The Highlander and the Sea Siren

by Marguerite Kaye

  “Oh, aye, he’s a fine man. You can trust him.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s many a lass in the village would like to be in your position, you know, but he hasn’t looked at a woman since he came here.” Ishbel eyed Morven speculatively. “There’s many a lad here would like the look of you, too. We don’t often get new faces here at Port of Ness, you must have a care how you go.”

  When she realised what the woman was hinting, Morven was shocked. “I would not! I would never–I am here for Lachlan.”

  Ishbel smiled grimly. “That’s not necessarily how the men will see it. You remind me of someone, someone from long ago. Have you family here?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Morven replied, though as she looked around, she found the place did have a familiar feel to it.

  “It’s your eyes, there’s something about your eyes.” Ishbel shook her head. “It will come to me.”

  They had been standing on dry sand as they talked, but now a wave lapped up around Morven’s feet. The tide was on the turn. The rock where the seal had been basking was submerged, and the seal was in the water. She could see its head bobbing. Another wave crept up the sand. Morven danced back from it, afraid to ruin Lachlan’s trousers, and saw that Ishbel was staring at her feet. She followed her gaze, flexing and shaking out her toes, where sand had caught in the tiny webs of skin that held them together. “What are you looking at?”

  Ishbel made as if to speak, then changed her mind.

  “What is it?” Morven said sharply.

  Ishbel shook her head. “It’s nothing. I must be on my way, I have people to see. Mhairi Ross is expecting her first child any day now, and it is likely to be a difficult labour. Lachlan has gone to Stornaway, hasn’t he? He’ll be back soon, I expect.” The fey wife picked up her wicker basket and began to make her way along the beach towards the harbour.

  “Mrs Macfarlane,” Morven called after her, not wanting to let her go, suddenly afraid to be alone with her thoughts.

  “My house is that one, the one at the opposite end of the village from Lachlan’s. You’ll know it by the garden. And the cats, of course, all witches have cats,” Ishbel called, her voice tinged with irony. “You’ll find me there when you need me. When you know the questions to ask, then I’ll give you the answers, but not before.” Pulling her shawl more tightly around her thin body, Ishbel scurried off along the sand.

  Morven watched her go. At the back of her eyes was a strange burning sensation, as if feelings would spill from them. This morning she had been happy. Now she was afraid, though she had no idea what it was that frightened her.

  When Lachlan returned, he found Morven in the bedroom, perched on a milking stool in front of the three-quarter-length mirror that hung on the wall next to the washstand. She was naked. She seemed to have an aversion to clothing. He watched her from the doorway. She did not notice him, twisting and turning precariously in her efforts to see each part of her body in the glass. Her expression was one of curiosity and wonder, as if she had not seen her own reflection before. She stroked her skin, running her fingers through the long luxuriant tresses of her hair, stretching, flexing, bending this way and that, completely absorbed, yet somehow completely lacking in vanity. As if she were looking at a portrait, rather than her own body.

  She was beautiful. Every curve, every new line formed as she moved was perfect. Essence of woman. As her hand smoothed itself over the roundness of her belly down toward the soft curls between her legs, Lachlan could bear it no longer. Pulling his jumper over his head, kicking off his boots, stripping his shirt and trousers impatiently from him, he caught her back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist, his lips seeking out the tender nape of her neck under her thick fall of hair.

  “Lachlan,” Morven exclaimed delightedly, snuggling her rear into the heat of his front, “I missed you.” With the aid of the stool, she was his equal in height. The mirror reflected back their bodies. His tanned skin dark against her pale. His shoulders and chest broad enough to enclose her. His hair, ruffled with the wind from his sail, so black it made her own look lighter. His eyes like the sky at midnight, heavy-lidded as he, too, looked at their joint reflection in the mirror. Morven put her hands over his. “So different,” she whispered huskily as his arousal pressed into the softness of her bottom.

  “So beautiful,” Lachlan said, meeting her gaze in the mirror. She could tell from the slight glaze, the way his pupils were enlarged, that he wanted her. It made her want him all the more. She watched, mesmerised, as he slipped his hand between her legs, flattening the palm of his other one on her stomach, encouraging her to push back against his heat. His solidness. His length.

  Excitement fizzed inside her as she watched what he did to her, feeling the effect of it on him, in his hardness, in the quality of his breathing, watching the colour of his eyes change, his pupils dilate. Anticipation and uncertainty lent it all an edge. This was new. New territory. New feelings. She had not thought there could be more, but it seemed there could be. She wanted him to show her.

  His fingers dipped between her legs. She could see them sliding into her, feel how easily they slipped in, how welcoming her flesh was for his touch. Her muscles clenched around him. He pressed farther inside her, and she closed her eyes with relish.

  Lachlan nipped on the lobe of her ear. “Watch,” he whispered, his voice low with passion. As he dipped his fingers into her, the look of ecstasy on her face was enough to send the blood surging to his groin. He felt himself, hard and tight, contracting and lengthening against her. He dipped again and stroked, too, relishing her wetness, astonished at the ferocity of the engorging rush of response it engendered in him. Morven shivered in his arms, but kept her eyes on their reflection. Such amazing eyes. He could drown in her eyes.

  He slipped his other hand up to her breast. Milky white. Her nipples rosy and hard. He grazed each of them with his palm. He pushed his finger higher into her, and stroked her swollen bud with his thumb, stroking and dipping, velvet soft, honey wet, until he felt her jolt, and watched, fascinated, the flush of her climax reflected in her face, felt the sudden cold on the rest of her body as the blood surged to feed it. She trembled, clenching around him, her eyes closing as she came, saying his name over and over.

  He could stand it no more. As she pulsed and shuddered he bent her over, nudging her down from the stool, holding her firmly by the waist, and thrust into her, anxious to ride the waves of her climax, moaning himself now as he entered her, felt her sheath him, grip him, arch against him.

  Morven gasped as Lachlan’s shaft plunged into her and filled her in one hard thrust. So much of him, but she took him high, higher than before, as her muscles rippled and made way for him. She braced herself with her hands on the nightstand, pushing against him, clenching and closing her eyes as he thrust. Opening her eyes for his withdrawal, she caught a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror, her own form bent over, the muscles on Lachlan’s shoulders and arms rigidly defined with the effort of holding her. Sweat glittered on his chest, taut buttocks and thighs rippled as he thrust. She watched his shaft, glistening with the evidence of her own excitement, thick and long, pushing into her, pulling out of her. It was unbelievably arousing. She felt the renewal of her climax, surging at the sight of him thrusting, enhanced by the sound of him, his moans soft and harsh every time he pushed, her own answering, urging whimper, begging him to ride her harder.

  For a fleeting second their eyes met in the mirror. Something inside Morven took flight. Lachlan’s grip on her tightened, the urgency of his thrust was almost brutal in its force. Then his eyes closed as he came, pouring everything of himself into her and she welcomed it, closing her eyes, too, the more to feel the pulsing of him, her own pulsing encouraging his essence to strive for higher, safer, warmer places inside her. And then Morven’s mind flew free from darkness, soaring and dipping like a seabird in the breeze.

  Behind her, his hand possessively on her thigh, Lachlan struggl
ed to understand what had become of him. Beguiled was the only word that made sense. He decided he liked it.

  Chapter 4

  Weeks passed. He could not keep his hands off her. The most beautiful creature he had ever met. And the most desirable. Lachlan’s thoughts came back to him like the words in a fairy tale. Indeed, there were times when he felt Morven really had cast a spell over him. She only had to look at him and he wanted her. He felt as if he were in a permanent state of arousal, yet every time it was sated, still he wanted her again. Just the sight of her, brushing her hair, bending over to tend to the fire, her little pink tongue flicking over the bone of her porridge spoon, and he was hard. Only the answering raw need in Morven, the ever-increasing height of her own passion, kept him from questioning his state of mind. If he was entranced, then so, too, was she.

  They had taken no precautions against the consequences of their love-making. It had not appeared to occur to Morven, and by the time he himself had thought of it, it seemed to him already far too late. He found the thought of his seed taking root inside her deeply erotic. The notion of a child, not one he had given much thought to before, Lachlan now found compellingly attractive. The babe flourished in his mind, the cherished product of their union. Such a babe would bind her to him. He was disturbingly aware of the need for something to do so. Though he could not have said why, though Morven had given him no cause to doubt or to question, still somehow he knew their situation was precarious.

  That Morven had remembered nothing of her past worried him. He kept his worries to himself. He did not think she was deliberately holding anything back, but increasingly he feared that her not wanting to remember was significant–that perhaps behind the loss lay a dark truth. Wrestling with his conscience and his desires, Lachlan concluded only that he wanted Morven to stay. Thus, he did not allow her to see his own cares, hoping that security and stability would bring about their rewards.

  She was in many ways like a wild creature, to be looked after without her knowing, and this is what Lachlan did, smoothing her path with the women in the village, ensuring too that no other man made unwelcome approaches. She was his woman, no one in Port of Ness was in any doubt of that. Only Morven remained oblivious of the efforts he made on her behalf.

  He tried to go about his business, but the boat he was building for Hamish Dodds was already behind schedule. He made love to Morven in the shed several times, amongst the wood shavings, on the ribs of the boat, against the pile of planks stacked up in the corner. Sometimes their coming together was urgent, so desperate were they to unite their bodies that they dispensed with foreplay. At other times they were gentle together, stroking and teasing each other into a frenzy of anticipation, as they had just a few minutes before, in the shelter of a cave on the beach where they lay now, the bucket intended for clams lying abandoned at their feet.

  Lachlan roused himself reluctantly, rubbing sand from his skin, shaking it out of his discarded clothing. Morven lay pliant, her hair spread out behind her, her body glowing with the heat of their passion. “Come on, get dressed before someone finds us here,” Lachlan said, grinning, his voice still drowsy with satisfaction.

  Morven stretched luxuriously, arching her back to make her breasts stand out in a way she had learned he found difficult to resist, the soft pink of her nipples summoning him like a siren. She stretched out her hand enticingly. “Come back here.”

  “Later. If we don’t get the clams, there will be nothing for dinner.” Once again, Lachlan was astounded at the ferocity of her need for him, a need only equalled by his for her. He dragged his eyes away from her body, reaching down to pull her upright. Morven sat up, flexing her feet into the sand. He noticed for the first time that her toes were joined by a thin web of skin.

  “What is it?” Morven asked him, brushing the sand from her body.

  “Your toes. Have they always been like that?”

  Morven followed the direction of his gaze. “Yes. Are not yours?”

  Lachlan stretched his own toes apart so that she could see. “No.”

  All of a sudden Morven recalled the way that Ishbel Macfarlane had stared at her feet, and curled them into the sand. Lachlan knelt down beside her, cupping one of her feet in his hand, kissing each toe. “It’s nothing. You’re beautiful. Don’t hide them.”

  She was only partly reassured, pulling away and scrabbling for her clothes. The door in her mind eased open for a fraction. She remembered swimming underwater. The sense of freedom. The strong flex of her legs and feet propelling her effortlessly through the deep. Then it was gone.

  “Morven, what’s wrong? You’ve gone quite pale.”

  She shook her head, pulling her skirt on over her underclothes, unwilling to meet his gaze. “It’s nothing.” Fully dressed now, she picked up the bucket. “Clams. Why don’t I get them. You go and do some work on that boat, or Hamish Dodds will be after you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was looking at her oddly. Morven gave him a quick kiss. “I won’t be long.” It seemed to work. He made his way back up the cliff path, turning to wave once. She watched him forlornly, clutching the bucket, until he turned around the corner of the cottage, making for the boat shed. Then, checking the beach, she quickly stripped her clothes back off again and ran toward the water, plunging into the surf before anyone could spy her.

  Morven swam straight out to sea, far beyond the surf, gliding easily through the water exactly as she had in her imagination. Or was it her memory? She turned on her back, floating, looking up at the sky, allowing her mind to drift. She could hear her sisters’ voices whispering and giggling, though when she tried to picture them, she could not. They are not like us. The warning was clear, but who spoke it, to what it referred, she did not know.

  You must keep it safe. Without it you cannot go back. Morven turned onto her stomach to discover she had drifted far out. A seal bobbed remarkably close. For an instant she could have sworn it was the creature who had spoken. A sense of impending doom threatened to envelop her. She turned to head for the shore, swimming as fast as she could in an effort to escape it. Running for the shelter of the cave and her clothing, she found the fey wife sitting in the sand. “I went for a swim,” Morven said, shrugging herself hastily into her undergarments.

  “I was watching. You’re a strong swimmer,” Ishbel replied. “I take it that you have remembered nothing as yet?”

  Morven’s skin prickled. “You know something. Something you’re not telling me. What is it?”

  “When you know the right questions to ask, I’ll give you the answers. I told you that.”

  It was kindly said, but the sense of impending doom returned to Morven on hearing the old woman’s words. “Is it bad? Will he leave me?”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Love? I don’t know. He–he is my mate.”

  Ishbel nodded sadly. “For now.”

  “What do you mean?” Morven asked urgently, but Ishbel only pursed her lips. “Tell me, please.”

  “I can’t. You must find out for yourself. Then you will follow the path that has been set. It is the way of your people.”

  “My people! What do you mean, my people? Am I not the same as you?”

  But Ishbel would be drawn no more. Morven made her way back to the cottage, her mind in a seething turmoil. Every day, at first, Lachlan had asked her if she remembered, and every day she had truthfully answered that she had not. Now knowledge fluttered like a bird on the window of her mind, tapping insistently, and she dreaded allowing it in. Lachlan seemed content to accept her, to allow her to stay, but she was no longer under any illusion. Whatever he thought, whatever she wanted, it was not a permanent state of affairs.

  She was horribly aware of the sands flowing relentlessly through the hourglass of their time together. She knew that once the mystery of her origins was solved, all would be at an end.

  She was walking through the village one morning, six weeks after her arrival in Port of Ness, when the faintness fi
rst overtook her. It was an unsettled day for summer, bright and breezy one minute, dark and lowering the next. Clouds scudded overhead, their shadows turning the sea from blue to grey. Down in the harbour, gulls flew high over the single mast of an incoming fishing boat. Morven was on her way to pick up a parcel that had been delivered from Stornaway on the mail boat when the ground shifted, surging up to meet her. There was a rushing noise in her head. She broke out into a cold sweat.

  The fey wife’s cottage was but a step away from the harbour path. As Morven pushed open the gate, a beautiful smokey grey cat brushed around her ankles. “Mrs Macfarlane,” she called.

  Ishbel, in her habitual black, caught her as she swayed, helping her into the house just in time. Morven fell into the armchair in a faint.

  She came to a few minutes later. “What happened?” she asked. Panic threading her voice. “Am I ill?”

  Ishbel knelt down before her and chafed her hands. They were ice cold. “Has this happened before?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been sick?”

  Morven looked surprised. “Yes. The last few mornings–not always sick, but I have felt like I might be. What’s wrong with me?”

  “You’re with child.”

  A deep contentment filled her slowly, like the sun rising. “With child,” she said in wonderment, placing her hands over her stomach. “Will it be soon?”

  “Don’t you know?” Ishbel looked a little disconcerted. “Don’t try to get up, I’ll brew you some raspberry leaf tea, it will help settle your stomach, then we can talk.”

  Ishbel’s home was at the opposite extreme of the village to Lachlan’s. Her cottage was smaller, the windows unglazed, the furniture roughly hewn. The room that Lachlan used as a bedchamber, Ishbel used for her herbs. The cottage was filled with the scents of them, lavender and verbena, angelica and saxifrage, with lemon balm, comfrey, chervil and camomile wafting in from the garden. The grey cat settled himself in front of the open fire. Ishbel handed Morven the fragrant brew, then sat down opposite, and informed her what to expect and when. “You’re pleased then?” she asked, when Morven eventually ran out of eager questions.