Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read online

  “I feel… ” Madeline began, but trailed off as quickly.

  She did sense something, but the darkness closing round her heart held too much poignancy to hail from Bernhard Logie… and it came from too great a distance.

  “I feel… nothing,” she hedged, her chest tight and aching with a stranger’s loneliness and guilt.

  A man’s loneliness, and of a certainty, not the guilt of a murderer.

  ’Twas a heart-wrenching guilt far too deep and intimate to be shared with another.

  Not even dear Nella.

  Cold, black, and laced with a bottomless yearning for vanished days and what-could-have-beens, the man’s anguish seized her very soul. And squeezed so tight she could scarce breathe until his hold on her began ebbing away, slowly retreating to the far-off corner of the land whence it had come.

  “You felt nothing, my lady?” Nella’s doubt cut through the residual haze still clouding Madeline’s senses.

  “I…” Not quite sure what had swept through her, Madeline gave off trying to explain and leaned back against the doorjamb, her breaths coming in great ragged gasps.

  “And, when he yet lived, I was the good King Robert’s favored lady love,” Nella quipped, peering hard at her. “Truth be told, you’ve gone whiter than new-fallen snow, so don’t be telling me nothing’s touched you.”

  Touched her.

  That was the difference—she’d been touched, and deeply. The realization washed over her in a torrent of golden waves, freeing her from the last tenuous threads of the stranger’s powerful grip. She grasped Nella’s strong hands with her own, trembling, ones. “I did feel,” she breathed, awed by the depth of the man’s anguish, stunned by the fierceness of his longing.

  “And what did you feel?” Nella prodded, giving Madeline’s hands a light squeeze.

  Madeline hesitated, not willing to share the stranger’s pain, yet unable to conceal her wonder at the rest.

  “Well?” Nella urged again.

  “I felt love.”

  “Love?”

  “Aye, love,” Madeline repeated, suddenly quite convinced. The very word sent little tremors tripping across her every nerve ending. “Heart-pounding, thunderous, shake-the-very-earth-beneath-your-feet love.”

  The kind she’d dreamed of every night for as long as she could remember.

  Shattered dreams, the remnants of which she’d cast to the four winds the instant she’d slipped into Nella’s way-faring cloak.

  Murderesses didn’t deserve to know passion, and nuns weren’t allowed.

  In his own far-off corner of the land, Iain MacLean stood amidst the chaos of Baldoon’s great hall, his back-bone steeled against the unpleasant awareness that every saint worth his wings must now be frowning upon him in fits of fine, feathered fury.

  Assorted fragments of his deepest needs, all his longings and best-kept secrets, weighted his broad shoulders as surely as the billowing clouds of smoke still pouring from the ruined chapel swirled around him in a choking mantle of black reproach.

  Bile thick in his throat, he struggled to ignore the seething frustration gnawing on his innards. A vein still throbbed wildly in his left temple, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears with such furor, he could scarce hear the pandemonium unfolding all around him.

  Not that hearing the ruckus would tell him aught he didn’t know.

  The shameful aftermath of his carelessness stood carved on his conscience. Indelibly and, without doubt, dancing already on the flapping tongues of every prattle-monger in the Isles.

  His jaw clenching, he drew a hand down over his face.

  One fit of blind rage, an accidentally toppled candelabrum, and all hellfire had erupted, its jeering demons clamping sharp-taloned hands around his ravaged soul in a foretaste of the damnation awaiting him.

  Blinking against the sting of smoke, he drew a great heaving breath and tried not to cough. If the good saints possessed a shred of mercy, they’d let the raging inferno in Baldoon’s chapel claim him as well.

  Unfortunately, much to his vexation, his brother, Don-all the Bold, much-revered laird of the great Clan MacLean, had other plans.

  Every inch as tall as Iain, and of the same impressive build and dark good looks, Donall MacLean aimed an assessing glance at the smoke-clogged chapel… and at the grim-faced warriors gathering ever nearer. Trusted kinsmen, well accustomed to Iain’s quick-tindered blood and how swiftly sparks ignited between the two brothers who resembled each other so closely that those meeting them for the first time oft mistook them for twins.

  Keenly attuned to their laird’s wishes, a near imperceptible nod of Donall the Bold’s raven-haired head was all the encouragement the loyal fighting men needed to form a tight, semicircular cordon behind him.

  An impenetrable barrier between Iain and the fire licking its way up the chapel walls.

  His handsome face set in bitter earnest lines, Donall MacLean whipped out his steel with the loud zing only the most lethal of blades can produce.

  He aimed its deadly tip at Iain’s middle. “Do not even think of going back in there,” he warned, his dark-eyed gaze hard as ice-frosted stone, his deep voice equally cold. And so annoyingly contained, Iain’s temper blazed all the more hotly.

  Irritation pumping through his veins, he met his older brother’s cool gaze with his heated one. “You think to stay me by the edge of your sword? Our own father’s brand?”

  Donall didn’t so much as blink. “I have no desire to maim you. Enough ill work has been wrought this day, but, aye, I will cut you if I must… if you attempt further foolishness.”

  “Then have at me.” Iain lifted his hands, palms out, in open challenge. “Think you I fear steel more than flames?”

  “’Tis well I ken you fear naught.” Donall slid another pointed look at the ruined chapel. “Fearless or nay, I’d counsel you to consider God’s wrath after this night’s sacrilege.”

  Iain fixed his brother with a steely-eyed glare, his own wrath ready to erupt in a welter of invectives. Battling such an outburst, he pressed his lips together and hoped Donall wouldn’t notice the muscle jerking in his jaw.

  Nor guess the depth of his turmoil, for he alone bore the weight of his wife’s demise.

  His entire body thrumming with agitation, he clenched his hands to white-knuckled fists. Had he loved Lileas as fiercely as MacLean men were legended to love their women, he would have sensed the danger stalking her that day, could have kept her from going anywhere near the Lady Rock.

  But he’d sensed naught.

  He hadn’t even thought of her that fateful morn… until it was too late.

  So he staunched his guilt the only way he knew: by braving his brother’s censure with the bold arrogance few but a MacLean male can summon. “You dare say I ought consider the whims of a God so uncaring He allowed Lileas to be murdered?”

  “The good Lord had nary a hand in her death, but I vow He will be mightily displeased to see you’ve set alight His place of worship.”

  Roiling anger rose in Iain’s throat, his bitterness near choking him. “Aye, you’re right, my brother. He had naught to do with the deed,” he seethed, no longer even trying to contain his fury. “God and all His saints were sleeping that foul-dawning day, just as they slept when my own grief sent me wheeling away from the altar and into the accursed candlestand.”

  Bristling, he met Donall’s measuring gaze with the calculated sizzle of a narrow-eyed glare. “Or would you insinuate I collided with the candelabrum a-purpose?” he ground out, unwilling to admit his deepest guilt even to the brother he loved above life itself.

  “Think you I wished to set fire to the chapel?” he pushed, his voice louder this time.

  Louder, and laced with crackling anger.

  Donall studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Everyone within these walls knows you’ve spent more time on your knees before yon altar than in your own bedchamber this past year,” he said at last. “Why should you burn the one place you’re e’er hid
ing yourself? Nay, my brother, I think your own torments and your unchecked ire blinded you.”

  “Torments and ire?” Iain’s very toes tensed in outrage. “I’d say it is my fullest right to harbor both.”

  Grief, hot and all-consuming, coursed through him, but he’d be damned a thousand times before he’d give a name to his regrets. Or admit to the black void that darkened his every waking hour and shadowed his sleepless nights.

  Donall lifted a brow, his silent appraisal more eloquent than words.

  Drawing himself to his full height, Iain cocked a brow of his own. A challenging one. “You dare say I’ve no claim to those rights?”

  “I say you forfeited any such claims the instant your temper caused you to knock over the candlestand.”

  “Some dull-wit moved the unwieldy apparatus,” Iain countered, every fiber of his being daring Donall to state otherwise.

  “Nay, you err,” the MacLean obliged him. “The can-delabrum stood where it’s always stood.”

  Iain held his brother’s gaze. “It scarce matters now.”

  “Say you?” Donall cast another quick glance at the shouting kinsmen still battling the flames. “It matters to them.”

  And it matters to me! Iain’s temper roared. So much so that I see no purpose in living in the dark and chasing shadows all my days… subsisting as one ill wished.

  Or, less appealing still, pitied.

  His mood worsening with each beat of his heart, he took a step forward, then another, until the sharp point of Donall’s blade pricked his abdomen. Then, standing proud and straight, he risked a smile, his first in longer than he could recall.

  And meant to be his last.

  Keenly aware of his brother’s scrutiny, Iain readied himself for a lightning-quick sprint into the flames. His decision made, the unaccustomed smile began to spread through him, not filling him with joy and light as smiles ought do, and not banishing the dark in his soul, but flooding him with blessed relief.

  The sweet surety that his bone-deep aching would soon cease.

  He heaved a great sigh… and blinked back the unexpected heat suddenly jabbing the backs of his eyes. “You err, brother mine, for I do know fear,” he said, his deep voice husky and… tight. “I fear living and”—he made an impatient gesture—“I’ve grown mighty weary of it, too.”

  Realization flashed across Donall’s face. “Nay!” he cried, flinging aside his sword. He lunged forward, throwing his arms around Iain in the same moment a strange prickling in the back of Iain’s neck made him spin around.

  His agility rewarded him with the surreal glimpse of a bonnie raven-haired lass rushing him. Wild-eyed and screaming, she held a large earthen wine jug high above her head.

  Its descent was the last thing Iain saw before a numbing darkness of a wholly different nature than he’d hoped for rose up to claim him.

  Many leagues away, on the other side of Doon, everstronger wind gusts swept across the isle’s high moors and boglands, but carefully skirted a particular cliff-top glade, not daring to bend a single blade of grass within its enchanted circle.

  A lone thatched cottage stood there, thick-walled and silent. Perched precariously on the rugged edge of nowhere, high above the sea, sheltered by silver birch and rowan trees… and the magic of Devorgilla, Doon’s resident crone and wise woman.

  The cailleach, who, even now, as Iain slumbered in fitful oblivion, used her skills to borrow some of his darkness to cloak her own doings from the gloaming’s luminous light.

  “Not the time o’ year for spelling,” she muttered, carefully fastening a length of dark linen over one of the cottage’s unshuttered windows… the last one to require such a blackening treatment.

  Pursing her lips, she smoothed the cloth into place. Her most potent incantations had failed to conjure sufficient gloom, and no wonder, when his disbelief raged so strong it hindered her even while he slept!

  “Harrumph,” she scolded, shuffling across the cold, stone-flagged floor toward a rough-hewn bench pushed flush against the far wall. Her straggly brows met in a frown. “‘I want naught of your depraved chantings and even less of black cauldrons bubbling over with newts and bats’ wings,’” she mimicked him as she eased her bent form onto the bench.

  Once settled, she allowed herself a well-earned cackle and pulled a large, wooden bowl filled with stones onto her bony knees. “Hah!” she scoffed, a familiar thrill tripping down her spine.

  “Iain the Doubter shall have a more potent cure than tongue of newt and wing of bat,” she informed the stillness, her concentration focused on the softly gleaming stones.

  Special stones.

  Highland quartz, mostly, though some came from sacred places throughout the Isles.

  Fairy Fire Stones, rare and precious. Each one collected by her own two hands or gifted to her by those more appreciative of her talents than a certain dark-eyed laddie too closed-minded for his own good.

  Humming to herself at his ignorance, Devorgilla began to poke through the stones with her gnarled fingers until their tips grew tingly and warm, and the stones themselves began to vibrate and glow.

  With a deftness that belied the appearance of her knotty, age-spotted hand, she plucked his stone from the bowl and placed it on the bench beside her.

  Her stone, the one she’d selected to represent Iain MacLean’s true soul mate, was found with equal ease. And while his stone still felt cold to the touch, its core a deep and chilling blue, hers was growing warmer by the day.

  Savoring its heat, Devorgilla set the female stone in the palm of her left hand. Her wizened face wreathed in a knowing smile when a teensy point of reddish gold suddenly appeared deep inside the Fairy Fire Stone’s core.

  One be you, and one be she. When your lady’s heart catches fire, you’ll recognize her, she’d explained as she’d tried to give him the stones the last time she’d made the long trek to Baldoon.

  A tedious journey she’d undertaken solely to offer him her assistance.

  Clucking her tongue at the scowl he’d bestowed on her, Devorgilla placed his cold stone next to the maid’s warm one and closed her ancient fingers over the two.

  His lady’s heart couldn’t catch flame, he’d informed her, claiming her heart was cold as the grave and would ne’er warm again.

  The cailleach cackled anew.

  Her smile turning impish, she curled her fingers tighter around the stones, and fixed a self-satisfied gaze on the low, black-raftered ceiling.

  Iain MacLean was sorely mistaken.

  Though the flame in his true lady’s heart might not yet be a blazing inferno, it’d already caught a fine, healthy spark, and was very much alive.

  Very much alive indeed.

  Chapter Two

  IAIN CURLED HIS FINGERS DEEP into the tangled linens of his massive four-poster bed in a futile attempt to stop the oaken monstrosity’s ceaseless spinning.

  Unfortunately, with each agonizing moment of his slowly awakening consciousness, the whirling only increased, the bed now dipping and tilting in perfect rhythm with the fierce throbbing behind his forehead.

  A clanging of discordant bells rang in his ears, and the backs of his eyes stung worse than the time when, as wee laddies, Donall had laughingly blown a handful of sand into his face.

  Iain grimaced, the memory driving a white-hot spike of bitterness right into the middle of his pounding head. A low groan escaped his parched throat, and he tightened his grip on the careening bed.

  When was the last time he’d laughed?

  Truth to tell, he couldn’t recall, and ne’er had he felt less inclined than now.

  Compressing his lips against the massed pain assailing him, he cracked his eyes as much as he dared and squinted into the blinding brightness of a chamber far too sun-filled to be his own.

  Some audacious whoreson had wrested open every last shutter, allowing the piercing afternoon light to flood his private quarters… a refuge all knew he purposely kept in cool and blessed shadow.

&nbs
p; “By the Rood!” he thundered, fury propelling him bolt upright. “What depraved arse—?” He broke off at once, collapsing against the pillows, his indignation soundly capped by the sickly sensation of his head bursting into a hundred jagged-edged fragments.

  “By-the-Rood,” he repeated, the words barely audible this time, pressed as they were through gritted teeth.

  In utter agony, he stared at the comfortingly dark underceiling of his great, oaken bed. Didn’t the meddle-some miscreants who professed to care about him ken he had ample reason to ban the sun’s golden rays from his life?

  Was it not common knowledge throughout the Isles that appreciation of such pleasures belonged to a man he could no longer claim to be?

  His jaw tightened as a wholly new thought weaseled its way past his ire and pain. Mayhap he only imagined he lay, aching and bleakhearted, in his bed.

  Perhaps he had sprinted into the flames, and now found himself in the antechamber to Satan’s own fiery pit? The glaring brightness stabbing his eyes, not the sun’s streaming rays, but the leaping flames of hell itself?

  Not as pleased at the possibility as he’d thought he’d be, Iain forced himself to endure the dazzling light long enough to survey his surroundings a bit more thoroughly.

  At once, a strange blending of relief and vexation welled in his chest. If he’d died and gone to hell, his most persistent tormentors had followed him. Each one claiming some privy corner of his chamber, and with absolute disregard for his pitiful state, his closest kinsmen and friends peered at him with such cold disdain it was a bonnie wonder they didn’t have icicles hanging from their brows.

  All save his raven-haired sister.

  She stood a scant pace from his bed, wringing her hands, her dark eyes red-rimmed and swollen. Iain blinked, confusion dancing light-footed around the edges of his black and bitter mood.

  His sister possessed a backbone of steel. Amicia MacLean wouldn’t flinch if someone set a flaming pine knot to her skirts… and ne’er had Iain seen her weep.