Chapter Five
Gelis knew something was amiss.
The surety of it intensified with every step she took up Castle Dare’s winding stair tower — no, the glowering keep’s cold
and dismal stair tower, chill, and with only the feeble light of a few hissing, sputtering rush torches to pierce the gloom.
Not that the murkiness bothered her.
She had plans for remedying Dare’s dreariness.
Indeed, she secretly welcomed the darkness, hoping she’d be rewarded when she dispelled it.
At the very least appreciated.
Unfortunately, the soul she so wished to please hadn’t shown himself since he’d disappeared in the wake of his druid friend,
claiming he’d see the ancient safely to his bed.
Gelis huffed and almost tripped on the hem of her skirts.
It was her bed that ought to be on Ronan MacRuari’s mind this night.
Not a graybeard’s.
However gallant the thought.
Hitching up her cumbersome swish-swishing gown, she quickened her steps. She also bit back another snort. Chivalry hadn’t
sent the Raven hastening from the feasting table. He’d removed himself from her presence. And she had a fairly good notion
that he had no intention of redressing the slight.
She tightened her lips. The shame of such a notion pulsed through her from the tops of her burning ears clear down to all
ten of her tingling toes.
That was what plagued her.
Not his keep’s unsavory stair tower.
Nor that the men sitting around the high table had fallen into such a loud and windy discussion about the demands and intricacies
of effective lairding that no one noticed when she pushed to her feet and walked away.
Not to hide and lick her wounds.
O-o-oh, no.
She simply needed time alone to decide her next move.
Thinking about seduction wasn’t easy with a good score of flapping male tongues blethering on about disciplining errant clansmen
or what to do when a trusted friend and ally suddenly lifted a few prize cattle.
Or the virtues of expanding one’s lands by conquest and inheritance, followed by a heated discourse on the fine art of Highland
feuding.
Or whose bard sang the sweetest harp songs.
Gelis straightened her back.
Harp songs, indeed. She had more pressing matters weighing on her.
Meaning to sort them, she tugged on the sleeve of the large-eyed serving lass leading her up the stairs. The girl halted at
once, her slight form jerking as if a two-headed water horse had seized her.
Gelis blinked, certain she’d never seen such a fearful creature.
“Anice,” she began, wishing her own agitation wasn’t pressing her to ask what she burned to know. “Are you certain the Raven
wished me taken to his chamber?”
“His explicit orders, aye.” The girl bobbed her head. “I readied the room myself and Hector carried up an extra basket of
peats for the fire.”
But when Anice led her from the stair tower’s top landing a few moments later, taking her to the Raven’s oak-planked door,
more cold and darkness greeted them.
The bedchamber, though vast and quite imposing, proved decidedly unreadied.
Of extra peat bricks, naught was to be seen. Nor even a stick of wood, or the merest twig, or even a bundle of dried bracken.
Indeed, the hearthstone appeared swept bare with only a thin scatter of ash indicating a fire had ever burned there at all.
Gelis peered into the dimness, the insult making her face grow hot. The shutters were thrown wide, letting chill damp air
pour inside, while the moon’s luminance shone cold on the room’s terrible disarray.
“Saints o’ mercy!” Anice stood frozen, one hand on the door handle, the other clapped to her throat. “The room was in perfect
order. I swear it.”
Shaking her head, she stared at the clothes strewn across the floor, the mussed and tangled bedding. “We’d even brought up
a bath,” she said, throwing a panicked look at Gelis. “Victuals and wine. Refreshments —”
“Never you mind,” Gelis halted her babble, sweeping into the room before the girl had a chance to swoon. “Someone” — and she
was certain she knew who — “clearly forgot to secure the shutters, and the wind has done the damage.”
“Och, nae, I dinna think so.” The girl looked doubtful. “The wind —”
“Wind is naught but just that.” Gelis glanced at the sideways rain blowing past the windows. “Cold, gusting, and at the moment,
quite wet.”
Anice bit her lip, unconvinced.
“I’ll own it was an unusually discerning wind,” Gelis allowed. She stepped deeper into the room, a dark suspicion making her
cheeks flame even hotter.
Her chest tightened with annoyance, but she held her tongue, not willing to say more until she was certain.
Though, truth be told, she already was.
The wind had been more than discriminating.
It’d been revealing.
Her own coffers and travel bags remained untouched. Her carefully selected bridal accoutrements stared at her from across
the room, the lot of her treasures stacked in a quiet and inoffensive pile in a corner.
The chaos was masculine.
An untidy swath of rumpled tunics and plaids, the messy jumble made all the more damning for the bulging money purse and wine
skin peeking up from its midst. A handsome black travel cloak flung haphazardly across a bearskin rug on the floor banished
any lingering doubts, as did the gleaming mail hauberk, sword belt, and brand tossed into a glittery silver heap near the
door.
The Lord Raven had been packing for a journey.
An effort he’d abandoned in great haste.
Like as not, the very moment he’d heard her and Anice ascending the tower stairs.
Gelis almost blurted one of her father’s choice epithets, but caught herself. She did put her hands on her hips. “That table
by the window” — she glanced at Anice — “is that where you placed the repast?”
Looking miserable, the girl nodded.
“Just there, my lady.” Her gaze went to the heavy oaken table. “And a right feast it was. A fine joint of roasted mutton,
spiced salmon pasties, jellied eggs, and even a platter of Cook’s fresh-baked honey cakes. Heaped high, those were, and sprinkled
with ginger.”
“A feast, indeed,” Gelis agreed, unable to deny it.
That the girl spoke the truth stood out all over her.
Puzzled, Gelis picked her way across the clothes-cluttered room to the empty table. Not so much as a crumb marred the dark
gleam of its scrubbed, age-blackened surface.
There was a lingering aroma of roasted mutton.
Faint, but definitely there.
Gelis sniffed the air, now catching a delicate hint of ginger as well.
“Could it be,” she began, turning back to Anice, “that the castle dogs snatched the food?”
She’d seen the great furry beasts when she’d first arrived and they’d rushed down the keep steps to greet her. Her father
favored similar dogs, and they’d been known to devour greater spreads of victuals than Anice had described. True masters at
the art of food-snatching, they could wolf down the offerings of a well-laden table and be gone before even the most watchful
soul took note.
But Anice was shaking her head.
“Och, nae, it wouldn’t have been the dogs.” She looked sure of it. “They ne’er set foot in this room. Nary a one. They’re
afeart —”
“Perhaps of the room’s master?” Gelis lifted one brow. “No one could blame them for that,” she quipped, unable to check herself
this time. “I have scarce happened across a more stony-faced, cold-hearted man.”
“Do not think too ill of him, my lady.” The girl took a few steps into the room. “To be sure, he gave you a poor welcome,
but he had his reasons.”
“No doubt,” Gelis agreed, trailing a finger along the smooth edge of the table. “A man twice married always has reasons. Either
to seek a new wife or to avoid one.”
Unbidden, the Raven’s own words about his previous marriages rang in her ears. As terse as when he’d said them, they haunted
her now.
Likewise, the shuttered expression that had crossed his face when he’d uttered them.
Is it so difficult to think I am not desirous of a third marriage?
Gelis straightened, putting back her shoulders before thoughts of his former wives could sour her mood. Already, she could
imagine blissful evenings in this bedchamber. Candlelit coziness and leisurely repasts enjoyed at this very table where she
stood. Endless hours of raw and heated pleasure in the massive four- poster bed across the room.
Perhaps a tumble across one of the three great bearskin rugs gracing the bedchamber floor.
Lusty tumbles, all naked limbs and hot, breath-stealing kisses and sighs.
Sinuous, carnal pleasures of the sort she’d likely never experience.
Not with a man determined to shun her.
A situation she refused to accept, she decided, furious at the direction her thoughts were taking.
She’d come abovestairs to plan a seduction. Not to stalk about a cold and messy bedchamber, pricked by needless jealousy over
two faceless, dead-in-their-graves females who deserved only prayers and pity.
“Dinna look so downcast, my lady.” Anice took a few more steps into the room.
Overbold steps for a maid so timid.
Proving it, she laced her fingers before her, twining them so tightly together that her knuckles gleamed white against the
room’s shadow.
“The Raven’s not himself of late.” She lifted her voice, not looking at Gelis, but at the tall window arches, the rainy night
beyond. Her gaze lingered there a few moments before she glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“His coldness has naught to do with you,” she finished. “His heart is good, I say you. Once you know him better, you will
see —”
“I have seen more than you know.” Gelis flicked a speck of lint from her sleeve. “Truth is, I’ve seen enough to know him better
than he knows himself.”
The girl’s eyes rounded and she looked about to say something, but before she could, a gusting wind swept in through the opened
shutters. A chill burst of rain splattered across the tabletop, the icy spray stinging Gelis’s cheeks and dampening her gown.
“These shutters ought to be secured,” she said, leaning across the table to reach for them, her fingers closing around the