Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (11 page)

“But never you mind her sweet-stroking fingers.” He leaned forward, looked directly into Magnus’s eyes. “Do you not ken what a boon having such a braw lass at my side would be for me—facing what I must?”

Well-chastised, Magnus nodded. What else could he do? Already, he could feel the heat inching up his neck to tinge his cheeks.

The inference behind Colin’s words could not have been more plain if he’d held a gazing glass before Magnus’s nose.

Ten gazing glasses!

Still, their plights could not be compared.

His was . . .
different.

Colin took life too lightly, lacked Magnus’s deeper-sitting beliefs and values.

His abiding sense of responsibility.

Even so, the lout had made him feel every inch a stone-hearted buffoon. Magnus cleared his throat, ready to apologize—even if he knew himself in the right.

“I did not mean—”

“I ken what you meant,” Colin said, all smiles again. He waved a careless hand. “As for wenching, so long as my obsessing is but to lay claim to one bonnie piece, what can be the harm in it?”

Magnus rubbed his throbbing forehead. Now he
did
feel the buffoon. “And here I’d been thinking—”

“That I would use the shadowy confines of a window embrasure to coax a kiss from my best friend’s wife?” Colin made a wry face, but his tone conveyed he bore no ill feelings.

And if Magnus yet harbored any doubts, Colin’s broad wink allayed them.

“Discredit my honor if you must, but ’tis well you aught ken my taste in women,” he minded Magnus. “Have we not enjoyed enough shared evenings of, shall we say
fair entertainment,
for you to recall I have e’er looked to abscond into the heather with pale-haired maids?”

“Och, to be sure, I remember well,” Magnus agreed. Indeed, the image of Colin with a veritable parade of Janet look-alikes on his arm tramped across his mind’s eye. “You e’er sought wee slips of lassies with corn-colored hair and huge blue eyes.”

Colin nodded, looking pleased. “Aye, so I did—and still do, I vow! Just as you e’er looked to lose yourself in the arms of sultrier beauties with well-rounded curves.”

“Your observation skills serve you well,” Magnus conceded.

Looking down, he made a pretense of studying his knuckles rather than risk letting his astute friend glimpse the damning truth behind his fascination with raven-haired women.

His pitiable penchant for painting another woman’s face on every dark-haired lass who’d e’er deigned to hitch her skirts for him.

Amicia MacLean’s face.

The one he’d carried in his heart for more years than he cared to remember.

Disaster and havoc.

Nothing left but a few scattered stones . . . the dust of your bones.

Tears, lamentations, even a falling upon your knees will not avail you.

The malice-filled recitations came with the turn of the tide, the wind and the sea echoing each hate-filled cry and carrying their wrath from the bowels of Coldstone’s most secret heart to a place enfolded by a quiet too deep for human ears—a lone tidal islet too forsaken for even hermits and holy men to seek a foothold upon its jagged, black-glistening surface.

The Isle of Doon’s accursed Lady Rock.

A threshold to another world, and where things have no reckoning of time, though none would suspect the like—none save Doon’s own blessed
gruagach.

A benevolent female spirit, older than the ages, she whiled on the islet now, toying with the ropey strands of seaweed tangled in her unbound hair, her very presence making her an interloper in time. A trespasser in a world she’d walked often and in many guises, some of them human.

A world that, at times, she’d held more dear than had been good for her.

In recent years by earth reckoning, she’d thought she’d found peace at last, believed she’d addressed and attended the duties gathered during her last sojourn upon Doon’s fair shores.

But certain tasks yet bound her, in particular the malevolence of a vengeful soul soiled by irrevocable darkness.

So she returned again and again, braving the loneliness of her perch in the sea, and scarce noting the waves, breaking high and icy cold against the islet’s treacherous rocks.

With an ache in her heart, but a purpose unbending, she endured the lashing wind and steady drizzle, her gaze ever fixed on the massive walls of Baldoon, mighty stronghold of the MacLeans and her last home in a world she’d not quite been ready to leave.

In that short mortal existence, she’d been Iain MacLean’s first bride. Fated to perish at the hand of a greed-consumed kinsman for the good her passing would eventually bring the clans whose well-being she was destined to guard.

And now, in her true form once more, she sheltered them from every dark wind and sought to keep them from harm for so long as they walked the earth.

Her great love for them welling in her heart, she watched Baldoon’s silent walls and sent those within all her goodwill and strength. Welcoming light shone from a few of the castle’s narrow-slit windows, the golden warmth beckoning fiercely, but only as echoes of another time.

Precious memories of days gone by, each one caught up by the wind and hurtled through the night as swiftly as they’d come. Bittersweet moments vanishing without a trace, just as the dark one’s rantings just now, had struck and then sped past her. Each malediction barreling onward to plague and unsettle other hapless souls who, like her, ought better be at rest.

So she tore her longing from a place she’d best tread no more, and made cause with the windy night . . . with the powers imbued in her present state.

By a softly muttered incantation or two, and a fervent belief in the good of her work, the
gruagach
summoned a fine and luminous mist of green.

Just enough magic for the whisper of a sigh to whisk her from the wave-splashed rocks of the tidal islet, so bound to her by fate, to the comforting hearthside of a trusted friend—the cozy thatched cottage of Devorgilla, Doon’s e’er-dutiful and revered wisewoman.

Not that the
gruagach
sought a fireside blether this darkest of nights, nor even a taste of the
cailleach’s
famed heather ale. Truth be told, Devorgilla slept . . . if her intermittent snores and wheezes were any indication.

For a good long while, the
gruagach
peered down at the old woman, then gave a light wave of her hand, filling the room with a soft, shimmering mist of palest green. A wee precautionary measure to keep the crone lost in her dreams, and to win herself a few unobserved moments to look about and see if her quiet urgings had been heeded.

Or if a stronger, more forceful intervention would be required.

Hoping not, the
gruagach
paused beside Devorgilla’s central hearth fire, turned a lingering glance on the soft-glowing clumps of turf. Acknowledging a weakness she usually suppressed, she allowed herself one deep-drawn breath of the homey, peat-scented smoke, savoring its heart-piercing familiarity before she moved on.

Before she regretted her chosen path.

But the smoky-sweet smell of the burning peat clung to her, its wispy blue curls seeming to follow her across the tidy, stone-flagged floor. Her throat tight—far too tight for one such as she—the
gruagach
ignored her yearning, and hastened toward a rough wooden shelf running the length of the far wall.

The
cailleach’s
stock of spelling goods was kept here, and somewhere amidst its clutter ought be the object she sought: a small vial of precious content—sacred earth collected from the grave of Eithne, mother of Saint Columba. And known by all to have miraculous properties.

A more powerful protection could scarce be had . . . not that the
gruagach
would e’er tell Devorgilla any such thing. The
cailleach
could work wonders of her own with her fossilized bat’s wings and powdered toe bone of toads.

It just wouldn’t hurt to see a bit of stronger magic, tactfully presented as earth snatched from beneath a slumbering
tarbh uisge,
slipped in with the rest.

In especial when one’s opponent walked in such hate.

Aye, to be sure, no one would frown on her for claiming the earth came from the lair of a water bull—the most feared of all creatures to dwell in Highland lochs.

Old Devorgilla herself had been known to twist the truth a time or two. Albeit only for the benefit of those who depended on her skill.

Thus satisfied in her wee deception, the
gruagach
searched amongst Devorgilla’s treasures until she happened upon her own contribution to the crone’s supply of charms. And to her great relief, the vial she’d slipped amongst the clutter proved empty. Only a residual glimmer of soft, luminous green remained.

A faint glow at the bottom of the vial.

The crone had taken the bait.

Her heart much lighter, the
gruagach
dropped a kiss on Devorgilla’s furrowed cheek. Then she smiled. A wan smile and far too fleeting, but a
sweet
smile nonetheless.

And one that, if only for a moment, made her look almost as real and lovely as she had in her most fondly remembered guise.

The one just past, when she’d been the young bride of a braw MacLean man and gone by the name of Lileas.

“One-and-twenty, two-and-twenty, three-and-twenty . . .”

Panting in a manner that could nowise be called feminine, Amicia paused for breath on the twenty-third step, one hand pressed to the curve of her hip, the other planted firmly against her breasts.

A scowl dark as the rainy night soiled her sweat-dampened brow, and her spirits, usually high, were in grave danger of swinging as foul as the musty air in this forsaken, out-of-the-way stair tower.

“I’ faith!” she gasped, speaking to Boiny. Though, at the moment, achy-limbed and exhausted as she was, she’d shout her frustration to any who’d lend her an ear.

“Death itself would be kinder than traipsing up and down these stairs yet one more time,” she told her tongue-lolling companion.

Wisely supine on the next landing, just two circular steps above her, Boiny cocked a canine brow, fullest sympathy in his milky-brown eyes.

She
ought to be so sensible.

Ought to still be sitting straight-backed at her place at the high table . . . ignoring Janet’s sullen-eyed glares as best she could. Or better yet, safely ensconced within the sanctuary of her own bedchamber, abed and sleeping.

Blessedly oblivious to her cares and the terrors of never-ending spiral stairs.

The rigors of mounting, descending, and reascending them.

A torture she’d engaged in every evening for the last three nights. Each time, she’d escaped the high table by pleading a wish to retire early. Then, with old Boiny trotting along at her heels, she’d made for the most remote turnpike stair in Coldstone Castle and used its smooth-worn steps to pare her well-fleshed form.

To
hopefully
whittle down her welling curves.

And, since her husband would ne’er have desired her enough to
steal
her as his more romantically inclined ancestors had been known to do, to better her chances of at least being an
un
shunned wife.

But even now, after days of tedious, ongoing labors, she could not detect a hint of improvement in her generously curved hips. Not one wee indication that the full-rounded swell of her breasts had diminished.

Far from it, they pressed damp and heaving against her straining bodice . . . large and cushiony-seeming as always.

Infinitely annoying.

Swiping the back of her hand over her perspiring brow before another bead of stinging sweat could roll onto her eyelashes, she gritted her teeth and prepared to climb and descend the stairs one last time.

Only through persistence would she succeed at making
less
of herself.

Succeed at making herself more appealing for Magnus MacKinnon.

Making herself more . . . delicate and nymphlike.

More like wee tiny-bosomed Janet.

A maid he clearly favored despite his firm denials.

“We’ve seen them kiss, haven’t we, lad?” She leaned down to stroke Boiny’s gray head as she passed him on the landing. “And the way he looks at her, speaks to her! As if she’d melt unless treated with fullest care . . . fair smothered with charm.”

Her ire mounting, Amicia climbed to where the next wall sconce flickered, pausing just long enough to choke on its smoking torch flame before she wheeled about and began her final trek down the dank-smelling stairs.

“That teensy-waisted viper has coldest steel flowing in her veins, I vow it,” she huffed, not bothering to speak softly.

Nor to keep the bitterness from her tone.

No one could hear her save old Boiny, the damp walls, and the constant patter of rain on stone.

Or so she thought until the swish of heavy skirts and a not-so-discreet cough told her otherwise.

Feeling as if a storm of ill fortune had just unleashed its wrath upon her, she looked down the stairwell to see Dagda peering up at her through the gloom.

Coldstone Castle’s self-proclaimed seneschal stood beneath an arrow slit window not four steps below her, a small but well-burning torch clutched in her hand. The fair Janet hovered just behind her. A beam of moonlight coming through the window slit fell slantwise across the younger woman’s face, emphasizing her ethereal beauty and glossing her flaxen braids to purest, shimmering silver.

A hot-pulsing ache, deep and tight, began spreading through Amicia’s chest. Even worse—because she couldn’t conceal it—a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead and dropped off the end of her nose.

Ne’er had she felt more ungainly.

Less a lady.

A stricken moan rose in her throat, lodging there, for she wasn’t about to let such an audible admission of distress pass her lips.

So she allowed herself the most manly gesture of swiping her sleeve across her damp brow—then sought to salvage her pride by drawing herself up to her full, lofty height, the minuscule Janet be damned.

Squaring her shoulders, she broke the silence at last. “A good eventide to you.”