Kiss of the Highlander (17 page)

She whisked Gwen through the door with a strong grip and slammed it behind them. “Och, lassie,” she crooned, gathering her in her arms. “Nell’s got ye now. For the love of Columba, what gives ye cause to be wandering so on such a night? An English wench, no less! How came ye here? Did a man have at ye? Did he harm ye, wee lass?”

As the woman drew her to her ample bosom, Gwen thought,
So this is Drustan’s Nell,
and sagged against her. She was exactly as he’d described. Assertive and gruffly kind, pretty—past the flush of youth, but with a timeless beauty that would never fade.

Beyond coherent thought, she was dimly astonished to realize her brain was shutting off, as if someone had flipped the main breaker and, circuit by circuit, all systems were going down.

She couldn’t crash now! She needed to know what date it was. But her body, overwhelmed and madly off-kilter from her jaunt through the centuries, had other ideas.

“Nell, what’s all the commotion?” A man called from somewhere in the perimeter of her awareness.

“Help me with the lass, Silvan,” Nell murmured. “ ‘Tis the oddest thing, but she’s chilled and her feet are near frozen.”

Gwen tried desperately to ask, “What’s the date” and “Is he okay?” But damn it all, she was passing out.

Her fading consciousness chuckled richly when she thought she glimpsed Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist of all time, bending over her, wiry white hair and wrinkled impish face, a mischievous light in his eyes. If she was dying, she was going to be in fine company, indeed. He bent his face close to hers and she managed to whisper, “Drustan.”

“Fascinating,” she thought she heard him remark. “Let’s get her warmed up and put her in the Silver Chamber.”

“But that chamber adjoins Drustan’s,” Nell protested. “ ‘Tis not proper.”

“Propriety be damned. ’Tis the most suitable.”

Gwen didn’t listen further.

Drustan was alive and they were putting her near him. She would rest for a moment.

T
HE
N
EXT
M
ORNING

         
12
         
 

“Why must ye live all the way up here, Silvan?
Yer like the bald eagle nestin’ on the mount,” Nell said, nudging open the door to his tower chamber—one hundred and three steps above the castle proper—with her hip. “Had to settle on the highest limb, dinna ye?”

Silvan MacKeltar popped his head up out of a book with a bemused expression. A silvery-white mane was sleek about his face, and Nell found him terribly handsome in a sage way, but she’d never tell him that. “I am not bald. I have quite a lot of hair.” He lowered his head again and resumed reading, running his finger across the page.

The man was completely in his own world most of the time, Nell mused. Many were the times she’d wondered how he’d managed to get sons on his wife. Had the woman slammed his tomes shut on his fingers and dragged him off by the ear?

Now, there was a fine idea, she thought, watching him through eyes that did not nor had ever, in the twelve years she’d been there, betrayed one ounce of her feelings for him.

“Drink.” She plunked the mug down on the table next to his book, careful not to spill a drop on his precious tome.

“Not another of your vile concoctions, is it, Nell?”

“Nay,” she said, stony-faced, “ ‘tis another of my splendid brews. And ye need it, so drink. I’m not leaving until the mug is empty.”

“Did you put any cocoa in it?”

“Ye know we’re nearly out.”

“Nell,” he said with a put-upon sigh, flipping a page in his book, “go on with you. I’ll drink it later.”

“And ye might as well know yer son is up and about,” she added, hands on her hips, foot tapping, waiting for him to drink. When he didn’t reply, she forged on. “What do ye wish me to do with the lass who appeared last eve?”

Silvan closed his tome, refusing to look at her lest he betray how very much he enjoyed looking at her. He appeased himself with the promise of safely stealing several surreptitious glances when she walked out the door. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

“Not until ye drink.”

“How is she?”

“She’s sleeping,” Nell told his profile. The man rarely looked at her that she noticed; she’d been speaking to his profile for years. “But she doesn’t seem to have suffered lasting injury.”
Thank the saints,
Nell thought, feeling fiercely protective toward the lass who’d arrived with no clothing and the blood of her maidenhead on her thighs. Neither she nor Silvan had missed it when they tucked the wee unconscious lass into bed. They’d glanced uneasily at each other, and Silvan had fingered the fabric of his son’s plaid with a perplexed expression.

“Has she said anything about what happened to her last eve?” he asked, rubbing his thumb idly over the symbols embossed on the leather binding of the book.

“Nay. Although she mumbled in her sleep, naught of it made sense.”

Silvan’s eyebrows rose. “Think you she was…er, harmed in some way that has affected her mind?”

“I think,” Nell said carefully, “the fewer questions ye ask her for now, the better. ’Tis plain to see she needs a place to stay, what with having no possessions nor clothing. I ask ye grant her shelter as ye did me that eve, many years past. Let her story come out when she’s ready.”

“Well, if she’s aught like you, that means I’ll never know,” Silvan said with studied casualness.

Nell caught her breath. In all these years he’d not once asked what had happened the night she was given sanctuary at Castle Keltar. For him even to make such an offhand reference to it was rarer than a purple pine marten. Privacy was ever honored at the MacKeltars’—sometimes a blessing, ofttimes a curse. The Keltar men were not wont to pry. And many were the times she’d wished one of them had.

When, a dozen years ago, Silvan had found her lying in the road, beaten and left for dead, she hadn’t felt like talking about it. By the time she’d healed and been ready to confide, Silvan—who’d held her hand and fought for her while she’d lain fevered—had retreated coolly from her bedside and never spoken of it again. What was a woman to do? Blurt out her woeful tale as if she were looking for sympathy?

And so a polite and infinite distance had formed between housekeeper and laird. As should be, she reminded herself. She cocked her head warily, warning herself not to read too much into his mild statement.

When she said nothing, Silvan sighed and instructed that she procure suitable clothing for the lass.

“I already dug out some of yer wife’s old gowns. Now, would ye please drink? Dinna be thinking I’ve not noticed that ye haven’t been feeling yerself of late. My brew will help if ye quit dumping it in the garderobe.”

He flushed.

“Silvan, ye hardly eat, ye scarce sleep, and a body needs certain things. Will ye just try it and see if it doesn’t help?”

He raised one white brow, giving her a satyrlike look. “Pushy wench.”

“Cantankerous old fox.”

A faint smile played about his lips. He raised the mug, held his nose, and tipped the contents back. She watched his throat work for several minutes before he grimaced and plunked it down. For a brief moment, their eyes met.

She turned around and swept toward the door. “Dinna be forgetting about the lass,” she reminded stiffly. “You need to see to her, assure her she has a place here for however long need be.”

“I shan’t forget.”

Nell inclined her head and stepped out the doorway.

“Nellie.”

She froze, her back to him. The man hadn’t called her Nellie in years.

He cleared his throat. “Have you done something different with yourself?” When she didn’t reply, he cleared his throat again. “You look…er, that is you look rather…” He trailed off, as if regretting even beginning.

Nell spun back around to face him, her brows drawn together, lips pursed. He opened and closed his mouth several times, his gaze drifting over her face. Might he truly have noticed the wee change she’d made? She thought he
never
noticed her. And if he did, would he think she was a silly old woman fussing with herself? “Rather
what?
” she demanded.

“Er…I do believe…the word might be…fetching.” Softer somehow, he thought, his gaze skimming her up and down. Ye Gods, but the woman was temptingly soft to begin with.

“Have ye lost yer mind, old man?” she snapped, thoroughly discombobulated, and when Nell was thoroughly discombobulated, she wielded crankiness like a sword. “I look the same as I do every day,” she lied. Straightening her spine, she forced herself to glide regally out the door.

But the moment she knew she was out of sight, she rushed down the stairs, skirts a-flying, hair tumbling loose, hands to her throat.

She patted at the wispy strands of hair she’d snipped shorter that morn—similar to the wee lass’s, admiring the look. If such a minor change drew—by God, a compliment!—from Silvan MacKeltar, she might just stitch herself that new gown of softest lapis linen she’d been considering.

Fetching, indeed!

Gwen awakened slowly, surfacing from a montage of nightmares in which she’d been running around nude (naturally, at her heaviest weight,
never
after a week of successful dieting), chasing Drustan, and losing him through doors that disappeared before she could reach them.

She took a deep breath, sorting through her thoughts. She’d left the States because she despised her life. She’d embarked upon a trip to Scotland to lose her virginity, see if she had a heart, and shake up her world.

Well, she’d certainly accomplished all her goals.

No simple cherry picker for me,
she thought.
I get a time-traveling genius who comes with a world of problems and sends me back through time to fix them.

Not that she minded.

She’d decided the words
soul mate
and
Drustan MacKeltar
were synonymous. She’d finally met a man who made her feel with an intensity she’d never imagined, was brilliant, yet wasn’t cold in his brilliance. He knew how to tease and be warm and passionate. He found her beautiful, and he was a phenomenal, erotic lover. Simply, she’d met the perfect man and lost him, all in three days. He’d awakened more emotions in her in that short time than she’d felt in her entire life.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. Although the room was dim, the muted golden light of a fire spilled about the chamber. She blinked at the profusion of purple surrounding her, then recalled Drustan’s fascination with the purple running suits in Barrett’s. His insistence on purple trews or a T-shirt, a request she’d refused.

That sealed it. She was definitely in Drustan’s world now.

A sumptuous violet velvet coverlet was tucked beneath her chin. Above her, a lavender canopy of sheer gauzy stuff draped the elegantly carved cherry bed. A lilac sheepskin—
oh really
, she thought,
I know there are no lilac sheep—
was spread across her feet. Purple pillows with silver braided trim were strewn about the headboard.

Small curio tables were draped in orchid and plum silks. Brilliant plum and black tapestries in complicated patterns adorned the two tall windows, and between them hung an enormous ornate gilt-framed mirror. Two chairs were arranged before the windows, centered around a table that held silver goblets and plates.

Purple, she mused, with sudden insight. Such an electrifying, energetic man would naturally choose to surround himself with the color that had the highest frequency in the spectrum.

It was a hot color, vivid and erotic.

Like the man himself.

She pressed her nose into the pillow, hoping to catch his scent in the linens, but if he’d slept in this bed it had been too long ago, or the coverings had been changed. She turned her attention to the frame of the exquisitely carved bed in which she lay. The headboard had numerous drawers and cubbyholes. A sweeping footboard was etched with delicate Celtic knotwork. She’d seen a bed like it once before.

In a museum.

This one was as new as anything one might find in a modern-day furniture gallery. Raking her bangs out of her face, she continued surveying the room. Knowing she was in the sixteenth century and
seeing
it were two very different things. The walls were fashioned of pale gray stone, the ceiling was high, and there were none of those moldings or baseboards that always looked so out of place in “renovated” castles frequented by tourists. Not one outlet, not one lamp, merely dozens of glass bowls filled with oil, topped by fat, blackened wicks. The floor was planked of honey-blond wood, polished to a high sheen, with rugs scattered about. A lovely chest sat near the foot of the bed, topped with a pile of folded blankets. More cushioned chairs were arranged before the fire. The fireplace was fashioned of smooth pink stone, with a massive hewn mantel above it. In it, a peat fire steamed, sheaths of heather stacked atop the dried bricks scenting the room. All in all, it was a deliciously warm room, rich and luxurious.