Kiss of the Highlander (12 page)

But it was more than just scientific curiosity, and she suspected it had something to do with his sock and her eggs and a desire she couldn’t attribute solely to the mandate programmed into her genes that clamored for survival of her race. No other man had ever incited such a response in her.

Science couldn’t explain the tenderness she’d felt at the sight of tears in his eyes. Nor the desire she’d had to cradle his head against her chest—not to have her cherry once and truly plucked, but for his comfort.

Oh, her heart was engaged, and it both alarmed and elated her.

Tucking her bangs behind an ear, she slid off the hood and started up the hill. He’d had enough time alone. It was time to talk.

“Drustan.” Gwen’s voice cut like a light through the darkness around him.

He met her gaze levelly. The poor wee lass looked terrified, yet bristled with resolve.

She looked directly into his eyes then and, if she felt fear, she rose above it. He admired that about her, that despite her misgivings she forged on with the valor of a knight entering battle. When he’d chased her off, he worried that she might simply jump in her metal beast and drive away. The relief he’d felt when he glimpsed her heading toward him through the stones had been intense. Whatever she’d decided to think of him, she’d resolved to stick by his side—he could see it in her eyes.

“Drustan?” Hesitant, yet firm.

“Aye, lass?”

“Are you feeling better now?” she asked warily.

“I have made a tentative peace with my feelings,” he said dryly. “Fear not, I doona plan to leap up and avenge the loss of my people.”
Yet
.

She gave him a brisk nod. “Good.”

He could tell that she didn’t wish to discuss it, and rather than accuse him of being deluded when he was clearly distraught, she was going to scuttle around it in some circuitous manner. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what she was up to.

“Drustan, I memorized your poem, now it’s your turn to grant me a favor.”

“As you wish, Gwen. Only tell me what you want of me.”

“A few simple questions.”

“I will answer them to the best of my ability,” he replied.

“How much dirt is in a hole a foot wide, nine inches long, and three and a half feet deep?”

“That is your question?” he asked, baffled. Of all things she might have asked…

“One of them,” she said hastily.

He smiled faintly. Her question was one of his favorite puzzles. His priest, Nevin, had agonized for half an hour trying to calculate exactly how much dirt would be in such a space before seeing the obvious. “There is no dirt in a hole,” he replied easily.

“Oh, well, that was a trick puzzle and doesn’t tell me much. You may have heard it before. How about this one: A boat lies at anchor with a rope ladder hanging over the side. The rungs in the rope ladder are nine inches apart. The tide rises at a rate of six inches per hour and then falls at the same rate. If one rung of the ladder is just touching the water when the tide begins to rise, how many rungs will be covered after eight hours?”

Drustan ran through a swift series of calculations, then laughed softly, at a time when he thought he might not laugh again. He suddenly understood why she had chosen such questions, and his regard for her increased. When an apprentice petitioned a Druid to be accepted and trained, he was put through a similar series of problems designed to reveal how the lad’s mind worked and what he was capable of.

“None, lass, the rope ladder rises with the boat upon the water. Do my powers of reason convince you that I am not mad?”

She regarded him strangely. “Your reasoning abilities seem untouched by your peculiar…illness. So what is 4,732.25 multiplied by 7,837.50?”

“37,089,009.375.”

“My
God,
” she said, looking simultaneously awed and revolted. “You poor thing! I asked the first question mostly to see if you were thinking clearly, the second to see if the first had been a fluke. But you did that math in your head in five seconds. Even I can’t do it that fast!”

He shrugged. “I have always had an affinity for numbers. Did your questions prove anything to you?” They had proved something to him. Gwen Cassidy was the most intelligent lass he’d ever met. Young, seemingly fertile, an extraordinary mating heat between them,
and
smart.

His certainty that fate had brought her to him for a reason increased tenfold.

Mayhap, he thought, she might not fear him after tomorrow eve. Mayhap there
was
such a love for him as his father had known.

“Well, if you’re a candidate for bedlam, you’re the smartest madman I’ve ever met, and your delusions seem confined to one issue.” She blew out a breath. “So, what now?”

“Come, lass.” He held his arms out to her.

She eyed him warily.

“Och, lassie, give me something to hold in my arms that’s real and sweet. I will not harm you.”

She trudged to his side and sank down in the grass beside him. She kept her face averted for several moments, gazing up at the stars, then her shoulders slumped and she looked at him. “Oh, bother,” she said, and stunned him by reaching out to cradle his head in her arms, pulling him to her breast.

His slid his hands around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. “Lovely Gwen, ’tis thanking you once again I am. You are a gift from the angels.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she muttered against his hair. She seemed awkward holding him, as if she hadn’t had much practice. Her body was tense, and he sensed if he moved suddenly that she would jerk away, so he breathed slowly and kept still, allowing her time to grow accustomed to the intimacy.

“I guess this means you won’t be able to prove anything to me tomorrow, huh?”

“As promised, on the morrow I will prove to you my story is true. This changes nothing, or little. Will you stay of your own volition? Mayhap help me explore the grounds tomorrow?”

Hesitantly, she slipped her wee hands into his hair and he half-sighed, half-groaned with pleasure when her nails lightly grazed his scalp. “Aye, Drustan MacKeltar,” she said, with as good a lilt as any Scots lass. “I’ll be stayin’ wi’ ye ’til the morrow.”

He laughed aloud and pulled her closer. He craved her touch, wanted desperately to make love to her, but sensed that if he pressed her now, he would lose the comfort of her embrace. “That was fine, lass. Yer no bampot, and I’m thinkin’ we may make a wee douce Highland lass out o’ ye yet.”

Gwen slept that night curled in the arms of a Highlander, in a field of sillar shakles and gowan, beneath a silvery spoon of a moon, peaceful as a lamb. And if Drustan was feeling wolfish, he bid himself be content merely to hold her.

S
EPTEMBER
21
10:23
P.M.

         
9
         
 

They searched all day but didn’t find the tablets.

When the sky darkened to indigo, pierced by glittering stars, Drustan gave up and constructed a bonfire within the circle of stones so he would have light by which to perform the ritual.

If the worst occurred tonight, he wanted her to know as much about what had happened to him as possible. And her backpack would be an added boon. While digging in the ruins, he’d told her everything that had transpired just prior to his abduction.

One disbelieving brow arched, she’d nevertheless listened as he explained how he’d received a note bearing an urgent summons to come to the clearing behind the little loch
if ye wish tae ken the name of the Campbell who murdered yer brother.
His grief fever-hot, he’d donned his weapons and rushed off, without summoning his guard; the thirst to avenge his brother’s death had overridden all intelligent thought.

He told her how he’d grown light-headed and weary while racing toward the loch and that he now believed he’d somehow been drugged. He told her how he’d collapsed just outside the forest on the banks of the loch, how his limbs had locked, his eyes had closed as if weighted by heavy gold coins. He told her he’d felt his armor and weapons being removed, then symbols being painted on his chest, then felt nothing more until she’d wakened him.

Then he told her of his family, of his brilliant and bristly father, of their beloved housekeeper and substitute mother, Nell. He told her of his young priest, whose nagging, fortune-telling mother was wont to chase him ceaselessly about the estate trying to get a look at his palm.

He forgot his sorrow for a time and regaled her with tales of his childhood with Dageus. When he spoke of his family, her skeptical gaze had softened a bit, and she’d listened with marked fascination, laughing over the antics of Drustan and his brother, smiling gently over the ongoing sparring between Silvan and Nell. He deduced from her wistful expression that, even when her family had been alive, there’d not been much laughter and loving in her life.

Have you no brothers and sisters, lass?
he’d asked.

She’d shaken her head.
My mother had fertility problems and had me late in life. After she had me, the doctors said she couldn’t have any more.

Why have you not wed and had bairn of your own?

She’d shifted and averted her gaze.
I never found the right man.

Nay, she’d not had much pleasure in her life, and he’d like the chance to change that. He’d like to make her eyes sparkle with happiness.

He wanted Gwen Cassidy. He wanted to be her “right man.” The mere scent of her as she walked by brought every inch of him to attention. He wanted her to become so familiar with his body and the pleasure he could give her with it that a simple glance would make her limp with desire. He wanted to pass a fortnight, uninterrupted, in his bedchamber, exploring her hidden passion, unleashing the eroticism that simmered just beneath her surface.

But it might never come to pass, because once he performed the ritual and she discovered what he was, and what he’d done to her, she would have every reason to despise him.

Still, he had no other choice.

Casting a worried glance at the arc of the moon against the black sky, he inhaled deeply, greedily, of the sweet Highland night air. The time was nearly upon them.

“Let it rest, Gwen,” he called. He was moved that she refused to give up. Mad though she might think him, she was still digging about in the ruins. “Come join me in the stones,” he beckoned. He wanted to spend what might be his last hour with her, close to the fire, holding her in his arms. His druthers were to strip off her clothes and bury himself inside her, brand himself into her memory with what time he had left, but that seemed as likely as the tablets suddenly manifesting themselves in his hands.

“But we haven’t found the tablets.” She turned toward him, smudging dirt on her cheek when she pushed back her hair.

“ ‘Tis too late now, lass. The time is nearly upon us, and that tube of light”—he gestured at her flashlight—“won’t help us see what isn’t there to be found. ’Twas a vain and foolish hope that they might have survived intact on the estate. If we haven’t found them yet, the next hour will accomplish naught. Come. Spend it with me.” He held out his arms.

She’d slept within them last night, and he’d awakened to the lovely sight of her face, trusting and innocent in repose. He’d kissed her full, lush lips, and when she’d awakened, sleep-flushed, with crease marks on her cheek from being pressed to his wrinkled T-shirt, he’d felt a rush of tenderness he’d not felt for a woman before. Lust, ever at a boil within him when she was near, had simmered into a more intense, complexly layered feeling, and he’d recognized that given time he could fall deeply in love with her. Not merely ache to keep her in bed without respite but develop a real and lasting emotion, equal parts passion, respect, and appreciation, the kind that bound a man and a woman together for life. She was everything he wanted in a woman.

Gwen trudged into the circle, clearly reluctant to give up when there was even one stone unturned, another trait he admired in her.

“Why won’t you tell me what you plan to do?” All day she’d tried to coax it out of him, but he’d refused to tell her anything more than that they were looking for seven stone tablets inscribed with symbols.

“I said I’d give you proof, and I will.” A stunning, irrevocable amount of proof.

The hours had dragged on as they searched, tossing rocks and rubble, and his hope had steadily faded with each broken chip of pottery, each timeworn memento of his dead clan.

At one point futility had nearly overwhelmed him, and he’d sent her down to the village with a list of items to pick up so he would have time to think, undistracted. During her absence, he’d meditated upon the symbols, working through complex calculations, and derived his best guess at the last three—the guess that would be put to the test in less than one hour. He was aiming for two weeks after his brother’s death, plus one day. He was almost certain they were correct and believed there was only a minute chance the worst would happen.

And if the worst happened, he had prepared her well and need only remind her what to say and do to restore complete, merged memory to the past version of himself. ’Twas why he’d bid her memorize the spell.

She’d picked up several jugs of water, along with flashlights, coffee, and food, and now sat beside him near the fire, cross-legged, cleaning her hands with dampened towels, emitting little sighs of pleasure as she scrubbed at her face with tiny pads from her pack.

While she freshened up, he broke open the stones he’d collected during their hike. Inside each was a core of brilliant dust, which he scraped carefully into a tin and blended with water to form a thick paste.

“Paint rocks,” she said, intrigued enough to pause in her ablutions. She’d never seen one but knew the ancients had used them to paint with. They were small and craggy, and deep in the center a dust formed over time that made brilliant colors when mixed with water.

“Aye, ’tis what we call them as well,” he said, rising to his feet.

Gwen watched as he moved to one of the megaliths and, after a moment’s hesitation, began etching a complex design of formulas and symbols. She narrowed her eyes, studying it. Parts of it seemed somehow familiar yet alien, a perverted mathematical equation that danced just out of her reach, and there was little that did that to her.

A beat of nervous apprehension thudded in her chest, and she watched intently as he moved to the next stone, then the third and the fourth. On each of the stones he etched a different series of numbers and symbols upon their inner faces, pausing occasionally to glance up at the stars.

The autumnal equinox, she reflected, was the time when the sun crossed the planes of the earth’s equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth. Researchers had long argued over the precise use of the standing stones. Was she about to find out their real purpose?

She eyed the megaliths and pondered what she knew about archaeoastronomy. When he finished sketching upon the thirteenth and final stone, her breath caught in her throat. Although she recognized only parts of it, he’d clearly stroked the symbol for infinity:

beneath it. The lemniscate. The Möbius strip.
Apeiron
. What knowledge did he have of it? She scanned the thirteen stones and felt a peculiar itchy sensation in her mind, as if an epiphany was trying to burrow into her overcrowded brain.

Watching him, she was struck by a stunning possibility. Was it possible that he was smarter than
she
was? Was that his madness?

Gorgeous
and
smart?
Be still, my beating heart….

As he turned away from the last stone, she shivered. Physically, he was irresistible. He was wearing his original costume of plaid and armor again, having shed “such trews that doona let a man hang properly and an inar that canna conceal an oxter knife” as soon as he’d awakened that morning. Hang properly, indeed, she thought, gaze skipping over his kilt, mouth going dry as she imagined what was hanging beneath it. Was he in that seemingly permanent state of semi-arousal? She’d like to kiss him until there was nothing “semi” about it…

With effort, she dragged her gaze to his face. His sleek hair was a wild fall about his shoulders. He was the most intense, exciting, and erotic man she’d ever met.

When she was around Drustan MacKeltar, inexplicable things happened to her. When she looked at him, his powerful body, his chiseled jaw, the flashing eyes and sensual mouth, she heard Pan’s distant pipes and suffered an irresistible compulsion to tithe to Dionysus, the ancient god of wine and orgy. The tune was seductive, urging her to cast aside restraint, don her crimson kitten thong, and dance barefoot for a dark forbidding man who claimed he was a sixteenth-century laird.

He glanced back at her, and their gazes collided. She felt like a time bomb ready to explode, ticking, ticking.