He removed his hands, and she exhaled a sigh of relief that served also to calm her erratic heartbeat, but then he gripped her by the shoulders and turned her about to face him. She tilted back her head to look at him. He regarded her in silence until she was too nervous to hold her tongue any longer.
“I was merely snooping. I’m curious about this place. It’s my history—”
“Had you been strolling about the castle studying portraits, examining the weapons, or looking at furniture, you might have convinced me, but rummaging through my chest strikes me as somewhat odd. My servants tell me they’ve seen you in every wing of my castle.”
Lisa swallowed, daunted by the cool expression on his face. A muscle jumped in his jaw and she realized she had upset him more than he was letting on. Danger, her mind cautioned. This man is a warrior, Lisa.
“Were you looking for battle plans, lass?” he asked tightly.
“No!” she assured him hastily. “I’m not interested in that.”
Circenn stepped past her, bent over the chest, and poked through it. Apparently he found little to warrant concern, but he removed the sheaf of papers she’d discovered, folded them, and placed them in his sporran. He pivoted behind her and angled his body so that his chest brushed her shoulder.
She could smell him—that faint spicy scent that lured, befuddled, and seduced her. He was much too close for comfort. Lisa stolidly refused to budge an inch; she would not turn to meet his gaze again. Let him talk to my cheek, she thought defiantly. She was not going to let him use his body to intimidate her, although she had no doubt he’d used it effectively to that purpose for most of his life.
His breath fanning her ear, he said, “I came to tell you Duncan awaits you in the oriel—that is the room above the Greathall. He will give you a tour and has more to teach you before you mingle with my people. I expect you for dinner this evening—”
“We’ve not dined together before. I see no reason to start now,” she interrupted hastily.
He continued as if she’d not spoken. “And I’ve had some gowns sent to your room. I suggest you spend the early evening with Gillendria, who will arrange for a bath and dress your hair—”
“I don’t need to fuss,” she protested quickly, her eyes fixed on the wall.
“My future wife would fuss with her appearance to befit her station.”
Circenn dropped his hand from where it was suspended above her nape and clenched it so he wouldn’t give in to the temptation to caress her hair, perhaps place a finger beneath her chin, and turn her face to his. Over the past few days, knowing she lay in his bed, slept in his castle, he’d grown deeply intrigued with the thought of being handfasted to her. His desire for her had in no way responded to his efforts at discipline; rather, it seemed to be growing defiantly, in inverse proportion to his attempts to contain it. Handfasting seemed to be acquiring the elements of a nicely bent rule, to the new and decidedly not improved Circenn Brodie.
If she turned to look at him, she would clearly see his hunger for her, and he wanted her to see it; it was like a volcano inside him—hot, far from dormant, and bordering on dangerous. He wanted to see how she would react, if her eyes would widen, her pupils dilate, her lips part. He gazed at her for a moment, willing her to turn and face him, but she was stalwart in her stance.
* * *
Circenn entered his chambers, gliding soundlessly across the floor. He drew a deep breath and let himself feel the raw power surging in his veins. Why fight it now? he thought sardonically. The past four days had been hellish. Since they’d returned to his castle, he’d tried to keep himself busy training, attempting to exhaust himself physically so he might sleep at night, but to no avail. At every moment he was exquisitely conscious of the woman in his keep.
And exquisitely tempted.
He’d broken every damned rule on his list but two, and now he’d come to this chamber to bend yet another one. He’d come to scry his future.
He paused before the brightly burning fire. Perhaps, if he had peered into his future the moment she had appeared, he might have glimpsed the disasters coming and been able to avert them. Perhaps he should have broken that rule first. Or perhaps he should have practiced scrying years ago and foreseen her arrival, but he hadn’t for two reasons: He disliked using magic, and scrying was not an exact art. Sometimes he could see clearly, and at other times his visions were impossible to decipher, more confusing than helpful.
Circenn stared into the flames for a long moment, arguing with himself over such things as fate and free choice. He’d never been able to reach a solid conclusion about predestination. When Adam had first shown him the art of scrying his future days, Circenn had scoffed, arguing that to believe one could see one’s future meant that it was unchangeable, which annihilated the concept of personal control, something he couldn’t accept. Adam had merely laughed and goaded Circenn that if he refused to learn all the arts, he couldn’t expect to understand the few he did know. A bird’s eye views the entire terrain over which it flies, a mouse sees only dirt Be ye free or be ye mouse? Adam had asked, his mouth curved in that perpetually mocking smile.
Sighing, Circenn knelt by the fireplace and ran his hand beneath the crack where the hearth met the floor. A portion of the wall containing the hearth silently revolved ninety degrees, revealing a pitch-black chamber behind it. He picked up a candle and stepped into the hidden chamber. With a slight movement of his foot, he depressed the lever that spun the wall closed. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the room with no windows. It was an uncomfortable place for him, a place he sought only in his darkest hours.
He passed the small tables, toying idly with the various “gifts” the blackest elf had brought him. Some he understood, some he never wanted to understand. Adam had given them strange names: batteries, automatic rifles, lighters, tampons. Circenn had explored a few of them, and one he’d found himself drawn to many times over the centuries. Adam called it a “portable CD player.” His usual favorite was Mozart’s Requiem, but today, however, he was more in the mood for a piece called Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner. Slipping the device over his ears, he thumbed the gauge to full volume and sank into a chair in the corner, staring at the candle flame. Papers crackled in his sporran and he removed them with a wry smile. He’d long ago forgotten stuffing those sheaves in the chest in his study, but he had narrowly escaped a disastrous situation by retrieving them. The last thing she needed to stumble upon was his scribbled and maudlin introspections. She would truly think him deranged.
He knew the first sheaf by heart:
˜4 Dec. 858˜
I have lived forty-one years, and today I have discovered that I will live forever, courtesy of Adam Black. I can scarcely dip my quill in ink; my hand trembles with rage. He gave me no choice—but what matter the wishes of mere mortals to an immortal race that has lost the ability to feel?
He didn’t tell me until after my wedding today, and even then he would not tell me all, he merely acknowledged that he had slipped the potion in my wine sometime in the past ten years. Now I shall watch my wife grow old and lose her to death, while I continue on, solitary. Shall I become a monster like Adam? Will time dim my ability to feel? Will a thousand years make me weary beyond enduring and tinge my mind with that puckish madness that delights in mischievous manipulation? Will two thousand years make me become like them—enamored of mortal struggles they can no longer feel? ’Tis no curse I would wish upon my love; better she should live and die as nature intended.
Ah … was it only this summer past I dreamed of my children, playing around the reflecting pool? Now I pause and think—what, give the fool more fodder? What atrocities might he commit upon my sons and daughters? Och, Naya, forgive me, love. You shall find me seedless as the grape in wine.
And the second, the one that had laid the course of his life:
˜31 Dec. 858˜
My mind is consumed with this immortality. I have pondered naught but these questions durin
g the waxing and waning of the moon, and now on this eve before the new year dawns—the first of forevermore— I have at long last achieved resolution. I will not permit the immortal madness to take me, and I shall conquer it thus: I have devised a set of rules.
I, Circenn Brodie, Laird and Thane of Brodie, do vow to adhere faithfully to these tenets, never to break them, for if I should, I may tumble headlong into Adam’s destructive irreverence and become a creature who holds nothing sacred.
I shall not lie.
I shall not spill innocent blood.
I shall not break an oath sworn.
I shall not use magic for personal gain or glory.
I shall never betray my honor.
And the third, when brutal understanding had finally dawned and he’d tasted the bitter dregs hidden in the cup of immortal life, camouflaged by the sweet nectar of perfect health and longevity:
˜1, April 947˜
I buried my foster son Jamie today, knowing it was only one of an eternal succession of burials. The hour grows late and my mind turns, as it oft is wont, to Naya. It has been a score of years since I lay with a woman. Dare I love again? How many people will I lower into their graves, and is it with such grim doings that madness begins? Ah, fie. ‘Tis a lonely life.
A lonely life, indeed.
The savage music thundering in his ears, he gazed deep into the flame and deliberately opened that part of his mind he usually kept tightly shut. Unlike Druidism, which was a ritualistic art that included binding curses and spells, true magic required neither ceremonies nor rhymes. Adam’s kind of magic was a process of opening one’s mind and using a focus for the power once summoned. Circenn had found that the glassy surface of the reflecting pool in the rear gardens, or a polished metal disk, was often the best focus.
He retreated into his mind, staring intently at the shield propped against the wall. He’d fashioned it himself hundreds of years past, and although it was far too battered to carry into battle, it served him well as a focal point. The last time he’d tried to scry his life, he’d been trying to see himself five hundred years in the future, to determine what he might become. The vision that had flickered within this same shield had been bitter indeed. His vision had told him that by the seventeenth century, he would be possessed by a depraved madness.
Fate? Predestination?
His visions had told him truly when and how Naya would die; still, he’d been unable to save her. Natural causes, old age—a thing against which he possessed no weapon. Impotent in all his power, he’d lost her. And she’d raged against him as she’d died, cursing him a demon, for his hair had never grayed, his face had never lined.
He shook off the memory and intensified his focus. Images blurred and slowly coalesced. At first he could define only blobs of color: pink, bronze, dusky rose, and a backdrop of ivory. He narrowed the span of control, focusing on what the next few months would bring him.
When the pictures became clear, his hands closed like claws upon the arms of his chair.
He stared, first in shock, then with fascination, and finally with acquiescence, a faint smile playing about his lips.
Who was he to argue with fate? If that was what his time held, who was he to be so arrogant to think he could change it? He had sworn this would not happen, yet all events had consistently carved the path to it, from the first day she’d arrived.
He would be the worst kind of liar if he tried to convince himself that he’d hoped to see anything different.
He sucked in a shallow breath as he watched the nude woman reflected in the shield roll astride his naked body. His abdomen tightened and his cock hardened painfully as she straddled him and lowered her hot, wet sheath onto him inch by inch. In the shield, he had a clear view of her, as if he were lying on his back, looking up at her as she rode him. Her full breasts bobbed tantalizingly above him, her nipples tight. His hands swept up to palm them roughly, to tease the puckered crests. She arched her back, tossing her head and baring the column of her neck. The muscles in her neck were taut with passion as she strained for her pleasure, and it aroused him immeasurably. His hot gaze swept down over her breasts, followed the hollows and planes of her stomach, to the soft curls between her thighs, and he stared, fascinated, as she impaled herself upon his shaft, watched as the thick column of his cock was revealed, then buried again in her mound. She had a tiny dark mole on the inside of her left thigh, and in his vision, his fingers splayed over it. He ached to kiss it, to run his tongue over it.
He could nearly feel her body clench around him: tight, hot, and slick with that woman’s wetness that made a man feel invincible—the measure of which bespoke his prowess: the wetter the woman, the more desired the man.
When the shield finally went dark, he came to himself with his hand on his cock. It was swollen and aching for release.
“So, that is what is to be,” he mused aloud. “Fate.”
He couldn’t deny that he’d wanted it since the day he first saw her; he’d had to forcibly restrain himself from taking her on several occasions. The vision had just confirmed that he would indeed have her, and that she would indeed be willing.
Why do you fight it? Adam had asked him angrily on more than one occasion. Why can you not glory in what you are and enjoy the power of being Circenn Brodie? You possess the ability to give and take more pleasure than most mortals ever know. Soar, Circenn. Drink of the life of my kind. I offer you it; freely.
Not freely, Circenn scoffed. There was a price. He squeezed his eyes shut as the music thundered in his ears.
It was his fate that she would ride like a mighty, demanding Valkyrie upon his body.
She already sang like a siren to his heart, this woman of defiance and fear, of curiosity and contradiction. Naya had been soft and passive toward her lot in life, until the end when she’d turned bitter. Never before had he met a woman like Lisa, a woman with needs and desires and a mind of her own. Deep emotions roiled in her breast, cunning intelligence glowed in her eyes, and a fierceness that vied with the legendary Valkyries’ breathed in her veins.
Rules be damned. How could he argue with the future? It was written. He could only take it, enjoy it, and make the most of it, praying he would survive it when he lost his heart to her, then inevitably lost her in a short span of years. If he was going to be mad in the future, he may as well savor the present.
Circenn Brodie rose from his chair, ripped the machine from the future off his head, and did what he’d never dared do before:
He eased his control a tiny bit and encouraged the magic to throb inside him.
Dark angel, Adam had inveigled him, soar into my world and fear nothing.
He tossed back his head and tasted the power running through his formidable body.
It was a very different creature who left the dark, hidden room to find his woman.
* * *
Adam Black smiled as he removed the tampon from the barrel of the rifle. Although Circenn had refused to use any of the weapons Adam had brought him, the warrior within him could not permit time to tarnish them. He snorted, dangling the tampon from its string. Only his fastidious Circenn Brodie would decide that the soft white swabs were to be used for cleaning.
Eyeing the rifle, Adam grinned. They were the perfect size to slip inside the barrel—it nearly seemed sensible. But he hadn’t brought tampons back to medieval Scotland for Circenn to play with; he’d brought them—and every gift he’d chosen—for another reason. Although if he had his way, there would be many nine-month intervals during which she would have no use for them.
“YER A BEAUTY, LASS,” GILLENDRIA SAID, CLAPPING her hands. “I thought I could refashion it well, but ’tis the woman who makes this gown.”
Lisa stood before the mirror, gazing at herself with no small measure of shock.
Gillendria had refitted a dress that she said had belonged to Circenn’s mother, Morganna. Now she slipped it over her shoulders, atop a shift of softest linen. Midnight-blue silk clung to her breasts
, and the scooped neck slipped off her shoulders, accentuating her translucent skin and fine collarbones. It hugged her hips and fell to the floor in a rustle of blue embroidered with gold. At her waist, Gillendria had fastened a gold girdle that knotted low and from which hundreds of tiny gold moons and stars dangled. Matching slippers encased her feet, and a lovely gold torque that predated medieval times encircled her throat. An embroidered surcoat was tied below her breasts. Gillendria had curled her hair, carefully picking out the gold highlights and curling them a bit tighter so that they lay atop the wavy mass, then mussed it gently. A dab of some combination of root, herb, and flower colored her lips ruby.
Who was this woman in the mirror who looked like sin? she wondered. Like Sin’s, she amended fancifully, for even she had to admit that the woman in the mirror now looked a suitable companion for the laird of the castle. For once she didn’t curse herself for being tall, because in this gown her height added an unmistakable touch of elegance.
“You’re incredible, Gillendria,” Lisa breathed.
“I am, aren’t I?” Gillendria replied without a trace of arrogance. “Although I have not had a woman with yer perfect figure to clothe for some time, I have not forgotten how. The laird will be well pleased.”
Lisa was well pleased. She’d never known she could look like this. At seventeen, she’d hoped one day to look like Catherine—a golden, striking beauty—but work had become all-consuming as she’d struggled to provide for her mother, and Lisa hadn’t spared another thought for her own appearance in five long years. Her mother would love—Oh! Mom!
She shivered. How could she have forgotten even for an instant?
“Are ye cold, milady?” Gillendria asked. “I can fetch a wrap.”
“Nay,” Lisa said softly. “Just a momentary chill, nothing more. Go on with you now, Gillendria. I’ll find my way to the Greathall.”