Mab ignored her.
But Devorgilla caught a malicious glint in the feline’s eye.
Somerled favored that sunny patch of the stone-flagged floor. He enjoyed napping there on such cold and crisp days as this one. But the little red fox had important duties elsewhere just now. And Mab, always disdainful of him, seemed bent on taking advantage.
Still behaving as if the cottage belonged to her and no one else, Mab lifted a paw and began meticulously examining each claw.
Devorgilla started to scold her, but cackled instead.
“Never you mind,” she allowed, feeling generous. “I don’t need your opinion whatever! I know fine I’ve done great work this day.”
Sure of it, she cautiously skirted the smoke-blackened cauldron hanging on its chain above her cook fire. Strange things were known to appear in the kettle’s steam and she wasn’t of a mood for the like. Instead, she went to a small wooden bench against the back wall.
A basin of moon-infused water waited there.
Such water was her best means of scrying, but just now it served another purpose as well.
Very carefully, as her old bones did give the occasional creak, she lowered herself onto the bench. Then she lifted the basin onto her knees.
Scrunching her eyes, for they weren’t the best anymore either, she peered hard at the edge of the bowl. She stared and concentrated until she saw not the basin’s rim but the narrow shingled strand at Eilean Creag.
“Ahhhh….” She gave a satisfied sigh when three MacKenzie galleys appeared there. The ships were drawn up on the strand, unmanned and harmless. Scudding mists shrouded the shore and black waves pounded the rocks. The loch roared like a lion and endless lines of huge, white-capped rollers raced straight for the MacKenzie boat strand and nowhere else.
Most gratifying of all was the figure of a man stomping furiously up and down the length of the strand, cursing fiercely as he went.
Devorgilla almost felt sorry for him.
The Black Stag wasn’t used to having things go against his plans.
“Only a bit longer…” She knew he couldn’t hear her, but the assurance balmed her conscience.
She leaned forward, bringing her face closer to the basin. So near she could see his down-drawn brows and hear his outraged ranting.
“Soon you will be able to sail to her, very soon.” She crooned the promise, knowing it was true. “But for now, your daughter needs more time. Days and nights, without you ruining things for her.”
The nights were especially needed.
Darroc MacConacher was proving more stubborn than she would have hoped. And Arabella wasn’t a born seductress like her sister.
Even so….
She was sure they’d soon make good use of the hours she was determined to give them.
To that end, she drew a great breath and blew hard onto the water in the bowl. As she knew would happen, the water dimpled and danced, the sight delighting her.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not by any means.
So she plunged her hand into the basin and wriggled her fingers, stirring the water round and round until it swirled crazily.
Excited, she trilled a laugh and flicked a few droplets in the air. They sparkled and glistened, then whirled around to fling themselves at the edge of the basin, just missing the tiny figure of a man still visible there.
Devorgilla cackled again, her mirth boundless.
Now she was making magic.
And there was nothing the Black Stag of Kintail could do about it.
Nothing at all.
Chapter Twelve
Why didn’t you tell me?”
Darroc pretended not to hear the female voice behind him. Soft, lilting, and just a touch breathless, it could have been Arabella. But that was impossible. He knew she managed to move about his bedchamber these days and she’d made some visits to the hall. But the climb to his notch room, Castle Bane’s uppermost tower chamber, would daunt even a Valkyrie. The steps were narrow and winding, the stone treads crumbling in places and dangerous.
Arabella couldn’t possibly have mounted them.
And if anyone—or anything else—had spoken, he didn’t want to know.
So he feigned indifference and stooped to pick up his special chisel. Three times now, the tool had flown out of his hands. And each time, he would’ve sworn he heard a woman’s light, silvery laughter.
The sound echoed around the room. At times so faint the tinkling, feminine skirls were almost swallowed by the howling wind. It was a blustery morn. Full of cold and damp, with squalls of lashing rain. But whenever he decided he’d imagined the laughter, it came again.
Yet when he’d spun around, no one was there.
Darroc frowned.
This time he wasn’t going to look. He did tighten his grip on the chisel, positioning it where he wanted to make a new notch in the window arch. He wouldn’t allow such nonsense as flying chisels to happen again.
Yet…
The same thing had happened with his mallet, though it hadn’t sailed from his grasp like the chisel. The mallet simply rolled away along the window ledge whenever he reached for it. And once—he could scarce credit it—he was half-sure the mallet deliberately leapt to the floor.
Whatever the cause, the foolery had kept him from making a single notch.
Determined to change that, he allowed himself a wickedly gratifying grin and focused on the chisel. Then, he raised the mallet for a good, stone-chipping tap. He’d make his best notch ever.
Nothing would go wrong.
“You had to know it would come to me.” Arabella’s voice floated to him from the door, unmistakable.
Darroc’s heart stopped.
The mallet, already in full, furious swing, slammed onto his thumb.
“Y-ooow!” This time the mallet went flying. The chisel merely plunked onto his foot. “Saints, Maria, and—” he caught himself, cutting off the curse before its utterance could make him even more miserable.
It was bad enough that everything in the room had gone black and white.
The pain was blinding.
His humiliation was worse.
Trying to ignore the hot pulsing in his thumb, he leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees and breathing hard. He kept his head lowered, not wanting Arabella to see his face until he was no longer grimacing.
He might have made a fool of himself, but he did have his pride.
A Highlander didn’t show pain.
Arabella reached a hand toward him. He felt more than saw the movement. “I remembered a tale last night,” she said, her voice troubled. “One a clan bard used to sing at my father’s hearth fire.”
“What tale?” Darroc forgot about being a Highlander and glanced at her from under his brows.
He didn’t like her tone.
How she looked really bothered him. Her hair was in disarray, with loose strands escaping the two gleaming black plaits that hung to her hips. And her borrowed clothes, his shirt and plaid, looked so rumpled that she could only have slept in them.
Worst of all, she was deathly pale and tears glittered in her sapphire eyes.
“You’re crying.” Darroc straightened at once.
“I am not.” She raised her chin, defiant. “MacKenzies don’t cry. And I’m sure you know the tale I mean. Indeed, I think”—one of the MacKenzie non-tears rolled down her cheek—“you should have told me yourself.”
“Told you what?” Darroc kicked his chisel aside.
The last thing he needed was to trip over it and look like an even greater bumble arse.
“I don’t know what you’re so fashed about.” He glared at her, finding that a safer option than letting her see how concerned he was by her distress.
The pampered and privileged daughter of one of the mightiest houses in the land shouldn’t look as if all the light had gone out in her world. And he shouldn’t care that she did. But he had a sinking feeling exactly what tale she meant and seeing what it’d don
e to her ripped him.
She was swallowing hard, pretending not to cry. But her lips trembled and her hands were making awful little fluttery gestures.
Darroc’s chest squeezed.
She had to have found out about the Slaughter.
“You shouldn’t be up here.” He tried to sound stern, hoping he was wrong. He scowled at Frang and his wee lady-light, both sitting in the shadows behind her like twin sentinels. He’d see to them later—make sure they learned better than escorting maids to places they had no good seeking.
He shoved a hand through his hair, feeling outnumbered. “See here, Lady Arabella. You should—”
“I should not be here at all, accepting your hospitality.” She looked down, plucked at his plaid. “Wearing your clothes and eating your bread. It isn’t—”
“Damnation!” Darroc crossed the room in three long strides. The cold air around him vanished, replaced by a hot whirling wind.
Hell rising up to claim him.
As if she knew, Arabella swayed and leaned against the doorjamb. She looked tired, shaken, and dizzy. Darroc tried to harden his heart against her, but couldn’t. It was impossible. He felt her anguish inside him, coursing through his blood and beating in his bones, his marrow, and even in the very soul of him.
He was a fool!
She touched a hand to her cheek and stared at him from eyes pooled deep with shock and sorrow. “I didn’t sleep the night through. I—”
He grabbed her upper arms, gripping tight. “Who told you?”
“No one.” The denial was swift. “I remembered the bard, Osbald the Sombre. He was my father’s favorite when I was a child. He often sang of the raid, praising our men’s triumph and valor, the deadly bite of their steel. He—”
Frang barked.
Darroc flashed the dog a narrow-eyed look, scowling until the shaggy beast lay down on the landing. Mina quickly joined him, whimpering dismally.
Satisfied, Darroc looked back at Arabella. She was staring at his hands on her arms, the beat of her pulse clearly visible at the base of her throat. She worried her lower lip, and her face had gone even whiter than before.
His was flushed red, he was sure.
“Your bard wasn’t praising a raid. He sang of war. Men do terrible things when the bloodlust is upon them.” Darroc couldn’t believe he’d said that.
But the words had come from somewhere inside him.
A place he didn’t care to examine.
War had nothing to do with the MacConacher Slaughter. There could be no excuse for such butchery. Even if the MacKenzies saw it otherwise.
He frowned.
Arabella was still staring at him, her hands clasped before her, knuckle-white.
“Those were grievous times.” There he went again, traitor to his own.
“I know that, but—” She pressed her fingers against her lips.
Lips that quivered and made him feel inexplicably guilty. A lass with enough steel in her blood to stitch her own wound shouldn’t shatter because of a horror that happened years before she was born.
Even more alarming, he shouldn’t be so damned affected because she was shattered.
Darroc set his jaw, furious.
Something entirely out of his control was happening to him. It was unnatural and outrageous for him to feel any kind of affinity to a MacKenzie.
But she hiccupped then and the sound sliced into him, piercing his heart. He couldn’t bear seeing her so troubled. Or so desperately in need and—saints damn him—so desirable and alluring despite everything. But watery sunlight spilled in through the notch room’s east window and it shone right on her, making her glow in a room that always made him feel so cold and empty.
His fingers tensed on her arms and the blood roared in his ears. She hiccupped again and her breasts jigged beneath the soft folds of his shirt. The linen clung to her curves, so generous and enticing. She did have magnificent breasts, full and round. He could see the dark shadows of her nipples, peaked tight and pressing against the cloth.
He stared at them, unable not to. And then he did the most foolhardy thing he’d ever done.
He pulled her into his arms.
It would be so easy to yank her even closer and kiss her, deep and passionately. Slant his lips over hers in a wild open-mouthed kiss that would damn them both, together. Oh, how he wanted that. Especially when he felt her breasts crushed to his chest and those oh-so-tempting nipples seemed to burn right through his plaid, scalding his naked flesh, branding him hers. But she melted against him and when he looked down into her face, it was no longer about kisses and nipples.
It was about her.
And that awareness was like having the breath sucked right out of him.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even have said where they were. He only saw her luminous blue eyes, still bright with the shimmer of tears. Holding her blotted out the terrors of the past, making everything insignificant except the feel of her pliant warmth in his arms. It was as if she ripped away a shroud of darkness, flooding him with light. A strange sense of wholeness filled him and in some terrifyingly separate part of his mind, he knew that once he released her, he’d be incomplete.
She sighed contentedly. Or so he thought until he realized the sound came from across the room. It was surely the wind again, but whatever it was, it broke the madness that had seized him.
Even so, he couldn’t stop the shivers that whipped through him. They were chills that sped through his soul rather than his physical body.
She trembled, too, shaking like a leaf in the wind as he held her, loosely now. She’d slid an arm around him, clinging, and tangled a hand in his hair, holding fast as if she also felt the power beating between them.
Then she lifted her chin and met his gaze. She made no move to pull away, but something of her old fierceness burned in her eyes.
“I’d still hear why you didn’t say anything.” Her voice was firm now, all MacKenzie.
Darroc could have wept.
He lowered his head and touched his lips to her hair. Just once, and only lightly, but it was something that he needed to do.
“What difference would it have made?” He wished there weren’t tears netting her eyelashes. The sight of them made it hard to speak. “You were here and needed our help. That is all that mattered.”
“If that is so, it wouldn’t have changed aught if you’d been honest.”
Darroc’s eyes widened. “Honest?”
She nodded.
The room was silent except for the wind and the sound of rain pelting the tower.
Darroc closed his eyes, wishing he could go back to the moment he’d become aware of her. This wasn’t going how he would have wished.
“Sweet lass, honesty had nothing to do with it.” He stepped back so he could see her better, but took care to keep a light grip on her elbows.
Damn him for a double-dyed fool, but he couldn’t bear to let go of her.
“Truth is”—he caught a flicker of movement and wasn’t surprised to find Frang had opened one eye to stare at him, piercingly—“MacConachers have never vented their grievances on women. I had no desire to be the first to start such a depraved tradition.”
It was all she was getting out of him.
And it was the truth.
He just didn’t add that he’d also dreaded discussing the Slaughter with her. Being a MacKenzie, she surely knew that as a staunch Balliol supporter, his grandfather had infiltrated an enemy camp for the sole purpose of gleaning information for his liege. Many MacKenzies were in that camp and it was with them that his grandfather rode when he learned of a planned surprise attack on the keep of a strong Balliol ally.
Slipping away from the MacKenzies, Darroc’s grandfather had made haste to warn his friends, allowing the keep garrison to sally out and ambush the unsuspecting MacKenzies. The carnage was great, but as history showed, the MacKenzies’ revenge was greater.
As though he was following his thoughts, Frang
groaned as only shaggy old dogs can do and did something to express his canine opinion of the matter.
Darroc winced when the fumes hit him.
To her credit, Arabella didn’t bat an eye. “It never crossed my mind that you would ill treat a woman,” she said, proving her persistence. “I only wish I’d been spared the shock of remembering as I did.”
“And do you know the whole story?” The words leapt from his tongue before he could stop them.
“You mean how your grandfather befriended my kinsmen, giving out that he was Bruce’s man? And what happened thereafter?”
“So you do know.”
“I do.” She still had her arms looped around his neck, her hands deep in his hair, fingers twined. “And I do not condone the actions of either side. It does grieve me. Especially now that I’ve met”—she glanced aside, blinking rapidly—“Moraig, Conall, and the others. They make the tragedy more real than listening to it recounted at my father’s hearthside of a cold winter night.”
“And that, my lady, is why I kept silent.” He looked at her, hoping she’d believe him.
There were so many other reasons.
“I didn’t want you to feel awkward or unwelcome beneath my roof.” That was absolutely true.
She looked skeptical. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Nae, I—” Heat swept up the back of his neck. “I’ve been holding counsel with my men. And—”
“Making your notches?” She pulled out of his arms then and bent to lift his chisel off the floor. She turned it over in her hand, her face still much too pale for his liking. “Conall said—”
“He told you of my notches?” Darroc stared at her, horrified. His head began to pound. Not surprising, the strange tinkling laughter came again, this time from somewhere very close by. But he paid scarce heed.
He only wanted a piece of Conall’s hide.
And to know how the chisel landed by the door. He’d kicked it in the opposite direction.
He took her by the elbows again, his need to touch her still strong. “What did he tell you?”
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