Chapter Sixteen #2
“Good. Then let’s go.”
They set off, Arran letting Jenna take the lead and staying close behind her in case she got into difficulty.
She didn’t, and it took only a few minutes before Arran felt the seabed under his questing feet.
He took Jenna’s arm and together they staggered through the shallows and collapsed onto the sandy beach that ringed the islet.
Arran lay flat on his back and allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and listen to the thundering of his heart.
Slowly, his breathing began to slow. He opened his eyes and turned his head.
Jenna lay on her back next to him, staring up at the blue sky, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
Her dark hair lay spread out around her head like a halo.
“Are you a gloater?” she said suddenly.
Arran blinked. “A… what?”
“A gloater. Someone who acts all smug when they’re proven right.”
“Nay, lass. I’m not a… gloater.”
“All right then, I admit it. You were right. I was wrong. I should have listened to you.” She spoke in a rush, as though eager to get it off her chest. “There. I’ve said it. Remember, you promised not to gloat.”
Despite himself, his lips quirked in a smile. “Wouldnae dream of it.”
With a groan, he sat up. The beach they were on was not large and hemmed in on all sides by rugged black cliffs too tall to climb. Colonies of guillemots and razorbills filled the cliffs and at this time of year the clifftops would be full of puffins in their burrows.
Arran wondered what they thought of these two strange interlopers to their land. “Dinna worry,” he muttered at the birds. “We’ll be gone soon.”
He climbed to his feet, water dripping from his hair and plaid, and strode down to where the breakers were landing on the shore.
The mainland of Skye spread out across the waters, bathed in afternoon sunlight.
Arran put his hands on his hips and gazed at it.
It wasn’t often that he saw his home from this angle and as always when he did, he was struck by its beauty.
A rocky coastline, wooded hills, heath-covered uplands, all rising to the craggy heights of the mountains that formed the island’s spine.
It was his. His home. He would not let Njord take it.
“Should we swim?” Jenna said, coming to stand next to him.
Arran shook his head. “Nay, lass. It’s too far to swim in our present condition.”
“You mean my present condition. I’m the coddled, unfit twenty-first century woman. You’re the lean, mean, fifteenth-century Highlander, remember? I suspect you could swim there and back a dozen times if you wanted to.”
“Yer faith in my abilities humbles me,” he replied with a lopsided smile. “Even if it is a little misplaced.”
She turned to gaze over the water. “But if we don’t swim, how are we going to get back?”
“Mal and the others will come looking soon enough. We just have to wait.”
“For how long?”
He shrugged. “Until they find us. Be thankful it’s a sunny day. If it was howling a gale and throwing down with rain, this would not be fun.”
She kicked at a sea-rounded pebble at her feet. “I really am sorry,” she said, her voice sounding more contrite than he’d ever heard. “I just wanted a swim. I didn’t know about rips and things like that.”
Arran bit his tongue. She might know about rip currents and the other dangers that Skye posed if she stopped to listen to him once in a while. But he didn’t say this out loud as he didn’t fancy another argument.
Her soaked shift was clinging to her body in a way that was wholly indecent, and the way water was dripping down her neck and chest was ridiculously alluring.
The memory of her lips on his flashed through his mind, and heat suddenly pooled in his stomach, traveling all the way down to his groin.
Why had she kissed him? Didn’t she realize how it tied his tongue in knots and scattered his thoughts like leaves on a breeze? Did she do it just to taunt him?
He cleared his throat. “It might be a warm day, but it will take us hours to dry unless we start a fire. We should gather some driftwood. Ye take that end of the beach, I’ll take this one.”
He strode away from her, glad to put some distance between them. She moved to the other end of the beach and began collecting driftwood that had been washed up on the sand. It didn’t take long before they had a decent pile, which they dumped in the spot where they’d come ashore.
Arran knelt and picked out a relatively dry stick and a small piece of driftwood.
He didn’t have his flint and tinder, so he would have to light the fire the old way.
Placing the stick upright into a notch on the log, he took it between his palms and began rotating it back and forth as quickly as he could, trying to get the friction to light the wood.
Jenna watched with a slightly bemused expression on her face. Then she crouched next to him, placed her hand over the pile of driftwood, and muttered a few words. Flames flared to life in a whoosh of sparks, eagerly taking root in the dry wood.
Jenna looked at him and shrugged. “Sometimes being a MacFinnan spellweaver comes in handy.”
“It certainly does,” Arran agreed. “Now use yer magic to build us a boat, and I’ll be really impressed.”
“Sorry. I’m right out of boat-making magic.”
“Shame.” He stripped off his plaid, shirt, and boots, and spread them out by the fire to dry.
In only his breeches, he seated himself on the sand. Jenna hovered nearby, looking uncertain. Her shift still clung to her body, outlining her hips and breasts.
Arran’s mouth went dry, and he quickly looked away.
“Come sit by the fire, lass,” he said, still not looking at her. “Ye’ll dry much quicker.”
*
Come sit by the fire? With him lounging half-naked with his ridiculously muscled chest on display? Did he have any idea what the sight of him like that was doing to her?
Jenna pursed her lips. Perhaps he was trying to get his revenge for her kissing him earlier. To be honest, she didn’t know why she’d done that. It had been spur of the moment, instinctive, and she’d enjoyed every second.
Aargh! She wanted to tear out her hair in frustration. They’d agreed to pretend that their first kiss hadn’t happened, so why had she gone and done it again? She didn’t know. Rationality seemed to go out of the window when he was around. Oh, bloody hell.
Deliberately not looking at him, she seated herself on the sand a couple of feet away, drew her knees against her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Arran said nothing, but she could feel him watching her. His gaze burned against her skin almost as hotly as the flames did.
“So,” she said. “How long till Mal and your men come get us?”
“There are a number of islets in the bay that they’ll search. Depends on which they search first.”
“So we’re stuck here until then?”
“Aye, lass.”
It might be hours. Hours alone with Arran MacLeod. She glanced over at him and found him watching her, his blue eyes brighter than the ocean in front of them.
“I tried to fix the second anchor stone,” she blurted. “It didn’t work.”
“Ah.”
She looked at him. “You don’t sound surprised.”
He sat up, pulling his legs into a cross-legged position, and fiddled with a pebble in his lap. “I’m disappointed, but not surprised after what I learned today. That’s why I came looking for ye. It seems there is more going on than we realized.”
“What do you mean?”
Arran’s sapphire gaze fixed on her face. “The men who attacked Tollman’s Gate bore a strange marking. I drew it for Brother Merrick and asked him to research it, see if there were any records of what it might signify. He discovered its meaning. The mark is a symbol of Njord.”
“Oh. I see,” Jenna said, although she really didn’t. “What’s a Njord?”
“Not a what. A who. Njord is a god. A Norse god of the sea, to be exact.”
Jenna blinked, digesting this. “So the raiders are followers of this god? What’s that got to do with the anchor stones?”
He gave a frustrated huff. “I dinna know yet. Something. It’s connected somehow, I can feel it.
I just dinna know how.” He scooped another load of pebbles from the beach and began throwing them into the water.
Each time he did, the muscles in his right arm bulged and flexed and Jenna felt herself watching the movement as if mesmerized.
She forced herself to concentrate on the dancing flames of the campfire.
Njord. A Norse god. She might have scoffed at such a preposterous idea had she not met a goddess herself only a few hours ago.
She glanced at Arran. The set of his shoulders was tense and his jaw tight as he watched the pebbles go sailing one by one through the air to plop into the waves.
Should she tell him about Lir? Yes, probably.
Didn’t he have a right to know that the MacFinnan spellweaver he’d brought from the future was wholly incapable of doing what he was paying her for?
But the famous MacFinnan stubbornness kicked in.
Who said she couldn’t do this? Only her own doubts. Lir had brought her here for a reason.
Do ye think I would have brought ye through time if ye couldnae do this? What ye need is already inside ye. Ye just have to find the courage to recognize it.
Trouble was, she had no idea how to do that.
“What’s wrong, lass?”
Jenna blinked, startled out of her thoughts, and looked at Arran. “Sorry, what?”
“What are ye thinking about? Ye look troubled.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing. Just wondering if people back at Dun Tabor will be worried about us.”
Arran snorted. “Aye. No doubt Rosaline will have the whole place in an uproar. Ye know, once, when I’d just become laird, she turned out the whole castle looking for me because I wasnae in my room when she went up in the morning.”
Jenna smiled. She could well imagine Rosaline doing something like that. “Mothers. Always overprotective.”
“Aye. And I wouldnae have minded except I was in the privy with a bad case of the skitters when the guards burst in.”