Chapter Ten #3
Heads taller and more powerfully built than any other man she’d ever seen, Magnus MacKinnon didn’t notice her at all. Truth to tell, he didn’t appear to notice . . . anything.
But hard lines of strained concentration stood etched into his handsome face and each one suggested the reason for his preoccupation. As did his over-long strides and the fierce passion blazing in his eyes.
A heated fervor she suspected had scarce little to do with the charms of lushly curved lasses, sultry or otherwise.
Even so, just seeing such passion—any shade or flavor of it—burn so brightly in those clear blue eyes of his made her heart pound all the same.
A soul-deep sigh rose in her throat. Faith, but she yearned to see those gorgeous eyes alight with an obsession of an entirely different sort.
She was more than obsessed.
Not that she cared.
Far from it, she’d swim the deepest Highland loch, climb the steepest brae, brave the fiercest north wind, and even shout her sheer, raging want for Magnus MacKinnon to all the world and the entirety of the heavens—and do so gladly, if only such a spectacle would help her win his heart.
His love.
The deep abiding kind she’d harbored for him since all time was, and for as long as time would e’er continue to be. A love that swelled her heart until she’d swear she could touch the wind and sea and sky.
A passion that, if e’er released, would shake the hills—should she put any faith in such romantic notions.
Possible or nay, such had been the shape of her every dream too long for her not to take full advantage of any crumb of opportunity he tossed her way.
So for the moment, she ignored the stir all around her and simply drank in the glory of him, let his heady male beauty melt her.
Garbed in full Highland panoply, with his plaid slung proudly over one shoulder and his mailed hauberk gleaming in the torchlight.
Just looking at him heated her in places a more timid lass would ne’er acknowledge.
But for the nonce, she forced herself to stop thinking about the welter of kisses she burned to light upon every inch of his great, braw-muscled body!
“I told you he’d be well-occupied,” Dugan said, his voice scattering the tingles, restoring her wits.
He latched a strong hand around her wrist, began dragging her forward, apparently having decided that it was time for Magnus to own to his bride.
Whether he wished to or no.
A notion circling through Magnus’s own mind—laying bright golden bands about him, a new one for each nearing step she took toward him.
It was time to face his fate.
Without dark scowls and evasions, and making use of every shred of charm he’d e’er been credited to possess.
If he hadn’t forgotten what to do with them.
And if his new bride didn’t find the nonsense that opened each MacKinnon wedding feast so off-putting, she truly did seek return passage to her fair isle of Doon—a place where he doubted such folly would be tolerated.
“Ho, Magnus! I bring you a meet bride,” Dugan called out, propelling Amicia toward him—just as ritual demanded. “Will you claim her? Or would you relinquish her charms to me, as next in line to represent this great and worthy house?”
“What?” Amicia’s wide-eyed glance shot to Dugan’s bitter earnest face, her face having gone a flattering blanched-white upon hearing his words.
Magnus stood still as stone, hating to see his bride’s dismay, but secretly pleased by her reaction to the nonexistent possibility of finding herself as Dugan’s bride.
Catching that one’s eye, Magnus squared his shoulders and gave the expected response.
“I will surrender her to none,” he said, speaking to Dugan but looking at his wife. “That I swear!”
He swore, too, to change the tradition that forbade him—or anyone—to warn her about this ritual test of her affections, her loyalty.
Aye, a change would be the order of the day once he became laird in truth. But for now, he contented himself by trying to reassure her with his eyes.
Let her know by his expression that she needn’t fret—that he wasn’t about to give her over to Dugan or any man. And that he’d have done with this buffoonery as swiftly as circumstance allowed.
Circumstance, and the scores of MacKinnons savoring each moment of the much-anticipated ritual.
A silly custom if ever there was one, dreamed up by some long-dead ancestor—like as not when the lout had been too drink-taken to occupy himself more wisely.
“So that is the way of it—you desire her. I have feared as much.” Dugan rubbed his chin. “And if there is someone here who might wish to challenge you for her favor?”
Magnus dropped his hand to his sword hilt, withdrew the blade to half its gleaming length. “Any insolent cockerel who’d dare attempt to win her shall leave here with his tail between his legs like some whipped cur,” he vowed, summoning his darkest mien. “Of that, you may be sure!”
“By all God’s wrath, what is this?” Amicia demanded, her initial shock swinging into a bold display of the famed MacLean temper.
With two spots of bright red coloring her cheeks, she glared at him, at Dugan, and even at those hapless clansmen who just happened to be standing close enough to catch the heat of her stare.
And, saints preserve him, but Lady Amicia in full, fiery temper proved more fetching than he would have thought possible.
Indeed, he found her so glorious that, for a moment, he forgot his own cares and knew his first true lift of the heart in longer than he could recall.
Knew, too, a hot stirring beneath his braies.
“Well, MacKinnon?” she demanded, glittery-eyed. “I asked you what this is about?”
Damning tradition, he mouthed one wee warning: ’Tis only the begin of MacKinnon Claiming Ceremony. . . .
Regrettably, even as he formed the words, his kinsmen chose the moment to voice their good cheer.
“Hech, hech, but she’s a fiery piece o’ womanhood!” a deep male voice called from somewhere in the hall.
“Aye, the sparks will be a-flying tonight!” another agreed, hooting with glee. “Would that I could be a shadow on their bedchamber wall this e’en!”
“Would that I were less gray-topped,” an older clansman burst out, thumping his chest. “I’d lay claim to her myself, by God!”
Her eyes now at fullest stretch, Amicia wheeled to level a stare at the snaggle-toothed graybeard before turning back to aim the entirety of her incredulity on Magnus.
“For truth, sir . . . can it be the whole Clan Fingon has run craven?”
The fiercest urge to agree with her swept through Magnus, but duty bound him to ignore her protestations and follow the course of the fool ceremony.
He did rake his kinsmen with a warning stare—the fiercest he could muster.
Their peace thus assured, he pressed a hand to his heart. That, too, being part of the ceremony.
The part he most dreaded.
“Be on with it, Magnus—or shall I say the words for you?” a gravelly-voiced clod of a clansman with a bushy red beard put to him. “I’ll fight you or anyone here for the lass—and give you my last siller for her, too!”
“Very well . . . so be it,” Magnus said more to himself than anyone.
“Lady Amicia is mine,” he declared, lifting his voice. “And I am hers. We belong to each other,” he rushed on, nigh shouting the remaining words. “Now. This night. And forever more . . . if she will have me.”
A throbbing hush spread through the hall, all gazes shifting to Amicia.
Magnus hesitated but a pulse beat, just long enough to swallow the tight knot in his throat. “Lady, will you show us where your heart lies?” Somehow he got the words out. “Is it your will to be my lady wife? To share my hearthside and bed, mother my bairns?”
Her dark eyes shining, Amicia nodded. “I have always willed it—such has e’er been my deepest hope,” she responded at once, rubbing her thumb over her sapphire ring as the words spilled from her heart.
Her answer unleashed raucous cheers as, throughout the hall, clansmen banged flagons and dirk hilts on the long tables, stamped their feet until the floor shook.
The fervor in her voice and the light in her eyes as she’d said the words unmanned Magnus, scouring him with a hot-burning pleasure that had naught to do with the rousing draw of her warm, womanly appeal, her earthy sensuality—much as he desired her.
Nay, it was the implied pride in being his and her unabashed delight in that state, that undid him. The knowledge knocked great gaps in his defenses until he had the uncomfortable sense of standing naked and vulnerable right smack in the crossroads of his destiny.
Most unsettling of all, he found himself glad to be there.
“Then go to him, my good-sister.” Dugan’s voice rose above the jubilation of their kinsmen. He gave a nudge to the small of her back, urged her forward.
Not that she needed any such assistance.
Abandoning all pretense of ladylike reserve, she launched herself at Magnus, throwing her arms around his neck and twining her fingers into the thick waves of his hair.
“Whoa, lass . . . my precious lass,” Magnus heard himself say as he steadied her, the endearment a truth he could no sooner have kept to himself than stop breathing.
He did settle his hands on her shoulders, holding her back just a wee bit so he could revel in just looking at her, savor the glory of her. How disarmingly alive she was.
How alive she made him feel.
Aye, she undid him entirely, marched hot-footed over every defense he’d thought to erect against her. Ne’er had he beheld a more stunning woman, a more desirous, utterly female one.
He looked at her, allowing himself for the first time since his homecoming to truly lose himself in the pleasure of simply gazing on her.
The lass who’d chosen him above all others.
The woman he would have made his long ago, had the fates been kinder.