by Joanne Rock
Her captor had saved her.
Elizabeth acknowledged as much by the time he pulled up short and settled her on her feet. The cool feel of the dirt and pine needles came through her lightweight leather shoes and she curled her toes against a sudden chill now that the man no longer held her.
“Thank you.” Feeling off-balance in every way possible, she glanced up at her rescuer with new eyes.
He blinked fast, the nuances of his expression more difficult to see now that they’d moved away from the unnatural brightness of… whatever had happened back there. Still, she had the sense her gratitude caught him off guard as he whistled softly to a huge horse that emerged from the trees.
“It was but a moment’s work.” He waved away her thanks as if he didn’t know what to do with it. “I have been at the job for many a year.”
His Scots brogue was softer now. Less noticeable. Still, he would never pass for a noble lord at Balmoral. And thank goodness for that. A lord from her auntie’s party probably would have left her to her own devices in that clearing and fled with the carriage horses. The man was pleasing enough to look upon though. Strong features gave his face a rough-hewn appearance with prominent cheekbones and a chiseled jaw. Dark slashes of eyebrows did nothing to soften his expression. Elizabeth felt a pinch of guilt for noting his looks given how much she resented being judged by her own.
“Well, you have my thanks. And my apologies for the scuffle I caused.” Remembering it, she peered down at her skirts and noticed the tear up one side. Thankfully, an inner layer of her petticoat remained intact beneath her traveling gown. “I’m Elizabeth Harrison, by the way. And I’m still confused about how you know my friend Lily or how you knew to look for me here.”
She had no idea where “here” was.
“I’m Magnus Darroch.” He nodded in a way that was just a slight incline of his head. Yet the way he held himself, the straight spine and chin tilted up, made it look like a courtly bow of a bygone era. “And your friend wed my brother a fortnight ago.” He waved her closer. “Can you ride astride in that…er… garb?”
He studied her dress as if it was a great mystery. In the meantime, she hadn’t heard anything past “your friend wed.”
“It cannot be.” She shook her head, unable to digest the words. Lillian’s parents were still in New York.
“Very well.” He nodded. “You can ride in front of me.”
Once more his broad hands clamped around her waist and he lifted her high onto the back of the monstrous horse.
She made a small, undignified shriek, but the horse did not even twitch as she landed sideways on the beast’s back. In a trice, Magnus Darroch flung himself beside her without the help of a stirrup or even—goodness—a saddle.
“We will fall off,” she protested, grabbing a fistful of mane in one hand before the man—Magnus—scooped her up and dropped her across his hard thighs as easily as he might handle a sack of grain. “Oh!”
“I’ve been riding horses for even longer than I have been dodging sidhe,” he proclaimed, wrapping an arm around her waist and clamping her tight to his chest. “There is nae a chance you will fall on my watch.”
He had no saddle, but he held reins in his hand—a simple bridle around the horse’s head that didn’t seem nearly enough to keep the animal in check, but with the slightest encouragement from Magnus Darroch, the powerful beast responded to a simple nudge of the rider’s knee. A nudge Elizabeth felt all too well since she was seated on his lap.
Heaven help her, the night had been thoroughly shocking from the moment she’d opened her eyes. She had no business making the trip to Invergale while wrapped in a foreign warrior’s arms. She’d be ruined. Fodder for scandal. Completely…
Unmarriageable?
The idea suddenly took on a certain appeal, especially since it would discourage the destitute earl she’d refused and others of his shallow ilk….
But then she came to her senses. She must be even more distressed and out of sorts than she’d realized to entertain such a notion. Her first priority right now should be figuring out what on earth was happening. Had Lily been drawn into the same strangeness that Elizabeth felt right now?
“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Her hand rested on the warrior’s forearm that went around her waist. She stared at it, hardly recognizing it as her own. His flesh was so warm. The muscle beneath impossibly strong. Magnus Darroch seemed to be the only stable, solid thing in a world suddenly off-kilter. “I don’t even understand where we are. What was that place?”
She’d heard the Highlands were remote and forbidding, but nothing had prepared her for what she’d seen tonight. Nothing had prepared her for Magnus Darroch, either. His plaid smelled of pine needles, his skin of musky male. Her body was pressed to his with an intimacy that no proper courtship would allow, yet there was something familiar and exciting about it all at once. Her body seemed to know his after their shared race through the forest, as if the size and breadth of his sinews had imprinted into her skin so that he no longer frightened her. As if she could trust him. Physically.
The thought made her shiver.
“Your friend did not explain about us?” Magnus asked, his voice a rumble in his chest against her shoulder as much as a sound in her ear. “Her new kin?”
She gazed up at his rough-hewn features, seeing a masculine strength there that was less fearsome and more…safe. This was a man who protected women. A man who did not use his position to intimidate or belittle anyone. Awkwardly, she shifted her hand away from his arm, afraid of being caught touching him. Which was utterly ridiculous since they touched in so many other places.
She could not even think about the way her hip rubbed his with each footfall of the giant beast that bore them through the mountains.
“I had no idea Lily had wed again. Nor does her family.” Her father would be livid. Perhaps he would even disown her. “I fear she will not inherit if she has wed against her family’s wishes.”
“She is a stiff, awkward little maid ill-suited to this life, but I know for certain she is in love with my brother. Yer friend cares naught for her father’s riches.” He covered Elizabeth’s head with one hand as they ducked sideways to avoid a low-lying branch.
Another shiver plagued her and she wished she had her heavy cloak, but it remained packed in her bags strapped to the runaway carriage. The feel of Magnus’s hand in her hair tingled along her scalp even after he resumed his hold on the reins, his arm draped about her waist in the process.
He spoke of love? The word chipped away at something inside her, even as it reminded her how foolish it would be to think on something so impossible for her. Men loved pretty, dainty girls, not tall, gangly maids like her.
“Be that as it may, you said yourself that Lily is ill-suited to this life. It seems rife with danger.” The woods were less eerie here, but still dark and forbidding. “What chased us back there?”
He remained silent for the space of two heartbeats. Then a third.
“I told you, lass.” He spoke slowly as if to help her understand. “The sidhe. Fae. Magical folk. They have cursed the Darrochs for all time. Or at least, they did until your friend helped my brother break his curse with the gift of her love.”
“You speak of love and magic and curses? That is the stuff of fable, sir,” Elizabeth scoffed, unwilling to believe in things she could never have for herself. Her hand in marriage was an asset to barter for her family’s social standing. She’d known that from the time she was a small child. Love was not an option for her.
She stared out at the landscape in the darkness as her companion guided the horse up one rocky path after another. When stones fell away from the animal’s hooves she feared they could be next to roll down a mountainside. In the distance, she heard the rush of a brook or river, but other than that the night was still and quiet save the clomp of hooves and the occasional breaking of branches.
“Aye. My whole life is a cursed fable then,” Magnus grumbl
ed, his words harsh and bitter. “It is better you are a practical lass. ‘Tis safer for you that way.”
“Safer how?” She had dismissed the idea of love outright. Strange how that seemed even more of a fairy-tale notion than magical fae or whatever else it was he spoke of.
“A sensible girl will not be lured into a world where you have no place.” The horse stumbled and Magnus gripped her upper thigh, anchoring her to him.
Her palm landed on his chest, her fingers finding purchase in the fabric of the wool plaid. Her gaze flicked up to his and their gazes met. Held.
The small hairs on the back of her neck lifted as a pleasurable sensation skipped along her skin. In the moonlight,at close range, she could see now that his eyes were green flecked with gold. A bright spring green like new leaves unfurled.
Or was it a trick of the light again?
“Then it’s a good thing I’m very sensible,” she murmured, to herself as much as him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling terribly levelheaded at the moment.
She also wasn’t feeling the least bit plain. Or tall and awkward. Next to Magnus, she felt—proportional, at least.
Amazing how that sensation soothed her heart. She found herself wondering what a protective warrior’s kiss felt like. If she was dreaming this strange journey, she would be quite irritated with herself if she woke up without knowing.
Her pulse pounded faster. Harder. Her throat went dry as her gaze dipped to Magnus’s well-shaped mouth, the lower lip full and soft, the upper one perfectly sculpted.
“Dinna look at me thus, fair one,” Magnus growled softly, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I have travelled too far to bring ye safely to Invergale. I will nae risk—”
Not listening to a word, Elizabeth screwed up her courage. Told her practical side to close her eyes. And kissed Magnus Darroch.
Chapter Two
Elizabeth was more tempting than a sidhe beauty sent to undermine his cause and make him forget his own name with her feminine wiles.
Magnus had withstood sensual onslaughts by skilled and knowing fae females who sought to distract him from his sworn duty to protect the door into the human world at Invergale. Ever since he’d been cursed as a time-walker along with his brothers, Magnus had worked tirelessly to prevent the sidhe enemy from working their dark magic on mere mortals.
Elizabeth’s kiss was no dark magic though. The tentative brush of her lips over his was like an angel’s sigh, soft and sweet. The silk of her skirts grazed his bare calf on one side of the mount, her slight curves all the more apparent now that he cradled her in his arms for the ride to Invergale. With every jostle of the horse, her hip shifted slightly against his abdomen, teasing a response from him that proved wretchedly inconvenient for a man charged with her safety.
But that angelic kiss…
She smelled like lavender and roses, her hair sliding loose from the confines of twined plaits. He wanted to bury his nose in the golden silk, but he needed to resist that urge as much as he needed to tamp down the desire to explore her mouth more thoroughly. Or the yearning to rein in the mare and find a soft spot among the pine needles to lay down this tender female and answer all the hesitant sensual interest her kiss revealed.
And yet, even if he hadn’t been a cursed man, he had no business touching her. Now or ever. She would not remain in his world for long.
Easing away from her with more regret than she would ever imagine, Magnus broke off the kiss. He forced his features into a bland expression, an effort almost undone when he noticed her eyes were still closed, her dark lashes fanned over creamy cheeks tinged with a rosy blush. His keen, predatory eyes saw all this despite the late hour, his senses as sharp as a hound’s after decades of searching for an enemy who could move like quicksilver.
But he did not believe in losing his judgment to the wiles of a woman, not after seeing the way his father’s love for a sidhe female had cursed the family for an eternity.
“Elizabeth.” His voice, at least, contained the right amount of brusqueness to startle her eyes open. Little did she know the rasp in it was the result of ruthless restraint on his desire for her.
“I don’t know what came over me.” A hand flew to her cheek. To cover her blush or to cool it, perhaps, with her fingers? “I keep thinking that I am dreaming and that I will awaken any moment, but that does not excuse…” She shook her head, brow furrowed lightly.
Although she attempted to shift away from him, their nearness was a matter of safety so he could not afford to give her much space. Even if the scent of lavender and roses was nigh on ready to shred his thin resolve.
“I spent many a day wishing I were dreaming this cursed life too.” He steeled himself against the lure of her. Against the thought of her soft arms and hidden passions. How long had it been since he’d allowed himself the pleasure of a mortal woman’s touch?
“Who are you really?” Elizabeth asked him, her gaze on the road ahead now instead of him. “I know I have asked before, but I have been trying to make sense of this night and have not connected all the pieces. Please, explain to me once more. How is it you came to be here, dressed as a Highlander of old, in an enchanted wood?”
“They are cursed, not enchanted.” He swore harshly. “To think otherwise is to risk being swept off into the arms of some sidhe lordling who seeks to waylay you forever and feed off the sweetness of your youth. That is what happened to my sister long ago. She drew the attention of a sidhe male who ventured close to Darroch lands through a door at Invergale.”
Magnus guided the horse faster, the mare as touched by the curse of his world as him. Together, they could cover ground more swiftly than mortal flesh, and even walk through time on the nights that it was Magnus’s turn to bear the burden of roaming, his feet incapable of staying still. But if Elizabeth noticed that they moved faster than usual, she did not speak of it.
So he told her the history of the Darrochs while keeping his arms wrapped round the sweet softness of her. The story of how his father, Fergus, had spotted a beautiful sidhe female and begged her to stay in the mortal realm to ease his loneliness after the death of Magnus’s mother. Fergus had urged her to defy her powerful family and forsake her immortal life, which she did, raising Magnus and his brothers as her own until her death.
For years, the Darrochs thought that was the end of it. They were raised at the edge of sidhe lands and occasionally spotted them along the banks of Loch Eilein, but they had lived peacefully enough. Until, that is, the youngest Darroch had turned eighteen. The sidhe retaliated by stealing Magnus’s sister, luring Shannon into their realm by sending out a young lord of their own, a bastard who kissed her into forgetting who she was and her duty to her own clan. She disappeared with him and the arrogant cur who’d stolen her had returned to brag of the feat and to curse Magnus along with his two brothers to search for her forever. Their fate to wander eternally—and to search fruitlessly—had lasted one hundred years with no change.
That is, until a mortal woman confessed her love for Iain. When Elizabeth’s friend, Lily, had arrived at Invergale and declared herself ready to accept the fate of the sidhe to live and love at Iain’s side, his curse had fallen away. He now lived a mortal life at Invergale as laird, just as he would have a century before if not for sidhe revenge.
“It’s like a folk tale,” Elizabeth mused at the end of his family history, her blue-gray gaze searching the edges of the wood as if she expected to see fae creatures spring from the bushes at any moment. “A dark curse broken by love.”
“We do not know for sure what broke it,” he warned, grateful to see Invergale ahead of them and the dark waters of Loch Eilein around it. “And while Iain no longer wanders, the fact is that now Alexander and I must roam more often, taking turns each night to search for our sister as we grow ever wearier. Perhaps the sidhe hoped this would weaken Darroch defenses for the next assault upon the mortal world.”
The brothers had mused on it almost daily since Iain had become rooted in the mortal re
alm.
Elizabeth gasped as the mare’s hooves trekked down a rise toward the weather-worn walls of the Darroch family holding, Invergale.
“Is that your home?” She shifted against him to see better in the light of dawn, her gentle curves a soft reminder of all he would never have.
“Forever ago.” He needed to bring her to her friend and the sooner the better. He would have no need to touch or see Elizabeth Harrison again. “Now it is Iain and Lily’s domain.”
“Lily.” Elizabeth nodded. “I cannot wait to see her and prove to myself that I do not dream this…” she fluttered a hand about to encompass him and the lands around them “…strangeness. I am sorry for your fate, Magnus, but I hope that Iain’s freedom from this curse is a sign that you and your brother will be delivered from it soon as well.”
Frustration stiffened his shoulders for he knew that nothing could be further from the truth. But his burdens were not hers to carry. He should be happy she was saying goodbye. Wishing him luck.
The mare’s hooves found a clear path on worn cobblestones in a recently cleared courtyard, the Invergale lands slowly returning to life under the hand of a real laird again. The thought made a lump rise in Magnus’s throat. Or mayhap it had more to do with setting Elizabeth free. If only his father had possessed as much restraint, none of them would be sworn enemy of the sidhe.
“Your friend awaits you.” Magnus slid easily from beneath her and swung a leg over the mare to help her dismount. She had little experience with horses for she all but fell into his arms.
It was a good thing he moved with the swiftness of an immortal sidhe himself, or she might have fallen to the ground.
“Oh! Sorry.” She clung to his shoulders, her nails lightly biting into his flesh through the fabric of his plaid. Bits of lace from her bodice found its way beneath the wool of his garb as she slid, their clothes lightly tangling. But the silk of her gown slipped over him easily enough, the pliable material giving him an ample feel of her body. “Thank you.”
