Sue-Ellen Welfonder - MacKenzie 07 (14 page)

A chorus of laughter filled the room.

One man choked on his ale. Conall grinned broadly and Geordie Dhu's guffaws were so great that he bent double, beard jigging and belly shaking.

"Aye, the Campbells are our men!" Mungo rocked back on his heels, triumphant.

"They're also easily found, the cloven-footed buggers. There be more o' that race in Argyll than dew on the grass. Their wealth - "

"Shall remain their own!" Darroc looked hard at his men. "If the Campbells are soft, it is no concern of ours. The Thunder Rod remains at Castle Bane. No matter its worth. Or" - his voice was stern - "have you forgotten what happened the last time the rod changed hands?"

The laughter died.

All around the thinking room, men shifted uncomfortably. One or two dropped onto settles, looking morose.

Even Mungo clamped his jaw, then glanced down and busied himself brushing at his plaid.

Dark flushes stained the faces of every man.

No one spoke.

"I see you do remember." Darroc spoke the obvious.

A desirable young woman left alone to meet her fate on a remote isle, with an empty, echoing tower her only shelter, wasn't something easily put from one's mind.

And her death wasn't the only one.

Others had paid dearly when the Thunder Rod passed into MacConacher possession.

Darroc flinched.

He looked to where the peats glowed so quietly on the hearthstone and tried not to think of certain cliffs where the wind sometimes held fragments of men's screams. Nor was it good for him to dwell on the scratches in the stone of the other window in his notch room.

Faint marks etched by a feminine hand.

Just as strong male hands - those of his own ancestor, Rhun MacConacher - were believed to have done with the men who'd so loyally served him, vowing silence as they'd toiled to do his bidding.

Had they guessed what would happen when they completed their task? Did they sense that the bold Hebridean chieftain had his own plans for ensuring secrecy?

That he meant for no living soul save himself and his nigh-abducted concubine to know of Castle Bane's existence?

Had Rhun known that his hastily built love nest would become a death trap for the very young woman he supposedly loved so obsessively?

Darroc's heart seemed to stop.

Feeling cold, he went to stand by the hearth, needing its warmth. The thinking room had grown dark and still, his men - he'd make amends with them later -

having somehow slipped out beneath his brooding nose.

"That was in very old times." Mungo spoke from the shadows near the door.

Darroc started, then whirled to face him.

"As you saw" - the old man gestured at the empty room - "the men do remember, even if Rhun and Asa are now naught but moldered bones."

A shiver sped down Darroc's spine, but he ignored it and held the seneschal's stare. "Then they'll understand why we mustn't part with the relic. Its powers go deeper than helping a man be a man! It holds a darker magic and I'll no' spread that kind of - "

"Faugh!" Mungo snorted. "I won't be naming names, but there be some beneath this roof who feel differently. They think the rod's magic is good. Very good, if" -

he winked - "you ken what I mean."

Darroc kept his face blank. To be sure, he knew.

He just didn't care to admit it.

Not that there was a need because the seneschal flipped his plaid back over his shoulder and sailed out the door, leaving him alone.

Except, of course, for the chill of the cold, rain-damp air blowing in the window, the familiar earthy-sweet scent of the room's ever-burning peat fire, and the Thunder Rod that - he'd swear - appeared to be glowing as brightly as the orange-red bricks of peat.

Darroc studied the rod, hanging so innocently above the hearth. With surety, the strange glow was nothing more than firelight glinting off the bits of brilliant color that speckled parts of the relic.

Even so, he stepped away from the hearth fire and placed a hand on his sword hilt, letting his fingers curl loosely around the worn, leather-wrapped grip.

For some odd reason, he felt watched.

Almost as if Rhun was in the room with him. Perhaps even Gunnar the Strong, the wealthy Shetland trader who'd presented the Thunder Rod to Rhun, never guessing that doing so would forever damn his beautiful daughter, Asa Long-Legs.

Darroc tightened his grip on his sword hilt, half expecting the two men to spring from the shadows. He imagined them whipping out their steel and glaring at him, each one for a different reason.

But the little room was completely silent around him.

Nothing stirred but the rain-dampened wind. No hot-eyed, sword-swinging ancients assailed him.

Only a single thought.

And as so often happened when he was in the thinking room, the notion rang in his ears. Loud and penetrating as if the walls had come alive and were shouting the idea at him.

It was a terrible idea.

A possibility that shamed him even as images of himself and Arabella of Kintail flashed across his mind, stirring his blood and tightening his loins. Bold, brazen images, heated and intense, that showed her naked on the soft wet earth, knees bent and with her arms reaching up to him. Her eyes pleaded and her lips beckoned, passion beating between them like a living, scalding blaze.

Then he was throwing off his plaid to join her, the two of them hotly entangled and rolling on the ground, kissing and kissing as they coupled wildly on a sweet, fragrant bed of grass and heather.

"Damnation!" He squeezed shut his eyes. Unfortunately, his closed lids only intensified the sordid images. Dreadful visions of him besotted and consorting with the devil's own spawn, fetching as she was.

Darroc opened his eyes at once, scowling.

There were certain aspects of the rod's magic no honorable man would employ.

No matter what notions the thinking room put in his head.

He wouldn't do it.

Turning on his heel, he pretended cold sweat wasn't misting his brow and marched for the door. But he paused on the threshold, some inexplicable feeling freezing him in place. Heart pounding, he was unable to keep from glancing back at the hoary relic.

Only it no longer hung from its ribbon on the wall.

He held the length of tartan silk in his hands, the magical rod dangling from his fingers.

Darroc stared, horror washing through him.

He was sure he hadn't retrieved it. And he was even more certain that his fate was now sealed. His most burning ambition loomed before him, bright and beckoning.

He could bring the MacKenzies to their knees.

Slay the hated Black Stag of Kintail without a single sword strike.

If he dared use the rod's most despicable powers.

Darroc's mouth went dry.

Blood roared in his ears and his palms turned cold, slick with damp. But his fingers continued to grip the ribbon and his gaze fixed on the Thunder Rod, its mysterious runes seeming to stare right back at him.

Reminding him of the past and the debt he owed his slain kinsmen.

He inhaled deeply.

He was tempted... sorely tempted.

High above the thinking room, Asa Long-Legs glimmered before her window in Castle Bane's topmost chamber. Once - in her short and distant life - she'd scratched markings in the stone of the window arch. Each nick, however faint, had given her hope. She'd believed that soon enough time would pass and he would return to her.

Rhun MacConacher.

The bold and lusty Hebridean chieftain who'd swept into her father's hall so many centuries before, conquering her heart with his laughing eyes and silvered tongue. A giant of a man, all golden and magnificent, he'd scorched her with his fierce embrace and white-hot kisses. Ruining her for all others with the way he looked at her, his heated gazes setting her aflame until passion and need consumed her.

How she'd loved him.

And what a fool she'd been to trust him.

Because of him, she was a ghost. Earthbound and lonely, trapped in a place where she'd expected to find only joy and happiness....

Asa touched a shimmering finger to one of her notches, her pain as deep as if she'd made the mark only yesterday. Perhaps it was well that, at the time, she hadn't known he was forever gone to her.

Or what dark deeds hid behind his twinkling blue eyes.

Instead, she'd made her mark each day, ever certain that his raging desire for her would keep him from abandoning her on his cold and rocky isle.

Then the day came when she was no more.

But she still had her rituals....

Floating closer to the window, she lifted the hem of her luminous white gown, so different from the gaily colored raiments she loved in life. She peered at her legs, less substantial than a breath of cobwebs, then let the gown's air-light folds drop back down to cover them.

As a child, her legs had been spindle thin. And according to her beloved father, they'd stretched to her ears, hence her name, Asa Long-Legs.

When she'd reached womanhood, they'd been sleek and shapely. The loveliest legs Rhun had ever seen. Or so he'd claimed when she'd first stood naked before him.

No other man had ever seen her unclothed.

And now none ever would.

She looked at her legs once a day, the shocking transparency proving what she'd become.

It was so hard to believe otherwise.

She still felt so alive.

But she wasn't, so she stared out her window at the heavily falling rain and did her best to think of other things. In particular the young chief, Darroc, the only soul who visited her, though she knew he came to make his own window notches and not to see her.

Of course, he didn't even know she was there.

Even so, she liked him.

Though it pained her to see the anger inside him.

Every time he picked up his special mallet and chisel she could look into his heart and see how it heated, glowing red with fury.

She wished he burned with such passion for a woman.

Seeing love - pure and true - bloom at Castle Bane would do so much to ease the sorrow in her own heart. The keep had been built for love, or so she'd believed at the time. Now she knew differently, and the truth burdened her as cruelly as if she wore weighted chains rather than a gown lighter than the sea mist that so often slid past her window.

Now, at last, she could hope again.

Excitement was stirring at Castle Bane and the young chief was in the thick of it.

The maid, regardless of her name, was beautiful and alluring.

Above all, her heart was innocent.

Asa rested her hands on the stone of the window splay and leaned out as far as she dared. The rain didn't bother her and she enjoyed the sea wind, so cold and invigorating. Better yet, she suspected the night's wildness would send Darroc to look in on Lady Arabella.

He was like that, she knew.

Asa sighed, the possibilities making her soul tingle. She turned her face upward, letting the rain spatter her and the wind toss and tangle her hair.

Then she did something else.

Something she hadn't done in centuries.

She smiled.

Darroc's thinking room had made a grievous error.

Surprisingly, he'd reached his bedchamber before the realization hit him with the force of an almighty blow. He froze where he stood, one hand on the door latch, the other gripping the ribbon of the Thunder Rod. His every muscle clenched with revulsion and hot bile rose in his throat. Ruining Arabella of Kintail was a great temptation. It would be no hardship to seduce her. The deed would shatter her prideful clan and bring her father lower than the grass he walked on.

Darroc's pulse quickened just imagining the Black Stag's horror. Unfortunately, he also knew that the shame of such an act would damage him more.

The stain on his honor would follow him to the grave.

That he'd hardened at the mere thought of having Arabella naked in his arms was already a damning smudge. Yet he couldn't deny that it stirred him to think of her hot, writhing, and wildly insatiable for him.

Hell's inferno!

He was no better than his roving-eyed ancestor, Rhun.

He'd defiled himself without even touching the lass. Most damning of all, his strong pull to her hadn't lessened on learning her name. That alone was enough to scald his soul and condemn him before his men. Yet she continued to consume him as much as when he'd first looked on her. Perhaps even more because he found her strength of spirit as irresistible as the curves and lines of her sinuous body.

Darroc swallowed a groan.

Boiling rage swept him and only his desire to get away quickly - and undetected -

kept him from cursing aloud. He needed to return the Thunder Rod to the thinking room and never touch the benighted relic again.

But for some inexplicable reason he couldn't move.

He held the door latch in a white-knuckled death grip and couldn't let go. He did drag in a furious breath. Regrettably, the rapid intake of air caused him to jerk and the Thunder Rod swung forward to knock against the door.

Darroc's heart stopped.

The Thunder Rod glittered brightly... and bumped the door again.

"God's curse!" He forgot himself and swore.

"Eh?" Mad Moraig's voice trilled from within. "Be that you, Darroc?"

He cringed.

The door swung open.

Mad Moraig beamed at him. "Come away in." She indicated the dimly lit room behind her. "I told the wee lambie you'd be along."

Darroc almost choked. "I..." he spluttered, tripping over his own tongue.

A wee lambie, his bluidy big toe.

There wasn't anything wee about Lady Arabella. She was as well-made and robust as a Valkyrie. And devil blast Mad Moraig for saying something - however innocently meant - that reminded him.

"She was cold. Shivering something fierce and with her teeth all a-chatter." Mad Moraig clamped a clawlike hand on his arm. "So I - "

"I see what you did." Darroc stared past her to where Arabella rested in his bed.

She was propped most proprietarily against his pillows and - he could scarce believe it - with one of his spare plaids wrapped snugly around her shoulders.