She hadn’t missed his proclamation that he was an authentic “laird” rather, she’d chosen to ignore it. He’d seemed to expect a curtsy or maidenly swoon, and she would not pander to his conceit. It appeared that centuries of submission to the English hadn’t taught the Scots one damn thing about submission. He was likely one of those stuffy aristocrats who was fighting to restore Scotland’s independence so he could swagger about in his kilt and regalia like a little king. He even preferred the archaic manner of speech affected centuries past.
And he was definitely a womanizer. Smooth-talking, sexy, and entirely too touchy-feely. Probably dumb as a box of rocks, however, because all that brawn couldn’t possibly couch too much brain.
“I have to return to the inn now,” she informed him.
“There’s no need for you to seek shelter in a common tavern. You will be generously housed in my demesne. I will see to your needs.” Possessively, he cupped his hand at the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I like the way you keep your hair. ’Tis unusual, but I find it most…sensual.”
Bristling, she tossed her bangs out of her eyes. “Let’s get something straight, MacKeltar. I am not going home with you. I am not going to bed with you, and I am not wasting one more moment arguing with you.”
“I promise not to mock you when you change your mind, lass.”
“Oooh. Contrary to what you might think, arrogance does not work as an aphrodisiac on me.” It was only a small lie. Arrogance alone didn’t, but this particular arrogant man was a walking lollipop, and she was certain that latching her lips onto any part of him would satisfy the relentless oral craving she’d been fighting for ten days, seven hours, and forty-three minutes, not that she was counting.
“Aphro-di-si-ac,” he repeated slowly, brows furrowed. He was silent a moment, then he said, “Ah, Greek: Aphrodite and akos. Mean you a love potion?”
“Sort of.” How could he not know that word? she wondered, eyeing him warily. And why break it into Greek parts?
When he grinned cockily, she dropped her gaze and pretended a sudden fascination with her cuticles. The man was too damn sexy for his own good. And standing way too close.
He slid his hands into her hair and tugged gently, forcing her to look at him. His silver eyes glittered. “Tell me you doona feel mating heat between us. Tell me you doona desire me, Gwen Cassidy.” His gaze dared her to lie.
Dismayed, she realized he could sense how much she wanted him, just as she could sense that he wanted to be all over her, so she did what handling insurance claims had taught her to do best: Deny, deny, deny.
“I doona desire you,” she mocked lightly. Yeah, right. The sexual tension between them nearly qualified as a fifth force of nature.
He inclined his head. A dark eyebrow rose and his gaze was amused, as if he were somehow privy to her internal dissenting opinion. One corner of his mouth lifted in a faint smile. “When you finally speak the truth, it will be so sweet, wee English. It will make me hard as stone, the mere words upon your lips.”
She felt it imprudent to point out that he already was. When he’d buried his hands in her hair, he’d brushed that part of him against her. She was shocked to realize she was actually contemplating having impulsive sex with him, trying to decide what was the worst that could happen if she did as many people she knew did—just hopped into bed with a stranger. God, he was so tempting. She wanted to experience passion, and when he looked at her the way he was looking at her right now, she felt an epiphany might be a hot, slippery kiss away.
But he was headstrong, too gorgeous for anyone’s peace of mind, a wildly unpredictable variable in a risky equation, and she knew what those could do—create chaos. The nervous flutter in her stomach, the desire she felt was too novel a sensation for her to act upon it without careful consideration.
Although she wanted to change her life and was determined to lose her virginity, she was beginning to realize that it wasn’t as easy to change one’s ways as she’d thought it would be. Thinking about having sex with a virtual stranger was a whole lot different than actually plunging right into the heat and nakedness and rawness of it. Especially when that virtual stranger was so much man, a little odd, and a lot overwhelming. Her newfound feelings of desire scared her. The intensity of her body’s reaction to him scared her.
Perhaps she could do it with him on the last day of her trip, she mused. He was certainly willing. She could have what she knew would be heart-pounding sex, then fly back home and never have to see him again. She’d bought condoms before leaving the States, and they were tucked safely in her pack….
Sheesh! Was madness contagious? What on earth was she thinking?
A brisk shake of her head restored her sanity.
“Come,” he said.
I’d like to, but you’re way too dangerous, she thought with a sigh.
Since he was heading down the hill in the general direction of the inn, she followed. “You don’t have to hold my hand,” she protested. “I’m not going to run off.”
His eyes crinkled with silent amusement as he released her. “I enjoy holding your hand. But you may walk beside me,” he informed her.
“I wouldn’t walk anywhere else,” she muttered. Behind would feed his ego, although she’d get to watch his incredible body, unobserved. In front, she’d be miserable, feeling his gaze on her. Beside him was the only tolerable place.
He took long strides, his natural pace a lope for her, but she refused to complain. The faster he walked, the more quickly she could surround herself with the safety of the teeming village. She’d never dreamed she’d be so grateful to see a busload of senior citizens in her life.
Busy plotting her polite but hasty retreat from his presence, she didn’t realize he’d stopped until he was quite some distance behind her. She turned and gestured impatiently, but his eyes were on the village below.
“Come on,” she shouted. He didn’t appear to hear her. She called for him again, waving her arms to get his attention, but he remained motionless, his gaze locked on the view.
Fine, she decided, this is a great time to leave, and I have a head start. She broke into a sprint down the sloping hillside. Stretching her legs, as if running for her very life, she suddenly felt silly. If the man had truly planned to harm her, he could have done so long before now. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was leaving something incredibly dangerous behind her on the hillside—far more than a simple man—and it was wiser that she did so now.
She ran for several seconds before the missile blasted her from behind. She stumbled and landed on her stomach in a springy patch of purple vetch, trapped beneath his body. He stretched her hands above her head and pressed her against the ground. “I said doona run from me,” he gritted out. “Which word did you have difficulty with?”
“Well, you stopped moving,” Gwen argued. “I called for you. And ouch, dammit, now I hurt all over.”
When he didn’t respond, only raised his body slightly off hers so she could breathe, she became aware of a subtle change in him. His heart was thundering against her back, his breathing was shallow, and his hands were trembling atop hers.
“Wh-what’s wrong?” she asked faintly. What horror could make such strong hands tremble?
He pointed to a car, disappearing down the winding road beneath them. “What in the name of all that is holy is that?”
Gwen squinted. “It looks like a VW, but I can’t tell from this distance. The sun’s in my eyes.”
“A what?”
“Volkswagen.”
“A what wagon?”
“Volkswagen. A car.” Was the man going deaf?
“And that?”
His cheek brushed her temple as she turned her head to gaze where he pointed. “What?” She blinked owlishly. He appeared to be pointing at the inn. “The inn?”
“Nay, that bright thing with colors such as I have never seen. And what of all those leafless trees? What has happened to the trees? And why
have they tied cords between them? Think you they will run away if not tethered? Never have I seen oaks so shamed!”
Gwen eyed the neon sign above the inn and the telephone poles in wary silence.
“Well, lass?” He took several slow deep breaths, then said unsteadily, “None of this was here before. I have seen naught of such oddities. It looks as if half the clans in Scotland have settled about Brodie’s loch, and I am quite certain he wouldn’t approve of all this. He is a most private man.” He rolled off her and flipped her over, then pulled her up so she was on her knees facing him. He cupped her shoulders and shook her. “What is a car? What purpose has it?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake—you know what a car is! Stop pretending. You’ve been pretty convincing as the archaic lord, but don’t play any more games with me.” Gwen glared at him, but beneath her anger he was frightening her. He had the most bewildered expression on his face, and she thought she glimpsed a hint of fear in his brilliant eyes.
“What is a car?” he repeated softly.
Gwen began to make a caustic comment, then hesitated. Perhaps he was sick. Perhaps this situation was infinitely more dangerous than she thought. “It’s a machine powered by…er…battery and gas.” She abruptly decided to humor him, giving him the short answer. “People travel in them.”
Soundlessly, his lips formed the words battery and gas. He was very still a moment, then, “English?”
“Gwen,” she corrected.
“Are you truly English?”
“No. I’m American.”
“American. I see—well, not truly, but…Gwen?”
“What?” His questions were starting to scare her.
“In what century do I find myself?”
The breath locked in her throat. She massaged her temples, assailed by a sudden headache. It figured that a man who dripped such raw sex appeal had to be fatally flawed. She had no idea what to say to him. How did one answer such a question? Dare she get up and simply walk away, or would he tackle her again?
“I said, what century is it?” he repeated evenly.
“The twenty-first,” she said, closing her eyes. Was he playing a game? The bold block letters of a newspaper headline blossomed against the insides of her eyelids, crowding out all rational thought:
DROPOUT DAUGHTER OF WORLD-RENOWNED PHYSICISTS ABDUCTED BY ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT. SUBTITLED: SHE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO HER PARENTS AND STAYED IN THE LAB.
He fell silent, and when she opened her eyes he was scanning the village below: the boats on the loch, the buildings, the cars, the bright lights and signs, the bicyclists in the streets. He cocked his head, listening to the blat of horns honking, the buzz of motorbikes, and, from some café, the rhythmic bass of rock and roll. He rubbed his jaw, his gaze wary. After some time he nodded, as if he’d resolved an internal debate he’d been having. “Christ,” he half-whispered, aristocratic nostrils flaring like a cornered animal. “I haven’t lost a mere moon. I’ve lost centuries.”
A mere moon? Centuries? Gwen pinched her lower lip between her finger and thumb, riveted.
Then he looked back at her, eyed her shirt, her pack, her hair, her shorts, and finally her hiking boots. He tugged her foot out from beneath her, held it in his hands and studied it for a long moment before raising his eyes to hers again. His dark brows dipped.
“You name your stockings?”
“What?”
He ran his finger over the words Polo Sport stitched on the thick woolen cuff of her sock. Then his gaze fixed on the small tab on her hiking boots: Timberland. Before she could form a reply, he said, “Give me your pack.”
Gwen sighed and started to hand it to him, then unzipped the main pouch first, not in the mood to get into a discussion about zippers. Considering the one on her shorts—if he truly didn’t know how they worked—she wasn’t in a hurry to teach him. Women should sew padlocks on their zippers with him around.
He took the pack and dumped the contents on the ground. When her cell phone fell out, she was momentarily furious with herself for forgetting it, until she recalled that it wouldn’t work in Scotland anyway. As he withdrew it from the jumble of her belongings, she realized it wouldn’t work—ever again. The plastic casing had been crushed in one of her many falls, and it broke into pieces in his hands. He eyed the tiny technology inside with fascination.
He sorted through her cosmetics, pried open a compact, and regarded himself in the small mirror. Her protein bars were tossed aside along with the box of condoms (thank heavens), and when he spied her toothbrush, his bewildered gaze swept from her long, thick hair to the tiny brush and back to her hair again. One brow arched in an expression of doubt. He picked up the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, eyed the picture of the half-clad model on the cover, then fanned rapidly through it, gawking at the brilliantly colored pictures. He ran his fingers over the pages as if stunned. “And Silvan thinks his illuminated tomes are lovely,” he muttered. When he started sorting through her brightly colored panties, she’d had enough. She closed her fist over the lime silk thong he was currently examining and firmly shook her head.
But when he looked at her, she realized that for the first time since they’d met, seduction was not on his mind. Her desire to flee was abruptly vanquished by the look of anguish on his face, and she wasn’t so certain anymore that he was playing with her. If he was, he was a consummate actor.
Plucking the magazine from his hands, she pointed out the date in the corner. His eyes widened even further. “What century did you think it was?” she asked, disgusted with herself for being a sucker for a gorgeous man. He evidenced no intellect, had no redeeming qualities, yet drew her like a fluttery moth to a flame, and so what if she made ashes of her wings?
“The sixteenth,” he replied hollowly.
He sounded so distraught that she touched him, brushing her fingers against his chiseled jaw, lingering longer than was wise. “MacKeltar, you need help,” she soothed. “And we’ll find you help.”
He closed his hand over hers, turned his head, and kissed her palm. “My thanks. I am pleased you come so swiftly to my aid.”
She withdrew her hand quickly. “Come with me to the village, and I’ll get you to a doctor. You probably fell and have a concussion,” Gwen said, hoping it was true. The alternative was that he had been wandering around, God only knew how long, thinking he was some medieval lord, and she just couldn’t reconcile the powerful, arrogant man with a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. She didn’t want him to be sick. She wanted him to be just as he appeared to be: competent and strong and healthy. It seemed impossible that a mental case could be so…commanding, regal.
“Nay,” he said softly, his gaze drifting to the date on the magazine again. “We go not to your village, but to Ban Drochaid,” he said finally. “And we haven’t much time. It will be a hard journey, but I will tend you gently when we arrive. I shall see you handsomely rewarded for your assistance.”
Oh, God, he meant to take her to his castle. He really was over the top. “I’m not going to those stones with you,” she said as calmly as she could under the circumstances. “Let me take you to a doctor. Trust me.”
“Trust me,” he said, as he pulled her to her feet beside him. “I need you, Gwen. I need your help.”
“And I’m trying to give it to you—”
“But you doona understand.”
“I know you’re sick!”
He shook his dark head, and in the late-afternoon light his silver eyes were clear, level, and intelligent. No crazed glimmer lurked there, only concern and determination. “Nay. I am well and in no way touched as you are thinking. You will simply have to see for yourself.”
“I’m not coming with you,” she said firmly. “I have other things to do.”
“You must forgo them. The Keltar takes precedence, and in time you will understand. Now, I ask you a last time, do you come with me of your own free will?”
“Not a chance in hell, barbarian.”
When he wrapped his
hand about her wrist, she realized that while they were arguing he’d removed a chain of sorts from somewhere on his body. When he closed the metal links about her wrist and bound her to him, she opened her mouth to scream, but he clamped a powerful hand over her mouth.
“Then you come with me of my will alone. So be it.”
5
Nearly five hundred years, Drustan brooded. How could that be? He felt as if only yestreen he’d gone riding in the heather-filled Highland meadows of his home. His mind reeled from shock, and try though he might to deny it, he knew it was true. He knew it with a gnostic bone-deep knowing that was unquestionable. Her time felt different, the natural rhythm of the elements was frenetic, fractured. Her world was not a healthy one.
Centuries had passed, and he had no idea how it had happened. Probing his memory had yielded no additional facts. Five centuries of slumber seemed to have muted his memory, dimmed the events that had occurred just prior to his abduction. All he knew was that he’d been lured into some sort of ambush in which a number of people had participated. There had been armed men. There had been chanting and fragrant smoke, which reeked of witchcraft or Druidry. He’d obviously been drugged, but then what? Enchanted by a sleep spell? And if he’d been spelled, by whom? Still more important, why? The why of it would tell him if his entire clan had been targeted.
An icy finger of dread brushed his spine as he considered the possibility that they’d been attacked for the lore they protected.
Had someone finally believed the rumors and come seeking proof?
The Keltar males were Druids, as their ancestors had been for millennia. But what few knew was that they were not simple Druids, struggling with mostly incomplete lore since the loss of so much of it in the fateful war millennia ago. The Keltars possessed all the lore and were the sole guardians of the standing stones.