Five women turned to gape at her.
The leggy brunette regarded her skeptically. That she spoke with a sweet Scottish lilt only irritated Gabby even more. “Mr. Black? I’ll not be believing that. That braw man’s a lass’s dream.”
“A really
bad
dream maybe,” Gabby heard her wayward, lying lips say. “The man can’t even kiss.”
“What do you mean?” the brunette demanded.
“Drool,” Gabby said succinctly.
“ ‘Drool’?” the brunette echoed, frowning.
Gabby nodded, accepting that it was too late. She was in it, and she may as well do it up right and see it through to a Big Finish. What she might lack in character, she’d make up for with commitment. “Have you ever kissed someone who . . . well, it’s like they open their mouth too much? And they get your face all wet, and by the time they’re done kissing you, all you really want is a towel?”
The redhead nodded emphatically. “Aye, I have. Young Jamie down at the Haverton’s pub.” She made a face. “Ugh. It’s disgusting. He slobbers.”
“That’s how Mr. Black kisses?” a slender blonde exclaimed.
“Worse,” Gabby lied shamelessly. “He hardly ever brushes his teeth, and I swear the man wouldn’t know what dental floss was if you tied a little ribbon of it smack around his itty-bitty, er . . . well, that’s another matter. But, no, I shouldn’t . . .”
“Nay, you should, you most certainly should!” a blonde exclaimed.
“Aye, don’t be stopping there,” the short brunette chimed in.
“You wouldn’t be meaning his winkie, would you?” the redhead said faintly. “Oh, say it isn’t so!”
Gabby nodded sadly. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Just how itty and bitty?” the leggy brunette demanded.
“Well,” Gabby said, sighing, “you know how big and tall he is?”
Five heads bobbed.
She edged closer, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Let’s just say he’s not in proportion.”
“No!” they exclaimed again.
“Afraid so.” She could have left it at that,
should
have left it at that, but the green-eyed monster had a fistful of her hair, not to mention control of her lips. She was appalled to hear herself say “Take my word for it, the only one Mr. Happy is making happy is himself.”
The leggy brunette eyed her suspiciously. “Nay, I’ll hear none of this. Last eve I saw the bulge—”
“Socks,” Gabby cut her off, barely managing to conceal her scowl.
How dare that woman be checking out Adam’s bulge? I’ve hardly even given
myself
permission to do that.
“He stuffs socks down his pants. Though he prefers a banana if a nice green one is available. Says it gives the best firm impression. Says that since women wear Wonderbras, why shouldn’t men enhance themselves too?”
“No!” Scandalized, the maids twittered, exchanging glances among themselves.
Gabby nodded. “It’s true. I seriously considered suing the man for misrepresentation of material fact. Clothed, he might look like a dream, but out of those clothes, he’s a nightmare.”
The maids were all staring at her with varying degrees of shock and disappointment. Only the leggy brunette was still looking somewhat skeptical.
Gabby made a mental note to swipe a few bananas and deposit them in his room. She might have giggled at the thought had she not been so horrified with herself. Never in her life had she sunk to such depths. And apparently she wasn’t quite done yet.
“You haven’t noticed any bananas missing from the kitchen, have you? I’d keep a close eye on them if I were you. You might want to watch the sausages too.”
And with that, she swept past them. Well, in as much as a hungover woman in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes (damn it,
why
hadn’t she taken the slinky dress and heels from Macy’s when she’d had the chance?) was capable of sweeping.
“For Christ’s sake, Drustan,” Adam said irritably, shifting in the saddle, trying to find a more comfortable position, knowing there wasn’t one, because saddles hadn’t been designed for men with immortal hard-ons, “you didn’t even know that the purpose of your four feast day rituals was to uphold the walls between our realms until I told you. You thought they were just a heralding of the change of season and an affirmation of your commitment to The Compact.”
“I ken it, and that fashes me more than a wee,” Drustan exploded. “What if, in our ignorance, we’d failed to perform them in the past?”
“First of all, you never fail to keep an oath,” Adam muttered darkly, “so I highly doubt that would ever have become an issue. Even if your whole clan were somehow wiped out, your bloody ghost would probably come back and bloody dance around the bloody stones. Second, it’s not my fault your clan misplaced The Compact for so many centuries and you forgot the meaning behind the rituals. And third—this is really the only relevant part and it’s what I keep telling you—” Adam said, enunciating each word tightly. Christ, his body hurt with wanting his
Sidhe
-seer. She was on safe ground. It was time. It was
past
time to make her his. How long had they been separated now? Fifteen mortal hours? It felt like a century. His skin was cold where, for the past few days, she’d been constantly pressed against him. “The queen will come, Drustan. She’ll never let the walls come down. She’ll come, demanding to know why you’re not performing the ritual. Then I’ll tell her about Darroc and all will be well. You’ll perform the rites long before your twenty-four-hour window of time is up. And she’ll be grateful, she
won’t
be angry with you.”
Christ, they’d been over this a dozen times. The Keltar Druids had from midnight on the dawning of the feast days of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnassadh, and Samhain to midnight at the close of the feast day, to perform the necessary rituals. During that time the walls would thin, but they wouldn’t collapse completely until midnight on the close of. For millennia uncounted, the Keltar had always performed their rituals at midnight on the dawning of.
When they failed to do so this upcoming Lughnassadh, once the walls began to thin, Aoibheal would appear, demanding to know what was going on. Adam was willing to bet she’d show by noon or shortly thereafter. There was no way she’d let the Isle of Morar be exposed, no way she’d let Fae realms rise up in the midst of human ones.
This was his one sure way to force the queen to appear. To bring down the walls between realms.
“And furthermore,” he added darkly, “if you don’t do this for me, there’s not going to be any frigging Compact to uphold anymore. If Darroc overthrows the queen, he’ll spill mortal blood in a heartbeat. Then you won’t have to bother with your oaths; there won’t
be
any walls between realms. You’ll have a Tuatha Dé war on your hands, with the Unseelie roaming free in your world, and, believe me, the damage they could do in a mere matter of days would make your Black Plague seem like a pesky cold. In fact,” he growled, “it will probably be
your
mortal blood Darroc will spill first, because he won’t like that you possess so much knowledge of our ways. The two of you are a threat he’ll want removed immediately.”
“There is that,” Dageus said, nodding his agreement and looking pointedly at Drustan.
“Is he always such a stick in the mud?” Adam demanded of Dageus, shooting a dark look at Drustan.
“Drustan’s ever been overbroody about oaths and whatnot,” Dageus said dryly.
“And it’s a blethering good thing one of us is,” Drustan said, casting Dageus a glare.
“Right, because if we
both
were, you’d be dead. Och, I forgot, so would I,” Dageus said mildly.
Drustan’s lips twitched for a moment, then he snorted and gave in to a laugh. “Point ceded, brother. Smartass.”
“Learning more words from your wee wife, I see,” Dageus noted, with an amused lift of a brow.
“I just did something so awful that I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore,” Gabby blurted without preamble when she stumbled upon Gwen and Chloe MacKeltar;
finally
she’d found the center of the castle.
She hadn’t meant to tell them that—really, she hardly even knew them, other than their brief conversation last night, which had consisted primarily of a recounting of recent events, nothing personal—but her mouth seemed to have its own bizarre agenda this morning, and she figured if she tried to zip it, she might explode.
Or worse, go find more wine, and she knew that was a really, really bad idea.
The MacKeltar wives were cozily ensconced in overstuffed chairs in a bright sunny room that opened off the second floor of the great hall, the east wall a bank of unbroken glass overlooking a lush tumble of gardens. They blinked up at her with warm smiles.
“Oh, come in! We were just talking about you,” Chloe said, beaming, and patting a chair beside her. “Please join us. Have you had breakfast yet? There’s coffee and pastries”—she waved a hand at the side table—“dig in. Gwen and I always breakfast in the solar; you can find us here every morning. We wanted to wake you, but Adam insisted we let you sleep. Said you hadn’t gotten the chance to sleep in a real bed for a while.”
The permanent scowl that seemed to have taken possession of Gabby’s face eased a bit. He hadn’t brought her coffee, but at least he’d
thought
of her. “Where is he anyway?” she asked peevishly, reaching for a buttery, golden-crusted scone.
“He went riding with Drustan and Dageus early this morning,” Gwen replied. “They were talking nonstop in Gaelic as they rode out and it sounded pretty intense, so I think they might be gone awhile. What did you do that’s so awful?” she asked avidly, plucking a clean cup from the table and offering it to her.
Sinking into a chair next to Chloe, Gabby poured herself a cup of coffee, heaped in sugar, and sipped greedily. Nice and strong, she noticed.
Thank you, God.
They waited patiently while she fortified herself, though by the time she’d finished her second scone, Gwen was tapping her fingernails against her cup.
Drawing a deep breath, Gabby began. Encouraged by their sympathetic responses, she ended up confiding the whole sordid debacle. Beginning with too much wine, skimming over the crying and the almost-phone-call, and ultimately to her confrontation with a contingent of the Maid Parade.
By the time she’d finished, Gwen and Chloe were laughing so hard they were wiping tears from their eyes.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Gabby said for the dozenth time. Blessed caffeine was thrumming through her veins, the scones had soaked up most of the sick feeling in her stomach, and the jackhammers in her head had died down to a dull tapping. She was beginning to think she might actually be able to take a shower sometime today. The mere thought of one when she’d awakened, the mere idea of little beads of water making contact with her tender scalp, had been more than she could bear. “Bananas,” she said, appalled. “Do you believe I said that? I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know what got into me.”
The moment she said “bananas” her hostesses started laughing all over again, holding their stomachs.
A very small, though bone-deep-embarrassed, smile curved Gabby’s lips as she watched them laugh. It
was
kind of funny, or at least it would have been if it had been someone else who’d behaved so moronically. If her friend Elizabeth had done something so idiotic, she’d have laughed about it for months.
When they finally sobered, Chloe said softly, “Oh, please. What got into you was that last night every woman in the castle was looking at your man like he was their favorite kind of ice cream and they couldn’t wait to devour him. Believe me, I can relate. Merely walking down a crowded street with Dageus can make me crazy some days. He and Drustan are hardly your average twenty-first-century men; women go nuts over them. The last time we were in Inverness some crazy romance author on a tour of the Highlands tried to get Dageus to model for the cover of one of her books.”
Gwen nodded with a wry look. “It does get old. I nearly got into a bit of a tussle in a sporting goods store with a saleswoman.”
But Gabby heard only one thing. “He’s not my man,” she told Chloe tightly. And wasn’t that just the crux of the problem? “As a matter of fact,” she added broodingly, “he’s not really even a man at all.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” Gwen exclaimed.
“He’s a
fairy,
Gwen.” She couldn’t believe she had to point out the obvious. Hadn’t somebody told her last night that Gwen was a brilliant physicist?
“A male Tuatha Dé,” Gwen corrected. “That’s how we think of them. Calling them fairies makes them sound like diminutive little things with wings. And they’re not. They’re just a different, highly advanced civilization, a race with vastly superior technology, but Adam’s still every bit a man. Heavens, don’t you see how he looks at you? If you have any doubt about what he is, look at that. That’s pure man and nothing but.”
Gabby went very still. “How does he look at me?”
Gwen and Chloe exchanged incredulous glances.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Chloe exclaimed, “she’s as bad as I was, isn’t she, Gwen?”
“I think she might actually be worse,” Gwen said dryly. “It’s just a good thing the men are off elsewhere, because I can see we need to have a good long girl talk.”
They rode for hours. It was early afternoon by the time they drew their mounts to a halt at the top of a vast, sweeping ridge. The sun had passed midpoint and begun its descent, and Adam was seething with silent impatience.
Still, no matter his mood, it was impossible to remain unaffected by the beauty of the Highlands. From their lofty vantage, the whole vale was spread beneath them like a scooped-out bowl between bens, at the heart of which sprawled Castle Keltar, looking tiny and faraway. Miles and miles of untamed, lush country stretched before them, dusted with the soft pastels of summer.
Adam inhaled deeply. How he loved this land. He’d always understood why the Scots had fought so fiercely to keep it. “Ah, she’s lovely,” he said softly, “Scotia is.”
“Aye,” Dageus agreed.
Drustan grunted, then sighed gustily, as if hours of talking and debating hadn’t done it, but Adam’s appreciation of their land had somehow resolved things for him. “We’ll do it, Old One,” he said. Grumpily. Clearly at irreconcilable odds with oath-breaking but conceding the necessity of it.