Apparently, they didn’t trust her. How was she supposed to have guessed they were hiding the Stone of Destiny—less that she had somehow traversed centuries to arrive here at the perfect time to open mouth, insert foot?
The word coincidence didn’t apply here. She sensed there was something far greater at work. No, this wasn’t simply a coincidence.
Fae magic.
Had Annie somehow wished herself here while in that curio shop? Could it be that she had been so obsessed with Lia Fàil all her life because it had been her destiny all along? Maybe this was another one of those chicken or the egg riddles, because sitting here now, it felt strangely as though she had lived her entire life for this occasion, and that everything she had ever done had brought her to here and now.
She was still contemplating that when Callum returned, making his way purposely toward her, carrying something in his hand. He knelt beside her, surprising her with a napkin filled with foodstuffs. “Ye must be famished, lass?”
Annie peered up at him in surprise. Hungry? She had eaten her entire sandwich before falling asleep on that bloody hill and this situation wasn’t exactly giving her an appetite. “I’d rather have my hands unbound,” she said honestly. He frowned, but seemed to consider her request, so she pressed. “Please, where am I supposed to go? There’s only one way out of this valley, and you have it guarded by thugs.”
His brows collided. “Thugs?”
“Goons, gangsters…”
His expression only appeared all the more confused.
Annie sighed. “Guards.”
“Ach, lass, why di’ ye no’ simply say so?” He set the napkin down beside her, and unsheathed the knife at his boot.
Annie lifted both her brows as she watched him saw at her ropes. She would have argued that she was “saying so,” except that she was getting what she wanted so she held her tongue. “Thank you,” she said instead as his knife sliced through the last of the rope. Already her wrists were chafed, after only a few hours of being bound, and she rubbed the raw area with her thumb.
He eyed her, a warning in his steel gray eyes. “Dinna disappoint me, lass. If ye attempt to escape, I canna promise to keep ye safe. D’ ye ken?”
Annie nodded.
“Now eat,” he demanded. “Ye’re naught but skin and bones.”
Annie nodded, hoping to appease him so he would go away and allow her to continue examining her crystal in peace—certainly not because the sight of him made her envision him naked. He was buff, but not in the same way as those gym-heads who posed in the gym mirrors. His body was strong and sculpted by what could only have been long hours of labor. Still, it wasn’t like her to think of men as sex objects. She lifted a slab of cheese from the napkin, acutely aware of his scrutiny.
His eyes seemed to peer straight into her soul. “I’ll bring ye a wee dram,” he offered, though he sat down beside her, lifting his knees and wrapping his muscular arms around them, watching her nibble at the cheese. “Ye’re a strange lass,” he remarked after a moment. His lips broke into a boyish grin that made Annie’s heart skip a beat. “Then again ye’re one o’ the fae, so ye would ha’e me believe…”
Quite certain of his answer, Annie asked, “Just how many faeries have you known? I’ll have you know that everyone in America looks exactly like me.”
He lifted a brow. “Exactly?”
“Okay, maybe not exactly.”
His lips tipped at the corners, making Annie’s heart trip a little harder. Men like him rarely paid attention to her. Men like him preferred her cousin Kate. “Sounds like a mon’s idea of heaven,” he said, surprising her, and Annie blinked, heat suffusing her cheeks.
“Are you flirting with me?”
Once again his brows drew together, as though he didn’t quite understand. “Flirting?”
“Never mind,” Annie said awkwardly. But he was, she realized. The man was flirting with her. She couldn’t mistake that mischievous gleam in his eyes. Or the appreciative way he was looking at her…nor could she ignore that familiar pang of desire that was building somewhere deep inside.
Reluctant to leave the lass yet, Callum leaned back against the boulder they had named Clach Tolargg, in honor of their fallen brethren. His people believed these stones were the leavings of their gods. The greater the stone, the more significance it held, and the greater the spiritual connection. They held their counsels here.
“I need ye to tell me the truth, lass. Who sent ye? From whence di’ ye come?”
She stiffened. “Okay…that makes sense.” Her tone was full of reproach, and mayhap a bit of disappointment. She waved the cheese at him. “You want something from me, so you think you can flirt your way to answers.” She gave him a lovely little impertinent nod and he found himself enchanted by the guileless gesture.
However, talking to her made his head ache—inconceivably, even more than the problem of the Destiny Stone. He raked a hand across his whiskers, and considered getting up again to fetch her that dram he’d promised—himself as well. He sorely needed it after the day he’d had. However, something kept him seated at her side.
He hadn’t set out to “flirt” with the lass, as she’d called it, but he certainly did not find her wanting. While her dress was odd, her hair was shiny and straight, cascading about her shoulders like a mantle of black silk. Her brows, perfectly formed, arched over pale green eyes. And her lips were made for a mon to kiss. If in truth he believed in faeries, she might well be precisely how he’d envision one—with creamy skin as soft as butter and legs that made a mon think of having them wrapped about his waist. However, it would do her little good if his kinsmen thought he was protecting her simply because he wanted to appease his cock.
Auld Morag watched them closely.
He considered the girl a long moment, thinking that strangely enough, her appearance here in the vale had settled his restlessness. Admittedly the thought of spending his life here in the Mounth no longer seemed quite so devoid of possibilities…if the girl stayed as well.
“I need answers,” he said, “and I intend to get them, but, nay, I dinna find ye appealing, if that’s what ye mean. Ye’re too skinny for my taste,” he lied.
Annie frowned. He was lying, she was certain. She recognized desire, and it was right there in his steely eyes. “Whatever,” she said and swallowed her bite of cheese.
“Tell me your name.”
“Annie Ross.”
“Annie Ross,” he repeated.
It wasn’t a question, Annie surmised. He seemed to be savoring the sound of her name—much like she was enjoying the bite of cheese he’d given her—judging by the mold, some kind of blue? She had never tasted anything quite like it—nor had she ever met a man quite like him. And he was acting a lot like a man with a hard-on. He was a liar.
“So ye hail from Ross-shire, then? Are ye Fidach by blood?” He fidgeted uncomfortably, and Annie decided to prove him wrong—of course, without stopping to question why she felt so safe with such a blatant flirtation. She shifted, lifting her knee to see if he would sneak a peek.
Fidach was a name she recognized, but she had no idea whether she was connected to the ancient clan. Oddly enough, despite her curious nature, and her obsession with the Stone of Destiny, she had never been driven to trace her clan’s ancestry. “Fidach? As in the sons of Cruithne, King of the Picts?”
His look darkened considerably. “We are seven nations, all with royal blood. ’Tis a blasphemy we have taken the Pecht name. ’Tis no’ our own.” Annie was too shocked to be disappointed by the fact that he ignored her blatant invitation to peek up her skirt.
Cripes, she thought. Callum is a Pict.
I am talking to a Pict.
The crystal was suddenly forgotten at her side. So was her failed attempt at seduction. He had her rapt attention now. The Picts had mysteriously vanished from the annals of history. Her peers were all making up plausible scenarios to explain how and why, and here she was sitting in the middle of a field talking t
o a Pict. She must be dead or in a coma. She must have fallen and hit her head and was lying unconscious in that field where she’d scarfed her sandwich. It just figured her idea of Heaven would be some sort of historical fact-finding mission. And despite that she suspected this was all a dream, she tried to keep calm and answer his question. “All I know is my father was a Scot,” she told him.
Across the fire, the old woman suddenly gave a decidedly disapproving, “Hurrumph!”
Callum paid the woman little mind. “How are your wrists?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry for binding them, lass. ’Ye happened upon me whilst I was burying my Da.”
“I know. I’m sorry too,” she offered, and meant it.
The old woman suddenly bounded to her feet. “Chan eil fhios càise!” she announced, pointing at Annie, and left them, muttering. “Dìt Scoti!”
Alarmed by her outburst, Annie watched her march beyond the light of the fire, her painted body disappearing into the night.
“Dinna mind auld Morag,” he said. “She’s o’ the mind no outlander is a good outlander, but the auld bat is harmless.”
Annie wasn’t so sure about that. “What did she say?”
“She said ye dinna know cheese,’” he disclosed with a grin. “That slice in your hand is as precious as your keek stane, and if ye were a Fidach in truth, ye’d know ’twas made by your own clanswomen for hundreds of years. But ’tis more like that her feelings are sore to see ye picking at it like a wee bird.”
Callum seemed to be watching her curiously. “An’ ye say ye lost your Da?”
“I was five,” she said, and hushed. The sense of loss was keen, even after all these years.
He stared at her—waiting for her to continue, she presumed. Despite his size and breadth, there was a gentleness about him and a comprehension in his gaze that Annie found effortless. Inexplicably, she found she trusted him. And in spite of the fact that she had never once discussed her parents’ death with her own fiancé, she felt drawn toward sharing the pain of her loss with another human being. Unfortunately, how did one explain a drunk driver to a man who must know nothing of cars? “He was murdered,” she said. And in a way it was true.
She knew he suspected the same about his own father though the circumstances were different. But they had something in common.
“What o’ your minny?”
Annie smiled a little. “Immortal, remember?” That was true as well—at least in Annie’s heart. Beneath her knees, the crystal glowed pink, catching her attention. So far, she hadn’t said anything she didn’t believe was true…
His gaze fell to the crystal she was keeping close. “Tell me aboot ye’re keek stane, Annie Ross.”
Annie reached down to pull the crystal close before he could think to touch it. “It’s precious,” she said, repeating the shopkeeper’s claim.
“Aye, weel…if in fact it has the power to reveal all ye say it does, then mayhap it is,” Callum relented.
“It can,” Annie Ross persisted, guarding her crystal jealously between her lovely legs.
Magic or nay, it was clearly important to her, he reasoned. But she had another treasure hidden there that was far more valuable, and it had been far too long since a woman had hardened his cock so easily. She was lovely as a summer day, with a temper that fired his senses. And there was a look of keen intelligence in her eyes that stirred him far more deeply than any pair of diddies could manage. He had claimed she was daft, but she was far from it, he suspected, and he realized she was attracted to him as well. However, it would do her little good if he confessed to it now and endangered her life in the process.
Besides, if Biera returned and found the lass was lying…well, he didn’t wish to grow attached to a woman who would end without a head.
He eyed the crystal, but he made no move to take it, sensing she was offering him a measure of trust. A mon could win more flies with honey than with vinegar, his minny used to say. The problem was that Callum could never determine what a mon might want with flies. On the other hand, he knew precisely what he wanted with the lass sitting before him now…
Answers…to begin with.
Nay, he didn’t believe she was any faerie. She was a flesh and blood mortal, the same as him. Proof was in those rosy cheeks every time she dared to glance at the region of his lap. If he werna a disciplined man, he would have erected a small tent in his breacan the instant he sat down beside her.
He didn’t believe she was a spy either, but god save her if she was. He’d take her head the same as any mon’s. And if he didna do it himself, one of his kinsmen would…only then he would lose the fealty of his clan.
Succession was not absolute, nor was it decreed by patrimony. Among the old ones, it was the mother’s blood that ruled. And fortunately for Callum—or mayhap not so fortunately—he had the advantage that both his parents’ Pecht blood was true. These days, three generations removed from MacAilpín’s treason, most men were Gaels by virtue of at least one parent’s bloodline. It was a stain on their Pecht lineage, and their consortium had drawn together the last of his people whose blood was pure. None of these men or women who had been chosen for this mission were beholden to the Gaels, not by blood or fealty.
They sat quietly for a moment, listening to the persistent sound of hammers in the distance. Along the beach, his kinsmen were busy repairing the remains of an old crannog that had fallen into ruin. It made him heartsick to think that now the elders of all seven Pecht nations—Cat, Fidach, Ce, Fotla, Circinn, Fortriu and Fib—could fit into one small crannog. Alas, they were the last of the Painted Ones—those whom the Roman’s had once called Pechts. Now they were the Guardians of clach-na-cinneamhain—the true Stone of Destiny, which was now hidden in the belly of the ben.
The lass picked up her crystal. The instant she touched it, the color changed.
“What does it mean when it turns green?”
She peered up at him in surprise, her eyes widening a bit.
Chapter Six
He could see it?
Still Annie didn’t know how to respond, because she didn’t really understand the crystal’s properties. So far, she had only seen it turn that particular color in the hands of only two people…hers and the shopkeeper’s so she took a wild guess. “It knows when it’s in the hands of its keeper.”
At her words, the crystal’s ribbons shifted to a rosy hue.
It chooses ye, she recalled the shopkeeper’s saying.
Callum seemed to be watching the crystal as well. Annie spared him but a glance, but her eyes returned to the crystal with sudden realization, “Of course,” she said. “I am the keeper.”
What else did the colors mean?
Truth, lies…and the destinies of men.
The old woman’s words had been very specific, Annie believed. There were only two colors she had witnessed thus far, and all things might be determined through truth and lies. If green meant that a connection with the crystal had been forged, could red be truth instead of anger or passion? The crystal’s rosy color intensified, even as she experienced the thought, and she marveled at it. It seemed to respond directly to all things connected to her.
Fae magic, the woman had claimed.
Could it be true?
What might be the color of a lie?
Lifting the crystal, she held it in front of her, peering into its depths. “I’m from another time and place,” she enunciated clearly, without sparing a glance toward Callum, despite that the statement was as much for his benefit. The last of the green dissipated from the crystal so that it was permeated with threads of all shades of red.
Callum watched closely as her crystal seemed to react to her words. For an instant, he thought he detected a measure of surprise in her gaze, but she was looking at him now with something more akin to conviction.
“Are ye a spy for King Giric?” he asked directly.
She gave him her full attention then, and shook her hea
d somberly, seeming to realize the import of his question. The stone’s colors remained rosy and Callum thought she must be speaking truth. He decided to test her…and the crystal as well. “D’ ye find me appealing, Annie Ross?”
Her gaze skidded toward his. “I…uh…haven’t…thought about it,” she stammered, and the crystal’s color faded to a dirty brown, while her cheeks turned a lovely a shade of crimson.
The blood warmed in Callum’s veins at the thought of her ardor—no matter that she denied it. God’s teeth, even without the crystal’s confirmation, he recognized desire in those clear green eyes—eyes that were far more knowing than any woman he had ever encountered.
Or any man for that matter.
For a moment, no words were spoken between them, and the breath of the world seemed to falter.
“D’ ye wish to kiss me, lass?” he asked, no longer testing her. Nor did he any longer care whether his kinsmen were watching. Let them watch if they must. If she said yes, he would take her sweet bonny mouth right here and now.
“No!” she said too quickly. In her hands, the crystal darkened and then extinguished like a gutted torch.
Callum grinned at the sight of it. She was lying, and that pleased him inordinately.
It took the lass a full moment to realize her stone had betrayed her, and once she did, he laughed low. “Seems your keek stane does indeed reveal truth and lies, Annie Ross. I’ll be watching what ye say from here forth.” And then, having imparted as much, he stood. “I dinna wish to kiss ye either,” he lied. “An’ I dinna like ye at all,” he declared before walking away—before she could note the darkened color of her keek stane.
As he made his way back to the crannog, he found himself grinning stupidly, wishing Biera would hurry back to declare the lass innocent, because if it was the last thing Callum did, he intended to convince Annie Ross to remain here with him in the vale, to bear his bairns and warm his bed. With the right person in his arms, not even the cold could diminish his spirit.
The Winter Stone: One Legend, Three Enchanting Novellas Page 5
