A Kind of Magic (29 page)

She shouldn’t have let herself become so complacent and halfway content with her situation in this world. She should treat the whole thing with Rowan as an affair, maybe even be relieved that he only wanted a physical relationship. Maybe he was doing her a favor and her heart wouldn’t be broken when she left. She was from a different time.

She was supposed to be looking for a way back to that time. She should go.

Shouldn’t she?

163

Susan Sizemore

Allen gently touched her hand. “Did my words offend you, lass? You look pained and are far too quiet.”

Since Rowan hadn’t said a word to Allen all evening and didn’t appear to be about to now, she made herself turn to the laird of the Harboths. Maddie found him gazing at her with genuine concern.

“Rowan and I are wed for a year and a day,” she told him.

His eyes glinted with sudden mischief. “Well then,” he said. “You and I will have to have a talk the day after that year and a day is up.”

Maddie was sure Allen was only teasing but Rowan surged angrily to his feet. His voice was deadly cold when he said, “Will you indeed, Harboth?”

Allen jumped to his feet. So did Maddie. All eyes in the room turned to them. All the latent tension that Harboth and Murray kinsmen had suppressed seemed to be on the brink of surfacing.

“Rowan,” Maddie warned. She put a hand on each man’s shoulder. The two of them glared at each other. The silence in the hall grew deep and ugly. Hands went to dagger hilts. Eating knives were grasped tightly in tense fists. “Stop it,” Maddie pleaded. Neither Rowan nor Allen seemed aware of the growing danger that filled the room. “Remember that you’re friends now and offer a toast to the happy couple or something.”

Fortunately a diversion presented itself before either a Harboth or a Murray did anything both clans would regret. The door to the hall was open instead of shut and barred as it normally would be after sundown, for the feast was going on both indoors and in the courtyard. As a guard ran into the hall, everyone’s attention shifted to him, including the two men who’d been glaring at each other a moment before.

“What?” Rowan demanded as the man hurried up to the table.

“The lord of the Isles,” the man announced loudly. “The lord of the Isles is at the gate. He says he heard of the celebration and he and his men came to share in it rather than making camp for the night.”

Rowan forgot any quarrel with Harboth as he focused on this new development.

He’d been waiting for anxious weeks for this moment but didn’t feel ready for it. There was nothing he could do but say, “Well, let the man in!”

164

A Kind of Magic

“What’s going to happen with us?”

Maddie asked the question too softly for anyone but herself to hear. She was afraid to speak any louder for Rowan was sleeping beside her and she was terrified of how he might answer. Truth be told, she thought she was too afraid of the answer to ever voice it. She hated being afraid. It wasn’t her nature to fear the unknown but this time she did. This time she wasn’t worrying about a scientific or engineering problem. She was worrying about her own future, more importantly, she was worrying over the future she might or might not have with the difficult man she’d come to love so deeply it hurt.

It had been a very long night. First Laclan MacDonald, lord of the Isles, and his entourage showed up, which had served to dissipate the tension. MacDonald proved to be a boisterous, charismatic man. He had a big personality and a high opinion of himself. Conversation during the rest of the meal had centered exclusively on him.

Maddie hadn’t minded a bit. In fact, she’d actually managed to relax enough to enjoy the rather lewd and crude spectacle of escorting the newlyweds to bed at the end of the evening. Even Rowan laughed and joked as the couple were undressed and settled side by side in a bed set up in a flower-strewn, curtained-off area of the hall.

After the festivities were over, Rowan drew her into a dark corner and they shared a fierce kiss and quick caresses. It fired her blood but didn’t last long enough. When she took Rowan’s hand and tried to lead him to their room, he shook his head. Then he told her that there was man’s work to be done, that he must speak with the lord of the Isles and sent her to bed. The hard look on his face brooked no argument. That she was his wife and lady of the castle made no difference. Women had no place in political discussions in this day and age. She recalled that they barely had a place in her own time and made herself leave the hall without any protest.

She’d gone to bed but she hadn’t slept even after Rowan came in and lay down beside her. He took her in his arms but was faintly snoring before she could say a word.

She held him, let him rest, took as much comfort as she could from his warm, solid presence but there was no rest in her.

Now as morning came, all her thinking and worrying could be summed up with one frightening sentence.

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“What?”

This time, she had spoken loud enough for the man so close beside her to hear. She stroked his cheek, heard as well as felt the faint scratch of beard stubble against her palm. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

165

Susan Sizemore

Rowan hardly felt as if he’d slept. He was a man of regular habits who didn’t function well on little sleep, at least when it interrupted his routine. During battle situations, it was different. One slept and ate when one could while chasing raiders and cattle thieves. In his own stronghold, he liked an orderly routine. Between wedding his sister to a Harboth and last night’s conversation with his overlord, Rowan felt as if he’d brought a battlefield into his own home. As he woke and became aware of the tension radiating from Maddie, he feared that his wife was going to prove to be one more source of conflict in his life. Having to fight his own desire for her was hard enough on him. It was as if she were a part of him for he could feel that she was sad and worried and perhaps a bit angry. He feared there was a battle brewing and that the enemy was the woman beside him. It pained him, more because he hated that she was hurting than for any injury her anger could possibly inflict on him.

Was that the way love should be? he wondered. Did it mean worrying more for another than for one’s self? Or was this ache and need to keep Maddie safe and happy some perversity he’d inherited from his father, along with the light brown color of his hair and the rangy way he was built? How was he to tell what was the right amount to love?

He wished they were back at the White Lady’s house or roaming the heather-covered hills together once more. It had been so much easier to give of himself, to concentrate all his emotions and attention on Maddie when there had been only the two of them alone together. Even such a fanciful wish was wrong, he warned himself. Fair folk could be fanciful but he was a mortal man with a mortal man’s responsibilities.

Among his responsibilities were those he owed his wife. With this in mind he stopped pretending to sleep, looked at Maddie and asked, voice rough from lack of sleep, “What?”

“Do you love me?” Maddie hadn’t meant to ask but once the words were out she could hardly call them back. So she sat up, took a deep breath and demanded, “Well, do you?”

Rowan propped his head up on his pillow and watched her. To her he seemed not only grumpy but wary of the question. He took a bit longer than she liked to answer.

“Have I not told you so once already?”

Maddie crossed her arms beneath her ample bosom. “When?”

Rowan sat up. “At the White Lady’s. Do you not remember?”

Maddie hated to tell him that she wasn’t sure what she remembered. He believed so strongly in fairies and magic that telling him she wasn’t certain about anything that had happened that evening would just lead into an argument she didn’t want. This was no time to go off on a tangential debate that probably could never be resolved.

She stuck to her central point. “Do you love me?”

“Aye.”

The fact that Rowan was scowling when he said it didn’t help. “Why?” She undid the drawstring at her throat and pulled her nightgown down to expose her breasts.

166

A Kind of Magic

Once she would have suffered a full body blush as she did it but weeks of loving had made her able to flaunt her body with assurance, even pride. Rowan’s gaze immediately shifted from her face and Maddie arched her back and demanded defiantly, “Is it me or these that you love?”

A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. “That’s a fine amount of freckles you’ve got there, lass.”

Maddie almost laughed at Rowan’s dry response. Almost. “You haven’t answered my question.”

His gaze met hers once more. “You expect a man to be able to think when you’re showing him one of the finest views in the Highlands?”

She yanked her gown back up over her shoulders. “How about now?”

“Give me a moment.” Rowan closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking of something unpleasant to get my—mind—off what I’d rather be doing just at present.”

What he was thinking of was that it was daylight, with all the duties and tasks that came with the day if he were going to remain a good laird to his people. What he wanted to think about was lying down with his woman and resting his head on those fine, soft, freckled breasts. It wasn’t even making love that he wanted just now as much as he wanted to rest a while with their bodies nestled lovingly together.

If a knock hadn’t come on the door he might even have given in to the powerful longing that pulled at him. Instead, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up to answer the knock. “What?”

Maddie recognized the voice that answered as Father Andrew’s but she didn’t catch the softly spoken conversation that followed. She stayed where she was while they talked, arms tensely crossed and waited for Rowan to return to her. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he wrapped his kilt over the shirt he’d slept in and left instead.

Without a word or look for her as he did so of course. With Father Andrew waiting just outside the half-open door, Maddie didn’t say anything either. She just sadly watched her husband, not that he noticed that she was disappointed or upset or anything.

“Men,” she murmured after he was gone. “Mom told me they preferred me for my boobs rather than my brain. I guess she was right.”

Maddie just wished she knew if that was a good or bad thing in her relationship with Rowan.

* * * * *

“’Tis only women’s work.”

If he says that once more,
Maddie thought.
I’m going to kill him.

167

Susan Sizemore

Rowan was being more than usually dour today and Maddie was about ready to strangle him with his own kilt.

“Designing such fine drawing chimneys is hardly what I’d call woman’s work,”

Lord Laclan MacDonald answered. He looked from one corner of the freshly whitewashed room where a fire blazed in one of the new stone fireplaces, to the corner diagonally across from it where a second blaze warmed that side of the room. “I’ve never seen such an efficient way for heating a hall nor been in a warmer one.”

“It’s a Southwestern design,” Maddie found herself explaining.

She couldn’t help but speak up at last, though Rowan had firmly ordered her to stay in the background and hold her tongue when the lord of the Isles had gallantly request the presence of the lady of the hall on his inspection tour of Cape Wrath. She’d done her best to remain unobtrusive but the role had been hard on her justifiable pride in the improvement projects that were underway at the castle. If the lord of the Isles had scoffed at the things he saw—the new windmills that powered the forge and newly constructed laundry, the compost heaps that were making soil to be used in the greenhouse she’d contrived out of oiled hides lashed to a wooden framework, the distillery she was building to process pig droppings into methane, the loom, the spinning wheels, the new rudder and sail designs for the fishing boats—she might not have been so frustrated by Rowan’s deprecating replies to his comments.

In the last few weeks Rowan had encouraged and enthusiastically participated in all the improvements at Cape Wrath. She had thought he was proud of them, that they were working as a team to improve his peoples’ lives. Now he was acting as if he were disinterested or even ashamed at all the new-fangled gadgetry that littered his property.

He was also downplaying and downright ignoring the part she’d played in the changes.

In fact, the only person who seemed to remember that she was involved in bringing technology to the Murrays was Allen Harboth. Somehow it didn’t seem right or fair that Allen was the one who cared to give her credit.

Now that they’d returned to the hall after traipsing all over the castle and village in a misting rain, Maddie was too wet, tired and furious with her husband to obediently follow his orders any longer. Which was why she spoke up when Lord Laclan mentioned the fireplaces. All gazes turned to her when she did. Rowan’s look was furious and warning. She ignored him to concentrate on curious stare of the lord of the Isles.

“Southwestern?” he asked. “Southwestern where?”

Since there was no reason to confuse the man by explaining that she’d come from the future and she’d adapted a Southwestern architectural style of the United States for her Scottish fireplaces, she replied, “It is a Spanish design, my lord. Placing a rounded fireplace in a corner rather than putting it flat against a wall is a more efficient way to heat a building. More warmth, less fuel.” Since Lord Laclan was still staring at her when she finished, Maddie gave him the most reassuring smile she could manage and asked, “You see?”

168

A Kind of Magic

Rowan stepped between her and the lord of the Isles before he could reply. “Come and warm yourself by the fire with a goblet of honey wine, my lord,” he said loudly as though shouting would somehow drown out what she’d already said.

Maybe he was just trying to negate her presence altogether. Maddie studied his fine, flat butt for a moment. She was half tempted to kick him squarely in the center of it. Instead, she leaned forward and half whispered in his ear, “Rowan! What is the matter with you?”