Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read online

  Looking confident enough to forge a path through a wall of granite if need be, Gavin MacFie strode off for the cathedral steps, every pilgrim, pious or otherwise, springing out of his way. Like lemmings fleeing a rat catcher.

  Iain stared after him, opening and closing his fists in mute objection before he grudgingly forced himself to follow. “Drones and parasites,” he muttered beneath his breath of the jostling mob. “Ply your wares elsewhere,” he snapped at a greasy-haired bawd who’d loomed up from nowhere to block his path and rub her breasts against his arm. “I’ve no interest.”

  Biting back a harsher rebuttal, he jerked free of her clinging hands, readjusted the fall of the woolen pilgrim’s cloak slung loosely about his shoulders… and wished the almost-gone knot on his forehead hadn’t chosen that moment to start aching again.

  His vexation now complete, he searched for, but caught no glimpse of Gavin MacFie’s shaggy-maned head. Iain frowned. Without doubt, the long-strided varlet was already on his knees before the shrine.

  Very likely praying for new and inspiring ways to bedevil one Iain MacLean.

  Eager to have done with the whole sordid business, he started forward again, but each step proved a gruel. For his ill ease mounted in alarming degrees the nearer he came to the cathedral’s great arched entrance.

  ’Twas the most unpleasant of sensations, and one that had naught to do with his splitting head, his wrath at MacFie, or his patent dislike of smelly places.

  Something was staring at him again.

  And might St. Kentigern and his host of holy cohorts preserve him, for the strange tingles were upon him, too… descending with a vengeance to whirl all through him, and igniting a firestorm of most unwelcome bestirrings in his vitals.

  The same odd pricklings that had beset him so oft of late. Heated, and not entirely unpleasant… just undesired.

  And whate’er unleashed them waited for him inside the hallowed depths of Glasgow Cathedral.

  That he knew.

  The queer tightening in his chest and the fierce pounding of his heart told him so.

  For the third time since entering Glasgow Cathedral that same morning, Madeline Drummond tried her best to examine the jumble of ex-votos, crutches, and other assorted paraphernalia of the sick and needy adorning the elaborate metal gates enclosing the raised sepulcher of St. Kentigern.

  Countless lit tapers threw flickering golden light across richly carved reredos panels and into the shrine itself, but the brightly painted columns supporting the tomb’s vaulted canopy cast inky bands of shadows across the votive-hung gates, making many of the offerings indiscernible.

  More frustrating still, and again for the third time, a sharp-eyed sacrist thwarted her attempt to slip out of the slow-moving line of pilgrims and edge nearer to the tomb’s well-guarded enclosure.

  “Ho, sisters, keep to the prescribed processional route,” he admonished, just as she and Nella of the Marsh completed yet another tedious round of pilgrimage stations and reapproached the feretory bay behind the high altar.

  Particularly harried-looking, the pallid young man trailed after her, shooing her along with his pasty white hands. “Good maid, might I suggest you return in winter—on St. Kentigern’s feast day when we open the shrine—if you are so desirous of a closer look?”

  Agitation beginning to heat her cheeks, Madeline resisted the urge to argue with him. The sacrist’s haughty tone made her sorely regret her postulant garb and the limitations it put on her tongue.

  Casting her gaze to the stone-flagged floor as a true sister-in-waiting would have done, she swallowed her annoyance and moved on with naught but a humble nod. “Faith, but I weary of this,” she bemoaned to Nella as, a short distance from the tomb, they paused to genuflect before a side altar. “Pinched-face stick of a man! He shall be remembered without charity.”

  “Shhhh…” Nella reached for her hand, squeezed it. “The postulant’s robe will fool no one if they hear you brandishing the peppered end of your tongue. He doesn’t ken your true purpose and only sought to—”

  “I don’t care a toad’s behind what his intent was, how many saints’ bones he can produce, and even less when they are to be put on display. I only—” She quickly snapped shut her mouth and assumed a suitably devout expression as a pult of psalm-chanting monks hushed past. “’Tis Silver Leg’s wee trinkets I seek and naught else,” she blurted the instant the cowled brethren slipped from hearing range. “That, and to see my stomach cease churning.”

  “Your stomach?

  “Nay, the freckles on my nose.”

  Nella shot her a reproachful look. Leaning close, she whispered, “I believe I may have glimpsed one of Sir Bernhard’s little silver leg votives the last time we passed the shrine. I—”

  “Are you certain?” Madeline almost forgot the discomfort roiling through her belly. “Where was it?”

  “Hanging from the gate enclosure on the east side of the shrine, fairly close to the floor. I spotted it just when the sacrist made us move on. I cannot say for a surety, though. It was half-hidden behind the larger cast of a reallooking foot.”

  Excitement shot through Madeline, joining the tumult of strange emotions whirling inside her ever since they’d left the last side altar. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”

  “Because I did not want to disappoint you, my lady.” Nella’s brow creased as she peered at Madeline. “I wanted to wait until I’d seen it again, and was certain.”

  Wrapping her arms around her waist, Madeline dug her fingers into the rough-spun wool of her borrowed cloak. Someone else’s revulsion, anger, and boundless frustration filled her breast to such a degree she could scarce breathe, much less continue upright down the crowded side aisle.

  She swallowed hard, fighting to ignore the sensations. “Can you find it again?” she managed, straining to keep her voice steady.

  Ever attuned to Madeline’s moods, Nella’s gaze turned sharp, but she nodded.

  “Then let us make haste,” Madeline urged her friend, barely able to get out the words, for her own heart had begun to thunder out of control.

  Hurrying, she stumbled on an uneven flag in the stone flooring, barely catching herself before the roaring pulse in her ears welled to epic proportions… as did the wealth of love swelling the stranger’s heart.

  Nay, his heart—her shadow man’s—and the sudden recognition nearly brought her to her knees, for his emotions no longer came to her from a great distance.

  He was here.

  Within the cathedral walls.

  And nearing her by the minute.

  His heart pounding ever stronger, hers skittering wildly out of beat. Forcing herself to keep placing one foot before the other, she moved onward. Praise be they’d almost reached the shrine again.

  It was one thing to wax romantic about a man’s depth of feeling—his capacity to love—and send him light and warmth in her dreams, and something else entirely to stand before him.

  To face him.

  In especial, now, when she’d committed herself to an undertaking the successful outcome of which condemned her to ruin and a life of piety behind cloistered walls.

  A rush of heat suddenly pricking the backs of her eyes, she grabbed Nella’s hand. “Come, let us look for the exvoto and be gone from here,” she implored, already pushing forward, dragging her friend through the crowd.

  In as much a miracle as those wrought by sacred relics, the little band of hawk-eyed sacrists had all hands full assisting a pilgrim who’d fallen into a state of writhing blessedness on the far side of the feretory.

  Seizing the opportunity, Madeline hurried to the spot Nella indicated, dropping to her knees in front of the tomb enclosure before propriety or watchful sacrists could stop her. Near-crazed by the intensity of the emotions spinning in her breast, she thrust her hands into the cluster of offerings hanging from the metal-wrought gates.

  And the instant her fingers curled around the little silver-cast leg, his voice joined the chaos, filling he
r head and heart as surely as he would have filled her ears had he truly spoken the words.

  A beggary votive thief! A postulant and a cutpurse.

  Madeline shot to her feet, the swift movement, or mayhap her shame, shattering his hold on her, the wild racing of her heart now truly hers alone, the panic inside her no one’s but her own.

  Forgetting Nella, the sacrists, and the wee silver leg pressing icy-cold against her dampening palm, she hitched up her skirts with her free hand and searched for the surest place to push through the solid-packed, prayer-murmuring throng.

  Half-afraid her knees would buckle before she could get away, she tried to block her shadow man’s voice, but it slid through her, its rich timbre every bit as deep, husky, and beautiful as she’d known it would be.

  Unbearably seductive and maddeningly distracting, it imprinted itself on the very fabric of her heart, doing the strangest things to her senses, and fully muddling her ability to think.

  Beggary. A cutpurse.

  Her breath came fast and shallow and she scarce heard the words… only the golden warmth of his mellifluous voice.

  “A sticky-fingered postulant.” The words slipped from Iain’s lips, though how they had, he scarce knew, for his jaw had to be brushing the cold stone of the cathedral floor.

  His astonishment complete, he stared at the plainfrocked, travel-stained lass—the very one he’d just identified as it—as she.

  The source of his weeks of discomfiture.

  The reason every fiber of his being had inexplicably tightened, his loins all afire and setting like stone, the nearer he’d come to the cathedral.

  To her.

  A would-be nun and votive thief!

  Iain stared at her, too stunned by the unlikelihood of his discovery, the immeasurable intensity of his heart-pounding reaction to her proximity, to draw breath, much less step forward and challenge her to hand over the wee whate’er-it-was he’d just witnessed her pluck from a cluster of ex-voto offerings affixed to the gates of St. Kentigern’s shrine.

  Nay, stricken as he was by his unaccountable reaction, he stood wholly flummoxed—in truth, fully undone— and hoped none of the wild and base urges thundering through him showed on his face.

  His honor, tarnished though it might be, forbade even one such as he to flaunt carnal lust in the presence of priests and the pious.

  And his pride, sore-battered or nay, cringed at the lustful urges inspired by the lamentably unattractive lass.

  He hadn’t been that long without a woman.

  Then she whirled his way, her snatched treasure clutched in a fisted hand pressed against fine, high-set breasts, and Iain’s heart swelled to bursting. Truth to tell, it slammed so hard against his ribs, the shock near felled him.

  He’d erred greatly in assuming her plain.

  Light green eyes, huge and panic-filled, locked with his, for a split second widening even more, their gold-flecked depths mirroring something uncannily like recognition—as if she, too, reeled from the crackling attraction sizzling between them.

  A single curling strand of glossy copper-gold hair slipped from beneath the cowl of her cloak, tumbling over her left eye before coming to rest against the sweet curve of her cheek. Looking more like a startled doe than a brazen-hearted relic thief, she blinked, moistening lips he would have claimed in a heartbeat if only he’d glimpsed them when his honor had been intact… his life his own and unsullied.

  She drew a deep breath, and her breasts, well-rounded and full, rose beneath her cloak, its travel-worn folds emphasizing rather than disguising their lushness.

  Though he would ne’er have owned it possible, Iain’s body tightened even more. His throat closed at once, his mouth going so dry he couldn’t even give himself the paltry relief of wetting his lips.

  Bitter regret swept through him, washing away his lust and replacing it with an emptiness so all-consuming its bite hurt worse than the cutting edges of a dozen wickedly honed blades.

  In another eerie echo of his own shackled longing, a look of deepest anguish flashed across her beautifully expressive face, then she was gone—bolting through a sudden break in the throng, and taking the whole of his heart with her.

  His MacLean heart.

  The selfsame one he’d thought had withered and died but now knew had only ne’er been truly wakened.

  Not by his late wife, Lileas, the saints bless her sweet-natured soul, and not by any other lass e’er to cross his path or share his bed.

  Adrift in a roiling sea of disbelief and a glaring truth he could no longer deny, Iain squeezed shut his eyes and, lifting a none-too-steady hand, kneaded the back of his hot, aching neck. Several long moments later, when he reopened his eyes, they looked out on a different place.

  A new world, and one through which he’d have to tread across very rough ground, for one of his staunchest beliefs had just been soundly toppled.

  He, Iain MacLean, younger son of the great House of MacLean, master of nothing, and sometimes dubbed Iain the Doubter, could ne’er again scoff at the notion of MacLean men being fated to love, truly love, only one woman.

  The legend wasn’t just a sennachie’s tale to be told round the peat fires of long and dark winter nights.

  The legend was true.

  He now knew it with a certainty that resonated with every thudding beat of his heart, every ragged breath he drew, for his one woman—a votive thief and a postulant—had just looked him full square in the eye.

  And the repercussions of having to admit it ripped him to pieces.

  A few scant hours later, but far removed from the splendor of Glasgow Cathedral, a darker, more ancient kind of magic than saintly relics and plainsong brought a smile to old Devorgilla’s lips.

  Cozily ensconced within the thick, whitewashed walls of her thatched cottage, Doon’s resident crone hummed a merry, if slightly off-key, tune as she peered closely at her precious assortment of Fairy Fire Stones.

  A sizable collection, the charmed stones nearly filled a large wooden bowl she kept on the little oaken table near her hearth. And although all the stones possessed their own immeasurable value, only two held her rapt attention.

  His stone—Iain MacLean’s—and his lady’s.

  His new lady’s.

  The lass meant for him since time beyond mind.

  Clucking her tongue, the crone shook her grizzled head. Much grief would ne’er have come to pass had not men, with their fool meddlings into things best left alone, procured Iain the Doubter a political marriage to benefit the clan rather than the needs of his own braw heart.

  For sweet-natured and comely as Lileas MacInnes had been, she wasn’t The One.

  And none of the powers-that-be at the time had heeded Devorgilla’s discreet reminders of the MacLean Bane, the Legend. Neither Iain’s late father, nor his Council of Elders. Nary a one of the better-knowing graybeards had listened to her.

  Even her more dire warnings had fallen on deaf ears.

  There’d even been threats to banish her from Doon if she didn’t cease what they called her foolish prattle.

  Her brow furrowing at their benightedness, the crone banished the lot of them to the farthest reaches of her mind. Greater powers than hers would be needed to undo ill-made choices of the past.

  A wiser move would be to help along the future.

  To that end, the cailleach curled knobby-knuckled fingers around the edge of the wooden bowl and dragged it across the table’s rough-planked surface until it rested at the very edge.

  Leaning forward, she brought her wizened face to within inches of the bowl.

  Just to be certain her eyes hadn’t deceived her.

  They hadn’t.

  Both stones, smooth and glistening Highland quartz, glowed with a finer luminosity than e’er before.

  Not yet the blinding brilliance she was hoping for, but with a goodly portion more shine and inner fire than she’d expected to see this day. And they vibrated… Devorgilla even fancied a faint humming sound came fr
om deep within their pulsing depths.

  At once, sheerest pleasure stole over her. The giddy, breathless kind better suited to starry-eyed young lasses with all their days yet stretching before them.

  But a gladness warm enough to do her bent frame a world of good nonetheless. And with no one but her napping grandson, Lugh, and her tricolored cat, Mab, to see her lapse of dignity, she gave an uninhibited cackle of delight and clapped gnarled hands in glee.

  Indulging herself, she touched a fingertip first to her stone, then to his. For, at long last, the male stone had lost some of its chilly blue tint, and like the female stone, now showed a slowly spreading point of pulsating reddish gold at its core.

  Equally telling, its flawless surface warmed her finger.

  More than satisfied, the crone lifted her hand away from the bowl and straightened, for once not cringing at the creaks and pops of her aged bones.

  Then, assuming a more suitably solemn mien, she recited the spelling words. “One be you, and one be she. When your lady’s heart catches fire, you will recognize her.”

  At once, and for the first time ever, the wee glow deep inside the female stone seemed to first contract, then burst, spindly rays of bright red-gold shooting outward, some even reaching the very edges of the stone before retracting.

  An erupting firestorm by no means, but enough.

  The time had come, and they’d met.

  There could be no denying it, for Fairy Fire Stones always spoke the truth.

  Blinking hard, for a good cailleach ne’er shed a tear, Devorgilla patted her wiry white hair and allowed herself a trembly-lipped smile.

  Her magic was working.

  Iain the Doubter was a doubter no more.

  Chapter Four

  GOD’S GOOD MERCY, BUT I cannot take another step.” Her cheeks pink with exertion, Nella of the Marsh flung herself onto the grassy bank of the fast-moving Molendinar Burn. Breathing heavy enough to flood Madeline with guilt, she glanced over her shoulder at the whin and broom-studded abbey hill rising steeply behind her. “Will not take another step,” she amended. “My feet would rise in rebellion should I even try.”