The Highlander's Dark Seduction (Secrets of the Darroch Clan) (2 page)

Oblivious, the man only scowled before he continued, “Heaven or no, these
sidhe
bastards lurking at the edge of the clearing would rather eat yer soul for breakfast than sing an alleluia. We’d best hurry.” He held out a hand to her as if to help her from the carriage.

Or drag her from it by the hair, perhaps.

“Who are you?” She scooted away from his outstretched fingers, her voice shaking as it returned. “What have you done with my driver?”

The man canted back as if he’d been scalded.

“What have
I
done?” The Scotsman glared at her from under thick, dark eyebrows. His eyes were light but she could not determine their color as he glowered in the moonlight. He crossed powerful arms over his chest, his shoulders so square they might have been hewn from a quarry. A navy plaid draped around his waist and chest did not cover all that it should, providing her with a distracting lesson in male anatomy at a time when she should be defending herself. He carried a sword at his hip. An honest-to-God sword.

She swallowed hard, responding carefully.

“Lawrence does not answer when I call him,” she clarified, sitting up straighter, trying to hide her fear the same way she would when meeting a fierce hunting dog or a spirited mount. “Where is he?”

The dark gloom around them seemed to deepen, the silver mist on the trees glistening brighter in response. What caused that strange glow?

“Your driver stopped to answer the siren’s song of some soulless she-devil in the wood.” The stranger threw his hands in the air as if the very idea disgusted him. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll go moony-eyed for a poetry-spouting spectral yourself, so hurry lassie, before one of them kisses the sense right out of you and you’re turned into a wood nymph to plague me for the rest of my days.”

“Excuse me?” Her heart pounded faster. He ranted nonsense like a lunatic. Perhaps he’d escaped the asylum.

“The
sidhe
are coming.” His voice grew more urgent as he waved her forward. “Can ye not see their enchanted light all around? We must flee and fast.”

Surely he was crazed. Yet the only thing that gave her pause was that Lily had described seeing a man like this, in a forest like this one. Except no one but Lily had been able to see him.

“But I’m on my way to see my friend, Lillian Desalles, at Invergale. Once I retrieve my driver—”

The Highland menace leaned right into the carriage, his shoulders a hair’s breadth from hers so that she could feel the warmth of all that brawny flesh.

“That’s Lily
Darroch
, these days,” the man corrected her. “Yer friend is my new sister-in-law and ye have her to thank for sending me on this fool’s mission to bring ye to her!”

And with that cryptic warning, the man’s hands landed on her waist and hauled her toward him.

“No!” she cried out, shoving at his thick slab of shoulders even as he pulled her from the carriage, her skirts snagging on the door handle.

“We must hurry,” he urged, dodging a blow she aimed for his head. “Did ye nae hear? Lily sent me!”

He hefted her against his chest and she heard the fabric of her ruffled traveling gown shred down one seam. The horses danced backward at the commotion, or maybe it was the unnatural stillness of the forest that spooked them. Whatever it was, the animals bolted with the empty carriage, reins dangling.

“No!” Her bag was still strapped to the gleaming black cabin quickly disappearing. “Release me,” she huffed and struggled, twisting in her captor’s iron grip.

A noise rose up behind them. The sound distracted her, a distant hum on the breeze like a thousand bees swarming past her ear. The light in the forest grew, concentrating into a pinpoint of brightness so intense she would have shaded her eyes if she didn’t hold onto the Highlander’s shoulders for dear life.

“By the saints.” She gripped the man’s arms tighter, suddenly grateful for the breadth of his warrior’s body between her and that spinning white light as he pitched forward in a blazing sprint.

The humming sound exploded in her ears. The light blinded her. She ducked her forehead against the stranger’s shoulder, hiding from whatever was happening out there in this unholy place.

Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to block out the light and the sound and the fear. She concentrated on the man’s solid chest against hers. The feel of strong arms holding her tight.

Moments ago, she’d been afraid of him. Now, she understood that he kept her safe.

He ran like the wind. Maybe it was just another mad illusion since her perceptions all felt skewed. She focused on his steps, listening for his footfall on the dead leaves of the forest floor. She timed her breaths to his every fourth step. Then, as they moved farther away from the light and the peculiar nature of the forest clearing, her breathing slowed more.

Her captor had saved her.

Elizabeth acknowledged as much by the time he pulled up short and settled her on her feet. The cool feel of the dirt and pine needles came through her lightweight leather shoes and she curled her toes against a sudden chill now that the man no longer held her.

“Thank you.” Feeling off-balance in every way possible, she glanced up at her rescuer with new eyes.

He blinked fast, the nuances of his expression more difficult to see now that they’d moved away from the unnatural brightness of… whatever had happened back there. Still, she had the sense her gratitude caught him off guard as he whistled softly to a huge horse that emerged from the trees.

“It was but a moment’s work.” He waved away her thanks as if he didn’t know what to do with it. “I have been at the job for many a year.”

His Scots brogue was softer now. Less noticeable. Still, he would never pass for a noble lord at Balmoral. And thank goodness for that. A lord from her auntie’s party probably would have left her to her own devices in that clearing and fled with the carriage horses. The man was pleasing enough to look upon though. Strong features gave his face a rough-hewn appearance with prominent cheekbones and a chiseled jaw. Dark slashes of eyebrows did nothing to soften his expression. Elizabeth felt a pinch of guilt for noting his looks given how much she resented being judged by her own.

“Well, you have my thanks. And my apologies for the scuffle I caused.” Remembering it, she peered down at her skirts and noticed the tear up one side. Thankfully, an inner layer of her petticoat remained intact beneath her traveling gown. “I’m Elizabeth Harrison, by the way. And I’m still confused about how you know my friend Lily or how you knew to look for me here.”

She had no idea where “here” was.

“I’m Magnus Darroch.” He nodded in a way that was just a slight incline of his head. Yet the way he held himself, the straight spine and chin tilted up, made it look like a courtly bow of a bygone era. “And your friend wed my brother a fortnight ago.” He waved her closer. “Can you ride astride in that…er… garb?”

He studied her dress as if it was a great mystery. In the meantime, she hadn’t heard anything past “your friend wed.”

“It cannot be.” She shook her head, unable to digest the words. Lillian’s parents were still in New York.

“Very well.” He nodded. “You can ride in front of me.”

Once more his broad hands clamped around her waist and he lifted her high onto the back of the monstrous horse.

She made a small, undignified shriek, but the horse did not even twitch as she landed sideways on the beast’s back. In a trice, Magnus Darroch flung himself beside her without the help of a stirrup or even—goodness—a saddle.

“We will fall off,” she protested, grabbing a fistful of mane in one hand before the man—Magnus—scooped her up and dropped her across his hard thighs as easily as he might handle a sack of grain. “Oh!”

“I’ve been riding horses for even longer than I have been dodging
sidhe
,” he proclaimed, wrapping an arm around her waist and clamping her tight to his chest. “There is nae a chance you will fall on my watch.”

He had no saddle, but he held reins in his hand—a simple bridle around the horse’s head that didn’t seem nearly enough to keep the animal in check, but with the slightest encouragement from Magnus Darroch, the powerful beast responded to a simple nudge of the rider’s knee. A nudge Elizabeth felt all too well since she was seated on his
lap
.

Heaven help her, the night had been thoroughly shocking from the moment she’d opened her eyes. She had no business making the trip to Invergale while wrapped in a foreign warrior’s arms. She’d be ruined. Fodder for scandal. Completely…

Unmarriageable?

The idea suddenly took on a certain appeal, especially since it would discourage the destitute earl she’d refused and others of his shallow ilk….

But then she came to her senses. She must be even more distressed and out of sorts than she’d realized to entertain such a notion. Her first priority right now should be figuring out what on earth was happening. Had Lily been drawn into the same strangeness that Elizabeth felt right now?

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Her hand rested on the warrior’s forearm that went around her waist. She stared at it, hardly recognizing it as her own. His flesh was so warm. The muscle beneath impossibly strong. Magnus Darroch seemed to be the only stable, solid thing in a world suddenly off-kilter. “I don’t even understand where we are. What was that place?”

She’d heard the Highlands were remote and forbidding, but nothing had prepared her for what she’d seen tonight. Nothing had prepared her for Magnus Darroch, either. His plaid smelled of pine needles, his skin of musky male. Her body was pressed to his with an intimacy that no proper courtship would allow, yet there was something familiar and exciting about it all at once. Her body seemed to know his after their shared race through the forest, as if the size and breadth of his sinews had imprinted into her skin so that he no longer frightened her. As if she could trust him. Physically.

The thought made her shiver.

“Your friend did not explain about us?” Magnus asked, his voice a rumble in his chest against her shoulder as much as a sound in her ear. “Her new kin?”

She gazed up at his rough-hewn features, seeing a masculine strength there that was less fearsome and more…safe. This was a man who protected women. A man who did not use his position to intimidate or belittle anyone. Awkwardly, she shifted her hand away from his arm, afraid of being caught touching him. Which was utterly ridiculous since they touched in so many other places.

She could not even think about the way her hip rubbed his with each footfall of the giant beast that bore them through the mountains.

“I had no idea Lily had wed again. Nor does her family.” Her father would be livid. Perhaps he would even disown her. “I fear she will not inherit if she has wed against her family’s wishes.”

“She is a stiff, awkward little maid ill-suited to this life, but I know for certain she is in love with my brother. Yer friend cares naught for her father’s riches.” He covered Elizabeth’s head with one hand as they ducked sideways to avoid a low-lying branch.

Another shiver plagued her and she wished she had her heavy cloak, but it remained packed in her bags strapped to the runaway carriage. The feel of Magnus’s hand in her hair tingled along her scalp even after he resumed his hold on the reins, his arm draped about her waist in the process.

He spoke of love? The word chipped away at something inside her, even as it reminded her how foolish it would be to think on something so impossible for her. Men loved pretty, dainty girls, not tall, gangly maids like her.

“Be that as it may, you said yourself that Lily is ill-suited to this life. It seems rife with danger.” The woods were less eerie here, but still dark and forbidding. “What chased us back there?”

He remained silent for the space of two heartbeats. Then a third.

“I told you, lass.” He spoke slowly as if to help her understand. “The
sidhe
. Fae. Magical folk. They have cursed the Darrochs for all time. Or at least, they did until your friend helped my brother break his curse with the gift of her love.”

“You speak of love and magic and curses? That is the stuff of fable, sir,” Elizabeth scoffed, unwilling to believe in things she could never have for herself. Her hand in marriage was an asset to barter for her family’s social standing. She’d known that from the time she was a small child. Love was not an option for her.

She stared out at the landscape in the darkness as her companion guided the horse up one rocky path after another. When stones fell away from the animal’s hooves she feared they could be next to roll down a mountainside. In the distance, she heard the rush of a brook or river, but other than that the night was still and quiet save the clomp of hooves and the occasional breaking of branches.

“Aye. My whole life is a cursed fable then,” Magnus grumbled, his words harsh and bitter. “It is better you are a practical lass. ‘Tis safer for you that way.”

“Safer how?” She had dismissed the idea of love outright. Strange how that seemed even more of a fairy-tale notion than magical fae or whatever else it was he spoke of.

“A sensible girl will not be lured into a world where you have no place.” The horse stumbled and Magnus gripped her upper thigh, anchoring her to him.

Her palm landed on his chest, her fingers finding purchase in the fabric of the wool plaid. Her gaze flicked up to his and their gazes met. Held.

The small hairs on the back of her neck lifted as a pleasurable sensation skipped along her skin. In the moonlight,at close range, she could see now that his eyes were green flecked with gold. A bright spring green like new leaves unfurled.

Or was it a trick of the light again?

“Then it’s a good thing I’m very sensible,” she murmured, to herself as much as him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling terribly levelheaded at the moment.

She also wasn’t feeling the least bit plain. Or tall and awkward. Next to Magnus, she felt—
proportional
, at least.

Amazing how that sensation soothed her heart. She found herself wondering what a protective warrior’s kiss felt like. If she was dreaming this strange journey, she would be quite irritated with herself if she woke up without knowing.