The Dark Highlander (24 page)

Focus, Zanders. You’re going to make yourself sick from excitement.

No archaeologist entering a heretofore sealed and forgotten tomb could have felt any giddier. Her heart was racing, her palms sweaty, and she was not managing deep breaths very well. She strode forward, pushing past the two men, determined to see all she could before they remembered her and perhaps thought twice about letting her see it. She was in an ancient underground chamber, surrounded by her most favorite things: dusty relics from ages long past. Relics that would send the scholars in her century into paroxysms of joy, giving them topics to gnaw on and argue contentedly about for the rest of their lives.

There were stone tablets chiseled with Irish oghamic inscriptions. More stones with what looked like Pictish ogham script, a script modern scholars had never succeeded in translating, as Picts had adopted Irish ogham but hadn’t been able adapt it to their own language since Pictish and Gaelic were phonetically incompatible. Maybe they could teach her how to read it! she thought, dizzied by the possibility.

There were cloth-bound volumes, secured and tied in faded fabric, leather-bound volumes and scrolls, enameled plates, hand-stitched codices, bits of armor and weaponry, and—heavens—even that long-forgotten flagon was a relic!

After a few moments of breathless perusal, she glanced over her shoulder at Dageus and Silvan who’d paused just inside the chamber, their heads bent above a squat stone column upon which lay a sheet of gold.

“Da, is this what I think it is?” Dageus’s voice sounded strangled.

“Aye, ’tis The Compact, as legend told, etched upon a sheet of pure gold.”

“That’s not very sensible,” Chloe pointed out faintly. “It’s too malleable. Pure gold is too soft, too easily damaged. That’s why so many of the ancient torcs had cores of iron beneath the gold. Well, that and to help deflect a potential sword. What Compact, anyway?”

“Precisely their purpose,” Silvan murmured, lightly tracing the edge of the gold sheet. “’Twas said they did it to symbolize how fragile The Compact was. To underscore that it must be handled gently.”

“What Compact?” Chloe asked again, stepping gingerly between a pile of leather-bound tomes and a heartbreakingly rusted shield, peering deeper into the shadowy corners of the chamber. She wondered if they’d let her live down here for a while. Another glance at Dageus made her recant that thought. Unless he lived down there with her.

“The Compact betwixt the Tuatha Dé Danaan and man.”

Chloe sat down heavily on her bottom.

“Not on the tomes!” Silvan gasped.

Chloe, startled, toppled sideways and sprawled on the dusty stone floor, appalled that she’d just planted her rump on a pile of priceless texts. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m just a little over-excited. How old is it supposed to be? What language is it in? Can you translate it? What does it say?”

Silvan busied himself sorting through an urn of scrolls.

Dageus shrugged. “No idea what language it’s in.”

“You can’t read it?”

“Nay,” Dageus muttered.

Silvan harrumphed.

Chloe’s eyes narrowed but she decided to leave it alone for the moment. She was feeling light-headed again and didn’t want to push it. She needed to slowly absorb her new perspective of history, one that included both Druids with the power to manipulate time itself, and the existence of an ancient civilization that had possessed knowledge and technology advanced far beyond anything man had ever achieved.

Grandda had been right—the Tuatha Dé Danaan had once lived, and not just in myth!

Breathe, Zanders
, she told herself, dropping to her knees on the floor and reaching for the nearest tome.

Many hours later, Chloe rested her head back against the cool stone wall and closed her eyes, listening to Silvan and Dageus talk. Languages she couldn’t translate, scribed in long-unused alphabets, danced on the insides of her eyelids.

There was dust in her hair, on her face and in her nose, she was wearing a dust-covered medieval gown in a castle that had no showers or indoor plumbing, and she couldn’t have been happier. Well, unless she’d been sent back in time to the Alexandrian Library right after Anthony had given Cleopatra the Pergamum Library, bringing the estimated total of volumes housed therein to nearly a million, if anything historians claimed was to be trusted.

“So, according to the journal you found, our ancestors rarely used this chamber, passing the knowledge of the place only from laird to eldest son?” Dageus was saying. His deep burr sent little shivers of sexual awareness through her.

“Aye,” Silvan replied. “I spent a bit of time paging through it yestreen. The most recent entry was made in eight hundred and seventy-two. ’Tis my guess the laird died unexpectedly and, like as not, quite young, and the chamber was forgotten.”

“All this history,” Dageus said, shaking his head. “All this lore, and we never even knew about it.”

“Aye. Had we, things might have been very different. Mayhap some of us would have made different choices.”

Chloe opened her eyes a slit. There’d been a strange, pointed note in Silvan’s voice when he’d made the last comment. She studied Dageus’s chiseled profile, bronzed by the flickering candlelight, wondering what he wasn’t telling her. She’d not forgotten about the curse or his unceasing searching of the old tomes. Though she’d had ample opportunity to ask him yesterday, she’d not wanted anything to mar the wonder of their day together.

Truth was, she didn’t want anything to mar the wonder of this day, either. She would zealously defend it from the merest hint of gloom. She’d never felt so bubbly, so elated, and she didn’t want it to end. She—who always pushed inquisitively, who never took “I don’t know” for an answer—abruptly had no desire to make even the smallest inquiry.

Tomorrow
, she promised herself.
I’ll ask him tomorrow
.

For now, between suddenly finding herself in the past, experiencing passion with such an intense man, and discovering so many treasures, she had enough to contend with. She was having a hard time just keeping pace. Merely pondering the fact that she was in the sixteenth century was overwhelming enough.

As if he felt her gaze on him, Dageus turned his head suddenly and looked straight into her eyes.

His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, his gaze hot and possessive. “Da, Chloe needs a bath,” he said, without taking his gaze from hers. He caught his lower lip with his teeth and all the muscles in her lower body clenched. “
Now
.”

“I’m a bit dusty myself,” Silvan agreed after a brief, awkward pause. “I suspect we could all use a bit of a break and a bite to eat.”

Dageus rose, seeming larger than usual in the confines of the low-ceilinged chamber. He held out his hand. “Come, lass.”

Chloe went.

“Must we chain him like that?” Gwen asked, frowning.

“Aye, love,” Drustan replied. “He’ll kill himself before he’ll talk, if I’m fool enough to give him the opportunity.”

They stepped back, staring through the bars of the dungeon where a lean man with close-cropped brown hair was chained to the wall, his arms and legs outspread. He snarled at them through the bars, but the sound was muffled by his gag.

“And you have to gag him?”

“He was muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a chant before I did. Unless I’m questioning him, he stays gagged. Doona venture down here without me, lass.”

“It just seems so . . . barbaric, Drustan. What if he’s not even involved in this?”

Drustan collected the assortment of personal possessions he’d removed from the man’s pockets before restraining him. He’d divested him of two lethally sharp daggers, a cell phone, a length of cord, a large amount of cash, and a few pieces of hard candy. The man carried no wallet, no identification, no papers of any sort. He tucked the phone, cord, and candy in his pocket, palmed the blades and wrapped an arm around Gwen’s shoulders, guiding her away from the cell toward the stairs.

“He is. I caught him lurking outside the study doors. When he saw me, he looked as if he recognized me. Then he looked puzzled and finally shocked. I’m fair certain he thought I was Dageus and didn’t know Dageus had a twin. Further, Dageus told me that Chloe told him her assailant had a tattoo on his neck. Though Dageus had no idea what kind of tattoo, ’tis entirely too coincidental that our intruder also has a tattoo on his neck. Aye, he’s involved. And though he’s not talking, he will,” he vowed with grim determination.

“None of this makes any sense to me. Why would anyone want to hurt Dageus or Chloe? What could they possibly want?”

“I doona ken,” Drustan growled. “But you may rest assured we’ll be finding out.”

21

It was stuffy in the chamber library and Dageus shifted
restlessly in his chair, then dropped to the floor and leaned his back against the cool stone wall. He glanced at Chloe and smiled wryly. Her mere presence made it damned hard for him to concentrate on the work at hand.

She was sitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in a corner of the underground chamber, poring, as she had been for some time now, over the fourth Book of Manannán. A few days ago, he’d swapped her for the fifth volume, so he might search that tome himself, since she was slower translating than he. Much to her extreme and oft-voiced consternation, she was unable to read most of the lore in the chamber. Scribed in forgotten dialects, using archaic alphabets compounded by grossly inconsistent spelling, the majority of them were impossible for her to decipher.

His hot gaze raked her from head to toe and he swallowed a little growl of ever-present desire. Dressed in a thin, clinging lilac gown—one of several Nell had altered for her, and he suspected Nellie was deliberately choosing ones to drive him to distraction—with a deeply scooped neckline and snug bodice, she was a vision. Her tousled curls spilled about her face and she was pinching her luscious lower lip, deep in thought. She got as lost as his da did in the old tales, becoming absorbed to the point of deafness.

When she shifted position, curling on her side on the soft cushions, her breasts pushed together above the neckline of her gown and lust quickened within him. Though he’d loved her upon awakening, as he did each morn, he ached anew to bury his face in that lush valley, kiss and lick and nibble till she was panting and crying his name.

The past ten days had passed swiftly, far too swiftly for Dageus’s taste. He wanted to halt time, to elongate each day, stretch it to the length of a year. To cram a lifetime into the now, suck it dry of the bittersweet joy of being mated.

Sweet because he had his woman.

Bitter because he had to stay his tongue, and not make promises he burned to speak. Promises that weren’t his to give because his future was uncertain. To his immense frustration, he couldn’t offer what small truths he possessed either, because Chloe still hadn’t asked him about the “curse.”

He wanted to tell her. He
needed
to tell her. Needed to know that she knew what he was and could accept it. Thrice he’d tested the waters, once in her dream, once later, while strolling the gardens with her beneath a silvery half-full moon. In her dream, she’d flinched and evaded. In her waking, she’d done the same.

The third time he’d begun speaking of it, she’d tugged his head down and used one of his tactics: She’d silenced him with a kiss and made him forget not only what he was about to say but what century he was in.

It wasn’t like him to fail to confront a difficult situation, but he’d reluctantly ceded to her resistance and let it go for the time being.

He had no doubt that, eventually, she would ask. Chloe was nothing if not tenaciously curious. He knew he’d burdened her with a great many new things in a very short time: time-travel, Druids, legendary races, new relics, the demands of his insatiable lusty appetites. She’d proven remarkably resilient. If she needed a bit of time to work her way around to beginning to ask questions again, he certainly couldn’t begrudge her the respite.

So for the past ten days, he’d focused instead on the sweet half of bittersweet, drawing succor from her sunny optimism and endless enthusiasm. Each day that passed, he grew ever more fascinated by her. He’d known she was intelligent, strong, and had a true heart, but it was the small things about her that truly enchanted him. The way her eyes went wide and excited whenever Silvan read a choice bit from one of the texts. The way she’d stood hovering above The Compact for half an hour, hands curling, but refusing to touch because she wouldn’t risk marring the soft gold with so much as a fingerprint. The way she chased his young half brothers around the hall in the evenings after supper, pretending she was “a wee fierce beastie,” until they were shrieking with excitement and mock-fear. The way she teased his cantankerous da, flirting with him in a winsome way, until she succeeded in bringing a blush to his wrinkled cheeks and a smile to his lips, chasing some of the worry from his somber brown eyes.

He was proud of the woman she was, and savagely possessive of her. He was fiercely glad that he’d been the one to awaken her to intimacy, that he was the one to whom she’d entrusted a small part of her heart.

Aye, he knew he’d touched her heart. She was not a lass who could hide her feelings, she simply didn’t possess such guards. Though she’d not said the words, he could see it in her eyes, and feel it in her caress. No woman had ever touched him quite the way she did. At times, it seemed she was touching him with near reverence, as if she was as awed as he was that they meshed so perfectly, two interlocking pieces of wood carved from the same tree.

She had no idea what it did to him to see her dressed in the colors of his clan, strolling through his childhood home. It made him feel all elemental warrior and lover, a man of fierce needs and primitive laws. The only thing that could make it sweeter would be if he, too, could don the Keltar colors again.

But that was a bearable loss. At a time when he’d expected little from life, she’d given him everything, including a reawakening of the wonder and hope he’d so long ago lost. The heathery fields seemed again fertile with burgeoning life. Everywhere he looked, he saw something of beauty: a wee pine marten questing the breeze, a golden eagle soaring overhead, tawny-crowned and majestic, mayhap simply a stately oak he’d walked past a hundred times but not truly seen. The night sky ablaze with stars seemed again full of secrets and miracles.

Chloe was a shaft of sunlight that had lanced through the storm clouds he’d lived beneath for so long, illuming his world.

She’d flung herself wholly and without reservation into their intimacy. She loved to touch, indeed, she seemed to crave it. She was constantly slipping her wee hand into his, or burying them in his hair, grazing his scalp with her nails. Like a wild tomcat who’d had absolute freedom, but known no place to call home, he savored the gentle constancy of the familiar touch of familiar hands.

He’d been right in thinking that with her, lovemaking might yield some indefinable result he’d not before experienced. Sex had always calmed and soothed him, easing his muscles, relaxing his mental tension, but now, when he fell sated, holding Chloe close, his heart was also at ease.

But if his present was a vast and sunny blue sky, his future was filled with the ominous roll of crashing thunderheads.

And he dare not forget that.

He dragged his gaze away from Chloe and inhaled deeply, forcing his thoughts back to less savory matters.

In the past ten days, though he and Silvan had discovered a wealth of long-forgotten information about their clan in the chamber library, and learned more about their purpose as Druids than they’d ever known, they’d still found no mention of the thirteen and scant information concerning their benefactors. Silvan was hoping they might find some way to contact the Tuatha Dé in the old records, but Dageus didn’t share his da’s optimism on that score. He wasn’t convinced the ancient race was even still about. And if they were, why would they bother to appear to a Keltar who’d fallen from grace when they’d not bothered to appear to any other Keltar? He wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d planted their traps in the in-between and gone away thousands of years ago, never to return.

The search was taking too long. In the twenty-first century there’d been a dearth of information, now there was too much, and sifting through it was an epic undertaking.

That wouldn’t have fashed him, except he’d recently noticed something that had made him realize time was critical: His eyes were no longer returning to gold, not even with their constant lovemaking. Nay, his eyes were now burnished copper, and darkening further each day.

Though he was using no magic, though he was tooping incessantly, though the ancient ones had not spoken again, the darkness inside him was changing him anyway, in the same manner that wine inevitably soaked into and permeated the cask that held it.

He could feel the thirteen growing stronger, and himself growing more comfortable with them. They’d been a part of him for so long that they were beginning to feel like another appendage—and why wouldn’t he use an extra hand? Now, instead of catching himself only a few times a day about to use magic for something simple like filling the bath, he was catching himself a score of times or more.

At least he was still catching himself. He knew that anon he wouldn’t. And in even yet more time, he wouldn’t care. That fine line he mustn’t cross was getting increasingly difficult for him to see clearly.

Rubbing his unshaven jaw, he wondered if it might be possible to strike some kind of deal with the thirteen.

Strike a deal with the devil?
his honor hissed.
Like what? They get to use your body
part
of the time? The devil cheats, you fool!

Aye, there was that worry. The beings in him were not honorable, could not be trusted. The mere fact that he was considering trying to barter with them proved how critical time had become.

And proved how desperate he was to find a way to secure some kind of future with Chloe.

Sighing, he turned his attention back to the text. Now more than ever, ’twas imperative he exercise utmost discipline. Though he’d far prefer to sweep Chloe into his arms, carry her from the chamber and show her more of his world, live only in the moment, he knew he had to revert to the schedule he’d kept in Manhattan.

Work from dawn till dusk, love Chloe only in the night, then work again whilst she slumbered.

He had his eye on much more than a few moons with his mate. He was determined that he would have his full measure of life with her.

When she got up and slipped from the chamber, he kept his gaze firmly fixed on the tome in his lap.

Chloe strolled blissfully through the gardens, marveling that already a week and a half had sped by. They’d been the finest days of her life.

Her time had been divided primarily between exploring the contents of the chamber library and exploring the newfound pleasure of passion. The explosive heat between her and Dageus was evidently palpable enough that on several occasions Silvan had ordered them to leave the chamber library, telling them dryly “to go . . . walk a wee or . . . some such activity. The two of you are like a pair of tea kettles, steaming up my tomes.”

The first time he’d said such a thing, Chloe had blushed furiously, but then Dageus had given her what she’d come to think of as The Look and she’d swiftly forgotten her embarrassment. He had a way of canting his head low and looking up at her, his dark gaze heated and intense, that never failed to make her weak-kneed with desire, thinking about all the things he was going to do to her.

Because she was unable to read a lot of the stuff in the chamber and was insatiably curious about the sixteenth century, while the men had worked, she’d stolen away frequently. She’d thoroughly explored the castle, leaving no part untouched: the buttery, the larders, the kitchens, the chapel, the armory, the garderobes (though scrupulously cleaned daily, those she could have done without), even Silvan’s tower library—where she was grateful to discover she could translate some of the more recent works. The elderly man had copies of every philosophical, ethical, mathematical, and cosmological treatise of historical significance on his meticulously organized shelves.

Also during those hours away from Dageus, she’d gotten to know Nell and had met his young half brothers, Ian and Robert, precious dark-haired two-and-a-half-year-old boys with sunny dispositions. She could hardly look at them without thinking what beautiful babies Dageus would make.

And that she’d like to be the one he made them with.

A delicious little shiver raced over her skin at the thought of making a family with him, building a future.

For the past ten days she’d watched him carefully and had concluded that he definitely cared about her. He treated her the same way Drustan had treated Gwen that day at Maggie’s castle, anticipating her desires: slipping from the chamber library to fetch her a cup of tea or a snack, or a damp cloth to wipe dust from her cheek. Disappearing into the gardens and returning with an armful of fresh flowers, leading her to bed and covering her naked body with them. Lazily, tenderly bathing her in the evenings before a peat fire, helping her plait her hair like Nell’s. She felt treasured, cosseted, and though he didn’t say it, loved.

She’d realized, while watching him and reflecting upon all she knew of him, that Dageus MacKeltar would probably never speak of love, unless someone spoke to him about it first. Gwen had essentially told her that much back in the stones.

Dageus doesn’t look for love from a woman because he’s never been given any reason to.

Well, Chloe Zanders was going to give him the reason to. Tonight. Over a romantic dinner in their bedchamber, which she’d already filled with urns of fresh-cut heather and dozens of oil globes that she’d pilfered from other rooms in the castle.

She’d set the scene, embellishing it with romantic touches, Nell had arranged the menu, and all she had to do was speak her heart.

And if he doesn’t say it back?
a niggling little doubt tried to surface.

She thrust it firmly away. She would entertain no doubts, no fears. A few days ago, over mugs of cocoa in the kitchens, she and Nell had had a long talk. Nell had openly shared her own experience with Silvan, and had told her about the twelve years they’d wasted. Chloe couldn’t imagine loving in silence for so long.

Twelve years! Sheesh, she wasn’t going to be able to wait twelve more
hours
.

When Chloe had been a teenager, not knowing anything about kissing, she’d practiced on a pillow, feeling inordinately silly, but how else was a girl supposed to get a feel for it? She’d read books, and avidly watched movies to see how lips met and where noses went, but it wasn’t the same as actually trying to press her lips to something. (Personally, she harbored the firm conviction that there wasn’t a person alive anywhere in the world that hadn’t practiced kissing on
something
. A mirror, a pillow, the back of their hand.)