No Other Woman (No Other Series) (8 page)

"We didn't do much talking. You lured me to seduce me. To my death."

"I never intended to seduce you—■"

"Umm, perhaps not as far as you did. You intended that I drop from the drug in the wine before matters could go quite so far as they did."

"The wine-—"

"Was very definitely drugged. Are you denying that?"

Her lashes fell. She had difficulty breathing.

"Shawna?"

His whisper touched her face. The feel of his thighs around her hips distracted her.

"I—I—meant to talk, I've told you that. We were trying to help Alistair. But, I tell you, sir, in truth, I don't know—"

"You knew enough, and you brought about my damnation, Lady Shawna MacGinnis. And by God, you will be part and party to all that I require—nay, demand!—now!"

"You are mad if you think that you can demand anything of me, Laird Douglas! I will not—"

"You will not what?" he queried softly, leaning even closer, the flash of his teeth caught in the moonlight now, his smile like a satyr's grin.

"Just what is it that you would demand?" she asked.

"Everything, Lady MacGinnis. Everything. Flesh and blood and bone and more."

He was closer. So close that his lips hovered just above hers.

His fingers again brushed her cheek. They ran down the length of her like tendrils of a flame.

"I demand... you, milady," he said flatly. "Indeed, I have come back, and would begin again where I left off. I demand you. And how very damned convenient. Just what I want—so easily delivered to me. You are, after all, sleeping in my bed."

"I offer my heartiest apologies. By some miracle, you have returned. The bed is yours. I can most certainly leave it."

"I think not, Shawna. I think not. Most certainly, milady, I think not tonight."

"This is absurd. You don't understand—"

"You don't understand, my lady. I was set up. Attacked. Left for dead, yet somehow alive. Alive to reside in absolute hell. The guilty parties must be made to pay."

"But—"

"Tonight, my lady, paying begins. And it is your turn. You first. Oh, aye, you first. For others
may
be involved. Others must be discovered and proved. While you, my love—you are guilty as all hell."

"Damn you, I didn't—"

"Damn you, you did."

"I tell you—"

"I lay in this very room, Shawna, while you came to me in the moonlight, and beckoned me to hell. How quickly, how easily, you forget!"

"I did not forget!"

"Neither did I."

"David, I'm telling you, I don't know what happened, I don't know how you can be alive. I—"

"Well, we'll have to all discover the complete truth of the past then, won't we? But in the meantime, tonight, lady, you begin to pay."

She knew him; he was so familiar.

Yet he was a different man, and she feared she didn't know him at all.

He could very well mean that he was about to wind his fingers around her neck and slowly, surely, squeeze her life from her.

Her breath caught as she met his eyes in the nighttime play of light and shadow. No deep dark warmth of forest green met her stare, but a glitter as sharp as emerald gems, as cold as stones from within an icy depth of the earth. And still, she despaired to feel a searing of heat within her veins, her limbs; he was a stranger, but even after five years, he was a familiar stranger. Flesh, bone, and muscle, she knew him well, knew the man with her. The power in his eyes she knew, yet it was clear that whatever more gentle emotions he might once have felt toward her had indeed died that night. The sharp light in his eyes as they met hers came from the demon death had made of the man; his touch upon her was equally as cold. Yet that did not douse the fever that had possessed her, born of fear, and dread, and fury, and... anticipation.

She was the daughter of a people who had fought forever,
she reminded herself.
A people who had died for their rights, for their pride, for their beliefs. Whatever he sought, vengeance or murder, she would fight until she could fight no more....

"I'll not pay for what I haven't done!" she whispered heatedly. "You'll demand nothing from me. You'll—"

His finger fell against her lips and he spoke coldly and harshly, as if he hadn't heard a word of what she had said. "I shall tell you, my lady, what will and will not happen. You cry to me of your innocence while admitting your guilt."

"I was guilty only of—"

"You were the pawn, Shawna. The bait. Perhaps you didn't strike the blow. Someone did."

"I swear to you, I don't know—"

"Someone tried to kill me."

"But you didn't die. Where—"

"That's not important right now."

"Perhaps no one did try to kill you. There was an ungodly fire."

"I was struck what was intended to be a deathblow on the head, Shawna."

"A rafter must have fallen—"

He let out an expletive with such explosive fury that she fell silent.

"I swear to you, I know nothing about any attempt to murder you—"

"Prove it."

"What do you mean?"

"Keep your silence. Help me find the truth."

"How?"

"For the time being, just watch and listen."

"And if I don't help you?"

"If you don't..." he mused, leaning close, low against her. She was aware of the texture of his face, the tension in his features, and throughout him. A strange heat riddled him now, like a low-burning fire that could at any time rage out of control. Could she have moved, she might well have been tempted to leap out the window to escape the portent of violence that seemed to burn and simmer within him. But he sat back upon his haunches again, atop her, yet easily keeping the pressure of his weight from her. "I promise you this, my lady, if you don't keep quiet, I'll make you very, very sorry, indeed. And aren't you forgetting something?"

"What?"

"It seems you are in deep and deadly danger yourself, Shawna MacGinnis. There lies the corpse of a man by the loch who meant to do away with you. So again, I warn you, Shawna. Keep your silence."

A recklessness suddenly ignited within her; she was tired of being threatened. "What will you do, David? Slay me? Beat me to death? Rape me?"

He arched a brow. Cool green eyes swept over her. He suddenly angled down against her, his face just inches away so she again felt the warmth of his breath, and the tremendous power of his body. The warmth and pulse of his sex. He touched her face again, fingers sculpting her cheek, brushing her lips, moving over her throat until she scarcely dared to breathe. His fingers curled in a sensually cradling motion around the mound of her breast, drawing a startled gasp from her lips, which he ignored. "Rape you?" His voice was a mere taunting whisper. "Hmm. Were it my design, lady, my choice, I'd have had you by now. And I don't think it would have been rape. After all, my lady, I do believe, in the past, it was you who seduced me."

She was startled when he suddenly rose. So startled she could not speak. He stood above her, his eyes meeting hers for a last time.

His eyes sweeping, over her.

"Hmmph."

He reached toward the candle and pinched out the flame.

She could swear she blinked, and then he was gone.

Gone. Gone!

Just like that. He had left her. Just when she had become convinced that he would never do so that night, not until he had taken from her... her.

She leapt out of her bed and stood by it, not at all sure if she was completely relieved... or disappointed. He had just walked away. He'd threatened her and left. He didn't want her anymore.

He had wanted her. Oh, aye, he'd wanted her.

As she hadn't even really realized just how she had wanted him.

Once...

Now he was a ghost; a man risen from a grave he was convinced she'd managed to dig for him.

"Oh, God!" she whispered aloud.

She ran to the window, looking out to the night beyond. There was no sign of him. She pressed the stone on the secret door just beyond the window, and looked down into the stairway. The stairway was blacker than ebony, and not even the slightest sound echoed back to her from it.

Had he departed the normal way—by the door?

She returned from the balcony and threw open the door to her room, scampered into the hallway and then to the balustrade looking down on the great hall below. Again, there was no sign of him.

She couldn't stand around in the hallway, she determined. Her gown was damp and shredded and she was half-naked and if any of her kin were to appear, she might well find herself residing in an asylum for the insane.

She slipped back into her bedroom, closing and bolting the door, and pacing the floor.

David had returned. It was impossible.

She shivered, discarded her torn, wet gown, and dressed quickly in a fresh one while staring at the remnants of the old. She realized she had to get rid of the ripped gown.

Only if she intended to keep secret the fact that David was alive. That he had returned.

David was dangerous.

Maybe he had a right to be. Where had he been for the last five years? What had happened to him? How had he managed to come home and rise from the loch at precisely the moment she needed him?

Had he really been there at all?

She groaned softly, rolling up her shredded gown, determined to hide it until she decided what to do with it. She stuffed it beneath her bed for the time being. She couldn't report to anyone that David was alive.

She had no proof. Already, there was no sign that the man might have been in her room. If she betrayed him, she realized, she'd definitely be sorry. For one thing, no one would believe her. They would all doubt her sanity, as she was beginning to question it herself. No one would believe what had happened to her tonight. She had run out. She had been chased and nearly killed by a tall dark shadow near the Druid Stones. But she hadn't been killed because a dead man had risen from the loch to slay her would-be assailant....

She needed a drink, she decided, if she was ever going to sleep for the rest of the night. And she had to have some rest. The world, at the very least, had gone mad. And she had to cope with it all somehow.

She slipped from her room, returned to the office, found the brandy bottle, and returned with it. The fire in her hearth had burned down to practically nothing, but she sat in front of it, shivering, trying to rouse up the last of the embers.

She was going to drink the brandy properly out of a glass, sit calmly in front of the fire, and think.

She did pour the brandy into a glass. Throwing her head back and swallowing down the contents in one long sip wasn't exactly proper.

She'd do better with the second glass.

Actually, she did do better. With her feet and legs curled beneath her, she stared into the small, flickering flames. He'd come back. He was alive.

Or was he? She shivered fiercely. Her nightmares had been torturing her for so long. He was gone again without a trace, how could she be so certain....

In the morning, there would be no doubt. Someone would find the corpse by the loch. And what? Was she supposed to pretend that she knew nothing about it?

David believed that she had been part of a conspiracy. That she had been the lure, the bait, so that someone else could come along and murder him unaware, in cold blood. He was watching her now to see who she would go to
....

There was no murderer, she tried to tell herself. A rafter had fallen, another man's body, burned beyond recognition, had been discovered, and it had been assumed that the charred remains had been David. No one would have tried to kill him.

But David was alive.
How could he be alive, back after all this time?

She drank another very long swallow of the brandy.

Her limbs, at the least, were no longer cold. What remained of the fire, and what sweet flames the brandy could create, warmed her at last. Any more, and she was going to waken with a pounding headache just when she would need to have her wits about her.

She set the glass down on the arm of her chair, leaving the brandy bottle by the side of it. She stood in the middle of the room for a long moment. Nothing was different; nothing had changed. She might have truly dreamed that he had walked back into her life.

She knew she hadn't just dreamed of David. He
had
walked back into her life.

For revenge.

Chapter 5

Shawna awoke to brilliant sunshine pouring into her room. She sat up with a sudden jerk, looking around her.

Had she dreamed it all?

She leapt out of bed, searching for some evidence that David Douglas had been there the night before.

But there was no sign of David's existence.

Shawna stared at her bed. The pillow on the right side, where she had slept, carried the telltale indentation of her head. Naturally. Yet her covers were torn apart as well, as if she had waged war there.

She fell to her knees, looking beneath the carved frame structure of the bed for the gown that had been torn and soaked during her midnight foray. There it lay.