“Thank you.” Cilla turned toward the door.
Flora thrust out her cane, blocking her path. “Have a care, child,” she tsked, shaking her head. “He looked mighty angry, he did.”
“I can handle him.” Cilla smiled reassurance as the old woman lowered her cane. “It’s not me he’s mad at.”
Ignoring her aunt and uncle’s flashed glances, she pushed her way through the milling Kilt Inspectors, who were now gathering around their hero’s book table, fawning and squealing.
They could have their red-cheeked raconteur.
She had to find Hardwick.
She paused outside the library door, peering both ways down the long and dim corridor. Retreating footsteps, rapid and masculine, gave a clue from the shadows to her left. But by the time she raced down the passageway, Hardwick was nowhere to be seen.
Pulse racing, she let herself out the castle’s massive front door and hurried down the steps to the graveled drive and gardens. Her gaze darting everywhere, she sprinted across the wet lawn, making for the moorland and the dark edge of Uncle Mac’s peat fields.
She’d covered only a few yards before Hardwick stepped out from behind a thicket of dripping rhododendrons to grab her arm, stopping her in motion.
“Whoa, lassie.” He pulled her roughly against his chest, his strong arms snapping around her like an iron vise. His big hands clamped onto her hips, his fingers gripping firmly into her buttocks. “You’re no’ going anywhere.”
Cilla sucked in a breath, the feel of her breasts crushed against his hard-muscled chest and, heaven help her, the press of his not-to-be-ignored bulge against her stomach almost making her dizzy.
“I thought the Dark One had taken you.” She clung to him, slinging her arms around his neck and thrusting her fingers into his hair, holding tight. “The Viking pair, the ghosts I saw, were there, in the library, and when you disappeared I thought maybe they’d come to warn me that your time here was over.”
His brows shot upward. “The Viking pair? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.” She choked on the words, twisting her fingers deeper into his hair. “I knew they were there for a reason, and when I saw you couldn’t see them I feared it had something to do with you. Now, after hearing Wee Hughie—”
“Enough.” His mouth swooped down on hers, hard and silencing. He tightened his grip on her buttocks and swept one hand up her back and around to her front, cupping her breast and squeezing hard, almost as if he feared she’d vanish if he didn’t hold her so fiercely.
“I heard what MacSporran said and I’ll no’ have you with me tonight.” He slanted his mouth over hers, parting her lips with his tongue and thrusting deep. Not even giving her a chance to catch her breath, he kissed her mercilessly. Nipping and licking, his tongue sliding furiously over and around hers, plunging and withdrawing again and again until she went limp in his arms and he broke the kiss.
He set her from him at once and stepped back, his breath coming in hard, fast pants. “I’m away to the moors to join Bran and the lads.” He looked down at her, his eyes still dark with passion, almost blazing. “Now go back to the castle. I’ll no’ have you coming with me.”
“Why not?” She lifted her chin. After such a kiss, and the odd feeling that he meant it as their last, she wasn’t about to return to Dunroamin.
“Dinna trouble your head with why.” He frowned at her. “You’ll go because I said so.”
“Oh yeah?” Cilla bristled. “That might have worked in the fourteenth century, but it won’t with me.” She folded her arms, stubborn. “Women do what they want these days.”
“And what do you want?” His eyes blazed hotter and his burr went all buttery deep, its smoothness downright dangerous.
Cilla blinked. “I . . .” Her voice hitched, the damn tingles he always gave her making it impossible to think.
“Come, sweet.” His eyes went hot and heavy-lidded, his gaze tracking slowly downward. “Perhaps if you tell me, I’ll oblige you?”
“I . . .” Cilla bit her lip, sure the ground was tilting beneath her.
Smiling wickedly, he reached between them to inch up her skirt, sliding his hand up her thigh to cup and press the panty-covered heat between her thighs.
“Tell me, lass.” He leaned close, licking, then nibbling her ear. “Your every desire fulfilled . . .”
“Stop trying to change the subject.” Amazed she could even speak, Cilla jerked free. “I saw the way your expression changed when Wee Hughie started talking about Vikings, and . . . and your friend, Bran, was upset, too!”
His smile fading, he touched one finger to her clit and circled. Once, twice, and again before he pulled back his hand and stepped away from her.
“I would throw off my plaid and toss you down onto it and nibble on that tasty little sweet spot until there is no tomorrow,” he vowed, his breath still harsh and his voice passion deepened. “But now isn’t the time or place, and you need to leave.”
“Hah!” Cilla tossed back her hair, hiding how limp-limbed he’d made her behind a flash of bravura. “I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on.”
“ ’Tis a man’s work.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll no’ have you looking on if things get a bit wild.”
“Wild doesn’t scare me.”
“This kind of wild should.” He remained firm.
“Then at least tell me why you and Bran disappeared from the library.” She could do firm, too. “I’m not budging until I get the truth.”
He frowned and shoved a hand through his hair. “The truth, lass, is that thanks to Bran and the lads’ keen eyesight and, this e’en, Wee Hughie’s blethering, Bran and I have guessed what Mac’s Viking ghosties are after.”
Cilla stared at him.
Her heart started pounding, fast and furious.
In her mind, she again saw Gudrid and Sea-Strider standing in a corner, nodding and smiling when Wee Hughie started talking about Norse archaeological sites.
“Oh, my God!” She clapped a hand to her cheek. “There’s Celtic treasure buried in Uncle Mac’s peat fields!”
Hardwick nodded. “Aye, that would seem to be the way of it.”
He glanced out over the moors, dark beneath drifting mist and low-hovering rain clouds.
“Some while ago Bran and the lads found a creel of tools hidden beneath an overhang in one of the peat bogs. They couldn’t locate the basket a second time, or perhaps the ghosties moved it. But”—the corner of his mouth curved up triumphantly—“Bran used his ghostly power to conjure one of the tools to show me what they’d found.”
“It was one of Wee Hughie’s Marshalltown Archaeology trowels?” Cilla guessed.
“No’ his own, mind.” Hardwick’s smile broadened.
“But a tool just like his, aye. The word Marshalltown was inscribed on it, for sure.”
Cilla blinked. “So you think the ghosties are using their Viking disguises and the trowels to search for buried treasure in Uncle Mac’s peat fields?”
“I do.”
“So that’s why you don’t want me with you on the moors.” She understood now. “You’re worried that if you catch them, they’ll go wild?”
“Saints, but you’re an innocent.” His lips quirked.
“Nae, that is no’ my concern.”
“Then what is?”
He leaned close, looking directly in her eye. “That you might swoon if you were present and looking on when Bran, the lads, and I went wild.”
“How wild?”
“Think naked, screaming men and swinging steel.”
“Oh.” Cilla flushed.
“Indeed.” He flashed his most wicked smile. “If you’ve ne’er seen a Highland charge, it isn’t a sight for the faint of heart. Especially when we’re after the kind of thieving scoundrels who’re too lily-livered to show their own faces and creep about disguised as Viking ghosties.”
Cilla’s heart flipped. She’d read about the ferocity of Highland charges in hist
ory books. How bold and daring they were, the men indeed often throwing off their plaids as they raced to fight their foes.
She lifted her chin, her pulse racing. “I think I might like to see naked, sword-swinging Highlanders. . . .” She broke off, realizing she was talking to thin air.
He’d disappeared, leaving only his sexy sandalwood scent behind.
That, and the raging tingles causing her to press her thighs together.
Who would’ve believed the thought of naked, wild-eyed Highlanders with swords could be such a turn-on?
But, she had to admit, that wasn’t quite true.
It was the thought of Hardwick naked that really excited her. The idea of his sword swinging free beneath his kilt that had her almost climaxing here, right in the middle of Dunroamin’s broad front lawn!
So close, one touch of a finger would have her shattering.
She frowned.
Then she started tapping her chin, trying to decide what to do.
She needed exactly thirty seconds to make a decision.
And when she started walking, it wasn’t in the direction of Dunroamin’s front door.
If Hardwick got mad, so be it.
It’d be his fault for not letting them have real sex when they’d had the chance. She was madly in love with him, after all. So, of course, she had to have him.
By fair means or foul.
Chapter 16
“You’re certain it was this overhang?”
Hardwick looked askance at the cutaway ridge of blackest peat. No more than a four-foot-tall gash in the rolling moorland, if it’d once held a creel of Marshalltown Archaeology trowels, there wasn’t a sign of such a basket now. Looking equally innocent, a thick fringe of grass hung down over the cutaway area’s top edge.
He shot a glance at Bran, not missing the stubborn set of his friend’s jaw.
“There are hundreds of such overhangs on these moors. Natural ones and those cut by Mac’s lads.” He folded his arms. “I say we keep searching. Now that we know what we’re after, there isn’t time—”
“And I say it was this overhang!” Bran hooked his thumbs in his sword belt. “Could be I’m for seeing something you don’t! Something I noticed last time but”—he rocked back on his heels, grinning—“slipped my mind till now.”
Hardwick glowered at him. But he did turn back to the peat overhang to give it a better stare.
His jaw dropped at once. “By the Rood! There isn’t any bog cotton.”
“Just!” Bran thrust out an arm to indicate the delicate, white-topped heads of bog cotton dotting the moors as far as the eye could see. Tiny and shaped like candle flames, they dipped and bobbed in the wind, letting the peat fields look alive in a sea of dancing white.
Except above the overhang where they stood.
Hardwick’s brows drew together. The longer he stared at the thick, bog cotton-less grass covering the peat cut-away, the odder the overhang looked.
He threw another glance at Bran, seeing at once that his friend thought so, too.
As did Bran’s bonny fighting lads. Brawny, shaggy-maned Islesmen from Barra and few other Hebridean isles, they exchanged suspicious glances and drew closer, forming a tight ring around the black-glistening gash in the earth.
Swinging back toward the peat cut, Hardwick whipped out his sword and used its tip to probe the grassy lip of the overhang. The fringe of grass shifted at once, a large chunk of loose earth and grasses tumbling onto his feet.
“Hah!” Bran yanked out his own blade, eyes flashing. “I knew there was something funny about that cut-away.”
Grinning broadly, he leapt onto the overhang, sinking to his knees in the soft, black earth. With gusto, he slid his blade along the rim of the overhang, easily lifting a good-sized clump of peaty grass.
“Have a care!” Hardwick warned as Bran’s lads joined in, using dirk points to poke into the odd little mound. “If there’s an ancient church or a kist of treasure buried here, it’s Mac’s and I’ll no’ see us doing damage to it.”
“Ach! We’re but flexing our muscles until the ghosties show their faces!” Bran laughed. “ ’Tis those cravens what’ll take a beating from our broadswords and axes! No’ the good Mac’s—”
Thump ... screech ... !
Bran froze as his sword blade shrilled along something long and hard, its contours just visible beneath the now-thin layer of peat.
“A wall!” He jumped back, waving his sword in triumph. “ ’Tis just like up Shetland way—an old Celtic church filled with treasure!”
“ ’Tis a bag of sticks.” Hardwick pulled the coarse linen sack out of the ground. “Nae, tools,” he corrected, upturning the bag so that a rain of dirt-crusted shovels and spades tumbled out. “No’ Marshalltown Archaeology trowels, but I’ll wager the dastards have been using these to dig up Mac’s peat.”
“So say we all.” One of the Barra men agreed, his words greeted with enthusiasm by his fellow Islesmen. “But where’s the treasure?”
Hardwick set his hands on his hips and scanned the hills. Light as a northern night sky was in summer, wisps of earlier rain clouds and slow-drifting mist kept the contour of the moors soft and indistinct, the hills slashed with patches of deep, impenetrable shadow.
He stroked his chin, considering.
“Whate’er it is, it has to be hereabouts.” Bran rammed his blade into the earth, leaning heavily on the sword’s flashy jewel-topped hilt. “The fiends are like to be after keeping their tools close to hand!”
“Exactly.” Hardwick couldn’t agree more. “We just have to winkle it out.”
He turned halfaway, then looked back, meeting the eager gazes of Bran’s rough-looking Hebrideans.
“Somewhere out here there’s some sort of ruin.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “An ancient church, a longhouse, a Viking grave, whate’er. I say we split up and search all the land within a hundred paces, eyes peeled for any grass-grown lump, bump, or hollow that looks out of place.”
He left out that he’d also be keeping an eye out for a tall and shapely, big-breasted beauty who could bewitch a man with one toss of her tawny-gold hair.
Just thinking of her brought hot stirrings beneath his kilt. Even now, he’d swear he still carried the musky taste of her on his tongue, could imagine the heady scent of her hot, wet arousal.
He frowned. Now wasn’t the time for lust. Nor the damnable dizziness that swept him each time such tempting images rose to torment him. A nuisance visited on him by the Dark One, and a bleeding annoyance.
“Are we still for charging if the Viking ghosties put in an appearance?” The Barra man loomed before him, battle-ax in hand.
Hardwick blinked, focusing. The waves of lust-dizziness, when they came, seemed to be taking longer to fade.
He knuckled his eyes. “The stalwart who first spots our foes shall whistle like a curlew.” He glanced round. “I trust all can?”
Bran snorted.
His Hebrideans looked offended.
Hardwick swept up his sword, knowing a show of bravura would fire their blood.
“Barra!” They shouted Bran’s war cry, rattling swords or jabbing the air with long-bladed dirks.
“Then away with you!” Hardwick ran his own blade into its scabbard. “First curlew wheeple and we rally to charge!”
But hours later, after much tramping in circles and many more curses when an examined hump in the landscape proved to be just that—a hump—the men were still stamping about, their eyes yet keen but their spirits waning.
Ignoring his own worsening mood, Hardwick went down on one knee to inspect a suspicious-looking gap in a hillock. He found himself peering into a foxhole. The wee creature hissed at him, teeth bared and hackles rising.
Hardwick pushed to his feet, swallowing his disappointment.
Who would’ve thought the night would unearth one small fox and not a trace of buried Celtic silver? No ravening Viking ghosties, either. Though he’d bet his kilt they were near. He coul
d taste their thievery on the air as sure as he carried Cilla’s sweet, hot scent on his tongue.
Pushing on, he looked out across the moors and past the dark bulk of Dunroamin to the rocky headlands of the coast and the wide sweep of the Kyle. The water glittered, glass smooth and still, the same deep blue of her eyes.
He stopped and sucked in a breath, certain something was tracking along in the mist beside him. A presence determined to parallel his long strides.
Affecting an air of casualness, he lifted a hand, meaning to flick his fingers and conjure a brimming cup of ale. This he’d toss back with pretended appreciation. Then he’d sleeve his lips and move on, seemingly unconcerned but with a ready hand resting on his sword hilt.
Unfortunately, the lingering effects of his lust-dizziness made the effort of conjure-flicking too great. He lowered his hand without trying.
He did think hard as to who might be following him.
The long-strided gait was too stealthy and masculine for it to be Cilla. And, praise the saints, too sure-footed for one of the Dark One’s tottering gaggle of gap-toothed, flat-breasted hell hags.
He shuddered.
Then he threw his plaid back over his shoulder and struck off toward the spot where he judged his pursuant to be hiding. He’d gone but a few paces when the drifting mist parted and a tall, fair-haired Viking stepped from the gap to stare fixedly at him. No Viking ghostie, but a true ghost, the man wore mail and carried a huge, colorfully decorated shield and a nine-foot spear.
Hardwick stopped cold. Ghost he may be, but with the exception of Bran and his other ghostly friends, he’d ne’er grown wholly accustomed to running across others who dwelt in their mysterious, ethereal realm. Perhaps he’d need another seven hundred years, but for now, such encounters always startled him.
The Viking didn’t share his reticence.
Striding closer, he raised his tall spear to point at a hillock to Hardwick’s right. Half-hidden behind a copse of thick-growing birch and whin, it was an area Hardwick hadn’t yet explored.
In that moment a sharp bird call pierced the air. Hardwick whipped around to see Bran and his lads racing toward him. He flashed a glance to where the Viking had stood, but the man was gone.
Tall, Dark, and Kilted Page 26
