aros or to Kisimul.”
Her face pinched in stubborn denial. “We will sway him, Lachlan will heal, and you will escort me as you promised.”
“Ye have a very simple way of looking at things,” he said, his frown relaxing.
“Right and wrong are usually simple if one looks at the problem for what it is,” she said. “It is the fallacy of human perception that makes everything complicated.”
He touched the soft waves sitting along her shoulder. “Beautiful and filled with brilliant wit. Someone should put ye on a throne, Grace Ellington.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, pulling back.
She leaned, following him, and her hands slid from his shoulders down his back. “You can’t say something utterly wonderful and pull away,” she whispered. “Not when I can warm you.”
He shouldn’t love her. Could a cursed devil even love? Yet the sincerity in her touch, in her smile, kept him still. Not with hope, because he had none, but with a desperate effort to grasp onto the last shreds of humanity he still possessed. He drew her in to him, and she naturally bent her face up to his. “What are ye saying, lass?”
Her worry thinned until a smile broke through. “I can say a lot,” she said and hoisted herself up onto her knees to be level with his face. “Like what I want to do to you and then exactly what I want you to do to me.”
The teasing lilt in her voice was like a balm to his brittle mind, his body responding to the promise in the stroke of her fingers down his chest. “What exactly do ye want to do to me?”
“Let me warm you, Keir,” she whispered, and a wicked smile spread slowly along her lips. She pressed him back among the pillows on his large bed, stroking his legs until her hands slid under his kilt. “I seem to remember quite a few things the maid in the barn did with her mouth that drove the groom absolutely mad.” Keir jerked in sweet agony as she wrapped around him, boldly gliding up and down.
“For such an angelic-looking lass, ye do have a deliciously wicked tongue,” he said between his teeth as he fought to control his impulse to throw her over and drive into her.
Shrugging her shoulders, the smock fell off, sliding all the way down past her hips to the floor. He inhaled as his blood rushed through his body. “Let us forget about the human world tonight,” she whispered as she straddled his legs, rubbing herself against him in a rhythm that drove him mad. “No angels. No devils. Just Grace and Keir.”
“Aye,” he said, unhooking the belt that held his kilt in place. “And nothing between us.” For one last night.
Chapter Twenty-One
Grace rolled over in the bed and nuzzled into the warmth that still held Keir’s scent. She sighed, a smile spreading over her lips. Ravished lips, she thought. She smoothed her hands down her naked body under the blankets. Ravished everything. Rolling onto her back, she glanced at the window where the sun was overpowering the dawn’s gray pallet.
Their night was over, and they had to face Rab and his lethal judgment of Dara. Grace’s sigh turned to a groan as she slipped her feet out of bed. The fire was kindled yet looked to have burned low again, indicating that Keir had left before dawn. Had he even slept?
Grace stepped out from behind the privacy screen and foun
d her smock, throwing it over her head. Next came the day dress she’d borrowed. As she worked at pulling the cording closed, she stared at the portrait of the woman on the mantel. She had the same dark eyes as Keir and his siblings. This was surely his mother, Margaret Mackinnon. Picking it up, she met the woman’s gaze. There was something sad about it, as if she pleaded from the thin canvas. “I won’t leave him,” she whispered, setting it down. “I promise.” She pivoted, searching for her slippers, suddenly anxious to find Keir.
The corridor was quiet as if everyone had already dressed and departed, ready to get on with the day. Grace hurried down a level to Lachlan’s door, knocking lightly.
“Aye,” came a voice, and she pushed in to find the boy sitting up in bed, eating cooked eggs and pork.
The sight lifted a bit of dread she was carrying. “You look well this morning.”
He nodded, swallowing. “Better each day.” His smile faded. “When I’m not being poisoned by my aunt and her lover.”
Good God. Grace sat down on the edge of the boy’s bed. “I don’t think your aunt had anything to do with it. Normond MacInnes is the villain, and he has paid for his sins.”
Lachlan shook his head like a typical stubborn boy and tipped his chin higher. “My da said Aunt Dara carried the poison to me that the bastard MacInnes gave her.”
Grace frowned. Rab had certainly made up his mind about Dara, and had held nothing of his judgment back from his young son. She patted Lachlan’s arm. “You concern yourself with getting well and strong again while we adults worry about who is to blame.”
He shrugged, but Grace picked up on the wetness in his downcast eyes. “Aunt Dara will follow MacInnes to Hell tonight.”
“Tonight?” The word fell out of Grace’s open mouth.
“Aye,” he answered, meeting her gaze. “When the Devil of Dunakin lops off her head.”
…
The great hall was empty as Grace flew into it from the stairs. Had Keir known last night? Been given the order to kill his own sister? Was that why he’d been physically chilled, the cold reflecting his pain?
Bloody hell, where are you? She jumped when Brodie seemed to appear from the dark entryway.
“Ballocks, Brodie, you scared the breath from me,” she said. “Do you always lurk at the door?”
He smiled, but it didn’t hide the tension in his eyes. “Only when I’ve been ordered to carry ye to safety.”
His words shot through Grace, choking her. She coughed. “Safety? Meaning…”
“Aros or Kisimul, your choice.” He moved closer, crossing his arms like a sentry.
Completely alert, she tucked her arms to imitate his stance. “And who would give you an order that would see you slain, or at least horribly maimed?” Of course, she knew the answer.
Brodie’s smile broadened into near authenticity. “’Tis a good thing I am a brave warrior, or your threat would surely make me quake.”
Grace stared directly into Brodie’s eyes. “Where is he?”
His smile faded. “Either at the bloody execution circle or sharpening his claymore at the smithy.”
Was he trying to frighten her? “So Keir is going to kill his own sister?”
“Nay,” Brodie said, his jaw set. “The Devil of Dunakin will carry out the order of his chief.”
“How could Rab order his own sister killed?” Grace asked, although her mind was already on to solving her immediate problem. She had absolutely no intention of going peacefully with Brodie away from Dunakin and Keir. After all, she’d just made a promise to his mother.
Brodie rubbed his jaw as if it ached. “She’s only Rab’s half sister.”
Grace stared hard at him, wishing she could pluck from his brain all the information that the man possessed. “Half?”
“Aye, Aonghus Mackinnon isn’t her father,” Brodie said, lowering his voice. He scanned the empty hall and shifted his feet like he regretted bringing up the topic.
Grace narrowed her eyes. “I think you are very bad at keeping secrets, Brodie. If Dara isn’t the descendent of a bloodletting chief, I’m guessing neither is Keir. And yet, he was thrown into the job from the cradle.”
Brodie pinched his lips tighter as if to say that she couldn’t pry anything else from him. She waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if they were linked by blood to Aonghus Mackinnon, it doesn’t mean they must become warlike tyrants, too. And being only a half sister doesn’t make an innocent woman guilty.”
“We should go,” Brodie said.
“He doesn’t want me to see him do the misdeed,” she answered. When Brodie didn’t say anything, she continued. “You do know this will kill him.”
“The Devil of Dunakin—”
“I’m not bloody talking about…that thing in the mask who walks around in winter half naked,” she broke in, her hands flying with her frustration. “I’m talking about Keir, your best friend. The man who protects baby wolves, and hungry men, and foolish lads.”
Brodie’s gaze shifted past Grace, so she stepped over, putting herself in his view again. “Killing an innocent woman, his sister, possibly his only kin left…” Grace blinked back the tears swelling in her eyes. “He remembers every person he’s killed, etches them on his skin. If he slays Dara, it will kill his soul, Brodie. You know that as well as I do.” She caught his gaze. “Don’t you?”
His voice seemed clogged in his throat. “There…is no choice.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open for a long second. Throwing her hands in the air, she stomped her feet, something she hadn’t done since she was a child. “Of course there is a choice! What the bloody hell do you mean?” She deepened her voice and frowned, imitating Brodie’s words. “There is no choice.” Pivoting on the heel of her slipper she turned, paced, and turned again. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. He can choose not to kill his sister. What will happen if he says no, sir idiot chief, I will not kill an innocent woman who is also my sister?” she asked, using a very poor Scottish accent.
Grace knew her face was red. It felt flushed with her fevered pulse and gesturing arms. She stopped, taking two large breaths, in and out, to gain control. Brodie stood there watching as if he wasn’t sure what to do in the face of a shrieking female. She propped her hands on her hips, giving up all her formal upbringing.
“Listen to me, Brodie Mackinnon,” she said, her words coming through clenched teeth. “I am not leaving here without talking to him, even if that means I must scratch your eyes out and kick your ballocks up into your throat.” She watched his eyes open slightly. “Is he really where you said, or is he at the cabin on the border?”
Brodie’s eyes opened even wider. “He took ye there? Inside?”
“Yes.”
“That was his mother’s cottage, where she would escape to be with Keir’s father. He lets no one in there.”
“Well, he let me in there,” she said. Could Brodie tell from her flaming cheeks that Keir had done much more to her than merely giving her a tour of the interior?
Brodie’s shoulders lowered with his exhale. He rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “Keir ran off. He does that sometimes, likes to run. Says it helps him stay fit.” He shook his head. “But if I were in his position, I might keep running.” He met her gaze. “Aye, he goes to the cabin to think. Ye talk to him, but as soon as anything looks dangerous, I’m hauling ye off Skye even if it means my ballocks.”
Without a thank-you, Grace dodged around him and out the door into the clear winter air. With all the turmoil at Dunakin, she expected mist or storm clouds, but the sky was blue, the sun shining. She ran to the stables and spotted Little Warrior still in his stall. Grabbing his tack from the wall she walked over with a handful of oats. He nuzzled her palm, lipping up the treat. “You remember your way back to that cabin, don’t you,” she said, looking up into the black face of the warhorse.
Grace had been around horses since she was a young girl, but none this large. Steeling herself with a breath, sh
e opened the stall and slid the bridle over Little Warrior’s face. There wasn’t time for a saddle. She threw on a saddle blanket and clicked her tongue, leading him to an overturned bucket to use as a step.
“There now,” she whispered, fisting a bunch of his mane while hitching her skirts high. With a quick thrust she threw herself up, her leg swinging over the tall horse’s back. Her muscles strained, but Little Warrior stood completely still while she righted herself.
She exhaled, her heart pumping wildly. Step one completed. Now, to find Keir.
…
Keir stood inside his mother’s cottage, his gaze on the bed where he’d shared the day with Grace. His gut was full of twisting eels, and his chest clenched. Duty before everything. The words of the man he’d always thought of as his brutal, warlike father slammed around in his head. Aonghus Mackinnon may not have sired Keir, but he’d raised him as his second son, to be the Devil of Dunakin. Until the day Keir had killed him.
The Mackinnon chief had molded Keir’s heart into cold stone, approving of him only when he killed or defended. It was all Keir had ever known, until Grace.
He let his sword tip touch the wooden floorboards, his arm suddenly weak as he thought of the beautiful Englishwoman who had treated him like a man and not a devil. She named herself a coward, yet she was the bravest person he’d met in his nearly thirty years. He exhaled, feeling the crush of her loathing even before she condemned him, for she would certainly hate him for the task he must do.
He was an executioner. Grace argued that Dara was innocent, based on his sister’s reactions that Keir hadn’t seen and Grace’s perceived feeling about Dara’s goodness. But Rab was certain she’d colluded with Normond MacInnes, marrying him in secret so he could rule the clan with her upon their deaths. Keir had argued, but his brother would not be swayed.
The Devil of Dunakin Castle (Highland Isles) Page 19
