The Ravenscraig Legacy Collection: A World of Magical Highland Romance

by Allie Mackay

  As if to prove it, he put his hands on her shoulders again, this time easing her onto a stool next to the bathing tub. The determined gleam in his eyes held her in place as he knelt before her, then reached for a basin and a pail of heated water.

  “Give me your foot.” He glanced at her as he filled the basin. “It willnae do for you to get into the bathing tub until your feet are clean.”

  Kira tensed. “I can wash them myself. You needn’t help me.”

  In answer, he cocked a brow and flipped her skirts up over her knees. Making it worse, he flashed an arrogant smile, then clamped a strong hand around her left ankle, lifting her foot and placing it in the basin.

  She tried to jerk from his grasp, but he only slanted her a look of lairdly admonishment, his fingers tightening on her like an iron-cast ankle bracelet.

  “You can see to yourself once we have you settled in your bath.”

  She lifted her chin. “There will be no we about it. If I use the bathing tub, you can leave the room.”

  “Och, you will bathe.” He dipped a soap-smeared cloth into the water and then plunged it between her toes, scrubbing vigorously. “I shall keep my back turned.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Then you shall have to learn. As I, too, am trying to do.” He looked up, fixing her with a long, level stare as he carefully washed the arch of her foot. “Do not think it is easy for me to accept a place called All-den, Pen-seal-where’er, tiny flying disks, and zip-hers.”

  Kira almost smiled, remembering his expression when her button went sailing through the air. “Okay. You’ve made your point, but no peeking.”

  “I do not need to peek,” he observed, soaping her other foot. “I already know every inch of you. Including a certain bit of sweetness I can see just now.”

  Kira’s eyes flew wide. “What do you mean ‘a bit of sweetness?’”

  He only smiled.

  Her own face flaming, she looked down, embarrassment crashing through her when she saw that her gown had slid much higher up her thighs than she’d realized. Even worse, she’d been sitting with her knees open.

  “Oh!” She jumped off the stool. “I don’t want to talk about our dream-times and what you think you know about me.” Shaking out her skirts, she frowned. “You can’t compare something from a dream with the reality-”

  “Nae, you cannae,” he agreed, standing. “The real you fires my blood a thousand times more than any dream vision.” He captured her chin and kissed her. Hard, rough, and fast. “Dinnae you e’er forget that, even when we must speak of unpleasant things.”

  Kira angled her head, regarding him in the flickering glow of the hearth fire. “I think I’ve had enough unpleasantness for one day.”

  “So you have.” He met her gaze, his expression serious. “There are still matters we must discuss.”

  “Does it have to be now?”

  He nodded, and then lowered his head to kiss her again, this time gently.

  When he straightened, she pulled away, her heart thundering. There was something both unsettling and electrifyingly delicious about being kissed when she wasn’t wearing any panties. But now wasn’t the time to go all hot and tingly. A sensation that vanished when he began pacing between the wine barrel and the window embrasure.

  Without breaking stride, he slanted her a dark look, all fierce warrior chieftain. “Remove your soiled clothes now, before the water cools,” he said, seven hundred years of authority shimmering all over him. “While you bathe, I would hear about your morning. You must tell me what frightened my men.”

  “What I must do is find a pair of glittery red shoes.” Kira glanced at him, her fingers busy at her gown’s lacings.

  He stopped pacing. “Glittery red shoes?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Ach, lass, but I do.” He stood watching her, another frown settling on his brow. “You must’ve said something the like to Geordie and Ross. Perhaps mentioned this future of yours, or the Na Tri Shean?”

  “It was neither, but close.”

  “That willnae do, sweet. No’ when your whate’er-it-was made my men gibber with fright.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare them. I just wanted them to save what I thought was – oh, no!” She gasped when the bodice lacings ripped and both her gown and over-dress fell open to her waist.

  Aidan’s eyes darkened again, his men’s upset apparently forgotten as his gaze lowered to her breasts. She didn’t need to look down to know that her thin excuse for a medieval undershift hid nothing. It was practically transparent. Equally bad, the room’s chill was tightening her nipples. She could feel them thrusting against the delicate linen, just as she felt the heat of his stare.

  An intense, heavy-lidded perusal that only made them pucker all the more.

  “You said you’d turn your back.” She wasn’t surprised he hadn’t.

  Instead, he stepped closer and touched her face, once again smoothing his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. “Now hie yourself into yon bathing tub, lest I forget my vow to woo you properly.”

  The words spoken, he turned and clasped his hands as casually as possible behind his back. He fixed his gaze on the night darkness outside his bedchamber’s tall, arch-topped windows. He also tried to close his ears to the furious rustling of cloth and the sloshing of water as Kira rid herself of her garments and climbed into the bath.

  “So, Kee-rah.” He faced her only when he was sure she was fully submerged. “What was it that you wished Geordie and Ross to save?”

  She looked at him, clouds of steam from the bath water rising around her like tendrils of faery mist. “A drowning woman.” She lifted her chin, as if she suspected he wouldn’t believe her. “I saw her death, apparently one that took place nearly a hundred years ago. She had seabirds tied to a rope about her waist and-”

  “Her name was Annie,” Aidan finished for her, his innards twisting. “Her tale is a sad one and well known in these parts. She was married to Eachann MacQueen, a farmer who scratched a living off Wrath Isle’s barren slopes. He sustained his family by lowering his wife down the cliffs to gather seabirds and their eggs whene’er hunger drove them to such privations.”

  “Whoever she was, I saw her.” She peered at him, her naked, soapy breasts jiggling as she gripped the edge of the bathing tub and leaned forward. “I didn’t see her as a ghost or because of witchcraft, but as a glimpse of the past. The once-was, as my gift of far-seeing reveals to me.”

  Aidan began pacing again, too aware of the rivulets of water streaming over her full, lush breasts to wrap his mind around something that happened so long ago, and what it had to do with her and his gog-eyed, clack-tongued kinsmen.

  “So you are a seeress.” He paused by one of the windows and stared across the dark water at the black, serrated cliffs of Wrath Isle. “The sight is common hereabouts and shouldn’t have fashed my men,” he said, keeping his back to her. “I’ll wager they fear you because of how you appeared atop the gatehouse arch. We must find a way to explain that. Then they will accept you.”

  Behind him, Kira shifted in the water. “I don’t have second sight,” she argued. “At least not if you mean divination and prophecy. I told you, I’m a far-seer. Sometimes I’m able to look back in time, that’s all. Now I’ve obviously slipped through the centuries and that’s the only explanation I can give you. That, and my suspicion your gatehouse arch is a portal to the past.”

  Aidan snorted before he could help himself.

  “Scoff all you will.” She dipped a soapy cloth into the water, began scrubbing her shoulders. “If you have a better theory, I’m listening. Fact is, in my time, that arch of yours was half-buried in the grass, its top covered with moss and ferns. I was sitting on it, having a picnic, when suddenly my world vanished and I saw your men running across the bailey at me.”

  Aidan considered telling her he wasn’t dimwitted enough to believe the like, but decided against it. The matter of their dream encounters and her zip-her made it diff
icult for him to doubt her.

  Not to mention the wee flying disk.

  He shuddered, his head beginning to throb with the immensity of it all.

  “Ach, what a tangle,” he muttered, turning from the window and going to his table where he poured a generous cup of his strongest ale. A fine, rich brew flavored with just a hint of heather. He took a long swallow, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “I will not lie to you, lass.” He swirled the ale in his cup, looking down into its frothy, honey-colored depths. “What you claim is no’ easy to accept. Even when my heart tells me you speak true.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  Aidan let out his breath slowly. “Let us say I can think of no other explanation,” he said, setting down the ale cup. He wasn’t about to admit how much the zip-her and the little disk she called a button, bothered him. Instead, he folded his arms and tried to look worldly.

  She put her shoulders back, soap bubbles winking at him from her smooth, wet skin. “There’s not another explanation because I’ve told the truth.”

  “Be that as it may, my men will have to hear a different tale.”

  She didn’t look happy at that, but before she could protest, he raised a silencing hand. “We will put it about that one of my allies brought you here, spiriting you onto the gatehouse arch as a jest. Many of my friends are bold enough to have attempted such foolery,” he said, thinking in particular of the Barra MacNeils.

  Hebridean devils to a man, and great ravishers of women as well, any one of his friends from the Isle of Barra could have done the deed. Best of all, if ever his tall tale reached the MacNeils, they’d be quicker to throw back their heads and roar with laughter than draw their swords and demand he redeem their honor.”

  Och, aye, the MacNeils were the answer.

  He smiled, his achy head feeling better already.

  Kira Bedwell frowned.

  She’d wrapped her arms around her knees and sat staring at him from the bathing tub, clearly not agreeing with a thing he’d suggested. “It means a lot to me that you don’t think I’m a witch, but whether you believe me or not, I still don’t belong here.”

  “I say you do.” Aidan crossed the room in a flash. “Your place is with me and has been since that long ago day we first glimpsed each other. If there be any truth between us, it is that.” He looked down at her, her nakedness making his blood race to places that could prove dangerous. “Come, lass, you know as well as-”

  “‘If there be any truth between us’ are words that prove there can be nothing between us.” She met his gaze, regret in her voice. “People don’t talk like that where I come from, and they sure don’t talk like me here.” Glancing down, she plucked at the tub’s linen lining. “Don’t you see? Much as I would have wished it otherwise, my being here is a mistake. A weird quirk of fate – a slip in time – that should only have been a fleeting glance. I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of you in your hall, but in my heart I wanted more.”

  She looked up again, her eyes shining. “I think my longing was so strong that it caused a bump in our destinies, sort of like when the needle of an old-fashioned record player skipped to the wrong groove.”

  Aidan dropped on one knee beside the bathing tub. He didn’t understand all the words she’d used, but he knew well enough what she meant. “The fates do not err,” he told her. “Leastways no’ Gaelic ones. If they saw fit to send you here, you can be sure that was their intention.”

  To his annoyance, she didn’t look convinced.

  Just the opposite, she drew back her hand when he reached for it, hoping to gentle her with a soft kiss to her palm.

  “I’m not so sure ancient Gaelic gods have much control over Americans,” she said, tucking her hands beneath her bent knees. “We’re always told we make our own beds and this one” – she glanced around his sumptuous, candlelit room – “is a bed I’m not supposed to be sleeping in. Especially when my being here is causing you so much grief. I can’t allow-”

  “Grief?” Aidan shot to his feet, pulling her up with him. Scowling, he lifted her from the tub, then swirled a linen drying cloth around her shoulders. “Misery was the long years without you. The empty nights when I wondered if you were indeed naught but a dream. I thought my heart would split when Tavish carried you into my hall and I recognized you.”

  She gave him a look that made his head start to pound again. “You looked furious when you saw me.” She clutched the drying cloth to her breasts. “In medieval-speak, you’d probably say black-browed and ready to flay me to ribbons.”

  “No’ you, lass. I was ready to punish my men, as I’ve told you,” he reminded her. “I was wroth with them for their treatment of you.”

  “That’s the reason I must leave.” She moved to stand before the hearth fire, turning her back to its warmth. “I can’t stay on and see my presence cause such disruption in your hall. If I’m gone-”

  “Without you, there would be no hall for I should spend my days searching for you.” He went to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “My warriors would become rovers, broken men without direction-”

  “You’re trying to make me feel good, but it won’t work.” She ducked away and snatched up another linen towel, using this one to dry her hair. “If I remained, you’d be miserable. You’d end up spending every night like this one, stomping about and scowling, grilling me because one of your men misunderstood something I said or did.”

  Stomping and scowling?

  Aidan shoved a hand through his hair. Was he truly guilty of the like? Half certain that he was, his brows snapped together, his head now throbbing in earnest. Frowning as well, he turned on his heel and did his best not to stomp to the window. Once there, he drew a deep breath of the bracing sea air and scowled all he wished.

  Truth was, it felt good.

  He didn’t need Tavish Long-nose to tell him that black moods and storming through halls weren’t ways to win a lady’s heart. What he needed was a clear head and a plan. A new approach, guaranteed to impress.

  Stepping closer to the window, he braced his hands on the cold stone ledge and took another deep breath. And another. The chill air would surely help him think. Hopefully, when the answer came, it would be one he could stomach.

  Something that wouldn’t make him look foolish.

  Not that he’d allow such a trivial matter to keep him from gaining his heart’s desire.

  He sighed. It was amazing what love could do to a man.

  Chapter Nine

  Aidan stood at his bedchamber window, no longer looking out at the night’s mist and murk, but down at his own two hands. Still planted firmly on the broad stone ledge of the window arch, they were hands a man could be proud of. Strong, large, and capable, they’d swung swords, wielded axes, and were no strangers to hard, back-breaking work.

  And, it finally occurred to him, neither were they the hands of a man incapable of claiming the woman he wanted.

  The only woman he wanted.

  Despite the small matters of All-den, Pen-seal-where’er and his men making the sign against evil each time she walked past. The gods knew, he’d fought and besieged greater battles. Taking one last gulp of the cold, night air, he straightened his back and turned, ready to take on this new challenge.

  A formidable foe, she watched him from near the hearth. Across the length of his chamber, to be sure, but after the distance of dreams, so close he could taste her. Without doubt, he caught her scent. The essence of clean, freshly washed woman filled the room, a fine, heathery scent laced with just enough her to befuddle his senses and torment him.

  Truth was, she drove him beyond reason.

  She met his gaze, her sleek flame-bright hair gleaming in the torchlight, the drying cloth still clutched tight around her. The thin, damp cloth clung to her, molding her full, round breasts and tempting him with the sweetness of her shapely hips and thighs.

  Even more distracting, she was tapping one foot, the rapid movement making her breasts jig
, while the flush on her face only drew his attention to her soft, kissable lips.

  Tiny droplets of water glistened on her shoulders and as he watched, one pearled and trickled down her breasts, disappearing beneath the knotted cloth.

  When a second droplet did the same, his mouth went dry.

  “A plague on it,” he hissed, trying hard not to groan or frown. Clenching his hands, he struggled to ignore the sudden, heavy pounding at his loins. He raked a hand through his hair, blotting all thought of her lush, warm curves, the fragrant, heated place hidden between her thighs.

  A slick, succulent delight he couldn’t wait to get his hands on.

  His hands, and more.

  Much more.

  “Return my clothes, and I’ll be on my way.” Her words dashed cold water on his lustful ponderings. “If the gatehouse arch brought me here, it can surely take me back.”

  “Och, lass, it is too late for that.” With long strides, he crossed to her. “There are clothes a-plenty for you here. Fine clothes. Raiments my sister left behind when she wed a Border chieftain. I’ll also have new ones made for you. As for the gatehouse arch, I cannae let you near it. Leastways unescorted. No’ that I think there’s aught amiss with it, but-”

  “What is this?” Her eyes flashed. “First you take my clothes and riddle me with questions, and now you’d deny me access to the one place-”

  He grabbed her shoulders, silencing her with a fierce, bruising kiss. “Ach, lass,” he panted, releasing her. “It was my hope to woo you this e’en. My questions were so I can understand what we’re facing. I need to know so we can find a way to make things work, together.”

  “You have a strange way of wooing a woman.” She stepped back, hitching up the drying cloth where it’d dipped to reveal a pert nipple.

  “Perhaps because I dinnae do the like every day.” Aidan frowned blacker than ever. “I have ne’er met a woman like you. One I so wished to please. A future woman.”

  She blinked, then sank onto a stool before the fire. “You wished to please me because I come from the future?”