Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] (7 page)

undone
— and hoped none of the wild and base urges thundering through him showed on his face.
His honor, tarnished though it might be, forbade even one such as he to flaunt carnal lust in the presence of priests and the pious.
And his pride, sore-battered or nay, cringed at the lustful urges inspired by the lamentably unattractive lass.
He hadn’t been
that
long without a woman.
Then she whirled his way, her snatched treasure clutched in a fisted hand pressed against fine, high-set breasts, and Iain’s heart swelled to bursting. Truth to tell, it slammed so hard against his ribs, the shock near felled him.
He’d erred greatly in assuming her plain.
Light green eyes, huge and panic-filled, locked with his, for a split second widening even more, their gold-flecked depths mirroring something uncannily like recognition—as if she, too, reeled from the crackling attraction sizzling between them.
A single curling strand of glossy copper-gold hair slipped from beneath the cowl of her cloak, tumbling over her left eye before coming to rest against the sweet curve of her cheek. Looking more like a startled doe than a brazen-hearted relic thief, she blinked, moistening lips he would have claimed in a heartbeat if only he’d glimpsed them when his honor had been intact . . . his life his own and unsullied.
She drew a deep breath, and her breasts, well-rounded and full, rose beneath her cloak, its travel-worn folds emphasizing rather than disguising their lushness.
Though he would ne’er have owned it possible, Iain’s body tightened even more. His throat closed at once, his mouth going so dry he couldn’t even give himself the paltry relief of wetting his lips.
Bitter regret swept through him, washing away his lust and replacing it with an emptiness so all-consuming its bite hurt worse than the cutting edges of a dozen wickedly honed blades.
In another eerie echo of his own shackled longing, a look of deepest anguish flashed across her beautifully expressive face, then she was gone—bolting through a sudden break in the throng, and taking the whole of his heart with her.
His MacLean heart.
The selfsame one he’d thought had withered and died but now knew had only ne’er been truly wakened.
Not by his late wife, Lileas, the saints bless her sweet-natured soul, and not by any other lass e’er to cross his path or share his bed.
Adrift in a roiling sea of disbelief and a glaring truth he could no longer deny, Iain squeezed shut his eyes and, lifting a none-too-steady hand, kneaded the back of his hot, aching neck. Several long moments later, when he reopened his eyes, they looked out on a different place.
A new world, and one through which he’d have to tread across very rough ground, for one of his staunchest beliefs had just been soundly toppled.
He, Iain MacLean, younger son of the great House of MacLean, master of nothing, and sometimes dubbed Iain the Doubter, could ne’er again scoff at the notion of MacLean men being fated to love, truly love, only one woman.
The legend wasn’t just a
sennachie’s
tale to be told round the peat fires of long and dark winter nights.
The legend was true.
He now knew it with a certainty that resonated with every thudding beat of his heart, every ragged breath he drew, for
his one woman
—a votive thief and a postulant—had just looked him full square in the eye.
And the repercussions of having to admit it ripped him to pieces.
A few scant hours later, but far removed from the splendor of Glasgow Cathedral, a darker, more ancient kind of magic than saintly relics and plainsong brought a smile to old Devorgilla’s lips.
Cozily ensconced within the thick, whitewashed walls of her thatched cottage, Doon’s resident crone hummed a merry, if slightly off-key, tune as she peered closely at her precious assortment of Fairy Fire Stones.
A sizable collection, the charmed stones nearly filled a large wooden bowl she kept on the little oaken table near her hearth. And although all the stones possessed their own immeasurable value, only two held her rapt attention.
His stone—Iain MacLean’s—and his lady’s.
His
new
lady’s.
The lass meant for him since time beyond mind.
Clucking her tongue, the crone shook her grizzled head. Much grief would ne’er have come to pass had not men, with their fool meddlings into things best left alone, procured Iain the Doubter a political marriage to benefit the clan rather than the needs of his own braw heart.
For sweet-natured and comely as Lileas MacInnes had been, she wasn’t
The One.
And none of the powers-that-be at the time had heeded Devorgilla’s discreet reminders of the MacLean Bane, the Legend. Neither Iain’s late father, nor his Council of Elders. Nary a one of the better-knowing graybeards had listened to her.
Even her more dire warnings had fallen on deaf ears.
There’d even been threats to banish her from Doon if she didn’t cease what they called her foolish prattle.
Her brow furrowing at their benightedness, the crone banished the lot of them to the farthest reaches of her mind. Greater powers than hers would be needed to undo ill-made choices of the past.
A wiser move would be to help along the future.
To that end, the
cailleach
curled knobby-knuckled fingers around the edge of the wooden bowl and dragged it across the table’s rough-planked surface until it rested at the very edge.
Leaning forward, she brought her wizened face to within inches of the bowl.
Just to be certain her eyes hadn’t deceived her.
They hadn’t.
Both stones, smooth and glistening Highland quartz, glowed with a finer luminosity than e’er before.
Not yet the blinding brilliance she was hoping for, but with a goodly portion more shine and inner fire than she’d expected to see this day. And they vibrated . . . Devorgilla even fancied a faint humming sound came from deep within their pulsing depths.
At once, sheerest pleasure stole over her. The giddy, breathless kind better suited to starry-eyed young lasses with all their days yet stretching before them.
But a gladness warm enough to do her bent frame a world of good nonetheless. And with no one but her napping grandson, Lugh, and her tricolored cat, Mab, to see her lapse of dignity, she gave an uninhibited cackle of delight and clapped gnarled hands in glee.
Indulging herself, she touched a fingertip first to
her
stone, then to his. For, at long last, the male stone had lost some of its chilly blue tint, and like the female stone, now showed a slowly spreading point of pulsating reddish gold at its core.
Equally telling, its flawless surface warmed her finger.
More than satisfied, the crone lifted her hand away from the bowl and straightened, for once not cringing at the creaks and pops of her aged bones.
Then, assuming a more suitably solemn mien, she recited the
spelling
words. “One be you, and one be she. When your lady’s heart catches fire, you will recognize her.”
At once, and for the first time ever, the wee glow deep inside the female stone seemed to first contract, then burst, spindly rays of bright red-gold shooting outward, some even reaching the very edges of the stone before retracting.
An erupting firestorm by no means, but enough.
The time had come, and they’d met.
There could be no denying it, for Fairy Fire Stones always spoke the truth.
Blinking hard, for a good
cailleach
ne’er shed a tear, Devorgilla patted her wiry white hair and allowed herself a trembly-lipped smile.
Her magic was working.
Iain the Doubter was a doubter no more.
Chapter Four
G
OD’S GOOD MERCY, BUT I cannot take another step.” Her cheeks pink with exertion, Nella of the Marsh flung herself onto the grassy bank of the fast-moving Molendinar Burn. Breathing heavy enough to flood Madeline with guilt, she glanced over her shoulder at the whin and broom-studded abbey hill rising steeply behind her. “Will not take another step,” she amended. “My feet would rise in rebellion should I even try.”
“My apologies,” Madeline offered, lifting her hands. “We will pause here until you’ve caught your breath. A rest will surely favor us both.”
“I am fine. ’Tis you causing me worry,” Nella panted, tugging off her calfskin brogans. “Grand or nay, my lady, a shrine holds naught but the dust of old bones,” she declared, rolling down her stockings.
She turned a keen eye on Madeline. “Do you wish to speak of the reason for such an ignominious flight?”
“Nay.” The swift denial drew a frown.
And before Nella could read even more into her hasty retreat from St. Kentigern’s tomb and her wild dash down the sloping braeside, Madeline fixed her gaze on the thick growth of birch and juniper scrub edging the riverbank.
Tendered explanations could wait until her heart ceased hammering and her blood cooled.
If such were even possible.
Another wave of frustration began heating its way up her neck, so she swatted at the little bits of twigs and bracken clinging to her cloak . . . tenacious flotsam to remind her of her foolhardy flight and the futility of expecting the tension thrumming inside her to ease.
A thousand tomorrows wouldn’t suffice for such a wonder.
Not unless her shadow man’s mellifluous voice relinquished its hold on her, ceased spooling its richly timbred warmth so seductively round her heart.
“I’ faith!” She sniffed, her patience with herself near flown. Half-convinced some snag-toothed witch-wife had charmed her—and on
his
behalf—she gave her skirts a vigorous shake, but the twigs and bracken remained. They clung to her just as stubbornly as the tall, powerfully built pilgrim lingered in the periphery of her mind.
Nay, lingered everywhere, for his darkly handsome face seemed to hover in the leafy green shadows of the burnside copse, his haunted eyes, a rich peaty brown, beguiling her from the shelter of the trees.
Holding her fast in his golden-voiced spell, and as firmly as if he’d strode right up to her, closed strong fingers upon her chin, and simply let the smolder in his eyes compel her to his will.
Madeline swallowed, a tingling cascade of shivers rippling her length. Seductively delicious tingles prickling every inch of her . . . including her most private places.
Feeling almost besieged, she stared up at the cloud-fleeced sky, bit her lower lip until she tasted blood.
Romanticizing about her shadow man had been . . . sweet.
Proximity to the dark-eyed stranger outside the bounds of her dreams proved dangerously perilous.
Even if she ignored the allure of his strapping build and great height, an inherent aura of power and depth simmered beneath his dark good looks, his intensity speaking to her, and calmly winding its magic around each uncharted corner of her femininity.
Truth to tell, everything about him shouted loud contrast to the shuffle-gaited, staff-clutching pilgrims she’d grown accustomed to seeing on the road.
Her braw shadow man—for he could be no other— proved unlike any man she’d e’er seen anywhere.
Pilgrim, common man, or lordling.
And that knowledge sank her heart, for ne’er had there been a darker hour for a man to stir her interest . . . make her burn to see him again.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep, cleansing breath of the cool, damp air. And another and another, until she’d filled her lungs to bursting with the pungent scents of gorse, pine, and rushing water.
But such measures helped not a whit.
All the clean woodsy air in Scotland wouldn’t be enough to wash away the desperate yearning he’d ignited inside her. A profound need, deep beyond measure, raged through her like an all-consuming firestorm, and once awakened, she feared nothing would quell her thirst to taste the kind of fierce, undying love carved so indelibly into the walls of his heart.
Her own heart twisted with impossible longing.
She’d
felt
the boundless wealth of his emotion, its pounding intensity near bruising her ribs as, night after night, her accursed abilities delivered him into her dreams, revealing not just his pain but his never-to-besevered bond with one single woman.
A faceless female he cherished beyond measure, and who now bore Madeline’s mounting resentment because for one cast-her-cares-to-the-wind moment she envied that woman.
Wanted to be she.
And so fervently her insides tightened with a winding, relentless ache, sheerest need spiraling from the top of her head to the tips of her toes and back again.
“You’ve gone pale, my lady, and you tremble.” Nella’s concerned voice rose above the sound of the burn’s rushing waters. “A plague on moldy relics and mumbling monks if sharing the air with such exalteds taxes you so.”
Madeline blinked, the pilgrim’s sway over her vanishing at once, his bonnie face fading from the shadows until only the hard thumping of her heart remained.
A bruised heart turned topsy-turvy, and the unsettling sense of something infinitely dear and precious spinning out of reach.
“I would not run from a whole phalanx of pasty-faced church worthies,” she huffed, dusting her skirts again, the true reason for her distress tucked securely in her heart. “Nor do moldering bones frighten me. Saintly or otherwise.”
Nella looked skeptical. “Then did the pain of some piteously cursed miracle seeker drive you to flee the cathedral?” She peered at Madeline from the shallows of the burn, her skirts hitched above the white-foaming water, her hazel eyes alight with keen interest. “Surely Madeline of Abercairn would not—”
“The Lady of Abercairn is no more,” Madeline said, examining her broken fingernails. “She was extirpated on the same blazing pyre that now holds my father’s ashes. His, and those of innocents whose sole crime was being too young to defend themselves against the killing swords of a turncoat Scotsman and the marauders who follow him.”
A wholly different kind of passion—dark and roiling—swept her. But its heat strengthened her, too, allowing her to straighten her back and lock away her grief. Her anger. Clenching her hands to tight fists, she bolted every hurting ounce of pain into the most inaccessible corner of her mind.
Her father’s honor, and her purpose, would be better served if delivered with a cooled temper and a steady hand.
She opened her mouth to remind Nella—and herself— of the purpose of their journey, but a loudly trilling curlew swooped out of nowhere, near clipping her head in its swift ascent to the rowans lining the abbey hill.
Almost a hedge, the red-berried trees flanked the buttressed wall of the Bishop’s Palace, while behind it, the cathedral’s bulk loomed proud and grand, its pointy spires piercing the sky, and soaring taller than the palace’s loftiest turrets.