Immortal Warriors 01 - Return of the Highlander

by Sara Mackenzie

  "You really are becoming a man again, MacLean. The Fiosaiche must be very pleased with you."

  "I want to please her. And you, Bella. I want to be a man again, so that I can please you."

  Bella cleared her throat, an image of MacLean and herself flashing into her mind with hot, sharp clarity.

  He seemed to read her thoughts because he chuckled, and for a moment, just a moment, she could see a man-shaped cloud. Not black, like his silhouette against bright light, but bluish and green. Perhaps the color of his plaid? A pan crashed into the sink, he cursed, and now she could definitely see him. All of him. Enveloped in a fuzzy white mist.

  "MacLean," she breathed, afraid that saying it aloud might make it go away. "I can see you… I think. I can see something."

  He froze. As she stared he moved toward her, becoming bigger, and then part of the hazy shape reached out and she felt MacLean’s fingers wrap about her wrist. Staring down, she could see the vague outline of his arm and hand, but no detail; he was very poorly defined.

  "I can see you," she said. "Not clearly yet, but I can see you."

  His fingers trembled. "I really am becoming a man again," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

  Behind him a pot boiled over with a violent splutter.

  With a curse he turned back to the mess he was making. But nothing was damaged and a moment later he had served up two plates of bacon and eggs with half-burnt toast. Bella thanked him, finding it touching that he had not just cooked for himself, but had gone to the trouble of thinking of her, too.

  "This cooking business is simple," MacLean announced around a mouthful of food. "I dinna know why women fuss about it so."

  Bella narrowed her eyes at him. "So you're an expert now, are you, MacLean?"

  "I'm a man."

  "Your point being?"

  "A man is naturally better at everything, apart from bearing babies."

  Bella itched to throw something at him. Instead she said, "You're medieval, MacLean. A medieval despot. A feudal lord."

  He munched a moment in silence. "Do you know, Bella, I've been to the homes of some of the nobles of Scotland, and I tell you that just because they dress in lace and wear wigs and have people to wait on them doesna make them good landlords and chiefs. 'Tis my opinion that the more money a man has, the more he wants. He forgets his people and the reason he was born to be a leader of them, and thinks only of having as much fine furniture and gold plate about him as he can get hold of, and wearing as many jewels on his fingers as he can bear."

  "Hmm, very Calvinist of you, MacLean." But he impressed her with his thoughts, and the depth of frank feeling behind them.

  "I never wanted to prance about Edinburgh in high heels," he retorted crossly. "I liked it fine here in Fasail. This was my place and my people, and I was born to protect them from harm." He stopped. After a moment he pushed his plate away, food still on it. "Aye, and look what a mess I made of it," he said bitterly.

  Bella spoke gently. "MacLean, when you returned from Culloden and Ishbel was gone, did you ever have any doubts about going after her?"

  "No," he said stiffly.

  Bella leaned forward. "Why not? I mean, if you didn't love her and she was desperate to go, and you were certain of your authority over her father, what did it matter if she left? Was the land that important to you that you'd forgo your own happiness and hers for the sake of it?"

  "I am the MacLean. Do you think my people would respect me if I allowed my future wife to run off with a scrawny wee laddie?"

  His voice dripped ice and an arrogance that chilled her blood. He didn't sound like the MacLean she had come to know. He sounded like the man in the legend, and capable of anything.

  Bella swallowed, refusing to be intimidated. "I don't know, MacLean. Perhaps in hindsight your people would have preferred to forgo the respect and keep their lives. What value do you place on their 'respect' for you after all?"

  "I am a man, and I have my pride, woman!" He shouted it, making her jump and the plates rattle. "You canna put a price on a man's pride!"

  "Pride!" Bella's own voice rose several decibels. She hesitated, not because she was shouting at a Highlander who did not exist, but because she was shouting. Bella didn't shout. She brooded. She stayed silent and mulled over the injustices in her life, and thought of all the things she wished she had said at the time. Now MacLean, with his blustering bullheadedness, was infecting her with that same need to express herself. Loudly.

  "What has your pride done for you, MacLean? Look at yourself. You should have humbled your pride that day, not chewed upon it like a sour bone."

  "What would a woman know about pride?" he roared back, and now the whole kitchen shook. "Women have no pride. They are devious sluts, their tongues saying one thing when they mean the opposite, their smiles luring an honest man into making a fool of himself and believing in them, when all the time they are plotting to run off with another. Ishbel didna deserve to be happy!"

  He stopped, breathing hard, his bitter betrayal a heavy weight between them.

  Bella felt sick with the new suspicion engulfing her. "So it was love that sent you to fetch Ishbel back," she insisted. "You loved her and she betrayed you and you couldn't forgive her. Couldn't forgive the fact that she chose another man over you, the great MacLean. You went after her, full of jealous fury, and killed that man. My God, did you love her that much, MacLean?"

  "I've told you," he growled, "I didna love her at all! But she was my future wife. A man doesna let his wife run off if he has any pride. He fetches her back, and that is what I went to do."

  Abruptly Bella stood up. "Let me get this right, MacLean. You are the Chief of the MacLeans of Fasail, and they mean everything to you. In fact, you decided not to fight at Culloden because you realized your men would die, and you thought more of them than any lost cause. I understand that. Where was your pride then? If you were as puffed up with it as you've just led me to think, then you would have fought, whatever the consequences, because to fail to do so would lower you in the eyes of your betters."

  "M'betters!" he snorted. "I am my own man, I make up my own mind, and I dinna bow and scrape to anyone."

  "Exactly! You put the interests of your people before anyone else. You did that. So why did you go after Ishbel? Fetching her back was of no advantage to you, surely? An unwilling wife and all that. Unless you were afraid of what her father would do once your hostage to his good behavior was free?" Bella paused. "But no, you've already said you did not fear Auchry, you despised him. So why did you do it, MacLean? There has to be a better reason than you've given me so far. Why?"

  He stood up, his chair crashing backward onto the floor and catching the handle of a pan and a plate as it went. MacLean’s roar of anger drowned out the ensuing din.

  "Because I was tired of listening to the bleating of women!"

  Bella stared back at him, or where she thought he was—he seemed to have vanished altogether again now. "What women? Ishbel?"

  "The women of Loch Fasail, my mother, all begging me not to go, all wringing their hands at me. They didna understand, none of them."

  "The women didn't want you to go," Bella said slowly, finally understanding. "But you didn't listen to them, did you? It was beneath you to listen to women."

  So MacLean had chased after Ishbel, and that was when everything had gone wrong. If he had listened to them like the clever and reasonable man she knew he was capable of being, if he had been a truly great and wise man, then history would have been changed. The massacre would still probably have occurred—they did not know the details yet—but MacLean and his men would have been there to fight, not lying dead at Auchry Macleod's feet.

  And suddenly Bella realized that MacLean knew it, too. The guilt was eating him alive, but he'd never admit it. He had far too much pride to lose.

  "Maybe you were right," she said quietly. "Maybe you can't change. Maybe all of this is a waste of the Fiosaiche's time."

  He didn't reply, but
then, she hadn't expected him to.

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bella's pink waterproof jacket was hanging on the hook by the door and she snatched it up as she went out. "I'm going for a walk," she said, and slammed the door. Behind her, in the cottage, there was another appalling crash, but with rigid shoulders she ignored it and set off, her thighs soon burning with the effort to get away from MacLean, as far away and as quickly as possible.

  "Insufferable," she grumbled, wiping the tears from her cheeks. The rain sparkled in her hair and the air smelled of damp earth and vegetation. "He's not my problem," she reminded herself. "I don't have to worry about him."

  She had enough worries of her own. She had a book deadline to meet and no laptop, a rented cottage whose lease was about to run out and nowhere to live, and a boyfriend who had left her for the bright lights of Edinburgh. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by the pointlessness of her own life. The five-star review on Reading England should have been a high point, and it had been for about five minutes. Bella loved writing about the past, but since MacLean had come into her life she realized that writing about it wasn't enough. She was living vicariously, through the lives of others.

  It was time she found a life of her own.

  The path up to the ruined castle was slippery, but she was so deep in her thoughts she hardly noticed. And then suddenly there she was, at the top, with the world spread out before her. Bella took some deep breaths and tried to visualize this place as it must have been. People all living here together as a clan, a family of one hundred and fifty souls. And their father and ruler, the man they looked to for wisdom and protection, was Morven MacLean.

  I bow and scrape to no man!

  Arrogant, chauvinist, medieval. Yes, he was all that. But he was also intelligent and frank and honorable in a way she found completely captivating. He was like no man she had ever met in her life. MacLean was a giant in any century, standing head and shoulders above the rest, and he should have been remembered for that rather than for being…

  A monster.

  MacLean felt his legs shaking as he struggled up the hill toward Castle Drumaird. He looked up, squinting against the rain, and was reminded of the first time he had climbed this hill after the Fiosaiche brought him back to life. A similar despair swept over him now. With a curse, he shook the water from his face. He could see Bella standing on the brow of the hill. Apart from her long dark hair whipping around her, she was very still against the gray and cloudy sky. For a breath he stopped, staring at her. Bella against the storm was spellbinding. There was a strength in her raised chin and straight back that made him ache with pride and longing.

  Why could he not have met someone like Bella two hundred and fifty years ago? She would never have run off with a puling lad and made a fool of him. She would never have been afraid of his kisses and his bed. When he came home from Culloden Moor she would have been there, waiting for him, loving him. She would have matched him well, and he would have been a better man for having her at his side.

  And now it was too late.

  He began to walk again, his legs trembling worse than ever. After their argument in the kitchen he had begun to feel strangely feeble, as if all of the strength he had so recently gained were trickling out of him. He was a water bladder with a hole in it. When he had tried to pick up the pieces of the plate he had smashed, he found his fingers slipped through them and he could not grasp them. He could not even feel them.

  The Fiosaiche was angry with him. He was a stubborn fool and to teach him a lesson she was undoing all she had done. Soon he would be sent back to the dark labyrinths of the between-worlds, a lost soul forever wandering.

  Horrified, MacLean had followed after Bella.

  He needed to see her again, before he vanished forever. To touch her skin and kiss her lips, to tell her she was his bonny woman and he regretted so much that he could not stay.

  "Bella!" There was a deep well of grief in his voice. He watched her eyes snap open as she turned her head to seek him out. The wind snarled and gusted about them. Suddenly he was so cold.

  He was turning back into a ghostie. His brief second chance was fading and very soon he would be gone.

  "Bella!"

  It already felt as if it were too late.

  "MacLean?" Bella was crying out his name. "Where are you? I can't see you."

  "I'm invisible again," he said, and his voice sounded weaker, less certain, fading away. He took the final few steps so that he could reach out a hand to brush her cheek. He could feel her skin, soft and warm, only just, but he could still feel her. He let his held breath go in relief and focused on that sensation, knowing that this would have to last him forever…

  "MacLean!" she stretched out her arms, finding him. Her hands caught his jacket, then slid awkwardly around his waist, pulling him nearer, until their bodies were pressed as close as they could be. "MacLean, you mustn't let it happen. Don't go." She sounded frightened.

  "I dinna want to go," he mumbled, and rested his face against her hair, his whole being concentrated on seeing her, feeling her, smelling her, listening to her voice.

  If the Fiosaiche returned for him and he was cast back into that nightmare place, then at least he would have these memories to sustain him.

  "MacLean," Bella moaned, and she was weeping, her tears making a damp patch on his shirt.

  And suddenly he couldn't bear for her to be so sad for his sake. "Bella," he whispered, "Bella, dinna grieve for me. I'll be fine. And if I see you in my dreams, then I willna mind so much."

  "You're giving up!" she shouted. "Don't you dare give up."

  "I'm no' giving up…"

  Even as he spoke the words, he began to feel stronger.

  "I'm no' giving up!"

  Some of the lost feeling in his hands was returning, and despite the wind and the rain he was not quite so cold. MacLean turned his face and kissed her temple, and then tipped up her chin and kissed her lips. Her mouth opened to his. Her loving warmth filled him, held him in a way he had never been held before. MacLean knew that he didn't want to leave Bella, and yet deep in his heart he had a dark dread that this might be what was required of him.

  Sacrifice.

  The word echoed in his head even as he kissed her, clasping her in his arms, hot with his need for her.

  Bella pulled away from him, gasping, her cheeks flushed and her lips red and swollen. MacLean groaned and again pressed his face to her hair, breathing in the scent of her. He felt like a stallion, insatiable, wild and desperate to mate. Maybe, like being hungry, this was just another part of his becoming a man again. Except there was more to it than that. This woman meant more to him than simply a willing female to rut with. If she was, then he would have taken her already, but he didn't want to frighten her with the strength of his passion, he didn't want to make her his if she wasn't ready for him to do so.

  It was important that when they came together it was something both of them wanted.

  MacLean rested his hands upon her shoulders and felt himself trembling with the effort it took to step back, away from her, and finally let her free. Bella swayed a little, gazing up at him, her dark eyes blurred with desire.

  "MacLean?" she whispered.

  "I have no' the right to touch you, Bella, unless ye wish me to."

  Her lashes dropped over her eyes, and she took a shaken breath. "I know I asked you not to, and you've abided by that, MacLean. But I've changed my mind. I'm tired of doing things to please other people. I want to please myself. I want you to touch me," she said, and looked directly at him.

  His laugh was mixed with a half groan. "I dinna know what will happen to me from one moment to the next. I am a wraith. I canna protect you as I wish."

  "I don't need you to protect me," she said sharply, then gentled it with, "although that you want to protect me sounds very comforting."

  He caught her hand in his, his fingers closing painfully. "I am a Highland chief, Bella. That I offer to protec
t you is no' an insult or a comfort, it is simply what I am. It is all I have to give now, and I offer it to you."

  Tears filled her eyes.

  "Are you sure ye want me, Arabella?" he murmured against her ear, his warm breath making her shiver.

  "I'm sure."

  "Come, then," said MacLean, his voice full of passion and promise. "Come with me."

  MacLean’s big warm hand enveloped hers as he led her toward the ruins of what had once been his castle. The bleak walls rose above them, and Bella looked nervously at the places where the stones had fallen away. The arched door was over eight feet thick, and although now it led nowhere, it still gave them shelter from the wind and rain.

  "Where are we going?" she asked as he stopped beneath the arch.

  "This is my home, Bella."

  "MacLean…"

  When she'd agreed to this, Bella had been thinking of her own warm bed, not a gloomy ruin on a hilltop in the rain. Surely even her passion for MacLean would cool under these conditions?

  And then he kissed her, his mouth hot and open, his tongue seeking hers, and she was no longer sure. Fire coursed through her. Her hands slid beneath his jacket, around his waist, feeling the soft linen of his shirt and the hard power of the body beneath. He eased her back against the stone and leaned into her. She should have felt crushed, trapped, but she felt so warm and safe, with his big body a bulwark against the weather and the world. She felt like weeping with joy.

  He kept kissing her. He was not rough, but he wasn't gentle, either. He wanted her and he showed it, and his honesty encouraged Bella to show it, too.

  He pulled apart her jacket and reaching for the hem of her sweater, pulling it up. She was wearing a bra, and for a moment that confused him. Bella showed him how to unhook it, and soon it was loosened and her breasts spilled free.

  He groaned.

  She felt dizzy as he stroked her, his mouth wet and hot against her flesh, his fingers tugging at her nipples. Bella knew how uncertain their relationship was, and awful as the thought seemed, it also set her free of any inhibitions. She lifted his face to hers and kissed him back, deeply.