Draycott Eternal

by Christina Skye

  She was too damned observant, Ian thought. He’d have to be more careful in the future. “I noticed that the bolt was stuck. I wanted to make sure the door doesn’t blow open.”

  “I hate being lied to.”

  “I’ll be sure to remember that.” Ian stretched out on the floor, his back against a lumpy sofa cushion as he studied the fire.

  “Did Adam put you up to this?”

  “Who’s Adam?” Ian said coolly.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

  He worked a blanket beneath his head. “There’s nothing to tell. Now, why don’t you get some rest?”

  “I told you I don’t sleep very well.” Muttering, Jamee sat on the floor and turned her bag over, dumping a dozen mounds of bright yarn into her lap. After fingering several balls, she picked up a skein of mohair the soft orange shade of a Highland sunset.

  “Colorful.” Ian wondered how long he had left to appreciate that particular shade of orange.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you staring like that?”

  “No reason.” Ian propped his head on one hand. She was too smart, and he was not going to give her any reason for alarm. “What are you making?”

  “A sweater, probably.” Jamee’s hands moved with the ease of a practiced knitter. Beneath her needles the thick yarn fell into even rows. “Knitting helps me think.”

  Ian wasn’t sure he wanted her to think right now. Not until he had some clear answers. He didn’t like the thought of being followed, even though the backup team from London wouldn’t be far behind him.

  “Since you refuse to discuss what you saw in the fog, tell me about that description in your notebook.”

  This was a safer topic of conversation, Ian decided. “My castle, you mean?”

  The needles went still. “Are you serious? A fifteenth-century castle, fifty-six cows and four outbuildings? Yours?”

  “Every brick and shed.”

  Jamee looked stunned. “Does this castle happen to have a name?”

  “Glenlyle. That happens to be my name, too.”

  “A title?” Jamee shook her head in shock. “A real, live lord? I saved a real live lord from jumping.”

  “I was not about to jump.”

  “Don’t bother me with fine points.” Her eyes gleamed. “Glenlyle Castle. And it’s really fifteenth-century?”

  “Some of it is even older. There are carved stones in the courtyard that probably predate the Vikings.”

  “Haunted, no doubt?”

  Ian shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever seen.” He’d heard, of course. Over the breakfast table every visitor to Glenlyle reported at least one strange encounter from the night before. And then there was the story of Glenlyle’s cursed lovers.

  Another row of orange knots formed beneath Jamee’s expert fingers. “So why did you need the description?”

  Ian thought of Glenlyle’s windswept towers facing the restless sea. A weight settled over his chest. “It isn’t important. Go to sleep.” He rose abruptly and strode to the window. In the fireplace the peat hissed softly, while fog pressed outside at the glass. Despite his tension, he was suddenly conscious of their solitude and the intimacy of the scene. “You could have been hurt coming after me in the dark, you know. Did you stop to think of that?”

  “No.”

  “You should have,” he said tightly.

  “If I stop to think about things, I get frightened or embarrassed and then I’m afraid to finish. Now I try not to plan things too much.” She shrugged. “Adam gives me hell for it.”

  “And who,” Ian asked, “is Adam? Boyfriend or lover?”

  “Brother,” she said.

  “No lovers? No boyfriends of any sort?”

  “Is that odd?” she asked, utterly guileless. Her eyes were filled with firelight, and her skin glowed the color of Botticelli’s Madonna that hung in the library at Glenlyle. For another woman it would be odd, but not for Jamee.

  Not after what she’d been through.

  Don’t let it get personal, Ian told himself. She was beautiful and vulnerable, despite her determined front. And he couldn’t let any of that touch him.

  But light danced in her hair, outlining the full curve of her mouth as she watched him, unblinking. Ian wondered if her eyes would change if he pulled her into his arms. He wondered how she would taste if he kissed her slowly, feeling her come alive beneath his touch.

  He bit back a Gaelic curse, blocking the heated images.

  “Was that another prayer?”

  “I wish it were.” He stirred the fire. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “As if you trusted me.”

  “I do trust you,” she said calmly.

  “What if I were some kind of criminal? Maybe I even have a gun.”

  “You don’t. I checked your bag when you went out to get water.”

  Ian was stunned. He was also glad he had been wearing his jacket when he went out. Another thing to remember in the future.

  “Tell me what you were doing out on that cliff,” Ian said, changing the subject. “Before you decided to rescue me, of course.”

  Jamee shrugged. “Oh, this and that.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

  “Are you always this secretive?” Ian asked.

  “Are you always this inquisitive?” Her needles clicked back and forth. “Is there a wife at that castle of yours?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Her hands slowed. “I’m not sure. You have a beautiful mouth, you know.”

  This time Ian’s Gaelic curse was longer and more inventive than the last. Ian Fraser Douglass McCall did not have a beautiful mouth. A laird of Glenlyle did not have a beautiful mouth.

  He was all set to tell her that when he heard her yawn. She was two feet away, snuggled against the cushions, telling him he had a beautiful mouth. Then she yawned while he entertained fantasies that were fast becoming uncomfortably graphic.

  “Dammit, I do not have a beautiful—” Ian stopped. “Jamee?”

  She was sound asleep, yarn dropped at her side, knitting needles forgotten at her chest.

  Ian took a long, slow breath, feeling her beauty eat into his very soul.

  He covered her gently, trying to ignore the warmth of her hair, cascading red and golden over his fingers. Only then did he realize his hands were trembling.

  A fine protector he made.

  “A beautiful mouth indeed,” he said roughly. He found a spot as far away from her as the walls of the cottage would allow.

  It wasn’t nearly far enough, he discovered, watching Jamee sleep.

  HEAT RISES IN SLOW WAVES, each breath coming harder. There is no running, no crying out. The silence knows where to follow and it always finds her. Chokes her.

  She shakes, so terrified she can only whimper, her lips dry and broken.

  There is no time in the Dream. No past, no future. Only the sick, shattering now.

  “You can’t get away,” the Dream people whisper, tying her hands and shoving her over the mud.

  “N-no.” She fights as she had then. Useless.

  “Get in.”

  She screams. He hits her, not enough to knock her out. Just enough to make sure she obeys.

  “Get in and be quiet.”

  The closet is small and black and hot. She can’t close her eyes.

  Not again. Not down there in the darkness and the heat.

  “Why?” As always, she tries to understand something for which there is no understanding.

  “Because you’re here and we’re hungry. You’re the meal ticket. Mommy and Daddy will pay. Nice Mommy and Daddy.”

  The laughter rises, cold and loud.

  “Not in the closet. Please…”

  Outside in the night the moon burns in the summer sky. Hard hands press at her back. She whimpers in the darkness when the heavy door slams shut behind her. So alone.

&
nbsp; There is no time in the Dream. No past, no future. Only the sick, shattering now.

  THE SCRAPE OF METAL woke Ian. He lurched upright, instantly alert. Something cold brushed his face.

  The door was open. Fog frothed over the threshold, ghostly in the light of the dying fire.

  “Jamee?”

  Nothing moved. Her blanket was on the table. Her sweater was tossed on the floor, her jeans slung crazily on a chair across the room.

  But the woman who had worn them was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IAN GRABBED an oil lantern from the worn table and shoved a match to the wick. The spark had barely caught before he plunged outside into the night. Chill waves of cloud pressed at his face as he listened to the silence, his heart pounding. “Dammit, Jamee, where are you?”

  Water slapped somewhere to his left. He gripped the lantern, skidding down the muddy slope, then called again.

  A tiny, broken sound drifted up the hill.

  “Answer me, Jamee.”

  The sound came again. Ian lurched forward, stumbling in the mud while the lantern swung wildly in his hands.

  He glimpsed her through the mist, huddled against a rock. Beads of water gleamed on her pale skin and her eyes were wide, frightened like an animal’s.

  Ian could almost smell her terror. “Can you hear me, Jamee?”

  She whimpered again. Her hands moved restlessly, shoving at invisible walls.

  Ian knelt beside her, holding the lantern high, trying to keep the fury from his voice. Jamee would not understand that his rage was not for her, but the men who had left her like this. “It’s Ian, Jamee.” He kept his voice to a whisper. “Everything will be all right. Let’s go in by the fire now.” He reached out for her, then stopped. His hands clenched helplessly. How could he reach her, locked as she was in the past?

  He remembered the chilling images from Adam Night’s videotape. She was back there now, looking through the eyes of a frightened child helpless in the dark. And Ian could only kneel beside her, terrified to do anything that might add to her pain.

  He held out the lantern, letting the light filter around her. “You take it, Jamee. Then we’ll go home. The fire will feel good.”

  She moved jerkily, like someone who had been drinking. Her fingers gripped the lantern handle and the broken, keening noise came again. “Light,” she said hoarsely.

  “There’s more light in the cottage. You can lead the way. You remember, don’t you?”

  She blinked, stiff with cold. Her eyes were dazed and unfocused. Ian yearned to pull her into his arms, but he knew the wrong movement could trigger the terror anew. If she bolted now, he wasn’t certain he could catch her in the fog.

  Not in time. Not if someone else was waiting for the same chance.

  “Ready?”

  She rose awkwardly, her arms rigid. How long had she been there, huddled in the mist? Dammit, why hadn’t he heard her go out?

  She took a step forward and swayed, then caught herself on the rock. Ian had to clench his hands to keep from touching her. Not yet, dammit. Not while she was so afraid. “Up the hill, Jamee. See the fire through the door?”

  She frowned, moving awkwardly up the muddy slope. Her body glowed, as pale as the fog in the light cast from the lantern she carried.

  At the door, Jamee blinked, then moved jerkily to the fire and sat before it. Her hands anchored her knees as she swayed from side to side, crooning softly.

  In that second Ian understood Adam Night’s anguish and fury at a nightmare no amount of love could erase.

  She made a low sound as Ian slid a blanket around her shoulders. “What is it, Jamee?”

  Her hand rose toward the fire.

  “Cold?”

  A jerky nod.

  Ian reached for another blanket, then paused as he saw her hand rise. Toward him.

  His breath twisted in his throat as he gently took her fingers, feeling them grip and tighten, like those of a swimmer finding a lifeline in a storm. He knelt beside her and pulled the blanket closer.

  He didn’t speak, understanding the silent war she waged every night in dreams that would have made grown men sink to their knees, broken.

  Grimly, he held her hand while her tension ebbed. It felt like hours later that he stretched out beside her, while the peat hissed gently beside them.

  As Ian watched the fire, rigid and unblinking, he swore that no one would get past him to hurt her again.

  JAMEE SAT UP, shoved her hair from her face, then froze. Ian slept behind her, one broad hand curled about her blanket. His muscled thigh had pillowed her cheek as she slept.

  Thank God, she was still dressed. Sweater, jeans, everything appeared to be in place. Maybe she hadn’t had the Dream after all.

  She eased to her feet, careful not to wake Ian. Banks of cloud still paled the windows as thickly as before, but some morning light managed to filter through the fog. She washed her face in rainwater from a copper bowl by the far wall, feeling strangely restless. How had she and Ian come to be sleeping only inches apart? Had he heard a sound in the night? Or had she cried out in her dreams, causing him to comfort her?

  She could remember nothing.

  But her body was leaden, tense, the way she always felt after her recurring nightmare. And as always, she could remember none of the details.

  Drawing a deep breath, she looked at Ian. Asleep, he looked younger, though tension still gripped his shoulders and kept his fingers clenched on the blanket.

  Like it or not, his mouth was beautiful.

  Jamee frowned, wondering why she felt so safe in Ian McCall’s company. He exuded confidence and power, both discreet, sensed more than seen. That was part of the reason, but not all.

  She decided that Ian McCall looked like what he was—a man who had made hard decisions, maybe once too often. The shadows of those choices haunted Jamee every time she looked into his green eyes.

  What would it take to know him deeply, to slide past his defenses and smooth the shadows from that hard face?

  Not her right. She was a woman who never stayed, a woman who skated over the surface of her life, wary of the dark currents beneath. Yet for a moment, with this man she had felt a hunger for something deeper. A touch that would join, expose and bind deeply.

  Definitely not her right.

  Jamee studied the blank windows. Honest feelings were usually dangerous; with this man they would be more dangerous than most.

  Sighing, Jamee put Ian McCall from her mind. One thing was certain: they wouldn’t be going anywhere today. After a last disgusted glance at the fog, Jamee picked up her bag. If she was stuck here, at least she was going to finish some work.

  IAN TWITCHED, hugged the pillow then sat bolt upright. “Jamee?”

  Her bed was empty. He was on his feet when he heard the clatter of pans across the room. “Where are you?”

  “Right here.” Her hair was held back by a swatch of indigo satin the same shade as her eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a fluffy sweater, with a tartan tossed around her shoulders like a shawl. Shadows ringed her eyes. “Sleep well?”

  Her radiant smile ran through Ian like 50,000 volts of direct current. He cleared his throat. “Fine. What about you?”

  “Well enough. I thought I’d let you rest, since you looked exhausted.” Her head cocked. “Bad dreams?”

  She doesn’t know, he thought. She truly doesn’t remember anything about last night. Adam had said forgetting was part of her trauma, but Ian hadn’t believed it until now.

  He turned away and pulled on his sweater, afraid she would read the shock in his eyes. “I don’t know. I never remember my dreams.” He took his time pulling down one sleeve. “Do you?” he asked casually.

  “Sometimes.” She frowned and made a sharp gesture, as if shoving a cobweb from her face. Then her smile slid back, full and utterly real. “Breakfast is served, my lord.”

  “Excellent. That would be salmon lightly roasted with sage and scones with fresh blueberries.” Ian st
eepled his fingers. “After that I’ll have coffee, very strong.”

  Jamee held out a chipped bowl. “What you’ll have, my lord, is oatmeal.” She looked rueful. “Very dark.”

  Ian’s lips curved. “Wheesht, and how did you know that I was wishing for a bowl of oatmeal, lass?”

  “It’s burned, I’m afraid. I haven’t got the hang of cooking over an open fire yet.”

  Ian took the bowl and settled back on the floor. The cereal was hot and creamy and he ate with relish. “Only a little scorched. What did you have?”

  “The last of the granola bars and my chamomile tea.” Jamee rested her chin on her palm, watching him eat. “It made me feel very dangerous to be finishing off the last of my larder.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find us something.” Ian put aside the bowl, stood up and stretched. “What have you got over there?” He nodded at the line of pots ranged over the long pine trestle table.

  “Just dye.”

  Ian’s brow rose. “Is that an order?”

  “Not die. Dye. As in madder. Also logwood, indigo, weld and walnut husks.” Jamee lifted a mound of dusky-pink yarn from a pan over the fire. “This is the madder batch. I’ve nearly run out of mordant.”

  “Mordant?”

  “Chemical to set the dye.” Jamee pointed toward a plastic bottle. “I usually use alum or copper sulfate.” She moved restlessly from yarn to yarn, touching each color as if compelled. “This one needs to simmer for another half hour or so to reach the fullest shade. These two are nearly done.”

  So that’s what she carried in her bag, Ian thought. Mordants and dyes. Madder and indigo. He suppressed a smile. Most women would have packed lipstick and a curling iron, but not Jamee.

  Jamee Night was clearly one of a kind.

  But Ian was worried about her. He’d cleaned the mud from her body and dressed her before falling asleep. Now the night was a blur, but her memories were still there. They burned in her eyes and in her restless movements. Talking about the trauma would be painful, but it was the only way she’d ever close the book on her experience.

  Ian rubbed his jaw. “Jamee, maybe you should—”