Draycott Everlasting

by Christina Skye

  “There are none. But if you wish to stay, you are welcome to watch me bathe.”

  He pulled the cloth free. As he had expected, she gasped, a soft sound lost in the swirl of the water as he met the loch.

  The current was as cold as an assassin’s heart. Ignoring the chill, MacLeod strode deeper. He heard a strangled cough and swift footsteps that crossed the bank. So she had gone.

  He knew a moment of regret. What was he to do now? What sort of life could this strange, hostile world hold for a warrior such as he?

  All he wanted was to go home.

  “I’m not leaving, you know.” A twig snapped. “Not until I have an explanation.”

  She sounded angry.

  She sounded frightened.

  The Scotsman’s lips curved in bitter humor. By honor, so was he.

  But even frightened, she would not leave. He was beginning to see the steel in her. It was clear that she cherished his house, and she did it without the help of any man. Extraordinary that the woman was a fighter just as he was.

  But this was one fight she would lose. MacLeod was determined to be alone.

  He strode out deeper, his teeth chattering as he welcomed the cold currents in a headlong plunge. Exhilarated, he let the icy water clear his muddled thoughts.

  So he had lost his time and his world. At least he was alive. With luck he could find a way back. And if not…

  If not, he must adapt as he had adapted before.

  God’s hand was in all things, even the most insignificant, so the Church said. MacLeod took refuge in that thought now.

  He had survived before and he would survive again.

  As a boy, he had plunged into this same loch. Already lanky at the age of eight, he had splashed and made mayhem in the cove while his three sisters mocked and ambushed him in turn. Three beauties, they had been. Strong-willed just as Hope O’Hara was.

  But Ronan had seen their laughter fade. He had seen the English take them, and even now he remembered their screams and the curses, so abruptly silenced. Tied with rope and marched over the hill like cattle, taken God knew where. And nothing he or any other MacLeod man could do to save them.

  No more laughing then. No more sparkling eyes.

  The dark memories clung as he broke the surface. Sputtering, he threw back his head. Did the English still fight the clans now? he wondered. Were the stones of the glens still dark with Highland blood?

  If so, God help them.

  When he turned, the woman was still on the bank, her shoulders stiff as steel. “I’m not leaving. You may be stubborn, but I’m more stubborn. If you swim away, I’ll just follow you.”

  Humor warred with irritation. For such a small woman, she would task a Norman sausage butcher, so she would. “What answers do you want of me?”

  “Why you left, for one. Make it the truth this time.”

  Did he know what the truth was? And could she bear it if he told her?

  MacLeod studied the rocky bank. The truth was, he felt no comfort being near her. The truth was that he didn’t want to feel her beauty eating into his very soul. He had enough trouble struggling to control his reason without her to assault his senses.

  “One man’s truth may be another man’s lies. They may hurt more than you know.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Perhaps I will not.” It was too soon to speak of what had happened. He needed time to understand for himself first.

  But she sat down on the bank, her eyes unflinching. “I’m here to stay. A little naked skin isn’t going to scare me away.”

  He drew a harsh breath. “It would be safer if you left.”

  “Safer for whom?” She danced on the edge of a flame, he thought. And like most women, she was unaware of her danger.

  But she could be bested.

  He stood up slowly, water lapping at his chest. “You still choose to stay?”

  Her cheeks flamed, but she did not move, fully resolute. MacLeod could not help but admire her. By heaven, she was a stubborn sort of female.

  So be it. She would see where her stubbornness led her.

  Her eyes flickered toward his chest—then lower. When he realized where she was looking, his mouth twisted in a hard grin. So the lady was curious, was she? If so, it would be her undoing. “Are you so anxious to inspect my limbs?”

  New color swept into her face, but she stared him down. “I might be—if you had anything worth looking at, which you don’t. In fact, I’ve seen better muscle definition on a sumo wrestler.”

  MacLeod had no idea what a sumo was, but he recognized an insult when he heard it. His dark brow rose. “You wound me.”

  She snorted. “Even a Mack truck couldn’t wound you.”

  “What is—”

  “Never mind.”

  Ronan MacLeod suddenly knew she was lying. Perhaps it was because her cheeks flamed red, like a choirboy’s in a brothel. Or perhaps it was the way her eyes kept slanting toward the water where it lapped at his waist.

  Curious, the woman was. He did not displease her. But she was a complete innocent, judging by her restless, uneasy movements.

  The knowledge sent heat coursing to his half-frozen limbs. “You have studied many men?”

  She crossed her arms, all defiance. “Enough to know what’s good when I see it.”

  “And how many men is that, Hope O’Hara?”

  She looked out over the water, her voice low and breathless. Was the memory of a man’s heated touch with her even now?

  Something like envy tightened his throat.

  “Dozens, that’s how many.”

  As a liar, she was appalling. But as a woman, she was entrancing beyond measure. MacLeod’s curiosity grew. “And you took these men as lovers after you made your…observations?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Perhaps not.” His lips pursed. “You found them pleasurable?”

  More color snapped across her cheeks. “Absolutely. Let me tell you, I had huge pleasure. Incredible pleasure.”

  “You observed them in groups, did you? Was it three at a time? Four? Twenty?”

  She glared at him. “I don’t remember.” She shifted from side to side, frowning. “It was a while ago.”

  “How long past?”

  “Two years—three. I forget.”

  He grinned. He couldn’t help it.

  “And what is that silly smile supposed to mean?”

  “If they had been MacLeod men, you would not have lost the memory so easily.”

  “Says you. All men get boring after a while. All those nights. All those amazing bodies.” She gave an airy wave. “Who can even keep track?”

  For a woman who was as skittish as a colt on spring ice, she claimed the worst sort of depravities. She could not even lie without flushing the color of new roses. Yes, she was a pitiful liar.

  And he was charmed beyond description.

  She dressed like a man, worked like a man, thought like a man. She even knew how to argue like a man. MacLeod bit back a laugh. She was a woman to make a man’s temper climb and his pulse race. He only wished he had met her in his own time.

  The wind ruffled her strange, boyish cap of chestnut curls, sending fresh color through her cheeks. Though her leggings were odd, they hugged her slender legs most pleasantly.

  The thought of her body was an instant mistake. Even in the icy water he was not immune to desire, MacLeod discovered. But there could be no future between this woman and himself. He might be tossed back into his own time at any moment, as swiftly as he had come. By all honor, this sudden heat singing through his limbs could come to naught.

  His reason knew that.

  His body did not.

  And soon she would see the evidence of his desire most clearly.

  She wriggled restlessly. “Stop staring at me.”

  “If you wish.” But he could no more master his urge to stare than he could walk on water. In this chaotic, unfamiliar world, she was life and color to him.r />
  Sand swept around his feet, mottling the crystal water. Like those tiny, swirling grains, he was tossed adrift, his future unclear. Somehow he sensed that she held the clue to the mystery of his arrival here.

  “Why did you leave the kitchen? What were you so afraid of?”

  “I saw things I did not wish to see.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Do you hound a man always, giving him no peace?”

  “I have to know. In a way you’re my responsibility now,” she said tensely.

  A MacLeod was no one’s responsibility but his own, by heaven. Especially not a woman’s. “I have no answers to give you, woman! All is loss and confusion.” MacLeod closed his eyes. He heard water gurgle past, relentless as time in its passage. “Mad, that makes me. A very fool. Laugh at me as you will.”

  Her eyes darkened. “I’m not laughing.”

  “Do you believe me then? Do you accept that Glenbrae is mine?”

  She shook her head slowly. “How can I?”

  But he wanted her to believe him. It hurt to feel how much he wanted that. MacLeod hit the water hard and sent silver beads flying. “Is it the truth you want? I am fit of mind and body, this is my truth. I have finally come home to the glens—only to find I’ve come centuries too late. The year, my year, is 1298.” He glared at Hope. “Hold your sides and laugh. I would did I hear such a wild tale.”

  But she did not laugh. “You know it can’t be true. People don’t leap through time. Einstein said it was possible, of course. Theoretically.”

  MacLeod stiffened. “Then take me to this Einstein. Maybe he can send me back.”

  Hope made a soft, exasperated sound. “Einstein is dead.”

  Another blow. “He was a great magician, this Einstein?”

  “No, he was a nuclear physicist.”

  Again she spoke in riddles. “I understand none of this,” he said harshly. “Why do you raise possibilities, only to destroy them?”

  Her head tilted. “Maybe you’re confused from the storm. After all, that plank did crash down on your head after you caught me….”

  “’Tis no dream I am having, woman! I know the year and I have all my wits sound in my head. The loch, the glen, even that house on the hill—all were present and real when I left in the night. Only their age has changed.”

  He dared her to throw back her head and roar at his misbegotten story.

  But she did not. Her expression only grew graver. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I do not need your pity.”

  Her head tilted. “I said ‘worry,’ not ‘pity.’ There’s a major difference.”

  Not to him. He had never known a woman’s worry, nor her concern. Feeling them now left him in greater confusion.

  The Scotsman muttered a rough phrase in Gaelic. “What I say appears impossible. Yet I also know I am here beside you, locked in a time that is not my own.”

  She made no answer. MacLeod knew that there was no answer to give. He could not fault her for the disbelief in her eyes.

  Arguing, too, was pointless.

  He turned away, his knee throbbing from the cold. To distract himself, he bent low, scooped up sand from the loch’s bottom, and scrubbed his back.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Washing.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re turning blue in there.”

  “It is my choice. Besides, the water is bonny.” He tried to ignore how his jaw clenched against the chill seeping into his bones. “’Tis the company which does naught for my temper.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, MacLeod. Come back to the house.”

  He slung another handful of sand onto his shoulder. What answers were there for him in the bright, strange rooms? “I will stay here.”

  “And freeze to death, no doubt.”

  “I can freeze as I choose,” MacLeod thundered. “This is my land. At least it was my land,” he added grimly.

  “You’ll be lost by dark. Or maybe you’ll break your neck when you fall off the cliff.”

  “Sorry I am to bother you, lady. When next I ride through time, I shall try to choose a more convenient hour and place to do it.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No? You do not hear a word I say. You do not listen because it makes you uncomfortable. You look at me and feel pure terror. I can see it clearly in your eyes.”

  She blinked. Again the fear was there, just as he had said.

  MacLeod finished scrubbing his back, then turned to wash his chest. The air between them shimmered with tension.

  He dropped the last of a handful of sand. “I’m coming out now.”

  Hope glared back at him, her body rigid.

  “Very well.” MacLeod waded toward the bank. “If you wish to fill your eyes with all of me, then remain.”

  Two bright spots of color raced into her cheeks. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You enjoy being a bastard.”

  “I am wedlock born, woman. Were you a man, you would regret those words.”

  “I can hardly contain my terror, Your Worthiness.” His patterned wool sailed through the air and struck him full in the face.

  MacLeod barely managed to catch one end before the whole length tumbled into the water. Cocky wench.

  His throbbing leg, empty stomach and growing frustration made him more reckless than usual. Since she thought his behavior crude, let him convince her of the fact now.

  Grinning, he tossed the bright fabric over his shoulder, where it fell to one hip. His gaze never left her face as he strode from the loch, up the bank and directly toward her, naked as the day God made him.

  Now let us see who would stay and who will bolt, the Crusader thought.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HOPE TOOK A STRANGLED breath and fought to keep her gaze on MacLeod’s face.

  It was a magnificent face, she admitted. Angular and sharp, his cheekbones were washed with color. Pride shimmered in his eyes, and his long hair lay slick and dark down his neck.

  He could have been the twin of the man in the painting above the stairs, she realized. Was it possible his fantastic story was true? How else could she explain his confusion, his strange garb and his uncanny knowledge of the house?

  Even now he stood with rigid arrogance, lord of his lands. Only they weren’t his lands, they were hers, and he was going to have to accept that—along with the true date.

  Her head began to pound. There was no sense trying to understand the inexplicable. Meanwhile he seemed just as confused as she was.

  The water slapped gently at her feet. In spite of her irritation, Hope was drawn to the man, touched by his uncertainty and pain.

  Unconsciously her gaze strayed lower, past the taut stomach ridged with muscle, past the snug hips, down where water hung in tiny beads that glittered below his navel.

  Bad idea.

  The man was gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. And there was something heartbreakingly lost about him, even in his anger.

  Hope didn’t like the wave of heat uncurling through her chest. So what if he was good-looking? She considered herself a liberated twentieth-century woman. She knew how the human body worked and she understood the mechanics of sexual arousal in precise detail. But seeing a man of such stunning endowment up close was a shock. He was so alive, so complex.

  So confused.

  Something blocked her throat. The only one confused here is you, a voice warned. Ronan MacLeod was about as helpless as a gorilla on steroids. Almost as ill-tempered, too.

  You can’t afford to be protective, she thought. Not when you know next to nothing about the man.

  Yet she continued to stand, continued to stare. Hope had to admit she was enjoying the view, every muscled inch of it, even if he was freezing to death in that icy water.

  “Do you find the sight of me pleasurable, woman?”

  Hope swallowed. One second the man was confused, the next he was all rottweiler.

  “Not particular
ly.” As a lie, it was spectacular, but he didn’t have to know that. She spun about and started for the house. “Go on and freeze, if you insist. Drown in the loch. Get lost in the peat bog.” With every word her heart hammered harder. “Break your neck up there on the cliffs. It makes no difference to me,” she said unsteadily. “I don’t c-care a bit, understand?”

  In one pace he caught up with her and pulled her around to face him. “Pie Jesu, you are crying.”

  Emotion left her trembling. “So what if I am?” She fought vainly to pull away.

  “You are crying for me?” MacLeod asked.

  “Don’t let it go to your head. I’d cry for anyone who looked as lost as you did when I came out here. And it doesn’t mean a thing, understand?” Hope ignored the feel of his hands on her shoulders. She ignored the damp wool crushed against her chest and the rigid wall of muscles beneath. “I m-might as well be crying for a lost puppy or a bird with a broken wing. And as for that ridiculous story you told me about being lost in time—”

  The madness seized MacLeod before he could control it. All he knew was that she was trembling against him and that the tears on her cheeks were for him.

  For him.

  He pulled her against him in midsentence. A hardened soldier, he knew when to argue and when to storm enemy terrain.

  He stormed now.

  He breached every defense. Hands rigid, he caught her shoulders and lifted her face to his. She was still arguing when he slid his fingers into that piquant cap of shining chestnut hair and kissed her.

  Her scent filled his senses, spring meadows after soft rain. Closing his eyes, he sealed his mouth to hers, hunger driving away all subtlety and restraint. He had to have the taste of her, deep and long. He had to have her against his mouth now.

  She shivered—and then her lips opened. In that second Ronan MacLeod became the besieged.

  By all the saints, she was sweet and achingly soft. Her mouth moved against his, driving his pulse to madness, and he groaned when he felt her breasts harden, small and firm, thrusting against his chest. He ached to explore the taut red tips, to pull them against his teeth and make her whimper with the same damnable need he was feeling.

  MacLeod felt his blood stir. He swore to let her go in a few more seconds. Maybe then he wouldn’t smell her, wouldn’t want her so much that he couldn’t draw a normal breath.