The Dream Catcher (12 page)

‘What dancers?'

‘Cameron hired five dancers and four musicians for his birthday ball at Westmore Manor. There should have been six girls but one of them was mugged and her body was found in the harbour the night before the
Sea Lady
sailed. Sadly, it isn't unusual. The girls are easy targets for thieves because they carry all their earnings on their person, in the shape of gold and silver coins and baubles they thread into necklaces and bracelets.'

He narrowed his eyes again. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about these dancers.'

More than he'd ever know. She came alive listening to their music. She danced like them. She danced with them. And at times, she even felt she was one of them.

‘One can't live in Bou Saada and not know about the
Ouled Nail
,' she said in a quiet voice before drinking up her whisky. ‘They're very much part of the local culture.'

He turned to face the fire and they were both silent. She stared at his broad back, the solid mass of his shoulders under the black jacket, his long, muscular legs clad in black trousers and scuffed boots, his unfashionably long dark hair. Even when he didn't move or talk, there was something overbearing and threatening about him.

She swallowed hard. Behind him the flames hissed and whispered in the fireplace, their amber light outlining his silhouette. The night was so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat and breathing.

Her head felt fuzzy suddenly, and her body too warm. She shook her cloak and bolero off, unfastened the top buttons of her shirt and leaned back in her chair.

‘I can't understand why McRae hired Algerian dancers in the first place,' Lord McGunn said at last, still staring at the fire.

‘He said he wanted something unusual for his birthday. A surprise.'

‘That would be two surprises, with the announcement of your marriage… Perhaps he needs his inheritance so badly he wants to speed up the old dragon's demise.'

He turned round. This time surprise flickered on his face as his gaze slid over her, slow and intense. His eyes were so dark and hot her body tightened and tingled all over in response, in a strange, awkward way, almost as if it wasn't just his eyes that roamed over her body but his hands as well.

She straightened in the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She shouldn't have drunk that whisky, it made her feel all hot and funny.

‘What old dragon?'

He smiled.

‘Lady Patricia, of course. Actually, some people say that comparing her to a dragon is unfair to dragons. Then again, others claim it would be more accurate to call her a female Black Donald.'

‘Black Donald?' Rose lifted a hand to her throat. ‘Isn't that what people around here called the devil?'

He nodded. ‘Aye, and believe me, the woman deserves her reputation. Anyway, I spoke to all my staff at the Lodge, and at the fisheries, as well as most people in and around the village. None of them saw Malika before tonight.'

He drank a sip of whisky, pictured once again the dead woman's pale, bruised face, her huge dark eyes open onto the grey skies. Like Fenella's, Malika's body had emerged from the sea, as if she'd been held captive by the blue men of the Minch then released back into the world of humans.

And yet she must have travelled on the
Sea Lady.
The only thing for him to do was to ride to Westmore and find out what McRae, the dancers and the musicians knew about Malika.

He wouldn't tell Rose, of course. She would only insist that he take her with him, and he needed her here at Wrath Lodge – safe, or captive, depending on how you looked at it – while he renegotiated the bank loans with McRae and investigated the puzzle over the two deaths.

Why did he have the feeling he'd seen Malika the night McNeil helped him fight a gang of attackers in Inverness? Unfortunately McNeil, the only man who could help sharpen his hazy memory, had left for Alltnacailich earlier on that day. Apparently Bruce himself had sent him there on estate business, even though he had no recollection of doing so. But then again, he did forget all kinds of things these days.

If he couldn't tell Rose about his plan to ride to Westmore, at least he could tell her about the arrangements he'd made for Malika's burial.

‘By the way, your friend's funeral will take place early tomorrow morning in Balnakiel church. The MacKay girl will be buried there later in the day.'

Rose looked up.

‘Thank you.'

He nodded, suddenly unable to speak as his gaze travelled up and down her body, taking in the details of her flimsy exotic princess costume. Her shirt was so thin it hardly hid the soft swell of her breasts. She wore no corset, no stays, and he could make out the tight buds of her nipples straining against the fabric.

He tried, and failed, to ignore the vivid image that surged into his mind: of him opening the shirt and trailing his tongue down from her throat to those full, round breasts before taking her nipples into his mouth until she moaned and writhed in his arms.

As if she could read his mind, her smooth, creamy skin flushed a delicious shade of pink and she parted her lips. His eyes lingered over the sheer purple pantaloons that draped over her slender legs. What it would feel like to yank her against him right now, stroke the silky fabric covering her hips before pulling them down to uncover her bare skin?

He exhaled sharply, and made himself look away. What was wrong with him? He was behaving like a green boy. The woman was entirely at his mercy, she had just suffered the tragic loss of a friend, and all he could think to put his hands, his mouth, on her. And to top it all, she was McRae's wife!

His voice was a little hoarse when he spoke next.

‘Actually, there is something else I'd like to know. How did you and McRae meet? I mean why did he travel to North Africa in the first place? I wasn't aware that he had business interests there.'

‘It wasn't business that brought us together, but fate,' she answered.

‘Fate?'

‘Fate, and our fathers.'

She pointed to the broadsword hanging on the wall, which glowed faintly with reds and oranges.

‘You know of course that Niall McRae, Cameron's father, was in the Gordon Highlanders, like yourself, I believe. Two days before Waterloo, in June 1815, my father's Cuirassier Regiment and the Gordon Highlanders clashed at Quatre-Bras. Niall McRae was mortally wounded that day. It was my father who looked after him.'

McGunn looked surprised. ‘Really? Please carry on.'

‘He recorded their meeting in his military journal, which was later lost in the French War Ministry's archives in Paris. It was only returned to my mother six months ago.'

‘It took the French army thirty years to return it?'

She nodded. ‘That's right. As soon as she read the entries concerning Niall McRae, my mother wrote to the British Embassy in Algiers with a letter to be forwarded to Lady Patricia, in which she offered to make copies of the pages concerning her late husband.'

‘And?'

Rose pulled a face.

‘A couple of months later we received a rather… forceful letter from Lady Patricia demanding that the diary be sent to Westmore at once. Apparently she didn't trust my mother to make a faithful copy and wanted to see the diary for herself.'

‘Needless to say, my mother didn't care much for the tone or the content of the letter. She replied that if Lady McRae wanted to see the original document, she would have to travel to North Africa herself because she would under no circumstances part with my father's diary. It was far too precious to risk losing it again.'

She must have seen the unspoken question in his eyes.

‘My father died seven years ago, killed in an ambush by the French army.'

‘Killed by his own side? I don't understand.'

‘He'd gone to help villagers hiding in a mountainside cave who were wrongly accused of helping Abd el Kader's rebels. The French ambushed them and killed them all. They later claimed they didn't know my father was there.'

There was raw grief and anger in her voice, her eyes shone with tears again.

‘So what happened with Lady Patricia and the journal?' he asked, abruptly changing the topic of conversation.

‘She wrote back to say that Cameron would travel to Algiers and requested that my mother meet him there with the diary. My mother made all the travel arrangements but at the last minute she had to leave for Djanet for the birth of my brother's baby, so I went in her place with Akhtar, our old servant, and Malika.'

‘You are telling me that McRae travelled all the way to Algiers just to read a few pages in an old diary…' Bruce hissed a whistle between his teeth. ‘Whatever is in that journal?'

‘It's an account of Niall McRae's dying moments.'

‘I see. Where is the diary now? I suppose you gave it to McRae and he took it to his mother.'

She shook her head. ‘Oh no, I have it here, in my tapestry bag. I promised my mother I'd never part with it. So you see, in a way I have my father and Niall McRae to thank for meeting the man I love.'

The man she loved? A flare of anger burned through him. McRae was a depraved rake, a gambler, a cruel landlord. He didn't deserve to be loved by any woman, let alone by one as naive and gullible as Rose.

As if echoing his feelings, the claymore glowed like a straight, incandescent flame on the wall, then became dull again. Funny how he'd never noticed until tonight how it reflected the flames in the fireplace…

‘Another question, if you don't mind. Why didn't you sail on the
Sea Lady
with McRae?'

Her face closed up at once.

‘I… I do not wish to speak about it,' she said in a shaky voice.

He narrowed his eyes. There was definitely something very odd about the whole story of McRae sailing to Algiers to get his hands on an old war diary, and about him sailing away again without his new bride… Whatever it was, the young woman wouldn't tell him anything more tonight.

‘Come on,' he said as he set his empty glass on the mantelpiece. ‘I'll take you to your room now, in case you lose your way and end up in someone else's bed.'

She glanced up, her face and throat blushed a deep pink, and the pulse at the base of her throat beat faster. ‘There is really no need to remind me of that unfortunate incident. I can assure you that I have no intention of ever venturing into your room again, or following any mysterious lady around the castle tonight.'

‘I already told you there was no mysterious lady.'

Her eyes flashed with annoyance. ‘There was a lady and you saw her. How else would you know that she was wearing a dark cloak? What's more, Morag knows about her too. She was very upset this afternoon when I told her.'

‘I hope you didn't trouble her, today of all days, with your silly stories.' He hardened his stare.

‘This was no silly story. The woman does exist.'

He snorted. ‘Shall I tell you why Morag was upset? Today is the anniversary of the death of her husband and young son. They were caught on McRae land and accused of sheep rustling, thirty-two years ago. After weeks in jail and a summary trial, they were hanged in Thurso. They lost their lives for two sheep. The lad was only fourteen.'

Rose gasped, and her eyes widened in shock.

‘They were hanged for stealing two sheep?'

‘There was no evidence they'd even stolen anything. It was their word against Morven's. Morag travelled to Westmore to petition Lady Patricia and ask for her husband's and her son's lives to be spared. They were granted a few weeks' reprieve then they were executed anyway.' He took a deep breath. ‘So Morag being upset today had nothing whatsoever to do with this imaginary lady of yours.'

He was in no mood to talk as he led the way in silence along the castle's dark, quiet corridors and up the stairs.

When he opened the door to her room, Rose gestured towards the mantelpiece.

‘Morag knows about the lady,' she insisted. ‘She was the one who mentioned her after I asked about the musical clock.'

He could feel the headache start, take root and pulse at the back of his eyes.

‘What musical clock?'

‘The clock on the mantelpiece. It plays a lovely tune after ringing the hour and the little shepherdess does a dance too. I asked Morag what the tune was called.'

‘It's called “My Fair Love's Lament”,' he said in a whisper.

She frowned. ‘You know it too? Morag said the clock was broken, and then she went on to talk about the lady. So you see I didn't make her up at all. She does exist.'

He shook his head. ‘No, she doesn't. Not really.'

He turned his heels and closed the door before she could ask him what he meant.

Chapter Nine

‘Réveilles-toi, petite danseuse. Il a besoin de toi.'

‘Wake up, dancing girl, he needs you
,' the voice whispered in French again.
‘They're coming for him. Hurry, or he'll die.'

Rose moaned, rolled on her back and pulled the sheets over her head.

Sleep, she needed more sleep. Dark thoughts had kept her awake well into the night, together with the clock's chiming and the music which sounded louder and louder as the hours ticked by. After the clock struck two, she had jumped out of bed, stomped to the fireplace and grabbed hold of it with the intention of sticking it in the wardrobe under a pile of linen. But something had held her back and she had returned the clock to the mantelpiece, climbed back into bed and buried her head under the pillows instead.

And now she'd finally managed to fall asleep, a woman was doing her very best to wake her up.
He
was in danger,
he
needed her. The voice didn't say who
he
was. It didn't need to. Somehow she knew who it was talking about.

Bruce McGunn.

Why was she dreaming about him? And more to the point, why should she care if he was in any danger at all? Her eyes still closed, Rose pulled the cover down, sniffed the cold air and wrinkled her nose. How infuriating, even in dream she could smell the man's pine shaving soap.