Moraig raised a thin arm and clutched her hand meaningfully. “And if you kent you already have him?”
Arabella’s heart jumped. “If you mean Darroc, I’m sure you mistake.”
“Say you!” Moraig laughed delightedly. “Himself’s besotted since the day he brought you here.”
Arabella wished it were so.
Unfortunately, she didn’t believe a word.
“It’s true as I’m standing here.” Moraig leaned close, giving her a secret smile. “I was young once, remember. I ken the signs.”
Arabella laced her hands together, embarrassed. “He has shown me kindness. But if he cares for me as you say, he has an odd way of letting me know.”
Moraig curled her fingers in a fold of Arabella’s plaid and held tight. “The lad’s ne’er been in love. All men make fools o’ themselves and blunder about like dimwits when they lose their hearts.”
Arabella looked down at Moraig’s hand, still gripping her. She didn’t want her to see her face because she was suddenly filled with so much wild giddy hope she almost feared she’d choke.
As if she knew, Moraig stepped back and hitched up her black skirts. “I’ll just be fetching you another jar o’ honey, though,”—her voice rose in triumph—“I’m thinking you’ll be enjoying another kind o’ sweetness when you visit that stretch o’ beach on the Seal Isles.”
Arabella’s heart flipped. Moraig’s prediction made her thrill with the memory of Darroc’s embrace, the brief but scorching hot kisses they’d shared.
She wanted more.
And she would crawl through the Giving Stone.
She’d been raised to be content with what the saints had given her. But if there was even the slightest chance the ages-old ritual could help her achieve her dreams, she meant to risk the foolishness.
As her father and sister oft claimed, he who is bold succeeds.
So she straightened her back and gave Moraig her most confident smile. “We shall see,” she said, feeling quite daring indeed.
She just hoped she could be as brave when the time came.
Something told her it might make all the difference.
“Did you know they’re calling you Darroc the Despicable?”
The words, spoken just behind Darroc’s shoulder, didn’t surprise him. Conall should know he made it his business to be aware of everything that went on within his walls. A mouse couldn’t snag a crumb from the great hall’s floor rushes without his knowledge. He certainly knew when his men turned sour and stooped to name calling.
As long as that name wasn’t Darroc the Daft, it was no bother to him.
He also knew what had their dander up.
But he had good reason not to fawn over Lady Arabella like the blundering fools his men had become. Even if he did—at times—forget her name, he couldn’t ignore the disaster that would befall them if he heeded temptation. His men could glare and mutter into their beards all they wished. It wouldn’t change a thing.
“Do you no’ care?” Conall stepped around to face him, blocking his view of Geordie Dhu’s eagerly anticipated sea tasting.
They stood beneath Castle Bane’s cliffs, on the narrow crescent-shaped boat strand where everyone watched the master cook brave the icy surf with long, sure strides. Seemingly unfazed by the cold, Geordie Dhu was naked save the plaid slung across one shoulder. Head high, he marched through the breakers, not stopping until the foaming water swirled around his waist. Wind screamed down from the hills behind the strand; sharp gales that tore at his plaid and whipped his curling black beard. But Geordie Dhu stood proud, the only man not stamping his feet or struggling stoically to keep his teeth from chattering. All present knew that his fiery will probed the sea’s mood and kept him warm.
This was the final act of his sea prophesying ceremonies and, as such, accorded due reverence.
Even so, Darroc gave his cousin a long withering look.
“Nae, I don’t care what they call me.” He kept his voice suitably low as Geordie Dhu thrust his arms in the air and began chanting a prayer to the sea gods, beseeching them to share their wisdom. “So long as they refrain from bathing with Moraig’s gillyflower soap and stop boiling their plaids, they can say what they please.”
“Ah, well.” Conall cracked his knuckles. “Could be they have the right of it. You’ve found an excuse to leave the hall each time Lady Arabella manages to make her way down the stairs to join us.”
Darroc fixed his stare on Geordie Dhu, feigning greater interest in the cook’s chant than he felt. He knew the words by heart, after all. What he didn’t like was the reproach in his cousin’s voice.
Conall had enough wits to know his coolness to Arabella was for her own good. And that each time he turned away from her such blinding frustration slammed through him that he could hardly see where he was going.
It was a wonder he wasn’t walking around with black eyes and stubbed toes, so great was the desire inside him.
But clearly Conall’s wits failed him, because he stepped closer and poked Darroc’s arm. “She’s a lady, Darroc. Your treatment of her is despicable. Have you no’ seen her face each time you push back from the table and stomp from the hall without a by-your-leave?”
Darroc folded his arms. “I haven’t been in the hall of late. Or have you forgotten who gathered and raked yon pile o’ seaware?”
It was the only excuse that came to him.
Seizing it, he gestured to a large mound of seaweed at the far end of the strand. Washed ashore by strong winds, the tangle was highly prized for the nourishing benefits it would bring the isle’s needy soil. He and Conall had seen to its harvesting, knowing the backbreaking toil would have been too much for the others, however eager.
“Well?” Darroc arched a brow.
Conall pinned him with challenging blue eyes. “You could tell her the truth. That you’re soft on her and that it scares you clear down to your stubborn toes.”
“I am no’ soft on her. I—” Darroc’s jaw slipped when the little red dog fox he’d seen before crept around the corner of the seaweed pile.
The creature stared at him with piercing yellow-gold eyes, twitched its plush tail, and then darted back behind the seaweed before Darroc could blink.
He grabbed Conall’s arm. “Yon fox! Did you see him?”
Conall shook free. “I see naught but our pile o’ tangle and your fool kist o’ plaids.”
“The plaids are for Lady Arabella’s comfort.” Darroc’s gaze flicked to a travel chest not far from the seaweed mound. The beached birlinn loomed only a few feet away. “It’ll be bitter cold on the water. The extra plaids will keep her warm through the night.”
Conall snorted. “I can think of better ways to warm a lass! Especially one I’m sweet on.”
“Your tongue’s flapping worse than a woman’s.” Darroc shoved a hand through his hair. “I feel responsible for her well-being. Honor-bound as chief to ensure—”
A great roar went up from the others.
Geordie Dhu was just plunging his drinking horn into the sea. Freezing mist swirled low across the water, cloaking him in a mantle of white as he raised the ram’s horn for his testing sip. A sharp intake of breath went through the onlookers and even Darroc felt gooseflesh prickle his nape. With his black-bearded chin tilted heavenward and the curved drinking horn poised at his lips, Geordie Dhu could have been Manannan himself, pagan god of the sea.
For a long moment, he swished the sea water in his mouth, eyes closed as he communed with whatever powers gave him the answers he sought. Then he swallowed deeply and tipped the remaining contents of the horn back into the surf.
“Ho!” He pumped the horn in the air, grinning. “The wind and waves are kind! Clear skies and no storms shall greet the morrow!”
He began stamping back through the surf and another rousing cheer went up from the men on the strand. They surged to the water’s edge, Mungo running at the fore with a dry plaid draped over his arm, the rest jostling and shouting, their e
xcitement thick in the air.
Until Geordie Dhu reached the shore and tossed aside his wet plaid, then shook his great girth like a dog coming in from the rain. Mungo threw the dry plaid across the cook’s wet glistening shoulders and gave him a hearty congratulatory slap on the back, but a change rippled through the others.
Everywhere men smoothed hands down the fronts of their plaids or raked fingers through their wind-tossed hair. Many coughed and cleared their throats noisily. All drew themselves up as straight as they could. Some shuffled feet and swelled their chests. They all seemed to have forgotten Geordie Dhu. And they also seemed determined not to look in Darroc’s direction.
He had a sinking feeling he knew why.
Conall’s grin proved it.
As did the way the entire morn suddenly shone brighter. In a blink, the day felt warm and almost golden, as if the sun had burst through the clouds, banishing the mist and even the cold, sleety wind.
There could be only one reason for the world to feel as if spring had arrived early.
The same reason his heart betrayed him with its rapid hammering.
Knowing he shouldn’t, he turned to follow his men’s moony-eyed stares. The sight that greeted him chilled his blood. Arabella and Mad Moraig were picking their way down the precarious stone steps cut into the sheer side of the cliff, Frang and Mina trotting happily in front of them.
“Damnation!” Darroc’s eyes rounded. He flashed a furious glance at Conall. “One misstep and they’ll both tumble into the sea!”
“Ach, they’re stepping careful enough.” Conall eyed them, still beaming. He clearly underestimated the danger of the slippery, zig zagging steps.
“Careful, my arse!” Darroc roared, then pounded across the shingle to where the two women were just taking the last dozen or so steps.
Mad Moraig’s hand was clenched tight on Arabella’s elbow and he knew the old woman made her way up and down the cliff path several times or more a day, sure-footed for all her tottering gait.
It didn’t matter.
The image of Arabella soft and pliant in his arms flashed across his mind, her hair spilling around her shoulders and her eyes full of wonder and innocence. Her lips parted for his kiss, her breath sweet. Life’s breath that could so easily be snatched from her if she slipped on the narrow steps to plunge into the churning surf below.
Terror as he’d never known gripped him. He could almost see her falling, her body still and broken on the terrible, jagged rocks.
“No-o-o!” He ran faster, willing her to tread with care.
Behind him men cheered and hooted and from somewhere outside the red haze blurring his vision, Frang and Mina’s barks nearly split his ears. Then the dogs were racing circles around him, romping and leaping at his legs.
A small hand grabbed his arm, squeezing hard, and chasing the horror from his mind. “Yourself didnae think I’d be for letting her fall, did you?”
Darroc jerked free of Mad Moraig’s grasp. “You could have both plunged to your deaths.”
The crone had the cheek to cackle. “Aye, well, we didn’t then, did we?”
Darroc glared at her.
She thrust out a bristly chin, her eyes alight with triumph. “We came to see Geordie Dhu taste the sea.”
Lady Arabella peered down the strand to where some of his men were slapping Geordie Dhu on the back and plying him with uisge beatha. Others gallivanted about like a pack of preening peacocks.
“It would seem we came too late.” Her voice was cool as spring rain.
“Aye, and I’ll just see you back to the keep.” It crossed Darroc’s mind to lie about Geordie Dhu’s predictions. “You are too late, so—”
“No’ too late for the two o’ you to share a kiss to thank Manannan!” Geordie Dhu cut him off. Striding up to them, he clamped a strong hand on Darroc’s shoulder.
Darroc felt the wet sand shift beneath his feet.
Now it truly was too late.
His men pressed near, the whole prancing lot of them, circling round and chanting in unison. “A kiss! A kiss for the god o’ the sea!”
Blessedly they didn’t shout that Manannan was also a fertility god. But the mischievous glints in their eyes said they knew it well.
Darroc’s face flamed.
Lady Arabella smiled sweetly.
“So the sea tasting was propitious for our journey?” Her words made him regret he’d suggested the voyage.
He nodded, feeling doomed.
“Aye, just!” Geordie Dhu grinned at her. “There’ll be naught but high winds and clear skies, though the cold might freeze your gizzards!”
“I never feel the cold.” She spoke like a true Valkyrie.
Darroc swallowed a groan.
He flashed a glance at his kist of plaids, his mood worsening. He’d hoped she’d pass the journey bundled inside them, her charms well hidden from view. Her lush curves and tempting womanliness buried within a lumpy bulk of chin-high tartaned wool.
“A kiss for Manannan!” His men took up the cry again.
Darroc could’ve sworn.
But the excitement on their faces gave him little choice but to join in their antics. And even if he’d denied them, Lady Arabella had stepped forward and tilted up her chin, her eyes closed and her lips proffered.
Not to kiss her would be to shame her.
Yet doing so would seal his fate.
Furious, he bracketed her face with his hands and leaned down to let his lips brush hers. Only lightly, a kiss as fleeting as possible, though even that brief contact seared him to the marrow.
Somewhere—at a great distance it seemed—his men roared their approval. Once again Frang’s and Mina’s barks added to the clamor. But he took little heed of any of them. Not even the beauty in his arms who somehow managed to twine her fingers in his hair and deepen the kiss before he could honorably break away from her.
Worse yet, he pulled her closer, happily obliging.
All around them time seemed to slow and one truth beat hotly in his breast, damning him with its scalding message. Somehow things had changed since he’d first suggested they make the voyage to Olaf Big Nose’s isle.
Arabella no longer dreaded the journey.
It was him.
The thought of a night spent at sea with her jellied his knees. And, saints help him, but he knew he’d be a different man when they returned to Castle Bane.
He’d be in love with a woman he couldn’t have.
And he didn’t know if he was man enough to bear it.
Chapter Fourteen
He who is bold succeeds.
Arabella repeated the words like a silent chant, timing them to match Conall’s rhythmic beating of the birlinn’s gong. She slid a look at him, taking comfort in his confident stance and the way his smile flashed each time he caught her glance. He made a fine helmsman, his baton strokes steady and sure, the repetitive clangs in perfect harmony with the oarsmen as they dipped and pulled the craft’s long sweeps through the smooth, dark-glistening water.
The Hebridean Sea stretched around them, empty of danger and benign.
Everything Geordie Dhu had prophesied proved true.
A brisk wind filled the birlinn’s single square sail and Conall’s gong-beating and the oarsmen’s strength kept them flying over the waves at speed. MacConacher’s Isle lay far behind them, its cliff-girt silhouette having slipped below the horizon several hours before. Night was closing in now, the sky turning a deep, dark blue with the first stars just beginning to twinkle high above them.
Every once in a while strange shapes loomed out of the darkness, black and silent against the encroaching night. Jagged skerries and tall, fingerlike protrusions of rock, they vanished almost as quickly as they’d appeared. Even so, Arabella couldn’t keep from shuddering whenever they sped past one of the eerie sentinels.
She didn’t want to be afraid.
Darroc stood at the stern and she trusted him. His grip on the long, broad-bladed steering oar looked fir
m and he seemed to anticipate the shockingly sudden appearance of each death-bringing cluster of rocks or reef before they rose in terrifying challenge.
Nowhere were there signs of sea raiders.
No black-painted dragonships, nor even a shred of mist to hide such jackels if they were about.
Indeed, the night was beautiful.
And so cold she was sure her feet had turned to blocks of ice.
She’d long since lost feeling in her fingers. It cost all her will to keep from thrusting her hands beneath her arms to warm them. Her nose and ears were beyond such repair. It wouldn’t surprise her if they snapped off any moment. And even though she sat near Darroc, well sheltered from wind and flying spray by the extra sail screen he’d hoisted for her privacy, she couldn’t feel the sturdy oaken planks of the stern platform beneath her.
Her buttocks were surely frozen to the wood!
Geordie Dhu had predicted—correctly—that the cold would freeze her gizzards.
But her MacKenzie pride wouldn’t let her admit it.
Especially when the racing wind and splashing waves made Darroc seem more alive and vivid than she’d ever seen him. His eyes held a gleam of excitement and each time the flashing oars sent up more clouds of icy spume to douse him she would’ve sworn he smothered a grin. Never had she seen a man so at one with the rolling sea.
Arabella hugged herself in an attempt not to shiver. But it was so hard when just looking at him made her believe that the world was meant to be untamed and wild.
“Still no’ feeling the cold?” He tossed a sidelong look at her. “I’ve brought along a kist filled with extra plaids just for you.”
“I do not need them.” She lifted her chin to the bracing air. “This is nothing to winters in Kintail,” she lied. “I’m enjoying the night wind.”
It was a wonder her teeth didn’t clatter on the words.
“Cold is good for the lungs.” She sat up straighter, feeling a need to prove herself.
“It’s also turning your lips blue.” He returned his gaze to the glassy black troughs before them. “When we lie-to for the night, you’ll see that the roaring traveler hasn’t yet shown us his worst. Once we drop anchor—”
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