Fairy Tale (6 page)

“I am waiting, Marsali.”

Her hackles rose at his tone of voice. She anticipated trouble, that somehow she was about to become the brunt of his black sense of humor. She reminded herself that she was submitting to him for a reason, that her patience would bear the fruit of peace for the clan.

As she approached his chair, she screwed up the courage to look him straight in the eye. The midnight-blue intensity of his gaze took her off guard. Heat suffused her face, but she held her head high, struggling to subdue the impact of his stare, which warned he had something horrible in store.

Duncan subsided back into his chair as Marsali returned in reluctant steps to the table, her small face set in a scowl of irritation.

“You have dropped your serviette again, my lord?” she inquired in a tone that suggested she’d like to strangle him with it.

Duncan waved the white linen napkin limply in her direction. “No, it’s right here.”

“Your wine goblet is too heavy to lift?” she asked, the dangerous glint in her eye growing brighter.

He leaned back in his
chair, long muscular legs out-
sprawled like an indolent conqueror’s, studying her in cold unblinking silence. Marsali stared back, positive now that she and Colum had made a severe metaphysical miscalculation. This man could not possibly be the link to bringing peace
and prosperity to the clan, born
to the position or not.

Aye, he reveled in the role of chieftain tonight, his tall handsome frame emphasized to advantage in a costume he’d evidently found in his father’s wardrobe: white ruffled shirt of fine lawn and black velvet knee breeches, white linen hose encasing his muscular calves, the MacElgin plaid pinned to his broad shoulder with a silver brooch encircled by Chinese amethysts. His long black hair fell loosely, framing his handsome face. It struck Marsali as a cruel irony that someone graced with such devastating physical appeal had been cursed with an utter absence of emotional depth. But there it was. The sad truth.

“There is another draft on your neck, my lord?” she asked in a falsely solicitous voice.

Duncan raised his goblet to his lips to conceal a wolfish
grin. He was enjoying himself immensely. The woman’s spirit added incredible spice to his efforts. Spice. Ah, that was the word for her with that warm sun-kissed skin and that small lithe body, its sensuality ill-concealed by her drab gown. He would have dearly loved under other circumstances to take advantage of her subservient role.

He cast a casual glance around the hall, struck anew by the overt hostility that engulfed him. Hate him or not, he’d be willing to wager this was the first night since his father’s death that his clansmen were behaving like human beings. Hope, albeit dim, rose inside him.

“Marsali, you will fetch the ladder and remove the tapestries from the wall. I find the smell of mold offensive while I’m eating.”

Marsali nodded weakly, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. “I’ll have it done after supper.”

“Not after supper.” He drummed his long tapered fingers on the chair’s lion-paw arms. “Now.”

She took a deep fortifying breath. She would find a way to sneak out of the castle and confront Colum tonight if it killed her because another day of pretending servitude to this selfish wretch would kill her. She could not bear the way he played her like a puppet on a string, and he liked it too.

“Yes, my lord.” She edged away from the table, digging her nails into her palms. “I’ll find a couple of lads to take care of the offensive smell.”

“I want
you
to take care of it, Marsali.” He folded his arms across his chest, his face as arrogant as an emperor’s. “This instant, before the dessert course is served, and my appetite is spoiled.”

From the co
rn
er of her eye she caught the sly grins of her clansmen. Stung by their amusement, she lowered her voice. “You want
me
to climb on a ladder and pull down the tapestries?”

He tossed his napkin onto his plate, his blue eyes reflecting the flame of the candles flickering on the table. “Unless you know of a better way to remove them.”

She sauntered up to the side of his chair, pretending to brush a few crumbs from his shirt as she whispered with cold fury, “And shall I trim your toenails with my teeth when I’m finished?”

“If you like,” he said calmly. “But not too closely, mind.” Marsali gazed down, infuriated, into his dark chiseled face, wondering if she could overturn the soup tureen in his lap and make it to the door alive.

He reached for his goblet, a lazy smile touching his lips. “Have you suddenly turned to stone, lass? I’m expecting guests at any day, my dessert any moment, and I cannot abide the reek of mildew. I have a delicate nose.”

Marsali gritted her teeth. “Yes, my lord.”
But this is the last bloody time. Tomorrow I’ll put as much energy into humiliating you as you have me.

She whirled, her pale blue muslin skirts swishing behind her like an angry cat’s tail. Duncan chuckled to himself, savoring the victory. Poor Marsali. She had no idea of the little humiliations he had planned for her tomorrow. He had restrained himself this evening. He had been kind to her while he assessed the situation. In the morning she would learn the true meaning of respect, and he would have fun while she did. Nothing too cruel, though. Just the proper dose of domestic discipline to put her in her place.

C
h
apter

6

D
uncan’s glow of satisfaction had already begun to fade before midnight, replaced by the unwelcome barrage of memories that assaulted him as he began to prowl the twisting torchlit corridors of the castle.

As if it had been only a week ago and not fifteen years, he remembered his poor stunned father dragging him through these very passageways, the clan’s tacksman, Andrew, following with concern on his gentle face, trying to reassure the young terrified boy that all would be well.

And how had Duncan repaid the man?

He had spat in Andrew’s face, rejecting, mocking the kindness he had never known even as his lonely heart craved it. He had cursed and swung with all his might; he had broken loose from his father and Andrew to run shrieking through the kitchens, breaking bottles and chairs, shoving a much younger Cook against the stove with such uncontrolled rage he dislocated her shoulder.

“Young demon,” she had whispered, cowering tearfully in t
he corner. “Dirty murderer…
”

Demon. Murderer. But no one had ordered
him,
at only eleven years old, to be flogged when God only knew he’d done far more than Marsali’s cousin to deserve it. Abercrombie would have to pay for that cruelty, after Duncan had gotten his use out of the stupid man.

Eager to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the castle, he left the deserted great hall by a side passage and walked to the stables, his order to be let outside obeyed with comical swiftness. His stallion had been found at the moor by a shepherd and curried (by Marsali) only hours ago, the last demand he had made of the exhausted woman before dismissing her for the night. No doubt she would sleep like the dead until dawn, when he intended to awaken her with a fresh list of demanding chores. He chuckled softly at the prospect.

He rode without thought to his destination, contempt hardening his face at the black piles of rubble littering the roadside where English soldiers had begun to clear cottages to build their military road. He was not insensitive to the Highlanders’ feelings nor unmoved by the sight of this destruction. But he could see little point in men sacrificing their lives for the inevitable thrust of progress into even these remote wilds. And he had more than enough experience in the British army to predict the Jacobite cause would die a violent death.

He swore it was not intentional, but suddenly he found himself staring down at the thatched stone cottage in the tangled beech copse where he had been bo
rn
, where his mother and the vicious bastard she had married had died, violently, on a Beltane night over two decades ago. He slowed his horse, unprepared for the dark emotions that swept over him, the painful lure of the past.

He had lived an incredible life since then, he had been feted in foreign courts; he had won the hand of a gently bred English lady and the sponsorship of her politically influential father. He had risen from the tomb of personal tragedy.

But when he dismounted and walked inside the forlorn abandoned cottage, he bec
ame an angry and abused eleven-
year-old boy again, and all the glory he had achieved dissipated like mist.

The door behind him gaped open, its broken crossbar hanging at the exact angle from when Kenneth MacElgin and his retainers had kicked it, drawn by the sound of Duncan’s aunt sobbing hysterically for help. Even the
breath of the nearby sea could not cleanse the remembered stench of blood, ale, and peat smoke from Duncan’s nostrils. He closed his eyes, assailed by repressed grief and unspent anger.

Aye, for all the honor bestowed on him, for all the years that had passed, as he stood in that dark cottage, he was a child again, caught in a nightmare of deadly violence, and escape was no easier now than it had been then.

D
uncan lifted his head, the dark circle of his thoughts broken by the vibrations of a rider galloping across the ridge that overhung the cottage. Deliberately not looking down at the floor where he had last seen his mother lying, lifeless, he hurried outside to the sunken yard and looked up in amazement at the figure that seemed to fly like an otherworldly being across the tree-shadowed path.

Marsali. Damnation, it was that girl again, flagrantly disobeying his orders to remain inside the castle until he gave her permission to leave. Anger welled inside him, a welcome distraction from the torment of his memories. Was she running away, fed up with her punishment and suspecting he had even grimmer chores planned? Had she followed him here to flaunt her defiance?

He strode toward his own horse, smiling unwillingly at the absurd memory of her sliding down the ladder in the great hall to fall on her rump, unbalanced by the weight of the enormous tapestry she had singlehandedly hauled down.

The look of fury she had shot him.

He mounted and cantered around the cottage, remembering the private ways of childhood, the hidden paths he had discovered years ago to avoid Fergus’s drunken rages. She had to be heading for the cove, with its honeycombed caves and rock archways, a place of secrets and shadows. His smile faded. In the old days the cove had provided an ideal trysting spot for lovers. He’d met more than one village maid there at midnight himself. He had no reason to believe human nature had changed that much in twenty years.

A sultry summer night. A young clansman waiting eagerly for her in the moonlight. A backdrop of crashing ocean waves to serenade the two lovers. For a moment Duncan
was tempted to turn around and pretend he hadn’t seen her. He could deal with her disobedience tomorrow. But after the unpleasant visit to the wretched cottage, he was too soul-weary to interrupt an intimate moment.

As he reached the rocky knoll path that led down to the beach, he started to urge his horse back onto the castle path. Then he saw her again, her bright hair like a beacon in the gray shadows of glooming, her bare brown legs exposed and clutching the mare’s sides as she rode toward the dark cluster of caves at the end of the cove.

The sight of her sparked something indefinable inside him.

He wanted to chase her down. He could outrun her horse and lead her himself into one of the damp private caves where he had hidden for hours, hearing Fergus call him from the cliffs. He wanted her vibrancy to counteract the coldness of his spirit. He wanted to tumble her to the sand. But what was the point? He couldn’t impress her with his legendary skill at seduction. If he tried to charm her with the clever badinage he had learned from the intellectual courtesans of the Parisian salons, she would laugh in his face, confused by words and customs she had never learned.

She would look at him, as the other Highlanders had looked at him all day, and he would become the outcast again, Duncan the Black Demon, the boy whose beautiful mother had bewitched the laird into believing he had fathered her son.

Marsali wouldn’t give a damn that grateful hordes had strewn flowers at his feet in the streets of Holland. Cook in her sublime ignorance would not care that he had given her the identical menu, and the purse to buy it, for a month’s meals worthy to grace the table of Czar Peter the Great.

He rubbed his hand across his unshaven face. Christ, why should
he
care? Peasants, women, drunks, Jacobite sympathizers, who would all end up getting themselves killed like his father.

He lowered his hand, a chill of suspicion cutting through his depression. He
assumed
out of his own irrational imaginings that Marsali was meeting a lover when in fact she might have a more dangerous objective in mind.

Intelligent, sharp-witted, strong-willed, a woman with
good cause to hate the English for the loss of the men she’d loved. God only knew the wee hellion could be hatching another rebellion right under Duncan’s nose, and when it failed, he would be the one to shoulder the blame. The world-famous military general who could not control a mere girl.

The hotheaded little fool would destroy everything, including herself, just as his gentle misguided father had done. Duncan’s head pounded with visions of being stripped of his rank and court-martialed, of losing the plump Border prize the prime minister had dangled before him like a carrot. He saw himself dishonored and impoverished, his hopes crumbled to dust, his achievements in ashes.

Hell, for all he knew, he could expect a knife in the back on the lonely ride home, courtesy of the clan welcoming party. He would end his life as he’d begun it, in violence and despised.

Everything destroyed by a fairy brat’s defiance. A serving wench who barely came to his waist. A girl he had allowed himself the dangerous indulgence of pitying, of desiring. An urchin with the arrogance of a princess.

He leaned forward and spurred his stallion after her, his long black hair coming loose from its leather thong to lash his coldly determined face. Even if he had to chain her to his damned bedpost at night, she would not disobey him again. He would break her spirit before she ruined them both.

M
arsali vented a sigh of frustration and slid to the sand. As she marched toward the caves, her mare stood resting at the shore. Uncle Colum thought himself very clever and elusive, never staying in the same location for more than a few months at a time. But Marsali was fed up with all this mystery.

First, he had lived on the moor to better communicate with the old gods. Then he had installed himself in the castle dungeon as resident wizard because he was reading a book about alchemy and thought he’d give turning base metal into gold a try. The previous summer he had wandered willy-nilly in the woods to contact the spirits of his Druid ancestors.

But ever since last autumn he had set up housekeeping in a wrecked old ship to study the ebb and flow of the waves. The ship was almost to the end of the cove, the tide was rising as a storm brewed offshore, and earlier in the day he had mentioned something about casting a solstice spell in a cave at midnight.

Well, hell. There had to be at least two dozen caves, and one looked about the same as the other to Marsali, her perception dulled by a day of grueling physical labor and public humiliation.

Furthermore, she had a knot on her head from that smelly tapestry falling off the wall and a throbbing bruise on her behind from where she had landed.

“Find the old codger for me, Eun,” she called to the bird perched on the hooded lip of yet another cave before her. “Magic or not, he and I are having a straight talk about the chieftain.”

S
he had just stepped inside the mouth of the cave when she felt the thunderous resonance through the soles of her feet of a rider approaching. Her mare whickered in warning and moved swiftly down the cove out of sight, as if sensing danger in the air. It crossed Marsali’s mind to make a similar escape. But there was no time. Besides, she was more curious than afraid.

Tightening her shawl around her shoulders, she edged back to the mouth of the cave, her eyes widening in anticipation as the horseman drew his lathered horse to a halt. Duncan, of all people. Dear Lord, the man was magnificent, long muscular legs gripping the horse’s lathered flesh before he vaulted to the sand, his black hair framing a face that an artist might have chiseled in a fit of inspiration.

Marsali frowned, not certain if he had seen her or if she could continue to admire him in secret. He was heading straight for the cave, the length of stride portending trouble. Before she could duck back inside, she was pinned against the wall like a butterfly by his large frame. She wriggled helplessly. The scent of camphor and lavender from his father’s old clothes mingled with his own male musk to
make her aching head swim. The tips of her breasts tingled, flattened against the wall of his chest. Her heart racing, she stared up at the underside of his clenched jaw, trying not to remember what he looked like naked. The harder she tried, the clearer the image became.

His gaze raked her briefly before darting to the end of the cave. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?” Intrigued, she glanced back herself in the direction of his scrutiny, grateful to be distracted from her own thoughts.

His gaze swung back to her face. “The lover you planned a tryst with,” he said grimly.

“The who I planned a what with?” she asked, blinking in bewilderment from behind her wind-blown tangle of hair.

“The spy then,” Duncan said impatiently.

She lifted her hand in a tentative caress to his lean cheek. “You are unwell, my lord?” she inquired gently. “I should have warned you about Cook’s potage. She tends to use the nastiest ingredients, and you did insult her cooking in front of everyone. Perhaps she poisoned—”

He jerked his hand from her hand, liking her delicate touch too much. “I know all about your Jacobite associations, Marsali.”

“You do?”

“Yes. All about the rebellion you’re planning.”

She frowned, trying to remember if madness ran in the MacElgin family. Surely the man wasn’t referring to her harmless little ambushes as rebellions? “You didn’t drink any of the mead Johnnie uses to clean the dirks, did you?” she asked guardedly.

Something in her voice, the almost maternal concern and absurd innocence, penetrated the dark mood that had ensnared him earlier. She was making him feel like a fool again; he was suddenly embarrassed by his frenzy to follow her here, unsure of what he’d hoped to prove. He might have conquered great armies, but apparently not his own deepest insecurities. The girl reduced him to raw emotion. She brought out a side of him he’d never confronted before. “I thought I gave you orders to remain inside the castle
.” She clenched the dangling corn
ers of her shawl, curling
her bare toes into the crunchy white sand. His voice was doing strange things to her system again, and his large body blocked any hope of escape. What had angered him so? “I couldn’t sleep, my lord.”