A Very Gothic Christmas

by Christine Feehan

  “By my given one. Rachel.”

  He pondered her request for a moment, then murmured, “As ye wish . . . Rachel” Her name rolled off his tongue in a growling caress, like the sound made by a hungry lion.

  Rachel had to mentally shake herself to diffuse the honeyed languor that had taken hold of her body. She busied herself by putting the supplies away.

  When she had her equilibrium in hand, she turned back to him—and found his gaze sketching down her body with far too much suggestive intimacy.

  “What raiment are these ye wear?” he asked, gesturing to her legs.

  “Jeans,” she replied, sounding out of breath.

  “I like them greatly. They cling tae your body like a second skin and cup your woman’s mound.”

  Heat rose fast and furiously to Rachel’s cheeks, leaving her mouth hanging open, but no words forthcoming.

  He canted his head, his expression contemplative. “Though your hips are a bit narrow.”

  That remark untied her tongue. “What have my hips to do with anything?”

  “ ’Tis not that I do not like the sweet curves outlined in those odd breeks ye sport. Aye, they sorely tempt me tae forget your interference with Gordon. But Highland women are more buxom, wider-boned for the birthing of large bairns.”

  Rachel waited for the indignation to come, and was surprised when all she felt was an unexpected heat tugging low in her belly.

  His comment brought her reluctant gaze to his attire, or lack thereof. A light dusting of dark hair disappeared behind the waistband of his kilt, and she wondered, with an almost indecent sense of curiosity, if he wore anything underneath.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “ ’Tis bare-assed I am. And should ye continue tae stare at me with those hot sea-green eyes, I may be tempted tae show ye what your lustful looks have wrought.”

  Rachel’s cheeks burned. “I didn’t . . . I mean, I wasn’t—”

  “Aye. Ye were, lass.” He reached for her, his hand encircling her wrist, tugging her closer, his male scent enveloping her, his heat making her nearly melt into his embrace. “Though I have no love of witches, ye beckon me and test my control tae its very limit. ’Tis too long since I last pleasured a woman.”

  His chest was right in front of her, and it was all Rachel could do not to run a finger down the stretch of bare skin, to lightly score the musculature, and confirm that he was truly flesh and blood and bone.

  He drew her closer. “I sense your desire for me. Your body quivers for my touch.” Those big fingers splayed against her pajama top as his voice dropped to a husky tone. “Ye bewitch me, lass, and make me forget your treachery in denying me my revenge against Gordon. But if ye’re good, and promise tae fix what your wicked actions have wrought, I’ll pleasure ye. And I vow ye have never known such pleasure as I can give.”

  His arrogance infuriated her—about as much as his nearness enflamed her. She needed to distance herself, or be consumed in the conflagration. “You rate your appeal too highly.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “With your vexsome ways, I suspect ye have no man.”

  Rachel glared at him, more hurt than she should be by his remark. “If you mean do I have a boyfriend, then the answer is no. Not every woman will die for want of a man’s company. In fact, some of us are pretty darn happy without one!”

  “But not you,” he said, his voice softening, his knuckles brushing across her cheek, making her shiver beneath his touch. “Ye need a man. Someone who will tame the hellion in ye and turn the heat of your anger into passion. A man who will make love tae ye and drive the devil from your soul.”

  His words took all the fight and anger out of her. Never had a man tempted her so, made her forget the kind of woman she was—one who never acted precipitously and wouldn’t dream of bedding a man she hardly knew.

  And yet . . . it felt as if she did know him, that perhaps there had been a time she had once burned beneath his hungry kisses, her hands whispering over his hard flesh, feeling muscles ripple and flex beneath her palms, their bodies merging . . . as well as their souls.

  It was crazy. Insane.

  Rachel backed away, out of his reach. “No.”

  “Ye deny me?” he said, sounding incredulous, as if a woman’s refusal was something that had never happened before, which she suspected was the case.

  “I do.”

  Those haunting bedroom eyes abruptly changed into hot, angry flames. “Blast ye, then!” he boomed and slammed one big fist on the table, shoving himself from the chair to tower over her, intimidating her, making her jump back. “I need no reluctant witch in my bed. I’ll take my leave of ye now, and good riddance.”

  “Ditto!” she shouted back at him, surprised by her bravado in the face of his black glower.

  He leaned over her, his eyes narrowing on her face. “I order ye tae lift whatever conjuring ye have put upon my head and send me back tae my men.”

  “If snapping my fingers would make you disappear, I’d do it in a second.” Liar, her inner voice refuted.

  He growled. “Lift this wretched curse, witch, or ye’ll sorely regret it.”

  Rachel backed away, her buttocks coming up against the table. “Stay away from me.”

  “There is nowhere for ye tae run. Surrender.”

  “Never.” Fear had not immobilized her in the past, but had instead galvanized her to action—as it did now. She lunged for the meat mallet on the counter and waved it at him.

  He stopped in his tracks and raised a single eyebrow, as if daring her to go for it, which only brought home the utter foolishness of her actions. The man had blundered into her life wielding a sword, for Pete’s sake. He was hardly going to cringe with dread over a kitchen implement.

  “Please,” she begged, dropping the mallet. “Won’t you just leave?”

  His expression changed, hardened, a muscle worked in his jaw as he inclined his head with a quick jerk. “So be it.”

  Then he turned on his heel and strode from the room, flinging open the kitchen door, sending a blast of wet, icy wind scudding over the floor as he dissolved into the darkness as if he’d never existed.

  For several minutes, Rachel remained rooted to the spot, her sense of disconcertment and fear not alleviating with his departure . . . but mounting instead.

  Everything inside her clamored that she go after him, her mind tumbling over a slew of logical reasons why she should. He was hurt. Confused. Lost. The night was cold and wet. Whatever demons plagued him, she should have tried to help him, get him to a doctor, if nothing else.

  But more than that, his very presence had shifted something within her, something she didn’t completely understand, igniting a flame—of need, of attraction, a pull so strong her heart felt torn knowing that he might simply disappear from her life, as suddenly and strangely as he had appeared.

  She had to go after him, had to find him. She couldn’t let him go. Not yet.

  Not yet.

  She raced into the night, her eyes scanning the moonless dark. Although the rain had stopped, the icy wind slashed at her face and whipped her long hair into flying banners around her head.

  “Duncan!” she cried, and stumbled forward, cold air stinging her eyes, causing tears to momentarily blind her.

  She tripped and fell to her knees before clawing herself upright and pressing forward, disoriented by the cloaking darkness, fear building inside her like a dawning tempest. Some instinct clamored that she would find him at the stones.

  But where were they?

  The grounds yawned before her, unfamiliar and frighteningly alien. Skeletal trees loomed through the shadows.

  She turned one way, then another, running wildly, her internal compass spinning as she called his name again and again, only to have her voice drowned amid the roar of the wind and something else . . . something powerful, growling like the belly of some Goliath beast.

  “Duncan!” she cried again. “Please . . . come back!”

  One moment the ground w
as there, and then she was hovering for an infinitesimal heartbeat, suspended, the earth beneath her becoming as insubstantial as the fog whirling around her. With a strangled cry, she began to fall.

  Then, out of nowhere, he was beside her, his strong arms wrapping around her waist and hauling her back against a hard chest.

  “God’s teeth, lady,” he hissed in her ear, “is it your wish tae get killed?”

  Rachel stiffened, hating the leap of her pulse that happened whenever he touched her and the relief that coursed through her, having found him.

  He swung her around to face him. “Do ye not hear that sound?”

  She listened, trying to discern the source of the noise over the harsh rasp of her breathing. Then she heard it.

  The crash of waves against the cliff.

  Her body went cold. She had been running headlong toward the precipice—and a sheer, jagged drop of nearly three hundred feet.

  She began shaking uncontrollably, her mind whirling with thoughts of how close she had come to dying, of how she would have plunged to a watery grave had he not saved her.

  Suddenly her knees buckled and she sank into him. Without a word, he swept her up into his arms, stalking silently through the dark.

  She clung to him with desperate fervor, her tear-streaked face buried against his broad shoulder, her hands clutching what was left of his shirt.

  Not for the first time had his scent infused her with an unsettling heat that vanquished the chill and fear that numbed her. The warmth of his flesh against hers made her blood ripple with a slow-building fire.

  He shoved open the front door and with a quick stride, carried her over the threshold and into the house. Carefully, as if she were precious and fragile, he set her on her feet. Yet when she gazed up at him, he wore a dark scowl.

  With a grunt and a muttered curse, he distanced himself from her. “Damnation, wench, what am I tae do with ye? First ye bewitch me from the battlefield and thrust me into this odd place that is my home and yet not, then ye tantalize me with your strange clothes and saucy mouth, only tae tell me tae be gone from ye, and then nearly get yourself killed trying tae find me. Ye make no sense, woman!”

  Rachel said nothing. There was no rationale for her to fall back on, no specific logic to her actions. Only a feeling. How could she explain something even she didn’t understand? Make sense of an emotion that had no solid basis? Reason away a situation that had no reason?

  She watched him pace like a caged animal, raking his disheveled hair back with one hand, his brow creased with anger . . . perhaps even desperation. Stopping in his tracks, he whirled on her again, drew himself up to his full, towering height, and glared.

  It was in that instant that the irrefutable truth of this whole unbelievable situation struck Rachel as her gaze slowly moved from his face, beyond him to the portrait.

  “Dear God,” she whispered in a raw voice.

  “What are ye babbling about?” he grumbled.

  “You’re him.” Her astonished gaze slid back to him.

  “Him?”

  “Duncan MacGregor.” She raised a shaky arm and pointed at the painting. “That Duncan MacGregor.”

  The sound of the grandfather clock tolling in some distant part of the castle intensified the silence as he turned his head and stared up at the portrait, then back at her.

  “Aye,” he said wearily. “ ‘Tis as I told ye.” No triumph lit his eyes, but rather an emotion far more disturbing. Anguish. “Where am I?” he asked, his voice a tortured rasp, his gaze searching her face as though she had suddenly become his bedrock in a wildly unstable universe. “I had thought ye had simply made Gordon and my men vanish, but this . . .” He gestured around him. “I am out of place.”

  Rachel trembled, shaken to the core by his words as well as the truth she had consciously denied. Seeing the living version of Duncan MacGregor, in all his brooding, darkly beautiful glory, and then looking at the portrait behind him, was a shock that made her legs weaken beneath her.

  She sank down into the only available chair, a high-backed affair of worm-eaten wood and musty, fraying tapestry, the arms carved into the likeness of lion paws.

  Jaundiced light from the girandole cast eerie claw-like shapes on the floor and obscured Duncan in half-formed shadows, making him look like a brooding Lucifer, devising the downfall of mankind.

  He raked a hand through his wind-whipped hair and glanced around his home, seeking something familiar, perhaps—something more than old stones now slowly eroding with decay.

  The shadows shifted as he turned once more to regard her, darkness appearing to settle over his face like a shroud. “Why have ye brought me tae this place?”

  Rachel’s fingers convulsed around the carved paws on the chair arms as his piercing blue gaze drove through her as keenly as the sword on his hip.

  She shook her head. “I have no explanation for you. I only wish I did.”

  He curled his fingers into his palms and abruptly pivoted on his heel, stalking to the window. He braced one hand against the moldering stone to stare out into the moonless night.

  The wind whistled through the eaves, skeletal branches scraping over the thick panes, lending a sense of loneliness to his solitary silhouette.

  He stood so still he might have been a statue, suspended in time and space, as mournful as the groaning drafts of wind that shuffled along the floor and swirled at her feet, coiling around her frayed nerves.

  A long moment passed in silence. Then his words, soft and edged with despair, whispered hauntingly through the air, “I am lost.”

  His confession tore at her, whittled down to the deepest part of her being and lodged itself there.

  Collecting her courage, Rachel stood, her legs unsteady as she moved across the foyer toward him, through the cold shadows, her steps silent on the mist-strewn floor as she came to stand beside him at the window.

  Her heart went out to him, this confused and distraught warrior whose greatest battle in that moment was against an invisible enemy, struggling to save the only thing he still possessed.

  His soul.

  How would she feel if she had been transported to another time? A time far different from her own, with nothing familiar, all friends and family left behind?

  Was he thinking about the men who would surely die without his leadership? Or was the pain etched on his face caused by something else? A woman, perhaps? A lovely Scottish girl who was now pining over his loss? Rachel did not want to face the thought.

  “My clan . . . what will they think became of me? That I fled from Gordon? Ran away like some piffling coward instead of facing him?” His jaw tensed, the hand resting against the wall curling into a fist. “Or will they never know what happened tae me?”

  Rachel had no answer for him. She did not know what tomorrow would bring, if time would right itself and he would return to his own world as suddenly as he had appeared in hers.

  She longed to offer him some measure of hope, some solace, to smooth away the pain stamped on his desolate profile. Yet she knew that he would not accept her offer. He was too strong, too fearless to admit any weakness.

  “What year is it?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

  She searched for some way to preface her reply, ease the blow, but there was nothing, except the truth. “2001.”

  His gaze slashed to hers, disbelief standing out in stark counterpoint in his dark eyes. “ ’Tis a lie.”

  For his sake, she wished it were a lie. And yet, at that moment, with him standing so close and the warmth from his body drawing her like a moth to a potent, dangerous flame, she wanted him to be part of her century, to be part of the present and not the past.

  “It’s true,” she murmured.

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head, his fingers scraping against the cold stone and a shuddering breath shaking his frame as he said bleakly, “I am truly lost then.”

  chapter

  4

  ETERNAL NIGHT. Remote and endless and b
lack as a raven’s wing.

  Shivering from the escalating cold, Rachel lay in her bed, hunched beneath the comforter, listening to each tick of the clock, the wind howling and scratching on the window with dire fingers, as if seeking entrance.

  Yet her mind was elsewhere, imagining Duncan pacing his room, haunted by whatever odd force of nature had wrenched him from his existence and deposited him within the realm of hers.

  How tempted she was to rap upon his door and assure herself he was not a dream. Yet she didn’t dare. She felt too disconcerted by his presence. He skewed her priorities, not to mention her emotions. She had come to Glengarren for one purpose: to fulfill her parents’ request to scatter their ashes on their anniversary, a day that was all too quickly approaching.

  A sad smile touched Rachel’s lips as she looked toward the matching urns she had placed on the mantle. She could imagine her father’s thrill over this strange and unexplainable occurrence with Duncan.

  Her father had been a history buff, and loved the mystique of rambling old castles and the families who had once dwelt within them.

  With each journey to Scotland, he had lugged home kilts and bagpipes and rusty battle swords, turning their house in Connecticut into, as her mother had termed with a sentimental smile, a maudlin old museum.

  Her father would not have been the least bit intimidated by Duncan MacGregor. Instead, he would have planted himself at the warrior’s side and drained him of every last detail of his life.

  Rachel, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as concerned over Duncan’s life story as she was over the effect he had on her physically—and emotionally.

  She stared up at the ceiling, watching the light and shadows cast by the flickering fire, reasoning with herself that it was Duncan’s despair that called to her, brought out this need to protect him, shelter him from things he didn’t understand, the perils that lurked in a world he no longer recognized. There could be no other explanation for the feelings he evoked in her.

  And yet, deep down, in a place she would not consciously acknowledge, she knew she lied. Duncan filled her with a yearning of the soul . . . and of the body, leaving her weak and on fire for him.