The Chieftain's Yule Bride - a Highland Christmas novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #10) (13 page)

He gave her a squeeze and laughed gently.  "Aye but you're good at this, lass!  The Elders were performing a summons –
The wisdom of those gone before us be with us now.
So, you were able to hear my ancestors from centuries ago but no' the Elders from the day previous?  That's some gift for you to go shutting out."

He got a wee grin with her reply.  "Actually it's easier to see far back than it is to see recent events, because the recent stuff hasn't had time to make much imprint.  The room itself has absorbed much over the years.  You should know.  It affects you too.  I
saw
it on you."

"Like the portrait does with you.  The spirits of ancestors come to their own, do they no'?  Those born with the Sight get to know everybody else's too."

"That's the part I don't want back.  So when we go to the cemetery tomorrow, you could do a bit of tuning in with me – and don't bother arguing, because I
know
you can manage it."

"The Elders have taught me much but I have none of your abilities in the direct way of communicating."

"Better if you don't.  I just need you to help me shut out the other souls and their memories, else I'll never wade through to find Symond Harper.  Not when my... my ability is running on full steam.  I'm too out of practise to be particular."

"Aye, I can do that."

He finished his wine and set his empty glass down beside Freya's.  Her arms came around his neck but there was no flirting in it.  She was seeking comfort, asking for his strength.  He held her close and rocked her, knowing that if he as much as touched her face it would start something again that was no' what she needed right now.

"Thank you..." she whispered, and yawned into his sweater.  Maybe she'd lain awake the same two nights.

"Bedtime, lass.  I can sleep in here – give you time to yourself, if you like.  Your choice."

He felt a giggle at his chest.  "Is that MacKrannan code for you wanting away now?"

No answer required.  He got to his feet, put the guard on the fire and picked her up for their combined journey... and turned back at the door to fetch his toothbrush, a contented man, for she'd no' brought up the subject of Zavier Campbell once.

The guilt began niggling at Freya after she'd done what had to be done with Callum.  Lucky that her mind was taken in a different direction by their long talk at the fireside, and then by Callum repeating what had to be done.  Her experience was limited, but enough to know that he was very good at it – or maybe it just felt like that because she'd needed to do this.

Dawn was nowhere near when she awoke from a sound and dreamless sleep with her head on his bicep and his other arm tight round her waist.

With no streetlights outside it was pitch black in the bedroom, and she should have assumed it was Zavier.  But Zavier didn't feel anything like this.  Besides, he always slept facing outwards at the bed's edge as if poising himself for the dash into tomorrow, and was such a grumpy sleeper that she was happy to leave him there.

Callum MacKrannan had settled her into his protection after a final goodnight kiss and never moved since, until she stirred... and felt him stir in a more obvious manner.  Swollen and well-used as she was, she found herself writhing and parting her legs in more want.  Callum obliged, sinking into her as if he'd never been gone, and fondling her breast in his gentle moving until the urgency took over them both.

Everything was always for her first and himself second.  A girl could get used to this.

This time he allowed her to be astride him, to play the Morrigan as she rode him.  She reached for that goddess of sex and battle but it was Arionhood who came to her again to drape the mantle of cosmic fate and rebirth.  A goddess of the morning to make things new.

The darkness that took away sight of Callum heightened all her other senses.  She inhaled deeply of his scent, tasted him keenly, ran her hands over the corded muscles of his upper body and the stubble on his gritted jaw.  Every one of his touches was a magical thing as she listened to his breaths starting to catch.

With a low groan he flipped her onto her back and began driving into her, making her squeal loudly as he brought her to a climax that blew her into blissful fragments.  She was shaking wildly when his own climax came and he growled her name, exciting her all the more.

A girl could definitely get used to this, and she dare not.

When dawn broke she came awake to the smell of breakfast cooking.  Her legs would hardly hold her up and she took a quick shower before going through to face him.  The steamed-up windows showed he'd been here before her.

She rested her fingers on the razor sitting by the sink and closed her eyes. Nothing.  There was a time she could have gained a sense of someone through the object they'd last touched, a clever method Auntie had taught her, and one to be used sparingly.  Such abilities were gone now.  The feelings which came were only of her own lips on his face before the razor had been there.

There were no Good Morning kisses or asking how each other had slept.  Just the look on him that gave her the space for next-day regrets if she had any, which she didn't, and the space for doing things differently today, which she intended to.

Seeing Callum look so wickedly kilted Highlander handsome nearly changed her mind.  In his fresh linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he could easily have come from another time.  She glanced at his big hands, currently putting two plates of perfectly-cooked breakfast onto the little kitchen table, and felt the blush rise in her cheeks at the thought of how those hands had been all over her for hours at a time.

That part had to stop now.

Her first words were, "Thank you!" and a deliberately bright "How's the weather looking?"

"Changeable."  Was that a glint in his eye?  Yes, it was.

She had to tell him. Now, while she faced him over the table.  Before they began the day's mission.

"Callum... we can't... I can't do that again.  I started it because I had to, and I now I have to end it."

There, it was said.  She stared at his plate of food, twice the amount he'd given her though there wasn't a pick of fat on the man, and watched his fork move to his mouth.  He gave her one of those brisk Scottish nods, the kind used for wordless acknowledgement.  Again the glint.  She couldn't help but smile as her cheeks flushed all the more.

"I mean it!"

He swallowed before saying, "Aye, Freya, I know you do.  You only want me for my mind.  Accepted."

The glint had turned into a full-blown grin.

"Oh!  As if a man has never..."

"Hush now.  Hurry on with your breakfast and we'll chase the daylight."

A peace settled inside her.  Callum always made everything easy, never demanding more of her than she wanted to give.  Well, he
could
be demanding, and she'd enjoyed him going into warrior mode to make her come
how
many times?  Oh god... stopping doing it wasn't half the battle of stopping remembering it.  She shifted in her chair, peace all gone, and scoffed her breakfast fast.

Nearly ten o'clock already.  Only a few hours before dusk started falling again mid-afternoon.  She needed to get this done, get off this island and get back to planning her wedding.

"Want to walk or take the car?" he asked.

A good stroll along the cliffs in the wind would do her the world of good.

"Car, please," she said.  "I'll need to start concentrating now on Symond Harper, not worrying about where to put my feet."  The last thing she needed was a holding-hands romantic outing.

They were companiably silent on the drive and she'd fully opened herself by the time the cemetery's stone walls came in sight.  "Ready, Callum?  Just...
distract
them.  Be nice."

First she had to find Symond's grave.  Auntie's chart had given her the date of his death so she headed to the older section of the cemetery to begin her search.  She needn't have bothered.  Symond was inside her head already, and his father, and several great-whatever-grandmothers, all leading her to the family plots as if on a family picnic.  Every cell in her body rang out in resonance with her Harper bloodline and all the women who had married into it and made her who she was.  It was so emotional to
meet
them for the first, to feel who they were, all their different characters and lives.

At the outer reaches of her mind she could feel many other souls gathering, some peaceful, some wanting to tell things to this visitor who could hear them so easily.  The kind of people with no descendants, or at least none who gave them a passing thought nowadays.

Callum had stayed near the gate and was standing stock still with the heel of his hand pressed to his brow.  He was feeling them too, and having success in asking them to give her peace which was why they were still at the outer reaches and talking to him instead.

His eyes were closed in concentration, not in fear.  Little wonder she'd been sent to him for there was nobody else she knew could have helped with this except for Auntie Harper.  And now she understood better why she'd had to be with Callum in the ways of the flesh.  The ancient pagan ways couldn't be bettered.  It gave them a strength of bond and synergy that would have been absent had she brought along any old friendly psychic out the phone book.

Spirits were not entities to be questioned.  They told what they told, and showed what they showed as best they could through the veil, no more.  Her job here was to listen without questioning, to accept what they showed her and trust they'd guide her well.

She stated her intention very clearly, over and over. 
Please tell me the truth of the portrait.

Symond's name was there in the middle of the chiselled letterings, interred with his parents and his wife and an infant in one of the graves.  She stood on the grass above the bodies of her ancestors, rested her hands on his lichen-covered name and let everything come to her.

A feeling of gladness and welcome... a loving pride that she'd come here... a flash of two cottages side by side, one old and one new... a fair-haired man painting picture after picture on his lap instead of using an easel... a flash of two portraits but not
side by side, for there was a great distance between them... his clarsach thickly padded over and wrapped in oilskin and strapped to his back as he sailed homewards...the sound of the clarsach mingling with the voices in that singsong chant... an empty cup with a finger in it, moving the tea-leaves...

Then she was being shown a library with books in every color imaginable, and there were doors leading off everywhere, stone passageways, a labyrinth of twists and turns and more rooms...

She heard crunching footsteps on the gravel of this world as an old man walked by with a holly wreath.  So out of practise was she that her connection slammed shut and she was left standing on a grave on the cliffs of Stromness, as ordinary as the passer-by, and seeing no more than he did.

Callum was great about not talking yet, same as he'd been at the Clootie Well.  He just beeped the lock on the car and opened the door for her, letting her sit there alone while he wandered off.

She went over what she'd been shown, scribbling it down quickly before she forgot any of it, trying to make sense of it all.  Some things she already knew and little details she didn't, like Symond not using an easel.  He'd painted another portrait linked in some way to her own, but she couldn't know if hers was first or second – or twentieth, for that matter, because his work on the Fair Lass of Monlachan was certainly no amateur's fumble.

The tea-leaves and the multicolored library bits she'd no clue about but she'd bet any money that Callum did.  They'd come after the chanting song, which was the link to MacKrannan Castle.

That second portrait and the library were the key to finding the truth.

The last Orkney address on her Harper chart was a remote farm over west, and she was looking for it on the map when Callum climbed in the driver's seat.

"So, chieftain," she greeted him, "would you happen to know anything about a multicolored library with lots of doors and winding stone passageways leading to other rooms?  I think it would be at basement level or even further down.  Somewhere there's no natural light coming in because I definitely didn't see any windows.  Oh god, Callum... is it your turn to faint?"