Chapter Eight #2
Her thoughtful stare gave him pause.
“What is it, lass? Tell me. I beg ye.”
With a faint smile, she barely shook her head. “I just think it’s nice to believe in such things. I’m glad you honor the bees.” Then her worries returned, settling so heavily upon her that her shoulders slumped. “What will I do here, Drummond?”
“Do?”
“Yes. Do. I can’t very well stay holed up in this room until…” She flicked her hand and looked away. “Is there a place for me here? Things that I can help with?”
“Yer place is at my side,” he said before he could stop himself.
“You don’t need a second shadow.” She rose and went to the hearth, warming her hands over the fire.
“Sooner or later, I’m going to have to come out of this room and meet all those people who stared at me when we arrived.
I know you don’t care about what they think, but I do.
I’d like to make a decent impression. At least make it so they don’t hate me or think I’m some sort of a wi—” She cut herself off, but he knew exactly what she’d nearly said.
“No one but Murdoch and myself know how ye came to be here, and it will stay that way.”
She didn’t turn away from the fire, just stood there with her back to him, staring down at the flames.
“If I hear of anyone saying ye’re a witch, I’ll have their arses.” He joined her at the hearth. Even the distance of the room between them was too much to bear. Unable to stop himself, he brushed the backs of his fingers along the velvety curve of her cheek. “Ye are safe here, Evie. I swear it.”
She turned and faced him, looking up at him with challenge and determination. “Do you believe I’m a witch?”
“No.” He cupped her chin in his palm, aching to pull her closer. “I believe ye are the woman I have always needed yet never been able to find.” He leaned in closer. “Might I please have a precious kiss, m’lady? ’Twould do this old warrior’s heart a world of good.”
She touched his cheek and made him shudder. “Old warrior?”
“Aye. Five and thirty this past summer.” He drew closer still. “A kiss, m’lady?”
“A kiss,” she whispered as she stretched and offered her mouth to his.
A rush of all-consuming energy crackled between them, igniting the connection and searing through them in a bond of fiery acceptance.
No other sound or sense of anything else existed.
It was only the two of them, one flowing into the other, and each giving back in turn.
He caught her to his chest and deepened the kiss.
Nothing else mattered. No other worries or thoughts existed.
As long as the two of them were joined, all else fell away into meaningless dust.
When he finally lifted his head, his breathing was as hard as if he’d run a race. “Yer place is at my side,” he said, his voice hoarse and rasping from the inexplicable power surging through him. “By my side,” he repeated.
She stared up at him, her lips plumped and reddened by the heat of their kiss. She touched his cheek, cradling it in the soft cup of her palm. “You are so…” Her voice cracked, and she went quiet.
“So what, m’lady? Tell me what ye wish, and I will make it so.” He would move heaven and earth for her. She had but to ask.
Her eyes gleamed with a sheen of tears, but he didn’t sense any sadness. She shook her head, but it was more like a shiver. “I just want everything to be all right. I’m…afraid.”
“As long as I live and breathe, nothing will ever harm ye. I swear it.”
Lips parting in shock, she broke their embrace and backed away. “Oh my gosh, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Thought of what, m’lady?”
“What will happen to me if something happens to you?” She eyed him as if he had turned into the greatest sort of beast in front of her very eyes. Still backing away, she placed more distance between them. “I can’t survive here. Not on my own.”
“Nothing will happen to me.” He thumped his chest. “I’m a braw Highlander. Healthy. Strong. Good with a weapon. None has ever bested me.”
She hugged herself. “You can’t guarantee that.
No one can. Fate is fate. What if, heaven forbid, something happens, and I outlive you?
That can’t happen. I can’t be trapped here, where I don’t know anything about anything and don’t have any resources to fall back on.
I’d never survive, and who knows what would end up happening to me? ”
The longer she talked, the higher her voice pitched until she squeaked like a wee mousie. With the quickness of her gasping breaths, she’d soon fall into a dead swoon.
He caught hold of her shoulders and gently shook her. “Lass! Calm yerself. Dinna let tomorrow’s imagined demons steal today’s joy.”
She fisted her hands on his chest and pushed, all the while shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I can’t take the chance of allowing myself to love you, to build a life with you, only to be abandoned among a bunch of ruthless barbarians.”
He didn’t know whether to be thrilled that she’d already thought about loving him or insulted that she’d called his people wild and uncivilized.
Granted, they could be at times. But for the most part, those of Clan MacMuirrow were good and honorable folk.
“Why would ye say such a thing? Why would such a worry suddenly fill yer head?”
“Because this is the most dangerous place I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I’ve been to Chicago and even lived in a questionable neighborhood in Nashville.”
“Chicago?” he repeated with great care to ensure he said it right. “Where is this Chicago of which ye speak? And was yer Nashville so frightening as well? Should I be insulted that ye’ve compared my clan to such places?”
“Not necessarily your clan, but the Highlands of Scotland in the fourteenth century. From what little I remember, this place is a minefield of dangers for the next several centuries.” She held a hand to her throat as if afraid someone was about to cut it.
“I can’t survive here on my own. I can’t afford to outlive you. ”
Her words chilled him to the bone. Not just her rejection of him, his clan, and country, but the way she spoke as if she knew what was to happen in the years to come. “Who are ye, Evie Waterton? Where is this Chicago that ye fear and the Nashville that ye’ve survived?”
She sidled over to the table across the room and edged her way behind it, placing it and the chairs between them.
Drummond almost laughed. As if that paltry table and chairs could keep him from her if he so desired to pull her back into his arms. To put her at ease, he backed all the way to the door, not wishing to frighten her any more than he already had; however, he had done it.
The terror in her eyes was heartbreaking.
“Answer me, Evie. Remember our kiss. Our connection. I deserve yer honesty. Yer answer.”
“Morganna told me not to tell you,” she said so softly that he almost didn’t hear her. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed on it, reminding him of its sweetness. “She said I shouldn’t.”
“Who is Morganna?” He widened his stance and braced himself in front of the door. Neither of them was going anywhere until the truth was laid bare between them.
“Uhm…a friend.”
“A friend.” He studied her, noting the rosiness high on her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes. She was upset, but he didn’t think she was lying. At least, not yet. “And when did ye last see this Morganna of yers?”
“Before you found me.”
That was a lie. He smelled the stench of it rolling off the words. “The truth, if ye please. Ye’re a verra poor liar.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the first person to tell me that.” She perched on the windowsill behind the table, turning to frown at the small, lead-set glass panes that had been an extravagant gift from Robert the Bruce. “How do you see through these? Everything is distorted and blurry.”
“Ye push open the window and look.” He didn’t attempt to hide his irritation at her insulting the gift he’d received from the king.
Apparently she heard it in his voice, and bowed her head. “Sorry. That was rude of me. They’re very nice.”
“When did ye last see yer Morganna? This person who warned ye that ye’d be better served by telling me lies.” He didn’t appreciate such meddling and refused to tolerate it.
With a huffing snort, she threw up her hands, then let them fall into her lap. “I might as well tell you everything. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.” She rubbed her forehead as if her head were hurting again. “Can I just ask one thing before I start?”
“What?”
“When you have me put to death, will you please pick a way that’s as fast and painless as possible?”
He stared at her, unable to believe she’d think him capable of such a horrendous act.
Especially not when, even though she frustrated him so much he wanted to roar, he yearned to sweep her into his bedchamber and keep her there until she listened to reason and made sense, until she realized what they could be together.
“I dinna make it a habit of killing defenseless women.”
“Yeah, well, you may not think me so defenseless when you find out who my friends are.”
Even though she hadn’t said it as a threat, another chill swept across him. “The English?”
“Worse than that.” She drew up her shoulders as if wishing she could curl into herself and disappear.
“The Fae.” Then her worried look switched to one of befuddlement.
“Well, some of them are Fae. There is a troll, too. And a dragon, and a kelpie, and something called a wulver, but I’m not really sure what that is.
I didn’t get to meet Jarrah in person. But I met the others, and sort of noticed something odd about them.
Then Morganna confirmed it, so I wouldn’t think I was losing my mind. ”
By all that was darkness or light, she was mad as could be. His heart broke for her.
“I am not crazy.” She shook a finger at him. “Think about it. You know where you found me.”