Teresa Medeiros (4 page)

An old man strutted into the hall, trailed by a parade of ragged but forbidding men. Most were dressed as their chieftain was in mismatched tartans and trews. Sabrina shuddered, wondering how many people had died to clothe them. From what she had heard of the MacDonnells, she suspected their victims had found themselves stripped before their bodies had even cooled. The wilted plumes of their bonnets danced in the breeze from the open door.

The old man’s gnarled fingers clutched the hilt of a rusty claymore that dragged the ground with each step. Sabrina’s father had a similar antique mounted on his chamber wall.

“Dougal Cameron, ye worthless son of a whore!” the MacDonnell bellowed. Enid gasped and shifted her hands from her eyes to her ears.

Sabrina’s father swaggered forward, hands on hips and legs splayed in arrogant challenge. “Angus MacDonnell, you foolish goat-spawned bastard!” he roared in return.

The chieftain of the MacDonnells cocked his head like a canny parrot. “Is that any way to greet an ol’ friend?” he whined before throwing his arms around her glowering father and drawing him into a crushing embrace.

The hall resounded with alarmed cries. Brian and Alex rushed forward to ensure the wily old man wasn’t hiding a dirk in his knobby paw.

“The Glasgow stage lost a great actor in that one,” Sabrina whispered.

“I once read of an actor whose wig caught afire and—”

“Shhhh,” Sabrina hissed, not wanting to miss a word of her father’s reaction.

Dougal waved back his would-be rescuers and slapped Angus on the back. “Friend or enemy, Angus MacDonnell, welcome to Cameron Manor. Tonight we lay down our old grudges to feast together.” He stepped back and spread his arms wide. “As a sign of our goodwill, my men have laid down their weapons as well.” Arching his eyebrow, he gave the MacDonnell’s ancient claymore a pointed look.

A rumble of discontent and profanity rose from the motley band of Highlanders, but when their chieftain drew out his claymore with a flourish and tossed it down, they had no choice but to follow suit. An arsenal of broadswords, pistols, harquebuses, dirks, muskets, and clubs emerged from scabbards and hidden pockets to rain down on the stone floor. The clatter was deafening.

Sabrina took advantage of the confusion to search their ranks for Morgan’s slender form. But all thoughts of her old nemesis fled as a man who had been hanging behind the others stepped through the door in a swirl of night mist.

“Holy Hannah,” Enid breathed. “The legends are true! They
are
giants!”

Sabrina’s breath caught in her throat. The MacDonnells were tall, but this man towered head and shoulders over every other man in the hall. He neither strutted nor swaggered as his clansmen did. He didn’t have to. He wore no bonnet and his sun-burnished mane hung well past his shoulders. A belted hunter’s plaid of misty blue and black hugged his massive form, and Sabrina realized with shock that he was not only bare-kneed, but barefoot as well. He made the Cameron men in their European dress look effete by comparison. Sabrina wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a mad skirl of bagpipes herald his arrival, wailing in time to the throbbing drumbeat of her heart.

His back was to the gallery and she could see the tension knotted in the massive breadth of his shoulders as he drew a monstrous Lochaber ax from his belt. A primitive thrill of fear clutched her heart. It was too easy to imagine his muscled arms swinging the gleaming blade, cleaving off the heads …

Enid nudged her, already fumbling for the bottle of hartshorn she carried in her pocket to avert potential swoons. “You’re deathly pale. You’re not going to faint, are you?”

Sabrina wrinkled her nose and shoved the pungent spirits away. “Of course not.” She shook off a shiver, trying to convince herself revulsion had prompted it. “I just don’t fancy large men. Especially large men with such enormous … muscles.”

A dreamy sigh escaped Enid. “I shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss him if I were you. I know girls in London who would say he’s everything a man should be.”

And more
. The words rose unbidden to Sabrina’s mind. Furious at herself, she dug her chin deeper into her hand.

The man stepped up to the pile of weapons, the haft of the ax poised in his palm. He hesitated, the motion fraught with deliberate insolence. Sabrina frowned. That lethal combination of grace and arrogance chimed an elusive warning in the back of her mind.

Although her father was tall, he had to tilt back his head to meet the stranger’s gaze. Sabrina couldn’t fathom the long, enigmatic look that passed between the two men, but suddenly the tension in the hall shot even higher than it had been upon their enemies’ arrival.

The eyes of every MacDonnell lifted to the stranger, and Sabrina realized that for all of Angus’s posturing, this man was the true master of their clan. And the true danger to the Camerons.

The ax slid from his fingers and thunked down on the pile. Sabrina’s breath escaped in a relieved whoosh.

As if realizing he was losing his audience to a more masterful player, Angus MacDonnell bustled toward her mother. “Beth!” he cried, his wheedling tones ringing through the hall. “Ah, me beautiful Beth, would that e’er a face so fair had graced me own table!” He brought her clasped hands to his lips.

Sabrina stiffened, outraged. “Why, that disreputable rascal! Nobody but Papa dares to call her Beth.”

Her mother, gracious as always, curtsied before him, then took his arm to lead him to the table. Sabrina noted with satisfaction that her mother towered several inches over the wizened gnome. A man shrouded in a hooded plaid followed in their wake, dragging his left leg behind him.

“Eerie creature, isn’t he?” Enid whispered.

Sabrina nodded her agreement, not finding him nearly as eerie as the muscled barbarian squeezed between her brothers.

Three long trestle tables had been arranged in a U shape. Her father and the MacDonnell sat side by side at the center of the connecting table, their backs to the heavy tapestries strung along the wall. Elizabeth took her place at her husband’s side, while the hooded man
hovered like a cloud of doom behind the MacDonnell’s bench.

After perfunctory grumbling over the fact that all the knives had been removed from the table, the MacDonnells fell upon the feast prepared for them. The hall resounded with satisfied grunts and growls, but very little conversation. The Camerons exchanged amused glances. A striking MacDonnell with an aberrantly dark tangle of hair plucked up the entire haunch of venison intended for that table and began to gnaw on it. Sabrina’s mother gave the gaping maid a frantic signal.

Enid’s eyes softened with sympathy for a kindred soul. “The poor dear must be starving!”

As goblets and bellies were filled and refilled, the mood mellowed. Snatches of song and bursts of good-natured talk came drifting toward the gallery. Sabrina’s gaze was drawn back to the blond behemoth. Unlike his clansmen, he picked at his meat and drank only water, leaving his goblet of wine untouched. Perhaps he feared it was poisoned, she thought. But then, why would he allow his clansmen to partake of it? He sat in the midst of them, yet apart, resisting all of Brian’s and Alex’s attempts to draw him into conversation. Wariness tautened his massive shoulders, stretching the worn tartan to dangerous lengths.

A pang of empathy tugged Sabrina’s heart. She knew how it felt to be surrounded by others yet feel alone. As an only daughter blessed with two rowdy brothers, adoration had been her birthright. But adoration did not always mean acceptance. Her brothers still tended to treat her like a child, but she accepted it as the price she must pay for their love.

A snore tickled her ear. Enid had dozed off, her head pillowed on folded arms. Leave it to her cousin to choose a sound slumber over the most thrilling night in Cameron history. Shaking her head in bemusement, Sabrina peeled off her woolen shawl and laid it over Enid.

In the hall below, Angus MacDonnell had raised his goblet. His slurred voice began an endless litany of
toasts to the MacDonnells, the Camerons, and the entire Scottish race. Sabrina wouldn’t have been surprised to see the flamboyant little rooster jump on the table.

Her gaze slid away against its will. The bench was empty. The tawny-maned barbarian was gone. A hollow feeling opened deep in her belly.

Then a flicker of movement caught her eye. She slammed her cheek against the floor, praying the shadows beneath the banner would hold. The stranger had taken advantage of his chieftain’s boasting to slip up the stairs undetected. Her heart thundered in her throat as she peered toward the opposite end of the long gallery to see him disappear into the sanctuary of her mother’s solar, his stealthy grace a disquieting contrast to his size.

Her hands knotted into fists. The wretch had to be up to no good. Leave it to a MacDonnell to use her father’s hospitality as an excuse for thievery or ambush. Indignation flooded her, tempering her fear. She cast Enid a frantic glance, knowing already that her stolid cousin would be of no help.

Her lips tightened. She might never have a better chance to earn her brothers’ respect. Alex and Brian might believe her too callow to face a banquet hall of MacDonnells, but she wasn’t too callow to face one MacDonnell caught in his treachery. She envisioned her brothers’ mouths dropping open as she marched the sneaky giant down into the hall at the end of a Cameron blade. Let the crafty Angus charm his way out of that one!

Refusing to give herself time to lose her nerve, she leapt to her feet and sprinted for the darkened corridor that led to her father’s chambers.

Morgan slipped into the solar and drew the door closed behind him, shutting out the raucous merriment below. Soothing fingers of peace and dark enveloped him. Leaning his back against the door, he drew in a hungry breath. His nostrils tingled at the attar of roses that lingered on the air. This room had haunted him for seven
years, and he had to see it one more time if only to banish its charms from his memory.

His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Misty moonlight trickled through the casement windows, spinning a delicate web of light and shadow over the solar’s treasures. A muffled chirp and rustle warned him he had awakened the tiny yellow finches that always hung in a golden cage beside the door.

“Hello, wee fellows,” he whispered. “No need to set up a squawk. ’Tis just Morgan. Remember me?” He lifted his finger to the cage, only to discover it had grown too big to fit between the bars.

Unaccountably chagrined, he left the birds to their mutterings and padded toward the bookshelves. If the hall below was the head of Cameron Manor, the solar was its heart. This was where the family had gathered each night to share stories and laughter and songs. To Morgan it had seemed the gateway to another world, a world of books and music and paintings, a world where a man could dare to dream.

His summers at Cameron had served only to set him apart from his own kind. They had trimmed the rough edges from his speech, rendered his ideas more dangerous. Upon returning to his clan each autumn, he’d been forced to parry the taunts of his clansmen and fight for his very survival until eventually there was no one left to best. His father had watched his battles with ill-disguised glee and savage pride, knowing his future as chieftain was assured.

He drew out a leather-bound volume. Already half in love with Elizabeth Cameron by the summer he was fourteen, he had proudly spurned all of her offers to teach him to read. But that hadn’t stopped him from skulking in the shadows while she read aloud to her children each night. He would grip his knees in excitement as her cultured voice recited tales of bold warriors and cunning gods who sailed the seas in mighty ships. He would sneak back the next morning to caress those same books in his reverent hands.

The book fell open to a richly illustrated woodcut. It was his old friend Prometheus, nailed to a rock, his
face contorted in agony as the eagle dove down to peck at his liver. Sometimes Morgan felt a bit like poor beleaguered Prometheus, eternally chained to a bleak cliff while his clan ate him alive. He slammed the book shut. He’d do well to remember its words were only gibberish to him, its pictures only childish fables.

A hand-carved clarsach was propped on a table beside the harpsichord. Morgan plucked one of its gossamer strings. A delicate note shivered on the air, jarring the silence. He jerked his hand back. He had often wondered if his own life would have known such genteel pleasures if Elizabeth had chosen to wed his father instead of Dougal Cameron. Or would Angus have eventually crushed even her indomitable spirit?

Morgan knew nothing of his own mother except what his father had told him—that in his own crude, violent struggle to enter the world, Morgan had killed her. The note of pride in Angus’s voice had both appalled and shamed him. His father hadn’t even troubled himself to remember her name.

A sparkle of light caught his eye. A crystal rose lay nestled on a wing of velvet atop the harpsichord. A strange ache caught in his throat. A rose, sweet and feminine, like a charm from one of Elizabeth’s beloved fairy tales, fragile, yet enduring enough to change even a beast like him into a prince.

He chuckled at his own whimsy, but was still helpless to keep from lifting it, from twirling the delicate stem between his callused fingers to watch its luminous petals capture the moonlight.

Without warning the door behind him crashed into the opposite wall. Morgan swung around to find himself facing yet another exotic creature of myth.

A princess, her cloud of dark hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, the light behind her throwing every curve beneath her ivory nightdress into magnificent relief. Her slender fingers were curled not around a scepter, but around the engraved hilt of a ceremonial claymore.

Silvery fingers of moonlight caressed the five feet of steel that lay between her hands and his heart.

“Hold your ground, rogue MacDonnell,” she sweetly snarled. “One false move and I’ll be taking your head back downstairs without the rest of you.”

Morgan didn’t even feel the pain as the rose snapped in his hand, embedding its stem deep into his palm.