Highland Enchantment (Highland Brides) (38 page)

"Cruel?" The voice of Haydan the Hawk interrupted his misery. "Twas not to be cruel that I brought you back, lad," he said.

Liam glanced up at him. Never would he be able to look at the huge warrior without thinking of Rachel. Never would he be able to see any Forbes without longing for her. Pain ripped through his heart. He curled his hand over his chest, but there was not even an amulet there to comfort him. There was nothing.

He closed his eyes in misery.

Hawk slowly approached to take a seat. "The wound is deep, but the pain will fade, lad," he said quietly.

"You are wrong," Liam whispered.

"I know something of pain," Hawk said.

"And do you know how it feels to have your heart torn from your chest?"

Hawk scowled at him. The ultimate warrior could brook no whining. But what did he know of loss? He had never loved.

"The injury is grievous, aye," he said. "But the Lady Fiona said naught of you missing your heart. What say you, Lady? Has the Irishman lost that precious organ?"

Fiona managed a wan smile. "Surely I would have noticed."

"How can you joke?" Liam asked, his voice choked. "How can you bear it?"

Fiona reached out, her expression mournful as she touched his hand. "All will be well. You will see. The pain will pass."

"All will not be well!'' He jerked away, unable to bear her compassion. Tears burned his eyes.

"She is..."—he could barely manage the word—"gone," he whispered.

The room was silent. Nay! All the earth was silent with the crushing weight of his loss.

"Gone?" Hawk asked, but Liam was beyond answering.

"Liam," Fiona whispered.

"I could not save her!" he rasped, turning toward her, seeking forgiveness though he could not grant it himself. "I am sorry. I..." His voice broke. "I failed."

"Save..."

"Liam." The voice was small and raspy and seemed to come from inside his very heart.

The breath stopped in his throat. Every muscle, every nerve, every hopeless, aching part of him quaked as he turned away from Fiona to the opposite side of the bed.

Rachel was there, her small face still sleepy as she straightened from the chair where she rested.

"Rachel." He breathed her name, not daring to believe, not daring to blink.

"Liam," she said, and reaching out, touched her palm to his cheek.

The sweet impact soared through his soul, jangling his senses. "I thought..." He pressed his fingers over hers and still she didn't disappear, didn't disintegrate into nothing more substantial than his fevered dreams. "I thought you were dead."

"Nay. Nay you did not, Liam," she whispered. "Surely you knew I was here. Surely you remember."

"Remember?"

"The dragon," she whispered. She was so close, so sweetly close. "The dragon of the deep."

Memories as slippery as eel skimmed through his mind, images only half real. Endless water, hopeless sinking, then the feel of sleek reptilian skin, clawed limbs, nightmares too frightening to ponder, and yet not frightening at all.

"It saved you?" he whispered.

"Aye."

"Why?" he asked, only to answer himself. "For Dragonheart."

"Nay. For you," she murmured, and kissed him.

Feelings as raw as an open wound squeezed his heart. She was alive! She was well! There was a God! He reached up to touch her face, to draw her closer, to kiss her lips.

"So you are awake," a voice rumbled.

Liam jerked away from her, waiting for the dream to shatter like a hundred others. But still she was there beside his bed. Her father, however, was there too.

"M-my laird!" Liam stammered. Laird Leith, the Forbes of the Forbes, looked as stern as ever, his bearing noble, his presence undiminished with the passing of the years—the epitome of everything Liam was not. "Aye, me laird. Thanks to your lady's ministrations, I am indeed awake."

"And which lady might that be, Liam?"

Laird Leith's eyes were as steely steady as they had always been in Liam's dreams. Steady, unblinking, and all-knowing, as if he could read every lurid thought Liam had ever entertained about his precious daughter. He knew, Liam thought. He knew all they had done together. Everything that had transpired between them. True, at the time they had been certain that naught but death awaited them. But still, she was a laird's daughter, and Liam, well... he would be lucky to still think himself a bastard.

Was it too late for a good lie? Even a bad lie might suffice. But no glib untruths came to mind.

"I am told that Warwick is dead," Leith said.

Liam scowled, but reprimanding the laird for speaking the name aloud seemed foolhardy at best. If he were wise, he would be grateful now for each moment the laird allowed him to share his daughter's company. For now, surely all knew his feelings for her, and none would accept that.

"I believe he is dead, me laird. But in truth," Liam said, "I have thought that before."

"He is dead." Rachel's voice was soft with quiet assurance.

The laird nodded, but his gaze never left Liam's face. "Me ladies, if you would leave us for a time, I would have a word with the Irishman."

Twas a bad idea, Liam thought, and when Rachel's fingers slipped from his, that opinion was only magnified. Lady Fiona rose to her feet and wrapped an arm about her daughter's shoulders as they met and exited.

Haydan the Hawk rose slowly, exchanged one prolonged glance with the laird of the Forbes and followed the women, closing the door behind him.

Tension crawled with chilly fingers up Liam's spine. The silence grew.

Leith paced slowly to the nearby window. "I know the truth," he said quietly.

"The truth, my laird?" Liam questioned, hoping his voice didn't quake like his insides did. But suddenly he could remember every touch of Rachel's fingers against his skin, every word, every breathless joining. And he was certain each scandalous thought showed on his face.

"Warwick was your sire."

Liam's jaw dropped, but whether this knowledge was more or less dangerous was questionable. "Aye." He found his voice with some difficulty. "Aye, I fear tis true."

"Fear?" Leith's gaze, sharp as a hunting falcon's, held him. "Why?"

The man, Liam was certain, had never known fear, had never felt its burn and never would.

"He was..." Liam searched hopelessly for his voice for a moment. "He was evil."

The eyes were still hard as an eagle's. "And you? Are you evil too?"

"I... hope I am not, but—"

"You saved me daughter." The words lay flat in the silence. "Is such the deed of an evil man?"

"Nay, me laird, but—"

"So Dragonwynd will be yours."

Liam shook his head, trying to find some reason in the other man's words. "Dragonwynd, me laird?"

"Warwick's estate."

"Estate?" Liam echoed.

"He was not always the personification of evil," Forbes said. "He was once the right hand of kings. Valued by kings and thus granted gifts by kings. Dragonwynd was given to him by James II. It was once a great fortress. But twas not enough for him. He was greedy, and he was cruel, and when the full measure of his cruelty became known, Dragonwynd was attacked in an attempt to take him.

But even before the gates were torn asunder, the wizard had fled."

"Dragonwynd?" It was the only word Liam could manage.

"Twas not enough for Warwick," Leith repeated. "Will it be enough for you?"

Liam tried to speak, to digest the words, to realize his good fortune. Never had he hoped to be given anything, much less a fortress. He should take this offering and be eternally grateful. After all, it was unlikely that even
he
could steal himself a fortress. Much easier to be given one. A home, he told himself. A place to belong. No more wandering. No more namelessness. He would be Liam of Dragonwynd.

And he would not have Rachel.

The truth struck him with the force of an arrow to the heart.

"Is it enough?" Leith asked again, his tone gruff.

"Nay." Liam could barely force out the word. "Tis not."

The silence felt like molten lead against his ears.

"What else, then?"

"Your daughter."

The great laird's eyes glinted. "What?"

"I would have your daughter's hand."

The laird of the Forbes towered over Liam's bed, his scowl dark as thunderclouds.

"Tis a bit late for her hand, isn't it?"

God's balls! He knew what they had done in the woods. Liam's heart rattled a rapid beat against his ribs. "My... laird?" he asked breathlessly.

"After all these years of mooning over her. After she has held your heart for half a lifetime, tis about time you asked for her."

He couldn't quite breathe or focus or think. Could it be? Could it possibly be? "I would be good to her," Liam whispered, the words rusty in the stillness. "I swear I would."

"Aye," Leith said with a shallow nod. "Aye. You shall, or I'll use your guts for my bowstrings."

Today was the day he would wed Rachel Forbes.

Liam clenched his fists and paced once more. Twas not possible, he thought, and yet, if the hubbub of the last two weeks was any indication, it was entirely possible. Still, since becoming betrothed, he had seen far less of her than he had in the month prior.

Laird Leith and his brother Roderic had insisted they escort him to Dragonwynd, his inheritance. The estate was a towering expanse of crumbling stone on the edge of the sea. The nearby village was prosperous, the people thrifty, the land not devoid of its share of fertile valleys.

Liam had looked it over much as he looked over the assemblage now gathered at Glen Creag, with a sense of mind-numbing disbelief. Things had happened too fast. Things he neither deserved nor indeed had ever dared to hope for. Things that scared the living devil out of him.

He skimmed the crowd. Guests had been arriving for some days now, guests like the Duke of Rosenhurst, every Highland laird within three days' riding distance, and the king of Scotland!

Liam wiped his hands on his ceremonial plaid and tried to be diverted by the entertainers.

Catriona spun into the air like a launched missile and landed, smiling and unwinded on her bare feet.

It was a sad day when the sight of her bonny form didn't even strike his interest.

It seems it was Catriona who had summoned help. Knowing Rachel was bound for the king, she had raced to Blackburn Castle after Warwick attacked her band of rovers.

Hawk, already alerted to the fact that there was trouble, had immediately set out with the Gypsy girl at his side. They'd reached the spot where Warwick had attacked the troupe of entertainers, then followed and lost the trail a dozen times before, some days later he had spied a mounted party on the road.

It had been none other than Shona and Sara. Panicked over the disappearance of their cousin, they had set out to find her with their scolding husbands, and a large company of warriors.

It had been Sara who had realized Liam and Rachel were headed toward their way to Loch Ness. And thus their rescue.

Catriona bowed to the assemblage at large then to the king, then to Haydan the Hawk, who sat just to the young monarch's left. Royalty was spread through the crowd like the pox.

Where the devil was Rachel? She hadn't changed her mind had she? Twas possible of course.

After all, she'd broken betrothals before, and if the truth be known his abilities as a magician and juggler may not stack up well against titles such as duke or earl, which she already had turned down.

Liam worried at his silver brooch. Twas a gift from his bride's mother. The sporran, big as a horse and ostentatious as a crown, was a gift from Rachel.

"Nervous?" The voice came from his right.

He turned his gaze to Shona, Rachel's auburn-haired cousin.

"Tis more the kind of crowd I'd pick pocket than I'd marry into," Liam complained.

"I'd suggest that you keep your hands busy elsewhere," Sara said, joining them.

"Aye. Where is our cousin to busy his hands?" Shona asked.

"Shona!" Sara reprimanded.

But the auburn beauty only laughed. "I'm but trying to make certain that our Liam gets bestowed instead of beheaded. You know how King James likes his baubles."

"I think his attentions are fully engaged elsewhere," Sara said, glancing toward where Catriona gave the king a single rose.

"He's only eight years old."

Stepping sideways with the grace of a fawn, the Gypsy gave the second rose to the hulking guard that sat beside him.

"Aye. And Haydan the Hawk is four times that. Neither would notice if the entire assemblage were sucked into hell with Warwick."

"Don't mention his name," Liam said, although as hard as he searched, he could feel no sensations of evil. Warwick was gone.

"So you are to be wed?" asked a deep male voice.

Liam turned as Sara's husband joined them. Sir Boden Blackblade was a huge man, dark and solemn, with a devilish dry wit and enough of a past with Liam to make the gleam in his eye a worry.

"Aye," Liam said. There was a time he had resented Boden's hold on Sara, but that was before he had possessed any hope of winning her cousin's love.

Even now it seemed impossible. Where was she anyway?

"So where is the bride?" Roderic the Rogue shouldered his way through the crowd. As Rachel's irascible uncle he had a right to cause trouble where he would. And now seemed to be the time. "You don't suppose she has changed her mind, do you, Liam?"

Shona widened her eyes, her penchant for a joke nearly as great as her father's. "Maybe she's realized her mistake and fled Glen Creag altogether. Mother..." Glancing past her sire, she caught her mother's gaze. "Are any of the horses missing? Maybe Rachel has run off with her lover."

"And maybe tis your Dugald who has seen the light and left with someone likely to cause less trouble," suggested the Rogue's wife, who was, if the truth be told, not the sort of pot who should call the kettle black.

"You've not yet left Father," Shona rejoined.

"That's because I'm charming beyond words," said the Rogue, curling his arm about his wife's waist.