by Allie Mackay
“It was neither, but…close.”
He arched a brow. “That willna do, sweetness. No’ when your whate’er-it-was made my men gibber with fright.”
“I didn’t mean to scare them,” she returned. “I just wanted them to save what I thought was—oh, no!” She gasped when the bodice lacings ripped and both her gown and her overdress fell open to her waist.
His eyes darkened with that look again, his men’s fright clearly forgotten as his gaze snapped to her breasts. Planting her hands on her hips, she glared at him, not needing to look down to know that her thin excuse for a medieval undershift hid absolutely nothing. The thing was practically transparent. Just as bad, the room’s chill was tightening her nipples. She could feel them thrusting against the delicate linen, just as she could feel the scorching heat of his stare.
An intense, heavy-lidded perusal that only made them pucker all the more.
She bristled, irritated by his effect on her. “You said you’d turn your back.”
“And so I shall.” He reached to glide his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. “Now hie yourself into yon bathing tub, lest I forget my vow to woo you properly.”
The words spoken, he wheeled around, clasping his hands as casually as possible behind his back and fixing his stare on the night coming down outside his bedchamber’s tall, arch-topped windows. He also tried to close his ears to the furious rustling of cloth and the sloshing of water as she rid herself of her garments and climbed into the bath.
“So-o-o,” he began, turning only when he was certain it was safe to do so, “what was it that you wished Geordie and Ross to save?”
She looked at him, clouds of steam from the bathwater rising around her like tendrils of fairy mist. “A drowning woman,” she said, jutting her jaw as if he wouldn’t believe her. “I saw a woman’s death—apparently one that took place nearly a hundred years ago. She had seabirds tied to a rope about her waist and—”
“Her name was Annie,” Aidan finished for her, his innards twisting. “Her tale is a sad one and well known in these parts. She was married to Eachann MacQueen, a farmer who scratched a living off Wrath Isle’s barren slopes, sustaining his family by lowering his wife down the cliffs to gather seabirds and their eggs whene’er hunger drove them to such privations.”
“Whoever she was, I saw her.” She peered at him, her naked, soapy breasts jiggling as she gripped the edge of the bathing tub and leaned forward. “I didn’t see her as a ghost or because of witchcraft, but as a glimpse of the past. The once-was, as my gift of far-seeing reveals to me.”
Aidan frowned and began pacing again, too aware of the rivulets of water streaming over her full, well-rounded breasts to wrap his mind around something that had happened so long ago, and what it had to do with her and his gog-eyed, clack-tongued kinsmen.
“So you are a seeress.” He paused by one of the windows and stared across the dark water at the black, serrated cliffs of Wrath Isle. “The sight is common hereabouts and shouldn’t have fashed my men,” he said, keeping his back to her. “I’ll wager they fear you because of the way you appeared atop the gatehouse arch. We must find a way to explain that. Then they will accept you.”
Behind him, Kira sighed. “I don’t have second sight,” she argued. “At least not if you mean divination and prophecy. I told you, I’m a far-seer. Sometimes I’m able to look back in time, that’s all. Now I have gone back in time and that’s the only explanation I can give you. That, and that your gatehouse arch is a portal to the past.”
Aidan snorted before he could help himself.
“Scoff all you will,” she tossed at him. “If you have a better theory, I’m all ears. Fact is, in my time, that arch of yours was half buried in the grass, its top covered with moss and ferns. I was sitting on it, having a picnic, when suddenly my world vanished and I saw your men running across the bailey at me.”
Aidan considered telling her he wasn’t dim-witted enough to believe the like, but decided against it. The matter of their dream encounters and her zip-her was making it difficult for him to doubt her.
Not to mention the wee flying disk.
He shuddered, his head beginning to throb with the immensity of it all. “Ach, what a tangle,” he muttered, turning from the window and going to his table, where he poured a generous cup of his strongest ale—a fine, rich brew flavored with just a hint of heather. He took a long swallow, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“I will not lie to you, Kee-rah.” He swirled the ale in his cup, looking down into its frothy, honey-colored depths. “What you claim is no’ easy to believe. Even when my heart tells me you speak true.”
“Then you believe me?”
Aidan let out his breath slowly. “Let us say I can think of no other explanation,” he said, setting down the ale cup. He wasn’t about to admit how much the zip-her and the little disk she called a button bothered him. Instead, he folded his arms and tried to look worldly.
She put her shoulders back. “There’s not another explanation because I’ve told the truth.”
“Be that as it may, my men will have to be told a different tale.”
Her brow furrowed at that, but before she could protest, he raised a silencing hand. “We will put it about that one of my allies brought you here, spiriting you onto the gatehouse arch as a jest. Many of my friends are bold enough to have attempted such foolery,” he said, thinking in particular of the Barra MacNeils.
Hebridean devils to a man, and great ravishers of women as well, any one of his friends from the Isle of Barra could have done the deed. Best of all, if ever his tall tale reached the MacNeils, they’d be quicker to throw back their heads and roar with laughter than to draw their swords and demand that he redeem their honor.
O-o-oh, aye, the MacNeils were the answer.
His aching head beginning to feel better already, he smiled.
Kira Bedwell frowned.
She’d wrapped her arms around her knees and sat staring at him from the bathing tub, clearly not agreeing with a thing he’d suggested. “It means a lot to me that you don’t think I’m a witch,” she said, her tone proving it, “but whether you believe me or not, I am still out of place here. I—”
“Saints of glory!” Aidan crossed the room in a flash. “Your place is with me and has been since that long-ago day we first glimpsed each other. If there be any truth between us, it is that.” He frowned down at her, seeing not her nakedness but the stubborn set of her jaw. “Come, lass, you know it as well as—”
“If there be any truth between us are words that prove there can be nothing between us,” she returned, staring right back at him. “Just like ‘saints of glory.’ People don’t talk like that where I come from, and they sure don’t talk like me here.” She looked down then, plucking at the tub’s linen lining. “Don’t you see? Much as I would have wished it otherwise, my being here is a mistake. A weird quirk of fate—a slip in time—that should only have been a fleeting glance. I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of you in your hall, but in my heart I wanted more.”
She looked up again, her eyes luminous. “I think my longing was so strong that it caused a bump in our destinies, sort of like when the needle of an old-fashioned record player skipped to the wrong groove.”
Aidan dropped on one knee beside the bathing tub. He didn’t understand all the words she’d used, but he knew well enough what she meant. “The fates do not err,” he told her. “Leastways no’ Gaelic ones. If they saw fit to send you here, you can be sure that was their intention.”
To his annoyance, she didn’t look convinced.
Just the opposite, she snatched back her hand when he reached for it, hoping to gentle her with a soft kiss to her palm.
“I’m not so sure ancient Gaelic gods have much control over Americans,” she said, tucking her hands beneath her bent knees. “We’re always told we make our own beds, and this one”—she glanced around his sumptuous, candlelit room—“is a bed I’m not supposed to be sleeping in. Especially
when my being here is causing you so much grief. I can’t allow—”
“Grief?” Aidan shot to his feet, pulling her up with him. Scowling, he lifted her from the tub, then swirled a linen drying cloth around her shoulders as he stood glowering at her. “Misery was the long years without you. The empty nights when I wondered if you were indeed naught but a dream. I thought my heart would split when Tavish carried you into my hall and I recognized you.”
She gave him a look that made his head start to pound again. “You looked furious when you saw me,” she said, clutching the drying cloth to her breasts. “In medieval-speak, you’d probably say black-browed and ready to flay me to ribbons.”
“No’ you, lass. I was ready to punish my men—as I’ve told you,” he reminded her. “I was wroth with them for their treatment of you.”
“And that’s the very reason I must leave.” She moved to stand before the hearth fire, turning her back to its warmth. “I can’t stay on and see my presence cause such disruption in your hall. If I’m gone—”
“If you are gone, there will be no hall, for I should spend my days searching for you.” He went to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “My men would become rovers, broken men without direction—”
“You’re trying to make me feel good, but it won’t work.” She ducked away and snatched up another linen towel, using this one to dry her hair. “If I stayed on, you’d be miserable. You’d end up spending every night like this one, stomping about and scowling, grilling me because one of your men misunderstood something I said or did.”
Stomping and scowling?
Aidan shoved a hand through his hair. Was he truly guilty of the like? Half certain that he was, he snapped his brows together, his head now throbbing in earnest. Frowning as well, he turned on his heel and did his best not to stomp to the window. Once there, he drew a deep breath of the bracing sea air and scowled all he wished.
Truth was, it felt good.
But he didn’t need Tavish Long-nose to tell him that black moods and storming through halls weren’t ways to win a lady’s heart. What he needed was a clear head and a plan. A new approach, guaranteed to impress.
Stepping closer to the window, he braced his hands on the cold stone ledge and took another deep breath. And another. The chill air would surely help him think. Hopefully, when the answer came, it would be one he could stomach.
Something that wouldn’t make him look foolish.
Not that he’d allow such a trivial matter to keep him from gaining his heart’s desire.
He sighed. It was amazing what love could do to a man.
Chapter 9
Aidan stood at his bedchamber window, no longer looking out at the night’s mist and murk but down at his own two hands. Still planted firmly on the broad stone ledge of the window arch, they were hands a man could be proud of. Strong, large, and capable, they’d swung swords, wielded axes, and were no strangers to hard, backbreaking work.
And, it finally occurred to him, neither were they the hands of a man incapable of claiming the woman he wanted.
The only woman he wanted.
Despite the small matters of All-den, Pen-seal-where’er, and his men crossing themselves each time she walked past. The saints knew, he’d fought and besieged greater battles. With one last gulp of the cold night air, he straightened his back and turned, ready to take on this new challenge.
A formidable foe, she watched him from near the hearth. Across the length of his chamber, to be sure, but after the distance of dreams, so close he could taste her. Without doubt, he could smell her. The scent of clean, freshly washed woman filled the room, a fine, heathery scent laced with just enough her to befuddle his senses and torment him.
Truth was, she drove him beyond reason.
She met his gaze steadily, her sleek flame-bright hair gleaming in the torchlight, the drying cloth still clutched tight around her. The thin, damp cloth clung to her, molding her full, round breasts and tempting him with the sweetness of her shapely hips and thighs.
Even more distracting, she was tapping one foot, the rapid movement making her breasts jig, while the flush of irritation on her face only drew his attention to her soft, kissable lips.
Tiny droplets of water glistened on her shoulders and as he watched, one pearled and trickled down her breasts, disappearing beneath the knotted cloth.
When a second droplet did the same, his mouth went dry.
“A plague on it,” he hissed, trying hard not to groan or frown. Clenching his hands, he struggled to ignore the sudden heavy pounding at his loins. He raked a hand through his hair, blotting all thought of her lush, warm curves, the fragrant, heated place hidden between her thighs.
A slick, succulent place he couldn’t wait to get his hands on.
His hands, and more.
Much more.
“Return my clothes, and I’ll be on my way,” she said then, her words dashing cold water on his ponderings. “If the gatehouse arch brought me here, it can surely take me back.”
“Och, lass, I fear ’tis too late for that,” he said, frowning after all. With long strides, he crossed to her. “There are clothes a-plenty for you here. Fine clothes. Raiments my sister left behind when she wed a Border chieftain. I’ll also have new ones made for you. As for the gatehouse arch, I canna let you near it. Leastways unescorted. No’ that I think there’s aught amiss with it, but—”
“What is this?” Her eyes flashed. “First you take my clothes and riddle me with questions, and now you’d deny me access to the one place—”
He grabbed her shoulders, silencing her with a fierce, bruising kiss. “Ach, lass,” he panted, releasing her. “It was my hope to woo you this e’en. My questions were so I can understand what we’re facing. I need to know so we can find a way to make things work, together.”
“You have a strange way of wooing a woman,” she said, hitching up the drying cloth where it had dipped to reveal a pert nipple.
“Perhaps because I dinna do the like every day,” Aidan shot back, his frown blacker than ever. “I have ne’er met a woman like you. One I so wished to please. A future woman.”
She blinked, then sank onto a stool before the fire. “You wished to please me because I come from the future?”
“Nay!” Aidan almost roared. “Because you are you. And dinna tell me it’s no’ possible to know you that well. Sweet lass, I have lived with you day and night for years now, though I canna explain what brought us together.”
He paused, looking at her deeply. “All that matters is that we are. No’ how we came to be.”
She blinked again and bit down on her lip, her eyes sparkling suspiciously. “You sound like you mean that, MacDonald.”
“I do. More than anything,” he owned, remembering the handful of heather tucked into his scrip.
Wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before, he wheeled about and strode across the room, making for his discarded plaid and sword belt.
“Here!” he announced, seizing the ratty-looking leather pouch and waving it at her. “Now I shall prove to you how I meant us to spend this e’en.”
Kira swallowed, not sure she wanted to know.
She’d already resigned herself to leaving him. If she even could. She took a deep breath, forcing herself not to think about how much she would miss him. She would even miss his world, wine barrel baths, stewed eels, and all. Shivering with a cold she suspected had little to do with the room’s temperature, she scooted her stool closer to the fire and focused on keeping a neutral look on her face. What she needed to do was concentrate not on how crazy she was about him but on how much better off he’d be once she was gone.
A feat she was mastering beautifully until he plunged his hand into his ancient scrip and withdrew a fistful of crumpled purplish-brown heather, thrusting his prize beneath her nose with as much glowing pride as if he were offering her a dozen long-stemmed roses.
“O-o-oh, no,” she cried, her heart squeezing.
She rose slowly to
her feet, her every refusal melting away as he pressed the crushed heather into her hands, closing her fingers around the dried, brittle stems.
Closing her fate, too, for the instant her fingers tightened on the heather, she knew herself lost. She opened her mouth to thank him, but shut it as quickly, the thickness in her throat making it impossible to speak.
She looked down at the heather, touching a finger to the tiny, bell-like blooms until they began to swim before her eyes. Blinking furiously, she pressed the gift to her breast, more delighted than if he’d showered her with diamonds and gold. Love, happiness, and wonder swept her, filling her with sweet, golden warmth that chased all else from her mind.
Certainly the Castle Apartments in distant Aldan, Pennsylvania, and even her love’s grumbling, grim-faced men and their giant, porridge-eating rats. The three mice that surely lived with a gazillion twitchy-nosed pals beneath the dungeon’s matted floor rushes. Even those great annoyances of her own time, every hapless landscape worker who ever wielded a leaf blower.
They were all banished. Gone, as if they’d never been.
Nothing mattered but the tall, fierce-looking Highlander standing so proudly before her. He took a step closer, his dark eyes watching her, waiting.
“You brought me heather.” She looked at him, her voice cracking. “Th-thank you.”
Aidan humphed, her pleasure affecting him more than was seemly. Tavish, that great gowk of a self-professed wooing expert, would no doubt place his hand o’er his heart and declare himself ready to lay all the heather in Scotland at his fair maid’s feet.
He was so besotted, he’d throw in every Highland sunset and all the stars in the heavens if such were possible. As it was, he reached for her, gently brushing his lips back and forth over hers, letting his kisses and the fine heat crackling between them say the fancy words he couldn’t.
As if she heard them, she slid her arms around his neck and twined her fingers in his hair. “I know the significance of heather,” she said, her eyes shining. “You wouldn’t have given me such a gift if you didn’t care.”
