A ghost of a smile tipped the corner of Andraste’s lip. For her, probably the closest thing to laughter she’d ever get. “Even so, the Fey do not forget an owing. You have only to call upon us.”
Gram stood, shooing the group of Fey before her like ill-behaved children. “That’s enough. All of you. You’ll tire her out with your grand bowing and scraping. She needs her rest.”
The two males tossed their dark hair, flinging the tiny woman black looks before blinking out of sight. But Scathach and Andraste both allowed the rough use, no more than indulgence in their cool gazes. Gram might have given up a life among them for a mortal’s love, but she still held a strong whip-hand among the children of High Danu.
“Wait,” Morgan called.
Andraste turned back, her perfectly arched brows raised in question.
“I do have a favor to ask. Ensign Traverse, the soldier who survived Neuvarvaan’s attack. Can you help him? Restore him to the way he was?”
The warrior-goddess tilted her head. “This is what you truly wish?”
Morgan swallowed. Eternal youth. Riches unimaginable. Great power. She knew she had but to ask and Andraste would see it done. The Fey didn’t favor mortals with wishes very often. But their honor required a fair reckoning when they felt a debt owed.
Morgan lifted her chin. Faced Andraste with all the strength of the Amhas-draoi behind her, her tone final. “It is.”
“Not even the true Fey can undo all the Morkoth’s black magics.”
Morgan’s shoulders slumped.
“But”—Andraste lifted a finger—“we will do all we can to aid this young man. You have my word.”
“Thank you.” Morgan bowed her head. Sent a silent I did my best to Cam. Hoped wherever he was, he heard it.
“You have a visitor.” Gram’s voice stirred Morgan from a doze. Sent a tingle of anticipation through her weighted limbs. He’d come.
But it wasn’t Cam that peeked a shy head around the door.
White-knuckled hands squeezing her purse, a shawl draped across her thin shoulders, Euna Sinclair took a seat beside Morgan’s bed. Offered a shy smile. “They told me you weren’t at home to visitors, but I insisted.” She bit her lip. Dropped her gaze to her lap. “I never said thank you for saving me. I only wish Captain…” Her words died away.
Morgan still felt the sting of failure at Brodie’s disappearance. What must he be feeling—thinking? “Have you heard from him?”
Euna lifted her head and the sorrow and sleepless nights were visible in the flat blue of her eyes. “Uncle Josh inquired. A man resembling Brodie took ship for the continent. But nothing more’s been heard.”
“He’s alive, Euna. At least we know that much.”
“Does he see it that way? Or does he see what they did to him as simply a living death?” Bitterness stung Euna’s words. Then her chin firmed, her shoulders squared. “Forget I spoke. He is alive. Somewhere. I can live with that.”
Was there more than concern for a foster brother in Euna’s tone? Had there been feelings between Brodie and Cam’s sister severed by Neuvarvaan’s killer stroke?
Morgan reached for Euna’s hand. Squeezed it, worried at the fragile press of bones beneath the skin. “But how are you? Truly?”
Euna’s courageous smile reassured Morgan. The young woman was tougher than she looked. “Uncle Josh and Aunt Sylvie have been dears. They worry over…I mean, what husband wants…” She pressed a hand to her breast. “If I dress in the dark, I don’t see…”
Morgan fought to sit up, ignoring the spinning room, the woozy light-headedness. As an Undying, Brodie was lost to them all. And Traverse had no guarantee he’d ever regain his youth. But Euna…here was someone she could help. Or at least her grandmother could.
“Do you trust me?”
Euna tilted her head, her brows furrowed in question. “Of course.”
“Gram?” Morgan called out, knowing her grandmother remained close by. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”
Alone once again, Morgan waited for Cam to come to her. And waited.
Then followed a day and a night and a day of unanswered questions, awkward silences, and sidelong worried glances when they thought she wasn’t looking.
To be honest after the first few days, she hadn’t tried over-hard to discover the truth of Cam’s defection. It was enough to know that he’d abandoned her, his promises as worthless now as they’d been last year.
She worked at furious. Not hard to do through frustrating days of lying flat on her back. Longer maddening weeks when the shortest walk could bring tears to her eyes and a spinning dizziness that sent her reeling like a drunk for the nearest chair.
She’d been a fool. A fool twice over, which made it worse. She’d fallen for the lost little boy and been blindsided by the rotten bastard of a man. In the end, all he’d really wanted was a good lay and she’d given it to him. Repeatedly.
Well, to hell with him.
She didn’t need him. Didn’t want him. Couldn’t care less where he was or what he was doing.
The anger burned bright and hard in her heart, squashing out the teeny voice that said he needed her still. That his words had been truth. His final actions that of a man who’d been pushed to the edge and over. Who ran from her in a vain effort to outrun a past he could no longer deny.
It was only in her sleep she dared to remember. When her dreams brought her visions of a windswept barren landscape, an isolated farmstead, and a quiet firelit room. His face swam before her, grief and loneliness clouding his gaze, and she ached for the calloused touch of his hand on her skin, the teasing heat of his kisses. Those nights she woke shaking with dry, wracking sobs, her throat tight, her eyes hot with unshed tears.
Autumn passed beyond her bedchamber window, Daggerfell’s woods a vibrant collage of scarlet and orange, yellow and gold. Friends and family came and went. Books read. Letters written. The little moments of life pieced together into a Cam-less existence.
The first snow fell. Heavy, wet flakes whispering in the lanes, blanketing the gardens. Morgan spent the day tramping the fields. Watching the icy hiss of white slant out across the Channel. Her lungs burned with use and the frozen air, her hands went numb in her gloves, her hair frosted white before she turned her steps toward home. Creeping to the quiet of her room, she collided head-on with her grandmother.
She motioned for Morgan to sit. “Myrgh-wynn—my granddaughter, we need to speak, you and I.”
One look at the determined glint in Gram’s eyes and Morgan squared her shoulders for the argument to come. “I wondered when you’d apply the thumbscrews.”
Gram let a smile curl her lips, but her chin remained stubborn with purpose. “You have hidden yourself away for too long. You are full recovered, yet you remain here rather than return to Skye. Can you tell me why that is?”
Vying for time, Morgan shed her sopping wet cloak on a chair. Pulled off her gloves, tossing them on her bed. Shook the snow from her hair.
“It is long past time for you to go to him.”
Morgan felt Gram’s words like a body blow. She whipped around, hating the revealing sting of tears. Cam wasn’t worth it. “Go? To him? Are you insane? That’s just what I’m not going to do.”
Gram remained as unmoved as stone. With a patience that Morgan had always envied and hated, she settled into a chair by the fire. Folded her hands in her lap. Obviously, this wasn’t going to be a lightning assault. More like a drawn-out siege. “You would rather hide behind the safety of Daggerfell’s walls than join with the enemy? Take the battle to him?”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head. Enemy. As in opposite of love. As in he’s not worth my time.” She stomped to the hearth. Made a great show of warming her hands. Ignoring Gram’s unasked-for advice.
“Your actions reveal the lie of your words. I have seen your heartache in the somber light of your gaze. In the sorrow of your heart. In the tragedy of your dreams.”
Morgan remained silent. If
she let Gram have her say, mayhap she’d give up and leave. But every accusation battered Morgan’s already bruised heart. Tore open a wound barely healed over.
“His sorrow is no less than yours, myrgh-wynn. And perhaps affects him more. He does not have the comfort of family. Nor the peace of his own conscience to offer reassurance.”
Gram had the persistence of an army sapper. Tunneling under Morgan’s defenses. Weakening walls. Pulling apart her arguments one brick at a time.
Morgan clamped her mouth over the harsh words that threatened to spill from her lips. Remained with eyes focused on the fire. Did everything but plug her ears with her fingers.
Still, Gram wouldn’t let it rest. “He is a proud man with the soul of a warrior. It will take a powerful woman to match such strength.”
The breech forced open, Morgan had no choice but to swing around to challenge Gram. “He left me. Remember? I offered him my love”—she beat her chest with her fist—“I sacrificed my future for him. And what did he do? Walked away from all of it. It wasn’t good enough.” She swallowed around the final truth. “I wasn’t good enough.”
And there it was. The real reason she sheltered within the safety of her rooms. Her greatest fear.
Gram nodded as if she’d already known what Morgan hadn’t admitted even to herself. Mayhap she did.
“Don’t you see, Gram? All I did, and I wasn’t enough.” She hated the crack in her voice, the weakness behind it.
“Perhaps the colonel thought leaving you was giving you what you wanted. Perhaps he thought he wasn’t enough for you.”
Morgan sank onto her bed, clutching the bedpost as she rested her head against the gnarled wood. Could that have been Cam’s reasoning? Could he have assumed that by bowing out he offered her back her freedom? Released her from what she’d stupidly referred to as the prison of his love? Why had she even said that? Why hadn’t she seen then what stared her in the face now? That no amount of Amhas-draoi power mattered if she’d no one to share her days with. Or her nights beside.
Taking a deep steadying breath, she closed her eyes, hating the spiraling doubts, the complete blindness of men. He should have known. He should have asked.
She should have told him.
When she opened her eyes, Gram stood, a smile of success lighting her face as if making Morgan cry had been her sole purpose. Her job here accomplished.
Morgan swiped a sleeve across her face. Sniffed. “If you’re so wise, where is he now?”
Gram laughed. “You two are more alike than you wish to believe. Like you, he fled to the one place he felt most at peace. Home.”
She stood on the shore of a loch, its icy blue brilliance mirroring the mountains surrounding it. The dirty storm clouds overhead.
Old snow curled in the corners of the rocks, blew through the cliffs. The sad cry of a loon sounded lonely across the waters. Returned in echo.
She rubbed her arms briskly, trying to warm her courage before climbing the path that led to the solitary farmstead.
It was just as she’d dreamed it. Built of local stone, the house seemed to grow from the hillside behind it. Bleak and storm-scarred with thick walls mortar-chinked to keep out the Viking winds howling down from the Orkneys and a slate roof sprouting chimneys, though smoke rose from only one. Scraggly trees leaned like old men in a garden left fallow and waiting patiently for spring.
Morgan knocked, though she knew Cam wasn’t home. She’d reconnoitered before plunging headlong into what could be an amazingly awkward situation.
Strathconon’s tenants spoke of the colonel as a solitary man, taken to spending long days on the moors and mountains. Never rude, yet holding himself apart from the life of the valley. No trips to the village. No evenings spent in the company of his neighbors. No visitors to his isolated holding on the edge of the estate.
Still others told—though always in a frightened whisper—of a mysterious woman who came to him only at night. And disappeared with the first gray smear of dawn in the east. On those days, the colonel seemed darker and more forbidding than ever. And though none understood why, they all took great pains to avoid him on those occasions.
If the exterior of the house exuded strength and age, the interior welcomed with snug rooms and a beeswax shine. Comfort and wealth combined to create a homey, cheerful atmosphere. Thick colorful rugs on the floors. Expensive paintings on the walls. A chimneypiece scattered with souvenirs of a life in the Highlands. Part of a stag’s antler. A clamshell. Weathered pebbles of an unearthly blue. A small bird’s skull. And in the center of it all, an urn of delicate antiquity. Worth a king’s ransom by the looks of it.
Like Cam, an odd mixture of high class and native ruggedness.
A pricking at her back spun her on her heel straight into the unblinking portrait stare of a hawk-nosed, strong-jawed gentleman whose frozen blue gaze was all too familiar. She lifted a hand, as if she could speak with him. Tell him he’d been right. Love wasn’t a chain. And in matters of the heart, at least one former Fey knew more than enough.
Morgan and Cam might circle each other endlessly unless one of them chose to end it. She would brave the first step. And please, God. Let Gram’s hunch be right. Or it would be one hell of a long trip south.
Cam tumbled the stones in his pocket as he pushed open the door, shut it against a wind shrieking with a promise of the storm to come. There’d be snow before morning. Lots of it. And he’d be trapped inside. No endless wanderings to tire his body and his mind enough for sleep to come. Morgan’s shade would visit him in his tossings and turnings. Punish him with second-guesses. What-ifs.
Had he been right to leave? In the chaos after Doran’s destruction when he’d been half mad with pain and grief and fear, the slithering coil of the serpent had convinced him to walk away. That he’d fallen too far for even Morgan to drag him back.
It had only been in the last weeks the voice had died away and he’d almost convinced himself—almost—that she might have stayed. He might have made her happy.
He crossed the hall to the back parlor—one of the few rooms he’d reopened upon his arrival. The upper floors remained shut.
Who needed a bed when sleep was the enemy?
At the threshold he slammed to a stop, the breath punched from his lungs, his heart banging against his ribs.
It couldn’t be.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them again expecting her to be a dream. He’d had them often enough to be wary. Morgan seated at the table, her red-gold hair gleaming in the light of a fire, her whiskey gaze hot with a love he thought forever lost to him.
But she remained. And the smile she turned on him smashed through the brittle barriers he’d thrown up to keep the worst of the hurt from taking him completely over.
He crossed the room in two strides, sliding to a halt an arm’s reach away. So close he smelled her enticing perfume, sensed her tension.
She clutched the arms of her chair, bit her bottom lip, but her eyes held his. Refused to let him look away. Retreat. “This is the second time I’ve had to track you down.”
His hand closed around the pebbles, reassuring him he wasn’t imagining. “I thought it best to disappear. Make it easy for you.”
Her jaw jumped. “You think what I’ve been through the last months has been easy?” She settled back, taking a deep breath. “One question, Cam. That’s all I’ve come here for.”
She squared her shoulders. Chin up. Eyes bright. Must be one hell of a question. She paused. Just long enough for dread to knot his insides. For sweat to break out on his chilled skin.
Apparently deciding she’d spun out the suspense long enough, she inhaled and asked, “I need to know, Cam. Do you love me, or were the last weeks just a way to get me naked into your bed?”
“I—”
But she didn’t give him a chance to finish. “I once told you I didn’t look for marriage. Had no need for love. I was wrong. Like it or not, I love you.”
Love. The word plunged a burning brand
into the icy fist of his heart. Cam dropped into the chair beside her, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed. Without looking up, he asked, “Can you know what I am—what I’m capable of—and love me anyway?”
Amusement colored her words. “I could ask you the same question.”
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Here was the dream. Morgan in his house. In his life. Not for a day or a month, but a lifetime. All he had to do was answer. But words wouldn’t come. His throat closed, his mouth dry. He lifted his eyes to hers. “Why?” was all he managed to choke out.
She lifted her eyes to his, her expression as fired with purpose as if she stood on the battlefield. “Because I’m tired of waiting on my knight in shining armor to sweep me off my feet. He’s damned overdue. This damsel decided to do her own sweeping. Write her own happy ending.”
She smiled, sending a violent wave of heat straight to his center. Months of snow and ice and cold baths had dulled the desire, but never extinguished it.
“So what’s your answer?”
Whether it was her words or some slight movement toward him, he couldn’t say. All he knew was one moment, he sat reeling in stunned excitement. The next he’d grabbed her up, knocking her chair on its side, swinging her around before settling her against his heart. Sliding his hands into the spill of her hair, he slanted his mouth over hers. Dipped his tongue between her lips. Felt her answering invitation in the plunge of her tongue, the slow sucking of his bottom lip, the suggestive grind of her crotch against him.
She broke away, her eyes glassy with lust and a consuming need as pressing as his own. “Well?”
He’d forgotten the question in the agonizing torture of having Morgan in his arms and still fully clothed. Something he meant to remedy in the next few minutes. But her question hung like the treasure it was. “Oh gods, yes, Morgan. I love you.” His hands curved around the swell of her rear, lifted her onto the hard bulge in his breeks. “But we do it right this time. Proper.”
Dangerous As Sin Page 28
