Kiss of the Highlander

  She changed the subject hastily and addressed something that had been bothering her since they’d left Barrett’s and that snooty Miriam. “Drustan, what does nyaff mean?”

  He looked startled, then laughed. “Who dared call you a wee nyaff?”

  “That snotty woman in Barrett’s. And quit laughing at me.”

  “Och, lass.” More laughter.

  “Well, what does it mean?”

  “Do you wish the whole gist of it, or a simple one-word summary? Not that I can think of one at the moment,” he added. “It’s a uniquely Scots word.”

  “The whole gist of it,” she snapped.

  Eyes sparkling, a brow mischievously arched, he said, “As you wish. It means one who is irritating, much like a midge, one whose capacity to annoy and inspire contempt exceeds her diminutive size but not the cockiness that accompanies it.”

  Gwen was seething by the time he finished. She turned around and stomped back toward Barrett’s to tell perfectly plucked Miriam precisely what she thought of her.

  “Hold, lass,” he said, catching up with her and closing his hand about her upper arm. “ ‘Tis plain to see she was merely jealous of you,” he told her soothingly, “for having a fine braw man such as me at your side, especially after she beheld me in those blue trews.”

  Gwen plunked her fists at her waist. “Oh, could you be any more pleased with yourself?”

  “You’re no nyaff, lass,” he said, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “She was like as not far more envious of the look on my face when I gaze upon you.”

  Well. Her sails deflated. Gwen felt suddenly much more charitable toward Miriam, and it must have shown on her face because he smiled arrogantly.

  “Now you like me even more.”

  “I do not,” she said, stiffly pulling her arm from his grasp. “Let’s go get that rental car and get out of here.”

  God forgive her, she was beginning to more than like him. She was feeling territorial, protective, and downright lusty.

  SEPTEMBER 20

  7:32 P.M.

  8

  One flat tire—in the company of a man who had no idea how to change one, and no jack—a pit stop for his weapons, three rest stops, four coffees, and a very late lunch later, they arrived at the outskirts of Alborath just as dusk was falling.

  Gwen sneaked a glance at him and wondered if the color would ever return to his face. She’d pushed the shuddering car up to seventy but quickly relented when he’d gripped the sides of his seat so tightly that if she’d tapped him with a fingernail, he might have shattered.

  It was a good thing she’d slowed down, because the tire had gone flat two miles outside of Fairhaven, and they’d had to walk back and get a person from the rental agency to arrange for a serviceman to get the tire changed. She’d tried to rent a different vehicle, but as all were under contract, it was this one or none until tomorrow evening.

  Tire changed, they’d resumed their drive, and eventually he’d relaxed enough to turn his attention to the coffee and pastries. After complaining because she’d gotten no kippers and tatties, he’d consumed the coffee and chocolate with gusto. The pleasure he’d exhibited over such mundane items had further irritated her. God help her, but she was nearly beginning to believe him. They hadn’t talked much on the drive, although not for her lack of trying. He simply hadn’t seemed able to relax enough to speak.

  Now, as the lights of Alborath came into view, nestled in a lush valley, his complexion was ghastly in the gloaming.

  “Would you like to stop in the village?”

  “Nay,” he replied tersely. He pried his fingers from the edge of the seat and pointed to a road north of the village. “You must guide this metal beast to the crest of that ben.”

  Gwen eyed the mountain to which he pointed. There were two hundred seventy-seven mountains in Scotland, so said her brochure, that exceeded three thousand feet, and he was pointing to one of them. Sighing, she circled the village, downshifting when she reached the mountain. She’d been hoping to coax him to have dinner and secure a reprieve before confronting the extent of his delusions.

  “Tell me about your home,” she urged. The day had been a trial for both of them, and she felt a sudden spear of concern. She was about to take him “home,” and what if there wasn’t one there? What if the next few hours critically stressed his already damaged mind? She was supposed to stay with him until tomorrow night to see his proof, although technically she’d fulfilled her end of the bargain: She’d gotten him safely to Ban Drochaid. She had a feeling technically didn’t mean much to a man of his ilk.

  “Doona think you’ll be leaving me now,” he said, placing his hand over hers on the gear stick.

  Gwen glanced sharply at him. “What are you? A mind reader?”

  He half-smiled. “Nay. I’m merely reminding you that your bargain with me was that you would stay to see my proof. I will not let you fail me now.”

  “What are you going to do, chain me again?” she said dryly.

  When he didn’t answer, she took another look at him. God above, but the man looked dangerous. His silver-metal eyes were cool and frighteningly calm and—yes, he would chain her again. For a split second, in the eerie, bruised half light of gloaming, he looked as if he had truly stepped forward five centuries, a barbaric warrior intent on his quest, and nothing or no one would get in his way.

  “I have no intention of reneging,” she said stiffly.

  “I assume reneging means to act with dishonor?” he said flatly. “Good, for I would not permit it.”

  They drove in silence for a time.

  “Do you enjoy a bard’s rhymes, Gwen?”

  She glanced sharply at him. “I have been accused of enjoying poetry from time to time.” Romantic poetry, the kind never read at Chez Cassidy when I was a child.

  “Would you grant me a boon?”

  “Sure, why not,” she said with a sigh a martyr would envy. “I’ve already done fifty gazillion, what could one more possibly hurt?”

  He gave her a faint smile, then spoke quietly and clearly: “Wither thou goest, there goest I, two flames sparked from but one ember; both forward and backward doth time fly, wither thou art, remember.”

  She shrugged, confused. It had started out rather romantic, but hadn’t ended that way. “What does it mean?”

  “Have you a good memory, Gwen Cassidy?” he evaded.

  “Of course I do.” Oh, God, he was losing it.

  “Re-say it to me.”

  She looked at him. His face was pale, his hands fisted in his lap. His expression was deadly serious. For no other reason than to appease him, she made him repeat it, then repeated it without error. “Is there a point to this?” she asked when she’d said it three times, perfectly. It was permanently etched in her mind.

  “It made me happy. Thank you.”

  “That seems to have become my purpose in life,” she said dryly. “Is this another one of those things that will become clear to me in time?”

  “If all goes well, nay,” he replied, and something in his voice made a shiver kiss her spine. “Pray you need never understand.”

  She changed the subject uneasily, and for the duration of the ride they spoke of innocuous things while her tension mounted. He described his castle lovingly, first the grounds, then the interior and some of the recent renovations. She spoke of her mindless job but said little else of significance. Gwen had been conditioned not to overdisclose: The more a man knew about her, the less he ended up liking her, and for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, she wanted Drustan MacKeltar to like her. It seemed they were both suddenly eager to fill the silence or it would swallow them alive.

  By the time they reached the top of the mountain, Gwen’s hands were trembling on the steering wheel, but when he lifted a hand to rake his hair from his face she saw that his were too. She didn’t miss the significance of the fact: He was not playing with her. He genuinely hoped to find his castle at the top of this mountain. Firml
y grounded in his delusion, he also feared that it might no longer stand. Sneaking cautious peeks at him, she grudgingly conceded that he was not suffering amnesia or playing some strange game. He believed he was what he claimed he was. The realization was far from reassuring. A physical injury would heal, a mental aberration was much more difficult to cure.

  Steeling herself, she backed off the gas, reluctant to complete the journey. She wished she’d hiked it with him, so she wouldn’t have to face this moment now. If she’d done it his way, she could have postponed it for another twenty-four hours.

  “Turn north.”

  “But there’s no road there.”

  “I see that,” he said grimly. “And considering the ones upon which we’ve traveled thus far, one would think there should be, a fact that concerns me.”

  She turned left, and the headlights of the car limned a grassy knoll.

  “Up the hill,” he urged softly.

  Drawing a deep breath, Gwen obeyed. When he snapped at her to stop, she didn’t need the command, for she’d monkeyed the clutch and was about to stall anyway. The tips of the towering stones of Ban Drochaid loomed over the crest of the hill, black against a misty purple sky.

  “Um, I don’t see a castle, MacKeltar,” she said hesitantly.

  “ ‘Tis beyond the fell; the mon conceals it because it sits farther back, past the stones. Come. I will show you.” He fumbled with the door latch, then burst from the car.

  Fell and mon must mean hill or crest, she decided as she killed the lights and joined him. The tremor in her hands had spread to the rest of her body, and she was suddenly chilled. “Wait, let me grab my sweatshirt,” she said. He waited impatiently, his gaze fixed upon the tops of the stones, and she knew he was desperate to get up over the crest to see if his castle still stood.

  No more eager than she was to delay it. “Do you want a bite to eat before we go?” she said brightly, reaching for the salmon patties and celery they’d boxed up at the last stop.

  He smiled faintly. “Come, Gwen. Now.”

  With a resigned shrug, she slammed the car door shut and trudged to his side. When he took her hand in his, she didn’t even try to pull away but inched closer, as much for her support as his.

  They hiked the remainder of the incline in silence, unbroken but for the chirping of crickets and the melodic hum of tree frogs. At the top she drew in a sharp breath. Against the backdrop of pink-and-purple-streaked sky, a gentle breeze ruffled the grass within the circle of stones. She counted thirteen of them, ranged about a great slab in the center. The megaliths reared up, black against the brilliant horizon.

  There was nothing beyond the stones.

  Oh, a few pines, and, granted, there were several gentle slopes that might block one’s vision, but nothing that a castle could crouch mischievously behind.

  They moved forward in silence, cutting through the circle of stones, much more slowly now, for ahead of them, past stumps of what had once been lofty and ancient oaks, was the clear foundation of a castle that no longer stood.

  She refused to look at him. She would not look at him.

  When they reached the perimeter of the outer wall, he sank to his knees.

  Gwen eyed the tall grass in the center of the ruin, the chunks of stone and mortar in crumbling piles, the night sky beyond the silent castle grave, anything but him, dreading what she would see. Anguish? Horror? Realization that he truly was mentally unbalanced flickering in those beautiful silver eyes that seemed so misleadingly clear?

  “Och, Christ, they’re all dead,” he whispered. “Who destroyed my people? Why?” He drew a shuddering breath. “Gwen.” The word was strangled.

  “Drustan,” she said softly.

  “I bid you return to your wagon for a time.”

  Gwen hesitated, torn. Half of her wanted nothing more than to tuck tail and run; the other half felt that he needed her desperately here and now. “I’m not leaving now—”

  “Go.”

  He sounded so anguished that Gwen flinched and looked at him. His eyes were dark and unreadable but for a shimmer of moisture.

  “Drustan—”

  “I beg of you, leave me now,” he whispered. “Leave me to mourn my clan alone.”

  The faintness of his voice deceived her. “I promised not to just abandon—”

  “Now!” he thundered. When she still didn’t move, his eyes blazed. “You will obey me.”

  Gwen noticed three things in the time it took him to utter the command. First, although she knew it was impossible, his silvery eyes seemed to blaze from deep within like something she’d once seen in a sci-fi movie. Second, his voice was different, sounded like a dozen voices layered upon one another, obliterating any conscious choice, and third, she suspected if he’d ordered her to walk off a cliff in such a voice, she might.

  Her legs broke into an instinctive sprint even as her brain was processing those startling observations.

  But a few paces inside the stones, the eerie compulsion receded and she stopped and glanced back. He’d entered the ruin and climbed the highest pile of collapsed stone; a black silhouette on his knees, back arched, chest canted skyward, he shook his fist at the indigo sky. When he tossed his head back and roared, the blood curdled in her veins.

  Was this the same man who’d kissed her in the fitting room? The one who’d gotten her hotter than a volcano and as prone to imminent explosion and made her think there might be an equation for passion her parents had never taught her?

  No. This was the man who wore fifty weapons on his body. This was the man who carried a double-bladed ax and a sword.

  This was the man to whom she’d begun losing a little piece of an organ that she’d been raised to believe was merely an efficient pump. The realization startled her. Madman or no, frightening or not, he made her feel things she’d never felt before.

  MacKeltar, she thought, what on earth am I going to do with you?

  Drustan wept.

  The worst was true. He lay on his back in the Greathall, one knee bent, arms spread wide, his fingers laced in the tall grass, and thought of Silvan.

  You have only one purpose, son, as do I. Protect the Keltar line and the knowledge we guard.

  He’d failed. In a moment of carelessness he’d been taken unaware, enchanted, stolen from his time, and buried for centuries. His disappearance had triggered the destruction of his castle and clan. Now Silvan was dead, the Keltar line extinguished, and who knew where the tablets and volumes were? The possibility of such knowledge falling into the wrong hands dragged him down into a deep black place beyond fear. He knew that a greedy man could reshape, control, or destroy the entire world with such knowledge.

  Protect the line. Protect the lore.

  It was imperative that he successfully return to his time.

  Although he had not changed so much as one hair, five hundred years had passed, and nothing remained to speak of his existence or the life of his father and his father’s father before him. Millennia of training and discipline, all gone in the blink of an eye.

  Tomorrow night he would enter the stones and perform the ritual.

  Tomorrow night he would not exit the stones. One way or another, he would no longer be in the here and now.

  And God willing, tomorrow her century would matter no more, for with luck, by Mabon-high he would have undone all the wrong that had been done.

  Still, for the time he had remaining in the twenty-first century, his people were as dead as his castle was destroyed, naught more than ancient dream dust blowing ignobly across Scotland. Roughly dragging the back of his hand across his cheeks, he pushed himself to his feet and spent the next hour wandering the ruin, looking for graves. He uncovered not one new marker in the chapel yard. Where had his clan gone? If they’d died, where had they been buried? Where was Silvan’s marker? Silvan had made it painstakingly clear that he wished to be interred beneath the rowan behind the chapel, yet no stone marker proclaimed his name.

  Dageus MacKeltar, bel
oved brother and son.

  He swept shaking fingers over the stone that marked his brother’s grave. Unable to comprehend the passage of five centuries, Drustan suffered the fever-hot grief of having buried Dageus only a fortnight past. His brother’s death had made him crazed. They’d been close as two people could be. When he’d lost his brother, he’d argued endless hours with his father.

  What good is it to have the knowledge of the stones if I cannot go back and undo Dageus’s death? he’d shouted at Silvan.

  You must never travel to a point within your own life, Silvan had snapped, weary and red-eyed from weeping.

  Why can I not return to a time within my own past?

  If you are too close in proximity to your past self, one of you—either your past or present self—won’t survive. We have no way of foretelling which one lives. There have been times when neither survived. It seems to stress the natural order of things, and nature struggles to correct itself.

  Then I’ll choose a time in the past when I was across the border in England, Drustan snarled, refusing to accept that Dageus was irrevocably gone.

  No one knows how far away is far enough, son. Besides, you are forgetting that we may never use the stones for personal reasons. They are to be used only for the greater good of the world—or in extreme circumstances to ensure the succession of the MacKeltar. One of us must always live. But these are not extreme circumstances, and you know what would happen if you abused the power.

  Aye, he knew. Legend handed down over the centuries claimed a Keltar who used the stones for personal reasons would become a dark Druid the moment he passed through. Lost to honor and compassion, he would relinquish his very soul to the blackest forces of evil. Become a creature of irreverent destruction.

  The hell with the legend! he’d thundered defiantly. But even in his grief, he’d known better. Whether or not the legend was true, he would not be the first MacKeltar to trespass on such sacred territory. Nay, he would accept, as all his ancestors had accepted, and honor his oaths. He had not been given unfathomable power to abuse it or use it for personal gain. He couldn’t justify using the stones to mend his own heart.