Their other hair gave away the secret every time.
But he knew what the tongue waggers said about true flaxen-haired, blue-eyed maidens.
Once a man melted them, their fire burned hotter than the sun.
Need clawed at his gut. He drew a tight breath, wishing he’d ne’er heard such blether. He wasn’t the man to test Cilla Swanner’s passion.
Would that he could . . . in another time and place it would have been possible.
As things were, he simply stepped faster, letting his quickened pace and his fury heat his blood. His frustration also staved off the bite of the day’s cold, wet wind.
Until the gusts turned, sending up spray from the foot of the cliffs to flip an edge of his plaid across his eyes.
“Damnation!” He snatched at the offending wool, yanking it down, only to discover that the maid’s face still hovered before him.
Worse, he could now see even more of her!
In memory, her naked breasts bobbed right beneath his nose. Just as full, round, and plump as he remembered, and with her rosy-sweet nipples drawn deliciously tight.
“By all the powers!” He roared the curse.
Snapping his brows together, he glared at the image until the wind broke it apart.
He shoved back his hair, his mood thoroughly ruined. He didn’t know how she’d done it—a long line and more centuries of women than he liked to admit had only left him disinterested, even after a particularly pleasing tumble—yet this one had somehow managed to brand herself on him.
And he hadn’t even kissed her.
That could only mean trouble.
Feeling it settle around him like a dark, clinging cloud, he set his jaw and started pacing again.
If need be, he’d spend his proving time doing so.
Pacing was good.
Scowling, likewise.
Better yet, even on a fine-weather day, the battlements often stayed windswept and cold. Many a good, stout Scots lass wouldn’t care to brave such a chill and blustery aerie.
With luck, an American wouldn’t even attempt the climb up the narrow, winding stair.
Unfortunately, something told him Cilla Swanner might. After all, she’d crossed the room to peer at him inside the poster frame even if seeing him there clearly didn’t sit well with her.
She might look as if she should be perched in a tower window, her fair hair spilling over the ledge as she pined for some noble gallant to come and carry her away on a white steed, but she had a bold and daring heart.
He was sure of it.
So he stomped on, practicing his best glares all the while.
“Ho! Here is a wonder!” A deep voice boomed behind him. “Ne’er would I have believed I’d see the day you scowl and curse o’er such a comely maid.”
Hardwick whipped around so fast he nearly dropped his shield.
Bran MacNeil of Barra stood a few paces away, his huge bearlike form almost splitting with mirth. Ghostly, great-hearted, and good-humored, the Hebridean chieftain sported a bushy beard nearly as red as Mac MacGhee’s, and his blue eyes crinkled with the same teasing amusement.
The gemstone in the pommel of his sword hilt shone dimly in the day’s pale light and his plaid lifted in the wind, its woolen folds smelling distinctly of a heady musk-scented perfume that wasn’t Bran’s own.
“You great stirk!” Hardwick glowered at him. “Cease goggling at me like a ring-tailed gowk. You should know why I’m scowling.”
“I can think it, aye!”
“No doubt,” Hardwick agreed. “You know fine why I’m here.”
He tightened his grip on his shield. A sharp bite to his tongue kept him from demanding how his longtime friend and wenching companion knew Cilla Swanner was comely.
Or, more importantly, how he knew she even existed.
“Why are you here?” Hardwick eyed him, suspicious. Though, in truth, he’d already guessed the answer. “It’s a rare day that you leave Barra.”
His friend cut the air with a hand. “My fair isle will keep until my return. I came to see how you’re doing here in the wild and lonely north!”
“I’ve been passing my nights well enough until—” Hardwick caught himself.
Somewhere in the mist behind him, a wicked chortle sounded.
Hardwick’s nape prickled. His blood chilled and he blanked his features, as if he’d not noticed.
Bran just kept laughing. “Until you had your head turned, eh?”
“My head hasn’t been turned.” Hardwick lifted his voice, hoping any lurking cacklers would hear his denial and return to their hellhole. “You’re poking your nose where it doesn’t belong and seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Say you?”
“I do.”
Looking as if he was having none of that, the burly Islesman leaned back against the parapet’s notched wall and crossed his ankles.
“I told you it would have been wiser to hie yourself to Barra,” he said, sounding most serious. “There, you could have—”
Hardwick laughed.
He couldn’t help himself.
Then he shoved a hand through his hair and spoke the truth. “Your hall is so thick with temptation you could stir the place with a spoon.”
“Aye, so it is!” Bran looked more than pleased with the description. “But”—he raised a sage finger—“you have sampled the charms of all the lovelies who drop in and out of my keep. It seems to me you’d have had less trouble turning a blind eye to them than to this maid.”
Hardwick humphed.
Much as he loved his friend, he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.
Besides, the lout’s piercing stare showed that he already knew.
“She’s an American.” Bran spoke the word as if it were dipped in gold.
“I don’t care if she comes from the moon.” Hardwick glared at him. “I do not even want to see a fetching piece of womanhood. No’ now!”
His temper rising, he strode to another section of the wall, deliberately choosing a place at least four square-toothed notches away from his friend.
“My wenching days are behind me.” He cleared his throat. “I cannot return to them—even if I wished to do so.”
“I wasn’t speaking of wenching.” Behind him, Bran made a sound as if he’d slapped his thigh. “Come you, dinna be so thrawn. Stubbornness is for soured old men!”
Hardwick slid him an annoyed look. “And you say we are no’ old?”
Bran gave a great belly-shaking laugh. “Centuries old isn’t what I meant, and well you know it! We are as hardy as the rutting stags on the hill.”
“Speak for yourself. I am done with that kind of hardiness.”
“Even so . . .” Bran stopped laughing. “There are just times I get these feelings, and this is one o’ them. Think you I would leave my cozy hearth fire and a plump bed warmer for naught? I say you, that lassie—”
“Is none of my concern.” Hardwick blocked his ears to whatever else his friend had to say about her.
Scowling, he braced his hands on the cold stone of the merlon and stared down at the shimmering expanse of the Kyle of Tongue far below. Even on such a chill, mist-plagued afternoon, the strait’s tossing surface glimmered and shone with silvery blue light, and its wide, sandy banks glistened in every shade of gold.
Soft, gleaming tones that made him think of her hair.
He flinched.
The neck opening of his tunic had gone unpleasantly tight, but he refused to slip a finger beneath it. Instead he pressed his hands even harder against the damp grit of the merlon and kept his gaze pinned on the swirl of the Kyle’s fast-moving current.
Such a day of strong-running seas and wind should have invigorated him.
Instead, he found his heart freezing in his chest and his gut twisting. Of his usual sharp wit and high spirits, nary a jot remained, and his mood had gone more foul than he could ever remember.
Even as a ghost—and cursed as he was—he’d never passed
a day without laughing.
Now . . .
He skulked about, trying to ignore the presence of the one lass who might have really appealed to him. And, equally galling, he’d been reduced to an over-the-shoulder-glancing fool, hearing cackles in every ripple of the wind.
He frowned.
His jaw set so tight he wondered he didn’t crack a tooth.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking about Americans.” Bran appeared at his elbow. “The women, I mean. There’s something about them.” He paused, drawing a deep breath, as if readying himself to pronounce some great gem of wisdom. “Ach, see you, after much consideration, I’m thinking that when they come here—”
“They should turn around and take themselves right back where they came from!” Hardwick flashed a dark look at his friend. “Leastways those so brazen they’d jiggle their bared breasts under a man’s nose.”
“So-o-o!” Bran hopped onto a merlon with surprising ease for a man of his size. “That is the way of it! She’s for seducing you!”
He pulled on his beard, an expression of feigned puzzlement on his face. “How odd that when I saw her heading this way, she looked more upset than out to flaunt her charms.”
Hardwick’s entire body tensed. “What do you mean she’s heading this way?”
“Just that.” Bran sounded convinced. “I’d gone looking for you and nearly collided with her in one of the corridors. Poor lassie would’ve dashed right through me if I hadn’t leapt aside fast enough. She was making for the parapet stair.”
“Then you must be mistaken.” Hardwick’s relief knew no bounds. “She left the armory in her aunt’s company. They were on their way to the library. She wouldn’t be careening through the passageways.”
Bran shrugged. “Be that as it may, that’s where I saw her.”
“You saw someone else.” Hardwick willed it so. “Honoria perhaps. She’s the housekeeper and by far the youngest female here excepting—”
“Ach, but you insult me!” Bran clapped a hand to his chest. “Think you a man of my wenching experience canna tell a housekeeper from an American?”
Hardwick scowled at the truth of his friend’s words.
He scowled even more when the lout vanished, leaving his merlon perch empty and Hardwick alone on the wall-walk, just when the parapet door flew open and she burst out onto the battlements.
Not Honoria at all, but his nemesis.
And looking so delectable he was tempted to close the short space between them with two swift strides and seize her to him, clamping her face between his hands and then kissing her long, hard, and deep, until nothing mattered but the feel of her soft, red lips yielding to his own.
He wanted, needed, the bliss of her silken tongue twirling and sliding against his in hot, ancient rhythm.
The Dark One and his bargain be damned.
Instead, he simply stared at her, his frown so black he could feel it to his toes.
She stood perfectly still, poised just outside the door, her cheeks flushed pink and her breath coming hard. Hardwick’s own breath snagged in his throat and he quickly jerked his shield into place. Not to hide a rise in his plaid, but to disguise his attempt to prevent one.
Furious at the need, he slid a hand behind the targe and squeezed.
Hard.
Hard, long, and tight enough to bring tears to a lesser man, but Hardwick only gritted his teeth and winced. Once, in another life, he’d have thrown back his head and laughed at his word choices.
Now they only fueled his frustration.
Long and hard was definitely what he’d love to give her. And, mercy on him, he knew she’d be wonderfully tight.
Hot, sleek, and slippery wet.
Need speared him again, a sharp and painful hunger pulsing somewhere deep inside him.
She hadn’t yet noticed him, so he continued to stare at her, her appearance shattering his last hope that Bran might have erred. And, even worse, driving home how urgently he needed to rid himself of her.
Her scent alone damned him. Light, clean, and fresh as a spring breeze, it swirled around him, firing his blood and threatening to set him like granite if he didn’t have such a firm grip on himself.
As it was, every other inch of him went tight with desire. His senses snapped to dangerous alert and he squeezed himself harder, struggling against her effect on him yet unable to look away.
Something had clearly upset her and—saints help him—that air of flushed, wild-eyed vulnerability drew him as strongly as her lush curves and creamy smooth skin. Her breasts, covered now in a silky-looking top of softest blue, rose and fell in agitation, and her bright golden hair whipped crazily in the gusting wind.
Cilla started forward, swiping at the tossing strands as she made straight for the walling. Notched, medieval-looking walling that surely was medieval.
Just as she was certain that the great bearded Highlander who’d suddenly appeared in front of her in one of the portrait-hung halls had been, well, medieval.
If not that, he definitely wasn’t of this time.
Nor of this world.
In fact, he’d looked downright savage. In a magnificent, old-time Highland-y sort of way, that is.
Magnificent or not, she wanted nothing to do with him. Shivering, she pulled her sweater tighter against the cold air and forced her legs to carry her across the narrow stone-flagged walkway.
No easy task when they felt like rubber and her knees wouldn’t stop knocking. But she kept on, placing one foot in front of the other until she reached the wall.
She needed air.
Lots and lots of cold, fresh air.
“I did not just see another ghost. I did not”—she gripped the edge of a merlon, needing the stone’s solidity—“almost run through him. He did not leap out of the way when—”
“Ahhh, but he did now, didn’t he?” A deep voice, well-burred and buttery rich, purred out of nowhere. “Perhaps you should leave before you run into someone who won’t.”
“Won’t what?” She spoke before remembering no one was there.
“Won’t leap out of your way, of course,” the blowing mist returned.
Cilla’s eyes flew wide.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Pea soup didn’t talk!
Not in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and, she was sure, not in Scotland, either.
Not even in the remote vastness of Sutherland.
Unwilling to consider the alternative, she straightened her shoulders and—very slowly—pushed away from the wall. Three, four long-legged strides would take her safely back to the doorway and she could just pop through it, leaving Dunroamin’s all-too-eerie battlements behind her.
She wasn’t in the mood to deal with talking mist.
But before she could turn around, she backed into something cold, hard, and unyielding.
Something round, leather covered, and riddled with bumps. She could feel them pressing into the small of her back. She knew at once what they were.
The brass studs of a targe.
A medieval targe.
“Oh, no!” She spun on her heels, certain the poster ghost had come for her at last, but the man staring so fiercely at her was anything but a phantom.
Tall, dark, and kilted, he was clutching a shield.
He was also gorgeous, defined sensuality in a wicked, smoldering kind of way, and he had a decidedly roguish air about him. But he looked just as real and solid as anyone else. And—she swallowed as she blinked up at him—even if he did resemble Mr. Wasn’t-Really-There, she doubted a ghost could make her mouth go dry.
“O-o-oh, aye,” he spoke again, his honeyed voice melting her. “Did I no’ warn you there’d be some who wouldn’t jump aside?”
Cilla stopped melting at once.
“Who are you?” She regarded him warily. “Where did you come from?”
“From a place more distant than you’d believe.” He ignored her first question. “And I’ve good advice for you,” he added, taking a step
closer, slowly raising his shield until it brushed the tips of her breasts. “If you’re after a true taste o’ Scotland, hie yourself—”
“Hie myself?” She blinked.
“Take yourself,” he clarified, scowling at her. “Quit this place and journey south. Inverness, the Isle of Skye, Stirling and Perth, perhaps even down to Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. Aye”—he appeared to warm to the idea—“Glasgow is where you should be! Loch Lomond is there and—”
“I saw Loch Lomond on the drive up here.” Cilla frowned right back at him. “We stopped for lunch at Luss and I’ve never seen so many coach tour buses crowded into such a tiny car park. Or so many people jammed into souvenir shops no bigger than a postage stamp. If that is Scotland”—she scooted around him and made a wide, sweeping gesture with her arm, taking in the rain-dampened parapet and the broad, silvery Kyle—“I’d rather be here.”
He snorted. “This is the end of the world.”
Cilla smiled. “Exactly.”
Suddenly in her face again, he leaned close. “Be warned,” he breathed, his dark gaze piercing her. “Sutherland is filled with lonely moors and dark bogs. Mountains so vast and bleak they’d eat a lass like you, bones and all, and no one would ever be the wiser.”
“I like wild places.” She tossed back her hair, defiant.
“Yet you plan to spend the summer here”—he made a broad gesture of his own—“where every soul present is at least thrice your own age? The only kind of wild they’ll give you is complaining that their haggis is too well spiced or that your uncle tells the same fireside tales too often.”
She stared at him.
His burr was getting to her again. Much as she hated to admit it, he really was six-foot-four of pure Scottish male.
She’d always had a thing for Highlanders.
Especially kilted ones.
But the absurdity of his objection and, perhaps, the exhaustion of jet lag, bubbled up inside her until she near convulsed with sidesplitting, eye-tearing laughter.
“You made one mistake.” She wiped her eyes when she finally caught herself. “There does seem to be a soul here who isn’t ‘thrice my age.’ ”
He cocked a brow. “And who might that be?”
Tall, Dark, and Kilted Page 4
